How Org could better serve the needs of MP players,Clans and the MP community?

[Tera]

Thanks for starting this thread.

I think what Duck and Sp00n mentioned above, fused together, holds the key to make The Org the central hub for the multiplayer community. This is no pie in the sky - this website was extremely strong with the community for years. However, The Org needs to be aggressively pro-active in its approach:

- Have an organized forum structure which caters well for the MP community.

- Organize large-scale multiplayer tournaments on a regular basis and try to get official, CA-backed prizes for them (like the wallpaper competition). CA knows about us, CA loves the Org. Remember that we are by far the oldest fansite around and this website has promoted Total War games for over ten years now.

- Be the place-to-be for multi player news. During my two years as website administrator here there were almost daily news posts about the latest news (and sometimes even gossip) coming from the community. New tournaments, new clans, game updates, patch info, new websites, tournament updates, a 'Featured Website' every week - the works. This was part of what made people log to the Org mainpage everyday: there was a clear connection between the MP community and the website. I'm happy to see that the mainpage is up and running again now; but there is ample room for growth.

- Apart from its in-house tournaments, the Org can easily host or sponsor other peoples' ideas and websites. Instead of having the organizers creating their own forum for the tournament/event, they could host it right here. But the Org staff needs to go "out there" to get these people. They don't just "come". We need to hunt.

- Last but not least, to do the above, some of the key staff needs to be heavily involved in the multiplayer world: playing the game everyday, knowing the people and the clans, the ins and outs of the game and generally up-to-date with the daily happenings. If The Org doesn't have them right now, you need to recruit. Hiring some the "big fish" in the community is one of the keys to attracting the right crowd of people. It's the way the world works. For example, in STW, having Magyar, AMP or any of the other "cream" of the MP community posting here regularly gave prestige to the forums and almost automatically attracted the rest of the MP crowd.

People go where the buzz is.

Just some ideas.