-big smiles-
Yay!
Thank you so much everyone...
Since scratchcards won the poll for what you would like to get as a prize, all of you have received one. Enjoy! I also have a special competition that I'm going to post soon, and later in the day we will have the Member of the Year announcement. But first, I think I should ramble a little about the past three years. For those of you who have heard all this before, I apologize in advance...
Well, three years ago I was fairly new to neopets. My first guild experience was as a council member in a Spongebob guild...yes, a Spongebob guild. Then that guild closed and I decided to finally act on my dream of creating my own Buffy guild. I knew that it was going to be a challenge since there were already so many, but I was determined. So I created the guild, and named it Simply Buffy because it was one of the first things that came to my mind (I had originally wanted to name it something else, but the name was taken. I can't remember what that name was.) Then I realized that I had no idea where to go from there. So I neomailed my one Buffy neofriend and she helped me immensely, made our first layouts, helped me with all the html stuff. Sadly she hasn't been here in a while now, but without her I don't know what I would have done. Once things got started I did a lot of advertising and such, trying to get members. At that point, Buffy was still on the air in its final months, so I remember having polls after the new episodes and such. Unfortunately, the guild never really took off right away. We plateaued at aroud 10 members, and this place was pretty dead for several months.
So I was pretty discouraged. Things didn't seem to be getting anywhere, and I really did honestly think about closing the guild. But then everything changed when all of a sudden we got a burst of new members. One of them was alysonhannigan. Through her easily findable username and efforts of everyone in advertising, the number of members quickly grew. I don't remember exactly what it got to, but I think it was around 30 members. That October, I started the episode of the week quizzes, which have become in my mind a very important staple of this guild. The first quiz was on Tabula Rasa. Those became very popular. By the time the first birthday rolled around, we were doing very well and had around 50 members. I stated on that first birthday that my goal was to have 100 by the second birthday. By the second birthday, we had almost 150. Things just really took off, and at many times I was very amazed. When Kitty joined she helped me so much, and we really worked together to make everything really great. We had lots of great people join that became very active and I was just so happy. Its really hard to believe that when all of this started three years ago today, all this guild was was a name and an idea.
In this past year, we got up to 200 members and beyond, which in my opinion is just amazing. Not to brag, but there really aren't that many guilds on neopets that have such a high number of members, have been around for so long, and have so much activity on a daily basis.
Today, I couldn't be any happier with the guild. We have a wonderful group of active members that I trust and love having here. These past few months since I started my junior year of high school I have often felt bad about not having as much time to spend here as I once did, but every time I say so all I get is so much support and offers of help that it touches me every time. We now have an established, good method of having quizzes and competitions and such (we are extremely close to have had an episode of the week quiz on EVERY episode of Buffy!), and we have so much discussion here every day that its really wonderful. And we have an amazing website, which once again would never have been possible without Kitty, and now Krysta, who helps a lot with that. So I just really want to thank you guys. This guild could not be what it is without you. I can only do so much. So thank you to everyone so much. You guys are the best. And so many of you have become so much more to me than just guild members, you are my good friends, and I have so many wonderful memories, not only from here but from our wonderful little rps and from livejournal and everything. I often say that my online friends keep me sane, and its really true! So once again, THANK YOU. Thank you for making this guild something I can be so proud of. -big group hug-
Here's to another wonderful year!
~Erin