THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!)

3. We should focus on RPGMaker, Gaming, Art (literature, modeling, what have you,) and current events (such as science, debate, and all that jazz,) in my opinion. Whatever it is we do, I think we need to focus more on these things rather than the "community" aspect.

I disagree about the extra emphasis on art unless there's an interesting twist to it. I definitely agree with your idea about focusing on RPGMaker and other areas of gaming. Of course, "gaming" is too vast per se, so narrowing down our share of the gaming market to something which is in great demand without a great supply of need-covering websites is a good way to go.

What about cheating and game hacking? Not many web sites cover that, but everyone wants to cheat. We even used to be a fairly famous Diablo 2 hacking community. A few more up-to-date map hacks posted as attachments so visitors have to sign up to download them, some guides on memory editing... Of course, illegal things such as cracking copyrighted games or selling CD keys would be disallowed, but a little ToS bending has never hurt anyone, has it?

Focusing on things other than the abstract "community" aspect of Zelaron is definitely a must in our pursuits for expansion.

3.) I mainly think that more discussion on the gaming aspects would draw more members in, as the aspect of "community" doesn't do much to draw in new people. Whatever we discuss should be something that a lot of our people are interested in, and hopefully a popular subject (I doubt we're going to find something bigger than D2 was in its heyday unless Diablo 3 is announced).

RPGMaker and Diablo 2... Hmm. Game development and hacking? Throw in some Slashdot-esque technology, gaming and world news as Willkillforfood mentioned, and I think we're good to go.

As for my earlier skepticism about linking Zelaron with art, what about writing game, movie and book reviews which follow a particular theme or school of thought, e.g. Cranky Steve-esque cynicism and negativity? Raziel (whom I have a 50% chance of resurrecting) would definitely pull that off extraordinarily well. Or, what about limiting the reviews to cyberpunk, steampunk and/or generic sci-fi?

[QUOTE=Chruser;642132]RPGMaker and Diablo 2... Hmm. Game development and hacking? Throw in some Slashdot-esque technology, gaming and world news as Willkillforfood mentioned, and I think we're good to go.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say with the bolded part besides coming off as condescending, but okay.

I haven't noticed any real discussion on game hacking/exploits practically since I was Diablo 2 Mod, and that discussion/help section was one of the biggest reasons people came to Zelaron. The retention rate on those people wasn't high, but I know they referred other people here for similar help. /shrug

As for my earlier skepticism about linking Zelaron with art, what about writing game, movie and book reviews which follow a particular theme or school of thought, e.g. Cranky Steve-esque cynicism and negativity? Raziel (whom I have a 50% chance of resurrecting) would definitely pull that off extraordinarily well. Or, what about limiting the reviews to cyberpunk, steampunk and/or generic sci-fi?

Didn't we have an informal kind of thing going on with this? I'm assuming with the Portal that things like this would get more obvious exposure? We could link Zelaron with almost anything, we just need our memberbase to jumpstart it and have active Moderators who care about the subject.