We recieved this today from Darren "Dai-Galean" Scott, to be posted before the official site. Lots of cool stuff, check this out: Large Player Structures - Organisations. This short article will try to deal with many of the remaining issues of facilitating large groups and crowds in Anarchy Online. It is not an article filled to the brim with promises of features-to-come (there will be some of course J), but is more about where we are heading in the game with this issue. As you may have noticed during the past months, the organisation code has been rewritten. It was bug-riddled and quite bad when we launched, but is now ship-shape. We have added more functionality - such as voting. We have also finished implementation of a feature called Organisation advantages. We haven’t enabled these features yet, as we want them to enter the game in a more meaningful context. (Let me tell you more about that later.) Let’s begin with the following issues: The vision behind the large organisations on Rubi-Ka Attaching player-run organisations to story-defined organisations. Organisation Headquarters. The vision behind the large organisations on Rubi-Ka. There are many reasons why we need to support the larger organisations on Rubi-Ka. These are the important ones: It allows people to band together in a bigger structure, sharing goals, values, deciding on matters and helping each other - in short, being social. It gives people a sense of identity. You are no longer alone. It is an easy way for Funcom to measure what people are interested in - how many players join the big guilds, focused on doing particular activities? It is a good way to enter a communication, focused on story, with players. It should help people find a “safe” place and a foundation from which to grow, find friends and learn the game. As you can see from the list above, the organisations shall fulfil many goals for the game. We have “in-game” support for some of these, but not all. Today many player-run organisations have homepages with rules, lists of members, goals and so on. It is not feasible to support all aspects of running organisations as in-game features, as many have suggested. Making HTML pages is a lot simpler than anything we could support in-game. There are still many features we would like to support, and even some types of behaviour we would like to encourage. First off: Attaching Player-Run Organisations to story-defined ones. Both Omni-Tek and the clans have their own structures. Let me very briefly list them. First off, Omni-Tek. There are several Departments defined on the Omni-Tek side: Departments Omni-AF (Omni-Tek Armed Forces) Omni-Trans (Omni-Tek Transportation and Shipping) Omni-Pol (The Omni-Tek Police department / Military department.) Omni-InternOps (Omni-Tek Internal Operations) Omni-Med (Omni-Tek Medical) Omni-Sci (Omni-Tek Scientific Research and Development)] Omni-Engineering (Omni-Tek Engineering and Manufacturing) Omni-Production (Omni-Tek Production and Processing) Omni-Com (Communication, Grid, Whompas...) Omni-Reform (Omni-Tek Public Relations and Reformation) Omni-Admin (Omni-Tek Adminstrative Services) There are also several clans on the rebel side, defined by the story, so far: The Clans Terra Firma (Low-key, political-party type clan) The Knights (Brash, high-impact clan for the retro-romantics, led by Lord Galahad (a.k.a. Efren Christe)) The Sentinels (Aggressive militant clan/terrorist organisation, led by Simon Silverstone) Vanguard (A large and moderate clan with business interests across Rubi-Ka.) New Dawn (New Dawn is the largest, and most liberal, of the clans.) Gaia (The Sisters of Gaia want to create a New Eden on the other side of the planet, a peaceful and serene "Garden of the Goddess.") Eco Warriors (Voted "Least Likely to Succeed" in annual clan-gatherings, the Eco Warriors are despised by most for their militant stance on conservationist and environmentalist issues.) PFL (The Popular Front for the Liberation of Rubi-Ka. Aggressive military organisation.) On your travels across Rubi-Ka, you have probably met people whose organisations are named something like the organisational names listed above. They have, so far, not been officially “endorsed” by our Events Team. They simply name their organisations the same, and there is nothing wrong with that. The only problem is: it leaves us in a fix on how to give everyone the equal opportunity to attach themselves to the story-focused organisations without forcefully changing names or identities. How to organise this in a fashion that steps on the least amount of toes, is the goal of this article. There are several ways to resolve this issue, and I would like your feedback on which method is the best. Let me outline the alternatives: Creating two new structures on the Clan and OT sides. They might be called conclave on the Clan side and company on the OT side. These would then be the "story" organisations proper. The leaders of the various organisations would then apply to align their organisations with these structures. a. We would change no names. This means you could find a company called Omni-Med and a department/faction called Omni-Med. b. No one would get pissed off, because Funcom changed the name of their organisations, but it could be confusing for new players. c. Individual players cannot become members of the conclaves or companies, only organisations. Forcefully taking back the appropriate story names - making stronger checks on names when people make new organisations. Removing the players’ ability to have "Departments" on the Omni-Tek side - assign these as the "story level" of the Omni-Tek structures. Run the structures with specially selected players / Funcom employees. d. This would cause a lot of name-changing and thrashing about in the community. e. Individual players can be members of the story orgs. f. It would give people an equal opportunity to invest their time in story-endorsed organisations, but would make a lot of people angry as their organisation names are changed. Endorsing the existing story-named organisations, let people keep their names on a first-come-first-serve basis. Let players have complete control on leadership / elections etc., but set a "story-org" standard which these player orgs would have to follow or face the possibility of having their names changed. (Or whatever.) g. This would mean that many in the existing organisations would be happy, because they get to keep their organisations more or less intact and also keep them with an increased status. h. Other people not so quick on the trigger would respond negatively, because they never got the chance to align themselves with / make story organisations. Totally ignore the in-game structure and run the story organisations as something happening on the side on the web etc. i. Boring. j. Boring. k. Boring. OK! Please voice your opinions in the matter. I must admit that I find this quite difficult… so if you have completely new ideas of how to deal with this issue, bring them to the table! The key question is: What does it mean to be part of the story-endorsed structures? First off, it would increase the likelihood of being forced into certain types of behaviour. You might have to have an open recruitment policy, or maybe the total opposite. Omni-Tek and the Clans (a.k.a. Funcom) would have more to say on how you run things - maybe running elections on the Clan side, or not on the Omni-Tek side. The likelihood of participating in events would most likely increase - it is not a promise, though. We have many other reasons for running events, besides the storyline! We would expect more exemplary individual behaviour too. A more friendly, sharing nature - more focus on Role-Playing than power-levelling etc. I am mentioning mostly the "negative" aspects here, to make sure people will appreciate Funcom’s need to "structure" the official organisations - why else would they be official? If you have any ideas for other perks and responsibilities - please share! We are listening! Organisation Headquarters. We have promised to, and are in the process of implementing organisation headquarters. For the time being, they will have to be located in the cities around the world. We have some ideas to share with you in this matter. The normal Org. Headquarters (OHQ) will be situated in certain entrances in the cities. There will be several entrances, but many organisations will have to share. The OHQ will contain some indoors and some outdoors areas, all in one playfield. There will, for the time being, only be one standard of OHQ per side. Possibilities of upgrades are being considered. The OHQs will contain an option to upload to the Grid, but not to download. The OHQ will be more or less like an org. apartment - a place to gather and talk shop without other people barging in, as if you hold your org. meetings in a backyard / high-rise. It will have the option to apply fixtures / furniture - and more than ten units. To us these features are more or less a pilot project - a prototype of other things we would like to see. I think it is important that the OHQ has a purpose to many types of players, and I admit that for the pure power-player the OHQ lacks much purpose right now. We have thought of many possibilities, but would like to hear your suggestions also. I cannot promise any dates, but we will not launch this system until it works well! As you saw with the Over-Equipping changes - the delivery date most likely lies some months into the future. Well, that’s it for now. See you all soon on Rubi-Ka… Yours, Gaute Godager