Private messages exsist so you can troll each other, please dont do it in this thread

/backseatmod

Hmm. Sadly I think this is right. Until the community is completely and utterly dead nobody is going to move, and even then they'd probably just quit instead of putting in some hard work. Either we need to come up with an alternative or I think the only way it might work is if two of the big guilds make an effort to forge more of a community, like Grd did when it made CoY.

I don't believe that it is a case of people not wanting to put in any hard work, to keep RP alive. In fact, I have a few choice words I could share on the notion.
To put it simply, there are two words:
Community
and
History
Many roleplayers put a lot of effort into developing their characters. In the course of this, they develop the communities they role play within.
As a result, history is formed.

The history of a role play community is the result of a lot of work.
I wouldn't go as far as to say "Blood, sweat and tears", but the efforts of the people within the community, over the course of time, come together to form history and lore.

Is it becuase people don't want to put in the effort of moving to a new location?
Or, is it that people don't want to cast aside everything they've worked for, over the course of their role playing "career"?
Should the epilogue of a city, or faction's history be "and, they all lived absently ever after"?

Some very good points made in this thread overall but particularly the last post.

Way back when the game was rich with an abundance of Roleplay guilds,we had to find reasons to be/not be in each others towns/cities etc.

Many ideas were worked out and enacted in game,athus providing the History being spoken of.

There was always an 'unspoken' consensus,that once some thing happened in game,it was a done deal.

You couldnt just log in the next time and act like it never was.

Thats where the plan for the OP ideas [ though very worthwhile ] basically falls off the map ,before even tried.

Hedlyn posted some very good reasons as to why things are the way they are,and whilst I agree Yew is an ideal area to accomodate such ideas,its not JUST about pixel crack housing.

Take DOT and E-V again as an example.

Trinsic has always been the town of the Paladins,and DOT have built their roleplay history around those Paladins.

They are the guards of the Paladins and thus would lose not only their identity but would be walking away from years of history.

E-V, now well established in Trinsic area.

What in the world could possibly warrant them to even venture to the furthest reaches of yew.

For them to be any where within sniffing distance of Grd,would just be the biggest travesty of all time.

Same with a guild like KH.

Grd being the elf murdering,torturing,beheading [ Devnet] group they are would absolutely rule out any such idea.

Even the Knights Templar who are allies of Grd.

Can you really see them moving themselves from Templewood [ or Beaufort as people like to call it these days]

Heck people gave their lives in that place during the Unholy War,and back in the day huge battles were fought,won and lost there.

The only possible way the ideas to 'merge' could happen if EA were to
orchestrate some sort of act of nature ,whereby everything was destroyed apart from Yew and everyone had no choice but to find a home there and some how survive alongside each other.

Of course you could all roleplay that,that had happened,a bit like when there was a volcanic eruption that hit Vesper and we went to LL for a time.

That was done with the idea of merging all the guilds for a few weeks and I distinctly remember the trouble that brought IC.

It gave many chances to offspin onto other things.

All the above is based purely from an IC perspective although
OOC I also remember the guild[s] in particular who's GM's dug their heels in and flatly refused to take part in the plotline,which took a lot away from it,but that was their perogative.

You would basically have to wipe out all the current guilds ,and reform everyone into ' new versions ' of their guild and start the history all over again, from Yew.

Its a very very difficult situation.

/tabbs

You don't necessarily have to 'wipe all the guilds out', though a fresh start could be refreshing. I'm certain suitable stories could be written as to why we would all suddenly move.

Maybe the Elves decide that it's their duty to defend their hunted brethren in Yew against the Militia and try to build a sanctuary there? With 'The Revolt' causing havoc in Yew, perhaps DOT decide to garrison Yew to 'secure the kingdom' (DOT & Grd are allies, right?) and perhaps merge/reform around that? Cove and Vesper (I can't remember if they are allied or not, been out of the community too long, sorry!) could have a settlement on the shoreline where they help the Revolt and generally try to cause Yew to fall under their influence? Could make it a long, long detailed 'plot' so it never has to end...

Just throwing some thoughts out

I'm a great sceptic that ideas like the ones you've sketched up will come into life, Udrak. This is mostly because I believe a change in the material foundation needs to take place (i.e. that there are no more role-players left, the guild is dieing, a guild disbands, &c.) before you can expect people to act. In other words: People needs to feel it before they act. Not all parts of the community is in equally bad shape. I wandered by Trinsic last night, and saw more RPers than I've seen in ages, to use an example. I'm sure this applies to a few other places as well.

On the other hand, I like the ideas you've sketched up, but I forsee another problem arise with that: There's always been an internal conflict in between the loyalists. Traditionally, DOT and Grd has always been at war. This comes as a result of frequent attacks from Grd at Trinsic. Grd on their side will claim that DOT is not fulfilling their commitments as a loyalist town, by e.g. allowing drow and elves in town and various other reasons. More information about this can be found on the MoongatesWiki (http://wiki.moongates.org/Loyalists_(Europa)). LB was initially on Trinsic's "side" but later decided to take a more neutral position in an attempt at uniting these two sides with, admittedly, limited success.

Keep throwing out some more thoughts, though ;)

It would definetly draw players back if all the RP was in one area but as Hedlyn states, this has been discussed over and over to no avail. Someone needs to stand up and get on with creating this new RP area and just see who moves in!

This might come along as somwhat selfish, but Yew has been my home now for almost a year and a half (plus about 2-3 years scattered around) and its still a thriving, active and fun RP community, which I wouldnt leave for anywhere.... (and heres the selfish part), if other city communities are struggling, thats their problem, the people in Yew are happy where we are. If people want to move, they can move to Yew if they want, but I see no reason why we should move when we are happy with what we already have.

Expanding on the last part, if a guild actually realised that their area was dead with no life and needed to be 'moved', then I would expect the guild master would have been inteligent/brave enough to make a decision to move their guild to where there is more RP activity, not just sit around and wait for the inevitable.

That would be an excelent solution. Magincia style.

Personally, i'm attracted to the idea of every guild uprooting and moving to a single guildstone in a single town with no prior rp community and no player owned buildings. It was suggested by Nightchill on f4g.net that we all move to Delucia and make a fresh start. Everyone make a new character to move to this new settlement; that helps tone initial IC and OOC friendships/hostilities down a bit and allows new ones to form from IC interactions.

It would be pretty much impossible to agree on any of the towns with pre-existing communities, as bias is so universally strong. I agree with Hedlyn that Yew is the only plausible candidate for a diverse community of small player run settlements, but I understand that others would feel resentful that we'd get to stay put whilst everyone else would have to move. Certainly, Grd isn't going to be moving anywhere else - as Telsia said Yew is doing very well at the moment so we have no reason nor inclination to move.

I've heard the argument that one town is not enough for drama, that you need multiple warring factions. I don't agree - internal factioning can work very well as long as it's encouraged and has good grounding IC. I don't know if anyone's seen Deadwood, but that's my idea of what a perfect single town RP community would be like. A new, underdeveloped settlement populated by an extremely diverse mix of people with many different reasons for moving there. There'd initially be a political power vacuum with no formal militia set up and no rules on things such as crime, magic, religion, elves/drow etc. The way things went would all be down to which faction of characters with similar political views was the most successful at getting their way.

The only problem I see with this idea is that it would require an extremely well developed and tightly controlled system to keep things running smoothly. People's wealth, influence and which buildings they own would have to be dictated by a central authority, otherwise you'd just have people turning up and claiming to be billionaire nobles without having worked for it in the game. I don't know if many here are familiar with the old PoY project in CoY, but I had something like that in mind. You pick a profession for your character and can only gain the right to wield better equipment, the ownership of town buildings and wealth from proving that you are actually working your job in the community.

Unfortunately, I imagine the particulars of this system and who was part of the central authority would be highly controversial and I doubt we'd get a firm consensus on it. I also think a lot of people would be unwilling to make new characters, or everyone would find out who everyone played too early in the scenario, bringing back OOC grudges. However, IMO it's ultimately the best way to make our ever dwindling role player base lasts as long as possible and is as entertained possible until it dies completely. At least, it would be good to give it a trial run for a week or so - if it really doesn't work its not like we've lost anything. We can always just go back to our old chars.

There is absolutely no point in moving everyone to two or more cities as proposed with the Minoc/Cove/Vesper area. The distance between Cove and Vesper is no different to the distance between Trinsic and Minoc with a quick Kal Ort Por. The only advantage to a single city over the current layout is that it would saturate said city with activity, but over three cities that saturation would be that much smaller and therefore not really worth the effort.

Well said,and a great post of ideas.

Oh and if people dont want others to know who they are,then they shouldnt tell them.

Ideas were never something this community was in short supply of. It's action that has always been absent.