Working on content

I'm starting to work on our various content pages, I'm thinking it might be wise to have them in sort of a database style organization. Any thoughts? (on the content organization itself)

ex: http://guildwarsguru.com/index.php?cat/cid:12 (
Also, any last minute layout comments?: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/gw_l.jpg
)
Currently intending on doing Creatures, Areas, Conditions, Professions, Salvage Items, Crafting Materials and possibly NPCs (might better if worked into the Area sections). Most of this stuff is going to be rather dry (but informative), although we can take the time making the profession pages more lively. An item database will also be made, but we need to figure out how to handle it, 1) A new script or 2) Same way as above

I'm going to be needing help with some of the content, as I am sure I have not seen all the creatures nor all the areas. It would be nice if we can get some of the alpha testers involved. Although the CMS allows people to submit articles and then have them approved, it sadly does not allow for uniform input boxes (i.e, Name: Insert Here, Description: Insert Here) which in turns means we can only select the extremely reliable/motivated types.

I think the site can do well if we focus on two specific fronts, 1) Articles & 2) Database content. Hopefully by having some great articles we can attract the smarter and more mature types early on. The database content will be bringing in those who are in need of in-game help, which is good and bad. It means the forum will be rather informative, yet it also may turn into stupid posts spam fests as we've seen on just about every major Guild Wars site. So, the Sage Lands will allow the better types to not be turned off; but I think we're going to have to get a few trigger happy mods once the game is released.

Anyways, any thoughts or suggestions? The more we can plan this out, the better; hopefully we can pull in the visitors we'd like to see while still being relatively mainstream.

Minor points: "Serenity Temple" (Outpost) needs to be added to the Ascalon section. It's a little area north of Fort Ranik through the explorable areas.
In the Maguuma Jungle, the outpost in Silverwood is now known as "Quarrel Falls", and there's a new outpost called "Oglemoor's Overlook" in the Sage Lands. I'm not sure what they overlooked that they need to ogle more, though.

I think i've come across everything there is in-game in terms of Creatures, unfortunately .. this section would also require having screenshots that were taken during a BWE / Open event .. which I don't have. Getting other testers to help out with this would be great, though i'm not sure who to ask unless it's 'our' Alpha referrals .. if they feel like helping out of some sense of loyalty to us, not OGaming, heh.

As for a Salvage Items section.. GWO has a pretty big, although cut and dry list going. The point being is that despite doing our own work, the results are going to be similar if displayed in the same manner .. so what if we keep a tally to give a projected percentage? For example, we take 10 Shaman Garbs, and salvage them, and can then say that X% of the time, we got Cloth. It might not be perfectly accurate, but a pretty faithful representation of how things would be in game.
The problem is that we need a lot of Farming for this .. we'd need a lot of farming either way .. but we don't have the people to do it at the moment. I play a lot, but not enough to cover every item by 10s.

Regarding articles .. perhaps we can also start incorporating the characters we use at All Call sessions (or otherwise) into a 'builds' area for each Profession. How the set up performed, its strengths, weaknesses, etc. I don't think they all need to be Fianna-grade Instant-Win-The-Game-Aren't-You-Special builds, just so long as they're informative and perhaps entertaining.

I will think on this some more. I'm still a tad sleep deprived.

Great work so far THX. Just tell me what you need help with and I'm willing and able.

As far as for what to do, I think something that's needed right now is a Runes database. I'm not even sure of what exactly is out there so I'm sure something that collects all the Absorbtion, Sacrifice, Fury, Vigor, and everything else beyond the readily apparent +attribute runes would be a good thing to have.

As far as a salvage guide, what drops what might be just as important to include as what gets salvaged. And a bit more information on how the level of the critter dropping improves the quality of what you get which improves the quality of what you salvage and how things like 'rare", "precious", and "highly salvagable" come into play, too.

As far as getting other alphas involved, I say leverage whomever you can. Forget OGaming, loyalties are given to people not organizations. Those guilds you referred know *you* and should be responsive. I could talk to the TGH guilds, of course, the newly reformed Seventh Alliance or whatever they're calling their sans-Dion guild would jump at the chance, I'm sure. You could try to recruit one of the top-5 ladder guilds. And then there are already existing guilds, I know the Alphas have been looking to raise their profile a bit lately. Participating in a project like this is a win/win for any guild. Lets them contribute to the community, put up a nice public face, and they can recruit new members from the boards, people they've been talking to and watching for however long, when there's a need. Simply put, I don't think we'd have much trouble getting just one of them involved.

For articles, I've been doing All Call reports at TGH and you're welcome to them. I have a few alpha journals from a while ago that never went up either. I've been thinking of doing a "build dissection" sort of thing, where I take a build and pick it apart and show what makes it ticks and why similar to what I've been doing in the Alpha Testing thread. Also, something on strategies for various maps. And a sort of PvP primer to playing each profession/role.

Hmm, I think my PvP bias is showing, so I'd better quit while I'm ahead...

Hey Saus, glad to hear from you

A rune database would be great, as it does appear to be a rather unknown aspect of the game; even for alphas. Any alpha report would also be rather beneficial, especially as many fans are rather anxious following the latest slew of alpha/beta events.

As for the salvage items, I think the more detail we can get the better. Yet, before everyone starts investing time into salvage items, it might be wise to pry around a bit and see if the current salvage item output and sources are relatively set in stone (i.e., there might be slight changes on some, yet the core set will not be altered by release). If we can determine they are almost final, I think it would be a good idea; and if not, it might be wise to only tackle them in a more general sense until release.

In regards to the creature page, we can most likely find many of the Kryta/Ascalon/Jungle creature sceenshots on the various fansites. For those creatures with no public image available, we can limit their information to a short general overview (all we can do really). Although, I’m still trying to figure out how to organize them, either with one list per kingdom or a list per kingdom in species sub-categories.

As for other articles, anything interesting is good. If you have an idea, something you would like to attempt and believe others would be interested, go for it =). I’m a pretty dry writer, so I won’t be much help in this department.

The areas currently don’t have any information (except for Ascalon City), but I believe it might be wise to add the following information: 1) Location on map, 2) Connecting Areas, 3) NPCs, if applicable, 4) Mission Number, Previous and Next missions; if applicable, 5) If possible, areas within the map (although, I will only be adding this once the other content has been added for all other categories). I’m going to be asking the Map Project leader if I may use his labeled map on the site and with it we could display the various areas of Kryta/Ascalon/Jungle.

I also need my sleep, but I shall be thinking about this a bit more; I’m sure we can all come up with some interesting and original content :=)

Glad to be here.

One last idea from me for the night. A lot of people are entering the test these days. The people from the Guild contest during the last BWE and the people from the Report contest before then should be getting in soon, not to mention the various invites and referrals. I say grab one of them and get them to do a journal/blog thing. Doesn't have to be great literature, but just the progress of someone stepping into the alpha would be a nice read for a lot of people, I bet. What was it like when they first logged on as a tester, what was their first All Call like, what did they make for their first PvP character, and everything else.

Sure, we can do that. And you're right, we don't need someone with the best of literature, although I believe high reliability is a must (i.e., someone who will be posting a relatively informative report/blog/article on a regular basis) which in itself is hard to determine.

Agreed, the important thing is just to have it done and on time. Although, it's hard to really tell if someone can do that reliably until they actually start doing it (You wouldn't want me for a regular columnist, probably, I'm too easily distracted to keep doing it for long). So, the solution is to not rely on any *one* person to be providing a regular column. Cast a big net and you're bound to catch a few big fishes. Get several people doing several different ongoing columns and with any luck, at least one of them will pan out. I'll lay down some feelers with a fe of the BR contest winners I know and see if they aren't responsive. I think I know a few folks from No Name, too, I'll try and sound them out on having their new members writing up some stuff.

I've been sending out the tendrils of subversion to lure people to our cause, and it seems - perhaps unsurprisingly - Echo has an interest in helping us out. Actually, they'd already like to know what kind of things they can help out with - have anything in mind so I can relay it to them?

All Call reports, alpha journals, forum participation, build testing, research for any armor/skills/items/whatever guides, contests. The list goes on and on. I'd start slow and ask them if they'd be interested in publishing their AC builds and experiences here, maybe some other articles from time to time, and then see if they'd want to help out collecting our data points, mapping things out, counting drops, remembering runes and mods, and all that.

[color=black]This is what we could do, we can give them access to the admin system and allow them to submit new articles. Each article would need to be validated by one of us before showing up on the site. With their permission level, they can only edit and delete their own articles (articles can be defined as any content page) hence if a mischievous member attempted to delete our site content, he would not be able to. After a set amount of time, we can probably determine the responsible ones and upgrade their permissions and allow them to edit all existing articles (hence, keep the content up to date and informative).[/color]

[color=black]We could setup a few primers on the forum (i.e., Name: Insert Here, Description: Insert Here, Location: Insert Here. etc) which they could follow, allowing the site to maintain a universal "look" instead of varied fragments. [/color]

[color=black]Content Wise? Anything goes I would think. Although, Data Collection might be better suited for some.[/color]

[color=black][size=2]Any thoughts on how we could "reward" them? Obviously they would like some sort of recognition. Individual wise, I'm going to see if we can incorporate some sort of "top 10 contributor" box (maybe dependant on categories? As obviously there won't be as many articles as rune submissions. We also don't want to encourage quantity over quality). [/size][/color]

Checking in.

I've got several unpublished articles on various aspects of the game (strategy, general game theory, mechanics, approach) in various stages of completion that I'm willing to contribute. Just let me know what you'd like me to do with them - I'll start finishing them up around the beginning of January.

The detail work I obviously can't help with until release, though I'm sure at that point people will be lining up to provide content.

Would anyone here want to edit my articles before they're posted? I'm better on the technical side of things, and don't always get the communication part to work right, so I'm sure even a once-over before posting by someone more literate than myself would help immensely.

Take care guys, and thanks for the oppertunity.

Peace,
-CxE

Heya, welcome aboard

I've read quite a few of your posts on the council, you obviously know what you are talking about; so any topic you have covered or wish to cover is fine.

If you would PM me a password and email address, I can add you to the CMS. Any articles posted will be credited to you, although the author information is not being displayed at the moment (making a different format for articles & database-style entries).

Glad to have you here, see ya.

Hey Chuckles, glad to see you made it. Now, to see these mythical "articles" you've been talking about for so long...

Anyhow, I've put out feelers with a lot of folks, and I'm off to send some to more. A few nibbles so far, but I've been being pretty cryptic and ellusive about details just yet. We should be able to have a good crop of potential columnists in relatively short order, if all goes well.

That's the way to do it I think. We could, if possible, set up multiple authorization levels. No sense in handing out admin access to everyone who doesn't need it. You could have some people be able to just take care of their own stuff. Some people could be appointed "editors" of certain sections, able to edit all the stuff in a certain category or related to a certain subject. Some people could be "editors in chief" able toedit anything and everything but unable to monkey with the site or set up new categories or things like that.

Depends on just how many people we have submitting stuff, of course, but I'll volunteer to act as an editor for people posting articles and things. Basic infor stuff is probably best handled by someone else, but I don't mind crossing the Ts and dotting the Is on things like what Ensign is talking about posting and then validating them so they're visable and all that.

I'm skeptical about the need for any sort of reward system. Do we really need to "reward" people to keep them doing things? Or are we better off relying on the general goodwill and bottomless resources of the interweb to provide for us? In other words, if you offer rewards, it's sort of a competition but if you don't then it's an act of intellectual philanthropy. I'd prefer the later, a sense of trust and obligation is implied, sure, but I'd think the quality and content will be better if it's done because people want the content done, not because there's a carrot for doing it.

That said, Spooky was talking about an RPG skin like you'll see some places on these forums. We could incorporate some sort of rewards for posting articles into that, I think. Post something about a Fire skill and get a point in Fire Mastery. Post something about items and get a piece of Iron or a weapon. As you post more and more, you can upgrade things or accumulate more. I'm loathe to encourage rampant ++ery but people do like it and as long as it's controlled and focused, it's all just harmless good fun.

Using the RPG for that.. nice. I like it.

Definitly got a few folks interested. Recent changes make the data mining stuff just a whole lot easier, although getting more hands involved in tracking bosses and drops and whatnot is still a good idea. And hey, the more alphas, the better. Should probably think about some usergroups or special icons or whatever to mark out the testers and the other important personages around. With an RPG skin, it's easy to have something special, but it should be something special and hard to miss. Can't go wrong with different colored names, I say.

Anywho, I've mainly been concentrating on getting people who can provide us some indepth stuff, like Chuckles there, articles, essays, stories, whatever. So, I've been bouncing around a lot of ideas with people. One that came up was the idea of a "column by comittee" where you'd have a regular feature up at around a certain time week in and week out but the actual person writing it would change. A good way to try out people who aren't sure they can do it and we aren't sure about themselves, I think. Those we like can take another crack at it and maybe spin off their own column, those we don't can just fade away as the days roll on. The original idea was a "non-alphas column" where different people could weigh in on things from the perspective of those on the outside looking in. Since they don't have access they have, well, less to talk about and the material would dry up quickly, was the thinking, but get several of them and you could make it last a lot longer. I like that idea and various notables from the forums could chip in, call it "Voices From the Forums" or something like that, giving a poster a chance to write up a full fledged article about something they liked. But, you could just as easily have a "Tales of the Alpha" where each week a different alpha could talk about their favorite battle or their coolest character or whatever. Or "Spotlight on...." and just have anyone pick a topic and run with it.

Also, I think once these forums really get rolling we could start soliciting for articles and things like that. Just have a post up about "Hey, you! You want to get your stuff posted on a real live fansite like all these other people? Well, here's your chance, submit a writing sample and a few article ideas to Saus and you might just be our next columnist!" Might not get many people at first, but as things grow we might just be able to pluck some people out of the crowd *without* having to look for them ourselves.

Sounds great to me, as it is a good way to have content coming in every week while being able to spot those who really enjoy and have an aptitude for writing such work.

As for recruitment from the forum, if we can gain the reputation of being the article hot spot, I am sure many writers will be coming to us.

And now, I am going to attempt to install the RPG hack. If you guys wake up and the site is broken, blame me

Weekly editorials are an interesting idea, because (despite how easy it is to forget) the number of people that read a site will always grossly outweight the number of people using the forums.
Thus, while those kind of discussions might be going on in the boards anyway, 'spotlighting' them in a sense might bring in some people who just happen to be reading, and decide "Hey, i've got something to say on this issue, too."

As far as the RPG mods go, in my past experience, installing them is never really a problem, so much as getting them set up well. Depending on how many options it offers, we should be able to customize it quite a bit with all of the various 'public domain' images that are available to sites, such as the skill icons, those character class pictures, etc. It'd certainly add a lot of flavor to the boards themselves, and could be one of the defining factors that makes the '20 posts or less and then leave' crowd stick around to be longtime members.

Okay, well I believe I've finished installing it. It is accessible through the ACP if wish to check it out.

Edit: It appears I will need to edit the template to have things finalized, I'm going to continue reading the documentation and see what comes up.

It's up and appears to be working correctly. I will need to alter a few of the templates in order to make it feel more guildwars'ish but I believe it is ready to be fooled around with.

Note: To use the script, access either RPG or Banker from the top nav bar. To customize it, it's all done through the ACP.

I still fail to see why we are using an RPG Hack - it is like the quintessential breeding ground for kiddie spam and what-not other idiocy.

imo just give us an arcade and keep them all entertained