Expanding SF into other games would be a great idea because it took a lot of work to build this framework, and it would be much easier to simply adapt that framework to another game, than to start anew. There are times when I get STO-phobia, and block the game from my memory for weeks, or months at a time... so it would be great to have SF take root in another game that I would be interested in for when those times come.

However, Fraggot gaming (a gay FPS gaming community) seems to have become very inactive lately, and it probably has a direct link to the health of the core games that it was involved in. There are still several members playing FPS games under the Fraggot banner on a regular basis, but the community as a whole seems to be fairly stagnant. :(

An mmo-based community would not have nearly the same levels of those types of problems, but I think it would be a good idea to make sure and focus on the health of the STO community first and foremost... as suggested.

I look forward to the release of the star wars mmo, and SF's involvement.

Quote by MrIzzy

I for one am not interested in starting any other games. I barely have the time for STO as it is now. I would like to see some expansion on the "groups", specifically the regional groups. Possibly have a "leadership" within each regional group and have regular get together annually or bi-annually; in different areas of said region. Where the people in the area could meet for a day/weekend/week/whatever and hang out, get to know one another, and play the game together in person.

Obviously Vegas pride is along these lines, but it is more of a whole fleet event; and thats just awesome. However, for most of us in the fleet, that event is just too far/expensive/unfeasible to attend even once.

I have already put out there to the west coast group that SF Pride is at the end of June and I am more than happy to host some people at my place. My team (CHEER SF) will be leading the parade down market street, performing on the main stage both days and for the first time have our own stage that we will be performing at with all of our sister squads from around the country. It's going to be an amazing event!

What about an event/get together in SoCal (Brandon I'm lookin' at you :P)? What about in Oregon or Washington? Reno? Relatively simple to plan and put together. Someone just has to do it!

Thoughts?

Meeting you all would be amazing and I can't wait to meet up at one of the fleet's IRL meetings, but planning and hosting those meeting has a number of difficulties, mainly our locations. Stonewall is very spread out.




(Photos from Google Analytics. Visits per City since 1/1/2011. Larger circles mean more visits from that city.)

There are several states where we literally only have one member in, while others like California or Florida, we have several. The above picture makes it look like we have a plethora of members from Northern Europe and it'd be easy for them to get together, but I bet if you asked them, even they would scoff at the idea that it's "easy."

Coordinating with all those people one location at a specific time and date is hard to do considering each person has to make sure they get that day and time off from work and save up the funds far enough in advance to plan and make the trip. Generally, these things need to be planned months, if not a year, in advance and with MMO gaming, the same people may not be active members from month to month.

Even local meetings can be challenging. In my state of Kentucky, there are 4 Stonewall Fleet members, but each of us are spread to the far corners of each side of our state. While I'd love to meet people like Ooom, it's a 6+ hour drive just to visit him. We could meet at a half way point to shorten the distance, but that would leave out members that live farther north towards Cincinnati.

But just because it's challenging doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted or done and I've been wanting to host and plan a local meeting for those of us in the Eastern states for sometime (the timing has never seemed to work out for me). Organizing these IRL meet-ups take a personal commitment and, somewhat, a financial obligation on the host that I would hate to thrust upon an unwilling or unable party. Therefore, I think its somewhat best for people to nominate themselves for organizing one of these events, instead of being pressured into something they don't want to do for personal reasons. We have a number of local based groups and I'd love to see grass roots organizing for these sort of things come from within then.

1 for today.

I personally will not be playing other MMO's, as I don't really like the MMO genre. STO is my exception to that rule, because it lets me play in a Star Trek world.

That being said, if there is enough interest in the membership, I see no reason why we shouldn't expand into other games.

I see Stonewall expanding into other games, however as it has been stated keeping at our core is the best course of action at the moment, while slightly branching out into other games. Hal is correct when he mentions wondering eyes from the Original. This happened with SBO as well as real life issues, In saying that SBO was a smaller group with just over 100 Memebers at it's prime. So Stonewall is a completely different story.

I wholey believe the most important part of any expansion is to keep an eye on your roots as well so for example, what Stonewall began with doesn't get lost along the way. However, I think it's a good idea to think about the future. Let's face it. STO won't be around for ever. It will hopefully be around a long time, but we always have to remember the shelf life of mmo's tends to be 6 years +. Then again STO has came on leaps and bounds and we never know it may last a decade or two.

I think that the way you are going about developing different website communities for different games is a very smart idea. It allows the communities to stay seperate while becoming combined. I guess an intersting question for you nick, is the Stonewall Fleet site always going to be the central hub if we land up expanding into other games with the removal of everything STO related and STO have it's own branched website like SWF. Then developing a website that is the hub, where all gamers in different stonewall communities can meet with their individual gaming sites or respective pages at the hub. The potential for that could seriously be amazing, with a lot of people coming through stonewall. However, from a financial point of you it must cost a bomb with the way it is at the moment and managing that many members between different communities is a lot of work. So yeah :P I'm just throwing ideas about.

Another question would be are we going to be exclusivly LGBT, by exclusive I don't mean that stonewall hasn't been welcoming to anyone, but I mean state that more to the point, in all games, i think it would be awesome if we are, but I've seen games that are quite limited in that respect. I must also state that if we didn't I guess we'd come away from the roots of stonewall. Then again that's a question of Quality vs member numbers vs what Stonewall stands for. Personally I don't see a difference between LGBT and the Straight communitiy anyways, but I am aware some people place more emphasis on sexual preference. So yeah it's a question to be asked :P I know we are very open, so that's just a random thought I thought lets chuck out there :P

I think Nick you've built a fantastic community and things seem amazingly on track. I just think it's going to be really kool to see Stonewall expand into other games :D

P.S. Sorry for the crappy editing, this stupid laptop is jumping the cursor about etc.... god.

would it be possable to make it viewable via web aswell as i dont wish to download it every month

Quote by Halish

Very important points but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. From my experience the decision to expand into a new MMO takes care of itself because the guild grows with the game and new members join specifically for that game.

I understand what you mean and it is what i said i dont mean all from sto goes over to the new game but a few that would be the basic leaders of the group in that game, as they wanted to play it

Quote by Halish

Your eyes actually need to be focused on the central hub of Stonewall which is currently STO. I've seen a few communities fall apart because the leaders eyes are fixed elsewhere and they normally end up passing power from themselves to other leaders in the original game and the community falls apart. Then as Silver says the new game community doesn't fit right and people start to leave and you're left with people scrambling about trying to rebuild on another new game without a base of operations.

A group I was with before did have a central hub the website but they never commited to a game and would let it fall to the way side when the next big thing came out, when I say we go with caution is that yeah make this the central hub, (lots of work for nick :D:D:D) but we support thoughs here that are making a group in the new game and any from that game that join us are made to feel a part of the whole community not just a small section of it.

Qapla!B)

Quote by Silver101uk

If we do move into other games then lets do so with caution and build on the new game to a strong group, so the members we might gain from it will have a strong support network not just on the site but also in the game.

Quote by NicholasJohn16

We have to remain committed to each MMO we go into for the long term, just as we are with STO. As well, as we go into a new MMO, we need to get things setup, then stop and catch our breath while things settle in. We need a steady growth and not rushing head long into something we can't sustain.

Very important points but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. From my experience the decision to expand into a new MMO takes care of itself because the guild grows with the game and new members join specifically for that game.

Your eyes actually need to be focused on the central hub of Stonewall which is currently STO. I've seen a few communities fall apart because the leaders eyes are fixed elsewhere and they normally end up passing power from themselves to other leaders in the original game and the community falls apart. Then as Silver says the new game community doesn't fit right and people start to leave and you're left with people scrambling about trying to rebuild on another new game without a base of operations.

I'd love to see us in 10 years time as a fully functional social website, a central hub. Where we all talk and discuss everything and anything we can possibly think of. This would be the new home and we'd instead have "offshoots" into different games and if one falls apart it doesn't matter because the entire guild is still connected through the social hub.

This eliminates the problem we've seen with some of our members quitting STO they also seem to feel that they have to abandon the website because it's tied into STO. It's an absolute shame.

This new fancy social hub should have personal Blogs, btw ;)

Talking about new games I'd like to see us expand onto, obviously since I pre-ordered it a little while ago, I'd love to say RIFT. But it doesn't seem like that many people have interest in it which is a shame because I'd love to be part of a community like this in a fantasy setting.

And as someone touched on earlier, the orientations of my captains:

YLIS: comes from an all-male species
KVAR: comes from an all-female species
BROCK: heterosexual male
RHOTHIGAAS: heterosexual male
SRANAGAR: gay male (I think that there would be great disfavour amongst Orions of gay males, who would not be influenced by Orion female pheromones and all, and when someday I write this crew's story, that will figure prominently, esp as he currently has two female Orions serving under him.

For each captain:

YLIS: Names of pre-Socratic philosophers
Ship names to date:
Thales
Anaximander
Anaxagoras
Zeno
Heraclitus
Parmenides

KVAR: Southern Hemisphere constellations named for inventions
Ships to date:
Microscopium
Sextans


BROCK: Small weapons
Ships to date:
Shuriken
Sai
Switchblade (I'm wondering if they should all be weapons starting with S now...)

RHOTHIGAAS: War-related names (in Klingon)
Ships to date:
Quv (to make war)
jey'naS (double-headed axe)

SRANAGAR: Astronomy-related names (in Klingon)
Ships to date:
Hovtej (astronomer)
chunDab (meteor)

***

The only in-game bio I've posted to date is for Brock; plan to do the rest in the near future.

Episode 174 - The Next Generation - "Tin Man" - 04/23/1990



Parts 2-5:

Found from the above link in the related videos section

A gifted telepath whom Deanna Troi once treated as a patient comes aboard to establish first contact with an unknown vessel near an unstable star before the Romulans do.

Enjoy!

Thanks, everyone! I really had a blast making the layout and am looking forward to improving it even more!

Klingon themed issue, anyone?

Quote by Margali13

Well, I'd like to be playing STO, but I an having troubles with it.
First the patch took forever, then when I logged into ESD, it lagged really bad, then I got a BSD crash.
I thought, its been a while since I did a driver update, and by the time I got that done, the game was down for emergency maintenance.

What the hey?

I imagine the lag was from everyone, their mothers and their pet gerbils logging on for the event. : p

Well, I'd like to be playing STO, but I an having troubles with it.
First the patch took forever, then when I logged into ESD, it lagged really bad, then I got a BSD crash.
I thought, its been a while since I did a driver update, and by the time I got that done, the game was down for emergency maintenance.

What the hey?

Quote by Margali13

I don't usually like pvp games, but I have to admit, This game is fun :)


In game I'm Peregrine_Lee

Yay Mar!

^.^

Though... Seeing as STO launched its 1 year anniversary event today, I expect I'd find you in STO rather than WoT. :3

I agree...quality product :)

I for one am not interested in starting any other games. I barely have the time for STO as it is now. I would like to see some expansion on the "groups", specifically the regional groups. Possibly have a "leadership" within each regional group and have regular get together annually or bi-annually; in different areas of said region. Where the people in the area could meet for a day/weekend/week/whatever and hang out, get to know one another, and play the game together in person.

Obviously Vegas pride is along these lines, but it is more of a whole fleet event; and thats just awesome. However, for most of us in the fleet, that event is just too far/expensive/unfeasible to attend even once.

I have already put out there to the west coast group that SF Pride is at the end of June and I am more than happy to host some people at my place. My team (CHEER SF) will be leading the parade down market street, performing on the main stage both days and for the first time have our own stage that we will be performing at with all of our sister squads from around the country. It's going to be an amazing event!

What about an event/get together in SoCal (Brandon I'm lookin' at you :P)? What about in Oregon or Washington? Reno? Relatively simple to plan and put together. Someone just has to do it!

Thoughts?

Quote by doogiegood

I would like to see Stonewall to expand into other MMO's. There are many that are playing CO right now and would like to see Stonewall on there. SWTOR will be great. Many times when I have been part of a group and a new MMO comes out, people loose touch. I have a couple people that I keep in contact from other guilds I have been part of, but I would like to see us stay together as a group.

I wonder what other MMOs we should expand into after SWTOR. Cryptic is already working on a Neverwinter Nights MMO. With our experience with Cryptic games and the Foundry, it would make good sense for us to create a guild in that as well. Although, there are lots of other games for us to expand into. The most important thing for us to consider when going into a new game is the community support. How many people want us to go into that game? I could imagine a User Voice type voting system for that.

Quote by Silver101uk

With luck we'll continue to grow in Sto and thou's also planing on heading to Starwars will create a stong and firm group there bring new members to us.

I would like to see us expand into other games but I hestate to rush into to them as I have seen with another group I was with, the 5 min ooooo exciting then bored and they move on to the next Big game, thats just been release.

If we do move into other games then lets do so with caution and build on the new game to a strong group, so the members we might gain from it will have a strong support network not just on the site but also in the game.

just me thought's :)

I completely agree.

We have to remain committed to each MMO we go into for the long term, just as we are with STO. As well, as we go into a new MMO, we need to get things setup, then stop and catch our breath while things settle in. We need a steady growth and not rushing head long into something we can't sustain.