Jump to content
Lelling

OpenCommunity 2019 Update #1 - Moving Forward

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone!

We've been in downtime for quite a while now, and it's time for us to post an update regarding the state and future of OpenCommunity! But before we move forward, let's take a look at how we got here.

 

Let's Start at the Very Beginning

I hear it's a very good place to start.

When OpenCommunity was founded, its goal was to create an inclusive space and community which is based on communication, collaboration, and solidarity, particularly as an answer to toxic movements such as Gamergate, and the beginning of the spread of right-wing movements which saw the spaces of many gamers - particularly women, feminists, and LGBTQ+ gamers - shrink and become more hostile, and the wake of the "LFG" world of MMOs, where people's worth and / or enjoyment of content was based not on the experience they had, but the loot they received, or achievements they achieved at the end, reducing the social aspect of games to a minimum, and creating an environment where people treat each others as NPCs which they can use in order to finish specific content.

The aspect of organising events came about as a secondary aspect as a result of who the community's founders were; every single founding member of OC staff was a Triple Trouble commander in GW2, and thus, that was what we did most of the time, and quickly, due to the desire to create a sense of security for our members, we began making commitments in regards to in-game events, which at the time were easy for us to uphold as they were mostly how we naturally commanded anyway. So we created a unified event presentation, promised to uphold a consistent & regular event schedule, as well as set a specific standard of commanding and event notification.

Unfortunately, those projects never worked out due to the pressure of the daily requirements of GW2 organisation. Due to OpenCommunity's open nature, meaning anyone could join and attend the GW2 events we were organising, as well as get involved, we very quickly amassed a fairly sizeable following, but not of people who were actually interested in OpenCommunity's core ideals, or actively participating, or indeed the social aspect of playing together, but were mainly just interested in the events that we organised. In an effort to remain open and continue growing, we did not change our policies that resulted in this, and that's when OpenCommunity began to be seen as a service provider, rather than a community of players.

Fast forward to today, most of the community's members actually belong to smaller groups (guilds), which function as communities, or they are simply uninvolved and log into TS for events, but both of these groups only, or mainly, see OC as a service provider for events and a Teamspeak, which was not our intent. Even when we had a daily traffic of 100+ individuals, most people did not interact with other community members at all, and would log out immediately after an event was over. Such events are much more stressful to organise, and there is much less positive feedback (not in the form of written feedback sent to the forums, but rather in the form of a positive social experience), while commanders still invest the same, if not more, effort and care into organising the events.

As a result of people viewing us as a service provider, many members also have a degree of entitlement, as if we are here to serve them. This has resulted in many negative attitudes, some of which include constant messaging and harassment both in-game and on discord, as well as some amazing threats of lawsuits and demands that we do or provide certain things "or else". There were also cases such as people planning (and succeeding) in creating drama with the sole purpose of hurting those in charge, by individuals, groups and guilds.

 

Now We Here

OpenCommunity is now a combination of two concepts - one is a community of players who wish to find a safe, inclusive environment where they can discuss and play games together as well as share their creative pursuits, and the other is an open platform for events which are accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, these are incompatible concepts, as the latter draws a much larger crowd than the former, and a crowd which is not necessarily interested in the former's goals, or may even actively inhibit them, which causes instability and unhappiness.

Our commitment to GW2 events has also completely stalled any development of the community's other projects, and, the OC staff is seen somewhat like the staff of a restaurant, expected to take complaints and serve the needs of anyone, rather than as people who are just here to play games and have a good time.

 

So What Now?

As it stands, this model of a service provider is something that was never intended for OC, and is also something nobody in the OC staff really wants to, or can, continue doing, and as evidenced by our consistent inability to fill new managerial positions, is in general something nobody wants to deal with. This is a status quo that is very difficult to maintain.

We want OpenCommunity to become more than just a "stop by & get your loot" point for GW2 events, and to evolve into a community of gamers, creatives, and friends who enjoy playing games together, chatting, talking about their hobbies and sharing their creations!

Making the change from being just a service provider to an actual living community will not be an overnight process, and will be done in several steps. Our first step will be to try and ensure that our members who were only here for events will still have a place to go.

So here's how we're starting!

 

Step 1: The Task Force Awakens 

OpenCommunity will no longer be a service provider in terms of GW2 events & raids, and will no longer be a direct organiser of scheduled everyday events. It will, however, continue to organise charity fundraisers such as the three annual Gamers Giving Back fundraisers, but this will be done with volunteer community members rather than pre-made teams.

However, a large number of our members and commanders would still wish to join and organise events, and we don't want to simply drop them, and we do want to support a place where commander teams and guilds can organise regular events. Before this ship can be steered into a new direction, we want to make sure we're not leaving anyone in the water. To that end, we want to help establish an autonomous group focused on events, made up of former OC commanders, guild leaders, and any other members who wish to get involved. This autonomous group would have the aim of eventually becoming fully independent from OC.

This autonomous group will be fully in charge of when, how, and which events they do, as well as set up their own structure, leadership, and internal guidelines. The scheduling and cancellation of events would be up to them, as would the recruitment, training, etc. of commanders, and they will have the full capability to unilaterally split from OpenCommunity at any time. The group can be a singular unit, or a collaboration between many groups (or guilds) working together.

In order to truly make this an open process where anyone can get involved, we are putting together a task force which will be charged with founding this new group. The task force will lay down the groundwork for the new group's structure and concept, essentially founding this new autonomous group.

We will offer our resources, advice, experiences, and guidance to the group, and during its transition to independence, it will have its own area on the OC teamspeak for events, but how much they choose to use, and how long they choose to stay, is up to them. We are hoping for a positive, constructive relationship, and an eventual amicable split. Here are our projected goals for this autonomous group:

  • Phase 1: Task Force
    • The task force is formed from OC commanders, guild leaders, and any other members who wish to get involved
    • The goal of the task force is to decide on a structure and direction for the group
  • Phase 2: Autonomous Group
    • The autonomous group is up and running with its own structure, running events on their own terms, with the support of OC
    • A section of the OC teamspeak will be made for the group to run events in, still subject to OC guidelines
    • During this time, the goal is for the group to secure their own calendar/schedule, voice platform, and any other feature they wish to have. As these goals are being met, the level of OC observation will decrease until the group is ready to become independent
  • Phase 3: Independent Group
    • The group becomes fully independent and no longer a part of OC
    • The level of partnership and collaboration between the new group and OC is decided

Note that these are only projected goals, and the final result may differ based on further developments, and the priorities and decisions made in the newly formed group.

If you are interested in being a part of the founding task force, contact Stormmy Knight ( @ktommo10 ) - or keep an eye out for an announcement regarding the date of the first meeting!

 

 

Once this project is underway, more changes will be coming up in the community to continue the process of transitioning to OC's intended direction. This is only the first step OpenCommunity is taking towards its new horizons, and more updates will be posted as things progress! We're super excited to be starting on this journey - we're hoping you'll join us too!

  • Like 12

Share this post


Link to post

Hi all we are currently trying to plan a meetup for the TaskForce on Friday 1st Feb @7pm CET, However this is not a concrete time yet as I still have some commanders that need to reply to me if they can make it so the time and date may be subject to change. If you want to be involved please contact me before this time so I know who is coming. 

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post

Hi all we are currently trying to plan a meetup for the TaskForce on Friday 1st Feb @7pm CET, However this is not a concrete time yet as I still have some commanders that need to reply to me if they can make it so the time and date may be subject to change. If you want to be involved please contact me before this time so I know who is coming. 

 

After Speaking with the Commanders the TaskForce meeting is scheduled for Saturday 2nd Feb @ 7pm CET so if you wish to attend please contact me so I know who is coming ?

 

 

Edited by ktommo10
my terrible spelling

Share this post


Link to post

While you have shown in detail what you want the task force to be, I kind of miss the part about OpenCommunity itself.

How do you want to realize your vision of this friendly environment?

Edited by Dawnkeeper
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
8 minutes ago, Dawnkeeper said:

While you have shown in detail what you want the task force to be, I kind of miss the part about OpenCommunity itself.

How do you want to realize you vision of this friendly environment?

Right now we'd like to focus on establishing the autonomous group first (to clarify, the task force is simply founding the autonomous group), and once that's up and running we're going to begin a restructuring of OC itself. The changes would be a balance of simplifying the structure of OC to support our new direction, creating an environment that's more appealing to the people this community was made for, and making the community less attractive to those who are not interested in its ideals. These changes will encompass all OC platforms.

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post

I cant stop myself from thinking how political this threat is (ment in a very positive way)? Saying so much while not really saying anything at all. Revealing the top of an iceberg, leaving it up to the people to imagine the rest however they want.

But I can tell you have carefully avoided directly saying whats most important (and potencially hurting) ? As such, I have an important question regarding this part:

On 26/01/2019 at 20:23, Lelling said:

During this time, the goal is for the group to secure their own calendar/schedule, voice platform, and any other feature they wish to have. As these goals are being met, the level of OC observation will decrease until the group is ready to become independent 

This really scares me. Does this mean "All the organizers in independent groups will be able to access and promote themselves on OC calendair, raid schedule, TS, discort and forums, while OC will maintain and monitor the platforms, in the same sence that for example Youtube or Twitch monitors theirs."

Or does it mean "Those groups will be responsible for creating their own platforms, promoting and maintaining them, while OC will sleep in the background, not really doing anything on its own."

The difference is massive, its essencially difference between saying "OC is dead, we are slowly going to dissolve it into small independent guilds, that will soon have nothing to do with the original platform, except for sharing the founding philosophy. Hopefully this way it hurts the curent community as little as possible, and doesnt show that really, we are just abandoning a failed project."

And saying: "OC is going to change from being a group of people providing events, to being a group of people providing a platform for others to organize these events on."

I really hope that the later is what you intend to do, since that is what I would like to see as a big fan of OC and its work. You have already invested so much into the webside and everything, got used to investing the time, have loyal following... Done right, it could really bring the platform forward, especially in the "inclusive" and "individual" part of your philosophy. Allow small groups to form with their own individual gaming preferences, which would be by essence more personal than 100+ groups of almost-random people on voice-chat.

But in the same time you talk mostly about having a problem with being seen as a "content provider" and while dissolving OC into a philosophy will surely take that off your shoulders, changing the nature of content you provide will not. Being a platform require a lot of work and will lure possibly even more people to it, increasing the pressure if anything.

I fear that what you are saying in this post is that you want to stop this from happening, and are going to slowly kill the platform instead.

So - which one is it? Active platform, or a philosophy?

You actually admitted already that you cant be both. But you didnt say directly which one of the two are you abandoning? From the steps described it still looks like you will try to be both, which means you will fail (again).

I just hope you guys have this one figured out, so that you can succeed whatever you set out to do. And I would really like to know what the actual intent is here. ?

 

 

  • Upvote 2

Share this post


Link to post

I don't think the thread is very political at all, and I think we've been very straightforward about what our goals are. And I think we've been far more transparent than "tip of the iceberg" - in fact I've often talked about issues we've had with OC that are personal and not anybody's business, quite openly. Partly because I think it's important to be honest, but also because I just don't know when to keep something to myself ? 

It's very simple - we're not looking to continue being a host, or a platform, for a massive number of people, all with their own entitlements and demands. We're simply wanting to be an online community, just like many other online communities out there, except with our special little corner of positivity and good feels, and mostly as a nice place for likeminded people to find each other to play games, share cool projects they're working on, and generally have a good time.

 

On 01/02/2019 at 14:15, Mishka said:

Does this mean "All the organizers in independent groups will be able to access and promote themselves on OC calendair, raid schedule, TS, discort and forums, while OC will maintain and monitor the platforms, in the same sence that for example Youtube or Twitch monitors theirs."

This is the opposite of what we want to happen. OC wont be a hosting platform, but will rather be an online community. Just based on a forum and a small teamspeak for members to chat on in voice if they so wish. OC as an organisation wont be hosting events, other than a couple charity fundraisers, which will be organised with volunteers rather than commanders from teams. To that end, the raid schedule and calendar have already been shut down, and we've already scaled down to a smaller discord.

So, to reiterate the post:

OpenCommunity will be a community of players, not a platform for other communities. We have already disbanded our commander teams and shut down our event scheduling.

But, we still have many commanders around, and it's not that we are opposed to a group focused on events, and that's why we wish to help our commanders set up such a group. As an extra bit of information, originally the discussion was that we (the OC staff) would actually found and establish such a group, parallel to OC, that would actually be an event / guild platform, basically taking that part of OC's functionality but expanding it to be more free and open, and then give the leadership of it over to the commanders / guild leaders running events there, but then we thought it would be more democratic if we let them found it themselves, while we just help with providing resources - that way, it can truly be something those people built from the ground up, and it will feel more theirs from the beginning.

During the time that the autonomous group takes to establish itself, we plan to offer them a section of our TS, and certain other bonuses, that allow them to more easily transition towards becoming an independent group. While they're on our TS, and actively advertising within OC, they need to follow certain OC guidelines, but as they transition to their own platform, they can switch to their own guidelines.

The other reason for OC staff to observe the progress of the new group is to determine our future relationship with them. It's highly likely that there'll be a lot of overlap between members of OpenCommunity and members of this new group, and there's potential to work together when working on charity events, which means it's best that we have an established relationship - however, the nature of this relationship depends on how compatible our two groups are in terms of philosophy and behaviour. But the new group is perfectly in charge of their own destiny, and can decide on a completely different philosophy, if they so wish.

 

On 01/02/2019 at 14:15, Mishka said:

"OC is dead, we are slowly going to dissolve it into small independent guilds, that will soon have nothing to do with the original platform, except for sharing the founding philosophy. Hopefully this way it hurts the curent community as little as possible, and doesnt show that really, we are just abandoning a failed project."

OC is very much alive, but it's simply taking its steps further towards being a community, and not just a place for anonymous people to come to events. It's not a failed project, and it's not being abandoned. But I wouldn't say something like our foray into Black Desert was a failed project either. When Black Desert came out, we prepared to scale up if necessary, we made a guild in there, had some fun, and then we were kinda done playing that particular game. But all the we spent in it, I'd say was a fun time and in the end, no one expects anything to last forever. Things end, but end and fail are not synonyms.

And if there is a "fail", there has to be a "success". But what is success with a place like OC? There's no investment return, no bottom line. There's no end goal, there's no success scenario where we've completed all the quests. Other than emotional satisfaction, there's no profit to be gained, so the measure of success is really what we get out of it on a personal level. And for a while now, the staff has been very unhappy - and we did have plans to keep our teams going. We developed some really cool tools for IPS, which would've made raids a lot easier to organise, we had plans and a structure set up for the Minecraft team, and an overhaul of our commander teams. But we realized none of that was making us happy, and it clearly wasn't making other people happy either otherwise people would be stepping in to take over. So, we could've kept it going - very easily, we could've just restructured things and maintained the status quo, we had most of the work done for that, but that was just a goal that served its own purpose. "We have to keep events going because events are important" -why? When did that start being the most important thing? It's clearly not a source of personal fulfilment, and it's not furthering the cause of this community either. It was just making us unhappy, and making those who the community was made for less comfortable in the process. Ultimately, I think continuing that would have been the bigger failure.

  • Like 2
  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
On 06/02/2019 at 06:37, Minithra said:

So basically scaling OC down to even less than a guild? 

No? Can you please point to where it says that?

The only thing we've literally announced so far is that we're hoping to create more of a community than have hordes of anonymous people joining for events without ever even communicating with a single person, and then these very same people outnumbering the people the community was created for, and the first step to that is that we're no longer organising events.

Which shouldn't even matter to you since you never even join them. I thought you'd be happy to hear this news.

 

Honestly, this is ridiculous. I could say "Hello everyone, I'm hoping to be more active this month", and people would freak out and turn it into something negative. Oh wait... that actually happened once already. How unreasonable of us that we'd want to change such an environment. ?

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
On 07/02/2019 at 07:52, Lelling said:

Which shouldn't even matter to you since you never even join them. I thought you'd be happy to hear this news.

 

Ah yes, attack the person ? Shocking, that this sort of news about a place where I spent a few hundred hours and made some good friends prompts a reaction. 

On 07/02/2019 at 07:52, Lelling said:

The only thing we've literally announced so far is that we're hoping to create more of a community than have hordes of anonymous people joining for events without ever even communicating with a single person, and then these very same people outnumbering the people the community was created for, and the first step to that is that we're no longer organising events.

And then there was silence about what's happening, none of these independent event organizers did anything... 

How will the part about creating more of a community function if OC is withdrawing from most of its activities? Yet another guild for "real" OC? trimming down one of the main guilds as people with no interest move to other guilds now that it's no longer an active hub? I mean, refining a group of people starts out by removing the undesirables, which you're doing by stopping the event runs, but in the almost two weeks since the announcement, there hasn't been anything about moving forward.

 

Share this post


Link to post
12 minutes ago, Minithra said:

Ah yes, attack the person ? Shocking, that this sort of news about a place where I spent a few hundred hours and made some good friends prompts a reaction. 

I was not attacking you, I was merely stating a fact. The only world in which "you don't join events" is considered a negative thing is one which revolves around said events. But that's the thing - we don't want to live in that world. There's a whole number of people who don't attend events anymore, either because they aren't interested in the events that are being ran, or they have lost interest in GW2 in general, or they don't like the atmosphere of events themselves. And in an OC that focuses on GW2 events only, once you're no longer there, you're as good as gone.

Both commanders and members alike have expressed a certain anxiety they feel when an event is going on, and they are doing something else on Teamspeak - often just as a residual anxiety of not being there and doing something they're "supposed to be doing", and sometimes actually as a consequence of being poked with a guilt-tripping message saying "Why aren't you at this event?".

We don't want such an environment anymore. And we've tried very hard to encourage people to see any activity they are doing on TS as elective, but the public doesn't see it that way. If an event is cancelled because no commander wants to do it, and then people see commanders on Teamspeak, doing something else, playing some other games, we always, without fail, get complaints about it.

The facts are simple, the focus on events meant that many commanders, and all of the staff, could not actually play games with people, because the only time we had on TS, we felt obligated to spend it doing events - which, due to the nature of how our events are percieved, did not feel like playing games with people anymore. Sometimes you could be commanding for a room of 30 people and still feel absolutely alone, despite wishing to start a conversation. And in the rare cases you do have an interesting conversation with someone, people will complain and say that's not how a commander should behave, and you should just stick to narrating the event.

I'm not making it up when I say that when we were thinking about this change, one of the people I thought of was you. I thought "well, Mini's always alone in his channel, and now I'll finally be able to poke him and ask what he's doing, and maybe just hang out... or who knows, dream big, maybe even play some games together!" But I suppose that's not a mutual feeling.

So many people leave OC entirely once they stop playing GW2, not because they don't like the people, but just because they don't see that there's anything else to it. We're just interested in creating a place where the emphasis is on the people, not on the events.

24 minutes ago, Minithra said:

And then there was silence about what's happening, none of these independent event organizers did anything... 

How will the part about creating more of a community function if OC is withdrawing from most of its activities? Yet another guild for "real" OC? trimming down one of the main guilds as people with no interest move to other guilds now that it's no longer an active hub? I mean, refining a group of people starts out by removing the undesirables, which you're doing by stopping the event runs, but in the almost two weeks since the announcement, there hasn't been anything about moving forward.

Independent organisers have been doing events all throughout the OC downtime, and I believe I saw them doing a Dry Top yesterday as well. So when it comes to events, they've been active throughout the whole thing anyway.

And when it comes to founding the newly formed autonomous group, that's not going to be an overnight process. They did have the first meeting on Saturday, as announced in this thread, and I believe a good task force of people has formed. They've already discussed many things about the focus of the group, the possible structures, how the leadership of this newly formed group will work, and so on, but it's only been 6 days since their first meeting, and I think it's unfair to demand any sweeping announcements from them, before they've even figured out what exactly they want to do. But, I did catch up with a few of them after their meeting (I didn't attend the meeting because I didn't want to influence their discussion), and I think they've got a good thing started.

But we want to take things step by step, and wait with further changes until the autonomous group is set up, so that we know their scope of plans, and can work with them.

But the reality that people must accept is that nobody is being paid for any of this, and the group's creation depends on how much free time they have, and how much of it they are willing and able to put into this. OC was set up and founded by a group of people, most of whom did not have jobs or uni or school, or social lives outside of the community, and had 12+ hours a day to sit in a channel and debate decisions, systems and structures, That was largely why we could set up OC the way that we did, and coincidentally why we could do the fabled 67 TTs per day and whatnot, and also, I think, why the way we used to do things was ultimately unsustainable. Moving forward, we - both us at OC and the new autonomous group - have to work within our reasonable limits.

It's important to understand that anyone demanding that OC should continue as it did up to now is demanding that the staff continue to put our entire lives on hold to keep OC going. I'm inviting @Saiface and @Viridian to chime in here, since this is a feeling that I think they can talk about better than me.

And I'd just also like to address 

32 minutes ago, Minithra said:

How will the part about creating more of a community function if OC is withdrawing from most of its activities?

Just because OC as a community is no longer organising events, it doesn't mean that its members will no longer be doing anything. In fact, what we're hoping for is more organic activity of people just hanging out and actually communicating with one another, when the tight event schedule is no longer a burden on the most active and outspoken members of the community.

I've mentioned many commanders feeling like they can't be at OC outside of running events, because any time they appear on TS, there's always a passive pressure of "but you should be doing events". That's why there's such a heavy burnout rate of commanders, and then people that we've made friends with just disappear, because you realize outside of GW2 events you had no connection. GW2 events were absolutely consuming us, and we just don't want to do that anymore. I hope people can understand that.

 

I know this can be an uncertain time for many people, but that's why we tried to lay this out as plainly as possible, and are even supporting the creation of an alternate option for those that do wish to continue just attending events in a similar way as before.

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
58 minutes ago, Lelling said:

I'm not making it up when I say that when we were thinking about this change, one of the people I thought of was you. I thought "well, Mini's always alone in his channel, and now I'll finally be able to poke him and ask what he's doing, and maybe just hang out... or who knows, dream big, maybe even play some games together!" But I suppose that's not a mutual feeling.

Ask Wolfie how well that goes >.> I'm pants at Overwatch, and I spend a lot of time "playing" Minecraft or more recently Endless Legend while semi-paying attention to a stream or podcast.

I'm happy to hear stuff is happening and progress is made.

Share this post


Link to post
12 hours ago, Lelling said:

It's important to understand that anyone demanding that OC should continue as it did up to now is demanding that the staff continue to put our entire lives on hold to keep OC going. I'm inviting @Saiface and @Viridian to chime in here, since this is a feeling that I think they can talk about better than me.

I think it really is important to remember, that every single commander and we as the staff do what we do in our free time. Naturally, having free time is important, because normally it is meant to relieve the mind (and the body) of some of the stress caused in other areas of our lives - be it at our jobs, studies, or by for example family issues. It is also time that we need to engage in social interactions and to maintain the important relationships in our lives, particularly with the people we are close to, because those are the people on whose support we will be able to count, should we ever be in a situation where we need it. The last thing that we want from the activities we pursue in our free time, is that they instead add to the stress. It's not that stress is always bad, but there needs to be a positive balance, and I don't believe any member of the staff has felt that in a very long time.

What happened instead is, that - all other issues aside - we were available to both commanders and our members pretty much most of the time. With all criticism and complaints about all the mistakes we've ever made and all the personality issues we (supposedly) have, I hope at least that is something that is undisputed - if we were needed for something, we were available. Eventually OpenCommunity with all it's issues and administrative and organisational needs had so far intruded upon our private lives, that we actually didn't feel like we had a private life anymore. I believe it is hard to not realize that something has gone seriously wrong, when someone is forced to deal with organisational problems related to events while physically at work. And I believe the words "Hang on. This is something I need to respond to." have very special meaning to my husband.

  • Like 5

Share this post


Link to post
24 minutes ago, Viridian said:

And I believe the words "Hang on. This is something I need to respond to." have very special meaning to my husband.

Actually that sentence has a very special meaning to me as well. It at some point becomes quite frustrating when your friend is busy answering and dealing with raid issues on one day in a week that was supposed to be reserved for doing something fun together.

  • Like 1
  • Cookie 1
  • Upvote 2

Share this post


Link to post

This is maybe slightly off-topic, still I feel a certain need to add to this discussion, so here I go.
I'm a quiet person, that feels uneasy around people, especially if it's a whole lot of people, that I don't even know. I don't connect easily to others and I will therefore never feel really "at home" in a place that has many members. When there are events I join TS, but I don't communicate with other people - there are commanders that tell people what needs to be done, and socialising often gets into the way of the event, or at least that's how I perceive it.
So why do I write this in this thread?
I got into OC because they were organising events (simply put), but in the way it worked then, it didn't achieve it's stated goal (for me): it did not provide me with an environment that was friendly and inclusive, I felt as a stranger - I was a stranger and still am.


If OC wants to change that, than I'm all for it!

Edited by mattemahticker
  • Like 4

Share this post


Link to post
On 08/02/2019 at 04:42, Lelling said:

It's important to understand that anyone demanding that OC should continue as it did up to now is demanding that the staff continue to put our entire lives on hold to keep OC going. I'm inviting @Saiface and @Viridian to chime in here, since this is a feeling that I think they can talk about better than me.

I struggle with a nice way to put my thoughts on this subject into words, because of how much it did effect my day to day life. And this was all still with the best intent in mind, wanting the best for the community. Wanting our user base to be happy, to have these events for you guys. I put so much time, and energy into OC from late 2016 to now. Starting out as a normal Event Team commander, to commanding Triple Trouble. Becoming a mod, then eventually a Team lead/Community manager. Countless hours of commanding, planning events, and any back-end tasks that needed attention. I had even changed my availability at work to be there to command if needed, and even times where I'd come home from work to jump straight into commanding. But as time went on my interest in the game changed, and so many things I felt like I was forcing myself to do.

And don't get me wrong interest in commanding comes and goes, we've gone through so many commanders in the time I've been here. But at the same time I've seen hundreds of people come and go. Some only here for our events, others who wanted to be part of OC. Feeling like if they weren't playing GW2 anyone that they didn't have a place here, and would simply disappear. Everything on the outside really did feel like it had to be all GW2 related. And even when we started the Minecraft server, it only helped so much, but that opened another can of worms of it's own.

But we made it to the point where we are now, a good chunk of our commanders prior to the downtime their hearts weren't truly into it anymore. We instead wanted a nice cozy place to have a community, to play games together. To support one another, and to get back to enjoying what they loved. And then the others still want, and enjoy organizing events. Which we figured this Task Force was the best way to go about it. We want to see it grow, and succeed at what they want to do, and help if needed. But I personally don't want to go back to putting my life in standby, to make sure events are happening.
 

  • Like 5

Share this post


Link to post

And you definitely shouldn't. Nor should anyone else.

I've always had respect for you folks for the immense amount of work you were putting into this whole thing. 
I can only applaud your decision, as nobody should (have to) sacrifice their personal lives, or that of those around them.

?

 

  • Like 4

Share this post


Link to post

I am really sorry for the lack of communication here on the forums. But we have all been really busy with the organisation for the new community  [PvE] .
We have been organising events on a day to day basis, however with everything that was going on. It totally slipped our minds to put something on the forums.
We have had a few Task Force meetings and I am happy to say we are very close to open our discord to you all.

We do have a Calendar already which we have opened up : https://calendar.google.com/calendar?cid=cHEyb3E5NjhjcGEwa3JsYzEwOWtqdTQ5M29AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

We are not forcing you to use the discord and we are working on alternatives for the website. If you want to know more you can always contact me, or come to our next meeting Saturday at 19:00 CET.

Edited by ktommo10

Share this post


Link to post

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

Teamspeak

We have an open Teamspeak, which can be freely used by guests in need of a practical voice communication solution.

Address: ts.theopencommunity.org

×
×
  • Create New...