2012 in Review, Plans for 2013

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Nymphetamine
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Joined: Thu May 10, 2012 1:09 pm
Preferred Title: Marog the Destroyer
Characters: Aezra
Azalia Stygian
Eliya Almakira al-Fasaad
Ianesene
Isabelle Auxerre
Nesira Vertal
Rix
Senkessa Silak-Dekhal
Siraz'jah Av'Zathrak
Location: Seattle, WA

2012 in Review, Plans for 2013

Post by Nymphetamine »

2012 saw a lot of huge changes to BDI. The website was updated, the introduction of various guides, drastic changes in the op team, a new network, and intentions to bridge the communication gap between the ops and the players. A lot of these changes and plans were things I had promised shortly after the move to Darkmyst to address, and never finished to post on the site. So allow me to discuss those changes, as well as the op team's plan to see BDI through 2013.


What we've done in 2012:

First and foremost, we put the channel back under active management in 2012 and moved forward in attempting to rescussitating BDI in a number of ways.

The move to Darkmyst: This is something I had been suggesting since even before I became an op. There are a ton of reasons as to why and you can read the original post: http://www.arangoth.org/phpbb/viewtopic ... 3&t=29#p57 that fully goes into why I wanted to do it. In the end, the channel spoke (or those that were paying attention when the ops posted links to the discussion) and decided to make a move of it, and we did. Since we moved, we've seen a lot more newcomers and fresh faces. The channel has grown for the first time in the last few years. We have a lot of old friends that have come back, as well and are active in channel. Not to mention, there are a lot of non-sexy RP channels to chose from, giving our players more chances of finding other places to get their RP on. Win-win!

The website: Amy and I worked pretty diligently on the site when we originally got it up back in the spring. The current set up is in the form of three parts: a wiki for content (by MediaWiki), the main site with rules and guides as a portal (by WordPress) and forums for discussion, RP and coordination between ops and volunteers (by phpBB). All three of these software are free, currently maintained and sustainable. They're also all easily reskinned with themes, so when it comes time for a cosmetic change, it shouldn't take too long to do. Content management in the form of the wiki and the front page is a million times easier, and doesn't require a particularly code savvy webmaster to maintain, either.

We've also written a handful of guides to help familarize players new and old with BDI on various levels: the immediate setting, canon races and professions. The rules and policies of the channel have been updated to reflect the current era and user base.

On the wiki specifically: Suz has, since coming on board as an op in October, pretty much taken over the wiki project and to awesome effect. Between her and Dan (and a few others here and there), they've migrated almost the whole of the old site in the last four months or so. Several countries and races have received updates to bring them current with the new format, as well as just tighten up or fill in gaps where necessary. The information is easily found and no longer buried behind three or four links deep. (Special thanks to the Setting Nerds, for their outstanding knowledge of past events in the channel and things that were intended, but never made it to the old site.)

Look at how much has left to be done: http://www.arangoth.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=185 ! It's awesome. When the migration is completed in the next few weeks, we'll be beginning a new project: to update or flesh out everything else that we didn't do during the migration. There's another list written up in the volunteers' forum of what needs more information, GMPCs profiles, NPCs, etc.

Streamlining submissions: This was something that I had viewed as pretty important. The old process was clunky, and gave no outline or idea to the submitter as to what the ops were looking for. A lot of back and forth was required between the two to flesh out this, remove that, etc. We've written up forms for submissions that are easily filled out with fields of information that we want to know before making decisions. Setting pieces, storylines, Crown officials all have forms, bridging at least some of the gap in outlining info that the ops see as important. These forms automatically generate an email to the ops' mailing list, which is than put up on the ops' forum for discussion. We're aiming for a 7-10 day turn around on a reply from the ops.

Introducing the Setting Nerds: There are a few people in channel with +'s, and green names on the forums. Veterans know them, a lot of them were old ops at some point or another. These folks have been a massive help with their near encyclopedic knowledge of the setting, and I'm priviledged to work with them. They've helped flesh out the rewrites of a lot of the setting pieces during the migration to the wiki. They are also helping out with details for upcoming story lines for the next year.

The Volunteers' channel & forum: Did you know we had a channel for the volunteers? #BDI*Volunteers, originally intended to be coordination for the wiki migration in the form of #BDI*Wiki, but has become a more generic channel in the last few months. A lot of the topic is STILL about the wiki and the like, but we've also extended this to discussions about Rumor Mill posts, story lines, plots, setting updates, etc. It is open to anyone, but can and does contain spoilers about upcoming plots or setting manipulation and the like. The price of admission is active contribution. No lookie loos are going to be permitted. If you don't actively participate in discussion or some other volunteer work in whatever form, you will be asked to leave with no hard feelings. When we're actively working up story lines and tossing around plots and secrets to be revealed to the players via RP, the less people that know about it, the better. To that end, tourists will be asked to move on.

If you're looking to take a more active part in the channel, come volunteer: http://www.arangoth.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=60 . Please only sign up if you have the time and drive to volunteer.

!news command: Orwell has been updated with an RSS feed that's taken from our two news forums. When the command is used, he'll give you the latest 10 news threads (both IC and OOC) in the last 30 days. This was done in hopes to help facillitate keeping players in touch with current IC and OOC information. We're still looking on a way to improve this system, while keeping it light on maintenance on all sides.


Looking Forward in 2013


The move to Darkmyst was wildly successful, and the player base is not only more active, but larger in BDI than it has been in a few years. Our goal is to capitalize on this. There are still things that we didn't get a chance to fully implement in 2012, that we're hoping to be able to roll out this year.

Stats: Want to know what periods of BDI are most active? Or how active is the OOC room versus the IC room, or just how much RP really happens in the Outside channel? We're looking into ways to run a stats script at least once a month to keep track of these details. No real purpose other than to get a clearer idea of how many characters are in use regularly, how regularly, at what times, etc. Sounds dorky, but when we can better answer activity questions with evidence, we'll be better able to serve our players.

Not to mention, as an ex raider on WoW, reviewing statistics (or combat logs) was kinda fun. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

Regularly occuring events: This is something that I think we've been lacking for a long time, and something that is worth addressing. Big, channel wide plots were things of the past, and a lot of the time, they were things that evolved from natural RPing. Having a dedicated storyteller or two means that we can run bigger events. Ideally, having a city wide event, such as a festival, or a holiday is a great start. But what if channel events were something that effected more than just a few people?

The tournament is a great example. This was an on going thing done in blocks of three or four hours depending on the match. It got players talking and participating, and that's something we need to do more often.

To that effect, we're in discussion about wide sweeping plotlines that effect not only the players, but the whole of the city, country and the greater world. Our goal is to have events every other week, with major events planned out in advance, but to develop the society in which BDI exists. We want to tie news posts and forum RP to things occuring in channel and will effect the world, creating a living world, rather than just some names on the wiki.

We have a few ideas regarding big plots and events that we're hammering out the details so we can introduce them soon.

Turning over government or city positions: While we all agreed that big movers or shakers in the world such as high ranking military officers or nobility shouldn't come into the hands of the players and instead be GMPCs, we do believe that players should be able to play officials or people in positions of some power. As a lot of the veteran players have grown older, the idea of more intrigue filled, French court or "Game of Thrones shenanigans" is more appealling. We want to be able to implement this aspect in some fashion, though exactly how is still up for discussion. Hopefully, we'll be able to.

Multiverse: Darkmyst throws a giant, 3-4 day weekend of multi-genre, nexus RP that is actually a ton of fun. This is coming up in a few months, and I'm hoping that BDI will be able to host an event at it this year. We barely missed the last one by about 3 weeks. No date has been set, but late February to early March are the tentative suggestions so far.


We are still looking for more volunteers for various areas of the site and channel. As I've said before shortly after we moved, we are in need of help from players to accomplish everything that we want to do. We're looking for Storytellers/Plotline development, Artists or Graphic Designers, Setting Nerds, Content Writing, Rumor Mill/News reporting. There is a long list of projects that we want to accomplish this year and we're woefully understaffed.

If you made it this far in this post, you are a champ! We look forward to pushing BDI into its 18th year in 2013!
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