RP HUB Origins

The idea of the RP Hub was one touted by the Founders during the Community Meeting in mid june 2014, after it emerged during a closer look at registrations, and the motivation behind newcomers approaching InWorldz, that much interest pointed directly towards role playing in all it's diversity.

The founders of InWorldz offered the regions and resources of InWorldz for the project, but emphasized the need for experienced role players, builders, scripters and organizational talents to form a team to develop the idea and to present it to the founders for approval.

Boaz Sands initially managed the development of ideas and their implementation. The first brainstorming sessions were held of from june with paticipation from members from divers RP- communitees as Medieval - fantasy, SciFi, Gorean, Pirate, Urban, gypsy and so on..
Several groups were formated to cover all aspects of the project:
- Inworldz RP HUB collaborative project (overall team)
- Inworldz RP HUB Concept/ layout team
- Inworldz RP Hub Maintenance team
- Inworldz RP Hub Builders team
Finally a proposal was presented to the founders..
With a few alterations in september 2014  the proposal was accepted, the founders insisted some kind of interactive gameplay and a storyline to be included.

Q&A from the founders (june 20th 2014) by Boaz Sands
I have received a response from the founders (Ele and Tranq) on the questions that were raised at the preliminary meetings.

I have listed each question followed by its answer as copied from their response.
If there are any other questions please let me know as I will be compiling the next round (if any) of questions to send them.

I think this will help the committees make some decisions so glad we were able to get them answered before the next round of our meetings.

IW RP HUB QUESTIONS FOR THE FOUNDERS:

1.  Would the participating RP sim owners be required to have a return tp back to the RP hub?

Answer: No, not required.

2.  Will the current IW mentors man the RP HUB?

Answer: No.

3.  Where on the map will the RP Hub be located?  Will it for instance be right next to IDI?

Answer:  There is no room near IDI currently so I'll be looking around the virtual beginnings sim area.

4. How many sims will the founders provide for the RP Hub?

Answer:  4 sims

5. How will access to build/move/mod be provided (ie will it be by a group role?, by parceling land and having the genre or RP group rent the parcel?)

Answer:  Through group and parceling and deeding.

6. Would the founders consider extending the deadline?
    The concern is that collaboration and trying to gain consensus takes a bit longer.  The team would like to continue the process we have started and gain consensus to be able to submit 1-3 good ideas to the founders.   If it cannot be extended we will do all we can to further speed up the process but would be nice if we could have say another week or two say.. July 11th maybe?

Answer:  Extension is fine, I would put it at July 15.

7. There is a concern by many that having bots and scripts will cause too much lag. This is why some support a simple landing with a board listing all rp sims categorized by genre.  Can the founders address this issue?  Is there a suggested limit on bots or scripts?

Answer: Scripts and bots should be handled through self policing. If there is lag, the tools are already present to determine the source and remove it. ISP issues are beyond our control. In other words, we don't want a big advertising area.

8. Would having only one sim become too laggy?  Would there be potential to have multiple copies of the hub for overflow if the RP Hub got full or too laggy? ie a RP Hub 1,2,3 that would be identical copies. If RP Hub is busy or too laggy user could go to the next available RP Hub?

Answer:  Currently 4 sims should be enough. If we see a need to expand later, we can have a conversation on the best direction at that time.


9. Will there be guidelines provided by the founders or IW mentors to help prevent "poaching" situations where a rp group hangs out at the RP Hub trying to direct the user to their RP sim?

Answer:  Poaching or advertising should be a committee issue not handled by Founders. Head of each RP group on the committee to analyze and determine validity of poaching or advertising claims and then determine best course if action to person or group.

10.  Could we get a definitive definition of what RP is and what the requirements for a sim to be included in the RP Hub would be?

Answer:  The only requirement from the Founders pertains to retention. As such, with this project we are to require that any group wishing inclusion will need to do 1 of 2 things: a) have enough people to rotate being on call to handle any new person coming to their groups sim for RP, or b) have enough activities available for a new person to complete or participate in when no one is available.

Anything else for requirements, we will leave to the group to determine outside if that one.

11. Who would handle approving a sim for inclusion in the RP Hub tps?

Answer:  This is best handled by a committee vote, we would suggest 5 people to be on that committee to handle new region submissions.

12. Are there any items the founders want expressly prohibited in the hub ?  ie: commercial sale items
freebie items (clothing, weapons, etc.) that might be perceived as favoring one genre over another one, etc.

Answer: Any items to be made available to the new people should be determined by the groups. So is someone approaches the group to sell banana lasers and it has no fit to any if the groups participating, the group can say it's not allowed.


13. Will an RP mall be allowed to be on the RP Hub or any RP merchants?

Answer:  Absolutely positively no mall. How would that fit into a medieval or other themed area designed to engage the person to RP? Small merchants that fit the design if the regions are fine, but must adhere to the overall theme.

14.  Will the registration be determining the level of the user ie new to virtual worlds, experienced in virtual worlds, new to rp , experienced in RP etc.?  or is this something that needs to be included in the HUB design to accommodate?

Answer: that will not be part of registration. Besides, someone can say they are a hard core RP'er and in fact know very little... Best to keep that as hands on as possible.
Other General Comments by the founders (Ele and Tranq)

As you can probably determine, we do not wish to micromanage this project. Our end goals are very simple:

1. Market to people outside the classic VW realm.

2. Give those users something to strive for (think more MMO in this concept).

3. Achieve better user retention.

The groups are going to need to think outside the box on this, and really sit down together and view it as one concept... They are producing their own games within the platform to grow their groups together.