... perhaps
originally posted by Valbrandr:
The community itself is what I am most concerned with. That was acutually alot of what was driving me with the URPS. I want this community to forever be a closely knit group. I for one will never leave, as much as that may sadden sep. We need to think of new ways to get people involved in game and out. In addition, attract new people who have the desire to stay with the community and help. I will try to join the devs but if nothing else I will be here to help.
This was of course referring to the community as a whole, not necessarily the Community of Vaalnor as in some ways it didn't exist. I think a problem was that the founders, namely myself and Valbrandr had differing goals when it came to the direction of CoV. CoV was originally discussed as a brainchild of a conversation between Valbrandr and Phinehas iirc, and was shaped into form by the old faithful members like Lishom, Myself, Valbrandr, Jekkar, Gorzhuul, and others. As the initial excitement wound down though we realized we needed more concrete goals and set out to better define ourselves, which was in my opinion, to our detriment. I saw the community more as a community of people, and Val saw the community as a community existing within a town. In some ways I latched on to this idea despite what I perceived as an unrealistic goal. So I set out to bring it to fruition in my own way, with the Vaalnor Town Project, which I later morphed into the Community Modeling Project in an attempt to attract a few more team members and create some viable artwork for ingame use. The idea of CoV as a community within a town relied heavily on an ingame place to exist but as they year wore on it became evident to me that Talad would never allow it, no matter how neutral it was. As a result as we discussed the future of CoV I tried arguing more towards the idea of the community existing as simply a community of people because I thought the whole town goals were too idealistic and unrealistic. Perhaps I shouldn't have doubted our commitment to such a large endeavor, but I did nonetheless. In the end though I don't think it mattered who was right and wrong, the problem was that we couldn't easily agree. In our own differing ways Valbrandr and I are both incredibly stubborn people when it comes to defending our ideals.
In retrospect the guild no matter what was a good thing. I've several friends I care deeply for, and I consider us in some ways a fragmented but still viable community - in game or out of game. Maybe we all became too good of friends in real life and as such didn't feel the need to RP that our characters were truly friends in game. Maybe there were other factors. In the end it doesn't matter. The guild either continues or not, and thats up to the community. Do we or do we not? I don't know. I want to. Maybe it will be a community of me and a guild list of inactives. Who knows?
Either way at this point I'm not willing to disband the guild, it means something to me, even if it is just 2.5 years wasted. It motivated me to learn 3d modeling, 2d texturing and artwork, to create mods, to network with interesting people, and for all those things I'm grateful. In all truthful brutal honesty I think the Community of Vaalnor made a difference, even if it was a small one, in the lives of many people.
And probably in all truthfulness I harbor a perhaps unrealistic hope that PlaneShift will be everything I always dreamed it could be. Sadly though I don't think that will ever be the case. I live mostly now in a world where I have the freedom to create my own way, and have brought some of the story of Vaalnor with it. But even in this case it was PlaneShift and CoV that propelled me there, nothing short of my sudden and immediate real life death will make me forget all of that and just disband a community I love, cherish, and value. Even if its only symbolic, I want to keep it for as long as I can.
