Editorial: Changes and Challenges

By Silent Hunter

 

I’ve been feeling this blog is a bit too much press releases and could do with some more diverse content, namely original reporting and editorials.

 

So here it is. All opinions are my own and do not necessary reflect the official view of AJJE Games or anyone else involved.

 

The first year of a new decade has seen some changes in AJJE, with several new and exciting ideas about to come to fruition and some new challenges.

 

Let’s go through this club by club.

 

LOTW

 

The strongest club in AJJE currently runs at 13 sims. I say 13 as the Alliance Camp has now closed due to inactivity. I don’t know whether it was the reason for it, but this and the Independent Camp had a shared RP thread using a system called X-LINK, now being used for a cross-over sim between IPS Dakota and Raug’Moss. I  was XO of the latter until lately, so I didn’t get to use it to the full potential, but it’s something we could use elsewhere in AJJE.

 

Replacing Alliance Camp in the “Other Times, Other Places” area, when Server Management get the sim set up, will be something called An Baile Ur, giving LOTW back a sim with a Gaelic name after the renaming of Tain Bo Cualinge. Set in the year 2300, i.e. the early years of the ‘Verse as envisioned by Mr. Whedon, it’s set on An Baile Ur (The New Home), an Irish colony where people go to escape from the hectic pace of modern life. Or if you’re Caitlin Regan (yes, I’ve signed up for it) to hide out after a con has gone wrong.

 

RTE

 

When I handed out the Player of the Year Award for RTE at the Award Ceremony earlier this year (yes, all the Admin Leaders did speeches), I described what you could do in “my” club in four sentences, each covering two sims. I guess I’ll have to do a different speech as we’ve now got 9 and may well get two or three more.

 

We now have a second Harry Potter sim, Diagon Alley, set in the magical London area that has a lot of wizarding shops and taverns, a resting place before boarding the train at platform 9 ¾ to go to Hogwarts.

 

However, we’ve got some other sims in the pipeline. Teddie Dollins is unleashing romance and vampires on us with a Twilight sim, while Eddie Cramer is working on a pirates-based sim that I will be joining. While I’ve shelved my planned naval sim due to lack of interest, rest assured that this particular “sim-creating monster” (thank you Jeannette) have another idea brewing. Let’s just say that it will be arresting. OK, that’s an awful pun...

 

SFHQ

 

SFHQ is facing a major challenge. Half of the sims are unhealthy and the club’s membership numbers are declining. Last year, a number of sims were shutdown because of inactivity and I think we may get others going.

 

In an attempt to arrest this alarming trend, SFHQ is opening a new Academy sim, which may well replace an existing ship in the club, to improve recruit retention. I wish this sim every success. It’s a fairly steep learning curve to get into Trek despite the fact that the key characters and concepts have filtered into popular culture in a huge way. Anything that can help people with this is a great idea.

 

SGU

 

SGU is going to do the Timewarp. A motion was passed to jump the sims outside the expansion fleet forward a year to between Season 9 and 10 of the original SG-1. That means that the Ori (religious fanatics) have arrived in the Milky Way. The sim I run, Argos, is in the expansion fleet, but will also do the jump.

 

Overall

 

We’re doing well, but we need to keep there. In particular we need to broaden our leadership base- we have people doing several jobs.

 

There are ideas for this. Stay tuned...