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Rate My Startup: Guildwork.com

21 points by Vishnevskiy ↗ HN
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 The current offerings for guild hosting are poorly made and outdated.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/

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

17 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] thread
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.
Vishnevskiy
Thanks for the advice I will change that.
Galletita
I can help you translate it to spanish if you want.
Vishnevskiy
We will be working on localization a little later. Feel free to get in touch with me by email.
swah
At least, probably should center the video and push the features list down. The big white space in the noble area feels wrong.
mrtron
Add some more whitespace? Feels cluttered.
Vishnevskiy
Haha the general feedback from our users is that there is too much whitespace. =(
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.

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.

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

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.

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.
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.