

Rate My Startup: Guildwork.com - Vishnevskiy

Guildwork is a guild host with a social layer. The MMORPG market is growing each year. World of Warcraft has 12 million players alone. The current offerings for guild hosting are poorly made and outdated. So we decided to give a better shot at it. We gained 1500 members last month and got 600k page-views before reaching beta (which is today). An example of a site hosted on Guildwork is http://www.ex-online.com/<p>Our downside at the moment is that we do not have a designer on our team and its hurting us. So if anyone here is a designer and interested in working on something like this feel free to contact me stanislav@guildwork.com
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patio11
Features do not sell software. Benefits sell software. Write your own DKP
Javascript is a feature, have less drama and more loot with less work is a
benefit. Highlight accordingly.

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Vishnevskiy
Thanks for the advice I will change that.

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Sindrome
I see you guys already have a lot going on. The best advice I think I could
give to you is to invest in features that people will want. Gamers are very
picky people.

Also, focus on WoW. It is definitely the cash cow of MMOs by far. I would even
go as far as to create a WoW specific landing page that is optimized to
attract WoW players.

Blizzcon is this month on Oct 22-23rd. If you can tie your site to Blizzcon
somehow… maybe by blogging live about Blizzcon or advertising/networking while
at the event, then may be able to capitalize on this once a year event.

One last thing, Cataclysm is coming in December. This means that all those
inactive WoW players are starting to comes back and will need guild hosting.
That means you guys have to be ready to capitalize on that surge.

Earlier this year I put together a site to try and solve the grouping issue
people face in WoW. It's not uncommon for people to spend HOURS trying to put
together PUG groups. I didn't get any traction so I've mainly abandoned the
site. If you have any questions about it feel free to email me (email in
profile).

Anyways good luck. Lately I’ve been noticing Curse gaming and ZAM buying a
bunch of sites (MMOChampion, one of those shitty guild hosting sites,
tankspot, etc). I heard WowHead sold for 1Mil, but not from anyone reputable.

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floozyspeak
Well I think its a good idea with a potentially big snackable market to go
after considering the number of MMORPG's out there.

Looks like you have a ton of data in the app, hence the busy/clutter feel you
get. Is all that data put in by hand, ie- i just won The Rock Uberness +12
killing to Bats, and I put it in the app, indicate how much dkp it cost, who i
was with etc.

I'd almost rather see your app as an app in facebook where they do the hard
work in providing the platform for communication/connectedness and you focus
on all the bit elements around it.

If all this data goes in by hand and i suspect is does, the feeling of work
overcomes me but i'm no the hardcore raider. Hardcore fanboys will probably
dig it but they want some sex in the app bad. The RiotACT feels sexy but feels
stuck as well.

I think you need to take 10 steps back, breathe, sit down with 5 different
types of users, the noob that just joined the guild, the guy thats been there
awhile, the crazy rabid collect everything on the planet girl, PVP master dude
X that likes to hurt people and the guy/girl who started the guild in the
first place. Talk simple flows outloud without looking at anything. Then go
back to your app and figure out a way to REMOVE 50% of what you see. Refine,
present it to those 5 peeps and go from there.

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Vishnevskiy
Facebook is out of the question because a lot of MMO players do not want to
mix their real life with their virtual life.

All the profiles and feed updates on the site are automatic through our
crawlers.

The DKP is manual and for many games this is fine because they are already
doing it manually. For WoW we have an add-on coming that should automate a lot
of it.

Design is an issue that we are attempting to fix as said in our original post.
I completely agree.

I think a flaw at the moment is we have 0 negative feedback from the thousands
of users that we do have because they are not WoW players. WoW players are
more picky and we are aware of that so now we will attempt to change things to
appease them.

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notahacker
My immediate thought is that it looks like a business app - the design isn't
unattractive, it just doesn't seem to fit the market.

Ideally, it should be skinnable with default themes loosely based on the most
relevant MMORPGs and the ability for guilds to come up with creative designs
of their own

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Vishnevskiy
What you call "the market" I would disagree with. Just because every other
guild host out there offers bulky flashy layouts does not mean that is what
the market wants now. Any user of those sites you talk to now will tell you
they are not happy with any of it and just use it because they are not aware
of other options. We have done the research in that aspect.

However skinning is something we are working on now, we left it out till we
had our own designer to offer base themes. Its top priority now. We always
hoped to get a designer on board early but we were unable to do so we focused
on features and quality.

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Vishnevskiy
Clicky: <http://www.guildwork.com>

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peng
I'm a designer, and I built this for my friends: <http://riotactguild.com>
Look me up if you're interested.

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targz
Really interesting idea. I do like the design, it feels like many other smart
apps that you run into in the line of software dev. Great logo too.

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swah
At least, probably should center the video and push the features list down.
The big white space in the noble area feels wrong.

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mrtron
Add some more whitespace? Feels cluttered.

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Vishnevskiy
Haha the general feedback from our users is that there is too much whitespace.
=(

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weixiyen
Could you elaborate on the technology you used and why?

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Vishnevskiy
[http://gwdev.lighthouseapp.com/projects/45937/guildwork-
stac...](http://gwdev.lighthouseapp.com/projects/45937/guildwork-stack)

That details everything behind Guildwork for those that are curious.

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Galletita
I can help you translate it to spanish if you want.

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Vishnevskiy
We will be working on localization a little later. Feel free to get in touch
with me by email.

