marimbamonk

If you community members leave questions on this thread I can compile some of the best ones to address before we field random questions the day of. Thanks!

Hey all! It’s been awhile since I’ve live-streamed LotC; this coming weekend, I’ll be back, and doing a 24-hour stream to boot! Here’s the trailer for it:

Mark your calendars! See you guys then ?

26 minutes ago, Narthok said:

How are you in a position to answer the map change, new rules, raids, nation status questions, dev questions etc out of curiosity. Seems like a recipe for filler answers.

I’m not in a position to answer those things. That’s why in this post I used different language for each of the options. If it just ends up being the Talkshow, we’ll be discussing and overviewing the information that’s already been made public. I won’t be answering questions I don’t know the answer to, those will have to be held off until we have an actual community meeting with senior staff members present

1 minute ago, Narthok said:

Who is talking on the talk show?

It’d just be me, and everyone else would be in Twitch chat discussing. Not gonna bring anyone on this short of notice as I can’t vet them in such a short time.

2 minutes ago, Tofuus said:

I’ll probably be there. 4 am for me so I’ll be pretty out of it.

Oh god! Don’t strain yourself! hahaha.

The community meeting in either case will be recorded, so those who can’t attend live will be able to listen/watch back at a later date.

Hello, everyone!

From the post I made a few days ago about our upcoming October community meeting, those of you that submitted votes indicated that tomorrow, Sunday October 14^th, would be the best date for our meeting.

Because the date was brought forward late (my fault!), the meeting tomorrow will happen in 1 of 2 ways:

1. Tomorrow at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 7pm GMT, everyone who would like to attend the community meeting will gather in the LotC Discord, entering the “Community Meeting” voice channel. LotC staff members will be present to divulge information, including answering questions that they can about 7.0, development updates, etc. Questions posted in the previous Community Meeting post and this post will be addressed first.

In the case that many of our senior staff members will be unavailable, tomorrow’s community meeting will instead consist of the following:

2. Tomorrow at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 7pm GMT, I will host the LotC Talkshow live on Twitch at twitch.tv/zacclay. I will personally discuss and overview the recent post unveiling 7.0, as well as discussing LotC with community members through Twitch chat. We’ll collate the community’s biggest questions and concerns and those will be what we address at the next community meeting!

I’ll update you guys ASAP when I know the attendance of our other staff members. Either way, we’ll be discussing LotC news tomorrow, so it’s gonna be interesting!

Feel free to leave any questions you would like to see addressed tomorrow as a reply to this post. Thanks everyone, and see you tomorrow!

\\\

UPDATE: So it looks like we’re going for the easier Option 2 for tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll be streaming and we’ll be discussing 7.0 during the LotC Talkshow at twitch.tv/zacclay. Updates and broadcasts will be pinged tomorrow close to the start time (12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 7pm GMT). 

Thanks guys!

Hello, everyone! It's been a while.

I'm kicking our community protocol back into gear and organizing an LotC Community Meeting. This is a time for all active (and inactive!) members of the community to gather in our LotC Discord and listen to updates by our senior staff members, as well as get a chance to ask any of them questions directly. More details about how exactly that will work later!

Right now I have two potential dates for our first October Community Meeting. Here are the options:

• Sunday, October 14th, at 12:00pm Pacific / 3:00pm Eastern / 7:00pm GMT

OR

• Sunday, October 21st, at 12:00pm Pacific / 3:00pm Eastern / 7:00pm GMT

I was informed that there may be an important server announcement within the next day or two, which could be very quickly discussed on the 14th, even though it's a bit of a shorter notice for the meeting date. There was a failure on my part to properly announce the date, so if this Sunday doesn't look like we have the numbers, we'll try for the following Sunday (the 21st).

Please vote on which date (both, one, or neither) you would be able to attend.

In Preparation...

1. Please fill out the poll attached to this post with whether or not you'll be able to attend both, one, or either dates, and look out for more community update posts in the near future.

2. If you have any questions for members of our staff team, or topics of discussion you would like brought up and addressed in the community meeting, then please leave those questions as a reply to this post. Questions left here will be addressed first in the community meeting, before questions asked in person.

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I also just made a post detailing the reasons for my recent inactivity, and a mentality that I think we should all be aware of. If you're curious, please check below to have a read!

Thank you!

Personal Anecdote – Server Community Manager

life and stuff

In our lives, sometimes these waves of work or stress roll in that make IRL a much larger priority for us. For this past month-and-a-half, the waves were really rolling in for me, and I found myself wishing I could clone myself so I could still be around to help make LotC a better place.

But then I realized something about my mentality, and one of the reasons why I become so inactive on the internet sometimes.

I. The Problem

I often become so obsessed with maintaining high production quality in my work that if I can't manage to make something absolutely amazing, or say something absolutely amazing, or do something absolutely amazing, I should just save my energy and create, say, and do nothing at all. I've set such a high expectation for myself that it's easier to just do nothing than it is to attempt to reach the expectation!

Those of us with this mentality tell ourselves, "Not creating at all is better than failing to create our best work."

As IRL stuff piled on, this mentality was one of the factors that contributed my inactivity this past month too. I would tell myself, "Not being around for this community at all is better than failing to be the best I could be for this community."

Despite its intention, this mentality is self-destructive, and easily traps a person in exactly that: a state of... just doing nothing at all. Often for extended periods of time! This is fairly common among artists, and honestly I think it's the part of my persona that holds me back the most.

II. The Solution

I think the new standard we should hold ourselves to is this – even when we don't have the inspiration to create or do or say something great, the moments when we're just feeling "okay" or even plain feeling bad or uninspired are still worth sharing. I believe it's a part of humanity, and we all go through it, and that alone makes it important. 

I'm saying all of this so that if anyone else out there finds themselves becoming inactive, or not creating or doing as much anymore because of this mentality, know that you could end up waiting forever for your best work, or your inspiration. When it comes, it comes, but when it isn't there, it's still just as important (if not more important) to continue creating, to continue doing, and continue putting yourself out there. You mean a lot more to your community than you might think – you guys really helped me realize this.

---

So with or without the Community Manager tag, I want to continue doing what I had been doing to contribute to LotC. As I pick back up again, I intend to continuing streaming LotC, LotC Talkshows, and posting videos or discussions with all of you.

Have a nice day, and see you on the flipside!

On 8/31/2018 at 3:27 AM, HedgeHug said:

@marimbamonk Idea: LotC HR department. Focussing on OOC conflicts between individual payers and groups. Where GM's focus on more technical and mechanical in-server conflicts. HR can take on the LotC side of things?

 

Thoughts.

The addition of an HR team would definitely alleviate some responsibility from our GMs right now, and it would basically be redefining the entire GM team. Adding a whole other team to the mix is a lot of work, but I see the value in having some sort of separate HR team. Right now, though, it seems like the GM team can manage to handle both of these things.

Why do you think the addition of an HR team is important?

2 minutes ago, Vaynth said:

I personally liked this a lot and you covered most of the base topics players have been concerned about recently. Community game nights is a fun idea too! I tried having one with just the AT once but we could never decide on something to play.

There is also a point I would like to make. It's nice to see the rules being worked on- I hope they turn out clearly outlined to best fit our players. However, this server sees many rules changes frequently. The ever changing and often complex system of guidelines throws some people off, and may even be a factor of distrust in the player base towards staff.

We need a stable set of rules that correlate well between the forum and the game team. After a fair amount of player feedback is collected, all moderation teams should work together to discuss and create the framework for a rule system that will last. Changes should only have to be made if an abusive loophole or map change deems necessary. There will never be a day where every player is satisfied with all LOTC has to offer them, but stability and consistency will improve this.

I agree 100%. I'll keep this in mind. My intention is to have the rules in-game and out-of-game be as similar as possible, and to not bog down our community with extra or needless rules, or rules that consistently change as you've mentioned.

There is an ideal, and many gaming companies keep their rules relatively the same for years. So this is an effort to reach that for ourselves. ?

1 minute ago, Tox said:

 

 

I don't want to be rude but I'd prefer reading posts over long videos.

I hear you – I'll still be doing longer posts as well. This video is a long summary of the previous community update, in the future I want to make the videos shorter and still include a written version.

I'm gonna include a link to the text version actually now that you mention this

The video above is a summary of the last community update and has a few more additional bits of information, including an addition to ban appeals and acknowledgement of raiding rule problems.

Here is the link to the text post earlier this week: 

I just wanted to throw something together and put it out, and I'm thinking about doing this sort of update-type video once a week. We'll see. I'd like to put more production quality into it in the future but just did not have the time this week.

Regardless, thank you, hope you enjoy!

Hello again, everyone! Zac here, the current Community Manager for LotC.

I just wanted to take some time to let you guys know a few of the projects and improvements to the server that are currently on my agenda.

Rules Updates

I’m currently working with the Forum team on an update to the forum rules of LotC, so that our forum rules will more resemble those of more established, major video-game companies.

These are our current forum rules: https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/170108-forum-rules/

And these are an example of the type of forum rules I would like us to adopt: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/code-of-conduct/

Taking a look between these two documents, one can see how much more specific and all-encompassing the forum rules of a company like Blizzard are, as opposed to here on LotC. Hopefully updating our forum rules to take some of those aspects will improve our experience here on LotC.

From the forum rules updates, I would then like to work with the GM team and Admins to bring an update to the server rules as a whole, so that they reflect whatever changes were brought to the forums.

Your View: Administration – Submissions Close Tuesday Night

Last week I posted the “Your View: Administration”, where you guys can voice your feedback and concerns about our administration team and their conduct.

In the interest of time, we’ll be closing the form from submissions this Tuesday, August 21st, at 11:59pm PT.

Starting Wednesday the 22nd, I’ll be going through the feedback and organizing submissions that were similar or were concerning similar issues. I’ll propose and discuss these issues with the Administration, and from there they will provide a response statement either in the form of a forum post or an appearance on the LotC Talkshow, or both.

Your feedback will go directly into improving how our Administration conducts themselves, as well as what issues and concerns our attention should be most focused on as we continue developing.

I’ll keep you guys posted!

Clarifications on how to report harassment or other inappropriate behavior on LotC

A communication post is coming very soon that will detail the best way for anyone in the community to report inappropriate behavior on LotC. In the “Recent Concerns” post, we addressed that we wanted there to be a clear and easy way for community members to report inappropriate behaviors, and that is now going to be addressed in the aforementioned post that is coming soon.

Many community members were upset by the apparent latency of action during that previous incident, and this post will now hopefully make the reporting and action process run smoother and more quickly.

Community Meetings, LotC Talkshow

I’m also looking into restarting our monthly Community Meetings that we’ve had on LotC in the past. This will be happening most likely with the dawn of the new month (September). Again, I’ll keep you guys posted!

In addition, the LotC Talkshow will be continuing to run on my Twitch channel. Scheduling always varies on the staff availability, but expect Talkshows with the Application team and the Administration team soon! Other staff teams and guests to come.

Final Words

That’s it for now. There are a lot more things that are missing from this post that are on my agenda, or that I would like to talk about in general, but this is just a few of the things I had the time to chronicle right now.

I'd really like to see what you guys have to say about:

• rules updates

• community meeting topics/activities

• talkshow topics/guest requests

• basically anything else

In the comments below. Thankee! ?

Hope you guys have a good day, and see you around!

19 hours ago, Medvekoma said:

5 days and neither a name published or a declaration it won't be. This isn't on you, marimba, but insofar it seems like Telanir sees fires buening in his absence and opted to give you a water squirter to tackle it while he turns his back again.

Addressed. 

The initial post has been updated, please look there!

Hello LotC! This post and the form within are the first step in a set of incoming improvements to LotC. We have certainly noticed that many people in our community have had concerns or feedback to express about our Administration team and their conduct, and we want to now offer a more formal way for those concerns and feedback to be received.

The link below will lead you to a Google Form where you can submit your feedback about the Administration team. This includes your general opinion of the Administration over the years up to now, specific issues that you would like to express your thoughts on, news and communication and visibility with our community, and more.

This is the place to submit the concerns and thoughts that many of you have expressed already as replies to forum posts, or in other places. If you want it to be seen and directly addressed by the Administration, submit it here.

Please submit a response only once.

https://goo.gl/forms/xiBikFwsPcGFwSP63

We will be accepting responses for at least the next week, let's say. This may be extended if we feel we haven't received a good volume of responses.

How this information will be used – What we're trying to achieve

Once we receive a good range of responses and close up the form, I will be personally poring through the responses and organizing them. Similar concerns or feedback will be grouped together and refined into a single issue that I will then address/question the Administration with directly. There will most likely be a good dozen (more or less) of these refined issues, all of which we will then discuss.

The Administration will respond to these concerns directly, making their own statements that give their perspective on the matter at hand. If improvement is needed in something, we will push to make sure that the community's concerns are heard and that necessary change is made – but in some cases, miscommunication or assumptions may actually be the outlier, in which case the Admins will do their best to communicate their own perspective!

Where will the Administrators statements be presented?

Either in a forum post that serves as a sort-of direct response to this Your View, and/or an appearance on the Lord of the Craft Talkshow, which would be a live interview of the Administration about what the community has expressed.

This will happen after the form is closed, so most likely a little more than a week from now. This may change due to scheduling or if we extend the response time of the form.

Final Words

In any case, it's important to remember that our server leadership are volunteers. Volunteers who, for the most part, do not have a degree or higher education in the position they hold; who do not get paid to do this; who are generally in only the second or third decade of their lives. We are by no means professionals, and we have and will make mistakes! All of those conditions I mentioned don't necessarily excuse bad conduct, and that's important to remember. But expressing forgiveness and positivity instead of animosity will go a long way in making the server better as whole. And I'm talking to everyone here. ?

Thank you all! I look forward to seeing your feedback.

Thank you for your service on the Administration, and for being an all-around cool guy. As you've said yourself you're not leaving and we'll actually still be working together, so I'm excited for the future! #marimbamonkisactually501indisguise #illuminaticonfirmed

Cheers. Here's to a new chapter. ?

501warhead describes his history on the Administration team and reflects on his service in the post he made today, which can be found by clicking here.

In the post he also resigns from the position of Administrator and notes that he is going to focus on pursuing his ideas as a Developer and Wiki Team Director.

I've only made this post because a change in leadership as monumental as Administration should be very visible to the community so they know this has happened. I know the news will spread on its own like wildfire but having it here as precedent is my priority.

Thank you! This post will be locked as it is merely informational and I do not wish to remove attention from 501's words. If you wish to comment about 501's departure please do so on his post.

❤️

28 minutes ago, Vaynth said:

-snip-

Noted and changed! Thanks for bringing this up, I didn't have that foresight unfortunately.

Questions may no longer be submitted. Thank you all for your submissions! I've picked out what I believe are the best questions from the lot, and questions that had already been asked by someone else were not considered.

We'll see you at 2pm Pacific for the Talkshow.

Just now, Legoboy7984 said:

Will the LoTC youtube channel be active again, like where there was LoTC news, and aswell with LoTC History thing?

 

What I mean by History thing is where someone explains a certain war or thing like the Year of the Four Emperors within a few minutes or even the Deep Cold Uprising.

 

Do you feel like players should consider RP more than OOC?

 

Do you feel like it's sometimes difficult for players to find RP on the server due to the number of settlements caused by Free Build?

Elaborate on your second question, "Do you feel like players should consider RP more than OOC"

4 hours ago, TJBMinecraft said:

When will the next map be and will there be freebuild on it?

4 hours ago, Beorn15 said:

What is your opinion on free builds? Do you think they should go, or stay?

4 hours ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

Do you think that there is room for any new races in LOTC?

 

Will the next map have one settlement per race, or will it be like Atlas and have there be multiple settlements for most races even from the beginning?

 

How large will the next map be? Will it be any bigger/smaller than Atlas?

 

Has work begun on the next map, or are you still in the planning phase/haven't begun any work at all?

 

Will any races be denied a region at the beginning of the next map (Like the Kha, Halflings, Hou-Zi, etc.), or will there be an effort to include the minor races somewhere?

 

Will items/minas be transferred over to the next map, or will it all be reset besides signed items and books?

 

Are you planning on doing any changes to horses in the near future? Or are you content with how they are now?

 

 

Fun Question: Do you do the didgeridoo? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I might ask, why are you guys so curious about a new map and freebuilds in specific? Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just curious. 

Hello everyone!

Tomorrow at 2pm Pacific will be the reprisal of the LotC Talkshow, with special guest Knox and possibly another Admin to join us for discussion on the server health, both in hardware and in community. You will find this at 

Please submit a question or a topic of discussion as a reply to this forum post and we may use it tomorrow! 

Thanks.

Hello everyone! I don't have the time right now to whip together a video explanation or poster but this Friday at 2pm Pacific we'll be live on my channel with the reinstatement of the LotC Talkshow!

One of our very own admins, Knox, will be joining us to discuss the server's health – both in its recent hardware problems as well as the community's health as a whole! If you enjoy LotC and you want to see it thrive, don't miss this show!

Here's a link to the event so you can remind yourself: https://www.twitch.tv/events/icZIgo4FSDC_jEZblagfUg

I'll see you guys there! Don't forget the next day at 2pm, we'll have the first ever Atlas March! Here's a link to that forum post: 

Posters are pinned around the various nations of Atlas...

((Hello everyone! Make sure that you're on this Saturday at 2pm Pacific to take part in the first ever Atlas March. In this livestreamed event, everyone on the server is invited to march with us from the Cloud Temple down to the frozen south, and we're attempting to break a record along the way. Don't forget! I'll see you guys there.))