What should we submit - final submission.
In another thread, to start this discussion, i posted this:
Please read that and come up with ideas for a final decision. It seems things are starting to die down so I feel the time is coming soon where we have to finish.We, the committee on forum expansion, find that idea of expansion is a viable option.
The first game that we looked at looks to be a great opportunity. Paradox Interactive makes products that have a similar kind of fanbase and require a similar site to what twcenter offers now. They have everything that total war games have as far as a community is concerned so it was looked at as the easiest expansion. Any site made for this has to be made in a similar fashion to twcenter.
Here are our key findings on paradox:
Paradox has no large fansite for their game aside from their own companies site, we could attract people using mods and similar ways used to attract people from CA's site before twcenter was popular. Getting hosted modifications will be important.
CA may be upset with hosting a similar game so they have to be kept separate. We have to have two separate indexes for the forums and a separate front page. The indexes can have the same user database because the CC is important for the health of any separate fansite and twcenter as a whole. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=98233 is an important link on this. These indexes should not show total war or paradox and visa versa. They should have all games related to that group, ONLY. However they should have the CC and probably the other twcenter forums as well. This is important for keeping gold status.
We have yet to decide on other games but the findings on this is certain and its a viable opportunity.From reading this we have covered everything unless we find other games.Attracting new members and increasing the site's appeal
Importance of Modifications: Its no secret that mods are important. However, looking a bit closer, the Paradox mod community appears to be much smaller than TWC, and the community appears to be somewhat mod-centric as TW community is. However, I would think that the modders are also the core of the Paradox community, meaning getting them here is almost equally important as it would be for a Total War site.
How to Attract Members: It is difficult to lure people over to a new site from an established community; in addition to the obvious promotional tools such as sigs, search engines, seeking out some recognition from paradox, as well as getting a mod community going, my feeling is we should not hide the fact that the new site is linked to a hugely successful fansite... this likely would not matter to the average joe member who sticks with whatever site he stumbles onto, but this is important I think especially for attracting mods and veteran members.
How to Attract Mods: In addition to declaring the new site hails from TWC, we should remember our unique advantages we give a fansite. There must be a promotion of the Wiki as a universal modding resource, the University as a non-TW specific modding place with obvious exceptions, SVN for mods, grassroots control (this committee for example is a good example), and professionalism, which I think is an part of all of the above aspects.
Style, appearance, function: Obviously we need a new skin and frontpage design. The sharing of databases has already been discussed. How will the rank, badge, and medal system be handled with the joint database? A technical consideration.
Content: When this committee is finished I think Hex should seek out TWC members who are part of the Paradox community or at least outside members who play Paradox games. Form a sort of focus group: what do they want to see at a new site? What keeps them as part of the community? Etc. Also, are we going to have Paradox equivalents of the ES? How is this going to get started?
Possible Staffing: Related to the issue of the ES, sort of. As far as moderators, I don't think it'd be an issue to get the first few from TWC, but perhaps we can seek out some prominent community members to moderate and administrate here. I'm least worried about moderators, actually; where do the Paradox people come in for the other aspects (content, administration, etc.)
Administration: Not the remit of this council directly I don't think but it can't hurt to give my opinions. Obviously there are security considerations. But at least initially I'd suggest Hex is very involved and open-eared with the Paradox site until it can choose suitable Paradox representatives to sit on the Council (same access as Speaker?). Or, make a Paradox council without administrative rights until Hex wants to give out the rights. But as I said, these are just suggestions, I'm sure this will be discussed in Hex extensively if it isn't already but I'm just giving my two cents, no need to respond to them one way or another.
That is what was submitted earlier.
Unless we find something else than all we need to say is:
No further games could be found to expand into. However, there are many possibilities out there. Everything, such as gold status issues, forums, site construction, was found previously when we were looking into the best example of paradox. Something needs to be done to determine what games are already popular on this site as a base for anything further to expand into. There needs to be a preexisting community already on this site and interest within the community so that any site could be established. Then that site would grow from there, this is the case for any game that contains a decent online community.
Games that contain a decent online community are usually long-running series or games with a long-time following. It could be a extremely mod friendly RPG like Neverwinter Nights or a multiplayer game like Starcraft, Counter-Strike, Age of Conan, or WoW. Any further expansion should also be into a game that doesn't have a end-all-be-all site or an up and coming game such as Starcraft 2 or Age of Conan.
I dont see what else there is to "submit" aside from that. If we dont find any other game that FOR SURE we should go into then that above is the completion of our goals as it fulfills everything this was created for.
Originally Posted by Jom
Pillaging and Plundering since 2006
