We're Half Way Home!

Hey Surreal!

This week marks a very special date; Surreal being open for six months! I know it may not seem like much - but what we have managed to achieve in just half a year is something Surreal on its own. To celebrate, I'm going to do a few things differently around here, and I'm going to let you all in on a little treat.

A new forum
Surreal members have been graced with a new forum named the Polling Booth, which anyone can feel free to post in (if you can access it!). Think of it as a fun forum where people can pose questions to the community in the form of a forum poll. These can be fun, educational, interesting or anything inbetween, so long as it fits into our rules, it's okay with us! Post some topics and make the place feel more cosy <3

Pick your Poison Reform
For those that have spent any time taking part in a PYP challenge, you would have noticed that there was a little lack of organisation which was a bit hard to avoid, until now. With plenty of help and suggestions from Clan Members and the Surreal Staff Team, we've compiled a fix to our PYP woes.

From this point on, there will be a designated weekend for Pick your Poison challenges, which means no longer will the winning team be able to choose the dates of a challenge. This is because it provides us with more organisation and hopefully better means of finding out who can participate and those who cannot. Here is the format in which months here at Surreal will be mapped out:

Week 1 - First Skill Week
Week 2 - Weekend PYP Competition
Week 3 - Second Skill Week
Week 4 - Free Week (Six Events)

This does mean that the next PYP challenge will happen next weekend - so get geared up, because Team Danny are going to grace us with their decision very soon. Make it quick, guys!

Secondly, we will from now on have only six competitors in each team for a PYP competition that are added to a tracker, the rest will be considered reserves. Don't be too put off by this idea, because you will be asked to fill out a signup form for each competition, which means if there is a skill you are not so keen on doing, you can leave yourself out of a competition - which is good news for some I can imagine!

The new sign up system for PYP will begin next month, as this month has already been sorted in terms of tracking and who will actively participate. More documentation is to be implemented and will show up near the end of this month. Additionally, many changes and additions to PYP are to be made in the coming weeks that will change the face of the competition for the better. I really look forward to working on this and I can't wait to update you guys!

A Short History
I know it's only been six months. But in these six months, a lot has changed, members have come, members have gone and above all, we've adapted marginally to suit a different crowd - successfully. I wanted to save this for later, but seeing as there is so much to write about, I figured I may as well share it with you... so here it is. The history of Surreal - so far! In the next news post, I will share the next 'section' of this history.

Part I: How it all started...
Upon joining a skilling clan for the second time, and being a part of the staff team for quite some time; I loved the experience. I loved making members happy and creating new things for them to enjoy. Skillers Empire was one of the greatest clans I had ever involved myself with... but I had some dreams of my own. I always aspired to create a successful Runescape clan, and figured there wasn't much time to lose as I was on school break and was going to start college pretty soon, so I began work on a new skilling clan.

Immediately before starting this project, I set myself a few goals. I asked myself; what do I want to achieve with this clan? How can I improve upon what I've already experienced? One key element of my brainstorm was to create a clan where the members have a say in critical decisions, where members are heard and acknowledged just as much as anybody else. This clan was set to be a wonderful community of friends supporting each other through life and a great game that we love to play.



After figuring out what I wanted to achieve, I began thinking of names that I would want this clan to have. I first used the clan that I previously created as a starting point, naming the clan 'Stealth Skillers' - an idea which I dumped about 4 minutes in to my thinking process. Many names after that were considered, including SkillersHQ, Defiance and Outstanding. I realise now that most of these names that I came up with weren't the most suited to the clan that I was aspiring to make, so I set upon something unique. Something that expressed that this clan is something different...



Surreal. Though it took me about two weeks to come up with, I finally found a word that fitted the clan perfectly. This was the start of Surreal and there was no turning back. I created a draft of the website, which looked a little plain. I frequently asked a close friend of mine, Danny whom you will all know for advice about how to lay things out on the website and for his general opinion on things. With Danny's help, many clan decisions were made and a lot of things changed within the clan dramatically.

Slowly, bit by bit, the clan's website and forums were taking shape. I created a countdown, set for January 1st, 2011 - when the clan was scheduled to be open. Though in very late September, I had already shaped a lot of the forums and things were pretty much ready to go. It was simply a matter of waiting for the date to release the clan. Downfall is not a patient man.



I did not want to open Surreal if I did not have enough time to go through with updates and the general running of the clan. I knew that it would be a risk to open it in October due to my final school exams taking place then - and a lot was dependent on them.


This is Downfall studying for his final exam

Being convinced that Surreal would become too much pressure and would probably never get off the ground, I was not even going to open the clan. I came to a conclusion that the clan would not be successful and I would not be able to achieve my goals. Surreal was set to be deleted from my Computer in the closing days of September, and I was going to call it quits entirely.

And then there was Danny.

To be continued in a later news post...

A message from Downfall
Throughout these six months, I've never been more happy and proud to work on anything in my entire life. I'm so pleased with the way that Surreal has shaped out, and I really don't know what I'd do without the company of each and every member and guest here You all make my day, everyday. Surreal will live on... to infinity, and beyond!

[/toystory]

Seriously. Thank you so much to everybody for the most Surreal six months in Runescape history. I'm not in this for my own gain, I just want to allow people to enjoy themselves at least a little more - I'll continue to try my best to implement this in all things Surreal. Time to make more history!