A wiki comes to Vanguard Crafters

I have a bit of a confession to make today about something I did in the past. When Vanguard first came to be and was released, I was heavily into the crafting. I really got into the system and learned a lot about it, contributing and participating in the various forums. Vanguard Crafters was and still is the premiere site for talking about this sphere of game play and I jumped right in. I had heard they were planning on creating a wiki about a month or so after release and immediately signed up to join the crew.

I didn’t have much of a background in mediawiki or any wiki development for that matter, but I had contributed to a variety of sites in the past and knew that I wouldn’t screw anything up bad enough that a simple “revert to previous” couldn’t handle.

I was accepted by Genda and joined the small crew of five, assigned specifically to the content team. I was psyched and at once I began saving a variety of information like recipe data, quest descriptions, npc locations, skill sets, clothing bonuses, and a ton of screenshots. I had some initial guidance from my team leader on what was needed and I hit these points off quickly, adding everything that was needed to the database on a daily basis. However, as I began to quickly finish what was assigned to me, I realized that the team leader’s response was arriving later and later. In fact, this person had gone afk from the game and was really never seen again in the forum. This was a common occurrence during the time of the Sigil to SOE changeover.

I had no guidance and no clue as to the optimal way to organize the data, but as the last remaining active member of the content team, I did my best to help the design and tech side of things. I tried to clean up bad pages and centralize information to make it easier for them to find pages no longer needed or redundant. I offered my help up in the forum and gave them details as to the best way to direct me. In the end, it wasn’t the lack of guidance that led me to stop visiting the forum, it was the introduction of a new contributor.

She came and she kicked some content ass. She blasted up the new pages and helped put out a final product that the community needed. I felt that the information she had was more than enough to get out a great backbone of content for the community to reference, and any more contributions by me would only gum up the work they were trying to accomplish.

So with that, I’d like to thank Demila, Genda, and the rest of the Tech/Design team for coming together to put out this wiki for the Vanguard Community. Nice job. Oh, and if you see any pages that look weird they may have been created by me (nuitwaters), don’t blame it on those guys.

Now, if they will take me back, I just might jump into Vanguard again.

The last cry of Atys?

It looks as if one the best MMOs I have ever played is in jeopardy again.  I really don’t have much to say on this other than I had some of the best roleplaying experiences with this community and it has been my benchmark ever since.  I hope a publisher or company will choose to pick this up and give it the love it truly deserves.  I feel that it not only has the established lore but mechanics to be a great game.

For what its worth, I miss you too little Kami.