SWTOR: alliance guild discussion

Further note: I'll still be thinking about this and deciding what I want to do. I would really rather play light side. And I'd rather not play guildless, which is where I'm heading for at the moment if I want to play light-side.

I would quite possibly have been a lot less concerned if the Eldain guild's forum did not require membership to read. I'm not a fan of things being closed off like that--and not just because it means I can't get a feel for what the guild is like by reading those forums. I went and looked for the guild and found the closed forum immediately, and that probably colored my later thoughts significantly.

(And to be clear: It is the very fact that you must sign up for access to read that concerns me. I understand that there has just been an invitation to sign up and look. Out of curiosity: Why is read-access not open to the public, at least for the majority of the forum. I can understand why it wouldn't be postable, but not why it wouldn't be readable.)

P.S. If you're going to invite GWJ folks to visit your forums, you should probably tell them *where to go*. (Oh, I see it is at the end of your message. You might want to make the link a bit more prominent.)

Hypatian wrote:

Further note: I'll still be thinking about this and deciding what I want to do. I would really rather play light side. And I'd rather not play guildless, which is where I'm heading for at the moment if I want to play light-side.

I'm probably going to go guildless for a while and will, most likely, playing light side. We can hang out.

So, I suppose I'll weigh in on this as well, and do so as a neutral party, having little interest at this juncture in SWTOR.

So, first off, I've spent a fair amount of time in BHA, and regardless of how that went, I still think very highly of them, regardless of where they're at today. So with that said, it must be realized that the GWJ guild on Blackhand Alliance is an abnormality when it comes to GWJ and MMOs. Go up and look at the sticky I maintain dealing with GWJ guilds in MMOs and tell me, honestly, how many of them still have a real presence? Also, for what it's worth, that's not even really comprehensive; the GWJ LoTRO guild died off years ago.

Anyway, if you look at it realistically, that's what happens to GWJ guilds; they start, they do well for a short time, and then largely become inactive. This isn't a bad thing, and please don't take it that way; it's simply how we are. So for that reason, it's absolutely worth looking at a guild merger from the start. Find a stable base for us to be welcome back to, which brings me to my next point.

Eldain is, at its' core, a group of fantastically welcoming people. This is not to say they are perfect. This is not to say that everything that's happened I agree with. But with all that aside, I can say that when issues come up, they're generally handled fairly. This is a group of folks who is probably more casual than it seems BHA has gotten, but I don't see that as a bad thing either. TOR strikes me as a game trying to be more like LoTRO than WoW; more about story than about the endgame. So while I'm certainly on the GWJ roster, I'll be honest and disclose that in all likelyhood, I'd probably wind up with the Eldain folks.

Oh, and a sidenote: I do feel that certain games tend to run rampant in the forumspace when it comes to thread proliferation. I do find it a bit annoying, but realize that it is what it is, and leave it to Certis to handle as he will. But with that said, I do prefer having a guild specific forum for MMOs to talk shop in, while coming here to spew gloriously about hype and upcoming stuff and other general bantery topics.

Unfrotunately I can't join (at least with my main) as I will be in my Star Wars Galaxies guild, but when they give the ability to have allies, I definately want to ally up with the GWJer guilds so we end up on the same server (if our criteria matches). If not, I will probably roll an alt and join up that way.

I think even if Vector and Hypatian play guildless they will be group and coordinate through the /gwj channel that has existed in every mmo we have ever played in. The only exclusivity will be not being able to see guild chat nor a guild tag in the name. I seriously doubt that most guild members from these forums will ever visit the other forums. It isn't really necessary unless you are an officer as far as I can tell. Seems mountain to mole hill issue to me and I almost never play anything with a mp component without some gwj affiliation.

Hypatian wrote:

It's not the people, it's the established community. I want to join something fresh--just a group of goodjers hanging around, and somebody has admin powers to deal with anyone who goes totally batsh*t insane (which is unlikely, because these are goodjers we're talking about.) I don't want to join a group with history. I don't want to join a group where people already "know" how they interact with other people in the group in this sort of game.

I have no problems with any of the people, I'm sure everyone's nice. I'm sure there will be plenty of goodjers. I'm just not interested in joining an established thing at this point. (This is the "it's not you, it's me" talk.) This is probably excess paranoia on my part, but I know how I work in that kind of scenario (raided in WoW for many years with an established guild), and I expressly want to avoid that right now to the point that I would rather solo and just hang out with goodjers from time to time if I'm playing light side.

I was expecting to join a new guild that is what I describe, and now I'm learning that instead we're going to be part of a larger community that has been around a while. So I'm kind of ticked off. I apologize for being cranky.

You realize the things you're describing here is exactly what would happen merge or no? Most of us here are MMO veterans and have played with each other already. We ARE a group that already knows how they'll interact. One of the reasons we're here

It made the most sense to me when i found out that we had another group of goodjers planning on playing but in another guild to try and consolidate us all. That and being well aware of the history of other guilds here at GWJ started talking about a merger. Again, for me it makes more sense to merge a group known to be unstable into the one that's shown to be stable. I already knew the Goodjers that were here (Bad Ferret, Psych, Nihilo, and others) and started having discussions with Namikaze to see what his goals were and to make sure that the standard DBAD was practiced. Talking with him and the few others who havent posted here at GWJ showed that they'd fit right in and walked the GWJ walk.

I knew the risk of bringing this up because some people wouldnt like the idea for an assorted different reasons. 1 being the loss of our kick ass name i REALLY like our name but figured aiming for something long term would be better.

I'm not trying to do a bait/switch. This will be a GWJ guild just like you'd find anywhere else. The only differences that i see happening is that the name would change and i'd be an officer instead of the leader and we'd have more Goodjers in one spot.

It will open its arms to any Goodjer at any time.

Having someone like Psych vouch for the merger is enough to sell me on the idea. I am a little concerned about what happens to the goodjers that have already signed up for the goodjer consortium but don't want to merge. If we end up merging, or even if we don't and just have a number of people change guilds then those who dissent are left either guildless or with a horribly gutted guild.

namikaze wrote:

I don't know how I would make the link more prominent without it overpowering the message of the post. I just used the url BBCode, I didn't make the text extra large or rotating or anything like that, since then no one would read the point of the post.

Try this:
IMAGE(http://www.thrillingdetective.com/images/click_me.jpg)

Tanglebones wrote:
namikaze wrote:

I don't know how I would make the link more prominent without it overpowering the message of the post. I just used the url BBCode, I didn't make the text extra large or rotating or anything like that, since then no one would read the point of the post.

Try this:
IMAGE(http://www.thrillingdetective.com/images/click_me.jpg)

Oh man, is that really Complete AND Unabriged?!

I tried clicking. It did nothing.

Psych wrote:

I tried clicking. It did nothing.

Psych!

namikaze wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

(And to be clear: It is the very fact that you must sign up for access to read that concerns me. I understand that there has just been an invitation to sign up and look. Out of curiosity: Why is read-access not open to the public, at least for the majority of the forum. I can understand why it wouldn't be postable, but not why it wouldn't be readable.)

The majority of the forum is LOTRO-related or SWTOR-related. When someone becomes a member, we use the membergroups to determine which forums (most often both) they want to see. This removes a lot of clutter for people that only want to see Officer/LOTRO content, or SWTOR-only content. We had to do this also because we were hosting the Rift Alpha discussion boards, which required us to make those boards in particular segmented.

Would you consider changing your style to have the SWTOR-related stuff be totally public? Aside from things that are required to be held private (i.e. beta discussion of rift type stuff), that is. There are other much better ways to segment things by game. GWJ is a very open community—you drop by, you lurk, you join in when you feel like it. In the past I've pointed friends who weren't sure whether or not they wanted to join the community at the forums here and said "Take a look at the XYZ thread and get a feel for what people are like." I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that if I try to point folks at the SW:TOR part of GWJ, I'm going to have to say "Go sign up here and tell them you're a friend and you want to lurk for a bit, and then you can read stuff and see that this is a nice bunch of people."

namikaze wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

P.S. If you're going to invite GWJ folks to visit your forums, you should probably tell them *where to go*. (Oh, I see it is at the end of your message. You might want to make the link a bit more prominent.)

I don't know how I would make the link more prominent without it overpowering the message of the post. I just used the url BBCode, I didn't make the text extra large or rotating or anything like that, since then no one would read the point of the post.

I would recommend putting a link inline in the text where you're inviting people to check out the forums. Having it in a signature at the bottom of your post means that people who ignore signatures (which is to say: everyone) will probably glance over it and miss it.

Hypatian wrote:

Would you consider changing your style to have the SWTOR-related stuff be totally public? Aside from things that are required to be held private (i.e. beta discussion of rift type stuff), that is. There are other much better ways to segment things by game. GWJ is a very open community—you drop by, you lurk, you join in when you feel like it. In the past I've pointed friends who weren't sure whether or not they wanted to join the community at the forums here and said "Take a look at the XYZ thread and get a feel for what people are like." I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that if I try to point folks at the SW:TOR part of GWJ, I'm going to have to say "Go sign up here and tell them you're a friend and you want to lurk for a bit, and then you can read stuff and see that this is a nice bunch of people."

I don't think that anyone in Eldain is considering making this type of change at the moment. There are two reasons for this. One is that this is the first time we've had such a request. Over 100 people haven't had any issues with it before, so that's not likely to change. Second, we have in the past had a lot of spambots try to attack our site. We've minimized this by implementing a bot-killing protocol and by segmenting the important parts away. It takes a matter of seconds to gain access to the site and then a couple minutes for one of us to set you up with the correct permissions. I get an email sent directly to my phone when someone new signs up, and I can do their permissions anywhere and anytime.

namikaze wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Would you consider changing your style to have the SWTOR-related stuff be totally public? Aside from things that are required to be held private (i.e. beta discussion of rift type stuff), that is. There are other much better ways to segment things by game. GWJ is a very open community—you drop by, you lurk, you join in when you feel like it. In the past I've pointed friends who weren't sure whether or not they wanted to join the community at the forums here and said "Take a look at the XYZ thread and get a feel for what people are like." I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that if I try to point folks at the SW:TOR part of GWJ, I'm going to have to say "Go sign up here and tell them you're a friend and you want to lurk for a bit, and then you can read stuff and see that this is a nice bunch of people."

I don't think that anyone in Eldain is considering making this type of change at the moment. There are two reasons for this. One is that this is the first time we've had such a request. Over 100 people haven't had any issues with it before, so that's not likely to change. Second, we have in the past had a lot of spambots try to attack our site. We've minimized this by implementing a bot-killing protocol and by segmenting the important parts away. It takes a matter of seconds to gain access to the site and then a couple minutes for one of us to set you up with the correct permissions. I get an email sent directly to my phone when someone new signs up, and I can do their permissions anywhere and anytime.

You can send your friends here like always. Going to their site isnt required.

Edit: That was kind of stupidly dismissive. I'll try to explain again why this whole thing makes me feel queasy.

Eldain clearly has a lot of ways they "do things". They're not interested in changing. They have an identity that they're unwilling to part with. They have a forum they're unwilling to part with. They have a way of running their forum that they're not interested in changing.

The mere fact that Eldain has ways of doing things that they are unwilling to change, an indentity that they are unwilling to give up, all of this implies that Eldain is something entirely other than "the GWJ guild". It has a history, traditions, etc. If Eldain is not willing to give up being Eldain in order to be GWJ, then that means Eldain is *something else*.

Eldain has an identity outside of GWJ, that predates SW:TOR by quite a bit.

I would much rather form a fresh new identity. Make a clean break: set up a new forum, draft new bylaws, do things differently.

Don't bring your history.

You'll notice that the only thing staying from the Goodjer Consortium is... the members.

--

To put this in perspective: What would the members of Eldain think if they were told "For SW:TOR we're moving to the GWJ forums for discussion, we're going to be calling ourselves the Goodjer Consortium and giving up our Grey Council name, and we're going to be using the GWJ Code of Conduct as our only rules." Apparently, at least some members of Eldain would be unhappy with that, given that rather than *any* of those things happening we're being told that schedules etc. will be discussed on the Eldain forums, that the name will be the Grey Council and not the Goodjer Consortium, and that we'll have officers defined by some sort of bylaws that I can't even find online anywhere.

I don't think it's unreasonable that I find this a little questionable and assume that Eldain's identity is going to dominate everything concerned.

After all, that's what's happened so far.

--

namikaze wrote:

I don't think that anyone in Eldain is considering making this type of change at the moment.

And that's exactly what I'm talking about with "history". You've already made this decision. That means you have the weight of history on your side when you dismiss my desire to have publicly readable forums. If we were doing this based on *creating a new guild*, then we would instead be talking among the people who are forming the guild about "Oh, how should we decide?" Instead, we have "Well, we already do it this way."

I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. The idea of this forum was to present the option of a merger, and allow all goodjers to discuss it. You seem to have in your head the idea of how this is exactly what you don't want, but you also don't seem to be willing to discuss it.

I don't care what the name is, I don't care where the forums are located. It is not a big deal. I would appreciate it if you would explain more of why you think it is a big deal, and why you are assuming that we are just going to try to control everything.

Why aren't we going to completely change the forums? Because the guy who created it, Dyrvik, put a lot of work into it. He has funded both the site, and until recently, the Ventrilo server, completely out of pocket. Recently Namikaze has taken over running the website and the vent server. He has put in a lot of work trying to streamline things, and securing it so the other admins don't have to spend all their time monitoring everything.

I love GWJ. I spend much more time here than on the Eldain forums. But in my opinion, the layout for the Eldain forums makes tracking one specific game much easier. I would appreciate it if you would take a few moments to actual register on the site, and when you encounter something you do not like, you take a few minutes to actually ask questions about it so I can understand more where you are coming from.

If you are not willing to do even that, than I don't really know what can be done to help you.

Hypatian wrote:

stuff

You of course can feel anyway you want about something, but to me all the stuff you're wanting (demanding?) to take place is done here already.

I'M the one. ME. This guy right..... HERE. Made the suggestion that we give up our name and roll in with the other guys.

I think it makes more sense for the reasons stated a few times already.

They're not demanding ANYTHING.

If you havent been paying attention Eldain's identity is already entertwined with GWJs. This isnt something new and bizzare.

You're making assumptions that the guys in Eldain our unhappy with the way we do things and that's just down right wrong.

This isnt like we're jumping some unknown territory or like we're a bunch of kids and one side has to stare down the other.

We're already essentially the same group.

I am registering for the Eldain forums now.

Note: ranalin told me when I asked that the plan was to give up the Goodjer Consortium name. Everything everyone has said has more or less shouted "Yes, this is going to continue to be Eldain, and Goodjers can join, and we're not going to create the Goodjer guild that we started with."

I'm not assuming anything about control. This isn't about control. I don't give a rat's ass who's in charge, I don't give a rat's ass what the "rules" are. I don't even care where the forum is.

I *do* care that we're not *discussing* it. My immediate apprehension has become more concrete as time goes on and I *do* bring up specific issues and am basically told "Yeah, we're not planning to change that." Why? Because you already do things a certain way. You already have a vent server, and forums, and people who pay for them. And you see no reason to rock the boat.

I see no reason to get onto the boat if nobody's interested in my concerns.

I want something that is *open*, that is *starting fresh*, where whenever there's a decision to be made (like "Oh, I guess we're getting big enough now that we should think about formally having officers") we talk about that, instead of starting out being in a state of having officers.

I am ticked off that even though this is being presented as "Should we merge?", I am at the same time being told "You're unreasonable for not wanting to merge."

I am ticked off that given that everybody else wants to merge, I'm now in the position of having to go solo unless I want to join, and I'm severely pissed off to be put in a position like that.

Is this really that hard to understand?

(And I'm ticked off because this whole situation is making me into That Guy, stirring up drama before the game is even released. I wouldn't want me to join my guild at this point.)

(P.P.S. For the record, "Gray Council" is a much more awesome name than "Goodjer Consortium". But it's not as good as "Baadjers".)

Hyp, I understand your concerns and some of them are valid. I'm a little sad we'll be losing the "goodjer consortium" name personally.

That said, this merger isn't a done deal yet nor I doubt that it will be for a while. There's still a good 20 some people in GC who haven't weighed in yet, not to mention a ton of Sith and people not in either guild yet that will be rolling in once the game launches.

So lots of opinions to still be taken.

Hypatian wrote:

(P.P.S. For the record, "Gray Council" is a much more awesome name than "Goodjer Consortium". But it's not as good as "Baadjers".)

For the record, I like Goodjer Consortium better.

I was against the merger when I first heard about it. I was asked to take part in this discussion to try to ease some minds. It was assumed that the more recognizable faces that people saw, the more they might understand that we aren't really two different groups. I had many of the same concerns that you do. But the best point that I heard was about how combining like-minded people is better than dividing them. And that made sense to me.

I am in favor of having a strong Goodjer presence in this new Star Wars world, and if that means merging these guilds, pre-launch, to ensure the longevity of that presence, than I think it is something to consider. I also feel, and when I spoke to Ranalin and Badferret last night they agreed, that if any Goodjers are against the merger than it shouldn't happen. (I think they agreed. And that I spoke to them. I was pretty tired.)

And I don't think you are 'That Guy.' I am assuming there are plenty of others who aren't thrilled with the idea, but are not willing to speak up. You are the voice for the voiceless.

Nah, I'm just the cranky old man who won't shut up.

[quote=Hypatian]
I *do* care that we're not *discussing* it. My immediate apprehension has become more concrete as time goes on and I *do* bring up specific issues and am basically told "Yeah, we're not planning to change that." Why? Because you already do things a certain way. You already have a vent server, and forums, and people who pay for them. And you see no reason to rock the boat.
[quote]

The whole reason of this thread is to *discuss*. I've been trying to be completely open here. This isnt set it in stone.

It just seems that you took the one thing *I* said about using their forums for scheduling and ran with it and started getting cranky and making assumptions about dark overlords and all that jazz And when someone else gets cranky i can end up getting cranky and when two old farts start going at it... well the room starts getting ripe

As for the forums... i like to think of it this way. If 4 members of a team are discussing something on one side of the street everything is hunky dory. If 2 of the 4 cross the street and discuss something doesnt stop them from being part of the team. I really see this as a no brainer.

The only thing they're not planning on changing is the name.

Still this is GWJ and we do discuss these type of issues. With the exception of Certis there's no single voice that can change the way we function. As such i want to hear everyone that's not chimed in yet.

Again this isnt somethign that has to be done today. We have some time. Granted time is moving by a bit more quickly now, but still lets all of us go over this.

Actually, I have no substantive objections to the merger. However, I'd rather leave things as they are and wait and see what happens when the game launches. The merger may end up happening naturally at that point. Or it may turn out to be that there is enough interest to support the guilds as seperate entities.

A lot of times, what happens is that one guild is more driven than the other and while one may be more populous than the other, some of the more driven folks make alts in the less driven guild when they want a break. And likewise, those who are less driven may find that after a week or two, they become more ambitious and transfer their main to the driven guild while keeping alts, bank mules, and crafting characters in the original guild.

I'd like to keep the name Goodjer Consortium. I think we are jumping the gun on issues that usually crop up 3-6 months into the game as the playerbase settles in.

edit: I guess a sum up point would be a reminder that one guild of 150 people is not necessarily better than 2 guilds with 75 people (or even guilds of 130 and 20 people). And that is true even if all involved are like minded, even as much as Eldain and GWJ are. There are lots of compatability issues to consider: like minded, time commitment, persistence vs natural skill, role preferences...

I'm not concerned about "dark overlords" or anything. Really, the concern I have is the much more minor (but insidious) rule of "we've always done it that way". I'm already kind of like "@_@ WTF have officers from the very beginning? Only institute officers when you start needing them" and "When raiding starts, are we going to do things 'the way they've always been done', or are we going to talk about how we're going to handle raiding?" My key concern is that merging like this is basically "becoming a part of Eldain", since the Goodjer Consortium has no previously established procedures of any sort—and that makes it far too easy for "the Eldain way of doing things" to be assumed into priority.

It's not the tyranny of a person I'm worried about—just the tyranny of tradition.

I think we should take each choice—down to which name to choose, which forums to choose, which vent server to choose—and discuss it individually. Let us talk about each choice and decide based on *what the better choice is* for the whole community. We have time to do this, so if we're actually going to merge, let's not just say "we'll take the way Eldain does it since they already have a way they do it."

I have no problem if we discuss individual choices on their merits, and then people disagree with me and choose options I think are less good. I *do* have a serious problem if we skip discussing those individual items and say "in the interest of expedience, we'll keep doing this the way we're used to." And that has been my expectation since this whole thing started, based on what folks have said.

Of course, the first step is getting all of the Eldain folks and all of the GWJ folks talking together in one place where everyone can chime in.

--

On the specific subject of forums: If there are two forums, only one of them will be used. I know this from experience. Almost no-one will read both, and that means that either everybody gravitates to one, or something important gets missed by half of the people since not everybody reads the same forum and *then* it's decided that everybody should switch. Using two forums at once is silly.

fangblackbone wrote:

Actually, I have no substantive objections to the merger. However, I'd rather leave things as they are and wait and see what happens when the game launches. The merger may end up happening naturally at that point. Or it may turn out to be that there is enough interest to support the guilds as seperate entities.

A lot of times, what happens is that one guild is more driven than the other and while one may be more populous than the other, some of the more driven folks make alts in the less driven guild when they want a break. And likewise, those who are less driven may find that after a week or two, they become more ambitious and transfer their main to the driven guild while keeping alts, bank mules, and crafting characters in the original guild.

I'd like to keep the name Goodjer Consortium. I think we are jumping the gun on issues that usually crop up 3-6 months into the game as the playerbase settles in.

edit: I guess a sum up point would be a reminder that one guild of 150 people is not necessarily better than 2 guilds with 75 people (or even guilds of 130 and 20 people). And that is true even if all involved are like minded, even as much as Eldain and GWJ are. There are lots of compatability issues to consider: like minded, time commitment, persistence vs natural skill, role preferences...

The gents of Eldain wont have a problem going on by themselves. I just see it as a wasted opportunity. We'll be playing together in game regardless and having a centralized location makes more sense.

Reason it was brought up now is due to a bunch of ? going forward. We just dont know what will happen and it would be easier now to do it instead down the road. Seriously the issue of 99.5% of all GWJ mmo guilds disbanding or having to merge anyway being primary among them (for me at least). There's also the issue of guild reward/perks and all that jazz that benefit from having a larger base to work from.

The compatiblity issues you speak of will exist regardless if we merge or not. There's a large swath of different play styles represented here. What tends to make things work is the DBAD axiom and everyone's willingness to follow that. While we do all work together regardless of our playstyle it doesnt help that 99.5% #.

I'd be willing to bet a large amount of money that 1 year later that Goodjer Consortium would be a shell of what it starts off to be. I dont want that to happen and if we stick with it and go that route will do my best to prevent it, but history has shown repeatedly the result. Which if we were a normal guild and not Goodjers you would want to try and match compatibilties to prevent that. Thats just not the way things are done here.

I understand a lot of the concerns, but I don't see the large difference between GWJ and Eldain. I can see a forum as a concern, but it seems to have worked out well for LOTRO. I don't see much to worry about in terms of

Hypatian wrote:

Eldain clearly has a lot of ways they "do things". They're not interested in changing. They have an identity that they're unwilling to part with. They have a forum they're unwilling to part with. They have a way of running their forum that they're not interested in changing.

For those that are coming into TOR having not been in a GWJ guild before, the same statement above would apply. GWJ has a way they do things (Very friendly, very open), has an identity they are unwilling to part with (all encompassing from casual to hardcore, pve to pvp, with a community that is respectful and generous). From all accounts of what I've read in the MMO forums about Eldain and from what I've heard word of mouth from GWJers I have talked to, Eldain seems to have those same exact characteristics.

Nobody wants to see GWJ lose its identity. I have faith that Ranalin and the other officers will continue to make sure that doesn't happen, even more faith knowing that GWJ and Eldain have been intertwined for years in LOTRO and are still going strong, and continue to have an open door policy for all of GWJ.

Hypatian wrote:

I have no problem if we discuss individual choices on their merits, and then people disagree with me and choose options I think are less good. I *do* have a serious problem if we skip discussing those individual items and say "in the interest of expedience, we'll keep doing this the way we're used to." And that has been my expectation since this whole thing started, based on what folks have said.

Has this EVER been done in GWJ? If so point it out because i'd like to see the results. It's why i posted now. We always discuss things here even if its not expeidient. Just because a few people agree immediately doesnt mean its a done deal.

As for officers... it's too late for that. This is a somewhat loosely military based game and the structure SWTOR has set up requires it. As it stands i'm the leader and Ukick is an officer we did have Oily as one, but he defected. Which means btw that we need another officer. The other 2 were picked because they were first to sign up.

Hypatian wrote:

My immediate apprehension has become more concrete as time goes on and I *do* bring up specific issues and am basically told "Yeah, we're not planning to change that." Why? Because you already do things a certain way.

I believe that the message has somehow become muddled. Allow me to restate it, and hopefully clear the air a bit. Eldain already has a vast majority of it's membership in GWJ. This is going to be the Gray Council, which will be made up of Eldain members from LOTRO and Goodjers that haven't played LOTRO with the rest of the gang. That's it. The only thing we're not going to change is the security measures that are in place already. It doesn't make sense to just open the floodgates like you've asked based on one person's complaint. I stated the reasons we've structured the forums the way we have, and if that's not a good enough explanation for it, I don't know what would be.

Hypatian wrote:

I see no reason to get onto the boat if nobody's interested in my concerns.

We are interested in your concerns. That's why I have jumped into this instead of just lurking, like I usually do. That's why Badferret, Psych, AnimeJ, Ranalin, and everyone else has jumped in on this discussion.

Hypatian wrote:

I want something that is *open*, that is *starting fresh*, where whenever there's a decision to be made (like "Oh, I guess we're getting big enough now that we should think about formally having officers") we talk about that, instead of starting out being in a state of having officers.

Starting fresh means very little when you're talking about any group of people who play with each other very often. If you want to be an officer, then you just need to say so and Ranalin and I will talk about it. Right now, the Gray Council has me as the leader, Badferret and Aveleth (non-Goodjer) as officers. This is the way it will be assuming the merger doesn't happen. If the merger does happen, then we will discuss how to move forward at that point. Note that the officers from LOTRO are not necessarily officers in SWTOR. This is intentional. We are starting fresh with the Gray Council, and if some of our officers from LOTRO want to take on two games, they're welcome to ask for the responsibility. So far, none have asked for it, but I've asked them to help.

Assuming the merger happens, Ranalin would definitely be asked to become an officer. As someone else stated earlier, he got the ball rolling here and did a lot of work for the Goodjer side of things. I would hate to lose that experience and leadership.

Hypatian wrote:

I am ticked off that even though this is being presented as "Should we merge?", I am at the same time being told "You're unreasonable for not wanting to merge."

I believe that this is perhaps due to the nature of the internet. Because we can't present ourselves the way we're used to, sometimes these sorts of tones are lost in the text. The fact is, this thread is about discussing the idea of a merger. You have been the only one to raise serious concerns about the idea of a merger, and because everyone here is taking what you say seriously, we are addressing those concerns.

Hypatian wrote:

I am ticked off that given that everybody else wants to merge, I'm now in the position of having to go solo unless I want to join, and I'm severely pissed off to be put in a position like that.

Is this really that hard to understand?

It is completely reasonable to feel that you are being given an ultimatum. With the exception that no one is giving anyone an ultimatum. The merger hasn't happened, might happen, might not happen, and right now it's just being publicly discussed. Ranalin and everyone else involved in the initial decision making process agreed that a merger was a good idea, and wanted to see what everyone else thought. The risk was that a merger might cause problems for those that disagreed, but we felt that the potential gain far outweighed the potential risk.

fangblackbone wrote:

Actually, I have no substantive objections to the merger. However, I'd rather leave things as they are and wait and see what happens when the game launches. The merger may end up happening naturally at that point. Or it may turn out to be that there is enough interest to support the guilds as seperate entities.

This is one of the major sticking points that we all had to the idea of making a merger. In fact, I believe it was me who brought this up. The biggest advantage to a merger is creating a very large and strong initial playerbase from which to draw. Having a strong core usually means that the longterm success of the guild is better. However, there's nothing that states that we have to do a merger prior to launch. Which is a big part of why this is still in the discussion phase.

ranalin wrote:

I'm not trying to do a bait/switch. This will be a GWJ guild just like you'd find anywhere else. The only differences that i see happening is that the name would change and i'd be an officer instead of the leader and we'd have more Goodjers in one spot.

It will open its arms to any Goodjer at any time.

After reading this, I realized I forgot to mention this. Of all the players that are currently in leadership positions for the Gray Council, every single officer is a Goodjer. ***EDIT: Missed one of the officers in Gray Council when I looked, and she is not a Goodjer.*** Ranalin of course would be every bit in charge as he is now. No one here is being a tyrannical dictator or whatnot either.

Hypatian wrote:

(And to be clear: It is the very fact that you must sign up for access to read that concerns me. I understand that there has just been an invitation to sign up and look. Out of curiosity: Why is read-access not open to the public, at least for the majority of the forum. I can understand why it wouldn't be postable, but not why it wouldn't be readable.)

The majority of the forum is LOTRO-related or SWTOR-related. When someone becomes a member, we use the membergroups to determine which forums (most often both) they want to see. This removes a lot of clutter for people that only want to see Officer/LOTRO content, or SWTOR-only content. We had to do this also because we were hosting the Rift Alpha discussion boards, which required us to make those boards in particular segmented.

Hypatian wrote:

P.S. If you're going to invite GWJ folks to visit your forums, you should probably tell them *where to go*. (Oh, I see it is at the end of your message. You might want to make the link a bit more prominent.)

I don't know how I would make the link more prominent without it overpowering the message of the post. I just used the url BBCode, I didn't make the text extra large or rotating or anything like that, since then no one would read the point of the post.

I am all for merging the guilds into one big one. As someone who is on LOTRO but rolled a character on another server than Eldain, I am unable to do a decent amount of the content because I don't have enough people to roll around with. I understand a lot of the concerns here, but I think having a very large player base as the beginning is a good thing, especially once people decide to stop playing (BLASPHEMY!).