15 June 2017
Hi everyone! I just wanted to write a few words as it's been nearly a year, now, since the server officially transitioned over to new leadership.
As many of you know, the server's previous administrator, Luna, disappeared unexpectedly in March 2016 (following a fairly significant server update). For several months, I tried to keep things together with the aim being to return it to Luna once he returned; but as systems began to fail, I was convinced that in order to save the server it was necessary that we move it, its finances, and its forums under my direct control.
I recruited several people to help me with this gargantuan task -- perhaps the greatest helper of whom was Endelyon (who would become our co-administrator), followed by Zanniej, and, later, Aspect of Sorrow -- and together we moved the old barn to a brand new field. We officially flipped the "on" switch on the new server on June 22, 2016 (after a couple of earlier attempts that went awry, and after having previously migrated the forums and finances).
Luna later checked in (for those of you who missed the thread:
viewtopic.php?f=136&t=58290), which was a relief for those of us who thought something awful might have happened. In reality, life simply got in the way, and he was unable to continue maintaining the server on top of all of his real world responsibilities. (Something I can certainly understand!)
But the reason I'm writing this message is less to recap history, and more to thank everyone who's stuck with us this past year.
I think it's fair to say that we inherited a troubled server. Months of stagnancy had sapped the morale of many on staff, particularly in the developer branches and the QC corner, and the update in March was less of a cure than it was intended to be (as it had damaged the server's overall playability in sometimes significant ways), we were struggling with a DDOS attacker who seemed entirely intent on seeing this place vanish for good, and Endelyon and myself were both trying to find our places as the server's new administrators (when neither of us really
wanted the job to begin with).
We put out the call for help, and the community stepped forward. Our DMs have rarely been more active or more responsive to players (I know that there are some who will say that they're not responsive enough, but this is always a work in progress for a volunteer corps serving a community that far outnumbers them -- and I've watched them plug away day after day at hundreds of player requests this past year, on top of their own plots and metacampaigns, where in years past we didn't even
keep track of player requests, let alone make it a goal to try to answer 100% of them); our devs have
never been so active (and together managed to iron out the worst of the March 2016 bugs); Quality Control revived itself in a big way, and slowly won over a sometimes suspicious player base (who did not always understand that it was the devs and admins who decided what goes in or does not go in game, and who wrongly laid blame for blocked or passed content on QC instead by virtue of QC taking on the active and unpopular job of explaining why the decisions had been made); and several new staff groups were created, including the Forum Moderators and the Media Team. On top of all of this, the players themselves have remained supportive and enthusiastic about this group project. Perhaps more important than everything else, everyone described above has continued playing and loving this game.
I think we still have a ways to go before we've reached our true potential. Good things have happened -- I think the server's positions on many things are far more transparent and predictable than ever before (from our public finances to our staff codes of conduct to what will or will not probably get a forum thread locked), I think our staff itself is fantastically active and engaged in the community, and I hear that our players are, from all accounts, probably among the best that we've had when it comes to roleplaying ability and a shared willingness to write stories in cooperation with each other. But we have had our speed bumps as well. We've passed bad rules and had to redact them, we've lost staff members and players over disagreements with how the new administration has chosen to run things, and we've not vanquished
all of our bugs just yet. In truth, those things will probably never truly end -- people will always disagree on how things should be done, leadership will make mistakes, and new bugs will come as new content is introduced -- but I think history has so far borne out that we'll always strive to do our best.
And, ultimately, the reason we do strive to do our best is because of all of you.
Speaking for myself alone, I don't know that I love this game. I really don't even play this game. It's been maybe two years since I've played it seriously. (I
do want to try to get into it again, someday, as I
do think it's problematic that one of the server's administrators doesn't even play the game he claims to administrate -- but it seems that whenever I have free time, I seem to spend it all on improving the server or answering PMs or writing posts like this one instead of actually playing the game!)
I don't really love the Forgotten Realms. I have always homebrewed my settings, personally.
I don't even love D&D. Well. OK. I do love D&D -- but not enough to keep me here on that alone!
No, above everything, what I love is this community. I think it's a really wonderful group of people that we have here, sharing an amazing hobby. Seeing all of your talent, and hearing all of your stories, is endlessly inspiring to me. I know that people have found hours of fun on this server; I know that families have grown closer together on this server; I know that people have met on this server and wound up married in real life because of this server; I know that non-native English speakers have become fluent in English by playing this server (and sometimes even landed good jobs because of this); I know that books have been written and art has been made because of this server; and I know that people have gained confidence in themselves where before they had little thanks to the friendships they've established and the lessons they've learned in their time on this server.
All of those things and so much more is what makes this whole place so "worth it" to me. And I hope that a year from now we can all look back together again and see that we've only continued to improve this place for ourselves and for the little group of like-hearted (if not always like-minded) souls that we've together gathered here at BG:TSCC.
Thanks, everyone, for keeping us going long enough to celebrate this first anniversary. Baldur's Gate is fast approaching 10 years of age (the server got its start in February of 2008, though arguably really only got going strong around November 2008).
And I hope we'll be around for a long time to come.
Please bear with us while we get this worked out.
