Calling all real TW Players and STAFF

[WuTang420]

hi all!

ill keep it short: i would very much like a place to practice my WB without having to wait for enough ppl in wbduel, or waiting to get picked. i like to practice wb in pubs 2-10 or w\e the highest # is, the only problen there is i always get lancs and spiders trying to spawn\stray.

so i suggest a WB pub. a dueling map, where wbs can come fight with ONLY wbs but with the pub type settings ( 36 ppl, priv freqs, ect.)

i know id spend alot of time there and probly have quite a bit of fun, i think alot of other ppl would too.

[WuTang420]

-
-more events!
-gimmik bots with minigames cycling trough pubs

the gimmik bot sounds awesome!

do you mean crazy games? like, split it into 4 freqs for a 5 min game or something? or prize thors or.......damn possibilitys are endless, great idea

[RoDNeY]

hold events in publics, some people that play in pubs dont even mind the Adverts when they go over the zone, i know that when i was a pubber i didnt even know there were other arenas, hold some events in a pub or something cuz then there u have 36 ppl then u can just chain events off of it into other arenas like some hosts do. Just dont do it in the purepubs.

[MirrorriM]

I just want to say one thing. Ive read the majority of posts and there are a lot of cool ideas about events to host. I also see a lot of events requested that are hosted..maybe these are mostly euros talking? Im in US so I wouldnt know what is hosted during your hours.

Anyways, about new things being done with events. From my experience, everytime I try to change or spice up an event, a lot of players complain. They want "their" game, they want the "old" rules. They dont understand that an ER can make up different rules to the same game. So it is hard to try to be creative when you have 10 people PMing you to play the "right" way.

But definitely there are some cool ideas I wanna try out in hosting. Thanks for all the great ideas, I'll try to be a better ER!

Mirror <ER>

[Barton]

I will host TWLDM... if staff allows me

[RoDNeY]

hi all!

ill keep it short: i would very much like a place to practice my WB without having to wait for enough ppl in wbduel, or waiting to get picked. i like to practice wb in pubs 2-10 or w\e the highest # is, the only problen there is i always get lancs and spiders trying to spawn\stray.

so i suggest a WB pub. a dueling map, where wbs can come fight with ONLY wbs but with the pub type settings ( 36 ppl, priv freqs, ect.)

i know id spend alot of time there and probly have quite a bit of fun, i think alot of other ppl would too.

i agree, i know the idea was put out before, just like how Javs have ?go javs give them ?go wb or something, its been out there before now is just the time to do it

[Jason]

DISCLAIMER: i apologize for the length of this post, but i had a lot to say and i wasn't about to leave anything out. if you're one of those people with a short attention span who can't manage to read all the way through a long post, please just skip over all this and don't bother to comment. if you do read through all of this, i would greatly appreciate your feedback.



i couldn't agree more with genes. he's hit the nail on the head. it doesn't matter how many new games you come up with or how many events are hosted per week. it doesn't matter how active your staff members are or how open you are to fresh ideas.

the biggest problem in the zone right now is that there's a serious lack of personality within the staff as a collective whole, a detachment of sorts, and that detachment trickles down into the playerbase making for a lackluster community.

i know that i, personally, hardly ever go to hosted events anymore. first of all, ads are key. ads are your hook. they need to grab attention and spark some interest/excitement in the event that's being hosted. i realize not everyone is going to be able to write catchy ads, but i must say that at least 75% of the ads i see these days are at best unimaginative and at worst downright stupid. a lot of them are full of inside jokes between some staff member i don't know and some other player i don't know. and many are something like "let's play javs ?go javs - so and so" which used to be okay back in the day. a simple, direct ad like that was fine back when we didn't have soooo many subarenas and the playerbase was smaller and more tight-knit. a guy like napalm sunrise i could say something like that and everyone knew about the arena already, and you knew going into it that it was going to be fun. remember though, there was personality back then.

moving beyond the ads, genes is also on the money regarding the absurd overuse of bots. yes, they make life easier, but easier is not always better. so many games are done by :twbot:!go <arena>, :twbot:!load <module>, :twbot:!start and then the host just sits back and says two words for the rest of the game. back in the days of manual hosting, hosts had to pay attention to the entire game, and as a result, there was more interaction between host and player. something as simple as having a host that routinely tosses up a few *arena messages commenting on the action in the game, something like that goes a long way.

and now onto the ZHs/ERs/Mods themselves, this is something that's really hard to fix because your choices as to who to recruit as staff members are limited. that being said, there are some really boring/silly/asshole people holding staff positions right now. a staffer's number one job, and this goes before performing the tasks required of them, is to maintain good public relations. they are the face of the zone. they have direct interaction with joe-newbie on a day-to-day basis. let me run through a couple of hypothetical scenarios.

first we have the boring staffer:

joe-newbie> hey can you host such and such event?
staffer> maybe
joe-newbie> it'd be lots of fun and lots of people really like it!
staffer> okay
staffer> i'll think about it
joe-newbie> okay thanks!

(and then lets say the staffer actually decides to host the event)

joe-newbie wants such and such event ?go wherever - staffer

(and then the staffer proceeds to barely say two words all game long)

honestly, you can practically hear the staffer yawning repeatedly throughout the entire process. that kind of attitude puts people off. we have a lot of younger (relatively speaking) kids playing these days and kids need in your face pizzazz to hold their attention and to keep them coming back for more.

second we have the silly staffer:

joe-newbie> hey i have a question about such and such
staffer> okay let me help you! kekekekeke ^__^ P~ ::squeak snort cookie:: and whatever other randomness or random emoticon you can think of
joe-newbie> uhhh so my question is _________

it's okay to be enthusiastic. it's okay to be a little goofy some of the time. being completely over the top oddball silly all of the time puts people off. being completely over the top oddball silly all of the time shows a lack of depth in terms of personality which goes back to the original issue at hand.

finally we have the asshole staffer:

joe-newbie> hey can i get in the game?
staffer> nope already started
joe-newbie> but it hasn't been going long and i just want to play
staffer> too bad already started
joe-newbie> could you maybe host it again after this one?
staffer> listen newbie i'm not your slave
staffer> go back to pub

this kind of thing happens more often than i'm willing to bet any staffer wants to admit. we all have our bad days and sometimes a persistent newbie can certainly get annoying. this goes back to the public relations concept, though. being an asshole puts people off. some staffer is an asshole to some player, and then the next time that staffer hosts an event that player doesn't come to play. the more people the staffer is an asshole to, the fewer people are coming to play in events hosted by that staffer. in a worst case scenario that player has friends and he/she tells them to steer clear of events hosted by that staffer.

in summation: i realize everything i've said isn't the kind of problem that can be attacked directly. it's more of an abstract issue, and it will take a lot of work and effort to affect the amount of change we need to bring this zone back to what it used to be. and what it used to be was one hell of a lot of fun because of the fun and interesting people that kept things going behind the scenes.

[Melo]

Hmm Jason I fully disagree with you concerning the boring and the silly staffer. They both do the job they are asked for... Only thing is boring staffers should be mod and never ER! I dont see how someone doing squeak squeak and smiles makes the staff look silly.... its just funny to see period.

On my part, Ive asked SOOOOO many times for people to contact me if they have a new idea or complaints concerning how events work in TW! I had about no one contacting me and yet everyone says there is a need for improvement in TW in that aspect of the zone! Please come see me, Im not funky enough to make it all cool!

[gran guerrero]

you just smell.


but i like it when jacklyn does those emoticons...well she's the only one that makes it look good. i dont like to see pl doing it...thats just weird...

[Kolar]

Jason is right on most things. ERs need to make their events more livly and fun but I don't think moving back to manual commands or removing moduels on the bots is the answer. Even though hosting and advertising that fact would be kinda cool. We just need to find some good people and move the right people around. I never wanted to be a ER because you could group me into the boring catagory. The 'silly' staffers need to be ZHs or Moderators, not ERs or Smod/Sysop imo. I can see these personailities in a lot of staffers, the truth is we can't get rid of them because they are useful and don't abuse so the best idea is to shift them around to where they best work and help the zone.

It doesn't boil down to recruitment or anything specific. A lot of these problems are caused by the community and where it has gone in the past few years. I think we've focused on efficency and productivity for a while now.. now that TWL is rolling and hopefully won't take a lot out of us we can begin to focus on publics, new events, new ZH/ER training.

[Golden_Aim]

i like dsb pub way more than tw's mostly because it's more interesting and motivating to play good.. should set up a bot which show stats after every played game in pub then the best 3 from each freq would get prized with shield 30sec super or something like that .. id also like to see those super events, like zombies with 100 players and ww3 with 200 players like old days

[deathking]

i think it would be fun to try to get more pubbers into hosted events as well as leagues by offering them more guides and such

also sb league would be fun =)

also, there are alota different things to host in maps, the hosts need to be creative, and think of something more than just regular hunt and dm (not that they arent fun)

[PrOnEsSim]

So many long posts.. so little time

How about this one weekend(includes saturday and SUNDAY) were staff would host every hour, like a marathon of events! something like that..yep

[Doc Flabby]

hi all!

ill keep it short: i would very much like a place to practice my WB without having to wait for enough ppl in wbduel, or waiting to get picked. i like to practice wb in pubs 2-10 or w\e the highest # is, the only problen there is i always get lancs and spiders trying to spawn\stray.

so i suggest a WB pub. a dueling map, where wbs can come fight with ONLY wbs but with the pub type settings ( 36 ppl, priv freqs, ect.)

i know id spend alot of time there and probly have quite a bit of fun, i think alot of other ppl would too.

There already is a map solely for warbirds.

?go wbs

[Jeenyuss]

I really miss the weekly ww3