(03-26-2015, 11:08 AM)Graeham Ridgefield Wrote: As much as I'd love for this sort of project to launch without any issues I do feel as though much of the concerns being put forward are very justified. People need to remember that many of us have invested in more than one MMO and have seen rot set in across many MMO's as these 'community' projects have kicked off only to end up as a circle-jerk for the same group of role-players to gain more and more influence.
It's also very easy for people to lace their words with sugar and claim that everything will be fine. To be blunt, I'm very much of the firm belief that whilst the RPC is a useful tool it is often just one big echo chamber for the same group of vocal individuals to fawn over each other, make plans and pretty much ignore anybody not in their immediate social circle or who isn't one of the 'cool kids'.
It's something I've touched upon before, yet I can't help but feel unease when the same people promising an open mind, honesty and clarity are the same individuals who give anyone not in their little group the cold shoulder when approached in-game.
So, yes - hopefully it does end up working out for the best! I'd really like to see something like this work out well for a change. It, sadly, always seems to be the same story though - people claiming that they're the exception to the rule and that everything will go off without a hitch only for the same mistakes to be directly or indirectly made over and over again.
Still, at the end of the day all we can really do is wait and see what happens. If and when things go south hopefully the situation will be able to be resolved peacefully. If, however, things go well - that'll be great! I just hope that in that scenario people won't let it get to their head and will continue to listen to feedback and be transparent.
I think the main point is that we've got to try. There's always going to be cliques and popularity contests in RP communities, just as much as there's always going to be drama in roleplay. I was and I still am skeptic when I signed up for this - I don't consider myself to be much of an anyone around here and you're absolutely right, it could just devolve into a continued circlejerk between a specific group of friends where no one else really gets to say anything (or gets heard). However I don't think that it would get too far in this community, just as much as there are cliques there's also people who don't particularly give any bothers about the cliques and at the end of the day, you can only influence the people who want to be influenced. I was in some community styled leadership meetings in GW2 a /long/ time ago (like, around the start) and to give an example, claim issues were one of the hot topics we were debating but could not solve because we did not have complete participation. Specifically, the guilds that when out and aggressively claimed buildings/places didn't show up to these meetings and didn't want to listen to the talk about how you can't just declare no one else can RP in a place you've decided is your characters house/secret base/experimental genetics lab. So the situations was, to my knowledge at least, never really solved.
Community is unfortunately the key to a lot of things when it comes to RP, I've always said that proper communication could solve at least half of the conflicts that arise between people (especially in fight-related drama) and honestly I'd be far more concerned if no one was interested in talking to each other because they already have their stuff, their FC and their social circle. The sort of everything is fine for me so why should I think about the rest of the community line of thinking. The reason why I use the word unfortunately, is because it can be very difficult to communicate with people or groups for various reasons. Which is also why I am hoping that as many people who are interested will watch the stream of the meeting. So it wont just be the ones attending who's getting a clear image of what is going on.Â
My biggest hope for all of this is that we get to make even more good events and, maybe even get some people on the floor that haven't done serverwide stuff before but with the aid/support of other FC's could feel confident enough to do one. It's both a frightening and a daunting task to run larger events that are open to everyone and their grandmother, and the community as a whole can't keep relying on the same people to keep on making them, as that'll just result in burnouts.Â
If we don't try something nothing will get better, and then it could still get worse over time.
