A thread of thanks.

[Crystal Dragon]

I'm stranded off the game for a bit while my rig is due for repairs, and I've had a lot of time to really think this over.

 

*bows deeply.*

 

I want to thank all of you of the RP community, every single one of you that have contributed to my writing, to my creative drive, to keeping me grounded with my projects and off the wall ideas. I know we are all strangers on the other side of the screen, but many have become very dear friends with me over the years and I've often thought very fondly of the community here for that reason. I speak quite highly of the community when I meet other gamers face to face, and eagerly mention Homecoming more often than not, to the point that my husband refers to my conversation flow as "recruitment" laughingly.

 

In the time that I've played here since 2019, you all have shown me so many fascets of identity, ideology, beliefs, and yes sometimes we argue, but I look at those points as moments to grow from and to learn from. We might not all agree on the same points and views, but we all share a love for this game, the stories we write, the characters we play, and the universes we create, and that is something truly irreplaceable. When I first brought up the idea of the Welcome Wagon's project, we were still quite a small community on this server and we've flourished and grown so much over the time since. If it were not for the people that jumped in to help, offered advice and experienced views, as well as contributed time to get those sessions going on the regular - we simply wouldn't be here today, still operating and still hosting sessions for beginners just dipping their toes into rping on mmorpgs.

 

What you all have done to help get this project off the ground has seriously humbled me a number of times over the years. I admire the commitment and the willingness to endeavor to keep it going, to keep the lessons we all have learned from our experiences in roleplaying over the years alive and passing on those critical lessons to new writers interested in joining our story weaving here. I appreciate each and every veteran roleplayer that joins the sessions to help us guide the new folks in learning the in's and out's of RP.

 

It took me a few years to get the courage to even step up to the plate to organize this project, to be quite frank with you all. I am no arbiter of RP, no overlord or judge of any kind, but I have seen new players starting out with something truly simple and blossom into a really well grounded and fantastic story writer over the years.

 

I strive for that honestly, to see fledgling players take on a new form of play to them and thrive with it is what I hope to achieve. Admittedly, it's not for everyone, some feel sidelined and chronically wallflower in social spaces, others feel awkward just trying to break the ice and join in the circles. But I know that an issue everyone faces at some point when they are looking for character growth and are having difficulty finding fertile soils to plant their roots.

 

I don't expect everyone to admire me, or like me, or even to get along with me, I just do what I can to make this community a kinder and easier place for newbies to navigate. City of Heroes itself within the lore is a harsh reality to deep delve into but it's one we all have found our niche over the years. It takes time to find the right group to join, time to find the right people to play with that will mesh with your own player lore, and that's more than understandable. But we are all sharing this world, and that in itself is what makes this RP community so unique. The variety of view points, alignments, and player canon concepts is astonishing and I admire that, truly.

 

So, I'm here just to say thank you, thank you for roleplaying and being part of that shared universe, thank you for taking part in a story bigger than the one world we share, thank you for helping new players find their way, thank you for contributing to my project, thank you for letting me help guide the newbies to find their footing in our shared universe here, and most importantly, thank you for keeping that story alive and well.

 

Sincerely, Melrose (Crystal Dragon's player.)

 

 

Edited March 24 by Crystal Dragon
Grammaaaaar

[McSpazz]

I don't remember the exact conversation we had when you proposed the Roleplay Workshop, but I'm glad I agreed to join in on it. If it weren't for the workshop, I'd have never considered writing my tutorials up here on the forums which I know at least some people have used as resources. Even when people weren't interested in coming to the workshops themselves, some have still felt the need to send me tells to thank me for running them. I almost always tell them I appreciate the thanks, but point to you as a big reason why they happen at all.

 

More than anything, I feel that the effort to guide other roleplayers to improve themselves is something that extends well beyond the workshop. The creation of several roleplay discord servers for Homecoming, the regular SG and VG recruitment fairs, and even the acknowledgement of the devs and moderators of the roleplay community (the very existence of this thread on the forums is only the tip of the iceberg) shows a general desire for roleplayers to be better and to never stop being better. While you just tapped into that and gave others the motivation they needed to really highlight that, none of that would have been possible if not just for your own contributions but for the community's willingness to entertain those within the community desiring to push others to do better.

I'm proud enough of this effort that it unironically sits in my resume. I'm glad to be part of it and look forward to see what else comes of it.

[Crystal Dragon]

That honestly is very humbling to learn about, Spazzy. This all would not have been possible for me to put together if you hadn't jumped at the opportunity, we talked about it for hours before we were both like "I mean, what if we could teach it to the new folks?" And it just took up like a rocket from there. I can see how this might sit on a resume actually, educating about group effort projects of this kind can be really rewarding and hard work. But this project would have never taken off if we didn't talk about it and come up with a plan to put it into action.

[Roseenmark]

Frankly I've been through various communities over the course of at least a couple decades, when I state that RP is an evolution, I mean it.  The difference is, evolution isn't a straight line.  I have seen communities grow, evolve, and end up dying due to that evolution.  I've seen it do the opposite and thrive too.  Standing tests of time that the only time they disappeared was when servers were shut down.  Even then, now, thanks to things like discord, forums, and other means.  Those communities still exist to a branched extent.  Some even adopting from others.  I spent some time attempting to find the original rules of chat based RP, just to look at how far we've come as RPers ourselves.  Some of those rules I helped write in the original T1 systems of combat RP.  An evolution in itself from Speed 3 2 3 systems before it.  Then watched T1 change to freeform, and so on.  It astonished me and humbled me how things have changed since I started RPing as a whole.

However, I can say this.  This is the first community that I can say I personally feel at home in.  Both on screen and behind it.  My history spans from chat RP, steering away from many MMO RP's for various reasons.  Most commonly, the excessive drama behind their communities.  While yes, there is drama here.  The sheer amount of that drama is out weighed by various other aspects.

When I say, that this is the best RP community I've ever been part of in all my years.  I mean it.  I'm both humbled, and proud of what I have seen here.  Many know me as (Insert tech jargon here) Error, aka Sabie.  But I have a plethora of characters I play.  None of them would have been half as exciting without the interactions they've had in the scope of almost 4 years of being part of this community.  It was the RP Workshop, at the time conducted by Spazzy that made me realize how different from the RP I was used too and how much more positive it was here than most other places I was part of that made me really push for a more serious approach on RP here.

It was welcoming, informative, and many of the values of RP were ones I personally have seen in place before, but never to the magnitude as they were on Homecoming.  Before Homecoming, I came from a place of RP that... needless to say, wasn't a great place.  It was as if I was back in high school again, and it was a regulated adult RP site.  As in you had to be 18+ to even be on the site.(For reasons I won't go into.)  To see adults acting like children was not a fun experience.  But that is a story to talk about later.  The point is... despite all the dealings I work with, it stays in the background and often gets resolved in civil manners.  And I wouldn't have even stayed part of this community if it wasn't for the Workshop itself.  It showed me that not only the players in the community cared, but the GM's too.  In fact some of the GM's are part of said community.  To explain how rare that is, would take a session all in itself.

[chase]

All of you in this thread made this community a family-  I guess I'm that weird uncle that shows up on holidays, sneaks caffeine and sugar to all the nephews and nieces, give them the "best gifts*" and then disappears unannounced until the next family gathering- even if you change the locks.   

Thanks for being awesome, everyone.
And for not changing the locks.

 

 

* "Best Gifts" are rated by three criteria:
- the highest potential noise level

- the most loose pieces.

- the pain level of said loose pieces when stepped on
If LEGO ever makes a functioning drumset kit, it's game over.

[McSpazz]

1 hour ago, chase said:

* "Best Gifts" are rated by three criteria:
- the highest potential noise level

- the most loose pieces.

- the pain level of said loose pieces when stepped on
If LEGO ever makes a functioning drumset kit, it's game over.

 

[Crystal Dragon]

I'll be honest with you, Chase, I didn't expect this to take off the way it did, but I'm really glad it did.

[jkwak]

I didn't encounter you many times in game, aside from a couple short interaction, but people have a lot or praise for you and you did more for the community on Everlasting than many others.

That you are not among the community reps is kinda baffling to me, but maybe that is by your own choice. 🤔

[Crystal Dragon]

I did apply a while back but as time went on and no response. I realized that players can actually be community reps on their own standards. It's not hard to do. It is a lot of work, but I think everyone can actually improve by helping each other. No power or title is needed for that.

[jkwak]

yeah, the rank and the tag are more a status symbol but it would be a well deserved one