Community News

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the Guild Spotlight!

As we explained in our introduction, in each Guild Spotlight we will feature one guild from Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ and invite them to tell their story. In this spotlight we sit down with Aphrodisia, the Guild Leader of Maan Ade Mandalore. Maan Ade Mandalore is a prominent roleplaying guild with quite a story to tell…

Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of your guild. When and how was it founded? What is the origin of your guild’s name?
Maan Ade Mandalore originated on the Lord Adraas server before the merger. In order to tell our founding properly, we would be remiss in not mentioning the community that originally brought us together. Back in the days of Star Wars Galaxies(SWG), the JEDl community existed, and in that community was a Mandalorian guild. Because of the long-term history of that guild, they had no trouble pulling together anyone interested in the culture when it came time to open up the doors in The Old Republic.

As is the nature of guilds, there were ebbs and flows to this guild, which ultimately lead to Maan Ade Mandalore’s founding. The guild was founded by myself (Aphrodisia), Du’x and Alàmar and began, predominantly, as a guild to house alts from another guild we were allied with at the time. For perhaps a month, we had very few members, and relied heavily on our allied guild. None of us really know how it happened, but it felt like overnight that we suddenly had our own crew of people that we could do stuff with.

We felt as though we were on good footing. People knew who we were on Lord Adraas (LA), and sought us out for roleplay and to join our family. This was one of the reasons why, when the server transfers came up to move to The Ebon Hawk(EH), we were apprehensive. We had built such an amazing reputation on Lord Adraas, that we feared starting from the bottom up. Ultimately, the decision was made to move, and our fears were proven false. Within the first few hours of joining, the resident roleplayers of The Ebon Hawk knew who we were.

Our name, Maan Ade Mandalore, is derived from Mando’a and translates to The First Sons of Mandalore, but we always joke about it actually meaning the First Children. Mando’a doesn’t typically separate the genders, so it’s always been a running joke for us.

What brought your guild to Star Wars™: The Old Republic™?
As I’ve said before, Maan Ade Mandalore was born from the JEDl community, originally, which was a guild community in SWG. Truthfully, though, our guild – our family – is born from its members. Many of our members were drawn here by good experiences in SWG, a love for Star Wars and the amazing cinematic teasers that BioWare put out. This game has given us the ability to roleplay as Mandalorians with other people wanting to do the same.

How would you describe your guilds play style? (ex: Progression PvE, PvP, RP, etc)
We are a heavy roleplay guild, for the most part, though we do have sprinklings of end-game PvE and some PvP. We try very hard to provide whatever our family requests. At any given time, we always have an overarching guild storyline going on, either written by one of our mentoring (officer) team or one of our wonderful members.

What has been your guilds greatest moment or proudest achievement?
There have been so many; it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. However, if we were to really ponder about it, I think we’d all agree it would be the first day we arrived on The Ebon Hawk from Lord Adraas. We had been incredibly wary about moving servers given our prominent reputation on LA. The dwindling population was ultimately the reason we decided to move, given that the Imperial Fleet alone had dwindled from an average of 150 players, to 15 by the time I logged on for the evening. Sadly, I had been at work all day, but my officer team had taken the bull by the horns and put our guild together on EH.

Rather than doing an operation that night as we had intended, we decided to head down to the snake pit (our beloved term for the Imperial Fleet cantina), and let EH know who we were via roleplay. Within 20 minutes, the regulars knew who we were and we were offered mercenary work in pre-existing storylines and by people who were already well known on the server (Hi, Sinclair!).

It was just so great to get right back into doing our thing and letting people know who we are. We still get people coming up to us now and again to chat, roleplay or ask about joining our family and the Mandalorian culture.

What would you say sets your guild apart from other guilds in The Old Republic™?
We’re a family. Plain and simple. Sure, we have titles and ranks (not everybody can lead the guild!), but they’re really just silly ranks with Mando’a names. Every member of our guild is mature, friendly and holds concern for everyone else in the group. Having a bad day? We’ll try to make you laugh. Just want to putter about and roleplay? No issue there. New to MMOs, end game or so on? Hey, we can teach you without getting annoyed.

Above everything else, everyone in our family wants everyone to have fun in whatever capacity of the game they enjoy. We don’t just talk about the game. We talk about ourselves, our lives and our futures. We remember that though it’s a game, there are people on the other side of your screen, just like you, that are just trying to have a good go of it as a way of winding down from work, procrastinating from homework or just to fill time.

Describe what an average day would be like for a member of your guild.
Roleplay. Lots of roleplay. Aside from impromptu or scheduled roleplay events, however, there are a lot of things we do. We do Operations a few nights a week and have our “Pub Nights”, where we go to our Republic-side guild, Dha Werda Manda'yaim, to roleplay and level toons in preparation for storylines (or HK-51!). Our level 50s frequently run Hard Mode Fashpoints around assisting lower leveled members.

Are you currently recruiting? If so, what kind of players are you looking for?
Always! We’re always on the lookout for mature, experienced roleplayers as well as raiders that don’t fit the requirements of a hardcore raider. We raid for fun and if we progress? Great! We really just want to have a good time regardless of whatever aspect of the game we pursue. Even if you don’t know a whole lot about Mandalorian culture, we’d be happy to teach you. We have mentors for every aspect of the game and the culture. One of our members is fluent in Mando’a; she even speaks it on Vent for us!

Where can someone go to learn more about your guild?
Our website at http://maanade.enjin.com/ is definitely the place to start. Poke around, take a look at what we’re about. As well, you can contact any one of our members in game to get more information or be directed to a member of our mentoring team.

Anything else you would like to add?
Like any family, we’re still growing, learning, and exploring together. We all bring something to the table in the guild as no one single person makes up Maan Ade. We come from all sorts of backgrounds, RP storylines, and goals, but we can come together as a family. We are the First Children of Mandalore, and we are good at everything! Oya!

We want to thank Aphrodisia and all of Maan Ade Mandalore for taking the time to talk to us. Don’t forget, if you are interested in having your guild featured in the Guild Spotlight you can submit an application on our official forums right here.

Thanks for reading.