Every year up to now I've done a Yuletide address. However, this time I took some time off from Tazlure during the holidays so you've all had to wait for the policy statements for a bit
THE PATH WE WALKED: 2005
The community of Tazlure has thrived in the past year, and friendships are strong. Packages, letters and cards have been send to and fro, and Tazzies visited each other like never before. It is always good to hug an online friend in real life
Online too the atmosphere of Tazlure has been one of friendship and kindness without many of the glitches we experienced before. There remained the occasional unpleasantness that Game Designers deal with, and occasionally we have had to serve a reminder of rules, but both in #tazlure and on the forums there has been a blessed peace compared to some of our more turbulent years. The year 2005 finally saw the stabilization and rest we've been working towards since 2003.
Sadly this has also been the year of goodbyes. Shaeliana and Tygress stepped out of active duty which has greatly affected the work of the GD's. Some of our senior players and moderators found that real life no longer allows for Tazlure too, and all those departures have been mourned by the community, as well as forcing us to temporarily redistribute areas to cope with a dip in experienced moderators. A new generation of moderators and players is gradually stepping up to the mike however.
The Modding Seminars continued to harvest some very talented supporters and Moderators. This year we ran 6 cycles of seminars after the revision of the system this winter, training over 50 people, most of whom either became moderators or supporters. In addition to that we introduced an Advanced Workshop for our coordinators to help them make game management easy. Moderating after all should always remain fun. This has been the year of the supporter. Many of our areas have benefitted from their invaluable help in running threads.
In a way we have reclaimed the old style of moderating and playing in Tazlure in the past year, going back to our roots. Concepts like the Chaos theory and player led plotlines have been at the core of internal debates and revisions to areas like the Citadel, Kings Court, World's Mouth and Pax Balthasar. The Gamedesigners consider this one of the greatest accomplishments of 2005 and will seek to further implement it in 2006.
Our webmaster informs us that 2005 set a record in statistical data. Even though our membership, while fluctuating throughout the year, has remained at an average of 200 to 300 players for the last three years, our posting habits have increased. Never before did we post so much in October and November, and some of the other months broke or matched records as well. What is more the site alexa.com has us listed as one of the most popular PBP games in our genre. This is not important to what Tazlure really is about, except to note that we seem to have been able to remain afloat where many other games have folded in the last year and a half, going against the trend. We hope to continue this into 2006, and maybe even find some growth once again.
THE PATH BEFORE US: 2006
One of the goals of 2005 we have not met and that is launching the new site. We hope to remedy that in the coming year. Already moderators and development supporters are working very hard on the remaining rewrites, and Meridiuz is preparing all the hard coding work. Some fantastic art is waiting to be integrated.
We fully expect the War of the One, that long anticipated result of the old theme Darkness Rising, to break out. In fact we can now officially announce a date. On Samheen 27th King Balthasar will attack Taquar, first in several areas that will be drawn into this battle between the gods. Already there have been skirmishes on Pan's Isle between panlings and Oneists. One of our goals for this year is to keep pushing time forwards so that some events on an epic scale can take place. You can all be part of the fun.
Over the course of the last year and a half we've had to close a few areas. We are looking to reopen some new ones, as well as widening the range of races available when we launch the new site. In fact if all goes well we might launch the Eastern Empire later this year, though of course that will depend on IC developments.
We will continue to support www.dragonmusenetwork.com, our partnernetwork. We expect that there will be a year of stabilization and rest after the launch. We will be holding a little IRC celebration with other partners in February.
We are looking forward to a new and exciting year. May 2006 bring all you wished for!