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This topic is somewhat important. I suggest you read all of it.
If you don't want to, there's a mini summary at the bottom in a quote box.
In case you're in a hurry. ;)

*sigh* Where to begin?

Ok, so Victorious has kind of lost its spark.
Before I start, let me make this VERY clear:

Victorious is NOT, I repeat, NOT, closing any time soon.

There, now we have that taken care of.
So, I shall start with the long rant.

Basically, I've kind of lost interest in role playing Warriors. At least the way it is on this board. Sure, we have a fairly good number of members, but it would be better to have 50 more, half of them being super literate, and 90% of them role playing regularly. THAT would make the forums BEAUTIFUL. SO BEAUTIFUL I'D WANNA CRY.

And every time I role play here, no one joins in my miniature plots, and/or the topic loses interest. "Dead topic. Meeeh. Moving on." That type of thing. That and I'm thinking of deleting half my characters - again. This seems like an annual event for Victorious. Character purges.

And why is that?

Because we're not role playing.

I've even considered dumping Ivystar just for a new start. I desperately don't want to do that, but it's like, I'm writing out a dang novel all about Ivystar. Why would I want to spend hours writing her story even more? You know? It gets fairly dull after a while.



>---<



I want to improve Victorious, and make it more of a community rather than an RPG. But I just don't have the time to do that, we don't have enough staff, and most importantly, we don't have enough members to make all the work put into doing that worthwhile.

I was thinking that we could maybe dumb down the role play a bit, and just have one forum for each clan (with a sub forum for the camp) as opposed to three. It would make the role play section look more active, and maybe it would encourage us to role play more. I dunno. We need some type of stimulant to drive us to role play, even if that means me personally sending out packages of ice cream tubs to every member.

There just seems, like so much work needs to be done but on Victorious - like it's a fixer-up-er, but I just don't have the time or patience or even the passion to do so. I'm kind of sick of working my butt off for this place when it isn't even alive. I'm this close *motions index finger and thumb close together XD* to just saying "ah what the heck" and closing this place down and never worrying about it again. But I'm generous enough to give it a second chance.

I've been sorting my priorities lately, and internet life has definitely gone far down the list. I'm sick of working on SP, I'm sick of working on here, I'm sick of trying to impress people of RC&R, I'm sick of trying to impress people here, I'm sick of all of it. I've come to the realization that real life is SO much more fun and worth the time. I'm actually spending my time being a human being instead of plugging my soul into the laptop. I've gotten much more healthier physically too (although band camp gets most of the credit for that XD).



>---<



And on top of all that, I have...

FIRST TRIMESTER.

OH DEAR WAFFLES.

So, out of all the 15 classes I am taking this year, I get the 5 hardest ones first tri. And to top everything off, I have marching band first tri for football season. Which means three hour practices Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and also long practices on Saturdays, actually performing at football games, and a very stressful competition three weeks from now.

EEEEKKKKK!!!

Not to mention my birthday in three weeks, and my big blow out party that I also need to plan, and to top it all off, there's also Church activities and duties, seminary, YCL meetings, my mom's birthday, my cousin's wedding, and if I find the time, free time to keep my brain from exploding.

And did I mention homework? Oh snap, I forgot about that.

So as you can see, the first three months of school are going to be HELL for me. XD

So, if you haven't already guessed, I'm not going to be on here much.
Even if I wanted to.



>---<



SO, the question is,

WHAT DO WE DO?

I don't know.

I've been pondering over this, as to what Victorious should do to redeem itself, and more importantly, SAVE ITSELF. I think if we simply got 50 new members, that would be the best solution. But that isn't simple, and it isn't easy.

And I'm tired of advertising.

I don't think we're going to transform Victorious into anything bigger than it already is, not until after first trimester at least. I think it should stay the way it is for now, and if people decide to be active, or if we miraculously get more members, then I'll consider making it something grand.

One solution I have thought of, is
EVERYONE CAN ONLY HAVE LIKE, 3 CATS.

That would solve A LOT OF PROBLEMS.

We're getting lots of new members, which is great, but I've noticed that most of them are concentrating on making characters, instead of using them. And we've run into the problem so many times before, of making too many characters and never using them. It seems every week we have to clean out the clan information and change everything. If you could only have a small amount of characters, everyone would have higher quality characters, more frequently role played characters, and overall it would make the forums so much more... clean, I suppose.

If we can't come up with any other better solutions, I'm just going to go with that.

I'm sorry, we're just going to have to give up our characters.
If you miss 'em too much, write a novel about them.



>---<



*sigh*, and the whole problem with SP.

Has anyone seen WW lately?

HOLY WAFFLES AND STRAWBERRIES FROM HEAVEN BATMAN~!

I feel like updating on SP and saying "you know what? WW is polished already, so just go visit them. XD" I'm not giving up, I'm being SMART. I mean, there is no more competition - anyone can see that. Not only is the layout so darn professional, but it's clean, and organized. Having a site MORE organized than mine makes me want to cry, because I'm an organization NERD. I mean, you should see my room. All my friends say I'm severely OCD.

And also since I've sorted my priorities, SP has definitely gone down the list. I feel I should move on and work more on web/graphic design rather than warriors crap. I mean, what's the point? I don't read the books anymore, I don't have the desire to spend a billion hours trying to make the site perfect, and I've come to the realization, that the only reason I was doing it was to impress others. I never made SP for enjoyment. I mean sure, it's fun to make the layouts and stuff like that, but otherwise, that's it.

I know, this may be a scary revealing to you all.

But I can't ever recall a moment, (other than completing a beautiful new layout) where I was truly happy while working on SP.

Just for the sake of my pride however, I'm not going to shut SP down. I'm just going to become like any other fansite and update only once a month. Pathetic? I know. But I think my life will become a lot less burdened if I'm not stressing over that all the time. If I just let it go, I won't be so depressed when WW outwins me. Because WW will outwin me every time, and I've known that from the start.

So to sum it up, I've been very stupid.

And now I'm only just realizing this three years after working on SP.



>---<



Wow, that was a lot of crap I just spewed out of my mouth.
As promised, here's the summary for you all, who are lazy in a hurry. :)

So yes. There you go.
I highly suggest you eventually read all of it, at least the parts that seem important.

I'm not going to be on here much, for various reasons, until winter.

If you have any questions or comments or suggestions, I'll try to answer them as soon as I can, and to the best of my ability. I suggest you do so within the next week if you ever want a response back from me.

AND PLEASE, DO NOT RESPOND WITH THE FOLLOWING:
don't say crap like "whhaaaa, but I still want to have 15 characters!!" or "before you become inactive, can you pretty pretty please do blah blah blah fill-in-the-blank?" or "can we do this in the role play?"
You may ask if you can do certain plots, but don't ask for major changes in the rpg.


I'm sorry guys for doing this, but this is how life has turned out for me.
I think it's God's way of telling me to not spend all this time on the computer.
And do what's really important.
LIFE.

I love you all, and no worries, I shall try my hardest to get on occasionally.

And I'll try to sort out things the best I can before I get caught up in life.




<333
Ivystar

I understand while you're doing this, Ivy. Fully. Life's been crazy for me as well. In between Cross country, band, school, and the barn, I have no time to myself anymore besides the weekends and the fifteen minutes I'm able to squeeze in when I get home very late at night.

Getting up at six a.m doesn't help that much either.

Computer wise, I also see how you don't want this. The computer doesn't make us happy, truly. I believe that it is an escape for us, especially teenagers who don't want to deal with reality. We can go on the internet and chat to random stranger, and do so many other things. But it can't fix all the crap we face in the real world. I know this. But when worse comes to worse, sometimes an escape is what we need. We're all here for you Ivystar. Don't forget that.

If we're not going to be focusing on role-playing as much, maybe we should move the other boards up to the top, as like we talked about before? That would make it easier to get to everything.

Oh dear.

This is why I have the dream of transforming Victorious into a site thats an online community for people to get together and have fun and write and discuss things without relying on warriors RP. Bottom line is = WARRIORS IS FOR YOUNGER/LESS MATURE PEOPLE THAN OUR ACTIVE MEMBERS.

We need to transform it into something that we could tell people about in our schools, and they would flock here to have fun and be creative.

WE NEED TO DUMP THE WARRIORS RP AND GET THIS THING MOVING AGAIN!

IVYSTAR, PLEASE, PLEASE, REPLY TO THIS AND HELP ME REFORM THIS PLACE INTO A FUN, CREATIVE FORUM FOR EVERYONE! We should make it so that we aren't afraid to tell anyone in our schools about it and that it is fun.

Please Ivy, please. Lets do this.

Snowy.

[P.S. If you are going to abandon SP and/or V (please, i beg you, dont), dont just shut them down. Give them to me and I will keep them. I would cry if I saw all of that work going to waste.]

I'd probably be a more active roleplayer if things were like you explained, but it seems like an impossible dream. I mean, super-literate and Warriors don't exactly rhyme together, hm? If we're gonna be based around books aimed at 8-12 year olds, we're gonna attract a bunch of 8-12 year olds. xD

I think even three characters is too much. There are many roleplay forums where each member is allowed ONE SINGLE CHARACTER, so they can develop it as much as they can. That was my intention when I joined, until I jumped the bandwagon and started making more. Eventually, everyone had like, 10+ cats, which in total would beat ThunderClan in the books by a mile! *cough*Ferncloud*cough*
And if you want more charas..well... yeah, WRITE A NOVEL! lmfao
Dumbing down the roleplay seems like a good plan. There's no point having super organised sub-forums if nobody posts in them.

I like Hawkstrike's idea, putting the discussion boards at the top. We're already giving them much more priority anyway. There's not much I love more than reading all the awesome topics there, and maybe even reply. I've become extremely........quiet online. *need. to. talk. moarz!!*

oh and SCHOOl. OH DEAR WAFFLES INDEED!
I'm going into 10th grade now, where they're all down our throats like "WHADOYOUWANNADOWITHYOURLIFE". Concert pianist is my dream, though it might be aiming a bit high. I've got tons of asian geniuses to compete against. ew. xD Not to mention my two extra classes of music history and theory, uggggh. But I think it'll be good for me, I need to get out of my procrastination habit.
My point is, school's gonna be hectic for me too. I don't want to end the year with lousy grades again, that felt terrible! 'Specially knowing I can do really well...

I think it's a wise move, pulling yourself out of the Warriors Wish competition. I'll admit I'm surprised that it was all to impress everyone, though I can understand that feeling. For my own mega site, HHP, layouts are the only thing I ever do. At least I've got a loyal co-staffer doing all the updating for me. xDD
I don't believe in shutting down sites though. I think when someone gets sick of updating their site they've worked so hard on, it should be kept online, like an archive, so newcomers can still enjoy it.

@Snowy: Someone's passionate! xD I do agree with you though, I love hang-out type forums. Where everyone just...hangs out. :D

That is a good idea, move the discussion forums to the top.

Ill do that right now. If it doesn't work we can easily move them back.

EDIT: Ivystar: we need to integrate the whole make 1 forum per clan thing soon.

I've been advocating that people have under five characters since I joined. I knew the allowing members to have 15+ cats would only lead to really bad characters that never even see the light of day.

And, you know, it's not even so much that I'm over RPing, it's just that it's so low on my priorities I don't care that much. I'm trying to keep up an average of 18 pages a week for my novel, which is roughly three pages a day with one day off, and that's already taxing my brain enough. And even without school, I have work, and I'm dealing with trying to figure out what to do next year, and things are still just as emotionally hectic as ever. To be honest, what I really need right now is somewhere I can come and just vent without worrying about whether or not someone needs me to reply to their topic about a cat that's trying to hunt a mouse. And I know there are plenty of forums like that (and I've been perusing them for ages), but the thing is I like the people on Victorious, and that's one of the reasons I keep coming back here. Unlike most forums, Victorious isn't ridden with trolls and members who act mean simply because it's cool and the guise of anonymity allows them to make asses of themselves without facing any consequences. I tried being part of a forum that was like that, but I'm way too sensitive. And, their words not mine, too intelligent- but that's a whole different story.

Tangents aside, I think it's best if we move Victorious away from being solely an RP and make it into more of a discussion area. Kind of like Vaulted Skies, but with a roleplay section, a simpler writing forum (seriously, VS was way too complicated for me), and a main discussion section. Just overhaul the entire site. Because I really don't see Victorious becoming any better over the next month or so when it hasn't gotten better the entire summer. The people we want to attract aren't attracted to Warriors. It's a great book series (at least the first one was), but everyone that enjoys it will always go to WW and there's nothing more to say about that. :/

So in summary, I'm basically backing Snowy up. Read his post and you'll get the gist of what I'm saying, too. :3

Love & Life,
Rain/Eli ♥

Thanks Hawkstrike!
I agree, that we shouldn't have another "life" on the computer, but it should just be there for relief, or a quick escape from life's troubles. It shouldn't be a constant obsession, like I've been doing.

oh wow, I never realized that before.
I'm getting old. XD
Warriors is for 12 year olds.
And I'm almost 17. O__o

So yeah, I think it's about time we just give up on the role play. Not entirely, but not have it be the main focus. Oh an Snowy, in case you didn't know this, I'm extremely anti-close-down-your-site. I think it's stupid to do that when you could just leave it there for others to still access, or inherit it to someone else. So, closing down is never an option for me, no worries. ;)

And yeah, I don't start school till Wednesday, so I'll start changing this forum a lot before then. I'll start another topic explaining things.



I'll reply to Cheri and Rain later - I got to go right now. XD

Lol, last week I was browsing through the teen section in the library, and once again it looked like I would have have to sacrifice my fantasy cravings for yet another romance novel because my options were so limited. However, so disgusted was I with having to compromise, I decided, "You know what? Forget this." I have gone back to checking out my fantasy novels from the children's aisle. Permanantly. ;) Lol, but I know what you mean, we need to grow up sometime. And the forum needs to grow up with us.

Personally, this is what I think. I'm probably one of the most guilty inactive roleplayers right now, although since I'm working through the moving process I've got a pretty good reason. But even with that aside, I think Victorious is too small a forum to have all the clans. I agree with Cheri that we should each have one character, too--and I know that might sound weird coming from me, who goes through characters faster than rabbits breed, but I need to commit, and I know that'll make me a better roleplayer because I'll be focused for once, and I think everybody else will improve through that as well. But I not only think we need 1 forum per clan as Rain and Snowy suggest; I think we need just one forum in general. One clan and some leader NPCs or something. Face it, our main positions are mostly just given away freely, and not just our most active people and best roleplayers take on more than one. Most of our clans even with the fifteen character limit thing are still very small and very inactive. If we ever did get big enough, we could make a second clan, but truthfully we are not. Let's just start with one moderately-sized clan, and if the forum grows, we can add a second or third--but we shouldn't if we don't need to. I think that'll take a lot of pressure off of our posters. Hey, maybe our top positions could even be NPCs that everybody plays, so no one has to feel burdened to post as their leader character all the time. There's just so much pressure and not enough plot to post anymore, you know?

And I absolutely agree that we should try to continue our community-basedness which has made this such a wonderful place, and broaden our OOC sections. :)

haha, lol. Asian geniuses to compete with. XD

And yes, I'm relieved to get out of the warriors fansite burden. Even though HHV died, it died mainly because Hamtaro stopped airing in the US. I'm not going to let SP die, however, because I put much more work into it than I ever did with HHV. Although, if I'm bored, one of these days I just may launch HHV up again. Just for fun.

And yes, Victorious should be more of a hang out forum to ... well... hang out. :D

I agree. The whole "I need to reply to others topics" burden is quite annoying. At times I would feel like not coming to Victorious at all, because other members would feel I was avoiding the RPG topics - but truthfully, at times I didn't want to role play. I wanted to, as Cheri states, "hang out".

And YES, I agree, the reason I love Victorious is because of its members.
RC&R is an AMAZING forum, but the reason I don't like going there as much as I could, is because I don't know anyone. Here, I know everyone, pretty much. It'd be great if I could transform Victorious into something like RC&R (+ role play of course).

Haha, no worries, the writing forum won't be as complex as VS. But I'm hoping to make Victorious a lot like VS, being a place to hang out and share novels and artwork.
Thanks for the input Rain!

HOLY WAFFLES YOU'RE A GENIUS!

And actually, I thought of a good idea to add to your idea.

We should have the role play be centered around SKYCLAN.
Like, the SkyClan in Firestar's Quest.
AMAZING, RIGHT?!?!

Because, it would be kind of unfair to pick just ONE clan, because if we had to do that, we'd either vote on it (which would take month because no one is active anymore), or I'd just pick and it'd be ThunderClan (and half of the members hate ThunderClan solely because of its reputation in the books).

But everyone seems to LOVE SkyClan already anyways, so I think that'd work out.

The NPCs for main positions sounds like a good idea, but then again, how would we go about doing that? It'd be a bit confusing having everyone trying to portray the character of the leader, or deputy, etc. Someone may roleplay the NPC doing something that highly goes against their character, or everyone may do things slightly off, to the point of where the NPC has no definite personality.

I like the idea of NPCs, but I don't think it will work out.
Maybe we can rotate the main positions, like every six months or something? Like for example, I could be the leader, Snowstar could be the deputy, and Rain could be the medicine cat. After 6 months or something like that, we could pretend those characters died (although maybe the leader could remain the same character to be realistic) and just rotate with new members holding the position. So then, for example, Fluffy could be the leader, Hawkstrike could be the deputy, and Cheri could be the medicine cat.

Or maybe the positions would just change once the member got tired of having the position, and/or when they become inactive.






whoo, that's a lot. XD
Tell me what you think, in the meantime, I'm working on stuff.

I LOVE the idea of having one Clan. I think that would really help booster the roleplaying section in the sense that there wouldn't be so much scattering going on. For instance, there are roleplayers on the site that have made topics that I thought, "Oh, I would like to reply to that," but then realize it's in ShadowClan when my character is in WindClan and it would make no sense. And I didn't want to create a character SOLELY to roleplay that one topic. I almost think we should not even have a Clan and just have rogues. In fact, we could move away from Warriors altogether and make the RP open to any species of animal. We could, like, have an RP "inspired by the Warriors books," without having to adhere to the rules and laws of Warriors.

Because, I think the thing about Warriors roleplaying is that it's too complex. There are four or more Clans that each need at least a dozen characters to be legitimate groups. That, in and of itself, takes a LOT of roleplayers to keep active. When you don't have that number of roleplayers, we get members with fifteen or more cats trying to multi-task the Clans and failing miserably because no one can keep up with that level of activity- at least not without their writing suffering. And if the writing in a roleplay isn't good...what's the point? The entire reason I liked roleplaying at all was to develop my writing by sharing story ideas and riding on the back of other amateurs, gaining experience as I went along. I think it's a really valuable tool for budding writers. In terms of Warriors, though, it's just too difficult to maintain the continuity of an overarching storyline (which is almost necessary to tie the Clans together) while also trying to have individual plots and character trials.

I agree with Ivy, also, that NPCs would be too hard to work with. If anyone can make the characters with the MOST influence on a Clan do anything, the Clan would constantly be pulled in different directions depending on what Sally over here wants and what Tom over there wants. I could see members clashing over who got priority and...just waaaaay too much of a mess. Also not a fan of the swap-out program; I think it would be too difficult to regulate and it would require too many updates all the time. Plus if someone got really comfortable with a character, you would have them kill them off? I don't think anyone's going to take roles they can't keep. I still suggest that we go for a more Redwall-like approach and open the RP to a wider variety of characters. Instead of the standardized order of "Leaders, deputies, MCs, and everyone else" we could ditch the Clan system and have animals that have developed their own talents interacting with each other in an open setting. Later on, if we manage to gain more members, we could start allowing members to form territories and "Clans", but as it is with the number of really active members we have, I would highly suggest we keep it on the low-down for the time being. (As a side note, Redwall does have a much larger and more mature audience because Brian Jacques is an actual writer. Mattimeo > Firestar)

So that's my two cents. Three cents, if you count all the paragraphs individually. Four if you count this additionally.

Love & Life,
Rain/Eli ♥

I agree that we need to make Victorious more like VS (that has been my plan for some time now), but it can't be as complicated. That is the main reason VS died before it was born. It was way too thick and hard to understand. We need a place to just hang out and talk, and maybe share some of our writing and artwork. It can't be all "Classify your story in one of 50087387942 different categories and then what is it rated and then post a summary, and then I would like a large fries and a coke with that." No. It needs to be fun.

As for RP, Im pretty neutral. Whatever floats your boats goes fine with me.

Exacto.
VS was so complicated it made neuroscience look like PacMan in comparison. For each story, you had to have, like, five different threads linking to it, and then a review thread, and then a main thread for all your work, and different main threads for art and writing, and then a synopsis, and then a description, and so on and so forth. I couldn't even understand most of the guidelines. I say if we're going to have story and art boards, make it easy to follow. Keep ratings general and all-encompassing. (Seriously, there were, what, like, three different mandatory ratings for "Adult" works?) If the "Rules" thread for each part of composing a story has more than three points (or if there are more than three "Rules" threads explaining how to compose a story), it's too complicated, in my opinion. :/

Love & Life,
Rain/Eli ♥

Maybe not having a clan at all is a good idea.
Just allow free enterprise for characters.
And I like the "other species" concept, because I think it would be fun to role play as a fox or a wolf or something. And that way it's not so much a "warriors" rpg, more of just a "based-on-warriors" rpg. I guess.

And over time, if we get more members, we can make a clan and stuff.





As for the revamping, I've got all the RPG stuff in one nice little category.
What I shall do with it, I'm unsure of at the moment.
Because I'm still not too sure how the RPG section is going to look like.


And for the art section, I was thinking, would it be easier to just let each member have their own topic where they post all their artwork in the first post? (and edit it with new additions and the like) Members could just comment on their art in that topic, and that way we don't have to "sort" all the art and stuff. It'd be like having your own DeviantArt - forum style.

I was thinking we could do the same for graphics. (just like RC&R)

However, writing, is sorted into its proper category, and then you make your own topic which links to all your writings. Just like the character profiles we had before? Except this time with literature.

And we also have a forum for specific critique. So if your writing something and want others opinions to see if you should continue, you can post there. Or if you have writer's block or can't come up with a name, or something, you can post there.


I'll eventually clean up and add to the "chatting" area as well.





Until then, I need some good ideas for the role play section.
What should the terrain be like, and how many forums should we have? (I'd like more than one, maybe three at the least?)
So, give me yer suggestions maties.

This is the fault with VS, you needed to have all of the links and critique and etc and so on and so forth. We need something simple. Just post your crap and get done with it.

We could have an optional thing where you could post either a topic or in your sig to all of your writings.

Ehm, that's basically what it already is. You post your writings and then you link all of them in one topic, where people can comment on your works as well. The critique forum is more of a "help center", not another place to comment on written works. I should probably change the forum name to that....