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Oh hey, it's time for another video! This one is from ColdFusion, a channel with one of the chillest voices I've ever heard. Dagogo makes really cool videos, usually about new technology and related topics. This is his newest one on the spoopy new Google Stadia! (I have to say I'm not used to him using such clickbaity thumbnails ) Honestly, Stadia and cloud gaming in general fills me with a ton of dread It's always concerning when too many things become a subscription service rather than we get to actually own them.
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So after some trials and tribulations, and a case of starvation I had to load from, I finished this challenge and completed all the milestones This was my village's final form
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Nice to see the process of all the shinies getting ready to get to us! And the mug wrapping was nice Got here all safe!
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rsyobvgn joined the community
- Last week
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20.3.2019 As per the latest announcement, the Guild Information has been updated. The following line has been added. The following sections have been amended. Old Version New Version The following sections have been removed
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Clubs, Calendars and the Pitfalls of our Community Software
Lelling commented on Viridian's blog entry in Staff Blog
Unfortunately, the feeling only lasts as long as it takes us to try the feature out and discover the few things we absolutely need that it just doesn't do, turning 1 hour of setup into 40 hours of tweaking and fixing -
Hello everyone! In our continuous effort to refresh and update our website, we've given a facelift to our old Let's Game forum. Welcome to the Let's Game club! The Let's Game club is the new go-to place to talk about anything game-related. Talk about your favorite games, share screenshots and discuss specific games the community's playing en masse, or just share stories from your single-player adventures! Joining the Club If you're already familiar with IPS clubs from our Creators' Corner, you'll be familiar with the functionalities here. If not, let's get right into it! To start posting, all you have to do is click on the "Join Club" button on the top right. Then you're in and you can start posting straight away. This doesn't have to be manually confirmed, so you can automatically join without any wait times. Note: If you posted any threads in the old Community Showcase forum, you were automatically added to the club. You can leave and/or rejoin at will. Club Features The club feature is an easy way for people to tailor their browsing experience to what they're interested in, and not have a massive list of unread forums glaring at them when they load the page. Instead, a list of clubs will allow for browsing of content you're interested in. This club features two previous discussion boards - the Let's Game general discussion board and the Minecraft discussion board. It also features a new gallery which members can use to upload screenshots from their video game adventures. Following the content you like! One of IPS' best features is the ability to follow specific things, and set how exactly you wish to receive notifications regarding certain things. When you click Follow on a particular thread, forum, gallery, or any other database, it will give you a notification of your choice when something is posted. This makes it really easy to keep in touch with the things you like to see! You can choose to follow specific threads, people, or even entire categories, and individually set the notifications for each one. For example, if you'd like to receive notifications whenever anything, from posts, to images, to comments, is posted in the the club, you can follow the Club Overview itself. Alternatively, if you just want to get updates when new images are posted in a specific album, you can follow that. Using the Gallery The brand new empty gallery may appear a little bit scary at first, but it can be used very easily, so don't be scared to post in there! If you go to the Screenshot Gallery tab in the club, you should see an "Add Images" button. Click the button, and you'll get a popup asking if you want to add images to the category directly, create a new album, or if you want to use an existing album. If it's your first time posting, or if you're beginning to post a new project, the best option is to "Create a new album", so all your related images are contained in the same place. Once you've created the album, you can upload images to it at will, and users will be able to comment individually on pictures, or on the entire album. You can also post updates or link to the album from anywhere else on the website. Give Feedback & Share Suggestions The club set up is flexible and can be changed according to our needs, so if the current set up ends up being not exactly what we need, it can be expanded, contracted, or reworked in a way that makes it more convenient to use! As always, if there are any issues, you can message me here on the website directly, or reply to this thread!
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Clubs, Calendars and the Pitfalls of our Community Software
Viridian posted a blog entry in Staff Blog
I am often amazed at how easily @Lelling gets hyped when he discovers a new and so far unused cool feature of our community software, immediately being enthusiastic about the many things we could do with it to improve our website's usability. It's a character trait I myself don't share, as I don't get easily excited as it is, but particularly definitely not where it concerns our community software (IPS). However, I think very few people can be completely immune to being affected by those sparkly eyes in light of a new discovery and the sense of exploration of newfound possibilities(*). One of the things I felt this most strongly with is our software's Club feature. Clubs are amazing! We originally looked into this feature already quite some time ago as a nice-to-have for our member guilds, but we later realized that clubs can do so much more. Besides them offering a more customizable experience for our members, the administrative possibilities grant us and club leaders so much more freedom compared to what we used to try with forums. Within a club, the leaders can freely decide what content they want to include (be it their own forums, gallery, calendar,...) without having to ask one of us to add it for them. They can promote (or demote) other members to moderators or leaders, without the need to inform the staff about it in order to get a role assigned to the newly promoted member through IPS' rather unwieldy permissions system (or revoked). The number of advantages seems endless! But, although we knew that this feature was really awesome, there was always something else to take care of, so we postponed releasing it again and again over the past year. Clubs became relevant again when we stopped organizing events and the autonomous group formed, as we wanted to provide them with whatever they might need to get them started, but at the same time wanted to give them as much independence as possible right from the start. We didn't know which of the things we would have to offer they would want, but we thought a lot about it nonetheless. Calendars While we were looking into the club feature more to figure out how to incorporate independent groups like Players vs. Events (the autonomous group) with as little administrative overhead and as few dependencies as possible, one of our main concerns were calendars. Luckily, Clubs can have their own calendars (did I mention Clubs are amazing?), but what we considered problematic is, that in order to add events, a person would have to be registered on our website. For a group that would in the future probably acquire both members and commanders without any affiliation with OpenCommunity, that felt like a restriction to us. Unexpectedly, IPS has a solution to this problem: iCalendar Feeds! It is possible to link an iCalendar feed, for instance from a Google Calendar, to an IPS-internal calendar, which makes it (sadly only almost) unnecessary to still edit the calendar from within our community's website. This is awesome! It would allow independent groups complete control over who can edit their events through an external calendar application completely separately from our community software's needs. So Lelling and I tried it out and it actually works! When IPS kicks you in the butt ...after a fashion. As Lelling once put it (not literally): Every time you want to do something with our community software, you eventually come to realize that what IPS can do is almost what you would need, but then it fails quite spectacularly at doing it in a way that would actually make it usable as is. So, it can import events from iCalendar feeds ...but does it keep them up-to-date? What happens when there is a new event, or an old one is deleted? ...well ...??? One of the most annoying facts about IPS is, it is seriously badly documented to the point where you can't actually call it documented anymore. After observing our test feeds for a while, we at first thought it doesn't update imported calendars at all – which would make this quite a useless feature, as this would mean that we would have to manually refresh imported events by clicking on a little "refresh" button in our administrator panel every now and then. This would also mean that only Lelling and I could do this, as we are the only ones with access to said panel ...IPS, just why?!? Why implement something as awesome as importing calendar feeds, but then stop short of that final little step necessary to actually making it usable? It could have been an amazing discovery, but ...nope. Call me selfish, but I don't actually see myself clicking through all our imported calendars every couple of hours. So, now what? Well, writing a plugin that automates the update process seemed like the way to go. However, after reviewing the actual code on my local copy of our website, I learned that IPS actually does have a task that updates calendar feeds! What?!? But why doesn't it update ours then? And here is where IPS developers apparently yet again failed to think things through properly before implementing them ...it does update feeds. Every four hours, it looks for the feed that is most out-of-date and updates that one feed. One calendar. Every four hours. The more calendars you get, the more out-of-date all of them will be. IPS, you are truly a work of art. So, I ended up writing yet another plugin to make up for IPS' design flaws anyway. The good news is, importing events from iCalendar feeds now works (almost) as it should, and we will be able to use this feature in the future! Thanks for reading! (*) Just to prevent any misunderstandings – I very much appreciate this, as I find it quite engaging and derive a lot of motivation from it! -
Let's learn how to draw - with Pub Draw!
Lelling replied to Lelling's topic in Creators' Corner's Creators' Corner
Hey hey! It is Wendesday, so it's time for another episode of Pub Draw! I was a bit worried that if we do it every week it'll be too fast, but turns out that some of the episodes will be practising and improving stuff we've already learned, with some advanced techniques. It also features Laura drawing on a tablet, so anyone who's not using paper, now you wont feel left out! This episode is another head drawing episode, this time it's from a slightly different angle, so that we can better learn how to work with heads as an actual 3D object rather than just flat faces drawn from straight ahead. Timestamps: 2:08 - Skip the ad 3:30 - Intro 6:15 - Start drawing If they're gonna keep starting so quickly, I don't think I'll keep including timestamps -
nipifyqu joined the community
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cquewzvh joined the community
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Already done. The event schedule was already removed a while ago, but guild mission times remained since some coordinators said they'd continue to do them. I put the rest of this information in the MOTD this morning, before the newsletters were dispatched The downtime announcement was sent out to all members in November as well, (I checked and according to our logs, you also received this letter,) with further updates in December and February. All OC newsletters are also stored in the Newsletter archives, in case you ever miss them.
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The Future of DV [Dispatched on March 17th)
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maybe put this in the DV MotD and remove the schedule. for Myself i had a little break too and wondered what happend the letter came a bit later. So it might be nice to include this in the welcom message. Greetz & happy life.
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I also took a little break from GW2 but i like the idea about the future of DV :-)
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The other day, I got all our pins & magnets required to fill the supporter packages still waiting to be shipped out, so over the last few days I've been packing the next batch of supporter prizes. I figured it would be fun to share the process, drama and conflama of preparing the packages for mailing When I decided to make this blog post, I unfortunately already packed all the currently pending packages - you can see them in the pic above, waiting patiently in their box corner for the day they get to see the world - so I was a bit miffed I couldn't include the whole process, but fortunately, someone ended up filling in their information just a few days ago, so I had another one to prepare! Package Tracker The first step is always going to the package tracker. Every now and then, I check all the packages marked with "Awaiting Response", to see if they've been filled in with the required information. Once the info's been updated, the package is ready to pack! Today, we'll be packing a Heroic Supporter box, so it does contain the magic OC mug Preparations Alrighty, so we've got what we want to pack - we need 1 mug, 5 bibi pins, and 1 Tyria Pride pin! Time to bring out the many boxes of pins & magnets! These boxes contain all the pins we've accrued through the ages. I'm currently looking at ordering a nice sorting box so I can store them all a little bit more neatly, but until then, I just have to do a little bit of browsing until I get to the right ones Right now I basically have 3 boxes - one for the bibi pins & magnets, one for the other currently sending pins, and one for everything else There's also one box where I keep the brand new thank you cards and stamps. If this was just a small package containing pins or magnets, I'd just use one of the envelopes you see on the left side of the picture above, and a stamp, but because this contains a mug, we'll need to use a box! Normally, I'd use a small box, but I just ran out! Luckily, I have some backup boxes from the post office - I originally bought those for the packages, but they're too big, and made from heavy cardboard (probably on purpose, so they can charge more for mailing them ). Pen to scale. Lastly, we're going to need some safety wrap. There's now a general rule in our house that all bubble wrap gets brought to me for inspection before it gets thrown away However, I did also buy an actual ball of bubble wrap, and some other safety wrapping that I use for the mugs, but for just filling empty air in boxes, I generally use recycled packaging, so we don't create too much waste ^^ Let's Get Down To Business Now, let's get to packing! First, I like to write a little thank you note. Thanks again to @llandshark for making the artwork for our Thank You cards! I'm really happy with how they turned out! The reason I write the message first is because the pens I use are very wet, and the ink takes ages to dry, so to avoid any smudges I write the note first, and put it away to dry . And yes, this has resulted in me having to open an already sealed and packed box to put the card in after forgetting to do so beforehand. Now, on to the pins! I like to secure the pins to a piece of paper, so they don't rattle around and get bruised, or leave marks on anything else in the box. I bought this nice shiny paper in both green and pink, originally to write on it, but the shiny finish it has actually makes it really difficult to write on, so now I use it to secure the pins on it It just keeps them nice and safe. In a completely unnecessary act of overkill, I use this weird professional-looking cutting tool to cut the paper into strips instead of using scissors Once the pins are nice and secure, I put them safely inside of the mug, in a little pocket of spare bubble wrap I had lying around, just so they don't damage the mug on the inside. That's the entire content of this supporter package, but the packing doesn't end here! Now it's time to protect this mug like it's my own child. Recently, I ordered a new chair, and its legs were protected in this foam mesh ting, like they're some kind of sensitive fruit, so I stored the mesh to use it for the mugs Behold, my ceramic fruit child! Now, all that's needed is to fill the package with tons and tons of protective bubble wrap, put everything inside, seal it, and write the address. Then, the package is ready to send! It joins its friends in the box corner, waiting for the day they all get to be released into the world!
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LegoAlexguy joined the community
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Hey, Thanks a lot for the invite. Looking forward for the big news!
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Hey ^^ This is a really good question. While public / open recruitment is closed, we'll still be responding to personal invite requests. I sent you an invite
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Hello @Lelling I noticed the recruitment is closed. I wish to ask tho what about people in my situation? My situation: i joined DV in August 2016 and after some very nice times i quit GW2 and hence quit all the guilds i was in. Ofc i loved DV most not just because of events but because of teamspeak chat When i returned to GW2 in 2018 november i saw that OC is in downtime so i reapplied to join my favorite guild DV but the recruitment is now closed. Do you think after everything is reorganized i can rejoin the guild? Honestly i had most fun in GW when i was in DV and id like to rejoin now that im playing again. Lemme know if its possible to rejoin or if recruitment is fully closed for everyone not in DV atm.
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Physicsman changed their profile photo
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like the other replies I'm also on a long term break from GW2, but the inkling to come back is there, and DV is definitely a home for me when I'm back. Being part of DV was my route into the OC events and all the fun I had as a commander. Looking forward to hanging out sometime soon!
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I'm not logging into gw2 regularly atm but this sounds really good. Looking forward to the future of DV and oc
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I don't really play GW2 anymore and I am not sure if I ever will again play it as much as I used to, so I am currently a rather 'inactive' DV member, but I am really glad about this decision ^^ For me, DV was always like a core of OC, a guild that represented its ideals and felt 'safe', and I am happy to hear it will once again move in that direction rather than the event spamming platform it has became lately
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Hello everyone! Since OpenCommunity went into downtime in November, there hasn't been a lot of word regarding what exactly will be happening with DV. Now it's time to post an update, and plot the future for DV! I'll be honest and say that this decision did not come easily. There was a lot of back and forth, talking with the rest of the OC staff, taking advice wherever I could find it, and I changed my mind on this subject at least a couple times before making the final decision. Recent Happenings As most of you already know, OpenCommunity is no longer a GW2 event provider, outside of a couple charity events per year. We made this decision because being seen as a service provider of that sort proved unsustainable, and eventually ended up draining all of our interest in GW2, as it became a place of work, rather than a place of leisure. It also made actually playing or just hanging out with people difficult, as any socialisation would turn into a member-leader type engagement, so it became a matter of all work, no play. However, despite wishing to move on from OC-hosted events, we knew that there were some commanders and members who still wanted to do events, so we decided to assist with the founding of a new group focused on doing events! For more details on this decision, you can read the original announcement. Changing Times Since OC is no longer doing regular events, and we're shifting away from hosting guilds in the same way we have up to now, the purpose of the integrated OC guilds came into question. We'd like to have a more relaxed community of friends, and that's what we're aiming for with the future of OC. Doing guild missions 3 times per week, a rigorous activity system, etc. are not things that are needed in a more casual and relaxed guild, and in fact, in the past have stood in the way of creating such an atmosphere. Activity System Inactive DV's activity system will no longer be in use. Since we didn't do a raffle in November or October, some of the leftover raffle prizes will be raffled off to those who were active in those months. Think of it as a late Wintersday present The rest can be used as prizes for charity events, such as the upcoming Toga party. This also renders the "Away" rank obsolete. No More Spam Mails We will also no longer be sending the newsletters on a monthly basis. Instead, they'll only be sent for important events and announcements, cutting the number of mails sent per year a little bit. Mailboxes rejoice! Abort Mission Guild missions will no longer be happening 3 times a week, and for now, have just been unscheduled. If people still want to do guild missions, if any of our coordinators wishes to continue doing guild missions on a regular basis, we can try to arrange a time, but for now, missions have been suspended. Recruitment Suspended For the time being, recruitment of new members has been suspended, as we move forward with reshaping DV into a smaller family guild. What does the future hold? In the future, rather than focused on every day events, we're hoping DV will remain a guild of friends, who can feel comfortable casually chatting, hanging out, and playing together, even outside of GW2, rather than a group of strangers doing events while never getting to know each other. Personally, I'm still taking a little bit of a break from actively playing GW2, but if anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me ^^ If you can't catch me in-game, you can always send me a message on the website! And just because we don't have scheduled events, doesn't mean we can't do something fun from time to time. Also, speaking of the future, we may not be doing daily events anymore, but we've still got some big stuff coming up! We have the Toga Party for Multiple Sclerosis event coming up on May 11! Stay tuned for an announcement as we'll start looking for volunteers soon! For more information on the future of OC, check out the most recent announcements, and don't forget about the Community Assembly on Saturday, March 23rd! A more serious note Some people may wonder why I made this decision as opposed to also transferring DV over or disbanding it. I did consider all three options, because I know there are many DV members who only joined for the regular events, but I also know there are members in DV who joined it specifically because of the positive environment and who stay in the guild because they enjoy an environment where they feel more secure. Those people are the reason we founded OpenCommunity in the first place. If you ever felt like DV was a shelter from the storm of toxicity in the outside world, if you ever needed a space where you know the concern over your comfort wouldn't just be waved away with a "deal with it", if you ever wanted to share a cool build you came up with and not be told "that's not meta tho", or if you ever wanted to join a group and have your team trust your ability rather than tell you to link all sorts of kill proof, if you want a place where casual racism, homophobia, and transphobia will not be tolerated, then you're one of the reasons I wanted to make OC in the first place, and the future I want for DV. I'm inviting everyone who's interested in staying in a smaller guild more in line with OpenCommunity's ideals to stick around, and join us in a new era! Also, consider participating in any of the discussions here on the website ^^ Join the drawing classes in the Creators' Corner, or start your own discussion! Still want to join regular events? For those interested in continuing to join regularly scheduled events - we have transferred ownership of [PvE] to its former commanders, and it is now the flagship guild of the autonomous group of commanders who continue to do events on the OC TS, so anyone who wishes to continue joining events can join them. Anyone interested in joining the guild, contact @ktommo10 (Kalinunil.4958) or @Atreyu (Atreyu.4920) for an invite into [PvE]
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Hey everyone! Things are picking up and our plans for the new and improved future of OpenCommunity are crystallising We've got a lot to share and we're hoping to share it all before the end of March, so let's get right to it! Community Assembly Before we get right to it, here's a quick reminder that the next Community Assembly will be taking place on Saturday, March 23rd, at 18:00 CET! During the Assembly, we'll be making new announcements, revealing a new project, as well as discussing our plans for the future and anything else our members wish to discuss. For more information about the assembly and the topics discussed, check out the announcement posted yesterday. Fate of Integrated Guilds One of the issues we were yet to make a final announcement about has been the fate of our three integrated guilds, [DV], [PvE], and [KIT], so let's remedy that now! [KIT] will remain as OpenCommunity's newsletter guild, with no expected activity or guild chat. [DV] will remain with OpenCommunity, but will aim to be a smaller-sized guild of friends, rather than focused on daily events. Please read the full DV announcement. [PvE], as previously announced, has become the flagship guild of the new autonomous group of commanders who are organising events on their own, outside of OpenCommunity's direct management. For the time being, they have their own area on the website, with the aim of becoming fully independent. As for the other community guilds, we've got some big announcements coming up regarding our plans for Guild Wars 2, which will be revealed on the Community Assembly. Don't worry if you miss it, though, the announcement will also be posted on the website! Autonomous Group / [PvE] Update The newly formed autonomous group has decided to take on the name of [PvE] - Players vs. Events! They have been granted their own Teamspeak area, in which they have full autonomy, as well as their own section on the website. Check it out for any news and announcements from their end! Since most of the active members from our Minecraft server are from [PvE], they will be receiving a copy of the OC Minecraft world when / if we decide to shut ours down, or sooner, if they so desire. For the time being, our server will remain online, and we'll make sure to announce it well in advance when the time comes. [PvE] now has full autonomy over their operations, and we'll likely no longer be posting updates on their behalf. If you'd like to keep in touch with their news, consider joining and following their club on the website, and joining the guild. We've Updated Our Privacy Policy - No, Seriously We've been going with an outdated privacy policy for a while, and while we're doing all-round updates to the website, we decided we might as well update it. Check it out here. Account Deletion With all the changes coming up, we do understand if anyone wishes to have their data and account deleted from the website, as per GDPR. If you're no longer planning on using the OpenCommunity website, you can request an account deletion. Simply private-message @Lelling with a request for deletion. Package Timeout Not really part of the privacy policy, but also a new website policy so we'll keep in the same chapter. Packages left with Awaiting Response for over 60 days will now be shelved if no address is given. Packages which have a mailing address but have not filled additional information needed, such as the type of Bibi icon, may not receive that particular part of the package, and may only receive the selected items. LFM Now that the future of OC is becoming clearer, we're getting ready to once again open our doors to anyone willing to help out around the community. Keep an eye out for further announcements, as we'll be announcing some new roles open to community members, as well as looking for volunteers for the Toga Party for Multiple Sclerosis charity event, which will take place on May 11th! If you're already wondering about helping out, feel free to post a comment here or contact a staff member! Don't be shy If you have any questions regarding this, we can also discuss them during the Community Assembly. In order to help out with MS Toga or any other future events, you don't need to be a commander or have any commanding experience. Spring Cleaning Continues In the next few days, there'll be some more cleanup on both the website and the forums, as we continue to shape our platform into something more suitable for the kind of community we wish to create. We're super happy with the Club feature tests so far, and will continue implementing it in the future, to replace many of our forums, so keep an eye out for any changes to familiar areas of the website On Teamspeak, the new autonomous section for [PvE] is up and running, so we'll be running some optimisation of the number of other channels we have on Teamspeak, particularly those which are no longer operational, to make our Teamspeak a little easier to navigate, especially for new members joining for [PvE] events, and to get ready for the major TS overhaul we're also planning to implement in the next two weeks! Stay tuned, and we hope to see you at the Community Assembly!
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Hello everyone! We've had a productive few days working hard on some upcoming changes, and in the next two weeks, we've got a lot of pretty big upcoming changes! In order to open up a little bit of discussion, and to better be able to present and explore the upcoming changes, we figured it was about time for another Community Assembly! The 3rd Community Assembly will be taking place on Saturday, March 23rd, at 18:00 CET! The assembly will, as always, be taking place on Teamspeak, in an open channel, and all community members are invited! What is the Community Assembly? The Community Assembly is a community-wide meeting open to everyone, where we can share plans for the upcoming future of the community, hear ideas from our members and discuss any questions, quandaries and concerns people might be having related to the community. Anyone can come along and voice their concerns, ask questions, share ideas, as well as ask for clarifications on any matters regarding the community! What will be the big topics? Any topics can be brought up by members, but major topics that will be brought up by the OC staff relate to the changes in the community, what we hope they will achieve, and the future we're hoping to build for the community. We'll also be announcing a special new project, which we're hoping will blossom into something bigger than anything OpenCommunity's ever done! Pretty much all of the community will be affected by these changes, but the largest points will most likely be: Our plans and future in Guild Wars 2 Upcoming Teamspeak changes Upcoming Website changes New project Announcement! The topics discussed will strongly affect OpenCommunity affiliated guilds, so we would like to extend a special invitation to all Guild Leaders in the community, as well as anyone who has a guild of their own that isn't affiliated with OC! If you'd like to discuss other topics, don't be afraid to bring them up! Whether you have questions yourself, or you'd just like to come and hear what others have to say or what the plans for the future are, we hope to see you at the 3rd Community Assembly!
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DV's 2019 Newsletter #1 [Sent around February 7th]
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DV's December Newsletter
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