Eternity RPC Board
My 2 cents / State of the nation and how we got here:
Ok. Here's my humble opinion about the state of things. The way I see it, we have two major problems that have led to the current situation and I think they need to be addressed if we don't want Eternity to go the way of the Dodo.
1) Imperial Peace By Committee / Enforced Status Quo / Insularity.
This one's a biggie and prolly the biggest killer of activity IMO. Long story short, we have a serious issue with runaway insularity here. No one can start major alliances, because no one would join them and some would try to kill said alliances before they even had a chance to take off. This leads to a situation where if anyone starts a war, it'll probably be one-sided and therefore pointless, due to countries ganging up on their momentary foe, which has no allies to call in because there are no alliances around (how many times has the topic of major, even world wars, been brought up, only to end in the conclusion that the outcome would be predictable and inevitable?). This also kills off diplo RP's, since they become as pointless as the wars. To support my theory, I would like to point out that activity died town following a pattern, until lately all that was left, were the occasional newspaper post, sports competitions and stuff like Voice of Siora, because anything else would lead nowhere due to the afore mentioned reasons. To put it more simply, we have an IC situation where a status quo is strictly enforced, leading to everything always staying the same and nothing ever happening.
My proposed solution: Kill this whole situation off. Kill off insularity/regionalism and get some major, intercontinental alliances going. Have the superpowers start alliances and compete with eachother.
2) Lack of a thing that is our theme
Problem 2 is even worse than problem 1. If we look at all the "big" RP groups on NS, they all have a theme going and it makes each of these groups unique and interesting. The Cornellian Empire, for example, has a lot of political intrigue relating to Game of Thrones-ish politics, bacwards governments and a somewhat 3rd world-ish feel. They also have that thing with the matriarchies/feminazis going around. If you can remember, back in Oracia, we also had a "thing": We had these big military/political blocks that were constantly at eachother's throats and were constantly scheming, arranging proxy wars and one-upping eachother. It gave everything a Cold War-esque feel which made our world distinct and created lots of RP possibilities. In Eternity, what we have is an enforced status quo and insularity which prevents anything from ever happening (and if it does, people from other "islands" can't get involved because they get ganged up on). We had a BIG chance to do something interesting when the Mandates showed up, but due to the above problems, we killed them (just like the TA was killed earlier on). Everyone who participated in that situation is guilty of this, myself included. What we should have done, was jump on the bandwagon, instead of ganging up on them. If we allowed them to spread and got a few more prominent dystopian states that joined MANINTERN, we could have ended up with a situation where we had a split between the so-called "free world" (with a bunch of ideological/pragmatic alliances of its own, which do not necessarily see eye to eye) and the other half of the world being a bunch of Orwellian, 1984-esque dystopian states powerful enough to rival the rest. We could have been the "dystopian" group on NS-MT and this could have been our thing that set us apart. Still can, if the Mandates are still around.
Proposed solution: If the Mandates are still around, we need to help them grow, grow, grow. Any recruitment ads/campaigns should mention them and we should try to get a few more dystopian states to spawn. We could/should advertise ourselves as the community with the Big Brother/Orwellian theme and this has the potential to attract lots of new members.
Problem 1 can be fixed by addressing Problem 2. Our biggest issue is the lack of a theme, a thing that sets us apart, something that makes our community stand out. The whole "we've been around for x amount of time and we have y number of active members" thing doesn't make us stand out. When people click on the Eternity page on NS, that is the first thing they see and a lot of people will click away without bothering to check any of the deep lore and detail that we have going on here. To put it plainly, we have a gem wrapped in toilet paper for packaging and we also lack a theme that would give us stuff to do with that gem. This needs to change.
Ok. Here's my humble opinion about the state of things. The way I see it, we have two major problems that have led to the current situation and I think they need to be addressed if we don't want Eternity to go the way of the Dodo.
1) Imperial Peace By Committee / Enforced Status Quo / Insularity.
This one's a biggie and prolly the biggest killer of activity IMO. Long story short, we have a serious issue with runaway insularity here. No one can start major alliances, because no one would join them and some would try to kill said alliances before they even had a chance to take off. This leads to a situation where if anyone starts a war, it'll probably be one-sided and therefore pointless, due to countries ganging up on their momentary foe, which has no allies to call in because there are no alliances around (how many times has the topic of major, even world wars, been brought up, only to end in the conclusion that the outcome would be predictable and inevitable?). This also kills off diplo RP's, since they become as pointless as the wars. To support my theory, I would like to point out that activity died town following a pattern, until lately all that was left, were the occasional newspaper post, sports competitions and stuff like Voice of Siora, because anything else would lead nowhere due to the afore mentioned reasons. To put it more simply, we have an IC situation where a status quo is strictly enforced, leading to everything always staying the same and nothing ever happening.
My proposed solution: Kill this whole situation off. Kill off insularity/regionalism and get some major, intercontinental alliances going. Have the superpowers start alliances and compete with eachother.
2) Lack of a thing that is our theme
Problem 2 is even worse than problem 1. If we look at all the "big" RP groups on NS, they all have a theme going and it makes each of these groups unique and interesting. The Cornellian Empire, for example, has a lot of political intrigue relating to Game of Thrones-ish politics, bacwards governments and a somewhat 3rd world-ish feel. They also have that thing with the matriarchies/feminazis going around. If you can remember, back in Oracia, we also had a "thing": We had these big military/political blocks that were constantly at eachother's throats and were constantly scheming, arranging proxy wars and one-upping eachother. It gave everything a Cold War-esque feel which made our world distinct and created lots of RP possibilities. In Eternity, what we have is an enforced status quo and insularity which prevents anything from ever happening (and if it does, people from other "islands" can't get involved because they get ganged up on). We had a BIG chance to do something interesting when the Mandates showed up, but due to the above problems, we killed them (just like the TA was killed earlier on). Everyone who participated in that situation is guilty of this, myself included. What we should have done, was jump on the bandwagon, instead of ganging up on them. If we allowed them to spread and got a few more prominent dystopian states that joined MANINTERN, we could have ended up with a situation where we had a split between the so-called "free world" (with a bunch of ideological/pragmatic alliances of its own, which do not necessarily see eye to eye) and the other half of the world being a bunch of Orwellian, 1984-esque dystopian states powerful enough to rival the rest. We could have been the "dystopian" group on NS-MT and this could have been our thing that set us apart. Still can, if the Mandates are still around.
Proposed solution: If the Mandates are still around, we need to help them grow, grow, grow. Any recruitment ads/campaigns should mention them and we should try to get a few more dystopian states to spawn. We could/should advertise ourselves as the community with the Big Brother/Orwellian theme and this has the potential to attract lots of new members.
Problem 1 can be fixed by addressing Problem 2. Our biggest issue is the lack of a theme, a thing that sets us apart, something that makes our community stand out. The whole "we've been around for x amount of time and we have y number of active members" thing doesn't make us stand out. When people click on the Eternity page on NS, that is the first thing they see and a lot of people will click away without bothering to check any of the deep lore and detail that we have going on here. To put it plainly, we have a gem wrapped in toilet paper for packaging and we also lack a theme that would give us stuff to do with that gem. This needs to change.