Asherons Call: Letter To The Players From CoD

It's been 3 weeks since Keth left us for RL commitments. Darn real life. 3 weeks since I became Site Manager at Crossroads of Dereth. 3 weeks since I've discovered why most of the other site managers didn't have daytime jobs! The email alone is amazing!

In that time we've opened a new forum, Third Party Portals; opened our Soapbox to the public (send in those articles!); hired a LOT of new staff: Chain - Lore, Tjene - Trades, Czak - art and graphics, Burning Man - promotions and special events, Lewt - Patch Editor, Empath - moderator and third party applications, Dotcher, Aesa, Krell, Cao and El Harco - all new to the Quest team, and Ana, Aztek, Ga'Lic Redsto'Ne, Gendhil and Hunter Zero to our moderator staff!

The Sponsorship program is coming along quite nicely. With the opening of the skyscrapers to the public, we'll really be making a difference in our overhead. I can't begin to tell you what a difference your participation has made. Really.

Now for what's up and coming:

The Crossroads Gaming Network has been gone for some time now. And for a while, the entire network remained Crossroads of Elantia, Camelot, etc. Over time, they've all migrated to DaoC Warcry, Ultima Online Warcry, AC2 Warcry. After much discussion and haggling, we've decided that to change CoD to AC Warcry at this stage would be detrimental - we're just CoD everywhere! So, as a compromise, we will now be Warcry's Crossroads of Dereth (WCoD). It's a subtle difference, but an important one. So, change your bookmarks to ac.warcry.com from cod.xrgaming.net. And your address books from Ophelea@xrgaming.net to Ophelea@warcry.com. We'll continue our migration as well.

We-ll be opening a new listserv soon. Not so that we can spam you, I promise. Just so that we can occasionally let you know about contest we're running, interviews, promotions, etc. Don't expect to get more than 1-2 emails a month and they will always be from the Site Manager or the Assistant Site Manager.

We want to change our server forums to show the personality of the server. Darktide has a link to the DNN, Frostfell a link to the Real Life Photo Album, Morninthaw a link to the Monarch's Consortium, now we just need to know what do the other servers have that makes them unique? Let us know.

Lots of improvements to our compendium:

[li]Cooking - Tjene is working on a vendors database and preparing for tinkering!

[li]Quests - We've got a fabulous quest team and they're really excited. Expect to see new quests up much sooner than in the past. We're also looking into enhancements such as links to maps, lists of rewards, etc

[li]Weapons, Creatures, Trophies and Miscellaneous - Quendor and Ravlen have spent hours this past week getting these sections up to date. We've gotten back to The Big List of Casting skills in the Collegium Arcani. There will be more useful links in our Trophies section to help you get to the correct quest or vendor.

[li]Lore - 1-2 times per week Chain will be posting a news item regarding a topic of debate in lore. For those of you who don't know much about the lore of AC, now's your chance. He also will be partnering with Shadowsoul author, Rokus, to develop some profiles of major figures including some original art.

[li]Patch Tree - The loss of Orinthia as our Patch Tree Editor and Libarian will be heavily felt. But many of the great ideas she had will be continued by her successor, Lewt. Expect to see a more useful Patch Tree. We hope to have initial quest write-ups that you can use just 1-2 days after patch, a broader Event Pictorial and more information over all.

[li]Library - Our new librarian, Loka Wu, will be working to change our least used portion of the compendium. Continuing with some of the work Orinthia started you'll see more wedding vows, regular fan art and fiction, monarch interviews, poetry and anything else the community would like to contribute.

Our goal is to make this site less about content (although we'll work hard to make sure it's the best content out there) and more about you, the players. To that end, I've got some questions for you:

[li]Our Guild Hall is never used. Its original intention was for cross-server communication and trade but that's been occurring on our trade boards. Do you have any suggestions before I remove it all together?

[li]The Tavern and role-playing in general is at an all-time low in AC. Would an RPG weekly event in IRC with ongoing storylines in the Hall be something that would be used? If not, what do you suggest?

What can we do for you, the players? Let me, Ophelea, know. And thank you all for your continued dedication to making WCoD the best it can be.