Allllllllllrighty then!!
How has everyone been doing? Hope you didn’t think I forgot about you all. To sum up whats been going on, I’ve been ridiculously busy in my personal life and haven’t had any time for one of my more enjoyable past-times, namely gaming and all that it entails. But my schedule has loosened a wee bit so I have come to finalize some things I definitely did not want to leave unfinished. I want this to be the final message I post before we put into place all I had been speaking of for ages now. So that if I become tied up again, the majority of the work will be done and laid out. I will be available for thenext few weeks definitely, but after that I’m not so sure.
Now, I believe in perfect transparency, so I will go through what I’ve done and what I would like to do, and why and how. I speak in regards to this whole inter-clan community thing I’ve been droning on about for ages.
My intention at first, when I had 20 free hours a day (year or 2 ago now) was to create a pillar for the community to rally around. Something similar to the totalwar.com or .org, but something specifically dedicated to multiplayer. Hopefully something that would have grown to become something as universally shared as the .com or the .org are for singleplayers, only for the multiplayers. I had great plans and ideas to make it work where others had failed. It would have taken a great deal of time. But the issue at that point in time was that I am also part of a very determined clan, Arcani. We have, every single day, a tremendous amount that happens beneath the surface in our internal affairs. This ranges from training, to planning, to setting up streaming video for tournaments, to developing new ground for future stability. Arcani is a large part of why I am still part of Total War. I played the feces out of M1, RTW and M2, and were it not for the great passion the clan experience arouses in me, I would have long since jumped ship to another game (Company of Heroes for one
). So, my plan for laying the foundation for this central-hub-website for the multiplayer scene was put on hold until we at Arcani had firmly laid down roots in M2. Once that was done, I would be able to focus on the whole central-hub idea.
That’s where the problems began. I very quickly began to see just how much time and dedication it would take to do it alone. So it got brushed aside until I could find help or come up with a better idea. Months later, I was approached by Mojo and the others for that whole medievalMPmayhem.com thing. I saw that as a great opportunity. Their vision was the same, they had the site already half done, and the team was good it seemed. So I threw my lot in with them and tried to rally the other admins and get everybody organized. Then Mojo died. But he was soon resurrected and everybody went looking for eggs some bunny had mischievously hidden in the area. Well, needless to say, that really took the fire out of an already waning site. And again, my plans were dashed.
And so, I became discouraged. I had been told by many people how a whole bunch of times this had all been attempted before and how it had failed time and time again and I was starting to see exactly why it had failed all those times. The plans were too grand, the goals and methodology too complicated, and the people behind it were not willing to do what was necessary. But I had some things going for me the others did not. Dogged determination, the ability to adapt my vision to what would work, and the ability to put into place a common sense approach to overcome obstacles in light of lessons learned through experience.
And this brings me to my most recent endeavour. I decided that the only foundation that would work was one that had already been laid and reinforced countless times. Trying to emulate it elsewhere was futile. So I thought about it and figured out a way to make that foundation work for me. The foundation I speak of is the inter-personal arrangement the multiplayer community already has. We have clans, but beyond that, there have been for many years channels of communication that link these clans to one another. The community already exists, so it would be futile to try to create another one. Like-minded clans already know one another, and already have systems in place to share their gaming experience. We just need to use those more effectively.
So you may wonder why go through this whole bother in the first place? The answer is very simple and I would very much appreciate it if you would read this and truly try to understand why. A game in and of itself is enjoyable. Total War is fun, otherwise we wouldn’t be playing it. But why are we in clans? Quite simply it is because it takes the fun we would have otherwise, and heightens it through a bit of organization to something that becomes a VERY different experience than playing solo in the lobbies could ever be (so, many of us stick around for the clan experience, not just the game itself). Now the way in which the clan experience does this is it brings together like-minded individuals who have similar preferences when it comes to how they choose to spend their Total War hours. These people come together and work as a unit. When they work as a unit it allows a great many things to become possible: long-term friendships; competitive tournament teamplay on a scale and intensity that would be IMPOSSIBLE without the clan element; and just simply having an infrastructure in place to support what we heavy-duty gamers want and desire.
But that is already in place. What I seek is to take all of things that heighten the solo MP experience to the clan experience, and extend them to the clan experience, so that it can be heightened to a level which has, quite frankly, never been realized. The potential has always been there, it was one of the first things I experienced when I first joined Arcani. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, but everyone was so fragmented. Every clan had fun within itself with say 5-20 active on the fields and 10-40 active on the forums. To bridge the gaps between the like-minded clans would create a network of hundreds of like-minded individuals. A great glorious day was within reach, but nobody was really pushing for it. I thought, how glorious would it be to realize what was so easy to do. The reason I say it would be easy is because TW has a way of bringing from out the shadows a superior class of gamer (in regards to maturity and dedication). So, with so fine a breed of gamer hounding the vicinity, all we would need to do would be to build something that would work WITH the nature of the beast and all would sort itself out. The project would take on a life all of its own and we would just need to keep pace.
So this brings me to the details. I say work WITH the nature of the beast because, one thing I have found is you cannot expect people to work too hard when it comes to telling them how to have their fun. You have to lay it at their feet in a place they would go regardless of whether or not you laid it there to begin with. You need to make it as simple and easy as possible. If you don’t, it will fail, as every other endeavour has and will continue to do.
So I chose to make it happen without creating a single thing that did not already exist. Also, I did not want to bring together everybody, only those that shared the mind-set the other Arcani and I have: mature, laid-back, and fun. We seek nothing more than good friends, good games, comradery, and good-humoured competition. So, those that should take part in this communal element should be those that share our ideals. My idea had morphed over time and was no longer meant to be a grand all-encompassing community hub, but rather, a nice lounge in the corner, where like-minded individuals could come and share their TW experience.
So I took the first steps. I decided to use a small control group and make it happen with them before taking the whole thing mainstream. If the system would work with the control group, it would work with the whole kit-and-kabootle (or whatever the spelling is there
). I would take the whole, and shrink it as far as possible while still maintaining all the properties of the whole. Once it was working and running, it would just be a matter of adding others to it, as the system would already be in place. I decided to pick 2-5 clans that were of like-mind to Arcani and make it happen with them first. Those clans are: the Warriors of Crom, the GrailKnights, the Dragons, the 4Horsemen, and the Brethren (BRO). As soon as the system was in place we could move to add other clans and just sit back and watch it grow.
So I maintained embassies with those clans as a priority in my diplomatic pursuits and made sure everyone was after the same thing in their clan experience and that I hadn’t chosen the wrong group of guys. I hadn’t.
So, this brings me to the heart of the matter. Where to from here? I said at the start of this whole piece I want to get this into its final form a bit so that if I leave again for a month or two that the steam won’t die with my going. I’m here for a little while, so let’s hammer this thing out and get it on its feet.
Things that won’t work:
1) Politics – We do not join clans to manage ourselves as individual units within the clan. We do not need clans for that. We join clans because we want to share, and bring down barriers. So this whole pursuit here should continue with that. Just as clans bridge the individuals, so too should this pursuit bridge those clans. As such, we must be sure not to call this an Alliance, or bring inter-clan politics of any nature into it. Rivalries and disputes are to be tended to by the individual clans themselves. This pursuit is as a lounge, where we come to have fun, not to break into groups and discuss terms over rivalries.
2) An Agenda – There can be no agenda. We need this to be as simple as possible. We are not out to reshape the TW multiplayer circuit. We just want to lay down things that people can use in their day-to-day gaming in the same spirit that the clan experience gives them options with their individual gameplay.
3) Complexity – People are lazy. And in their leisure time, the lazy-factor increases exponentially. Everything we put down in regards to tools and options given to the clans and the clan’s membership must be easy and straightforward. It must be as simple a thing as adding people on msn from a pre-typed list; an extra ventrilo login address saved into ventrilo; having game-names in the lobbies start with special characters that denote they are on of “our’s”, etc etc.
4) Centralization – This is the pursuit of no one clan, and no one man. This will only work if it is given as tools and options to people universally (within the clans that are members). All are equals, and as there should, ideally, never be any decisions to make as it is all a big passive arrangement, the whole governance thing shouldn’t become an issue.
5) Active content - This must be something that exists passively in the background, to be used when people want to, and not have it thrust at them.
6) A COMPLETE lack of governance – While the arrangement of the goals and methodology should minimize the need for governance, man is by nature a wild and crazy guy. So there will be some need for stability. If there is no stability, the whole thing will go to hell and be a big waste of time. But this must be as minimal as possible, and it needs to be as decentralized as possible to avoid useless issues.
One thing I do want to say before I leave. Initially this was meant as something to supplement a glorious clan experience in and of itself. Arcani is still going as strong as ever. But the MP scene is not what it once was with RTW. So, in view of that, let us see the need for urgency to spice things up a bit. With this we can really add some spice to what we do anyway. And when we add more and more clans to it (like-minded of course), it will really become rather vibrant.
So, let’s discuss some first steps:
These are all general blueprints I have to get the ball rolling. If for whatever reason you disagree or have a better or different idea, DO NOT HESITATE to propose it. As I said before, this is to be decentralized. What the people want, the people shall receive.
1) Common ventrilo server – this has long been a central item. Communication is central to everything. What would your clan experience be if you had no voice-comm, or if you had no msn contact?
2) Central forum – embassies will work for the time being. But we very quickly need a way to bridge the gap for forum discussion between the member clans. I was thinking either approach the CCS guys and try to get a subforum made with a password on it, or use the Arcani site and make a subforum there with a password on it. And keep that until we get a huge membership big enough to justify having it’s own site, Or another idea, which may be outstanding....start a thread in the totalwar.com forums MP section and ask for it to be stickied? That could be great.
3) Msn/X-fire lists – As I mentioned countless times before, communication is key. The point of this is not to bridge the officers and leaders and diplomats of each clan, but every single member within it.
4) Publicity – This can only come after we’ve got the groundwork laid out. Once we have a good, simple, and COMPLETE system in place, we can add others to it, within the walls we create.
So that is a good place to start. The msn/xfire lists we can compile now, so it would be good if someone would volunteer to put one together for each clan, I can do it for Arcani and can put it all together for the whole group once each is submitted. The vent server will need discussion. The forum will also.
Subject: Re: Arcani Embassy 
Mon Nov 12, 2007 10:58 pm
Although, it is a shame, I must ask you one question, is Lonesoldier leaving the Total War community? Or just resigning his spot as the diplomat for Arcani?
