ALL GUILDS PLEASE READ -- Establishing Guild Precedent

domahreh · **Posted:** Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:04 pm

Quote:

Competition is not a bad thing. Embrace it! And should a 'rival' group appear to be stepping on your toes/turf, open up a dialog w/them in good faith. Perhaps the two can merge or come to a compromise.

... or coexist? (Otherwise, here here, frankenscarf!

)

Aiden · **Joined:** Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:02 am **Posts:** 39

I just read this whole thing. Man.

Okay, here goes. Point by point as I remember them:

1. I like the term "Guild" because it's a familiar term in an IC sense and an OOC sense. Obviously if Cyan sponsored Guilds started cropping up I'd have to change the name to a crazy compass/sextant hybrid symbol and ask to be referred to as "The Organization Formerly Known as the Guild of Cartographers" which would be a nice person to spell out in D'ni.

2. As it stands, none of the Guilds could possibly be considered a governing body with any authority outside of itself. So, the good news is we don't have to worry about the Guilds going power mad and destroying the cavern. No matter what we choose to call ourselves we'll never hold that much power.

3. People seem to be caught up in names a lot. I didn't name the organization I head, nor did I create it. But I don't see very many reasons (barring the events of Point #1) to worry so much about how player organizations are named or what they choose to do as an organization. There was such hullabaloo (it's a real word, spellchecker says so. Side note: "spellchecker" not a word, according to the spellchecker) about the proposed mission of the Guild of Maintainers. So a group of players decide to go out and gather freely available information? So what? Even if they discovered something and kept the information to themselves that doesn't change the fact that these people can play the game however they chose (within the ToS) and if they want to keep secrets, so what? Never mind that that's not what that organization was trying to do. I'm getting afield.

4. Redundancy? Well. Let's see. We have roughly eight or nine million bulletin boards covering Uru. I've lost track of all the ones I'm a member of, and I really only check some of them. So, yes, we could use less redundancy. But we should never enforce it. If someone made a Mapmakers' Union then I wouldn't be able to say a darn thing, and that's the way it should be. I would be puzzled by the need to re-do everything the GoC has done so far, but it wouldn't really bother me too much, and I'm pretty sure most of the Cartographers would agree.

5. I like pudding.

6. Gathering all these player organizations under some sort of central control (unless that control is Cyan or the DRC) is a Bad Idea. If it's not immediately obvious to you why, then this statement will appear condescending. Because it is.

And here is the part where I avoid saying "That's my $0.02."

Montgomery · **Posted:** Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:11 am

Islander. You honor me. /me bows to Islander. Thank you.

This discussion -- in here and the other threads on other forums -- has been very instructive. And it has tempered my thoughts quite a bit. So thank you to eveyone who has contributed.

I will freely admit that my motivation for guild secrecy and exclusivity stems from my conversation with Reno Peacecraft and the Guild of Guardians. Frankly I would never have thought there was any need to keep secrets or enforce any kind of "intellectual property" rights in Uru. And so on the whole I agree with the vast majority of those posting here who argue against what I outlined as a need for exclusivity. But I keep going back to that conversation with Reno.

Now, to be fair, I haven't heard much from Reno or his Guild since that meeting. He does not post on any of these forums, at least not as himself or as a representative of his guild or, apparantly, his particular views. And his own forum (which I ws invited to read) is not especially active. So maybe I am overreacting to a perceived threat and projecting it on the whole community. If so, I apologize. And hereby withdraw my advocacy of this concept. There, I said it.

As to the other matter, the idea of the Archivists being a major guild with minor guilds contributing to it. I only suggested this because it seems this is what Cyan has in mind. RAWA said it twice. When I first proposed changing my guild's name from the Guild of Maintainers to the Maintainers Auxiliary, he said "it's possible that your guild could be one of the minor guilds associated with the Guild of Maintainers as your alternate name would suggest." Later he said, "Reporting and documenting new content or changes in content fits under the realm of the Guild of Archivists" Now, I took this not to mean he was suggestingwe should name ourselves the Guild of Archvists, but rather as he suggested in his earlier PM, that we could be one of the minor guilds associated with the Archivists -- again, like the Maintainers, one of the original D'ni guilds.

So despite opposition to this hierarchical concept I proposed in my initial post, I must say I believe it is the right way to proceed. At least until further illumination from Cyan. And Tweek is actively seeking that illumination as we speak .... er, post.

DedHed · **Posted:** Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:20 pm

Wow... fascinating discussion!

I'd like to comment on something Aiden said:

Quote:

As it stands, none of the Guilds could possibly be considered a governing body with any authority outside of itself. So, the good news is we don't have to worry about the Guilds going power mad and destroying the cavern. No matter what we choose to call ourselves we'll never hold that much power.

I've often wondered just how much our activites will be allowed to drive in-Cavern events. If Cyan is approaching story development in this manner, I think it certainly is possible that Guilds - or at least, Guild Masters - could have a say in government/decision-making sometime in the future. After all, the Masters of the 18 Major Guilds had seats on the D'ni Ruling Council.

DocOlanA · **Posted:** Mon Apr 23, 2007 6:25 pm

Well, I suppose I may as well jump right in with this.

Since the Guild of Archivists is looking to be restructured, I'm looking to get in on it with the minor guild of Historians (or Scholars. Scholars was the original name, but it's been pointed out to me that Historians are more accurate.)

In addition to doing things like cataloging timelines and records, the Guild would also embark on efforts to expand our knowledge of the D'ni and their culture, beyond information currently available. We would also strive for a closer working relationship with the DRC, in order to have access to more such materials, something having an actual organized scholarly group would assist greatly.

If anyone is interested in hearing my ideas for this guild, please KIMail me (my KI# is in my signature, below.)

As a note, this is a separate entity from the Students of D'ni Knowledge. The Students are, and shall remain, a more unstructured gathering, where anyone is invited. The Guild of Historians, on the other hand, will be more structured.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sun Feb 21, 2010 12:36 am

Doing some research I came across this thread. It's old but the issues it touches on are coming up again as people look at what to do with the IC and OOC guilds.

Some of the discussions we are having now about whether OOC guilds have special rights to the IC guilds and Guild Pub Imagers make this thread again pertinent.

Montgomery · **Posted:** Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:58 am

Thanks, Nalates, for digging this out. I've just reread it and needsome time to organize my thoughts before I make a formal reply. Two things I'll say now:

1) darn, I had a pride thing going on. I spent a LOT of effort trying to make my personal issue into a community issue.

2) The whole dynamic has changed in several ways --
a) Cyan has stepped in and made 5 official Guilds
b) a lot of the ideas expressed here actually came to pass
c) the community has been distilled down to a hard core
d) Cyan has openly discussed handing large chunks of responsibilty and performance to the community
e) the Assembly of Guilds and earthwizard -- and their invaluable service -- are gone

Obviously, this whole discussion neeeds to start over. Give me a day or two to think, and I'll start a fresh topic. Probably in the Guild section of this forum. Need sleep now ....

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

That was then, this is now -- yup, maybe trite to say, but true.

From what RAWA said -- no resources to do anything on Uru, other than run servers.

My take ont his -- do what you want. Groups, guilds, multiple guilds with the same name. The world is new. It's all good.

Nalates · **Posted:** Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:56 am

Messed up posting... :oops:

Nalates · **Posted:** Mon Feb 22, 2010 1:18 am

I think much of the ground initially covered in this thread is being covered again in various other threads now. A new topic that references this one and several of current ongoing ones would be good. In a larger context you may want to double post and place a copy on OpenUru.org. May be make a last linking post and ask that this thread be locked.

Many things have changed since the thread started and concluded… paused… whatever. Hopefully we have learned and grown over the years. We have far more guilds today than we did at the time this thread started. We even have a 'Guild of non-Guild' folks... not really but most will get my meaning.

Because of the problems many experienced the community has now created places for those averse to guilds. Some are looking at how to solve other problems (See: [url]Standards for Discussion & Debate[/url]) and are moving beyond the viewpoint of just a game player in Uru. We are the future of Uru and that puts many in the place of player and game developer or operator. Some in the community are looking at how other communities handle similar challenges. (See Google Videos like: Poisonous People) Some are considering how to make Uru a better game and keep the things we enjoy while staying within possible Cyan limits. (See: OpenUru.org)

Blogs and Twitter are new tools of the community. This has lead to new sources of information and places for opinion. (See: Myst-Uru Guilds IC and OOC Part-I or the group of Myst-Uru Guilds IC and OOC posts. Many moved to play in Second Life and other virtual worlds and constructed Myst Style areas in those systems. (See: Crux Isle – requires SL account). In SL they have experimented with new forms of guilds and cooperative yet independent game play. All of these new things will affect how we handle future guilds, either IC or OOC.

With the possibility for multiple private shards, changes to both the server and client sides of Cyan’s game, I expect the IC side of the guilds to be very different this time around. The growing pains we see in Second Life and OpenSIM open source are likely to be the same problems we see in open source Uru. Those unaware of them will needlessly walk the Uru community into them.

It really becomes a matter of what have we learned, whether we are self-centered only, and what will we do differently.

@ mszv, if it were just a matter of each of us doing our thing, I could agree with your suggestion. But, to take an extreme viewpoint… if everyone runs their own server, no one would be left to play in and support other servers. So, some form of cooperation will be needed and it would be nice to avoid anything like UU flame wars.

Another odd twist in this community is the number of people that can’t perceive how to deal with nearly complete freedom. Many continue to insist on some form of control. There are a number that insist on no or minimal change in the game. I think it is obvious the game going open source will bring great changes and considerable freedom.

We can just ignore people with different ideas and move down our own paths. There is nothing they can do to stop us. I personally think part of what makes Myst-Uru what it is, is many fans desire to be inclusive and do what can be done to keep the community unified. Handling and understanding these problems and how to handle contentious people, is part of what we need to know to keep the majority of the community together. Figuring out how to handle guilds, groups, or whatever we call them is part of that process.

BAD · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 2:10 am **Posts:** 372

Once again I see people much more willing to discuss things for ages, rather than simply just doing what they are thinking about.

Nadnerb had it right. There is no need to discuss this, if you want your group called the Guild of Archivists to exist and be some sort of hub of D'ni knowledge and information on the cavern, than just do it and make it good enough that most people use it.

Regardless of what you discuss here, the group you begin and work at to make flourish will evolve unpredictably. Also even if you could get some kind of official sanction from Cyan, that would not curtail others making their own groups that rival yours'.

Basically this thread reads like you all are trying to plan out the community response to something you haven't even started yet and you are trying to figure out how they would respond before you do it so you can figure out if it's a good idea to start it even though you're going to start it anyway cause you really want to. Even that sentence is over complicated.

So here's my thought. Start your Guild. Do it in a fair and as balanced way you can. Offer tools and pages that will make it easier for people to access the information, and make it easy for the members to collect and organize the information. Let the community judge it as they will.

Further discussion will only delay your ability to work on actually DOing anything and thus giving more time to those who want to make their own group doing the same thing.

MustardJeep · **Posted:** Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:04 am

Interesting bit of thread necro, but I really don't see why this old hash was brought back up.

The original intent of this thread is pretty much lost in time except for those of us that were in the thick of it back then. The only bare possibility at the moment is people running servers, and only a fool would think people would not / will not run them however they gosh darn please. The server ideas I've seen preclude major community knowledge that you have moved from one server to the next, people could run their Ages how ever they want on "Their" server but in terms of the old single server UU model the single server model is pretty much dead. Most of the rest of this doesn't apply any more or is once again so far in the future that it might as well not apply IC or OOC.

Dreamers dream, a page is marked, but the ending "The Ending has not yet been written".

BAD · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 2:10 am **Posts:** 372

BAD reads MJ's post.

BAD checks the dates of the posts...

BAD decides he shouldn't respond to things while he is off traveling and may have had a couple drinks.

:wink:

Dekar · **Posted:** Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:48 am

Honestly, I feel the core 5 guilds discussed in Kirel are how things should remain. The guild of archivists does not seem as connected at this moment but the writers and maintainers have been doing their off line thing for a while and when (and I DO mean when) cyan is ready to open source, their expertise will be available. On the more current note, the guild of greeters has been extremely active and helpful, and the guild of messengers is doing what they do best, messaging.
The way the first post on here describes their group was really guild of archivests as opposed to maintainers and I assume that got cleared up ages (ha) ago, but I think we just need to make sure we are seeing organization and function from those 5 guilds and things will flow rather nicely.

So let us do our jobs hee hee.

church99 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 23, 2010 5:44 pm

Quote:

Honestly, I feel the core 5 guilds discussed in Kirel are how things should remain. The guild of archivists does not seem as connected at this moment but the writers and maintainers have been doing their off line thing for a while and when (and I DO mean when) cyan is ready to open source, their expertise will be available. On the more current note, the guild of greeters has been extremely active and helpful, and the guild of messengers is doing what they do best, messaging.
(edit) I think we just need to make sure we are seeing organization and function from those 5 guilds and things will flow rather nicely.

So let us do our jobs hee hee.

I agree.

However- I seem to be a worker bee.
I also see things in black and white, so I shall go where my strengths lie.

But this is a great conversation and a place to share those thoughts and hash them out.

/me goes back to work.

ALL GUILDS PLEASE READ -- Establishing Guild Precedent

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