That's not necessarily true. If you concentrate a bunch of people with different political and social views together, you're going to get a bunch of internal factioning. People aren't going to assimilate just like that.

Variety comes from players, not buildings. And EA is the only choice; player run shards are renowned for corruption.

Then do a variety and rise an army of undead near the hedgemaze having the tome of Darkness under control.
With it the local cemeteries are in uproar and the dead are rising all over threatening the lands.

Good luck

Uhm.. okay?

Hedlyn is right.

Centralization only benefits if you believe people could interact alot more, they just don't because they log in, check their local area (I don't know, call it Swaggers for Vesper, West Gate for Trinsic, SK for Yew, a simplification but you get the idea) and if they don't see anyone they log off. If everyone was nearby, more people would be online at any one time and more people means more activity.

Its a rational conclusion but I don't think the initial statement is true. That being that people 'could' interact alot more. Well they could, but would they?. As has been said, for various reasons people from different locations don't want to interact. If you stuck a group of Trinsican roleplayers in with a group of Yewish roleplayers they would both sit on their side of town, interact little and likely jump to ooc flaming/complaining with all the more vitrol since they see each other every evening.

Yewish arrogance is certainly 'a' factor in this, just as Vesperian arrogance was detrimental to RP several years ago (and it might be argued still occasionally is). Arrogance tends to stem from confidence with regard to both activity and PvP prowess. On the otherhand, and to ensure I have no friends either side of the border, Trinsician persecution complexes do little to help RP either. Then again, if I had served as Sosaria's punching bag for the better part of a decade I would be a little defensive too.

As a theorist it seems to me that Vesper is the most likely candidate for annihilation. Well, that isn't quite true, for as long as it has players it shall not die, but with a split between the two poles of Yew and Trinsic, Vesper sort of falls between them. I imagine the same could be said for Cove.

All in all, if you want activity either go and make some or if your not inclined to create go and enjoy someone else doing something. I spent this afternoon covering Stonekeep in Mushrooms. It wasn't the most productive of schemes, but it was entertaining enough for me and perhaps brought some momentary mirth to others. Regardless... in time they shall come to learn they should not go to the Snakehills. That goes for their badly dressed and incomprehensible peasantry as well...

If I may interject.

Everyone seems to be focusing on something that, from what I can see, everyone agrees is not going to happen. So lets see if we can come up with something that is achievable.

What I feel there needs to be is a centralised, up to date, database with information of all the guilds that are part of this roleplaying community. Giving information about the guild, where it is based, what times are generally active, correct details for contact, events (even small ones), etc. Why? Because if people know when things are likely to occur, know who to contact to arrange events, know where people are likely to be it makes things a lot easier.

I'm from the Trinsic side of roleplaying and I have no idea who Grd really are, have had little interaction with Cove (up until recently), only really fought vesper and I am sure there are many about that i don't even know about. I am sure the same is true for both sides.

Kind of ran out of steam now but you get the idea.

I think Erik raises an important issue here: There are a lot of good ideas so far in this thread, and it's pretty much agreed that a larger scheme is needed to fix certain parts of the community, but until that will make itself possible, what about coming up with suggestions for achievable goals as well?

He mentions a centralised, up to date, place to get information about guilds and other parts of the community. I'm obviously biased in this, but I think the MoongatesWiki is the right place for that. I'm open for ideas, but it's relatively easy both to update the list of coming events as well as the articles about each guild. I'd like to encourage most to make use of it.

I'm sure there could be improvements as to how information is displayed on the wiki. Perhaps events should be listed in a different fashion, perhaps there should be a seperate news stream, perhaps a way of adding player-written books to the wiki, &c. If so, I'd like to hear about it.

I suppose this was a little off-topic, but both Olk, Sineal and Hedlyn has made a few good points in between the loss of ability to stay on-topic.

if everyone remembers the Moot a while back, where everyone came together in Britain, couldn't something like that be arranged? An invasion, for example. Cove, Vesper and Trinsy decide to rip up Yew and set up camps. Obviously, the three factions might start fighting each other. Could have peace-talks and truces between the factions for some non-PvP Rp. Orcs rush in to reclaim Tolagâl valley, hacking at anyone in their way. That would at least centralise us for a bit.

Also, the orcs can probably move anywhere for centralisation!

It has been more or less proved that "centralization" in its last 2 attempts hasnt really worked [event wise that is].

The trip to Ilshenar for all sorts of reasons didnt generally "work" - there were lots of people all around similar areas but taken out of the comfort zone of their "home turf" they behaved as expected and resorted to type and instead of seizing the opportunity to role play with each other decided there was "nothing to do".

At one point there were probably near 70 or 80 players within a stones throw of each other and still didnt really interact.

The last Mootin Trinsic was generally considered to not have "worked". Players went home when they logged out and didnt stay in the city and generally speaking attendence was lower than in Britain and didnt have the feeling of the first moot.
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You are looking for a solution to the wrong problem.

All the centralization in the world wont help until players and especially GMs start working together.

WHat would centralization change in terms of attitudes? Not much that I can see other than more bitching and moaning which is what helped destroy the community in the first place.

The moot in Britain was a pain to organise, if I may say so, and only really worked because the leaders of the involved guilds were working together, had one set of mutually agreed on goals and a set of rules that all attending were willing to follow. It was furthermore set out in a way that made clear that it was only for a limited amount of time and it was designed so that all could find a place at the table.

Why would Trinsic for example invade Yew? It wouldn't, lest they betrayed their own RP. And if they did, it would end very badly very soon. Those that itch for fights would have a field day, whacking all they can find and the rest goes back to their homes to pick up their own plots that interest them more than a faked invasion.

Centralisation simply cannot work as long as guilds, both leaders and people, cannot work together. And at the moment they are far from it. There are a few little groups, more or less outspoken and opinionated, but the coordination amongst them is non-existing. Fix that first and you will find a good many problems solved alongside it.

If you want to get a feel for things then organise one-night events on neutral grounds. Make those fun and get people from all groups to visit them and you'll be a great deal further. (Not referring to the 20th tavern here though)

Hmmm, I thought it worked reasonably well. The problem from the Vesperian side was that our story was kind of forced. Not to insult the ones who came up with it, but the bulk of the player base were left going *so erm.. a volcano has destroyed Vesper.. and so we came to Ilshenar.. because?* There were attempts at some Trinsician PvE questing, but most of the player base (myself included) were not all that interested. One dungeon crawl is much the same as another. The act of guarding our base against hostile forces, or social interactions with VTC and BoC etc were more popular. I think we had reasonable activity in Lakeshire for most of the event, although it may have died off towards the end. Sure we didn't really get involved in the Trinsician events, but there seemed little we could do except fight. We dislike gargoyles, were not to keen on Trinsic and their duke etc etc.

I am tempted to say the last moot in Trinsic failed simply because I didn't have an internet connection back then and thus couldn't be online . I suspect however that such would be rather simplistic and egocentric interpretation. Although to be fair, whether something is a success or failure in RP terms is very much a personal judgement. If you had fun you had fun. Whether or not someone somewhere didn't bother to log on and also enjoy themselves is an irrelevence.

To my mind Britain did work, but in part because all the GMs finally put aside any reservations and determined they would take part. If I remember correctly it very nearly descended into the usual pessimism mixed with bickering that leads to nothing ever being attempted. At the time you had quite alot of activity throughout Europa I think, so there was plenty to be getting on with in Britain for people who had turned up beyond just the events that gms designed. The rebellion was in full swing. It wasn't 'artificial' in the way that the Ilshenar event was. For Vesper and the other rebels atleast, above and beyond what was designed by GMs we had tavern nights, secret meetings, I was nearly eaten alive by rabid dogs that were then put down, the rebels were massacred attacking castle Britain, slowly convincing the Kaldorians to aid us and so on and so forth.

I remember a good event where Vesper went to Trinsic for a week to hunt for Chucky's lost treasure. I don't remember if there were long and complex discussions with Trinsic about using their city for the time period and most if not all of the RP was spontaneous but I think on the whole it worked pretty well.

Everyone agrees that both OOC and IC grudges present a massive barrier to inter guild interaction. That's precisely why if it's going to ever take place, centralisation would have to come with at least some initial anonymity regarding who played which chars. The only way to an integrated community would be new chars and a new town for all, IMO. It's such an idealist goal I don't see it happening, but if people really want to go for centralisation then it's the most feasible option.