Continuing with our Salute to Podcasting, for this week’s profile we have the community and clan which spawned the Wikiriot podcast. This week I am looking into the Halowiki community, and their clan, The Clan of Bobs. Halowiki is known for its wiki-style organization of all things Halo 2. They dissect maps, weapons, vehicles, and anything else that one can think of about Halo 2. Plus, since it is a wiki, if you register you can go in and edit and add information if you would like. I had a chat with PEZ, who is the founder and webmaster of Halowiki, and had him answer the usual questions. Enjoy. Learn.

How and when did your clan start up?
Moving from XBox Connect to XBox Live was a scary experience. On XBC people were nice and polite and helpful. On XBL it seemed all people were Adolf Hitler reincarnated. Wait, not all people. What if I created a clan that could attract enough nice people so that I would never lack good people to play Halo 2 with? It started with me and my real life friend, a k a WacoTaqo. I wrote a recruitment letter on Bungie.net Classifields forum and then I also started halowiki.net and had some luck with PR and early recruits of the right kind and well, that was the start.

What meaning does your clan’s name hold?
I’m a Swede. English is a struggle. To me Bob means a good neighbor. One you can count on. One that makes your neighborhood the neighborhood of choice for many people. The kind of person I wanted to recruit to the clan. I’m also a big nostalgic. I have very fond memories of playing the campaign mode of the old Bungie Marathon trilogy. There were BOBs there. Short for Born on Board. They were mostly in the way and causing problems. Much like what I felt like when playing Halo 2 those first months.

How many people call your clan home?
I think something like 200 people do. Maybe more. But maybe 70 or so are active.

How do you go about luring and screening recruits?
We actually have the opposite problem. Growth is a real problem for us since we don’t have a way to keep control of a clan much bigger than the 100-member limit that Halo 2 sets. Recruitments has been set to a full stop for months only to be opened again a few days ago, but we don’t know for how long. Anyway, we do like to try spread our name and our cause. It’s much about creating good content and making a difference so that HBO and Bungie.net mentions us now and then. We want to reach a point when most all online Halo players know about us and know what we are trying to achieve.

What are some unique bylaws that your clan enforces?
Unique… We have the Code of Bob binding us together. It’s all about respect. We do not care the least bit about skill levels. All we see to is our abilities to stay nice and friendly and show respect to people we play with and/or against. Lots of CoB members try to get better at the game, no doubt. It’s such an awesome game with lots of depth. We show respect by not cheating, not even glitching the least bit. Superjumpers and BXR’s and all those people can look somewhere else for their home. We play the game as it was designed to be played. I think most of us are in love with Bungie for giving us such a great game.

What do you do to build camaraderie in your ranks?
halowiki.net is our pet project. We work together on making that the number one source for people wanting to improve their game. We also have a clan site that’s supposed to go public some day. Of course we play Halo 2 and other XBox Live games together. And there has also been three real life clan meets. Two big ones, in London and in New York where people have crossed the Atlantic to meet. I just wished I had been able to particpate. But now there will be a new London meet in March and I will try to be there. We also have Brathnok and Sigafoos (Dweezle – Last Friday’s Interviewees) who are full of ideas and surprises and energy. They host Wikiriot which keeps the clan and our supporters in the loop. Any clan wanting to reach a state where it is always growing/developing should make sure to have people like that amongst them. But of course, they do not grow on trees.

What is the best way to get booted from your clan?
Failing to stay excellent. If by best you mean “surest” it would be to start disrespecting people and express racist oppinions and stuff like that. “Errare humanum est” of course. But we have the Code of Bob for a reason. If it proves too hard for someone to follow eventually that someone will be identified as a non-Bob and booted from the clan.

What gametypes does your clan prefer?
Generally lots of Bobs like sniping. And we also like party-games like RUN (a ka Cat ‘n Mouse). Our favourite gametype we learnt from our friends in Zero Commit. It’s Sniper Rifles and Shotties KOTH on Lockout. We still call it “zero vs bobs2” since it was the second game in our challenge against the ZC guys. It’s just a great game type. Since our clan has so many different skill levels it’s extra good because it allows people to grab a role where they can contribute regardless. I’m always the hill monkey.

What is your poison/passion: Matchmaking? Customs? Challenges? MLG?
Halo 2 multiplayer! But yes, the clan plays lots of Customs and we also get to play challenges now and then. We have this Bob vs Bobs challenge where we have two Bobs playing head to head and a referee who has connection host and also helps writing up about the games afterwards. Great fun.

What is the closest game your clan has had in a Clan Challenge?
I think that was our challenge against Will Clan 4 Food. It ended in a draw actually. It was also one of the most fun gaming nights I have ever had. WCF are such a great bunch. We’ve lost quite a few CoB members to them because they are in some respect better than us. But as the two clans are close friend clans it we keep to play with these stray sheep anyway. =) The challenge against WCF was extra fun because they had this great idea that the first game be played with mixed teams. It was 8 vs 8 with half of each team being from the CoB and the other half from WCF. Then the parties split and played 4vs4 games where we shifted opposing teams. I can truly recommend this style of a challenge.

Thanks alot PEZ for the info. I highly suggest that anyone reading this take a stop by Halowiki and browse and even register to enjoy more. I am glad I had the chance to profile this group, they are all very nice and cool people. They practice what they preach, respect. Thanks again PEZ, and I will see you on the battlefield.

If you know a clan, or are in a clan that would like to be spotlighted in the Clan Profile then send me an email and tell me about it. Hope everyone enjoyed this week’s profile. Stop back next week for another great clan.

Posted by Dweezle