GGHQ One Year On…

Holy smokes! I can’t quite believe it, it’s our first birthday!

GGHQ’s first year has been host to dozens of events and activities, including tournaments, in-houses, scrims and community-hosted quiz nights!

We’ve seen the content creators among you jointly create and share thousands of hours of video and music from your own Twitch, Soundcloud and YouTube channels.

Discord has been our most active platform, with over 71,491 messages posted on the General channel alone.

Thanks to every single one of you all who has in any way supported our platforms, or taken part in any of the hosted events. After an especially tricky year for all of us, you’ve mutually breathed life into a wonderful online community.

Prior to announcing GGHQ in 2020, we had set a number of targets for our first year, most of which we met; though there are some that we’d still like to accomplish over the next 12months, so here’s a glimpse at some things we’re aspiring for in 2021-2022:

• Continuation of regular community game nights
• Online GGHQ charity fundraiser event
• Social meet ups (Dependant on Covid restrictions, obviously)
• Website update
• Mugs
• Merch update
• Time trial/Challenge events
• PUBG Encore Event
• CSGO Tiebreak In-house
• Left4Dead2 Tiebreak Scrim
• Halloween Stream
• Exploring ways that we can better promote/spotlight community created content

And, though it’s impossible to know for certain when it can happen, we’ve started preparations for our first GGHQ LAN Event!

As always our ears are open to what you guys want to see from GGHQ, so drop us a DM if you have any ideas of events you’d like over the next year!

Valheim Server now live!

Excited to announce that our Valheim server is now live! Go forth and adventure!
Joining details are available in the Discord Announcements channel. 🪓

New Rust Server

RUST WIPE IS TOMORROW AND WE’VE GOT A BRAND NEW SERVER FOR YOU!

The monthly Rust wipe is tomorrow, and we’ll be taking a dip into the brand new Softcore mode (details here: https://www.rustafied.com/updates/2021/2/1/rust-softcore-the-new-game-mode)

Now is the perfect time to jump into the world of Rust if you’ve never played it before! The Softcore game mode is slightly more forgiving than the ‘vanilla’ game style, allowing for newer players an easier entry into the game!

Rust is all about persistent-world survival, and tactically attacking and defending bases for maximum loot yield. @everyone is welcome to join, and with our trial server reaching over 600 hours of total playtime in January, hopefully it’s a sign you guys will enjoy it!!

Details on how to join the server and more are available in #rust-chat, which you can get access to by selecting the :oil: reaction in #welcome-and-rules

Thanks once again to everyone that has helped on our trial server over the last month! ❤

Happy New Year!

Thanks to all your support for this year -Take a quick look back at some of the 25+ events that we ran this year.

Please take care of yourselves, and continue to look out for each other.

Wishing everyone a happy 2021!

Merch Now Available

Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2021 with some exciting news!

Fresh merch is now available from our store which you can preorder today!

Huge thanks to MattStillbust for helping with this – Don’t forget you can support him by using Out of Key Studio once restrictions allow!

Items will be being printed to order over the next couple of weeks in batches, so expect a slight wait in receiving your items.

If you have any questions about merch, you can reach us either by email, or by messaging one of the admin team on our Discord!

2020

With 2020 limping to a close, I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and at the same time say an enormous thank you to everyone who has supported GGHQ over the last 9 months or so!

Given how peculiar circumstances have been this year, it’s been so amazing to have stayed in close contact with such a fantastic group of friends during a time that, for many, could feel totally isolating.

Your involvement in the community events has been incredible, and knowing that conversation, or support, is only a few clicks away at any time has been comforting.

As always, please take care of yourselves, as well as your nearest and dearest over the next few days, and we can’t wait to catch up with you again soon in 2021.

Lockdown 2.0

As England readies itself for a second lockdown, starting tomorrow, we firstly want to remind everyone that the #covid-support Discord channel is available for any issues/updates/support that you guys may wish to post over the next four weeks and beyond.

It’s an anxious time for many, especially for those struggling with mental health issues or loneliness, and we hope you feel that our platforms are a safe place to connect with others and escape from some of the pressures of the world right now.

With that in mind, we are hoping to maintain and expand our ongoing community activities throughout the lockdown period, the first of which CalamitySam has kindly offered to create and host.

Introducing:
GGHQ Lockdown Quiz!

Sam’s given us some dates starting from Wednesday next week – Head over to Discord or Facebook to share your availability if you’d like to join.

Following on from our experience with the previous lockdown, we’ve also added a new #General Chat voice channel to Discord for users to jump into while they’re working to help give some feeling of familiarity during the working day.

If you have any suggestions of features you’d like to see, or ways that GGHQ can help you during the lockdown, feel free to post them on Discord or contact one of the admins directly.

L4D2 & LAN Update

Happy Tuesday @everyone!

As voted for at the start of the month, we’ll be hosting another Left 4 Dead 2 event this Sunday! Aiming to run through some more Versus and Campaign playthroughs – Let’s see what teams of four might be able to beat Futz, Arty_Ziff, Darrigaz and Kruthal for the title of Best Survivors!

Today also marks 2 years (!!!) since the last LAN event we held. While it was our original intention to organise and host another LAN event in the Autumn half term of this year, the global pandemic has obviously prevented us from going ahead with those plans. Many LAN organisers that I’ve spoken with are expecting their events to be on hiatus at least until the second half of 2021, though of course it’s anyone’s guess at this point. It’s still our intention to organise a LAN, but only once it’s absolutely safe to do so.

In the absence of any IRL event this year, hopefully the online community events have allowed you to continue to meet new ‘faces’, and keep in touch with people. Since March we’ve hosted 23 community events, and will be continuing them for the foreseeable future.

We’ve still got a list of things that we’d like to do outside of a LAN, but time and real-world commitments might impact whether those come to fruition this year, or if they’ll end up waiting until 2021.

As always, feel free to shout at us with any feedback or ideas! Last time we asked, we got some fantastic points raised which have all had a really positive impact!

See you on Sunday for some Left 4 Dead 2!

L4D2 Last Stand Versus Results

Thanks to every who joined the Left 4 Dead 2 games! The results after an evening of infected Vs Survivors are as follows:

Winners – Futz, Arty_Ziff, Kruthal and Darrigaz

2nd Place – Calamity_Sam, BouncingCzech, Eugene_Goat and Blood_beard
3rd Place – Johnny_Titan, Ko$sac, Turbo_Phil and Fletch

Points have been doled out in the League section of the site.

Vote on new Merch options!

Well this is an exciting update, and about my favourite topic too:

MERCH!
dont mention the mugs

Recently, GGHQ members voiced interest in some branded merch, and after some helpful discussion with mattstilbust we explored some options.

Now while we had originally hoped to explore the potential of having customised clothing to include your own individual gaming handles, after a little research it was deemed too impractical to pursue at this point.

BUT, I think we’ve got something even better!

Matt has mocked up a pair of branded GGHQ hoodies for us over on the Discord! Now in order for these to be made, we’d love to know if you have a preference for one of the designs, or if you like both!

So head over to our Discord channel, and check out the voting posts in #Announcements

Once we’ve figured out you’re preference, we’ll setup preorders!