It amazes me how many new people arrive on the boards every day, and how we treat them. Some of them are annoying, there is no doubt about it, but others we just flame and make fun of – with no real reason. There's the Veteran Board government, which is a complete mess; even a constitution couldn't save it. There's the LTU government, which is fairly sound, thanks to Whitesburg.
So, this got me thinking about my own faction – the LZA. Looking its roster over, examining the war topics, and talking with many of them, I have come up with some fairly interesting observations. The LZA isn't what it used to be, but that's a known fact. The thing is, it COULD be what is USED to be. I look at it, and see an army of a handful of oldbies, a handful of inactive persons, and a bundle of newbies.
Then self realization hit me. The newbies have no way to become oldbies, because unlike the past, they lack the places to go to gain knowledge. Serious faction reform is on the menu here, and there are several steps involved in this. Not only would improving the LZA make it better for its members, but it would also make the board a little better too.
First of all, these wars are definitely a problem. They get boring after the first few posts, and nobody wants to sift through and see if they were attacked. Duels between rival members of factions should be encouraged, but war topics should be kept to a minimum; as in once every two or three months, if even that.
Second is the fact that nobody can RP fight or RP that well anymore. That's why a factional battle school would be implemented, and the city of Ashgaroth hopefully used more often. The more I think about it, the cities have been a great asset, and are slightly helping creep the board along. I'm not saying make more of them, but I'm saying use the ones that are already there well.
Third would be that we don't hang out like we used to. Every other post is "I HATE YOU!", and that's bad. It's worse than bad – it sucks. We need to hang out in taverns and in random topics like we used to. A little bit of hate goes a long way on the boards. Of course, an LZA tavern will be made, provided the new LTU tavern falls through.
So, in closing, I'd like to state that one more thing the boards (and the LZA) needs is effort. A lot of people are complaining "It takes too much time" or "It takes too much effort". That's bull. I logged over 10000 minutes of internet time last month, and I'd say 7000 of those minutes on GameFAQs.com. So it'll take a bit of effort, but as long as everybody participates and helps, everything should come together and flow smoothly again.