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

We need front page articles. And we need me and grav to write them.

I really agree with this one. Except we need to ALL be able to write articles. (Not really like a post. Find some way to distinguish it) but, we should be able to review books, movies, games, events and such.

EDIT: LOL, didn't read all the way through before posting my thoughts. Still a GREAT idea though.

Okay, the portal is almost done. All we need to do now is to decide on what content should be put on it. So far, the main ideas are:

• Reviews (games, books, movies) written by Zelaron members.
• Interesting news (mostly pertaining to gaming and technology).
• RPGMaker resources.
• Game hacking resources.

We could, of course, turn Zelaron into a RPGMaker or game development community, largely because it is better to break into markets with low supply and high demand, but it depends on what we're capable of, and interested in providing.

So, three questions for those of you who read this.

• 1: Why do you come to Zelaron?
• 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?)
• 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

So, four questions for those of you who read this. 1: Why do you come to Zelaron? 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?) 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

1. I come to Zelaron for the community, and occasionally to talk about Gaming.

2. I percieve Zelaron as a place to hang out with a touch of Gaming discussion.

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.

4. Where's the fourth question?

1.) I come for the community, to discuss current events (science mostly), and to share my knowledge on what games I play.

2.) Mostly, I perceive Zelaron as an online chatboard. There really isn't a whole lot of gaming discussion these days.

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).

1: Why do you come to Zelaron? 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?) 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

1. It's addictive, and I find some of the vindictive assholes on here similar to myself.
2. A hang out for people. Most of my conversation does not have to do with games, but there's a lot of it that goes on.
3. Pull a slashdot and relay the news that nerds like.

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?

1: Why do you come to Zelaron? 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?) 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

1. I come to Zelaron because it feeds my gaming news and tech addiction better that most other sources.

2. Zelaron is most definitely a gaming forum. I found it years ago when looking for RPGMaker tutorials. It was mainly because of this site that I got as good as I did.

3. I really think we need to host resources and review RPGMaker games.

While others may favor the community more, I've always seen this as a game making site.

I know this idea is kinda late in to submit, but what about floating modules? There would be a bar that can be moved to either side of the screen, such as the 'Start' bar, that would allow you to add or remove modules, depending on how the user sees fit. But the modules can be moved where ever and when ever the user wants.

As Wed-G pointed out, this is probably viewed as a game making site by most people who weren't around for or cared about Diablo. So why not point out indie games? I am sure there are some great games out there that not many people have heard of.

And before I forget:

1.) I come here... I don't know really. Used to be RPGMaker, but now it is a bit of everything that goes on in the world, all in one place. I can learn about games, news, movies, and get psycological help when needed.

2.) As I said earlier, I percieve zelaron a gathering of people that are, in one way or another, interested in the makings of games. The other stuff we share just happens to be a bonus.

3.) We can have flavored urinal cakes. The ones at the theatre are rather bland.


Another feature came to mind. How about every week, there can be a featured member? At the top of the forum or on the portal, a small module would show the avatar of the individual and a short 4-5 sentence summary of thier contributions since the last time they were on, or in the last month or so. Under that would be a section saying something like, "You can find "MEMBER X" most frequently sharing wisdom in these forums/threads" or something like that. This, at least I think, would show potential members that they can expect whatever issue to recieve attention, and might in turn cause them to stay.

I like the idea of a featured member. That's not bad.

[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.

1: Why do you come to Zelaron? 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?) 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

1. I come to zelaron because its a forum that i have actually managed to become a part of - not saying you all know me or like me but, it has a wide variety of people with more then just general knowledge. alot of you have many answers to questions, and can give descriptive answers as well.

2. I always saw this as a gaming forum, solely because those tend to be the threads i troll. i tend to not venture much out of my comfort zone, however lately ive been posting in just about every thread.

3. i think you should dedicate yourself to 1 idea, be it gaming, friends, welcome parties. However if you do choose to do it all, you cant ever lax in 1 area, then it slowly turns into nothingness - cough diablo 2 hacking. There are some great programmers on here, but - why hasnt anyone programed a dupe for me on d2 yet?!

Recommendations : I think there should be some exclusive content to veteran zelaron members. Titles for reaching x amount of posts. Perhaps blogging? Keep up to date with the games comming out, information about news, gaming, and the science half of life.

Most of the last part of that description is already here, i think it just needs more posters, and a bigger community.

i bumped a 2 month old sticky!

1 i come to zel because my life is boring

2 i think zel is a place were you can talk about anything

3 i think you should advertise on other sites for more people
get more games
more ranks like kazilla said
and last but not least have more themes for zel

the one ranking system by forum posts i found was on www.crossingtyria.com when you reach 1000 posts you get the Discple of Dwayna (its a guild wars website) title, if you contributed to something on the site you get the contributor tag. i had mine before i got banned for bored and useless posts

how about an area were if your this or above you can see and post in it

I thought of something that i havent noticed about zelaron. when you type www.zelaron.com it brings you straight to the forums, which leaves a ton of space to play with. Most every single other webpage brings to a home page where you must navigate your way to the forums.

My idea is this, if we made a home page we could ideally become 'fan sites' or have a complete library of information at our members disposal - for instance.

Warhammer Online is due out september 18th (without official forums). There are requirements to become a fansite - you need so much of x with a mixture of y. So say you built a homepage that had a WarhammerOnline Link, which brought you to the warhammer fansite - tons of information there, everything anyone could think of. If something wasnt posted they could look it up and edit it, almost like a wiki with restrictions of course (or not). Warhammer fans will be looking for that site that is easy to navigate has a great community and tons of information. I think this is prime meat for zelaron. All the forum links could come back here, introducing the Warhammer community to everything else zelaron has to offer.

Guildwars as well doesnt have any offical forums, althought currently the GuildWars community on zelaron is dead, if we were to create something that felt significant to them. I think it might change.

WoW forums are full of asshat trolls, and the elitestjerkoffs that spawn from top raiding guilds and arena teams. World of Warcraft forums is a popularity contest, if you are a nobody dont post. This could be a nice alternative to that.

Big console games are comming out in the very near future. We have the respective forums for those, but maybe tweak it a bit to appeal to more people.

Allowing zelaron members to contribute to the cause is imo the ideal way of brining more to this community, writing guides, strategies, builds, and walkthroughs. It is all very excillerating to some poeople.

Congradulations for not knowing what the thread you're posting in is about.

1: Why do you come to Zelaron? 2: What do you perceive Zelaron as? (A gaming forum? A place to hang out with online friends?) 3: What "unique" needs should we cover, to make others come here?

1: I am actually accepted here and the people are not boring
2: I see it as a place to discuss games that I play (D2 LOD and WoW)
3: I don't know what else it could need besides game reveiws, I would like to be able to score games I play and we could have our own "top 10 games"

THE NEW ZELARON PORTAL! (No, it's not launched yet, but we need YOUR ideas! Now!) em... ok? i suppose they arent idea's

So, what kind of features do you want to see on the new Zelaron portal?

(from the very 1st post)

i think its up now

Unless WW has been on an obscure domain name shopping spree for the portal, one would imagine it would be found at www.zelaron.com. Seeing as that still redirects to the main forum page, I'll have to reply in the negative to your thoughts.