I am acting as Necromancer for this to find out what happened with the result. I haven't playee here in years now and I was waxing nostalgic and decided to look up my ol' acquaintances to find this.
Has the transition to MU happened? Or was something else decided?
Hey man, we are in the process of moving to MU but our contact there is very busy so it's taking a while (but hopefully not much longer). We are still active on discord as our community coordination hub: https://discord.gg/F7eVGkwF
@Osie: would MC be interested in joining forces with us in a move to MU? Effectively get the best of both worlds by merging with MC and moving to the bigger site?
From what I can see, MafiaScum might make a good home, but I think that would just be as a group of players joining, I don't think we'd get any special treatment like MU is promising or anything. We don't have the connections and they didn't extend a hand (IIRC) when this was last discussed.
My understanding of the state of a Mafia Universe integration is as follows:
They will set up a new subforum called "long phase games" where one cycle is 5/2 minimum
The queue for that subforum will be managed by one of us, and games we currently have queued will be placed into the queue in whatever order we wish and will run first
We may be permitted to place someone from the Mafia Council on the MU moderation team
The "council" as such will be dissolved/have no official power as far as that subforum is concerned; the queue manager position will be subordinate to the regular MU hierarchy just like the others are
This was almost three years ago now and I haven't spoken directly to anyone in the MU administration team about it recently though.
This sounds so perfect I can't believe we haven't done it already. It'll be sink or swim but if we can produce a rule set and quality games good enough to attract a fraction of MU's playerbase the payoff would be huge.
While I am open to hearing from Shadowlancer on behalf of MTGS staff and new owners, the complete silence since the site rescue isn't promising.
I posted player number updates in the original thread, but it's clear that our playerbase is dwindling. We've had a few major system shocks that have caused massive losses on top of general attrition, and have yet to see any significant recovery from any of them.
I believe our best option is to migrate. While we have history and distinct style here, I think that our playerbase (and by extension host base) is too small. Current rates are just about sustainable, but one more major event (e.g. site sale) or period of empty queues could easily be a death knell. If we stay here, it can only be done by a genunine concerted effort to improve player numbers - and to get back to even 2016 levels we'd need to nearly double where we are now. Frankly, history has shown that we as a forum have completely failed to implement any (effective) effort to rebuild the playerbase in the past.
If we do move, I think MU is the best destination. As much as I appreciate the other offers we have received, I think a merge with forum of similar size and state to us would just kick the can down the road - it won't solve anything long term. With MU, yes we would be subsumed into a greater whole and risk our identity, but if we get our own space we can mitigate that, and with enough integration we can really try to change attitudes towards slower paced/longer deadline games.
Regardless of where we go, I think we need the following to make it a success:
Active and enthuiastic Council members to coordinate the community and engage with destination site staff. Strong leadership will be required, and the council needs some refreshing.
Games ready to go in the pipeline. Some MTGS-unique Specialties would be great, but we just need a backlog of something because if we go somewhere, host one game, then spend a month trying to find another game the move will fail. Hopefully the reception to our initial offerings will encourage other hosts to finish their games.
Community buy-in. We need to move with as many people as possible (once you've played once with MU software you should be excited). But I would also like to see community integration - join the discord, play their games (especially the cross-site events). We want to not be hermits within the wider community - we want everyone to learn the joys of making one wallpost every 3 days.
Finally a reminder: much of our community is active on discord, which I imagine will be our hub no matter where we end up.
Hey man, we are in the process of moving to MU but our contact there is very busy so it's taking a while (but hopefully not much longer). We are still active on discord as our community coordination hub: https://discord.gg/F7eVGkwF
From what I can see, MafiaScum might make a good home, but I think that would just be as a group of players joining, I don't think we'd get any special treatment like MU is promising or anything. We don't have the connections and they didn't extend a hand (IIRC) when this was last discussed.
This sounds so perfect I can't believe we haven't done it already. It'll be sink or swim but if we can produce a rule set and quality games good enough to attract a fraction of MU's playerbase the payoff would be huge.
I posted player number updates in the original thread, but it's clear that our playerbase is dwindling. We've had a few major system shocks that have caused massive losses on top of general attrition, and have yet to see any significant recovery from any of them.
I believe our best option is to migrate. While we have history and distinct style here, I think that our playerbase (and by extension host base) is too small. Current rates are just about sustainable, but one more major event (e.g. site sale) or period of empty queues could easily be a death knell. If we stay here, it can only be done by a genunine concerted effort to improve player numbers - and to get back to even 2016 levels we'd need to nearly double where we are now. Frankly, history has shown that we as a forum have completely failed to implement any (effective) effort to rebuild the playerbase in the past.
If we do move, I think MU is the best destination. As much as I appreciate the other offers we have received, I think a merge with forum of similar size and state to us would just kick the can down the road - it won't solve anything long term. With MU, yes we would be subsumed into a greater whole and risk our identity, but if we get our own space we can mitigate that, and with enough integration we can really try to change attitudes towards slower paced/longer deadline games.
Regardless of where we go, I think we need the following to make it a success:
Finally a reminder: much of our community is active on discord, which I imagine will be our hub no matter where we end up.