If you haven’t already encountered these guys in the Star Wars: The Old Republic community then the name might fool you into thinking they are less than the outstanding community forging team they have proven themselves to be. Especially Jono, who I particularly admire for his charm and seemingly exhaustible energy and positivity. However, we tease the most the ones we love (if you will forgive me molesting a paraphrase here) so I fully intend to get a few digs in on these guys by the end of this article! So without further ado let me introduce you to my dear friend Jono, Alliance Overlord of Knights Who Say Ni.

KWSNI - Lightsabers and guns

Quick Stats:

Allegiance to: The Galactic Republic

PvP

English, Europe (GMT)

Moderate (10-20 hrs/week), social, forum and website usage required, chatty/talkative

Founded on March 09, 2011, led by JonoBradley

50 members 

KWSNI Emblem. Star Trek communicators, SWTOR Symbols, Guns, Lightsabers KWSNI risk getting hunted down by people who speak fluent Klingon or Huttese.

What prompted the formation of your guild?

The Knights Who Say Nii was originally formed 10+ years ago, a time I wasn’t even aware of the guild- so that’s not something I can speak too. However we formed the SW:TOR wing of KWSNi because we knew we had a good 15-20 members who would be playing the game.

What was the date of your guild’s formation?

The SW:TOR wing was formed on the day that Guild Phase 1 was launched (around 10th March this year?) But we knew we would be launching into SW:TOR for a few years now.

That and demand shrubberies!

How did you pick the name?

The name is actually a really useful recruitment tool. What it does for new members is let them know what sort of humour we enjoy and it also acts well as our “Age Gate” the people who tend to get the reference tend to already be 18+

I think it’s reasonably obvious why it was chosen all those years ago, I would imagine it had something to do with the original founder’s love of Monty Python.

How many members are you strong? How many are active?

50-60 members currently, but we anticipate an influx just after launch once we get into our in-game recruitment process.

Tell us about your guild’s artwork.

Nebin was the member who created the guild “emblem”, what it shows of is our love of all games and genres. We are a multi-game alliance and it really helps to show that!

WeekendJedi is a guy which joined us in the last few months through the SW:TOR website and he jumped into activity with the guys straight away. He’s also been the steering force behind our current website! We were trying to implement a new website and miserably failing at it, Lee (WJ) came along and he’s basically built the site up from the ground. So a BIG round of applause for him!

Sannas has dedicated the last few years to build KWSNi up from what it was, and now we’re a multi-game alliance… so I suppose he deserves some sort of thanks.. the pain in the arse that he is!

Tiadormia or “Tal” has really helped out with the building of the website and the creation of our Company of Heroes league. If anybody is interested in joining, give us a shout. I’m sure we’ll be using our league system soon enough in SW:TOR! Go HuttBall!

WeekendJedi has another distinction at least among the Twitter SWTOR crowd as we are all anxiously awaiting news of their impending new baby. Hopefully there will be good news on this soon!

Screen grab from the recruitment video

What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a new guild starting up?

Don’t try too much too fast. If you have the quality of players, more will come.

Are you looking for more members?

We’re always looking for new players! We have no set cap on how many we can accept, so if you’re looking for an English speaking guild based in the EU, give us a look! You do have to be 18+ (although there have been SOME exceptions to that rule) and you will need to sign up to our website. Other than that, they’re are no other pre-requisites. Well.. you need to be a fun person who can take a bit of banter

We also prefer people to use our VoIP servers if you’re going to participate in flashpoints, operations or group PvP

It’s also useful if you have an “adult” sense of humour!

KWSNi Screenshot of their website

I love Monty Python as much as the next (elderly, according to KWSNI) geek but I’m not sure they would be pleased by being categorized as ‘adult humor’.

When looking at prospective applicants and their applications, what is your pet peeve? Or what would you advise NOT to do?

I’d like to say capital letters. People who dont put capital letters at the start of a sentence really annoy me. But if its a good application then I can look past it easily enough.

My SW:TOR application pet peeve is the amount of just empty applications I receive. If you’re not willing to fill the form out, don’t apply!

Alright I have to agree that skipping over questions in an application left and right won’t make a guild likely to believe you really want to join.

KWSNi Cullen and Jono drawn by a member of the guild

How do you guys pass the time and keep the excitement and guild commitment up while waiting for the game to release?

We’re continuously playing other games. As I mentioned above, we have a Company of Heroes league running, we have members playing World of Tanks, Lord of the Rings Online, Battlefield 3… the list goes on and on! We’re using Skype at the moment to gather our members in a Voice chat, but once BF3 goes live we’ll have a live Mumble servers for all the members to use.

What is your guild looking forward to doing in SWTOR in particular? Example: Most of us will be speeding to the first Warzone we can enter.

I think the majority of our members, I think just to play and get into game will satisfy the majority of us. One of our leaders “Vayran” is in particular looking forward to Sannas “The Bug Hunter” finding every bug in the game (we don’t know how he does it, but he does!).

I’m personally looking forward to Open PvP “Nii Style!”

Which in my mind translates to “Come back here, I can still bleed on you!”.

Guild amenities. What does your guild have to offer its members?

We’re currently running a Ventrilo server, but we use Skype mostly at the moment and our Mumble server (which will replace Ventrilo) will go active next month. We also have a Forum which we like members to be active on. Myself and WeekendJedi are also working on a “NiiNet” for SWTOR which will be a mini-SWTOR database on the classes, planets, holocrons etc… It will be usable for everyone, not just the guild. So if SWTOR.com is down and you wanted to read up on Tython, head on over and take a look.

Ni-Net - You might want to bookmark this for further use. Click the image to go to the Database.

What was the toughest hurdle for you and your guild to get over in the time you’ve spent together?

Sannas’ long forum posts! No seriously, they’re a killer!

Tell us about You. What draws you to SWTOR?

It’s relatively simple really, I got the first Knights of the Old Republic for Christmas one year. I devoured it before going back to school in January and haven’t since looked back. BioWare created such a fantastic immersive environment with KOTOR and then Obsidian did a “playable” job of KOTOR2. I can remember chasing rumours on the internet of a KOTOR3 and then possibly an MMO? I can remember talking to my best mate ALLOT about what KOTOR3 could possibly be, I even started to write a few story ideas down onto paper. I also remember vividly saying many times that “if they dont make a KOTOR MMO by the time I’m 30- I’m doing it!” – I guess BioWare/EA beat me too it

Nii Net Planet page

What class will you be playing?

I shall be playing the Jedi Knight: Guardian! Ever since the announcement of SW:TOR, I have wanted to play a Tank- mainly down to tanking allot on my Captain in LOTRO. So when the Jedi Knight: Guardian got announced, I decided it was what I wanted to be- and I have stuck with it since.

A picture of me on the train to Eurogamer last week - Jono

What made you decide to run a guild?

The way we run the guild is that we have 4 “Alliance Overlords” which are myself, Sannas, Cullen and Vayran. From that each of the game guild leaders come below us. When talking about the SWTOR guild it was decided that I would start the guild up and lead it at launch as I’m one of the most SWTOR fanatic people you’ll ever meet!

I’ve also got previous experience of running guilds of over 200members etc, so it wasn’t going to be a problem for me if KWSNi got a ridiculous amount of members within SW:TOR!

Screengrab from KWSNi's recruitment video

What is it like to run a guild a year or more in advance of the game the guild is formed to play in?

It’s exciting! It’s the first time I’ve done it, and whereas it can be relatively quiet and boring, it can also be exciting, fast paced and a great deal of fun. I’ve met allot of new friends and associates since joining in with the SW:TOR guild crowd- something I wouldn’t have done if not leading KWSNi into SW:TOR.

Pre-launch its more about setting up the community and allowing people to inter-mingle, whereas post-launch I anticipate a lot of work to do with Flashpoints, Operations, PvP and dealing with complaints. It’s just the nature of the beast!

Awesome background image made by KWSNi

Have you guys ever met IRL? Planning to?

We’ve planned to do so many times, but none of them have ever come to fruition. I’m sure it’ll happen at some point though.

Anything else you’d like to add? Maybe an anecdote for readers to enjoy and identify with?

Something interesting about my past experience leading a guild is this: I lead one of the most popular guilds on a browser based game named “MechG” around 6/7 years ago and funnily enough the name of that guild was “The Knights of the Old Republic”.

KWSNi are going to be so happy when they hear the game is releasing on the 20th in Europe now!

What happened in the guild when they learned of the launch date?

I can’t vouch for everybody.. but I jumped up and down screaming “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” I imagine that was the reaction from all of our members!

If you are interested in checking KWSNi out more thoroughly you can visit their recruitment thread or their guild website (international and SWTOR version). You can also find them on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Steam Group.

Thank you so much for sharing the Knights with us Jono, and I hope you will forgive the ribbing along the way.

 ~~~

This week’s Galaxy of Guilds is brought to you by Enjin.com, where you can set up and host an epic guild page for free.