Hello everyone!

After over a year of working, blowing up Teamspeak server after Teamspeak server, and waiting on Teamspeak Systems GmbH to get off their butts, we've finally set up the GW2League teamspeak!

Community Assembly - Saturday, February 29th, 16:00 CET!

Before we get started with this announcement, - reminder that this announcement, and some other stuff will be discussed on the Community Assembly, happening on Saturday, February 29th, at 16:00 CET!

We'll be discussing and opening up to questions regarding GW2League, as well as talking about OC's future, and taking a look at OC's 2019 budget report!

Background

When we decided we no longer wanted to directly lead teams of commanders from the top of OC, and instead just let people do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, we also started talking about creating a new Teamspeak server, that would operate as something that we believed is what people wanted from OpenCommunity in the first place. Not a top-down organised community with a structured approach to events, but a free-for-all teamspeak where anyone can hang out, request a channel, and just do what they want to do.

At this time, Teamspeak had already announced Teamspeak 5, which was set to release in Q4 of 2018 (yikes). We decided to wait on the release of TS5, so that when we built the new Teamspeak, we'd build it knowing what this new generation of Teamspeak was all about.

But 2019 came along, and TS5 still wasn't released, and nobody at Teamspeak was giving any information about when the brand new, much hyped TS, would be releasing. But we did find a claim that TS5 would run on TS3 servers, so, as 2019 trucked on, we decided we'd just make the separate Teamspeak without waiting for TS5.

The goal was to make an exact replica of our current server, so that when we made the move, people wouldn't have to learn all new channels, get new groups, etc. All the supporter groups from OC would carry over, so people would be recognized for their contributions on both servers. However, that was easier said than done.

What followed were a couple months where @Leaky and I would be poring over a single-line file with almost 1 MB of data in it, to try and decode what exactly we needed to clone to make a successful copy. If there was any kind of conflict, the new server would crash and we'd have to start from scratch. After about 10 iterations, we finally managed to build the new TS!

So What Is GW2League?

So, the idea behind GW2League is to have a TS platform where any guild or group can request a channel, in which they have full admin permissions. They can moderate the channels, rename them, set passwords & permissions, and even prevent other people from seeing inside. They can assign groups such as Moderator, Commander, Muted, Keyboard Disabled, they can ban people from accessing their channels, basically anything that somebody can do if they have a Teamspeak server of their own.

The advantage is that they're not alone - if they ever want to make bigger events with other guilds, form alliances, or just hang out with strangers, they're surrounded by others that might be interested in doing so. But, there are no requirements to do so, you can also just completely stick to yourself.

The main advantage of GW2League over other communities is that it's completely federated - each guild has its own channels where they have admin powers, meaning that you do what you want in your channel, without interference from outside, and because it doesn't hinge on a single individual or group of individuals to run it as a staff (like OC did), there's no top-down structure, and no orders coming from a staff of people. If you want to work with other guilds, you can do that, if you want to ban all other guilds from being able to enter your channels, you can do that. If you want your channels to be invite-only, you can do that, and if you want everyone to be able to join, you can do that.

The Teamspeak just exists, regardless of what people want to do on it. It's there as a neutral platform, which I think is what a lot of people wanted OpenCommunity to be, but it never could have been that.

I also wanted to create a Teamspeak which had no connotation to OpenCommunity, because generally, I think a lot of people have personal beef with that name, and creating a separate TS and not calling it something like "OCPublic" or "OCGuilds" or whatever, was the right thing to do.

So What's Going to Happen to the OC TS?

All public & guild channels from the OpenCommunity TS will be moved to the GW2League teamspeak.

We've been telling everyone from the individual guilds to use the address "GW2League" to connect to the OpenCommunity TS for a while now, and that's because on March 1st, that's going to point to the GW2League teamspeak rather than OpenCommunity's, so if you've been using that address, you wont have any interruption of service. You'll have the same groups, see pretty much the same channels, and have the same permissions.

The OpenCommunity Teamspeak will be dedicated more towards a small & friendly community, with the occasional big charity event open to everyone, just like in the old days.

Plans For the Future

There's several things we want to do in the coming months - build a new OC website, build a new GW2League website, and I'd love to create a bot which automates the creation of a new guild channel, so that people wishing to have a new TS channel on GW2League could just click a button on the website and become admins of their own channel! That'd be really nice  

And of course, in the first half of 2020, I also wanna go ahead with two big events for OpenCommunity:

• OpenCommunity's 5th birthday (probably not held on May 1st, OC's actual birthday, but on an adjactent weekend  )! I think it'd be great to have a big party celebrating 5 years of OpenCommunity, remembering everything we've done in the last 5 years and all we've achieved!
• Tyria Pride! In June, I'm hoping to once again organise Tyria Pride!

Those are the big events I'm looking forward to, in the meantime, if anyone wants to hang out and play some games, or just shoot the breeze, get in touch