The State of WOK

Post by **Dameon** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 1:48 am

All righty, my summer has ended and I am back to the world of regular email access once again. This means I can jump back into WOK, although I have asked Duke to remain as VO clanhead if he is willing since he is doing such a fine job.

I have some serious concerns, though. My biggest one is that WOK is turning into primarily WOK-ON, which means WOK 4. No surprises here, but I hate WOK 4. WOK 5 doesn't look to be getting online anytime soon, AFAIK, so I don't know if this trend is going to reverse itself. It seems to me, though, that the entire summer went without a single WOK 5 game opening. True, summer is usually slow, but that's a little ridiculous. I'm willing to run a WOK 5 game, sure, but I'd rather play in one, and it's not looking as if there's enough demand for two WOK 5 games, that I can see.

Also, even bigger, Al has decided he's not going to support WOK anymore, apparentely, at least for now. I sincerely hope he changes his mind and comes back, but if not, we need to start worrying about how long this webpage hosting is paid for. Without this page, WOK would die, plain and simple. It may be somewhat ill now, but it could perhaps recover. In the same vein, is there any way at all we can have a player update WOK 5? The tribe updates that were sent to Al before he vanished have been lingering for almost a full year now, and I know there was also talk of more WOK 5 rule changes but that stopped when we realized there was no way to implement them, apparentely.

I guess what I'm asking is if there is any way somebody motivated like Korexus or Sal can take over for Al, essentially becoming responsible for sight maintenance and working on getting WOK 5 both updated and online, both critical to the long-term viability of WOK as a whole, I believe. Or, if anybody has ANY pull with Al and can suck him out of WOW and into WOK again, that might solve all our problems neatly. I've been absorbed into a MMORPG before though and often there's not much to do but wait until the addicition has run it's course, which can take anywhere up to a year often.

Thoughts? Solutions? Cures?

Post by **Duke** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 4:37 pm

I say that we are stuck until Al gives the go-ahead for someone or a group of people to act as "vice-creators" or some sort of presidents if you will. Perhaps we could copy the US system of making changes? A president that suggest changes to a "senate" which will decide if it goes through or not. Just an idea.

I wrote a mail to Korexus, Mullog and Sal and only the K-man replied and he didnt seem to care all that much about my issues so I guess I'll wait until summer is over. Or?

Post by **korexus** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:22 pm

I'm about to start a very busy course (teacher training) so I don't know how much time I will have to help maintain the site. Also, I'm going to have to *pay* for my internet connection, which will doubtless decrease my enthusiasm for staying up all night bugfixing...

I don't think the site is in danger of going under financially just yet. I know the donations page looks bleak, but it hasn't been updated for a while. My subdomain rental pays 1/3 of the webhosting bills on it's own and players are usually generous around Christmas time. - Albeit usually after some prodding from Al.
Incidentally, I feel I should push the subdomains again. $5 a month is very reasonable for what you get. 100Mb of space, a database of your very own (so you can for example set up a forum, for your clan or for some non-WoK use) and a lovely fast server with no pop-ups. Two more people renting a domain would mean we only needed donations for the domain name (about $10 a year) any extra could be used to pay us poor saps a wage!

As for updating WoK V, I'd like to do it. However, I'm not sure Al would be happy with the idea. Any changes to the system of WoK IV to Wookie took hours of debate in the chat room first. Neither Al nor I seem to have time to do that right now unfortunately. Plus I'd have to learn VB first, which I'm more than happy to do but Al doesn't code with the idea of making it easy for beginners to see what he's doing...

Duke: It's not that I didn't care about your plan, it's just that a focus group's not much use if nothing ever happens about the results. We tried that with Nick and although we didn't go about it in quite the right way, we still came up with some good results which were never acted on. (*Looks at that sentence*, *shudders at the horrible grammar.) I'm happy to join any focus group you like, just don't get your hopes too high too soon.

I'll email Al, asking about the WoK V code. Hopefully after working with me on Wookie, he trusts me not to massacre the engine. If I promise not to make a new release but only to tweak some values so a small group of players can play test it he might agree. I may as well try...

In the long run though, we need Al back. As I see it, we have two choices here;
Either we hack into the WoW site and make it look like he's been cheating so he gets kicked out.
Or we convince whomever it was who took over and ruined SWG to do the same to WoW.
Cast your votes now please!

Chris/korexus.

Saladin · Post by **Saladin** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 3:18 pm

Hi,

I've contacted Al a whole ago and asked for permission to do some updating and site changes to get the site more user friendly. As well as keep it up to date. And also setting up the WSC again so that all players have a say in what's going on in wok.

Al was very enthusiastic about my offer and asked me to be his 'replacement' for the time that he's still suffering from his WoW addiction (Duke's idea of an intervention isn't all that bad an idea

).

He also promissed to find some time to implement the wok 5 changes that the focus group had proposed. Sadly he hasn't come round to doing that yet.

Anyway, i've started to reorganise the site a bit yesterday and i'm working on a new menu that will be easier to navigate than the standard phpnuke modules menu. This i hope to have finished tonight as the menu i put in doesn't look nice enough i feel, so i'm going to try something else.

I'll also start work on a new front page that will mostly be for new players being more enticing for them to come and play the game.

When it comes to getting the WOK engine updated i think we should all support Chris in his effort to do these updates. If Al's not to happy about having somebody else code changes, it could even be unofficial updates which stay unofficial till Al aproves them. But it would at least give the players a more balanced wok 5 experience again.

By the way, do we have any other programmers in WOK that could help make the necessary modifications to the wok 5 manager?

I'm also glad to see that people are starting more games now and that a number of players have returned from their holidays. What we need is to always have a waiting list open. Both for wok-on and wok 5.

It might also be better to run a game with only 7-8 players than to have these people wait for a long time before we can start a game with a full set of players.

What i do want to ask of all players is that they do not give up on WoK! woK is not about just one or two people. Of course Al is a very important person in WoK but WoK's strength comes from the big involvement of the entire community! So we need to get that involvement back, meaning that you ALL have to start feeling responsible for where WoK is heading and help make it more lively and 'full' once again.

So post on the forum, join games. Discuss possible changes to the wok 5 and equally important the wok-on engine and lets ALL make WoK great again!

Yarosund · Post by **Yarosund** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 6:26 am

Sal - the changes that you have made to the web page look good.

Just one thing (which might just be my bad eyesight) - I cannot see a link to "My Lobby". Where do I find this?

Cheers

Stephen

Xechortariaste · Post by **Xechortariaste** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 7:28 am

Unless I'm missing something, you have to go through "Wok-on" on the left, then click the WOK-ON game list, which will open the old "My Lobby" in a new window. New windows are evil!

Any chance we could get back the direct link to "My Lobby"? Other than that, it looks great!

Saladin · Post by **Saladin** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 7:48 am

Hi,

If you go to wok-on there's one link there: Wok-on lobby.

I'll have a look tonight if i can re-integrate Al's old top menu bar. I'm not sure it looks good on this site, but it makes navigation extremely easy.

Yarosund · Post by **Yarosund** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:00 pm

Thanks Sal

I can now access 'My Lobby' with no problems.

Also, Now my 100th posting

(Mind I think I had a few posts under the Old system - who know was a while ago)

Cheers

Stephen

Xechortariaste · Post by **Xechortariaste** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 4:05 am

Woot woot! Go Yaro!

Any excuse for popcorn is a good one for me.

Saladin · Post by **Saladin** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:44 am

Well looking at the Squares map, you two have all the reason you'll ever need for a popcorn frenzy.

Yarosund · Post by **Yarosund** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 4:26 pm

Did someone say popcorn frenzy

I would share, but I'm a real greedy swine

p.s. Sal - do not worry we can manage to lose the game, from our poition of strength

Cheers

Stephen

Lowebb · Post by **Lowebb** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 5:14 pm

Just FYI, I used to be a regular here and I've been trying to look for games for about 15 minutes with little luck. I found the Kaobase, is it even still runing????? Wok-ON I cant find whatever it is.

And you expect to attract new ppl.

Post by **Duke** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 6:25 pm

Good. The "Irish filter" system is working. Dont want none of those up in here.

Post by **Egbert** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:18 pm

TBert · Post by **TBert** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 9:40 pm

Um... maybe flashing lights need to be set up around the "New Visitors Look Here"... thingamabobber.

Or mayhaps I'm just really really internet-savvy and had no problem finding it when I came back (for the 3rd time) to the new site.

Post by **Hannibal** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:13 pm

Lowebb wrote:Just FYI, I used to be a regular here and I've been trying to look for games for about 15 minutes with little luck. I found the Kaobase, is it even still runing????? Wok-ON I cant find whatever it is.

And you expect to attract new ppl.

I agree with Lowebb. Same point I was making on another thread. You have to somehow "know" to click on "search for games" (despite the header that tells you it will ONLY show you the games you are in), and then have the flash of insight to SCROLL DOWN, otherwise it looks like the same screen, no games, and then, when you see a list of games paused/running/next turn not defined, to nevertheless assume that at least some of them are current happening games. I've said elsewhere that GM's really should complete the "Next Turn" field with dates (they ALL say "not defined", every one of them), and should really insert at top of commentary: Last turn: xx/x/xx and Next turn xx/x/xx, so that watchers, or re-visitors like Lowebb or me, can see that some of the games are actually happening, with recent and current dates, and maybe worth watching....

Post by **Hannibal** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:19 pm

Duke wrote:Good. The "Irish filter" system is working. Dont want none of those up in here.

Brilliant! That's why I never take offence your comments, Duke!

Of course, you do realise, don't you, that there's a "Swedish filter" working, not on the forums but in the game rules. Seems to be working ......

Han

Post by **Duke** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 6:10 pm

Hannibal wrote:
Duke wrote:Good. The "Irish filter" system is working. Dont want none of those up in here.
Brilliant! That's why I never take offence your comments, Duke!

Of course, you do realise, don't you, that there's a "Swedish filter" working, not on the forums but in the game rules. Seems to be working ......

Han

I KNEW that there was something holding me down. Turn that thing off will you? I'll bring Baron Roland back if you dont.

Raw · Post by **Raw** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 5:09 pm

Han and Duke need to kiss. All you guys seem to do is compliment each other and flirt back and forth.

When's the first date?

Han and Duke
Sitting in a tree
K I S S I N G
First comes love
then comes marriage
Then come baby toy
in a baby carriage

Love,
Raw

Post by **Duke** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 7:39 pm

lol!!!

You're the toy, toy

The Worlds of Kaomaris

The State of WOK

The State of WOK

Cjhanges to Web page

Cheers Sal

Frenzy