[Khannie]

Do you regularly browse this forum?

If so, please take a second to answer the following questions:

Are you a member of unreal.ie forums?
If not, why not?

Thanks

[_CreeD_]

Guys I think you've split the community too much. The forum here was fine, and attracted new players from other areas of the boards universe, now they have to go to another site...sign up...then find empty forums as it seems you've segragated it even more to a private section there. I think it's great you have such a friendly and cohesive set of regulars (from what I've seen before) but surely you've noticed a lack of new blood from the forums (as opposed to those who found the game server and were pointed there).
Irish game communities are relatively small and as such are prone to disappearing quickly when just a few key players call it a day, this will happen all the quicker as you effectively (though it may not be intentional) close your borders.
Just my $.02

[spooky donkey]

I agree . I have signed up with unreal.ie but I never think of going there im not even sure if I still know my password for it. I like to pop into boards to see whats going with the various games I play and now unreal seems dead. I play COD mostly and am in a clan. I goto their forums all the time but I also goto the cod forum on boards where I meet up with a completly different bunch of cod players that play all styles of COD. Divercity in game playing is always good, making it into some sort of elitism is bad.

[zoro]

Creed/SpookeyD - I see what you're saying, and I do agree, up to a point.

But a community can't exist on a forum alone. It simply has to be able to grow.
Unreal.ie and the forum there was setup mainly because of the unreliability of boards.ie, as well as the admin's simply ignoring our requests for a "real" mod.

As the main(ish) developer on the site, of course I'm going to defend it, but if players and members aren't willing to make the effort to make a community work, then what use is the community in the first place?
As it stands, we have more than 110 registered users on the forum (not much by boards.ie standards, but I consider it quite alot for a baby system) and most of them are regular users of both UT and the UIE servers and UIE irc channel

Unreal.ie is most certainly not the be all and end all of irish unreal tournament, but neither is boards.ie - they're both a path to a community. And that is the single most important point about the sites - it's a group of people that enjoy playing the game. It's not about competition, and it's not about winning every game you play.
It's about taking part, and enjoying it.

Certainly, if you have any suggestions for the site, or how it's run, or how you'd LIKE it to be run, I'm all ears, but complaining that we no longer use boards.ie as our main point of contact isn't very productive

Daniel

[nag]

what he said ^

[Khannie]

Well....the reason I posted here is because this forum's been dead since we moved to unreal.ie, but Crunch (now a regular) came to unreal.ie from here recently enough (after reading the sticky) so I thought that there were probably others. Also wanted to see if there were any "barriers to entry".

You two were regular posters here and I'm surprised you haven't transitioned to unreal.ie (creed, I have "TOT~Sh1m0d3@n" in my buddy list but am yet to see you online...are you using a different nick?). The private forum there is pretty quiet and is mainly intended for UIE clan talk (tactics etc.). Public forum's where I do all my chit-chat (around 95% of my activity on unreal.ie).

I'd hate to think that we've "split the community" as creed puts it. Having the unreal.ie site and our own two servers has actually attracted a lot of players to the group, which had reached a static size as a boards.ie incarnation.

Sounds like a guest login would be a good idea. It's my job to implement a swear filter before we do that (so that we don't get websensed).

Any other suggestions are mucho mucho welcome.

I'm definitely open to ways of keeping the two separate unreal boards alive and kicking.

Oh and creed....don't you mean €0.02?

[mang87]

Wtf how hard is it to do:
www.unreal.ie/forum->bookmark

gg

But yeah, come on, it's not hard. Just bookmark us FFS

[edit] and maybe keeping this forum active is a good idea aswell... Because people would look in, realise there's no new posts and think the scene is very dead.
[edit2] And come on, www.unreal.ie is easier to type than http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14 : |

It's many many times easier...

[pug_]

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

Guys I think you've split the community too much. The forum here was fine, and attracted new players from other areas of the boards universe,

All we've done is create our own site, we felt that boards.ie was growing too small for us, and in the last 6 months we've managed to bring members of the unreal community togeather to create something of our own. Sure boards.ie can attract people from the boards universe, but unreal.ie has attracted people from lots of different parts of the world, as well as Ireland which can only be a good thing imo.

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

now they have to go to another site...sign up...then find empty forums as it seems you've segragated it even more to a private section there.

That's simply not true, yes there is a private forum for the clan element of UIE for match tactics and things like that, but that's all, and the public forum is far from empty, there are regular posters there every single day.

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

I think it's great you have such a friendly and cohesive set of regulars (from what I've seen before) but surely you've noticed a lack of new blood from the forums (as opposed to those who found the game server and were pointed there).

Yes the regulars on UIE are a friendly bunch, but it's not the case that we've noticed a lack of new blood, we're constantly seeing new people joining the forum both from the game servers, and from simply browsing the Internet. We are always happy to see new people join up, and try to be as friendly and open to new members as possible.

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

Irish game communities are relatively small and as such are prone to disappearing quickly when just a few key players call it a day, this will happen all the quicker as you effectively (though it may not be intentional) close your borders.
Just my $.02

Yes Irish game comunities are small, but I don't see how we're closing the borders??? If you're refering to the fact that the forum is password protected the only reason for that is because it's a completely bespoke forum and sware filters have not yet been put in place, we had a discussion about removing the password protection before the filters were put in place and decided to wait in case any of the netnanny software lots of companies use blocked us before we got a chance to implement them. As soon as it's in place the password protection will be removed.

unreal.ie is not now and was never intended to be a forum only site. The intention from day 1 was to have somewhere the Irish unreal community could go for as much general and local information as can be provided for them, as well as downloads, games servers and as many services as it's feasibly possible to provide under one domain. I know there isn't much to the site yet, but it's something we're actively working on. Also we're always looking for new people to help with the development of the site to ensure it's not just "a few key players" looking after it, and hopefully it will continue to grow when the current developers decide to call it a day.

In the short term the hope is that come the release of ut2007 it will be somewhere people will find usefull, and will turn to as the home for unreal in Ireland. In the long term I personally would like to see the site stick around and grow for as long as the unreal franchise continues and hopefully for a long time after that.

[zoro]

Originally Posted by pug_

Also we're always looking for new people to help with the development of the site to ensure it's not just "a few key players" looking after it, and hopefully it will continue to grow when the current developers decide to call it a day.

I think that this is a very very important point to note - at the moment, and I've no problem stating it at all, I am the main developer on it.

But if I were to drop out at any stage, I know that there's no shortage of experience coders that could step up to take my place. Screwball is one of the few that understand the ins and outs of the site and it's spiders-web network of includes and sessions and headers and..... but that's not to say that anyone else who feels that they can help out isn't entitled to offer a hand in something.

I've done my best to ensure that everything is as straightforward as possible - the only real difficulties were the nazi-like security measures on the webserver


As for splitting the community - it's certainly true that unreal on boards.ie isn't at the top of my visit-list, but i still check in almost every day. And even more often if there's a thread that I'm watching (such as this one).

The stickies are there for a reason, and that is to tell people where to find other Irish players of the unreal franchise - but I don't see any reason as to why unreal on boards.ie and unreal.ie can't co-exist happily. In fact, boards.ie's massive google hits is most likely an advantage that unreal.ie won't gain for at least a few years.

[Camel]

Agree with pug tbh

The "few key players" you talk about, imo, is actually around 20-30 people that have been and will be playing ut for a long time. And they are one of the most dedicated bunch of people i have seen tbh, so even if they do give up, they would put measures in place to ensure that it carries on thriving.

[calis]

when i first joined uie in november i played on the iol games server and there was around 12 regulars and very few new players. on boards.ie there was posts everyday and it was busy but again very few new people.

since we left and the boys set up unreal.ie we have a webpage with a thriving forum .. 2 fully working servers that are not only played by uie players but usually server 2 is full of ppl i never met playin fookin them jumpy jumpy maps. since january there has literally been an explosion of new ppl playin with the uie tags ... so much so that i havent even played them all yet

in our community craic is our major reason for existence and no restriction other than been a muppet stops ppl from joining our community. sure there is a hardcore few - 2 groups mainly u have zoro screwy khannie ginja pug who actually run set up and improve uie for every1 and the rest of us who enjoy the fruits of thier labour.

the community is there and very easy to find ... u just gotta look beyond boards

[_CreeD_]

Heh, see....lively and engaging posting on Boards after all .
Actually I wrote the part about the forums being empty as the last time I popped over (a few weeks nack) you had just started the private sections and the pub was a bit dead...sooo apologies for not checking to see if it had changed earlier.
I wasn't questioning your zeal, sense of community or willingness to accept new folk to the fold, just pointing out that you're going to miss at least one source of new blood in the move. Yes it's easy to follow the link and bookmark but in this day and age 2 clicks requires dedication for most forum goers. BUT if it's working for you then great, things were just different when I played TFC (I play UT in the states but TFC was when I was home so I was active in the community here and saw it just fall apart when the regulars split to 2 main clans and got their own private forums (okay so I was kinda guilty in that one), the forum died and the IGN server disappeared shortly thereafter. Just don't want to see it happen here.
Khannie, sorry but I haven't been able to play much in the last few months, work's been in the way. Besides I left TOT and have been floating a little since an argument with the clan leader, who likes to play bots about an hour a week and then gets pissed when he gets completely and utterly owned....but he payed for the server and I wasn't about to kiss his ass so I walked out. Just plain old 'Shimodian' it is now. I HOPE to get on for a few games on Saturday, probably 8pm your time or so. I'll checkout the Irish servers first even if my poor pingage pays the price . Are you 'Khannie' on ASE?

[zoro]

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

...since an argument with the clan leader, who likes to play bots about an hour a week and then gets pissed when he gets completely and utterly owned....

HAHAHA

classic

[Khannie]

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

just pointing out that you're going to miss at least one source of new blood in the move.

Bingo! That's what I'm trying to avoid. I was hoping for someone other than yourself and spooky to post too, since you were regulars before the move anyway.

Originally Posted by _CreeD_

Are you 'Khannie' on ASE?

UIE|Khannie

If you buddy UIE* in-game you'll find us handy enough Don't use ASE myself.

If you're not with your clan any more, we're always looking for good ons players Not enough ONS played within UIE IMO.

[Orion]

There's more than enough ONS played

TAM all the way but I do miss playing AS