Idea: Add WHL to Baldur's Gate

[CloudDancing]

We had a great conversation last night about the state of the WHL. It was suggested by myself that "we" simply take all the areas of WHL and add them to the Baldur's Gate server and shut down WHL as a separate server.

While this would limit the available number of servers, this would also consolidate basically a wilderness with not much but Wildlands in it and make it part of a server which has at least two Dms that are constantly changing and evolving the server.

This evolution has come mostly to a close unless more areas are being added in the future I don't know about.

Thus adding WHL would allow it to be developed by a dynamic and creative Dm/Tech team and focus those efforts THUS making WHL and BG into a much more diverse and wildly populated server with the spanning wilderness of TSM.

With that consolidated we could easily encourage the Amn project to step up and fill in the place for that WHILE MS develops Skullport and possibly even Waterdeep to evolve into the "Sword Coast and Moonshaes Isles" server.

[Swift]

It is worth consideration if we cannot find someone to actually flesh it out a little more than a few travel maps and some caves.

Wreck havoc with the 2 PC thing but meh.

[Ronan]

BG DMs, what say you?

[Mick]

I think this is a good idea.

Someone has pointed out elsewhere that the city of Baldur's Gate actually falls within the geographic region called The Western Heartlands. I am already on board as a DM on both servers and have told players I in practice consider BG and WHL a single server.

Personally, I have never thought that WHL had enough to stand alone as a server. That is not a comment on the amount or quality of work that has been done, but rather the limitations of the geographic region represented. For the most part, it is wild, wide-open territory that lacks an urban center. Hard to attract a group of PCs and have them make their home there.

I do not plan to play a second PC at all, but if I did choose to, starting it up on MS would be fine for me.

All of this, of course, is predicated on how easily one could be rolled into the other from a tech standpoint.

[Ksiel]

I am an accepted DM on WHL, but my plots have not made it from TSM to that server yet. However, I wanted this about 2 years ago, and am still in support of it. I play on BG, so I will have to drop my DMship on this server, but I think it would better serve the community to combine the 2.

[Darkmystic]

The less servers the better. The bigger a server is, the better.

[t-ice]

Right now we need more population condensation, so less servers is better.

I've never been on WHL, but was under the impression it works with a travel/overland map, whereas BG has the long, narrow roads travel thing. Not necessarily a killer issue to just glue the two together, but maybe is? Might actually be for the better as WHL is to my understanding of the canon more wilderness whereas around BG the sword coast is somewhat more civilized.

What about the machine capacity side, how much is too much?

Possibly another option, which for obvious reasons I would personally love, would be to add Amn's areas to BG. (Again, Amn has an OLM) But utilizing Amn's areas at ALFA would first need the placeable-fix magic Ronan proposed...

[CloudDancing]

Talked with Paazin. He said it would take months to merge the two for various tech reasons. However, we could easily TREAT them as the same server and give him oversight over both.

That would be either keeping the DMs separate or merging them together so they could facilitate events that cross over.

[boombrakh]

Before anyone goes ahead and makes decisions that we'll all end up regretting later, let me present you with an idea I have that has been in the works for a few days.

I was recently informed (and the rest of you knew this already) that Heero was stepping down as HDM of WHL and has since then worked hard to put together a package-deal that I would present to Curmudgeon when he would have the time talking to me about this. I know he has been busy with updating TSM, so I havn't been perstering him about this as much as my enthusiasm would normally require. I aim to propose that I take over WHL as HDM after Heero.

I spoke to Heero about this and he pointed out several things to me that the current team as a whole is lacking and that became my first goal to fix. He told me that I basically needed to know how to build, how to update and maintain the module, how to understand how to spawn creatures and learn to script. He then went on and told me that while WHL has good DMs, the server team is severly lacking in those areas and if I were to take over as HDM, then i'd have to know all these things since no one else did.

I am realistic about this and I know that I don't know all the things he asked of me so I have put together a package-deal which includes a main builder and some assistant builders, a damn fine script monkey (from outside that i'll present ALFA to in the coming days so that he might apply and will script regardless) and at least four new DMs including me. The DMs are basically me, puny, pinkpink, and Matti. We are all excited about what we've been talking about among ourselves the past few days. I might not master all the things he wanted me to, but I do have extensive experience in getting things done and getting the right people for the job. I have also successfully in the past, been the HDM of two servers for ALFA (Waterdeep and Daggerdale) and I did a good job with that.

What is comes down to basically is that my package-deal ties heavily into the proposal I made about having a storyteller/narrator group for ALFA and the fundamental opinion that all of the people in the group here shares, and that is that ALFA should be player-centric. What that means is that we are heavily invested in creating content and stories to IC deal with the problem presented in this thread. We intend to build and add content to reflect character choices and story arcs. We start small and we sculpt the landscape based on the outcome of player choices and interactions. If there are player groups with heavy focus towards certain goals, then sure those goals will be more represented and of there are many elf players wanting to create a settlement for themselves, then that is what will happen. To us, it is all about having players make an impact while at the same time maintaining the goals of ALFA and upholding the quality of our community.

And yes, we know it's a pretty vast and seemingly empty server but where others only see what is right infront of them, we see a canvas ready to be painted with the colors that the players choose. We also know that it will be a lot of work, and we are fully prepared for this. Having four story-driven DMs that all know eachother in real life and who can motivate eachother and help out will give us an edge when it comes to overcoming pressure of the work load.

I do not want this diamond in the rough to simply be gobbled up or to fade away back into beta-obscurity because it is such a good server that I know with a little work many players will come to enjoy. When I get to talk to Curmudgeon about this, I hope that I can convince him to let me take this responsibility on. I really enjoy what i've seen so far on the server, both the little content i've experienced and the quality of the DMs there. From here, we can create something amazing.


Now, finally this is not nearly done to really be presented as a package-deal yet, but I felt I had to say something before this thread resulted in rash actions. I know I havn't had the time to talk to the existing DMs about this yet and if it hadn't been for this post, I would have gotten there in due time. As it stands now, I still had a couple of ducks to get in a row. To those who DM there, I am sorry for this, but like I said, I didn't want this thread resulting in something unfortunate before we got to present an alternative.


Anyways, thank you for reading.

//boom

[Veilan]

Increasing concentration is a Good Idea.

[Swift]

The DMs are basically me, puny, pinkpink, and Matti. We are all excited about what we've been talking about among ourselves the past few days. I might not master all the things he wanted me to, but I do have extensive experience in getting things done and getting the right people for the job. I have also successfully in the past, been the HDM of two servers for ALFA (Waterdeep and Daggerdale) and I did a good job with that.

My only query about this is as follows:

The Euro player base is not all that much larger than the Australian player base (at this stage). If virtually all of the Euros are DMs for the server...how many players do you expect to see during the time you could all DM?

[boombrakh]

My only query about this is as follows:

The Euro player base is not all that much larger than the Australian player base (at this stage). If virtually all of the Euros are DMs for the server...how many players do you expect to see during the time you could all DM?

Reply moved here

[Ronan]

I am not sure about taking two months, but there is no telling what issues might come up. I certainly don't have time to mess with it, and in fact my current computer is hardly able to run the toolset at all without crashing. The downsides are:

• Additional load on the host. It might push us to 3gb or so of ram usage, 1gb from the limit.
• Additional creator/chooser clutter for DMs.
• Significant work required to integrate the mods.
• Additional DM/play restrictions caused by consolidation of the servers.

The upside seems to be that any BG DM could then DM WHL, and it would be easier for DMs to travel to WHL (chooser jump instead of logout/login). Players can already walk between servers without restriction, as the servers are adjacent to each other.

Blueprints would also be shared, and this is a Good Thing. However I would rather devote time to improving the campaign folder and getting blueprints ready for all modules to share.

I agree it would increase the player/server ratio, but this is not a goal worth aiming for.

All in and all it doesn't seem like a good idea to me, especially with Boom and other BG players wanting to renovate TSM. Any WHL DM who wants to DM on BG can simply PM us, and will be granted permission.

[Ithildur]

What about keeping them separate modules on separate servers, just have the same HDM/DM team overseeing both? And remove need for validation from one to the other.

The one downside is it may not seem to address player density because PCs would still show up scattered on 2 separate servers, but if we make it clear that there's effectively little or no difference between a PC being on WHL than logged on BG down in Beregost or Nashkell... Our technologies of seemless autoport and cross server tells seem tailor made for something like this.

Could rename the servers Hearlands: Swordcoast and Heartlands: West or some such to help get this idea across, and have people realize it's one server effectively?

Though if Boom and company have great ideas for developing the WHL server, I'm all for letting them take a crack at it.

[edit] Oops, looks like I'm late to the party, saw that Heero is staying on as HDM!

[Castano]

since you can transition between WHL and BG w/o a wait, they effectively are one region. the only benefit to consolidating teams would be running games across the two servers.