Lelling

Everyone who's heard me talk about wanting to make my dream game could suspect that I'd absolutely want to check out Dawn of Man  It uses so many of the elements I wanted to see in what I would one day hope to make, and I've been having some fun playing it!

Dawn of Man is a survival city builder where you get to build an ancient settlement - hunt, gather, and eventually discover agriculture and metalworking and all the good things! It's really cool and handles certain things really well, like how you learn tech points by doing things (particularly doing new things), or the intuitive and useful mix of micromanagement vs. automation.

Overall, it's a really cool indie title and I'd definitely recommend checking it out on Steam.

Here's some screenshots from my game so far - I love a good timelapse  

If anyone else picks it up, let me know! Show me your settlement!

Someone at work linked this website, derailing production for a series of hours as everyone tried to beat their own and each other's score  So naturally I figured I'd share it here

https://www.livechatinc.com/typing-speed-test/#/

4 hours ago, StevieTV said:

oh man, the amount of injuries is crazy! I'm surprised it wasn't halted after that first challenge! And that punishment for being the least favourite - "now you can't eat for 24 hours" so harsh!

I like to think it shows a glimpse into our dystopian future where social media presence is used as currency, and through sheer coincidence, the writers of the show just accidentally predicted what happens to unpopular people  

Just now, Pippin said:

Oh my god I think the video above is the first you sent me of Jenny and it was SUCH a journey.  It just KEEPS GETTING BETTER. Every time you're like "Okay, this is the worst a reality show can be" something ELSE happens, it's like a gift that keeps on giving. 

Hella approved!

Good luck to you but you have been eliminated.

So, while I do love to go into more deep and thought-provoking videos, to get us started on this journey, I thought I'd start with the very first video I saw of one of my fave Youtubers - Jenny Nicholson! Out of the ones I currently have in my "to share" brain list, she's the one that's most focused on just entertainment value, and doesn't really get political or too deep, which is nice and entertaining.

Strap in and get ready to embark on a journey through time, space, and one man's quest to fill in a lot of dead air while live on national television.

So, I watch a LOT of video essays. They're a wholesome and high quality source of entertainment compared to the 3-minute clickbait factory that dominates Youtube, and I just think they're a lot of fun. 

I often recommended them during events but we could never really follow up or discuss them cause when you're chatting with people in voice, you can't just go "OK brb watching this 50-minute video about the history and current state of the Avatar theme park", but I figured this is a much better way to share something, and then peeps can just watch it on their own time.  

I figured it could be fun to share a cool / funny / interesting video every week or every two weeks, and then peeps can reply and chat about it or even recommend some similar videos or other videos by the same person and just have a blast doing it

Hey everyone! Welcome to the brand new Creators' Corner!

We've transformed the Community Showcase forum into the brand new Creators' Corner, to create a better environment for people to share and discuss their creative pursuits!

It makes use of the IPS Clubs feature, but don't worry, it's not an exclusive kind of club where you have to know somebody who knows somebody to get in. 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 with no wait times or confirmation shenanigans!

Note: If you posted any threads in the old Community Showcase forum, you were automatically added to the club. You can leave and rejoin at will.

What is the Creators' Corner?

This is the place for people to talk about their creative pursuits, share pictures of projects, WIPs, or discuss inspirations or share cool crafty stuff from the internet.

Whether it's drawing, painting, crocheting, music, or culinary attempts, if you're the kind of person who likes creating, or simply likes to see what other people create, this is the place for you!

• Where do I post? What am I allowed to post? Aaaa help.
  
  The post area (where this post is located) is carried over from the Community Showcase, and you can simply make posts about anything you create or anything related to arts, crafts or other hobbies. And don't worry if you're not sure what you're posting belongs in here - the worst that can happen is that it gets moved to a more relevant area   Feel free to talk about anything and everything in here!
  
  You can also check out all the old posts - most creators tend to keep one thread per project or theme, so you can easily follow up with anyone's work!
   
• Using the Gallery - Artists rejoice!

  The Gallery is a new feature that's more suited for sharing works or projects that are mainly pictures, such as if you're an painter or other type of visual artist. If you go to the Gallery tab, 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.

• 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 Creators' Corner, you can follow the Club Overview, alternatively, if you just want to get updates when new images are posted in a specific album, you can follow that.

Overall, Clubs offer us a lot of features, which can be added or moved around at will, which means depending on how active they get, they can have mulitple post areas, or gallery areas dedicated to different things, or even a blog or calendar, so we can tailor them to our needs!

If there are any permission issues, or other issues with the new features, please let me know!

I'm really excited to see where this goes!

Launch Yourself Into The Sun With Pippin's Music

Since we started playing, there have been some developments  

This is still a slightly old screenshot. I should remind @Yuudai to remind me to take some screenshots of our new realms next time we play  

Also, in our multiplayer games, the names may have taken a slight turn.

Here is the information for the OC minecraft server:

Address:

minecraft.theopencommunity.org

In order to connect to the server, you must be whitelisted. The whitelist signup is a one time process and can be done here.

Please make sure to follow the OC general and Minecraft etiquette while on the server. Thank you!

If you're having any issues, feel free to reply to this thread.

Since we are no longer organising raids, this thread has been unpinned. I'll leave it in the Raids forums though, in case anyone finds this etiquette useful in the future ^^

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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!

On 03/01/2019 at 09:05, Dawnkeeper said:

It's been two months. Any news?

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

It is a very legit question in my opinion.

I replied to Dawnkeeper on Discord, where he also asked the question, but I really should reply here as well, so I'll post the (slightly paraphrased) reply here:

Posting any specific information on how that's going on is difficult. In the past we've had a lot of (both accidental and malicious) jumping to conclusions, false interpretations and spreading of unconfirmed rumors whenever making partial announcements, and it's something we wish to avoid and want to write something more complete. Basically, there's an environment where me just saying "I've been thinking about the possibility of X and Y" has led to some serious fallout (and personal attacks), and it's not something I'm interested in experiencing again.

I can say that we are definitely working on a future for OC, rather than giving up on the project.

And I'm hoping we'll be able to inject some FRESHNESS into everything. I'm feeling really positive about what we're cooking up - positive not just for the people who agree with OC's ideals and the way OC's been ran in the past, but also for those who wish things had been run a bit differently. It's really exciting and I'm hoping everyone will like it.

Keeping that in mind, I'll reply to your other stuff as well ^^ (And perhaps that'll make it more clear why we're being so cautious with what we want to write in the announcement)

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

So it got me curious aswell (since there were a bunch of plans for Minecraft and Guild Wars 2 aswell back then) any news of what's happenning at the moment? The raid team is on a break for quite a while, the event team can't organize events, I'm kind of unsure how the TT team does at the moment and the Minecraft server is practically empty most of the time.

I find "the event team can't organize events" to be very strange wording.

All Teams have been suspended and were effectively disbanded when we went into downtime. It's not that the Event Team can't organize events, it's that the Event Team doesn't exist. And neither do the other teams. We just decided that while we decide exactly what we want to do with the teams - whether we want to reform them in pretty much the same way they existed up to now but with new leadership, whether we want to change their internal structures, whether we want to make a single new team, or something else entirely - rather than remove everyone's tags, we're just going to "freeze" them as they are, since, while the teams no longer exist, the people in those teams do still exist, and can do events - no point making it harder for them to do so by stripping them of the tags (it also makes it easier for us to regroup after the downtime is over). This is also one of the reasons there were no promotions in the TT Team leading up to the downtime - since we knew the trainee hierarchy was going to be reworked for sure.

Regarding Minecraft - it was something I was really looking forward to as well, particularly running a server which has community-wide goals and events / challenges that everyone can participate in, but based on the response we got, it's not something people really wanted - neither to participate in as members, nor to help in preparing these events and running the server as team members. Basically, people just wanted a server where they can do whatever and the admins will spawn whatever they want for them at any time, which is not something we're interested in running. The server will stay up, but all general plans have been put on hold for now.

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

Improving features and getting more organized is always nice, but from the start, I didn't really understand why is everything getting "shut down". If there are features of the website or the community that needs some work, it could've been done hidden from sight, while it's only accessible to testers and people who work on them. I don't mean to hurry anyone and I believe that's not what Dawnkeeper is intending to do either, but it would be nice to know what's going on with the whole community.

Organizing events and managing teams was a daily, time-consuming and mentally exhausting task - which no one else wanted to do. By the time we went into the downtime, I was the temporary team manager of both the TT Team and the Event Team, and keeping things going as they were up to that point was the equivalent of using a spoon to try and save a ship from taking up water. Staff members would get several messages on a daily basis, on discord, in-game and on the website, writing in with questions, requests, and most commonly, demands. In the weeks leading up to our decision to go into downtime, I also got two threats of lawsuits (ridiculous but stressful nonetheless) and even threats of physical violence by someone who had my address (I put my return address on all OC packages that go out, so a lot of people have my address).

Pressing the proverbial "pause" button on the community was the only way to gain some distance and allow us to evaluate the community, its teams, and everything that's going on, without having to fight 5 fires at any given time while trying to figure out the best way to keep the fires from happening. It also didn't help that some of the very people we relied on in our own teams would turn on us and try to set fire to the firetruck.

It also gave us a nice insight into how much of our community is actually a community, and how much is just people wanting someone to organize events for them and who see OC as a service provider. Basically, everything that makes OC a community is still up and active, the only things that have been properly suspended are things that made us a service provider.

But like I said above, we're not giving up on the project just yet  The idea of shutting down did come up, but while I can't speak for the other staff members, I still believe there's a lot of good we can do!

So @Yuudai and I have been playing CK2 a lil bit since the new update and I figured I'd put up some choice screenshots here from time to time.

The newest update allows the player to create random rulers & titles, as well as a funky setting that creates some very interesting animal rulers  

I naturally picked the Ruler Whomst Is Cat, and Yuudai went for the doggo of the prestigious dynasty of Goodboy.

I didn't take a screenshot of the world right at the start but this is pretty much near it  

The glowy bit is Yuudai's and the amber bit is mine. We actually didn't plan on being neighbors but that's where the doggos and the cats live  

This looks awesome! How many of these castles are open for tourists? I really want to visit more cool historical locations around Europe some time ^^

Year 1326-1369: Empress Katarina III of the Illyrian Empire

Lelling note: I'm rushing to finish this before the patch comes in on November 13th and changes the maps! About a hundred years to go - Halp!

28 minutes ago, Dawnkeeper said:

Will these changes include the Raid Team? I would have loved to do more with them, but it was kind of hard to get in there. And a static group is not something I can reliably fit into my schedule.

Yes, the Raid Team will continue their break during the downtime. A large part of the downtime is that we realized the reason the Raid Team required the 1-month break had some underlying issues that couldn't be resolved as easily as we'd hoped.

27 minutes ago, Wapervolk said:

Will this downtime affect the Minecraft server in any way?

No, the Minecraft server will stay online

1 minute ago, Cellize said:

12 November onward ------> for how long ?

For as long as it takes  

Our minimum time framework was 14 days, but realistically it might take longer than that depending on the time we have & the progress made. It's also likely that different features will come out of "downtime" status at different times, as we gradually roll out things that have been finished.

This is an important period of change for the community, and we don't want to rush any changes. The point of taking this downtime is that for once, we're not rushed to finish something by a specific deadline, but can instead take the time needed to properly move forward to the next chapter of OC.

Hello everyone!

This year has been a blast, and in October, the Pink Day in LA fundraiser has been super successful, raising over $6000 CAD for cancer research! Thank you so much for all your contributions! Now that Pink Day in LA has come to a close, we've got some time between major fundraiser events to take a step back from our daily routine and focus on making sure this community is the best it can be.

We're taking the opportunity to take a good look and update & upgrade several parts of the community, some of which have been largely unchanged since its founding in 2015. Now, it's hard to change the tires on a moving car, and this is why we'll be taking some time off from organising our regular events, so we can fully focus on improving the way things are, as well as have the opportunity to focus more on the social side of our community rather than just its events.

Several sections of the community will be going on a scheduled downtime from November 12th onward. This includes the website, calendar, the majority of our discord, and our organisational teams. During this time period, no events will be scheduled on the calendar by our teams - but that doesn't mean we'll be gone. Our Teamspeak will still be online, and everyone will still be able to use it the way they have so far - to play games and have fun together! During this downtime, our managers and commanders will also have more time to play and socialise without having to focus on planning, scheduling, and organising, and just hang out and have fun!

Here's to a bright & shiny future!

 -OC Staff

Year 1306-1326: Empress Katarina II of the Illyrian Empire

Lelling note: I'm starting to like the hidden fields a lot more now