501warhead

Hey all, just dropping by to let you know that the Map has been updated at https://www.lordofthecraft.net/map/ You can view it full screen if needed by visiting https://map.lordofthecraft.net It includes nation locations as well this time, though druids are a little off (a work in progress!) We’re also done a little bit of footwork this time to ensure that we can update the map frequently, preventing it from getting too out of date. Thanks for being patient with us on this, we’re slowly working on restoring functionality to a few things across the board.

Greetings LotC! Today I come here to talk about what I briefly talked about on the FAQ posted this week; the Community Manager. I hope to break down this new role to the LotC staff for you today and announce who will be filling this role for the first time. What/Why The Community Manager is a role that we've come to believe we need that fulfills a critical role which we have not yet been able to fill properly. Often times the days of the Administration are busy with the daily tasks and goals we set for ourselves and in doing such we often find that we forget or even are unable to find time to organize events, make announcements, and gather feedback - all things that, while we view as critical, we have unfortunately left to neglect. The Community Manager is a role intended to assist with this subject, bringing on an individual whose sole focus is on the state and concerns of the Community. The hope is to work closely with this individual to try to increase our communication with the community and hopefully as well try to offer more events for the community as a whole to attend, both serious and non-serious. They'll be working with the Administration and Team Directors to remind us and encourage us to be more forthcoming with out ideas and passions while also organizing events for us to share our thoughts with you, the playerbase. Who When we were looking through the applications for the position one name stood out above all the others and I believe that many of you reading will already know why before I even explain. We've selected @marimbamonk (formerly BoogerBuster/BGBuster) as the Community Manager. He has gone above and beyond lately in his efforts, trying to bring together the community he loves and find ways to address issues within it. Even without holding this role he has pushed the boundaries of what we've been able to accomplish in the past while also fighting for what he believes in; accountability, communication, and unity. We're very proud of his efforts so far and hope that he will be able to go above and beyond expectations from both ourselves and the community as a whole. That will be all for today from me, expect more from @marimbamonk himself in the coming weeks!

> literally spent an entire day dedicated to increasing communication, works full time and yet comes home exited to work on/for lotc "No passion btw XD" XD my mans, XD. Glad you don't pick admins, you wouldn't know passion if it hit you on the head. I don't stick around because I want to stroke my own power ego, the power trip disappears after about a month on the team. About a month in you realize the scope of management as an administrator, realize how much you've got to juggle, and realize how much stress it is. Administrators without passion drop like flies. I'm here because of passion, because of vision. But of course, clearly I don't have passion and should step down - I'm contributing nothing to the server!!!!!

- We're currently attributing the retention issues to issues getting new players involved in the community (either through getting lost on the roads or not being interacted with by people), new players not finding anything to do, or new players not really getting into roleplay properly. The monk project was a big effort to try to resolve that which should hopefully start up again and get traction soon, being in-game people to guide folks and teach them the ins and the outs of the server. Then trying to promote community activity with a bunch of stuff so that they can find people to interact with. I think it's a pretty good summary of the retention issues. - We have a general idea for media team director but there arent exactly people chomping at the bit, the team is very small. You'd be surprised at how few really want to do this, it's been like pulling teeth. - Running rules like that would be a headache. Maybe a live stream? I'm not sure. We should do more community reviews though. - Because honestly there are, at any given point in time, between 0 and 2 good admin candidates. Often leans to 0. If we have to kick someone out for activity, then we've got to hunt a new pick which will likely be subpar to the person we put there originally. The pick might come in and they might be bias, inactive, or a combination of the two and then we've reset the cycle. Suddenly we're back to priorizing finding a new admin, and our time is once again consumed by that creating an infinite cycle of not getting shit done. I'd rather work with an admin I can contact over discord every now and again when I need them and they'll be there vs working with an admin who can't do the job, who isn't there, who is incompetent, who is unmotivated, and unreliable. I need an admin I can message, ask them to do something, and they'll get it done and I know they will. I don't need an admin who is going to brush me off, ignore me, or just forget about what they need to do - and all too often you'll find candidates of the latter but not the former. So fishing for new admins every month when someone has a real life change is just absolutely detrimental to the team as a whole and eats far too much time. They'll be around when their real schedule allows them to be around more, but it'll fluctuate.

Ya, honestly I could probably have worded this more professional but at this point I felt the community wanted something a little more sincere than that and usual "I'm super professional 501" weren't doing anything. I didn't want to spend 24 hours carefully drafting up a response and going through every nitpick detail to make sure I can't be misunderstood. I did that, it sucks. If we're going to start communicating then I'm just gonna start talking, and hopefully that honesty is at least to a degree appreciated. If not then oh well

Just to reiterate from my status update; No, I don't see the numbers draining. Actually, they're draining from their summer high sure but to say we're draining? Cmon. Literally 3rd best month of the year, 4 months of subpar activity and we're doing absolutely great now. And you were an asshole on staff, I wanted to tell it to ya but I respected ioannis and let him know my thoughts so that he could run the team he wanted to, because we let directors have independence. I express my concerns to team directors, but I don't force my opinion on them. But regardless, we're working on the mechanics & the rule set as stated here. Also flambo is a good lad, I'm glad he accepted our offer 🙂 ...What? We've accepted 1,600 people this year. 1,500 have joined and 200 of them are still playing, our retention rate is actually going up, currently at 28.5%. What is this flat line you're talking about? Do you even know what you're talking about? Because right now, looking at the numbers, it doesn't really agree with you. That rate can and should be better but we've been rapidly bringing in new players who are enjoying the server - while the retention is garbage it's not this so called "flat line". I do want to take more of the media team into our hands though, but media producing takes a while. I did a few livestreams of the Territories plugin development a while back kinda low-key to see what it would be like and boy I was exhausted after doing such. It's hard balancing all that out. I want to pursue this though, if you're interested in helping out though I'd love to reach out to you non-ironically so you could help out if you wished. I kind of explained the admin thing, we can't prioritize activity heavily. It's nice, it's important, but replacing an admin (I've had to do this way too many times) is stressful, time consuming, and often takes away from our other projects. We gotta choose between hunting a 5th admin or writing war rules, hunting a 5th admin or increasing communication. It takes time to interview people, and it's time we'd rather just use elsewhere if the admin is going to be at least semi-present. It seems backwards but that's my experience.

I mean, alright sure. I'll just not communicate anything next time, because it doesn't matter at all right? If it's useless then why bother talking at all? Why publically announce anything? I put in the effort to increase the communication because I feel it is an issue, and while my answers are very weak at times it's about all I can give. I apologize for being honest? Maybe I should learn to lie to the community more? It's not intended to "address player concerns". It's intended to answer questions, explain stances, and just communicate. Nothing is final here, but overall the goal was accomplished even if you read things you didn't like. Sorry? Playercount decreases every night after 2AM, and fluxuates throughout the days and weeks. I'll get back to you with some hard numbers though to see if I'm accurate on this front, we can parse exact player averages. Nations being inactive is due to a lack of being able to encourage people to come by. This can either be due to roads not being great or the nation not offering anything. Sutica is an active nation and it's position is far away. Haelunor is growing more active, and it has been dead. Some nations thrive, others don't. At any given time during peak hours there are between 20 and 30 individuals not a part of roleplay, either as 1 or 2 people. We can measure this, and have a command to do so; and about 10 are staff members (ET/GMs). I wouldn't exactly blame this on freebuild. And yes, they are at critical levels. But, that's why I'm making something like this, no?

My grandfather died of parkinsons (the really bad, falling kind) and my mother has been living with stage 4 for ~3 years after being diagnosed for 10. I'm allowed to make that joke