Discussion: Freelancer - The Past, The Present, The Future

Having been founded on 22th September 2007, Freelancer is one of the oldest kinships still alive and breathing on Eldar. We've had our share of ups and downs, of all that drama that always accompanies any guilds, clans or kinship, but we've managed to survive.

As always, we have our doors open to good fellows. We're not a big kinship, nor even close to being a dedicated raiding kin as of now, so we're definitely not raiding as often as many other kinhips, but... we have fun in here! I could say that if you're going to be part of Freelancer, you will definitely need a good, and sometimes strange and twisted sense of humour to really fit in. Some of our members are just nuts, and that's why I often refer into Freelancer as "a little nuthouse".

In short: If you're looking for a small-ish, casual-ish kinship spiced up with great sense of humour and the feeling of kinship, contact me either here at the forums or in-game. My main character is Elaida, but I often play on Olver or Bayle as well. If I'm not on those three, ask any Freelancer if I'm on another alt of mine. There's an army of them after all.

About our rules: We have only two - behave properly and respectfully both within the kinship and outside of it, and bring at least your main character into our kinship. Not too tough, right? We have no minimum age, though due to type of idle chatter that sometimes happens due to our twisted humour, I'd recommend that you should be over 18 years old. I rarely ask anyone's age though - it's always the behaviour that matters.

(I've seen 11-year-old players who behave better than some guys at their thirties... If I'm able to choose, I'll rather play with a well-behaving 11yr old kid than a 30-year-old who's behaving like the most annoying kid ever in his defiant age. Got the point? :P)


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If you're interested in our history, here's a bit of it.


The Past

Back in the good old times when LotRO meant just Shadows of Angmar, we were very successful kinship in terms of endgame accomplishments. Our kinship name, 'Freelancer', was well known amongst fellow Eldarians and both our casual players and more hardcore raiders were happily playing the game together.

Some time after the release of Mines of Moria and those horrendous "6 goes in, 1 comes out" -themed radiance grinds, a decision was made. Freelancer was split in two; our hardcore raiders left to build their own kinship, leaving the more casual and social players to continue their own fun. Don't take this the wrong way; I see nothing wrong in that decision. Everyone needs a kinship that suits their playstyle and wishes.

Since then, we have been much smaller kinship. We haven't done many raids as a kin without having been helped by alliances or our contacts in other kinships. This has worked out for a while, until we had another similar split. It resulted in the whole kinship being pretty much dead.

I became the leader of Freelancer after that second split, as I was one of those who had no intention to let the kinship name disappear, ever. I took about 8-month break from the game and started to slowly rebuild during fall of 2010, after nearly a full year of complete silence. I had set a goal, I had the patience, I had the time. I wasn't in a hurry to build up numbers, but chose to be somewhat picky and get in players who had the same sort of patience.

It worked out quite nicely; We had a kin-only raid going just before the summer 2011, with worth another raid of players online.

However, this was sort of "the last raid before summer". Soon after I took this screenshot, many of our members began to drift into inactivity. Summer took it's toll - who wants to stay online when there's such great weather outside anyway? My own main hobby during summertime is nature photography, thus I was also much less active for a few months.

Later in 2011, SWTOR was released and took it's toll, and of course, not everyone bought the Rise of Isengard expansion. We grew much smaller and have been smaller since then.


The Present

Even though we are small kinship, I'm very glad about what I have seen and experienced. Instead of having 20-25 members online at a busy night, we may have about 10 now. If we want to increase the amount of activity, we will need more - and that's what we're looking forward to.

We are able to do 6-mans as a kin, thanks to most of our level 85's having multiple characters at level cap to allow groups to be set up properly, but we'd like to have a bit more.

We are not an endgame/raiding kinship by any means. We have very different philosophy than those kins - our main focus is not the accomplishments in endgame or getting the best gear, but just one simple word; fun. The most important thing for us, whatever we're doing in game, is to have fun. That's the most solid base I can imagine for a good kinship that also feels like a kinship.


The Future

As I've hinted above, we have different goals than many other kinships. We have no reason to try being a hardcore kinship, as most of our members are fairly casual. Raiding, as a kinship, is of course one big part of the game and it will be part of Freelancer as well.

We just won't be raiding every day and into exhaustion; we'll raid when we feel like it. No weekly, steady schedules or any DKP systems either. We use common sense. Fun is, and will always be, the priority number one for us.

PvMP is also one part of the game, but we're not really active at the "bad guys' side". There are a few 'lancers who may be somewhat addicted to their creeps, but it's not any kind of priority to us as a kinship. We'll hang on to our old philosophy; fun comes first.


With regards,

Elaida
Leader of Freelancer

good luck recruiting

Greetings, fellows.

I think it's a good time for a little update. I have been very inactive myself during the exceptionally hot and sunny summer we had here in Finland, but I'm slowly getting back into the game now. Freelancer is still alive and doing well; some things are happening somewhat regularly, though we would love to find some fresh blood to get the kin raids going on smoother.

For now, there's no real quotas per class, though we won't be growing ourselves into a ridiculously big kinship. That will never happen, as we could easily lose the "feeling of kinship". What this means in practice is that we're open to a bunch of active players (say, half dozen more at this time), no matter what the main class of yours is.

If your main is a minstrel or captain, or if you just happen to have a minstrel or captain you like to play with, we would definitely be interested. Alt-o-holics are the most precious of all player types from our point of view, as they will give us more options in filling up groups. :P

See the first post for a longer story about what kind of kinship we are and apply through our website if you think you'd fit in. And most importantly; remember to have fun, whatever you do in game!

Thank god at least the forum moderation here works swiftly.

If anyone happened to read the post that has now been removed, let me clear things up. I have not spammed anything. I have not been rude. Freelancer's recruitment strategy is to use social panel in-game to find kinless players, to whom we send in-game tells. This does not allow us to read their bios, there's no right-click menu with "inspect" option in that player list. We can only inspect after we have sent the message or they have replied.

We do it this way, as we don't want to "spam" public chat channels with our advertisements, and also as we often have priorities on classes to recruit. Sending the tells to chosen few instead of public ads allows us to focus on specific classes we need the most. And no, we never invite anyone blindly or "spam invites". We send a tell, with a short introduction about the kinship and ask "would you be interested?" This message is perfectly friendly, and it is not an invite. If the person replies and says he (or she) is interested, there are a few follow-up questions regarding our very simple rules, before anyone gets an invite.

In the case of now-deleted message, I was looking for one or two healers - specifically minstrels. The person was initially interested, and I did not have any problem with dps minstrels as I do dps myself as well if there's already enough healing. However, as I was looking for healers at this point, a minstrel who doesn't heal at all (that's what he said to me) does not help the kinship at all.

It would have only been awkward, if I recruited a non-healing minstrel. Too many eyebrows rising when there's a new levelcapped minstrel around but never joining as a healer when that's what we need the most.

When I told this, he threatened to blackmail our whole kinship and apparently did just that, here at the forums. My response to this threat was that a person who threatens anyone with blackmailing would never, ever be welcome to Freelancer anyway, for that reason only. I'm only grateful that I didn't decide to invite this person; he wouldn't have fit in.

I never got far enough to explain our two very simple rules to him, but blackmailing threats are very clearly against our rule number one; proper behaviour, both within Freelancer and especially outside. "Outside" mentioned in that rule covers in-game chats, pug groups, even these forums. We do not want to see our members behaving badly, but the opposite.

Well-behaving Freelancers are the best possible advertisements for us.



Note that we are not open to everyone who thinks Freelancer is a cool name for a kinship. We are small/medium size kin, where we try to keep a balance between classes while keeping the numbers steady - but just big enough for raiding. This somewhat smaller size keeps the atmosphere better and members get to know each other better than in huge kinships. This is why we sometimes look for specific classes; those we need the most urgently.

This is one part of my philosophy in running a kinship, think about it: "It's not a problem if one person leaves the kin or goes on a break, it's not a problem if half the kinship does the same. Only problem is if you never look for replacements."

As such, highest priority right now is to find one (or two) active minstrels to replace those who are inactive at the moment. And a burglar, as well as another captain. Feel free to contact me (Elaida) in-game or check the kinship website linked in the first post. If you're already at the level cap, all the better - however, if you're actively leveling up towards it, that's fine too.

Other classes can also send us applications. There might even be a spot for another hunter main, which isn't too common I guess. Just keep in mind that you will have to bring at least your main character into Freelancer; we do not recruit alts, until the main has been brought in.


With regards,

Elaida
Leader of Freelancer

Good luck Freelancer, I recall when Elaida took me through Hall of Mirrors in a PUG a few times many ages ago, think this must be a nice kin if that experience was anything to go by.

Hi Elaida.

Hope the recruitment drive went well and that SWTOR has not taken to big a toll.

Say HI to everyone from me

Apple

At first, let's just say that we're not dead yet. Here's a screenshot from our roster, dated at 17th June 2011. We were doing very well back then...



This was sort of "the last raid before summer" - soon after this, people started to drift into inactivity. First, the summer came. I was also much less active during summertime as I'm a nature photographer (that's my main hobby during summer). Later on, SWTOR came, and more people went inactive. And of course, not everyone bought the new expansion.

Thus, we've shrunk into being much smaller kinship again, but we'd still like to make it look like it does in the screenshot. We've done it before from even worse starting point than where we're now, so we can do it again. Would you like to be part of it?

Our rules, goals and such are still the same as described in the first post. I will update some bits of that text when I find time for it, but generally, we're the same kin we've always been - fun comes first, whatever we do. As of now, we would welcome players of any class. Higher the level, better for us in the short term, but it doesn't matter if you're steadily growing towards the cap.

Just one extra requirement though; as we do want to have some endgame activity, we wish that anyone joining us would be either VIP or at least Premium, with willingness to purchase at least some content.

Just contact us - send me a message either here at the forums (I'll check these just about daily); or through in-game mail to my main character, Elaida; or through the application form at our kinsite. We'll get back to you!

This post is targeted to leaders of small kinships who are also struggling with too few members.

In addition to looking for individual players to join us, I would also like to offer other small(-ish) kinships an opportunity; a merge to Freelancer. Don't take this the wrong way - I'm not megalomaniac, nor am I trying to usurp whole Eldar. However, I know that there are other kinships lacking members, and that by combining our forces, we could make things work out.

As one more headsup, I'll just say this; there's only one direction in which the merge would work, and that's merging into Freelancer. We're four and a half years old kinship, with "long traditions" if you can say so in this context, and I won't let the name "Freelancer" disappear as long as I live and breathe. And there are a few other 'lancers who probably think the same way.

Think about it - and drop me a message if this could be a viable option for you.

First post updated.

Please ignore any links in follow-up posts pointing to a kinship website - it's not currently being used actively.