OK so now what?

Well I haven't finished telling you about Dark Age of Camelot. I will in time get back to that. What have I been doing since?

My last post spurred me on to putting into action some of the ideas and analysis I have had. Its been quite some time since I posted for a number of reasons. I have moved into Eve online mostly because my brother and other people I have known for a very long time are playing there. I am going to assume you know what eve is.

What did I do?
Ok the first thing was to start a new corporation. This time the idea was to do more than open a corp and just take people who fancied playing. Rather the idea I had was to follow the principles I have been outlining here because I think they are a good guide and they can help create a good framework with wich to enjoy the game and hopefully get back what I lost from Dark Age of Camelot. Essentially what I was seeking to do was set a framework for my 'intentionality'. To try and get a feeling for goals in the game and identify with a corporation ethos and see what it would mean for us to play to that pattern.

This took a lot of time. I felt the most flexible ethos was going to be a mercenary corporation and so I had a hunt around for information on historical Mercenary societies. I struck on the notion of the Jomsvikings and started to work out a few anagrams of the term. It was proving quite difficult because we only had one vowel, and then of course we found that Jomsvikinga which is another words for the same thing and which has a very useful 'a'. Having messed around (my wife helped me find the right term) we decided that the term with the best ring to is was Kaminjosvig. The next stage was to set out the rules and ethos to decide on some of the detail but not too much (the players should decide the real deatils in the end).

So what happened? It took ages - 3 weeks in fact to get the whole thing together we got a website together and started recruiting. One of the first people into the corporation was Commander Warpy he was delighted with the idea and loved the term and ethos. In fact I found that having worked out the details it was quite easy finding people who would sign up to it. All in all it started to work quite well. The problems of course come afterwords when you want people to actually play like that. The corporation numbers had swollen to 34 signed up and about 20 active members which is not bad in four to five weeks.

Whilst the story is only 5 weeks old already we have had some drama. I won't go into details but of all the players who were recruited one did not take any interest in the ethos of the corporation. He felt we should follow what he wanted, that we should settle in 0.0 space and become like any other corporation. He was quite forceful about this and it was not long (he was in four weeks) until he left and tried to take half the corporation with him. One person followed him so it was no big disaster for us. The point about this is that it demonstrates the issue of intentionality is crucial. It only take one person to not identify with the intention of a corporation or guild or whatever and then friction starts.

So on the one hand trying to frame players intentions is a good thing and clearly it works for me and others. A lot of us feel like our time spent in the game is for a higher purpose. That we are achieving something that is good and feels great even if it is very slow to develop. Not only this when someone comes along who does not identify with that ethos it is very clear that they are in the wrong place. I know this because the reaction of the corp members has been emphatic to fall behind the corp and work together. Two of them immediately went out and were happy to lose their ships just to prove that we are the Kaminjosvig and we do not back down! This is exactly what we intend to be like and we will not change.

In time as the corp develops I will let you know whats happening. For now I am already feeling like the corporation has started to take shape. We have a long way to go but the general sense of achievment is starting to take root for many of us and its a good feeling.

Sharkith/Nat