The Total War Community Centre (for the mature and honourable...a dedicated TW MP endeavor)

[gurpreetsingh]

Before you go on, if you dont want to read the whole thing, the only thing you need to read is the "Mission Statement." And if you are not in a clan no matter, as a Multiplayer if you meet the requirements of maturity (not age just attitude) then you fit the bill.

Our Website:

http://www.freewebs.com/totalwarcommunity/ (link for forums is near the top)

Our Fundamental Concept:


We are people from across the world, joined together by a common bond. We are the noble combatants in a quite unique saga. We do what needs to be done, in order to lay claim to titles of honour and respect. On the road to these titles, and on the way to earning the trust, friendship, and respect of our fellow fighters, we create something truly spectacular: an online community. Between us exists little else but walls and distances. We are geographically separated, and culturally divided. Yet in spite of all this, we feel the presence of one another and welcome each other with such warmth as to deny the existence of those distances and differences. Together we bridge those gaps, and form a phenomenon like no other. The online community we have so unwittingly created with our inherent lack of prejudice in this rare yet priceless medium of TW presents us with endless possibilities and bottomless rewards. Together, with the simple continuation and natural extension of what we are already doing, we can explore some very intriguing possibilities. Here lies the potential of our arrangement.


Our Vision:


As the honourable men of TW, it is our responsibility to ensure a safe-haven for those that drift through the lobbies in search of a sport for gentlemen. Many times these men come into contact with buffoons and animals and they may lose their appeal for the game. When this happens, the online community is weakened. As the gentlemen of this game, we must ensure we keep a vibrant sector alive where honour and respect are more than mere punch-lines. We must pursue both our own growth as individual clans, and the strengthening of the ties between any and all clans that can bear the mark of the truly honourable. In so doing we strengthen not only our own selves and our enjoyment of the TW experience, we strengthen the safe harbours to those that would enjoy sharing in our mutually beneficial arrangement. We strengthen and expand the realm of honour and respect in the TW online community.

Such a task is a great responsibility, but it is something we have been doing casually for a very long time. So long as we continue to strengthen ourselves, press future members to adhere to our principles of sportsmanship and respect, and forge and strengthen ties among any and all truly honourable clans, we march towards a brighter future.


Our Mission Statement:


What we seek is simple: to bring together the clans of M2 that are of like-mind and character. All of the active and mature multi-players of TW will have a forum to share. Also, all will have access to a shared ventrilo server to heighten their gameplay experience, forge new friendships, and strengthen old ones. An X-fire guild will allow everyone to add with one easy step all the TW multi-players to their x-fire list in one grouped category. All of this will serve to bridge the gaps that divide us, in an easy, efficient, and effective manner. The purposes for this are solely to allow for more frequent, and more enjoyable TW gaming.

Now, when I say of like-mind and character, I mean those clans that share a similar membership and similar ideas about what the Total War experience should be (namely a fun, mature, epic adventure in a manner which only TW can provide). There have been many groups around that have tried to bring together the community, and all have failed, and all will continue to fail...for one simple reason: they do not offer what the people want, and their goals are too grand and convoluted.

What we are pursuing is simple, and more importantly, it is effective. The thing that sets this endeavour apart from others is very simple. We do not wish to create something new. We endeavour to give tools and a more efficient and effective infrastructure to a community that has already existed for a long time. We do not want any other goals apart from creating a more enjoyable communal experience to cloud our efforts. Everything we do is done simply to provide the community with options in how they choose to pursue their TW experience. Want to get a game of med2 in? Not sure who's on? Load up X-fire and you will have every member of every clan you PREFER to play with summed up at a glance. Or maybe you like msn messenger to organize your game-time? Is it Sunday already? Well if it is there will be an ongoing casual tournament all-day Sunday with games every 2 hours. The teams will be mixed so if you don't have any clan-mates on it doesn't matter you will still find some bloody epic fun. And everybody will be on the shared vent server so that just adds to the fun of those Sunday casual tournaments. Rules will be new every week and will be totally flexible as they are simply a guideline. These are simple examples of what we offer.

We do not want politics, we do not want Alliances, we do not want to moderate nonsensical make-believe wars, we do not want anything but to HAVE MORE FUN and bring the people together. Our methodology is simple, and it is passive and easy to maintain. It is there to give you more options with things YOU DO ANYWAYS and it will bridge the gaps between like-minded clans and make for a community with a stronger infrastructure. Once it is in place, the people looking for quality games and good friends will have actual tools at their disposal that are easy and simple to take advantage of.

(quick side note) In RTW this was not as urgent as it is now (as in RTW the lobbies were always filled to the brim) In M2 the community element has shrunk considerably and without concrete steps taken to inspire the good fun that was once abundant and is now a bit harder to find at times, we will lose out to some extent. Consolidation is critical.

And more on the mission statement is this: You played TW before joining a clan. You joined a clan. Your TW experience increased in enjoyment after having joined a clan. Why? Because it brought you and others of like-mind and character together, and bridged gaps of communication between you and other players you would enjoy sharing your gaming experience with. Now we are all in clans. But just as we were all once disjointed as individuals, so too are we now disjointed as clans. There is minimal communication through the CCS and through embassies/forums etc (I say minimal because it is never more than 20% of a clan's membership that pursues communication through those venues). And lobby discussion is good, but also minimal in many ways. So, we have come up with an arrangement that will bridge the gaps between the clans that want to have the gaps between then bridged. More importantly, the gaps will be bridged in a way that will take minimal effort on the part of the membership of each clan, and the rewards will be great.

There are countless things the people in clans do daily, and it is there that our methodology finds it's foundation. Other groups have you work to reap the rewards of a stronger community. We work (and it honestly does not take a huge volume of work as compared with some other groups) so that you do not have to. The venues of communication are: msn messenger lists of members by clan; an x-fire guild that makes x-fire communication simple and easy (all members are added to your friends list in one easy step into its own grouping); a ventrilo server that is free for all member clans and shared so as to bring everyone together; and a forum for group discussion for those topics that need to be kept in forum format. The primary methods of linking the people will be the forum, and the ventrilo server. The rewards enjoyed by those that choose to take advantage of this arrangement will be: special tournaments arranged so as to maximize fun and inter-clan friendship (all members, not just the most senior 10%); great friendships that have always had the potential to grow, but never had the infrastructure there to allow it; and countless other things.


The Evolution:
(I had written this before everyone rallied together and we all created the TWC)


Now, I believe in perfect transparency, so I will go through what I've done and what I would like to do, and why and how. I speak in regards to this whole inter-clan community thing I've been droning on about for ages.

My intention at first, when I had 20 free hours a day (year or 2 ago now) was to create a pillar for the community to rally around. Something similar to the totalwar.com or twcenter, but something specifically dedicated to multiplayer. Hopefully something that would have grown to become something as universally shared as the .com or the twcenter are for single-players, only for the multi-players. I had great plans and ideas to make it work where others had failed. It would have taken a great deal of time. But the issue at that point in time was that I am also part of a very determined clan, Arcani. We have, every single day, a tremendous amount that happens beneath the surface in our internal affairs. This ranges from training, to planning, to setting up streaming video for tournaments, to developing new ground for future stability. Arcani is a large part of why I am still part of Total War. I played the feces out of M1, RTW and M2, and were it not for the great passion the clan experience arouses in me, I would have long since jumped ship to another game (Company of Heroes for one ). So, my plan for laying the foundation for this central-hub-website for the multiplayer scene was put on hold until we at Arcani had firmly laid down roots in M2. Once that was done, I would be able to focus on the whole central-hub idea.

That's where the problems began. I very quickly began to see just how much time and dedication it would take to do it alone. So it got brushed aside until I could find help or come up with a better idea. Months later, I was approached by Mojo and the others for that whole medievalMPmayhem.com thing. I saw that as a great opportunity. Their vision was the same, they had the site already half done, and the team was good it seemed. So I threw my lot in with them and tried to rally the other admins and get everybody organized. Then Mojo died. But he was soon resurrected and everybody went looking for eggs some bunny had mischievously hidden in the area. Well, needless to say, that really took the fire out of an already waning site. And again, my plans were dashed.

And so, I became discouraged. I had been told by many people how a whole bunch of times this had all been attempted before and how it had failed time and time again and I was starting to see exactly why it had failed all those times. The plans were too grand, the goals and methodology too complicated, and the people behind it were not willing to do what was necessary. But I had some things going for me the others did not. Dogged determination, the ability to adapt my vision to what would work, and the ability to put into place a common sense approach to overcome obstacles in light of lessons learned through experience.

And this brings me to my most recent endeavour. I decided that the only foundation that would work was one that had already been laid and reinforced countless times. Trying to emulate it elsewhere was futile. So I thought about it and figured out a way to make that foundation work for me. The foundation I speak of is the inter-personal arrangement the multiplayer community already has. We have clans, but beyond that, there have been for many years channels of communication that link these clans to one another. The community already exists, so it would be futile to try to create another one. Like-minded clans already know one another, and already have systems in place to share their gaming experience. We just need to use those more effectively. It is simply a matter of giving this arrangement a much more efficient and effective infrastructure.

So you may wonder why go through this whole bother in the first place? The answer is very simple and I would very much appreciate it if you would read this and truly try to understand why. A game in and of itself is enjoyable. Total War is fun, otherwise we wouldn't be playing it. But why are we in clans? Quite simply it is because it takes the fun we would have otherwise, and heightens it through a bit of organization to something that becomes a VERY different experience than playing solo in the lobbies could ever be (so, many of us stick around for the clan experience, not just the game itself). Now the way in which the clan experience does this is it brings together like-minded individuals who have similar preferences when it comes to how they choose to spend their Total War hours. These people come together and work as a unit. When they work as a unit it allows a great many things to become possible: long-term friendships; competitive tournament team-play on a scale and intensity that would be IMPOSSIBLE without the clan element; and just simply having an infrastructure in place to support what we heavy-duty gamers want and desire.

But that is already in place. What I seek is to take all of things that heighten the solo MP experience to the clan experience, and extend them to the clan experience, so that it can be heightened to a level which has, quite frankly, never been realized.
The potential has always been there, it was one of the first things I experienced when I first joined Arcani. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, but everyone was so fragmented. Every clan had fun within itself with say 5-20 active on the fields and 10-40 active on the forums. To bridge the gaps between the like-minded clans would create a network of hundreds of like-minded individuals. A great glorious day was within reach, but nobody was really pushing for it. I thought, how glorious would it be to realize what was so easy to do. The reason I say it would be easy is because TW has a way of bringing from out the shadows a superior class of gamer (in regards to maturity and dedication). So, with so fine a breed of gamer hounding the vicinity, all we would need to do would be to build something that would work WITH the nature of the beast and all would sort itself out. The project would take on a life all of its own and we would just need to keep pace.

So this brings me to the details. I say work WITH the nature of the beast because, one thing I have found is you cannot expect people to work too hard when it comes to telling them how to have their fun. You have to lay it at their feet in a place they would go regardless of whether or not you laid it there to begin with. You need to make it as simple and easy as possible. If you don't, it will fail, as every other endeavour has and will continue to do. So I chose to make it happen without creating a single thing that did not already exist. The basic tools of this endeavour would be ventrilo, x-fire, msn, and forums.

Also, I did not want to bring together everybody, only those that shared the mind-set the other Arcani and I have: mature, laid-back, and fun. We seek nothing more than good friends, good games, comradery, and good-humoured competition. So, those that should take part in this communal element should be those that share our ideals. My idea had morphed over time and was no longer meant to be a grand all-encompassing community hub, but rather, a nice lounge in the corner, where like-minded individuals could come and share their TW experience....and just have barrels of fun!!

So I took the first steps. I decided to use a small control group and make it happen with them before we, as a group, would take the whole thing mainstream. If the system would work with the control group, it would work with the whole kit-and-kaboodle (or whatever the spelling is there ). We would take the whole, and shrink it as far as possible while still maintaining all the properties of the whole. Once it was working and running, it would just be a matter of adding others to it, as the system would already be in place. I decided to pick 2-5 clans that were of like-mind to Arcani and make it happen with them first. Those clans are: the Warriors of Crom, the GrailKnights, the Dragons, the 4Horsemen, and the Brethren (BRO). As soon as the system was in place we could move to add other clans and just sit back and watch it grow.

So I maintained embassies with those clans as a priority in my diplomatic pursuits and made sure everyone was after the same thing in their clan experience and that I hadn't chosen the wrong group of guys. I hadn't. All expressed excitement, as everyone understood how easy it would be to take advantage of the tools I was proposing....and also how much enjoyment could be derived from such simple steps. So now we have a home (the GrailKnights rallied together and arranged the forum, ventrilo server, and x-fire guild) and we all continue our efforts as we always have. Expansion will be nice, but penetration into each clan's membership is vital. So the work is ongoing, but the point we have reached thus far is, in and of itself, hugely satisfying and thoroughly enjoyable.


The Things Which Will Not Work in Our Arrangement:


1) Politics: We do not join clans to manage ourselves as individual units within the clan. We do not need clans for that. We join clans because we want to share, and bring down barriers. So this whole pursuit here should continue with that. Just as clans bridge the individuals, so too should this pursuit bridge those clans. As such, we must be sure not to call this an Alliance, or bring inter-clan politics of any nature into it. Rivalries and disputes are to be tended to by the individual clans themselves. This pursuit is as a lounge, where we come to have fun, not to break into groups and discuss terms over rivalries.

2) An Agenda: There can be no agenda here. We need this to be as simple as possible. We are not out to reshape the TW multiplayer circuit. We just want to lay down things that people can use in their day-to-day gaming in the same spirit that the clan experience gives them options with their individual game-play.

3) Complexity: People are lazy. And in their leisure time, the lazy-factor increases exponentially. Everything we put down in regards to tools and options given to the clans and the clan's membership must be easy and straightforward. It must be as simple a thing as adding people on msn from a pre-typed list; an extra ventrilo login address saved into ventrilo; having game-names in the lobbies start with special characters that denote they are on of "our's", etc etc.

4) Centralization: This is the pursuit of no one clan, and no one man. This will only work if it is given as tools and options to people universally (within the clans that are members). All are equals, and as there should, ideally, never be any decisions to make as it is all a big passive arrangement, the whole governance thing shouldn't become an issue.

5) Active content: This must be something that exists passively in the background, to be used when people want to, and not have it thrust at them.

6) A COMPLETE lack of governance: While the arrangement of the goals and methodology should minimize the need for governance, man is by nature a wild and crazy guy. So there will be some need for stability. If there is no stability, the whole thing will go to hell and be a big waste of time. But this must be as minimal as possible, and it needs to be as decentralized as possible to avoid useless issues.



~LoneSoldier of the Arcani~

[Armatus]

This is quite a long read for the subject matter... it could have probably been condensed to about a paragraph and still got the point across. Good luck with what ever it is your trying to do... I read the whole thing, and I agree with making things smooth and accessible, but other than that this post was so long winded I'm not sure if I'm missing something else or not... :hmmm:

[gurpreetsingh]

this whole thing was actually a whole bunch of posts I made in a couple different places all copy-pasted into one.

I added a blurb preceding the whole thing that says

"Before you go on, if you dont want to read the whole thing, the only thing you need to read is the "Mission Statement." And if you are not in a clan no matter, as a Multiplayer if you meet the requirements of maturity (not age just attitude) then you fit the bill. "

so should fix that thanks for the heads up tho.

[Armatus]

I know, but since I've always been involved in multiplayer I had to take the time to read it as I don't see posts like this on TWC all that often.

But again hope you find what you're looking for from us there's plenty of members here.

[_TubbZ_]

Err one thing you go on to mention lazyness in peeps leisure time but expect them to read all that!!! I agree with your aim, i personally gave up with MTW2 and went back to good old rome. It was not due to the lag or the lack of balenced gameplay but more the fact when i was in the rome lobby people seemed to speak more and it always seemed to have a better atmosphere.

Although i personally thing piggy backing a successful site (like this one, looks cleaner than the Org IMO, no offence to the org ofc...) would provide a stronger starting platform as the last specific mp site failed to me it was yet another forum to visit. After a while i just cba to visit it. It was called medievalmpmayhem right?

so best of luck to you

Tubbz...

[Armatus]

Personally I think TWC has a wealth of un-used potential for the multiplayer community. Right now we have plenty of space good moderation not only that but in the kingdoms sub forum several of us are playing multiplayer campaigns. The problem I see is that everyone wants to leave the big sites and form there own little redundant forums which ultimately serve as TubbZ somewhat said the same purpose but make one more forum to visit.

If you want to organize MP do it here. If you want to build a clan site fine that's a totally different aspect, but so far hardly any clans are representing themselves on TWC and that's a shame in my opinion.

[gurpreetsingh]

well the thing is, its not really an all-inclusive MP community. We dont want EVERY single TW multiplayer on there. We have a group of great friends that has grown over the years. We like to have fun and be laid back and enjoy TW multiplayer. Previously we had no central ground, now we do.

As for medievalmpmayhem, that was something I was a part of, and something I learned from. It was too grand a scale. What we have now has ALREADY succeeded. We have our core of friends that are all very focussed on TW in their gameplay hours.

Now, when I say we dont want EVERYONE on TW multiplayer on there, thats because we have a ventrilo server we use when we have coordinated games and such (or just during peak hours when u know ppl will be on there), and as you are all well-aware....the internet has a way of bringing the buffoons from around the world right into your living room in a very special way

But we will not exclude anyone who is of "like-mind" i.e. mature-attitude and laid back and whatnot. Our group of TW multiplayer friends, mostly met through clans and such things but not exclusively, has steadily expanded over the years.

My posting here was an invite to the many worthy members of the TWC that either actively enjoy TW MP, or would like to enjoy TW MP with a vibrant sector of the community. It is essentially an ever-out-stretched hand welcoming those that would take it to join our vibrant group of friends as a new acquaintance.....soon to be an old friend.

Edit: It should be noted we coordinate between different mods/TW games and we use the forums/msn messenger/ventrilo voice comm/x-fire as mediums through which we maintain the bonds that unite us

Edit2: @ Tubbz ur sig is pretty wild, did u design that urself and is that from terminator?