An interview with the leader of MCC, Syrian

Greetings, noble Lords and Ladies!

On this day we would like to finally present you an interview with Syrian who is the leader of the Military Clan Council. This interview is a result of a common effort of the LoWM community members and the .ru server’s official newspaper called ‘HWM Daily’. Lord Syrian shared his thoughts on the upcoming server merger as well as the creative activity of LoWM community.

1) As the leader of the Military Clan Council (MCC) please tell us about the goals set for this clan and what are its objectives? What are the subjects that are being discussed within this clan and what are the issues that the MCC resolves?

“The MCC is a project that was suggested about 2 years ago. At the time .com server was experiencing its first ever event (the Unholy Event), and some of the MCs started recruiting low level players for the purpose of climbing up the general ranking. This caused some distress and the idea of gathering MCs in a single clan appeared at the time to deal with ethical issues. After the event passed that idea has somehow faded. At some point afterwards some contacts were initiated to perceive general interest in such clan. As the idea was then presented, the MCC could’ve became a tool for communication between not only MCs, but between the community itself and the Administration (at that point of time Arctic was temporary gone from .com and could no longer serve that specific purpose).

In our belief about 90% of the main characters of the CL8 and above were members of different MCs, so the MCC would’ve represented the vast majority of the server. Hence given the general interest in exploring such a tool the MCC was officially recognized and created as an official clan.

Although the MCC gathered almost every LoWM MCs’ representatives it had even greater goals set. Different official clans’ representatives are members of the MCC and it has as many as 4 Secretaries: players who are connoisseurs of both game and community that are capable of bringing neutral insight to the MCCs work. The MCC was created in mid-February and therefore it’s a young but prominent clan it is yet too early to say for sure where it might takes us from here. Especially considering an upcoming merger...”

2) This server hasn’t witnessed much updates and news lately. Have you guys organized any events on your own?

“We have since created a few events which were well received by the community, mainly because the first problem we tried to address was the lack of server activity. Our first event was the PVE one: players from different MCs were named a list of neutral creatures they had to hunt during a week, and we tracked their progress and the general progress of the MCs in general rankings. Our second event was the PVP one: and it concerned mostly the Commanders' Guild battles. It turned out to become great success as well and after it was over lots of players were left hoping CG could be as active all year long. Speaking of our future plans our next event will most likely be some sort of a Tavern Event (Cards). This could relieve anxiety of those who miss the official regular card tournaments we used to have in the past, and that were suspended (without any notification) apparently due to constant insufficient amount of participants.

There is however a huge difference between the events we organize on our own and the official events and that is the fact that our events can’t boast with those rare artifacts sets or any other fancy rewards for that matter. Although our events still bring some extra server activity and are generally appreciated and encouraged by the players those events simply cannot replace the official ones. We will continue to work on the MCC events, knowing all too well that players want way more than that. Even though MCC is arguably the most influential players’ assembly it’s still all up to the Administration because we cannot replace nor them neither their work, plain and simple.

3) What are your thoughts on the upcoming server merger? How it will be performed? What are your fears and expectations/anticipations?

"What are your thoughts on the upcoming server merger?" I think it's a great way to improve the gaming experience for .com players, since by the vast majority of .com players this server is considered to be an "abandoned" place and since Arctic’s yet another departure we have no events, no special tournaments, nothing new. We have a special .ru server discussion thread in our forums and we are jealous of all of the Russian server’s activity provided by the Administration there.

The most pessimistic players believe that .com server has only two possible options as its future. The first one suggests that .com server is going to be absorbed by the .ru server. The second one claims that .com server will be simply shut down. So the merger not only guarantees us that our accounts will be safe and sound, but that also means that we will be provided with an opportunity to gain access to all those cool events and tournaments .ru server offers its players. Moreover it’s quite difficult to arrange CG battles in here due to insignificant amount of players online, so one can consider those .ru CG battles as an additional bonus. MG elements on the Russian market are cheaper than they here. There are tons of various artifacts sets at the .ru server so the players have more options over there, etc.

"How it will be performed?" That’s going to be tricky. Due to lack of attention received by .com server, we think that the merger will become some sort of a "physical" issue and by that I meant that our database could be simply integrated into the Russian database. We’ve heard Administration mentioned it in some of their interviews that we will be provided with a separate forum. Hopefully it will be big enough to keep our community altogether otherwise it will simply turn out to be the absorption process I’ve mentioned earlier. But like I said, there are some things that we all look up to as a blessing so...

"What are your fears and expectations/anticipations?" In few words, we’re most afraid of a possibility of being mashed into the .ru server since Russian accounts have better exp/fsp ratios compared to the .com server accounts. We will be destroyed in PVP by Russian players because they have higher faction skills levels than we do.

We’re also afraid of some possible technical issues. Like for example what will happen to those players who have accounts at both servers and some of them have even purchased diamonds both here and there? What will happen to virtually 17th combat level .com players, they will never have a chance to play at 16th combat level? What is going to be done to overcome that language barrier, because for example you cannot translate the text that appears in the creatures’ info cards using an online translator? What will happen to our LoWM territories? Some of .com players own estates so what will happen to them? What will happen to our hunting and tournament achievements?

As a conclusion we have lots of things to be worried about but one thing is the biggest of them all and that is we are afraid that our opinion won’t be heard when the merger will take place and we really hope Administration will listen to us this time.”

4) It’s a well known fact that many players don’t want that merger to happen. So what are their reasons?

“We have a community that is over 4 years old, which means that many players have grown accustomed to the way our server is: low activity, not overcrowding, not permanently overrun by events and special tournaments. Also there's the competition factor and that is the fact that not even a single Top100 rated .com player will become a major player in .ru conditions.

Of course, there are pessimistic players who by default assume the merger will be performed in a wrong way. Most of them argue about the fact that they just don't believe Administration will bother to translate the whole .ru server into English just because of a tiny group of 1000-some players which isn’t equal to even 10% of the .ru server population. There are also concerns of the fact that the relationship between the Russian-speaking and the western players right from the start might become intense caused by the ‘cold war’ heritage so to speak. You can add the lack of communication between the Administration and the .com players to that list as well. This is why lots of .com player are afraid of the upcoming merger and would’ve preferred our server to stay on its own.”

5) Please tell us about the .com server’s creative activity?

“There are many players out here that almost exclusively dedicate themselves to the role-playing or creative writing side of the game. Most of the creativity can be seen in the players’ suggestions like all those new factions, creatures, abilities, etc. That’s a sign that .com players have a very fertile imagination :) Rumours have it that sometimes Administration takes those suggestions into consideration so maybe that’s one of the reasons.”

6) What are your thoughts on the cooperation of Russian newspaper with the .com server?

“I think it's a great chance for our communities to get to know each other.”

7) Have you ever tried to create a newspaper on your own?

“Nope! Neither myself, nor the MCC has any publishing agenda. We are looking forward to cooperate with HWM Daily in the future.”

Lords and Ladies!

With this wonderful interview finished we would like to encourage those of you interested and willing to take part in the newspaper development to address Xmm at .com server either Paris-Hilton at .ru server with PM.

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