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September News - Zarkaylia - 18-09-2017
Greetings, Mesalians!
Introduction
Another school year has started for me. Hopefully the last (so far). In the eventuality that someone is interested to hear a little more about the current state and future plans of Mesalia I’ve decided to write this little “news letter”, or update. I’ll TRY to keep it short but I’ve had many thoughts the past year, especially this summer.
The Staff
We’ve long held the more traditional type of staff and the size of the team have varied from just 2 to as many as 6 people.
Young, our second Whitelister, disappeared around Christmas last year. We’ve not heard from him since. While it certainly has happened that he’s randomly gone missing for weeks it has now been 9+ months. I therefore will now officially declare that he has left the staff team and Hutch is our only Whitelister.
SentaiPink, our Lore Keeper and Server Builder, have been on hiatus for education and work since March this year. There’s as of yet no news on when she may be able to return but she’s still in good contact and have even logged on to roleplay a bit now and then. She however does not have time for her staff duties for now.
This leaves the current active staff at 3 people: Hutch (Whitelister), Fire (GM) and myself (Admin). And we’re JUST able to keep ontop of things, without considering changes, lore, building or events or... any eventual issues at all. We’re busy people.
I’ve decided to soon open up applications for another staff member. I still need to determine exactly what the new member NEED to be able to do but the idea is for it to at least be a temporary position. The traditional type of staff which most Minecraft servers have is not 100% working for us anymore.
The 1.12 update and plugins
I did contact a developer. I had a lot of good ideas for a good and functional RP-plugin for us that’d give us just that little extra and keep us safe for longer. The problem, however, is that it will be expensive. And I have quite a limited income.
I ran a test-update a few weeks ago and it confirmed that our plugins will not work with 1.12. I’ve got a job and work by the hour since a few weeks back and may be able to arrange a new plugin and update by October. If you wish to donate to this specific issue, let me know.
The state of the setting
Due to SentaiPink’s rather strong involvement in setting development, design and functionality the setting is damn good but currently a bit stale in her absence. Nightveil is the best town in a setting we’ve had, I dare to say. Where other settings eventually grew aged and dull, Nightveil does not. Or seem to do so much slower. But development have pretty much stopped.
The dragon event will be addressed as soon as the staff is able to. Which honestly means it may not be till after Christmas anyway. Till then, I’m going to look into giving the dragon a slightly more active role. This is already underway some, the Char Elias was allowed to scout the dragon’s grounds and the character Ophelia had a minor run-in with it. Sadly, however, the character Elias may not come back anytime soon due to Klik’s real-life commitments.
The remaining active staff generally do not feel all too confident with the Ko’Ban tribe (that’s SentaiPink’s baby after all) and the tribe is also put in a type of hold-situation. Therefore, I’ve been considering to introduce a third “faction”. Should that present a bit too dodgy with the Ko’Ban still about, I’m considering to let the Ko’Ban head off on one of their travels.
What will be new soon is that players that have been around for a bit will be allowed to apply as characters from/in factions such as the Ko’Ban or any future faction and not just as arrivals from other towns.
NPCs are something we’ve been almost scared of before, but I’ve long been thinking to introduce NPCs more actively to allow a greater size and activity of the town. Ryu recently had me think of it again and think “What the hell, why not?”. These NPCs would NOT replace characters and new characters would without effort be replacing the NPCs. Rules will be added to regulate interaction and use of with said NPCs in that case. Further, players will be allowed to help with NPC-creation.
Time remains paused. At the moment I feel I it suitable to move us ahead a year once the dragon event is done. That may change. I’ve however been considering to allow small age-jumps for those that want to. We already allow this for babies/children up to age 15. I’m thinking age-jumps at max 5 years at a time, with a minimum time-frame in-between, should be acceptable.
The tradelist
This will be overhauled and/or removed. It was intended as a way to encourage RP by giving ideas and make professions matter even more. This seem to work well with the players that think it’s fun but not with the majority. It’s thus a bit too much effort to put down for something not enough people are really interested in. And I’m fully aware I won’t have the time (or memory space) to deal with it anymore.
The website in general
The website is still under way. I’ve not had the time, energy or inspiration to dive into it but new-found motivation and energy has me all over it again. 2 pages are now fully done (as seen in the menu). 2 more will be added and the hope is to in the future add a home page.
Given the popularity of Enjin within Minecraft communities I’ve been considering to throw up a “dummy site” there that just tell people where our site is. A kind of… advertisement. I’ll look into this more with Fire if he’s got the time.
The result of Discord
About half the community have joined the general community chat on Discord. And things are swell. We got a pleasant, cozy little chat going and I like it! Much better than any general chat on Skype. Anyone there is allowed to suggest new channels to discuss different topics. You’re welcome to join us, we have a lot of fun!
There should be a Discord - Minecraft chat integration. I may try to make this work to just ping when people log on! That’d be awesome if it works.
Mentors/roleplay masters/DMs/whatever
With staff being few in numbers it’s sometimes difficult for us to be able to introduce new players. It’s not uncommon for servers to deal with this problem with plugins or command blocks and create an introduction area. The problem when it comes to that is, again, time. And to some extent skill. This won’t entirely work with broken plugins either.
An alternative is to introduce the role of mentors or similar. These would be any veteran player suitable that gets assigned a new player. The responsibility would be to introduce the new player to the server roleplay and spend some time with them, hopefully making them feel welcome and feel a want to return.
Seasons
Should we also extend the time of seasons? Thoughts?
That’s all for now[/size]
September’s a rocky month for me, I’m back to university after over 6 months of hiatus and I’ve started a job. My home situation has thus also been shook, the day-to-day is working so-so with trying to balance responsibilities, family, chores, hobbies and the fact there’s no washing or laundry machine in our apartment. We’ve basically been forced to push for a renovation!
So bare with me.
Any questions or things you’d like to bring up? Please do so below or if you wish message me privately. I’m open to discuss new ideas and thoughts on this thread.
Best regards,
Zark