I understand your frustration, Merri. And I mostly share it, as do numerous others. That said, I don't think ALL hope is lost yet. I think a large part of the problem right now is communication (or lack thereof). Eva mentioned the former Council section of the forums. The charter revote pretty much got rid of all of that, but that doesn't mean we can't further examine having a section where leaders can come together to chat about ideas and whatnot. Without the charter, there is no "council" with actual power or anything after all. But if we were to reintroduce such a section, it would need to be thoroughly discussed by the leaders and members of the community first as to avoid possible elitism, gossiping, etc.
The RPC actually does get pretty decent traffic still, just not postings. So there are people "watching" the direction of the overall community even if silently. And I DO wish to use this site to breath more life into the RP community if others wish to do so as well. I wouldn't mind cleaning up the site and sending out mass emails to try to draw back old RPers into the fold by telling them about the changes to the game and the RP community. I'm sure we could design some fancy means of doing so as PS3 launch comes closer. But I (nor others) are going to put a ton of effort into a cause if nobody else is going to meet us all halfway.
Assuming Archavalon has a successful launch (still in the phase where I'm gauging support levels), I personally intend to send out IC "invites" to every linkshell for its debut event and have a little mini-epic I wanted to try out, assuming other shells were interested.
But to refrain from getting overly off-topic, everyone brings up valid points. The main thing though is communication. If we can't do that, then yes, there really isn't much of a community left.
Edit: As a sidenote, I should mention that Sylph was kind of the unofficial RP server in FFXI. While there were other RP groups out there on other servers, Sylph dominated in the numbers category. In that regard, I can say this: The community was very unstable and dramatic during its first year, as Eva and others can attest to. After that first year though, the "Golden Age" began and I can't put into words how great RP was then, despite occasional hiccups here and there with drama. As Besaid's Rp community approaches the 1 year mark, it's POSSIBLE that our Golden Age could begin just the same way. But it really all depends on the linkshell leaders AND their members.
The RPC actually does get pretty decent traffic still, just not postings. So there are people "watching" the direction of the overall community even if silently. And I DO wish to use this site to breath more life into the RP community if others wish to do so as well. I wouldn't mind cleaning up the site and sending out mass emails to try to draw back old RPers into the fold by telling them about the changes to the game and the RP community. I'm sure we could design some fancy means of doing so as PS3 launch comes closer. But I (nor others) are going to put a ton of effort into a cause if nobody else is going to meet us all halfway.
Assuming Archavalon has a successful launch (still in the phase where I'm gauging support levels), I personally intend to send out IC "invites" to every linkshell for its debut event and have a little mini-epic I wanted to try out, assuming other shells were interested.
But to refrain from getting overly off-topic, everyone brings up valid points. The main thing though is communication. If we can't do that, then yes, there really isn't much of a community left.
Edit: As a sidenote, I should mention that Sylph was kind of the unofficial RP server in FFXI. While there were other RP groups out there on other servers, Sylph dominated in the numbers category. In that regard, I can say this: The community was very unstable and dramatic during its first year, as Eva and others can attest to. After that first year though, the "Golden Age" began and I can't put into words how great RP was then, despite occasional hiccups here and there with drama. As Besaid's Rp community approaches the 1 year mark, it's POSSIBLE that our Golden Age could begin just the same way. But it really all depends on the linkshell leaders AND their members.
