For those already on discord and want to join the fun:
https://discord.gg/fHbNr9p
Read on for the reason:
In efforts to bridge the gap into 2020, we want to evolve communication within NewDawn. There is a reason behind this effort. Community.
For years NewDawn served as simply an alliance in Planetarion. In its prime, the game served thousands of planets, now we are down to the 700 that come and go. Over time alliances have came and went (Fury, Legion, etc..) and many spun up their own gaming communities in order to continue to play games with the members they were up late hours defending in Planetarion.
Communications were centralized over irc.planetarion.com long ago, a bot named P came to join the party then eventually netgamers.org came and too over our IRC related services. PA remained a function of IRC for a long long time, up until just recently, when the need for IRC on a mobile device started. From here many alliances decentralized communication in Planetarion by going to different apps. Some galaxies and alliances require the use of WhatsApp, some Telegram, some IRC, some slack, some discord, some wherever. This hurts the game.
As a returning HC and member that has been here since the beginning, it was hard finding you all. I would stop by IRC time to time to say hello only to find it empty (you were all on whatsapp, then slack). Slack works, its slick, but it isn't a true gaming platform. In fact we still run relays to IRC so that Delling can do his magic. Any time you issue that ~eff command, or ~p, or ~g; that is a relay being sent to the old channel on IRC, processing your command.
Enter discord. Discord has grown to be the biggest gaming communications platform and has taken over all of the other ones. Any game you play that requires some sort of team playing, or MMO, or whatever it is, now a days more than likely have a discord server. So with the help of a few people, we spun one up to see if we could integrate delling into it. Harv was able to get delling running on discord, without the use of relays and IRC. What this means is that all functions of delling on IRC, are on discord, but cannot be on slack.
I too was a skeptic at first. Watching it being built up and all of that, how we may utilize it, if peopel will even want to switch etc.. My thought is though, that if you are playing games other than PA, you more than likely are to be on discord anyways, so existing there works regardless of whether or not we play PA there. I sat in different servers for games I play, just seeing how it works. Now that we are 5 months into it, I prefer it over everything else, and there is a major point why. It can evolve our community to the next level.
Moving to discord does a few great things for us. It eliminates irc. It allows for us to build a bigger gaming community by bridging into other games. It brings delling back in whatever capacity we want it in. It lets us know, oh hey, I didn't know "X" liked to play this game, maybe we can team up and rank up together. It will allow us to maybe try other games as a real guild, instead of just an alliance in Planetarion. It will also allow the continued growth of this website: http://www.newdawn-hq.org/ and we could then use ruin.nu specifically for PA arbi related functionality.
The goal, overall isn't to disrupt the "way we do business." It is to evolve NewDawn into a true gaming community, even if we only do play Planetarion. It is a way for all of us to stay in touch if PA were to shut down and play other games with one another. It is built, we just need you to simply download the client on PC or Mobile phone, or just use the web client and join us there! Once we can function under one roof, we can move on to seeing what is next for the NewDawn gaming community.
Last story/rant. When I rejoined PA at the beginning of this year after being away for 2.5 years, I discovered a new alliance in the game. Carnage. For those of you that do not know where they came from, they are a gaming community that was looking for a war game that could be played via web browser, somewhat old school. They are a gaming community that found Planetarion and established a pretty good alliance in the game whether they are hated or not. They began as a community, played other games as a community, and found PA (not in its prime mind you) and they enjoy the hell out of this game. I just thought that was really need seeing a gaming community pick PA as a game to play. I want ND to be able to pick a game to play, if PA isn't a choice anymore.
https://discord.gg/fHbNr9p
Come join us. It may feel a bit strange at first getting used to another new platform, but we promise, we won't be moving from this one!