Why do we need a newbie-mega-guild?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Earl Atogrim von Draken, Oct 2, 2016.

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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    ~Everyone, Come, Recruit and Share Some Fun With the Outlanders~:D
    The Fellowship can and other guilds who also help by inviting and helping organize quests, events and hunts that our Outlander Guild can participate in. This is sort of a lead by example and thus become friends with sort of thing. This is because not only do our new players need help with the interface and such, they also need to become very knowledgeable about "all the guilds" before choosing and so they can choose a great guild that best fits their personality or play style and desires for fun.

    There's a great danger unless our outside guilds do entice our Outlander Guild members to leave, that the Outlander Guild would soon overtake and become nothing but a large permanent guild.

    The key is enticing them out and this is where "The Fellowship" is prepared in all it's extended Cult membership to aide the Outlander Guild in this proses through our Avatar Quest, along with and in support of "all other guild's involvement" with the project. The Fellowship project's primary mission is to help and aide the new player to find the guild that best suits them through those guild's "Worthiness, Trust and Unity".

    The Fellowship displayed their Trustworthiness in this commitment by not becoming an overnight 100+ member guild, choosing instead to remain the Cult we are, who's membership extends all across our New Britannia. Even when anyone is an actual member of our guild, they will first notice that we don't all go out hunting together, instead we have been in constant preparations for this guild of "The Outlanders" to have been created from our collective ideas and support to such ideas.

    Show me an earlier SOTA forums suggestion for the creation of such a guild structure and mission than the Fellowship's and I'd say that's difficult to come by. We as a collective Cult have been in support of this idea from it's very first conception and will continue to support in it's mission to help our new players find a guild which best suites their pursuits. All that have ever been entertained within any of our PM discussion groups knows this to be true from the very onset of those discussions.

    I say all this so that all guilds can rest assured that The Fellowship wants the success of all "Worthy Guilds" in our New Britannia. Those guilds which have continually displayed their finest qualities in helping our SOTA to become greater than the game we even now have. It's then extremely easy to see which guilds we support, because all one needs to do is look at those guild's members and how supportive to our game they have been as individual players as well as a collective body.

    So, as you can read, this Fellowship project is not a single guild project, but has been culminated from a "vast amount" of other guild's members and is not just the work of a single guild.
    Much like "The New Britannia Theater Troupe", we are a Cult where everyone is invited :D and all you have to do is apply your own motivation to see where any project can become true, if it's good enough to do.

    So, you, me, my guild, your guild and everyone's guild is invited to attend our Outlander Guild's fun, party and mayhem.
    And it certainly is a big one aye Big Brother @rild !:cool::p "We're Everywhere" :confused:!'
    ~Time Lord~:)
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2016
  2. Mykll

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    That is my point. The Fellowship, from a bunch of different guilds, can help new people, and promote their guilds, but Hospitallers, from a bunch of different guilds (and un-guilded), can help new people, but NOT promote their guilds? So not sure why the issue with them, or the worry with them, when everyone else can, and do.
     
  3. Tahru

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    FYI: Hospitallers have an huge PM conversation going with Dallas on this forum. It has been that way for a very long time. You don't even have to meet in the game nor be the one helping people.

    They do indeed recommend people to guilds, usually to somebody else's guild. The approach is to ask the new player questions and figure out how they want to play the game and match them up with a like-minded person or guild. Sometimes this placement is based on language needs as well. The Hospitallers attempt guide new players into the right directions, not stand there and answer every silly question. While that may seem counter on the surface, it's quite natural.
     
  4. Ravicus Domdred

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    Why a PM (Private Message)? should it not be a thread for discussion?
     
  5. Tahru

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    It is what it is. I don't run it, but perhaps Berek can put interested people in it. Like I said before, i dropped off the thread. I got emails daily for every message and I was not helping the conversation, so I ducked out.
     
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  6. Andrew Silverston

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    Big spenders who own megalopolises, castle and manor pledges, may be "leading" devs hands in many things. This is one of the way to 'group' all the newbies and through different programs distribute them into biggest POTs and guilds, even if not directly, it will still be done. It's a good idea on one hand, but on the other, like OP said its #4 all the way. This will seed most of the bigger POTs and guilds, and leave the rest of the communities empty.

    This whole initiative came up because the number of lots available in game now is thousands, if not tens of thousands, more than the deeds were sold. POTs were never calculated into land rush. And the 'elite' senders probably asked devs what did they spent all their tens of thousands of dollars for, if they can't even get players settle in their POTs. Now the initiative came up that would promote the seeding of the biggest POTs.

    I don't like what they are doing. I like the idea of global chat, but they don't need to make a "guild" for that. It's enough to have an option that allows new players to contact hospitallers in the game, it's a different thing if all newbs are grouped into some kind of odd organization, to keep them all accounted for and in check. Just feels as if some kind of prioritization going on behind the scene. It supposed to be done by the word of mouth, not through some "Outlander Guild" to just allow them to have a global chat...
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2016
  7. Time Lord

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    ~Outlander Guild Exit and Escape Hatch~
    This is one of the Outlander Guild's problems which needs the addressing and that is "how to shed members"...

    This is a privet guild's quest (the fellowship), meaning that it's what is offered to our Portalarium's Outlander Guild. We could become excluded or optioned out of the picture for all I know (some people are just sometimes left out of the Bar-BQ invitations), but this is a quest that the Fellowship Cult came up with. It's been hashed over by over 100+ players and it includes many minds and not just my own;

    There is only an automatic entrance, yet no automatic exit. This is where "The quest of the Avatar" comes in, because our solution is through natural social magnetism and in the same ways as the Oracle.

    How this quest works in a nut shell...
    Every member is equal to all other members. Yet at a certain interval (I'm thinking astrological) there will come a time when a single Avatar will "Rise", having been chosen through an extremely loose evaluation from all the information known about each Outlander member. This information comes from all sources of normal players to a central collection point of supporting players. The actual guild members of "The Fellowship" (a privately owned assisting guild with no reason to expand, yet this is their quest to administer), this is where this information is collected by having been reported to, yet also through our many members who are in other guilds. "Anyone can call themselves a member of the fellowship because this is where we are a cult". Anyone at all can offer up the name of a Outlander Member as a candidate just before that appointed time arrives. So, there is no illuminati choosing them as a candidate.

    The Fellowship has a Triad Membership of 3 very prominent members of our forums community and are well respected by literally everyone. That Triad are named in game as "Batlin, Abraham and Elizabeth", names from the original Ultima VII Fellowship. The only thing they preside over, is deciding which candidate has proven themselves by the Fellowship's original Triad of Power "Worthiness, Trust and Unity" (WTU) which is in our Cult's logo. They will at the appointed time choose from the candidates based on all information given who will become "The Avatar" and leader (for a time) of the Outlander Guild. At the end of that Avatar's time, they will suggest their own candidate to put forward along with everyone else from all guilds for the Triad of Batlin, Abraham and Elizabeth to choose from.

    Now for the beauty in this and the shedding of members...
    "Who will honor our Avatar and choose to leave with them on their continued journey?"

    Each chosen Avatar has proven themselves as a leader, they have attended quests, events, and hunts with many different guilds showing their "Unity". They have been the leaders of hunts and aided other fellow Outlanders demonstrating their Worthiness to have become "The Avatar". Yet to have become the avatar, their time is then limited within the Outlander Guild because they "must leave" or be de-guilded by Berek or other Outlander guild officer who can. It then becomes a matter of honoring their leading Avatar for them/others to leave with them as well. This becomes quite a motivator for outside guilds to have impressed and aided the Avatar, because the Avatar may bring them all with him into a guild which had been so helpful to them on the quest to have become the Avatar.

    This is the great magnet which helps all guilds that are worthy to have displayed their worthiness through their good service to the Outlander Guild.

    The Fellowship themselves would only accept those willing to help administer such a quest and aide in the quests of other guilds. Yet all our fellowship members know well that they do not have to be actual members to do what we do, as all guilds can do what we do, or help do what we do. We are not Hospitallers" yet we have many Hospitaller members of our "quest cult". Our function is very different in this way and needs to be because we all need our Hospitallers to be under the same roof of their own structure. One cannot fully do one while doing the other. One cannot test through quest or judge through observance when one is a teacher with all the answers which the Hospitallers are. Sure our involvement will be helping in that regard, yet it's not our primary function and we fellowship cult members will be hooking up those Outlanders with actual Hospitallers.

    To give an overview of what our extended cult looks like, you can look at the forums and point to almost every player who is administering or writing quests and "they are members who we have an extremely close relationship with".
    You can look at the top PvP champions and there you will be seeing members of our extended cult everywhere.
    You can look at all the true scholars of old Ultima, and there are many of our members as well.
    All 3 of these categories are dominated by an overwhelming majority of our "Cult Members" and not our actual guild members (who's numbers we very much wish to keep low). Many large guild leaders have been in our PM discussion groups and help craft what you see here offered.

    This is a privet guild quest, meaning that our Portalarium has only provided the means to which it could become possible. This is not a quest forced upon any newbie and therefore is all very voluntary to participate in.

    The Fellowship wishes to become the poster child of how every guild should be participating with and helping the Outlander Guild project, which could increase their membership because they are "Worthy, Trusted and truly believe in Unity".

    Lead by example, that's what we bring to the table for our Portalarium's Outlander Guild Project.

    We can't fulfill our mission which is well known, of celebrating the 25th anniversary of Ultima VII in 2017 without being what we have been charged to be, which is RP sinister.

    We must make it interesting and attractive for players to take advantage of our Outlander guild. We are not the Hospitallers of it, we are the entertainers who bring the entire world of guilds through our example and our quest's objectives for the Guild of the Outlanders to find their finest place within our game for their enjoyment.

    And a way to shed all those members out of it through enticing them into other great worthy guilds.

    That's it for our public all to see and comment on. This is the result of 100s of PMs and discussion groups who were and are all forums posting members.
    These are our SOTA forums, this is where we discuss things in an open venue for every troll to take a shot at, comment on and help us fine tune any idea into it's better form for all of our community and not some illuminati of other communicating channels we may not be privileged to attend.

    Do you, "any of you" trust any other guild at doing or administering such a thing?
    The Fellowship is the Forums and our forums community's venture...
    If you are reading this and thinking to yourself that you may not have been included, "please feel very welcomed because this is those same discussions which you may have missed out on :) "but you're not now" ;) You are now well informed :D
    ~Time Lord~:)
     
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  8. redfish

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    Sorry rild.. I do agree it's paranoia. But when the announcement is snuck quietly into a schedule update without just straight out calling it what it is -- global chat -- and when the devs have previously said -- maybe from the beginning of development I think -- that they wouldn't do this, then the paranoia is maybe warranted.

    You're saying this is transparent; its not. The way they rolled this out was very political and low-key, and did so because they know much of the community is against it. So the devs have shot themselves in the foot in this regard. (Not the first time, either)
     
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  9. Andrew Silverston

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    If "The Fellowship" is so virtuous in their deeds, why you are doing it all behind the backs of the majority of the game community? You cutting off smaller communities of players this way. Instead of promoting smaller communities, you fattening up the ones that are already big. Shame on you, guys and shame on Portalarium that they even think about promoting something like this. It's elitism in it's purest form, except the scale in this case is very big.
     
  10. Ravicus Domdred

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    I am interested in by what you say? What do you know of the fellowship? Is it sinister?
     
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  11. rild

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    Well said, sir Andrew! However, please allow me to point out that "The Fellowship" o_O is NOT the newbie guild being created & advocated by Portalarium. It is wholly player-created and run, and seemingly sprung up out of nowhere in the past two moons.

    @Time Lord was merely asserting that The Fellowship predates this newbie guild in its attempts to recruit new players by providing assistance. The Hopitallers, on the other hand, are not a guild but a volunteer help-group. As a private guild it is free to do as it wishes.

    Just wanted to make sure no one got the two confused - Portalarium in no way endorses the so-called Fellowship.
     
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  12. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    Watching too much 11 O'clock news make you paranoid.
     
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  13. Ravicus Domdred

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    why would Port be against a fellowship? It seems they are doing things organically without dev support. If anything they should get a Royal Warrant for the efforts of supporting new members finding their place in the world. Why such negativity to them?
     
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  14. Time Lord

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    ~The True Outlanders of SOTA... We of the Forums~:D
    There's absolutely nothing stopping any guild from having a part in our fellowship quest because that's what the quest is about. "I sure don't want to admin any large guild" :p I wouldn't want to wish that on a dog's life :D Large guilds are a large problem, especially if those large guilds aren't doing anything collectively or individual member contributing to the greater community. The Fellowship is far from virtuous in half of it, while the other half is holding to the virtuous path. As far as helping large guilds and not small ones, I know one small guild right now that I'll be helping because a few of their members are doing so much for so many players in the form of quests, with many big plans of their own which they hope will make them big.

    How we could do more for your guild? Hey, let me know what your guild is all about and I'll let you know when a good time would be or thing to do in order for you to make yourselves as large as you want to become.

    And a big BTW:
    Portalarium hasn't spoken to me in ages :D I'm like the 3rd stepchild of a departed, estranged and shamed uncle with a speech impediment :p and I don't know any actual members of our actual forums posting SOTA membership who they even speak with anymore :confused:...

    Yet this is where our wonderful Berek comes in, because he has spoken with people, yet mostly because they posted some trolling smack about some other player's dirty underwear o_O...
    I do get a question every now and then about why I'm doing a this or a that, but I never get any feedback from any of my answers to them.
    Our Portalarium stuggles with having a large community right now, yet falls back on those players who rarely post here on our forums and have outside web sites where they do all the real idea making which seems to make it's way through.

    But one thing most people must admit, is that it takes almost constant reading in endless clouds of text just to know a little of whatever actually goes on around here :D
    ~Time Lord~;)
     
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  15. Selene

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    If I am understanding Dallas' post correctly, anyone that wants to be involved in the outlander guild and help answer questions can do so...without leaving their home guild. It's not just people who participate in the weekly meetings (which I can't attend either, due tio family obligations). The one or two times I've been able to go, there were people from a lot of different guilds.. and some of the biggest ones had NO members there.

    My biggest concerns would be RMT spam and general trolling turning off new players, but with proper moderation, I think those can be overcome. It's not the worst choice ever... but like cultivating anything, it will need attention and the proper care.
     
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  16. Time Lord

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    While I'm on the subject and everyone else is as well;

    "This is our chance for input" because we already know that Berek and dallas have posted here and will keep reading all our gibberish smack talk about them until their eye's get tired of reading it all or it gets too repetitive or boring.

    I've been invited to having a more refined version of that Fellowship "Quest of the Avatar" on another outside web site, which is why I figured first it should come up here for ridicule and possibly stimulate some input so we here in our forums don't feel so left out of all of this.

    Even if they (whoever they are) reject that questing plan administered and held by the Fellowship, the fellowship will still figure out some way of helping support the Outlander Guild project and it's mission.

    But this Outlander Guild thing has one huge problem in it and that's how to get rid of or encourage anyone to ever quit being in it. They could find some "mr computer wizard" way of some automatic boot out once a player reaches some magic number in achievement in skill, "but somehow I don't think that's going to happen". Maybe some "time limit" will be placed on such a Outlander Guild membership.

    Portalarium and our Hospitallers have a problem and we need to help them solve it, "or there is no good way I can see to have a newbie Outlander Guild" and not have it become and remain the largest guild ever within our SOTA.
    That's a very real concern @x_Selene_x , I'm thinking that Berek may have his hands too full attempting to keep up on rude behavior there in Outlander Guild chat while still needing to maintain some order around our ever expanding wild bunch here in our SOTA official forums.

    This was one of the reasons I offered up the Fellowship Project's inner guild quest, because anything to distract or help cushion a good interactive Outlander community to govern themselves with more virtuous behavior would be a good thing. Peer pressure is a good tool in such cases and wanting to fit in. I figure if you have an internal operating continual quest that strives for good virtuous behavior, yet also with an outlet for those of sinister nature to have something to do besides behaving badly, then this may help. Even our sinister players need to learn how better to play a sinister character and possibly find a good home in a sinister styled guild.

    Our naughty, evil or otherwise more ruff behaved players should have a place to go within our greater SOTA community, which is why within the Fellowship Project, those players displaying that behavior were all placed in their own discussion group to find new and interesting ways to bring a balance to our New Britannia's niceness... which can get a bit too nice for many of our players. I now do know some of these types of guilds discovered through the project and would direct those types gladly to their best destination for their enjoyment.

    This Outlander project that our Portalarium has taken on does have a great need to exist, yet it's one of the greatest psychological challenges of our times to try to accommodate all things for all people.

    This project of theirs is so much the same as what the fellowship project is, that it's as if within all those many PM discussion groups, that we were all preparing for just such an event, which has now become our Portalarium's Outlander Guild.

    AND again BTW: I'm only repeating what was said in all those PMs, so it's not like all these words of seemingly truth are mine... because they're from "allot of people all wanting different things which became all one thing".
    ~Time Lord~o_O
     
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  17. rild

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    They shouldn't and I don't think they are. I only wanted to make it clear that "that organization" is not "the newbie guild" as described by Dallas. They seem like they have some really good ideas, and perhaps I will subscribe to their newsletter.

    I for one though, am personally checking on the well-being of Novia's fine blacksmiths. . .

     
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  18. rild

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    Competition between guilds for membership is part of a healthy system. Such behavior will serve many purposes, from improving new player experience to serving as a gold-sink. I do not see a need to restrict honest guild recruitment from volunteers - all guilds will be recruiting whether by action or word. Having a base pool to recruit from (ie the Outlander guild) and an in-game location to find players in seems like it would help things along.
     
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  19. Themo Lock

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    There is no more public than an open meeting. Just because people are not using your preferred medium does not make it secret. Many of the more helpful people walked away from these forums and never looked back (with good reason). Discussions can not be had on these forums if you actually expect to achieve anything.
     
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  20. KuBaTRiZeS

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    Maybe the folks who did not attend the weekly meetup preferred to keep the cafeteria as a cafeteria, instead of having another activity invading the space they wanted to use for what it was intended to?

    I really don't care about favoritism. I'll keep calling this what it is; a short term solution for a problem that still doesn't need to be solved and should be solved better and more elegantly in the not so distant future. Who cares why or who asked for it to be implemented? The point is that their reasons to exists are weak and it has the potential to do as much harm as good.

    Please, take this out and make the game easier to play by making it robust and coherent. Rely on players to get specific questions answered is cool, Rely on a gigantic guild full of strangers and expect new players learn about the game and make friends while ignoring they can be as well scammed and trolled is just...


    I mean, we don't have lots of things because they generate "unhanlded edge cases" and we're just overlooking this? Cmoon...
     
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