2012-12-24, 02:57 AM
As a former member of the MWLB, I like the idea of the council, hell I liked the idea of the MWLB. Doing something to help the community of a game you enjoy playing is always a fine ambition. I just don't see it succeeding sadly. I've often thought Nexon could have done a lot more with the MWLB if they'd done a better job of things, but I don't think a community driven group is going to work out any better than that experience did. I liked the people they chose for the program, I liked the GMs who worked with the program, but in the end it always fell short of where it needed to be in order to be successful.
Not that there weren't some people who tried very hard to make it successful, but there was a rather high drop rate of people involved amongst the few chosen to help, without even going into the other problems that plagued the program. I think if you try to add just a few people and make it work, it will fail rather quickly. Even highly dedicated people can't always find the time to split between the game and real life, let alone a significant time sink like this would be. I feel like unless you get a solid group of people on each server who can all take on some of the burdens that it would entail, it has little to no chance of succeeding. And even with a group like that, there will still be times when some servers would be understaffed just due to the way life works out.
So do you add more people or allow people to transfer servers? Do you dedicate more resources to the larger servers? Then there's issues with larger groups of people, like how do you all stay on the same page when you may have very differing viewpoints? What if you don't present a unified front, how long will it take for the community to take sides? Then there's the issues further down the line after the program has been working for a while. For example, how do you decide who should and shouldn't remain in the program? How can you keep people motivated after the initial starting period?
There's a lot of issues with programs like this (Takebacker mentioned a few more to consider too), and while the MWLB may have helped Nexon answer some of the questions I posed, there are many more that are unknown, simply because you can't predict how things will turn out. I'm not saying all this to dissuade you from your goals, I'm merely suggesting a handful of things that occurred to me as I looked into the idea and thought of my own past experiences.
Still, I like the thought of a community cleaning up their own games, even now. And perhaps Nexon will embrace the idea, if only for the good PR they might be able to get out of it. XP So in spite of my doubts, I wish you well and I'll throw my support in as well if you would like it. Not sure what sort of proof you might like, but I suppose that's probably best left to PMs or emails.
Not that there weren't some people who tried very hard to make it successful, but there was a rather high drop rate of people involved amongst the few chosen to help, without even going into the other problems that plagued the program. I think if you try to add just a few people and make it work, it will fail rather quickly. Even highly dedicated people can't always find the time to split between the game and real life, let alone a significant time sink like this would be. I feel like unless you get a solid group of people on each server who can all take on some of the burdens that it would entail, it has little to no chance of succeeding. And even with a group like that, there will still be times when some servers would be understaffed just due to the way life works out.
So do you add more people or allow people to transfer servers? Do you dedicate more resources to the larger servers? Then there's issues with larger groups of people, like how do you all stay on the same page when you may have very differing viewpoints? What if you don't present a unified front, how long will it take for the community to take sides? Then there's the issues further down the line after the program has been working for a while. For example, how do you decide who should and shouldn't remain in the program? How can you keep people motivated after the initial starting period?
There's a lot of issues with programs like this (Takebacker mentioned a few more to consider too), and while the MWLB may have helped Nexon answer some of the questions I posed, there are many more that are unknown, simply because you can't predict how things will turn out. I'm not saying all this to dissuade you from your goals, I'm merely suggesting a handful of things that occurred to me as I looked into the idea and thought of my own past experiences.
Still, I like the thought of a community cleaning up their own games, even now. And perhaps Nexon will embrace the idea, if only for the good PR they might be able to get out of it. XP So in spite of my doubts, I wish you well and I'll throw my support in as well if you would like it. Not sure what sort of proof you might like, but I suppose that's probably best left to PMs or emails.