"Let's talk about organizing a tertiary RP server."
Short answer: no.
Long answer:
[Admin Hardhat]
I feel a need to both expound upon some RPC history and make some sort of pseudo-official comment on this matter.
Once upon a time, the first wave of members on this site had to decide on a server to collectively jump on, for the sake of creating a large enough community of roleplayers that they could depend upon when it came to reaching out and engaging in cooperative writing. That server turned out to be, for whatever reason, Balmung.
Some time later, a few users started tossing around the idea of a secondary or alternate or "sister" unofficial RP server. The name that happened to get tossed out, again for whatever reason, was Gilgamesh. The suggestion was taken seriously and a secondary community began to grow. What quickly became evident, however, was that there had grown a schism and a degree of bad blood between the userbases of Balmung and Gilgamesh. Accusations of "elitism," "second class citizenry," "bias," and the like got thrown around, and there was fault to be found on both sides of the line. The long and short of it is that it got ugly. Even as recently as this year, the legacy of that divide still occasionally erupts in short bursts of drama and bad feelings.
That said... after two years, we've finally reached a place where both communities are on relatively good terms, we have sister sites serving different populations, the boards here on RPC are now geared more towards inclusion of all servers rather than a focus on Balmung and Gilgamesh, and despite a staggering disparity in populations here on RPC that favors a much larger Balmung community, folks are growing more and more open to working with new roleplayers and their desires to start or get into smaller RP communities on smaller servers, rather than defaulting immediately to "oh well most RP is on Balmung so you should transfer here" (which, as it happens, only goes to fuel that bad blood between server communities).
It seems to me both unwise and self-righteous in the extreme to suggest that we need to organize a third unofficial RP server when the better course of action is to support smaller RP communities on other servers by not only encouraging their growth but providing a place for them to come together and organize themselves. There's a wonderful Jenova RP Community thread that Ember linked, for example. It cropped up a while back here on RPC, and it's more or less roleplayers using this site to reach out and connect with one another, which I see as an ideal. There's a burgeoning population there, and they're taking care of themselves. They are more than welcome to continue using this site and its boards and resources (we want them here! they're brothers and sisters with the same interests!) .
An organized effort at designating a tertiary server, in my opinion, constitutes little more than rocking-the-boat. I apologize if that seems offensive, but consider: RP communities are already growing on other servers, energy is better spent supporting those communities as they grow, splitting existing communities onto a different sever will inevitably result in grief, it is not the fault or the responsibility of any roleplay community to answer for the difficulties of getting on Balmung and/or Gilgamesh, the onus is on Square-Enix to deal with impacted servers, and the "difficulties" of getting on Bal/Gilg have more to do with creating alts than new roleplayers who can either try for the fabled few-minutes-long post-maint window or else pay for a guaranteed transfer.
Artificial stimulation of the communities on Coeurl, Faerie, Jenova, Lamia, Sargantas, etc. might seem prudent... but the best thing we can do is go, "hey, there's this site known as the RPC, they've got lots of tools and space for folks to get organized or at least get a start on doing so!"
[/Admin Hardhat]
I'll leave this discussion open, because there's some value in going over the particulars... but the moment it starts getting nasty, it's getting closed.
Short answer: no.
Long answer:
[Admin Hardhat]
I feel a need to both expound upon some RPC history and make some sort of pseudo-official comment on this matter.
Once upon a time, the first wave of members on this site had to decide on a server to collectively jump on, for the sake of creating a large enough community of roleplayers that they could depend upon when it came to reaching out and engaging in cooperative writing. That server turned out to be, for whatever reason, Balmung.
Some time later, a few users started tossing around the idea of a secondary or alternate or "sister" unofficial RP server. The name that happened to get tossed out, again for whatever reason, was Gilgamesh. The suggestion was taken seriously and a secondary community began to grow. What quickly became evident, however, was that there had grown a schism and a degree of bad blood between the userbases of Balmung and Gilgamesh. Accusations of "elitism," "second class citizenry," "bias," and the like got thrown around, and there was fault to be found on both sides of the line. The long and short of it is that it got ugly. Even as recently as this year, the legacy of that divide still occasionally erupts in short bursts of drama and bad feelings.
That said... after two years, we've finally reached a place where both communities are on relatively good terms, we have sister sites serving different populations, the boards here on RPC are now geared more towards inclusion of all servers rather than a focus on Balmung and Gilgamesh, and despite a staggering disparity in populations here on RPC that favors a much larger Balmung community, folks are growing more and more open to working with new roleplayers and their desires to start or get into smaller RP communities on smaller servers, rather than defaulting immediately to "oh well most RP is on Balmung so you should transfer here" (which, as it happens, only goes to fuel that bad blood between server communities).
It seems to me both unwise and self-righteous in the extreme to suggest that we need to organize a third unofficial RP server when the better course of action is to support smaller RP communities on other servers by not only encouraging their growth but providing a place for them to come together and organize themselves. There's a wonderful Jenova RP Community thread that Ember linked, for example. It cropped up a while back here on RPC, and it's more or less roleplayers using this site to reach out and connect with one another, which I see as an ideal. There's a burgeoning population there, and they're taking care of themselves. They are more than welcome to continue using this site and its boards and resources (we want them here! they're brothers and sisters with the same interests!) .
An organized effort at designating a tertiary server, in my opinion, constitutes little more than rocking-the-boat. I apologize if that seems offensive, but consider: RP communities are already growing on other servers, energy is better spent supporting those communities as they grow, splitting existing communities onto a different sever will inevitably result in grief, it is not the fault or the responsibility of any roleplay community to answer for the difficulties of getting on Balmung and/or Gilgamesh, the onus is on Square-Enix to deal with impacted servers, and the "difficulties" of getting on Bal/Gilg have more to do with creating alts than new roleplayers who can either try for the fabled few-minutes-long post-maint window or else pay for a guaranteed transfer.
Artificial stimulation of the communities on Coeurl, Faerie, Jenova, Lamia, Sargantas, etc. might seem prudent... but the best thing we can do is go, "hey, there's this site known as the RPC, they've got lots of tools and space for folks to get organized or at least get a start on doing so!"
[/Admin Hardhat]
I'll leave this discussion open, because there's some value in going over the particulars... but the moment it starts getting nasty, it's getting closed.
![[Image: 1qVSsTp.png]](http://i.imgur.com/1qVSsTp.png)
