I am in the process of moving right now but when everything is settled Ill seed up.. I agree with Kuka and I think there should be staff presence in Cove for new players ofcourse not 24 hours a day but a in game staff member just to help new players hold new player quests and events once or twice a day...

_________________
Scathach of Skye - Pure Ranger

I have pmed staff about this. Hopefully we will work something out soon.

_________________
"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death."

i tried seeding that torrent but its not valid maybe a new link to the torrent so I can bookmark it when I am ready to seed. I forgot all about the create account section on the home page glad there is a direct link!! People may not like going through the whole process of getting there though... new generation = lazy..

_________________
Scathach of Skye - Pure Ranger

I'll make a new one and post it up then link it on the thread here.

_________________
"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death."

And here is our live torrent on thepiratebay.org

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6341013

I put a together a long list of trackers on it too.

_________________
"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death."

Actually, the issue so far is pretty much like this:

I spoke with Bob and Broadband some time ago about a recruitment drive, and that in order for that to happen I needed to promote a couple of the long-serving moderators to an in-game counselor position and train them up.

There is no use in having an influx of players if there are no active lower staff to handle pages and support them. The more experienced players among you will know that Counselors are really the in-game equivalent of GM's in most games, in that they are the ones who actively answer the most pages and collate feedback for the GMs. The role of Seers is to assist in this but mainly to run events, and the role of GMs is to coordinate the other staff, fix pages that other staff can't deal with, and work on more elaborate events/quests/etc.

Now, Bob (a valid point) argued that he didn't want an influx of players or new staff coming in when he was working on active development and the shard was still at a point of great change. I pushed the point that I could still be recruiting and training staff in that time, but the compromise that was reached with BB was that my two new Counselors would be recruited after Bob's main focus (at the time) was completed, which was the bulk of his crafting patch.

That was well over a year ago, now.

I have never been given admin access to promote staff myself, Bob hasn't wanted to on the several occasions I discussed it with him, and I haven't spoken to BB in a long time.

However, in no way am I blaming Bob for this, as I do understand he wants to get his development work sorted before we get on board with staff recruitment, advertisement and getting more players here once more.

I think the issue we've had is simply that we all have other lives. Bob has had a lot of personal upheaval that has delayed certain dev actions, BB is busy of course, Echo (I think) has been busy with uni or work, and I started my own business which for the past 18 months has taken up the majority of my time - the rest of which has gone to my girlfriend who moved in with me a few months ago.

In short:

- When Bob has less upheaval to deal with and he is happy with the developmental / stability status of the shard to the point that we can look about active promotion/recruitment, I am more than happy to help and revisit staff/moderator recruitment in preparation for any recruitment drive.

- I expect that these new members of staff would be primarily trained by myself/Echo (and Bob if he wishes to be involved). Once these new Counselors are appointed we should then be in a position for a player recruitment drive.

- We can then look at various options to support that drive. There is a forum mass mailer, direct download or torrent seed options to spread the client, and of course the infamous Ultima Online shard vote pages that everyone can work on (although I'm not sure they're going to be that popular these days).

-----

Hopefully I can sit down and have a decent conversation with Bob some time soon, as I'd really be interested to hear his thoughts on this thread. Bob has always had the key interest of the shard at heart, so I wouldn't want to look at staff/player recruitment until he's happy with it.

_________________
Thassius
"Blessed are the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Thassius

Also, BB for years has mentioned having a Counselor specifically dedicated to this purpose - to handle new players in Cove. However, without a sufficient quantity of those new players the position is kind of redundant. Maybe that's something that we'll look to deploy in future...

_________________
Thassius
"Blessed are the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Thassius

Thanks for responding Thass. I hope you are successful in your new business.

_________________
Scathach of Skye - Pure Ranger

thanks

_________________
Scathach of Skye - Pure Ranger

Thanks It's been a long struggle but I'm finally getting there! Another six months and I should be ready to conquer the world

_________________
Thassius
"Blessed are the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Thassius

While I do agree with you Thass there is a point where waiting will also ruin this shard.

I understand BoB's point of view as well, but come on now, 1-2 years without recruitment is pushing it. We need players and we need them now. Most of the shard is up and running to where new players can come in and catch up pretty quickly and even manage to understand the new changes that come along. Plus, most of the new players are UO vets and could actually give inputs that would further help BoB.

Idk, just my two cents. It's pointless logging in now when there is barely anyone to sell to, chat with, and hunting gets boring as well when I know that I don't have to worry about anything happening and being able to train in peace. I missed knowing that at any moment someone could find me and kill me.

Oh well, whatever happens I guess...happens.

I appreciate your views. Realistically speaking, if Bob is happy to have new Counselors we can probably get that done in a very small amount of time, and then start an 'official' recruitment drive.

I'd really rather wait until Bob's personal life has settled down so I can discuss it with him properly. Let's try focussing on getting some decent, long-term players here via word of mouth, and then focus on voting etc en masse. You will appreciate that banner voting is kind of useless without enough players to get enough votes to suitably rank our shard in the first place.

_________________
Thassius
"Blessed are the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Thassius

If you push any product that is not ready it fails. I understand wanting more players to log on but having them log on and actually wanting to continue playing is better than having them log on for couple hours and then never logging on again.

Agreed. I am putting all the pieces in place to launch a larger campaign, but for if we get a few new chars on that would be beneficial. Because then it shows to the staff that all the work they are putting into the shard will not go unappreciated. In addition, these new players will also entice old players to come back when they see (like this past weekend) that there are 10+ players on the shard at one time.

_________________
"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death."

There is that too.