Referring to the thread "Is there still RP here?", I want to start a new thread to throw in a few ideas and make some suggestions.
Some of us already know about the Roleplayers Ring (collection of message boards, pretty much dead), the Catskills Roleplayer Forums (collection of message boards not many know about), the Catskills RP Wiki (pretty much dead either, hardly anybody knows it), Artystic (a not very well laid out site which isn't used at all, afaik), and maybe there are even other sites out there I never have heard about.
All those sites have one thing in common: The makers put in some effort to build something for our community, and they did not really succeed due to different reasons.
About a year ago, when I re-joined UO after 6 years of absence, I experienced how difficult it is to get in touch with the community, find out which RP guilds were active (which in fact are very few), where their headquarters are located, where to find and how to join them. Google doesn't help either, as there are many many sites of inactive guilds out there. As web and graphics design is part of my job, I thought about building a site, which should become a hub for the Catskills RP Community, with the following purpose:
As you can see, the concept is rather simple. It just has to be done.
However, before someone starts to build such a thing, we should make sure the following is available long term:
Do you have ideas, suggestions? Are you willing to help? Do you have a web space available? Do you want to volonteer? Please, post your feedback!
Hawkeye Pike
Some of us already know about the Roleplayers Ring (collection of message boards, pretty much dead), the Catskills Roleplayer Forums (collection of message boards not many know about), the Catskills RP Wiki (pretty much dead either, hardly anybody knows it), Artystic (a not very well laid out site which isn't used at all, afaik), and maybe there are even other sites out there I never have heard about.
All those sites have one thing in common: The makers put in some effort to build something for our community, and they did not really succeed due to different reasons.
About a year ago, when I re-joined UO after 6 years of absence, I experienced how difficult it is to get in touch with the community, find out which RP guilds were active (which in fact are very few), where their headquarters are located, where to find and how to join them. Google doesn't help either, as there are many many sites of inactive guilds out there. As web and graphics design is part of my job, I thought about building a site, which should become a hub for the Catskills RP Community, with the following purpose:
- Each guild should still maintain their own independent websites.
- The hub site should serve as a central information base for the RP Community, but also for players interested in their activities and events. Its purpose should be, to direct players to guilds and events.
- It should contain regularly updated information about people (guilds, guild masters), events (player events, recurring events, ventures, expeditions), places (player-run towns, guild headquarters, taverns).
- The site should be kept simple and very clearly arranged, and well laid out.
- The site should not be updated by only one person. In fact, it should be possible to delegate update permissions of certain sections of the site to different people (there are very handy tools out there which allow such a thing).
- The site could host guild forums, but it would not be our priority in the first stage.
- The site should be created in a way so it can easily be found through search engines, and it should be advertised on existing popular pages (for example, uo.com, stratics, uoguide etc.).
As you can see, the concept is rather simple. It just has to be done.
However, before someone starts to build such a thing, we should make sure the following is available long term:
- A web space and a domain.
- The support of the existing RP guilds.
- Someone who wants to be responsible for this, and this person should be someone who plans to play UO until the very end.
Do you have ideas, suggestions? Are you willing to help? Do you have a web space available? Do you want to volonteer? Please, post your feedback!
Hawkeye Pike