Clan Spotlight: [T-D] 3/31/14

Hypnotik: Our next clan in the spotlight is The Destined, a clan that has shown that it is possible to get the right balance between being a social clan and clan wars clan. They're a clan that's been around for a while and looks to be around for a long time in the future as well. You may have even benefited from them without knowing it, as one of their officers is the creator of the popular MapTactic strategy-building tool.    Attriti0n - (Atti) Commander of T-D, been with the clan over 2 years flamino - Dep. Comm. Been with the clan for over 2 years, responsible for helping the clan stay organized and to find new and better ways to engage our members CPTObvious08 - Newest Dep. Comm. for T-D, been with the clan for over a year   When and how did T-D get started? Attriti0n - The clan started about 2½ years ago by Davinchy. He had been in a group of players in other game called The Destined, and he found that he was the only guy from that group playing World of Tanks and he wanted to start his own thing here. He wanted it to be something a bit different than usual, a different kind of culture. The culture we have is more about the character of a player, and we have one rule: we don't allow our guys to curse on TeamSpeak. Some people find that odd, others think "well, that's cool. I like it." It works great for us and builds a certain kind of culture. From the beginning that was something that Davinchy wanted. Immediately when I joined he began to mentor me, it’s the kind of the culture that he wanted, we grew into and we will continue to have.   How is your clan structured organizationally? flamino - We're a pretty flat organization. Atti’s philosophy, which I think we've all embraced, is to stay flat.  We've got a good leader in Atti, a lot of the decisions we make about how we play in Clan Wars or go about recruiting or interacting with our members when it comes to contests we run is done largely by individuals. The idea is that we've got a handful of DC's that will handle any conversations that need to be addressed. The next level of commanders manage our day-to-day operations and step in when we need a company or battle commander. We have had a couple unicums like Viglundr who have stepped into the DC role and then stepped out to settle into a Company Commander or soldier role. But when it comes to leadership we're pretty easy-going - largely it's been about who's interested in filling a role and if they step up we give them plenty of latitude to make things happen.   CPTObvious08 - We have a rank system, but it's not like you'd see in a military where it's very stringent. Everyone has a say in things, even the newest person. If they have an idea, they're allowed to voice their opinion and have it considered by the clan.   Attriti0n - I think our system of rank exceeds what you would see available on the World of Tanks page. What flamino has developed on our website has allowed us to create any type of rank with any sort of name we need and even develop awards separate from the game.   What is your experience in Clan Wars? Attriti0n - Initially we participated casually. During the last Campaign one of our members, blzngunz, wanted us to be more active in Clan Wars and organized us into a group that did Clan Wars every night and helped us become competitive. We held land in Greenland for some time. His personal life has drawn him away from being able to do that right now and we did our best to keep it rolling. Hopefully as things progress with recruitment we'll be back to doing Clan Wars every night. This isn't a requirement for every member though, so we see our attendance numbers fluctuate until we get recruitment turned around again.   What have you learned about running a successful clan from your experiences? Attriti0n - It takes attention every day from more than just one leader to engage enough players and make sure they're coordinated. If you don't have the same group every night it's a challenge to build that cohesion. We've learned some solutions for it, but we understand that that will be a little bit of a struggle for us, but we look forward to it.   CPTObvious08 - That being said, the one thing I learned from calling battles at that time is, given the right map and strategy, we could hold our own against clans. It gave us a real vote of confidence and we stayed on for 3 or 4 weeks.   flamino - We've had 2 or 3 runs at Clan Wars, this last time through was a lot of fun. Atti mentioned blzngunz - he really motivated us, helped us see what was possible, and helped us organize and we did very well. What they didn't mention was when we were in the European/African maps - diplomacy is huge. Blzn again played a huge role in working with what used to be GSA and helping us secure territory in North Africa. It helps to have excellent tankers and with Blzn’s diplomacy it allowed us to be pretty competitive, even dominant at times.   What are your current goals right now? Attriti0n - It's a bit of both. What I want for the Clan is that we pursue whatever makes them happy. Quite a few want to do Clan Wars and be competitive. The other goal is the goal we've always had for the clan - to be social and play together and learn from each other. That's always going to be there. I don't think we're that far away from being back into Clan Wars consistently. We're looking to recruit some good shot callers and we'll be there.   What is the recruiting process like for T-D? Attriti0n - After the torture, nothing. We ask that they apply on the website and for the main clan we like to see players that have at least 1,000 battles, are 18 and up, and fit in with our culture. There's no stat requirement - it's great if you have Tier X's, but close is fine too. We have another clan if you're not quite ready for Clan Wars capability that is very much a part of our singular community. Even though they're a separate clan, the community is the same, and as you progress and are ready to hop into Clan Wars or tournaments we bring players over.   Do you feel that there are any major challenges that a smaller/social clan face that the major Clan Wars powers don't face? CPTObvious08 - The second night on the map is more of a problem for us. Tank Locking is something that hits us a little harder than the clans that have requirements for 5 Tier X's. I was looking at clans like Havok and they require 6 Tier X's to even apply. We don't have those requirements and I think it hurts us. When people have only one tank they aren't available the next night and after a few days we're just out of people.   Attriti0n - We're not willing to put a requirement like that in place because we value our culture and ethics ahead of having the tanks. By the same token, if you join with one Tier X, it won't be long before you have a few more. I'm sure that's a hurdle we'll get past.   flamino - We really are now. One of the things we like to do is internally promote and help our players come along. I think unlike a lot of larger clans that have deeper pockets because they own more territory, we've put in a successful scholarship program that helps folks who wouldn't otherwise be able to get into a premium account or to take full advantage of what's available to them to tier up quicker. We've done that on several occasions. As long as people are willing to put time in, we're willing to help them.   Attriti0n - As far as other differences, I'm sure the bigger clans are constantly turning people away in terms of recruitment. If you look at our roster, we're more or less full. We're in the process of identifying inactive members to move in to the sister clan and bring actives over. Maybe it's a blessing and a curse - I'm not sure we could take massive waves of recruits, but we'll deal with that as it comes.   Outside of Clan Wars, what type of improvement to the Clans system do you think would help Social Clans grow? flamino - For us, part of it's our culture. I joined The Destined because it was a place for me to come with my two boys to play and I didn't have to worry about leaving my guys on TeamSpeak unattended. This is just an awesome group of guys, they're people that I trust, and they're my neighbors on a virtual street. One of the big challenges for us is helping people stay connected. It's not enough to give me stats about me, I want to know how Atti did yesterday, because I'm going to do better than him. I want to see myself and my clan mates see themselves relative to our community. The tools I think we need are things to help clans recruit, retain, and entertain or engage their players, and you do that by providing information about their own community. So right now if you want stats you can go to any number of excellent sites like WoTLabs to see everything there is to know about your clan, but we’re sort of nerds. Fifty percent of our clan won't go there because it's not the game. They'll come to our website because it’s “our” forums, it's about us, they don't go elsewhere because it's a layer of complexity that they just don't want the hassle. What we’d like to see is easy access to our data, the ability to mine it and make it “The Destined's” data, not some third party site’s. I think that as we go forward we're going to see through the Wargaming API program more clans take the available data and use it to their competitive advantage. For example, we run internal contests using the data from the API, and it allows our people to have one more badge that someone else doesn't have.   Attriti0n - As far as contests go, something I've had in mind for a while is that it would be great if as players we could set up and coordinate tournaments that we can restrict entry and put up prizes from us (maybe have WG match the prize). An interface to set that up through Wargaming would be fantastic. It would create, I think, an interesting community of tournaments that you don't yet have. I think that would be a great way to engage more clans like ours and bring us more into the greater community.   CPTObvious08 - On the competitive field, giving a smaller, less structured or less developed clan somewhere to play would be great. One of the reasons we did so well during the Campaign was because all the big boys were off playing on the Campaign map and we were over on the regular map doing our thing. If you make a place where the smaller clans don't have to worry about Havok chipping in and obliterating you (which kills morale, for one), but if there was a place for smaller guys to face smaller guys, it would bring a lot more to the smaller clans and give them reason to compete. A lot of the big guys would not really go to those areas, so we'd be free to learn.   What (other than tournaments) do you do to keep your members active and interacting with each other? CPTObvious08 - At any given time, someone's on TeamSpeak. We have people from all over the place, some from Australia, I'm in Germany, flamino's in California, Atti in Texas, nippongamer in Japan and _Mordred__ is in India and a whole host more. We kind of develop groups of people who play at the same time, but within those groups there's some crossover and all of the groups meld together. There's always a few playing together and our culture helps everybody stay connected and driven. A lot of people will grind an unfavorable tank to help someone else get through one they're working on, and that helpfulness goes into how we are able to keep going as a clan.   Attriti0n - Our internal contests certainly help, the internal tracking of awards that let us create competition amongst ourselves also helps. We also have some guys who like to do experiments - one our players (skaeke) likes to take some of the forum posts from the official forums or WotLabs and flush out some of the theories behind why the game works the way it doesn't and put them to the test, and makes us feel like we're a part of the whole thing.   When you are trying to recruit new players, what do you do to make yourself stand out more than other Clans? Attriti0n – We don’t have a mentality that says we are the best Clan. I think every clan has something that makes them special. What we have is our culture.  We find that people either like us and some of things we are doing or they don’t. Maybe there is more going on than that but to me that is how it feels. When a new guy comes in and people enjoy playing with him and he enjoys playing with us. That is the beginning most of the time. I like that but now that we have developed so many other tools, those are definitely things we can offer and say these are unique to us. I’m sure we have folks stick around for those reasons. I do get the occasional note from someone saying “I’m glad you have this feature.” It is one of the many reasons I stick around.   CPTObvious08 – I know when I’m out recruiting and see a player that might be a good fit, I push the environment. We are a real laid back clan and an easy group of people to play with. You don’t have to worry about being harped on for a bad play and that is something you won’t see or hear on our TeamSpeak. Nobody faults another member for anything. We will rib each other every once in a while and give each other a hard time but not to the point where someone gets upset or their feelings are hurt. That is what I try to use as a recruitment tool, it is a good environment to relax and enjoy the game.   Attriti0n – We will help you if we see a mistake but we are not going to sit there and harp on anybody about that. I don’t think that is all that healthy. It is not the atmosphere I would want.   What lessons have you learned about recruiting? Have you had any players that didn’t work out? Attriti0n – Yeah, I think that happens in every Clan, especially when you accepting such a broad category of players. So yeah it happens and we try to deal with those as fairly as we possibly can and with as little fuss and hard feelings as possible. I mean what else can you do?   CPTObvious08 - Few and far between   flamino – I’m trying to think of the last time we had a big issue with someone. It is interesting, we get people to come in and assign them the friend tag on TeamSpeak for a couple of weeks and then they will apply. It is really cool because if you want to come play, we have 1 rule and if you good with that, stay as long as you want. If you want to join great, if not keep your friend tag. We have assimilated members from other Clans as groups and that has been a challenge on a couple of occasions. Actually only once has it been a problem and still it was a good experience for us.   Attriti0n – If we aren’t what you are looking for, I’ll be the first person to say it, go find the thing you are looking for. I want that for you. It doesn’t even fill up on hand the number of people we have had to kick in a bad way. For players that want to graduate to a more competitive atmosphere, one of my friends recently left to join FOXEY and he might get into SIMP now. Since that what he wanted, that is what I wanted for him. Certainly he is always welcome back here and we play together still. He comes back to our TeamSpeak server and he still loves the environment. I don’t think that will ever change in him but he is also after that additional competitive tournament play.   What is the craziest thing to happen on your TeamSpeak? flamino – Nothing ever funny happens.   CPTObvious08 – JagdTiger is the best tank on the game. That is my most memorable moment. We had a new player swear up and down that the Jagdtiger could beat any tank in the game and he was quickly humbled. It was pretty interesting to watch him eat is words after a couple seconds of claiming the best tank.   Attriti0n – We have some great sync platoons of like PZ-1Cs just doing crazy things to the other side in public battles that have just turned into really riotous occasions in the TeamSpeak server. Those are the kind of moments we look forward to and enjoy.   If you could pick any possible new feature that only your Clan could have to make your Clan much more successful, what would it be? flamino – Can we tie in Lord of the Rings into this? I was going to say you got to have a situation where you got the Riders of Rohan involved in this some place. One of our traditions in Clan Wars is to always quote from Lord of the Rings before the battle. Just to remind people that we are special. So whatever you can do to tie that into the game will only make tanks more profitable.   CPTObvious08 – I’m going to say, true airdrop tanks. At the start of the battle you pull up the minimap and click a point where we want to drop. Then airdrop 3 or 4 tanks in and go behind the enemy lines. That would be cool.   Attriti0n – Haha, I don’t know, we got a few guys who arrange pretty much the same thing.   CPTObvious08 – But having them start there would be so much better.   flamino – OK, I take back my Lord of the Rings idea. I like the airdrop tank idea better.   Anything else to add? Attriti0n – We are always looking for new recruits. We are always looking for people who enjoy an environment like ours that is family friendly, social and primarily focused on fellowship and its membership. If that sounds good to folks out there, we would like to see you. As I mentioned earlier we are looking for some good battle commanders so that we can get back on the road to Clan Wars. So please apply!