Ark 2830 Popular Post Share Posted August 22, 2022 Hi, I'm Ark. I’ve created a few different communities in my time on LotC and the community creation aspect of it has always been my favorite part of the game. I’ve decided to distill my almost decade of experience of creating online communities, specifically on LotC, to help those who are currently making communities, have a community, or just would like some tips on things they could do. #1. Find a good niche and stick to it. When we created Haense, the idea was to have an all encompassing northern faction that united the many different “northerners” at the time. We fought hard to keep this niche and timing really helped us as the Starks from Game of Thrones were really popular around the time we started it all. Describing our faction as "We're basically the Starks" had huge appeal and made many new players join us for that reason alone. Though your niche doesn’t have to be that, generally the larger you want to be, the more popular of a niche you should take advantage of. Just try to find something popular and advertise the hell out of it. It’s alright to stick to a popular niche. It's a popular niche for a reason. If you have a hard time describing your community to a new player in more than one sentence, you should take another look at your niche and see if there’s something more succinct you can capture. #2. A good team beats a great person every time. Some of the friends i’ve made leading communities on LotC will stick with me for life. @Eddywilson2 and @ErikAzog. A community is a group of people centered around a common goal. If you’re anything like me you are going to try to do everything yourself because you’re a perfectionist and if you do it, at least you know it’s done right. But you will get burned out and disillusioned. Something that has helped me is to figure out swim lanes that people tend to excel in. I am really bad at military conflicts in LotC. I’ve lost nearly every single one that I have been the main commander. Eddywilson2? He’s really ******* good at it, so I let him deal with that. I’m very good at making active RP hubs through community engagement and events, so I do that. Taking a step back and realizing, “What am I good at and how that can contribute to the community” will save you friendships and hours. #3. Be honest OOCly Even if you’re going to fight against someone, be clear about that. Rarely do snakes get anywhere. You only have a single reputation, people will respect it and it will make every single conversation you have in the future easier. #4. Choose a side. Every single time i’ve had two groups that I thought would easily merge, there've been troubles. People protect their status and any change to that can be very threatening. Without cutting out one of the groups, it always leads to more infighting and drama down the line. Picking a side and sticking to it typically leads to the most troublesome leaving and the rest integrating. It’s not always bad to take a small hit to build back better with one consistent vision. #5. Help people do what they want to do. (Within reason). The most motivated people in a community are those who are allowed to do what they want to do. I’ve had lots of people come up to me in communities, towns, cities, with pretty crazy ideas. Most of the time I'd allow them to go for it. As long as it wasn’t totally out of the scope of what we were doing, i.e. no space command in our medieval kingdom, I found that people appreciated the trust and worked harder at projects that were their own. Even then, sometimes the projects fell through but they appreciate your trust in them, and they are more willing to run a project that you know would be useful. #6. Remember it's a game. I’ve been really bad about this at times in my lotc career, but there are real people behind the screen. They can become great amazing friends who might change the course of your life, treat them as such. Using people as an end to a means will only have people regretting ever getting to know you. Shoot the shit, have fun, chill out and remember it’s just a Minecraft server. #7. Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are literally the most valuable thing I learned from lotc. From keeping track of rallies to events going on in your town, you should be using them where you can. This habit has helped me in my career immensely, just learning to organize information allows you to make better decisions and see what’s working and what isn’t much quicker than a blind approach. If you do not have a spreadsheet for your community, please go make one right now. If people are interested in what I mean by that, let me know and I can make a little mini-guide on how I use them to run communities on lotc. #8. Your bar owner is the third most important person in the faction. If you want an active city, get an active bar owner with a vision for their bar. They will work harder, put on their own events, and generally create a RP hub that’s separate from the traditional “Keep, barracks, etc.” I like to have 2-3 RP hubs in any community, with enough space between them to prevent RP overlapping but play around with it. Even after 8+ cities or so I think there’s other stuff that could be done. #9. Culture is written on the forums, but made in game. I really do think cultural posts are valuable, but without anything tying it to the game makes it useless. People aren’t going to start doing something just because you wrote in a post that’s what you do. Coordinate your community leaders to start doing that and people will follow because we all mimic what we want to become. #10. Your middle leadership, (Lieutenants, Stewards, etc.) are incredible resources and listen to them. With community's being on the scale of LotC (100 people being close to the cap), it’s easy to think you can make every decision or understand how the community feels about a certain thing. But generally it’s good to run a 10-30-60 rule. 10% being your head executive leaders, these are the people who are making the big decisions, ie. who are we warring, what niche are we going to be, etc. 30% are the leaders who make your administration actually function. They are the people collecting taxes, helping to write posts, officers in your army. 60% is everyone else. Generally I see one or two things happen, you have a lot of people who listen to the 60%, so whenever people start yelling and getting upset at a certain change or event they make drastic changes but if you’ve planned out what you’re doing you shouldn’t change just because the mob says so. Or, you have 10% of the player base dictating everything for everyone else, which leads to burn out among the 30% who are seeing bad decisions being made because the upper 10% doesn't understand the playerbase. If your Stewards, Officers, and other officials are telling you something, I implore you to listen. Anyways, thanks for reading. A lot of these ideas have been stewing in my brain for years and since I'm satisfied with the communities I've built on lotc over the years I hope this inspires some people to make better communities. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. Also I have a twitch stream now that I'd like to shamelessly plug. twitch.tv/TrainingArk, if you’re interested in self improvement and want a community that will support you in that, consider joining. 60 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweetshare 115 Share Posted August 22, 2022 Always lie in OOC. Never let people know your character's intentions. Never let them know your next move! 9 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurferDurfer1 2584 Share Posted August 22, 2022 he got jacked so i gotta side with ark on this one 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
satinkira 5981 Share Posted August 22, 2022 yes Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
FredrickTeufel 316 Share Posted August 22, 2022 14 minutes ago, Ark said: #1. Find a good niche and stick to it. When we created Haense, the idea was to have an all encompassing northern faction that united the many different “northerners” at the time. We fought hard to keep this niche and timing really helped us as the Starks from Game of Thrones were really popular around the time we started it all. Describing our faction as "We're basically the Starks" had huge appeal and made many new players join us for that reason alone. We are basically Russian High Elves. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dogged 2129 Share Posted August 22, 2022 this guy would be a good nl ngl Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ark 2830 Author Share Posted August 22, 2022 1 minute ago, Dogged said: this guy would be a good nl ngl this guy would be a good peactime nl ngl* 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrophysical 1009 Share Posted August 22, 2022 46 minutes ago, Ark said: #10. Your middle leadership, (Lieutenants, Stewards, etc.) are incredible resources and listen to them. Never listen to anyone but yourself, the rest are palebeasts. I always hate the palebeast. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sergisala 2804 Share Posted August 22, 2022 Very interesting post, king Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
seannie 6873 Share Posted August 22, 2022 treat yourself like a king, even oocly Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macaroniminx 295 Share Posted August 23, 2022 We need gyms all around each nation so our characters can get peak gainz 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErikAzog 3313 Share Posted August 23, 2022 +1 king 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poor_Fellow 812 Share Posted August 23, 2022 i miss greywater and the brotherhood of horen. good times 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnimeWolf0080 1493 Share Posted August 23, 2022 👌 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
exanimated 1360 Share Posted August 23, 2022 now hear me out. . Snake everyone. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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