It's kinda tough to say "Yes, we have a control problem" when all you hear is "Glomdoring has a control problem" but no one actually ever points out a problem.

Someone needs to provide some examples or else we're just going to sit here and "Yes, you do" and "No, we don't" repeatedly.

No, you're definitely not filed under uninformed claims. On the other hand, Glomdoring's leadership roles as any other orgs are elected (excluding ministries) by those living there and evidently the majority in Glomdoring are quite happy with Xenthos. Since I think your main grievance was restriction on combat I can completely understand where you're coming from and sympathize with how it was like in the past. However, much changed over your hiatus and even though we're a lot more active in combat your character left for the city. As for any sort of stifling, well, I can sympathize with that as well- Urazial was killed by the Minister of Culture for stating his opinion. As for so many stating there's a problem, how many are we talking about? I'll be generous and say that on here on the forums, 20 people say there is a problem with Glom leadership. How many is that versus the player base in the game? In that regard, is it even worth considering, especially given that the Glom players who even bother with the forums don't even understand the whole control issue? As for low population.... have you seen topguilds? The Ebonguard and Shadowdancers maintain a fairly consistant scoring and I have no doubt that the the Harbingers and Blacktalon will work their way up as well.

When such cases have come up, I've discussed them with the people involved, and been consistently disappointed by the unwillingness to listen. It's not my place to inform the forums that person X told me that person Y yelled at them for 30 min for some imaginary slight, but that's the sort of thing that drives people away.

Gwylifar, I am not sure what you were responding to, but when people say that the leaders of glomdoring are "scared" of having a larger population, I have to just laugh.

90% of IC and OOC conversation between Glomdoring leaders about Glomdoring revolve around "How can we get more people." Never, not once, was the conversation "How can we control more people."


In my opinion, the Control RP comes from the willingness of the players to inforce thier own control over themselves, by looking at the spirits and the such. It doesn't come from other players.

I actually have never had any run-ins with Glom leaders when I was a Glom, so this an honest question. What has the leadership of Glomdoring actually done to get more people? There are regulations and things for Glom leaders to control their population, and people are regularly punished when they violate those regulations (as they should be). What have they done to actually encourage more people to come to the Glomdoring?

I think I partially agree with you. The 'control RP' doesn't come from an individual controlling themselves, it's from the collective enforcing what the individuals do not agree with. For example, there may be a collective feeling in Glomdoring that Viravain's word is law, and anyone who disagrees with her is a traitor. In this case, even if every individual disagrees with something Viravain says, they will still go along with punishing the person who spoke out and violated it, because their understanding of the RP of the Glomdoring tells them that this is the 'right' thing to do. I think the real problems that should be examined (in Serenwilde and Glomdoring) are the collective ideals, whether they are OOC-ly productive, who propogates them, and how they can be modified. Most likely, only the leadership can bring about any kind of change. Taking my previous example, if Urazial and Viravain were to stage an event where they disagree, and Urazial comes out of it looking 'right' (not necessarily that Viravain was wrong, but that it is possible to do things a different way), then the feeling might begin to change.

The Viravain thing doesn't seem to be as big of a problem as it was in the past, that was just a random example. The same would apply to Magnagora and New Celest. I'd like to see the GM of the Nihilists perform regular sermons, and maybe some rituals led by city leaders (Daevos is Warlord, and he is amazing at leading in battle and delivering rousing speeches, exactly as his role demands. He's probably not the best person to lead such events, but someone should). Most of the political problems come from negative collective concepts of the RP of the org. They're not from individual people - if they were, the collective would just replace those people.

I'm kind of curious the leaders of any org are supposed to do to recruit more people. Glomdoring's got a novice shop which sells enchantments and other items for our novices at a very modest price, you've got some members of the Court schmoozing with non Gloms and recruiting when they can and the power laws are pretty lenient as far as drawing extra power for defense of the commune and means by which you can draw extra power by bringing a fair bit of essence in... so what can be offered as an incentive to join? Gold? Automatic favours in return for their joining Glomdoring? Beats me. The Ebonguard on the current topguilds is ranked second with the Shadowdancers not too far behind them. I agree that population has been a problem in the past, but moving on and staying current, we're growing. We've lost some good people, but we've also gained some great ones- Ashteru, Shamarah, Armand, and Marcalo are just a few that come to mind off the top of my head. Fighters are extremely important, but they aren't the end all be all of any org. I think rather than focus on trying to recruit more fighters, it would be better to ensure that the novices coming in are given good training. If Glom had someone giving out free systems like Serenwilde has, I'm sure there would be no question of a population problem in Glom at all.

Hrm, a little bit amusing about how a post about politics in general turns into a discussion about Glomdoring. First off, Glomdoring has become stronger for a number of reasons, and even I am willing to give credit where it's due. They've managed to come out of a complete rut from the whole Viravain spiel, as well as motivate themselves to try to do more. Plus, there really isn't any room to judge the organization that probably has the best RP ( in my opinion, and most others.. ) currently in the game. Sure, that may be because they have a small population, but I steadily see it growing by the day. Glomdoring continues to get novices, and they're becoming more of a powerhouse militarily thanks to a few people such as Diamante, Ashteru, and Shamarah. Though, of course, they are under good leadership too despite the scrutiny they may get sometimes. That's the bad part about politics anywhere.. Whether they make good or bad decisions, people will always disagree with leaders. It happens, but Glomdoring shouldn't be scrutinized at all in my opinion.

Celest is the head powerhouse right now, but I don't think it's as glorious as it once was. Forren really is the backbone of that military, and he's carrying a lot of Celest's strength right now. That's not to say that others in Celest work and fight hard, but if you lost Forren.. It would be a big blow.

Mag is just on the bottom of the power see-saw right now, it'll change soon enough.. Give it time. They have capable fighters there, very capable.

Seren just needs to practice and become less apathetic to things. People flinch at the mere mention of possibly getting an enemy status, but at least some leaders are doing something to rectify the situation. Seren has the capabilities of becoming a strong organization again if we could gain more leaders and more people willing to go the extra mile. The raid on the Night Avatars proves that Seren has something somewhere in them, but it's just going to take good and motivated leaders to bring it out of them. Plus, I'd really like to see the younger generations in Seren try to make some of the decisions. It seems in any organization prefers seniority above tenacity. I could, and probably would be wrong about that, but it's just a fair observation on my end.

EDIT: Plus, discipline in any organization is a good thing. So long as it's not overly strict. It helps root out the damn snugglers who do nothing but get whiney and emotional when someone tells them they're doing something inappropriate, wrong, or tells them to get off their behinds and do something productive ( Seren is a good example ).

First, the Serenwilde has someone who gives out free systems to the security (and possibly protectors) of his own guild only - that's really not many people. Besides that, I think this might be the wrong line of questions. In order to improve population, you don't actually want to go out and find out what will draw individuals. I wouldn't worry so much about things like rewarding people for coming to Glom with any special incentives. Instead, you should think about just what would make Glomdoring a place that people would want to live. Right now, the culture and RP aspects have helped a lot, but that's not enough to get a large portion of the playerbase. The population has been rising recently due to the increased conflict, where conflict was stifled previously in both the Glomdoring and Serenwilde. Players want conflict without it going overboard; they want RP without being obligated to attend a ritual every time they're around; they want freedom to hunt and do what they want, within the RP bounds of their character. Think about how to give them all of those things, and the incentive becomes that Glomdoring is such an amazing place, it's fun to play there. Most people don't want to deal with constant stress (which is why guild leaders tend to tire out quickly, and heavily beaten organizations lose some of their population), and a lot of people just don't find the scholarly playing style of the Glomdoring to be worthwhile. This conflict with the Serenwilde has gone a long way to improve things, but there's still more to do to make it a well-rounded organization.

New Celest (and to a lesser extent, Magnagora) has the opposite problem, where people move there for quick and easy metagaming, with very little scholarship, RP, or 'meat' to it. If there were a better balance, I think all of the orgs would be more fun. Nothing I say is limited to the Glomdoring, but they seem to be the representative organization of choice, and I like throwing out psychological and sociological drivel whenever I can (I knew that psych degree would come in handy someday...)

So...instead of overanalyzing an organization in a game so much, why can't people just join another one if they think their current organization is so horrible? Maybe if you were tied to your chair, and your fingers were mechanically forced to type as you played a Gloomie character. Anywho, people need to think less and play more. Mindlessly bashing is awesome.

From the various experiments I have conducted and research we have done, from what I can tell there is only one way to get more people.

What you do, is as a leader, you check GWHO a lot, and if there is ever a name you don't recognize so much, you make an effort to talk to that person, and do something with them. If its hunting, teaching, taking them shopping, or teaching them some rare fact. You also have to do this with names you recognize but don't interact with often. I have noticed that if people who are not in leadership positions do this, it doesn't help as much, so its not something that can really be delegated.

I personally, have also tried to encourage people who "complain" to talk to me about their issues so they can be solved in one direction or another.

That isn't so easy when you have RL money invested in a charachter, and its going to cost you $200 to switch.

Because despite the problems, most people care enough for their organization and the people in it to try to make it better and improve. Not to mention that not everyone has the ability to purchase credits regularly so the lesson loss would be a deterrent for some. As well as the fact that you'd be starting all over, wasting most of the time you spent in the last organization. Oh, and getting unenemied to denizen orgs like Nightspirit, Celestia, etc.. Isn't cheap.

Meh, maybe it's just my way of thinking then. I'd rather work hard to switch to a place where I would have more fun, than not have to work hard and keep a solid position in a place I didn't find all that appealing.

Interesting stuff but I have to dissagree a little bit.

To me, the "cool RP" in glomdoring has nothing to do with attending rituals, or having "rp events." To me, what the really cool RP is what I would call "consistency of philosophy within the game world." For example, in Glomdoring, somebody might suggest to me that government actions become more transparent. We have seen in the real world how this is -always- a good thing, for both the government and the people, however in Glomdoring, no argument will make sense unless that person shows him how either Night or Crow or some aspect of Glomdoring displays the characteristics of transparency. Just like how in the real world, an argument that people should "suck it up" more often because "Crow does" would make somebody think you are insane, so the inverse is true to the game world. My charachter, and the "cool rp" require that there be in-game "proof" that transparency is a good thing. Even if I as a player can think of how transparency is a charachteristic of Crow and Night, my charachter Daganev won't listen to the argument untill somebody else uses that reasoning in thier argument. Otherwise, I have no reason to change my mind.

Just for the sake of argument, one could argue that seduction is best acheived through transparency, and that partial transparency in large issues allows one to better keep other issues in shadow. Or from Crow's perspective, "there is nothing trickier than hiding something in plain sight." However, the biggest problem is that normally, the people who argue for these types of changes, could care less about what the spirits represent or how Glomdoring is defined. In a sense, I see them as metagaming politics.

As for other orgs, All their rules could be exactly the same as they are now, but if they put more emphasis into there being some more umph behind the laws, and new players were told early on about that thought process, then I think those places would also become more imersive and have some "meat" to them as you put it.

Also, Serenwilde had its largest population when it was in economic conflict, but not PK conflict, if I remember correctly.

Yet, I give the same justification on my arguments for decisions in Seren, and I'm called too stubborn.

A little while back the question was asked by Urazial (I think) about why bother sticking around in Glomdoring if things are so horrible. In my case, it was because even though Glom has problems, they are general problems and not problems specifically focused on my character. With Serenwilde, I just plain burnt out. If I wanted to try and get involved in politics again I'd probably have more of an issue with Glomdoring than I do now but I promised myself I wouldn't do that.

So yes, while Glomdoring does have problems it can still be a fine enough place to play. That doesn't mean those problems don't need changing but at least its not completely killing most people in the meantime.

I think you need to be "old" to get away with being stubborn how old is Tael?

After reading this post, I am going to think that the "controlling problem" is with CHELP GLOMDORING.

When I first started playing, that's exactly what I thought. If Celest didn't have Forren, Celest wouldn't be where they are; but then I thought about it and the more I did, the more I realized that Forren just kinda makes it easy. Demi-god Aquamancer, can tank a lot, can meld, knows what he's doing; it's all really nice to have, but he isn't the only aquamancer we have (Munsia, for example). Forren likes raiding and he does it a lot, whether it be quick trips to raid Earth or a full-on raid on Nil, but if he has to go in the middle of a raid, those that came along usually stay behind and we usually do a good job.

Forren kills fast, without him it would take more time (obviously). And yes, Celest would be a lot weaker, but I don't think that would topple Celest over and make them be a target to step on. There's plenty of other decent fighters there, but there's only one Aquamancer Demigod (which may change, you never know). Forren inspires us to raid, but he isn't the only one. I do recall participating in a nexus world battle where the only capable fighters were Triden, me, Kaalak, Alodia, and a couple Squires from the Paladin's guild, and one aquamancer (Elaria I think). We were doing poorly but then we got an upper hand.

In short, if Celest lost Forren, I think we would recover fairly quickly from it, but we most likely wouldn't raid as much.