Before I came aboard Level Up in 2004, I was active as a guildmaster in Philippine Ragnarok Online. Our guild was not a popular one, we didn’t number in the hundreds and we weren’t even aggressive in PVP or Agit Sieges (but we got one in Payon for a week! Woot!).

But we were happy. I started the guild as a way to get in touch with friends. Since we were all busy with jobs and family responsibilities, the guild – which I dubbed “The Fellowship” (named after the same moniker as our tabletop RPG group founded in the 90s), was a way for us to meet every night and catch up, go “dungeon delving” and rip the butts of powerful beasts along the way.

Back then I was a writer for Fast Forward magazine and my editor gave me the task of taking charge of game and game-related content. I covered Ragnarok in a massive 7-page cover-story back in 2003. I specifically remembered Sheila Paul (who eventually became my boss) and Gameboss, Ben Colayco doing the press rounds themselves.

Soon, Level Up was texting me and I was receiving calls to be part of the first Ragnarok World Championships in Korea (2004) as a “chaperone” and also to double as a writer to cover the event. I was happy and elated to be part of a historic event – the first time a team from the Philippines was to compete in an MMORPG tournament.

I sent real-time coverage via the ragnaboards. Sadly, team Philippines (Rebirth and Unholy) didn’t fare so well. I hope they do this time. Btw, the Waukster regularly blogs about the RWC semis in his site, so be sure to check it out there.

At any rate, Level Up offered me a job as a Community and Content consultant in July of 2004. (I signed in full-time in October of that same year).As a consultant, I was in the office 3 times a week writing for the game. One of my first tasks was to analyze the processes within the community, soon I was developing new methods and stuff to basically make things better – event reports, event ideas, a process on copy-writing and eventually revamping the old Ragnarok website. One of the major overhauls was to take away the item-generation and summoning powers of GMs – things to regulate in a game.

I’m glad that I was a guildmaster for The Fellowship (in Chaos and in Odin… btw, it was Horonaim who donated an Emperium to make the guild. I am forever grateful, old chap!). Would you believe that all community-management skills I learned from managing the guild? I used to run events for my guild such as an ‘amazing-race’ type and various quests and ‘bring-me’ events too. I also kept a blog to record our adventures and even made screenshot comics of Sharic – my “palpak” build Priest hehehe.

The rest, pardon the cliché, is history – from 2 games back in 2003 (Oz is a game, yep) we have now grown to more than 200 employees, merged with ePLDT and Netgames and we are working hard to market and operate 10 games now (can you name them all?).

3 years was gone in a flash – with our share of “hell-weeks” and even “hell-months”. The various experiences, successes and crises we hurdled as a team have contributed to the growth, loyalty and dynamism of our company today. Yes, we had our laughs and even some tears along the way, but we will continue to strive for excellence in the gaming industry and all of this is for our greatest asset – YOU: our community of players.

Here’s to many more years down the road.

Regards to all,

GM T