Orleron wrote:I've been trying to get into a discussion about this issue for a while now, so this looks like a good opportunity.
When I started this organization, I knew it would be hard. I knew it would be tough to get standardized systems, mainly, and to standardize the roleplay and culture a bit. Turns out that part was not as hard as I expected, though it wasn't easy and is still a bit of an issue even today. What turned out to be HARDER was dealing with human laziness and human nature, coupled with real life.
CoPaP is still a great idea and I still think it's not going to go away any time soon. The problem is that most worlds lack ambition. Some lack talent. Others just plain old don't care, and some of the rest are just leaching.
I'll explain. Out of every 10 or so worlds that joins as a World In Progress, maybe one will actually link up. Even those that link often do not have the ability to figure out VaultSTER enough to get a reliable link going.... so they futz around with the thing indefinitely. Sometimes that may be on purpose because after being here a while they become afraid to link.
Most other worlds just fade away. People do not understand just how tough it is to start and run a PW. So they do it and they eventually drop it. That happens to most worlds that join us. They have great visions, but no followthrough. Others actually get their world running, but instead of linking they insist on "finishing" the world, which of course never happens because a world can never actually be "finished".
Last post on this thread was a month ago, so I guess I've been thinking about this for the last month, and in a slightly different context for longer than that. It lept into my head at work today.
I see from a lot of worlds, "We'll be up when we have it all !perfect!". It seems to be a common vein running, perhaps because the worlds have such excellent competition. But Avlis, one of the lead CoPaP worlds, runs quite a bit against this philosophy. What did Avlis do when the Wildspace server ended up under thier jurisdiction? Put it up - within a week, no less - to get people thinking about it and working on it.
I think these kinds of early "come-look-see" launches get people enthusiastic about things, and they often sign up, join the team, and do some work. If your world grows up in an isolated ivory tower, you never get this kind of hop-on-board attention.
I started thinking today that maybe new worlds have too much freedom. They have 15 different things to consider and 30 different decisions to make, and they never wrap them up all into a usable form. New worlds should perhaps be given full freedom in a wide range of areas... storyline, world content, monsters, graphical hacks, perhaps races, and so forth. But perhaps CoPaP should retain authority over scripts, the persistance engines, and so forth - the technical areas.
This common base would let worlds link easier, and it would also let new worlds focus on story, content, and DMs and relax on the technical details where staff is hard to come by. It would aid early launches and links, and help young worlds get traction on the road to success.
And after a server has been up 1 year and has at least 1 link to the CoPaP universe? All of these restrictions go away. After you've made it this far, you can do whatever you want within the limits of the current copap charter. Forcing new worlds to wear training wheels for a while may seem a bit harsh, but it would help people get started with what you really need (space and DMs)... and if you can't deal with a year wait to put in your custom shiaz, you didn't really have the long term outlook to put up a server anyway.
Human nature would be a less onerous burden if you encouraged (forced, really) people not to bite off more they can chew. Give them what they need to start, encourage them to get started, and once they *are* started, they can reach for the stars. But until that day, there should be a strong emphasis on the basics.
It seems that CoPaP gives a lot but asks very little of new worlds. Maybe it's time to ask for something, even if that something is just a limited scope until your world is really moving.
Now I'll have to get in game and see if I can find out more information about this Tairis link ~grins~
