Where do you see Stonewall going?

When I started Stonewall Fleet, or rather when I made the forum post that would later become Stonewall Fleet, I had few goals (get a group of gaymers together, talk about Star Trek and MMOs a lot, and cling together until the game actually launched) and since then Stonewall Fleet has become far more than I had every dreamed. We have gone farther and gotten larger than I ever imagined. It makes me very proud to be the leader of such an amazing group of people.

As Stonewall continues to age, I keep setting goals for farther into the future, which includes setting things up like the Crafting Corp, the Foundry Task Force and the Academy; one by one, we complete each goal and I'm continually amazed.

Now I sit here contemplating Stonewall's future, not just into the next year, but the year after that and even farther.

We, of course, have our plans to create a guild in Knights of Stonewall which will hopefully grow the community and expand our gaming options. Since Champions Online went F2P, there has been renewed interest in the game. Many have asked about us starting a guild within that game as well. While I don't feel ready for that just yet, I find it very interesting that so many are eager for us to expand already into another game.

As the title suggest, there is an underlying question in this thread. Where do you see Stonewall going? In the next year? In the next 5 years? In the next 10?

Are you excited that we'll be expanding our community into Star Wars: The Old Republic? Or maybe, is there another game that you'd rather see us in? How many games should we expand into?

:) You're thoughts are extremely appreciated. :lol:

With luck we'll continue to grow in Sto and thou's also planing on heading to Starwars will create a stong and firm group there bring new members to us.

I would like to see us expand into other games but I hestate to rush into to them as I have seen with another group I was with, the 5 min ooooo exciting then bored and they move on to the next Big game, thats just been release.

If we do move into other games then lets do so with caution and build on the new game to a strong group, so the members we might gain from it will have a strong support network not just on the site but also in the game.

just me thought's :)

I would like to see Stonewall to expand into other MMO's. There are many that are playing CO right now and would like to see Stonewall on there. SWTOR will be great. Many times when I have been part of a group and a new MMO comes out, people loose touch. I have a couple people that I keep in contact from other guilds I have been part of, but I would like to see us stay together as a group.

Quote by Silver101uk

With luck we'll continue to grow in Sto and thou's also planing on heading to Starwars will create a stong and firm group there bring new members to us.

I would like to see us expand into other games but I hestate to rush into to them as I have seen with another group I was with, the 5 min ooooo exciting then bored and they move on to the next Big game, thats just been release.

If we do move into other games then lets do so with caution and build on the new game to a strong group, so the members we might gain from it will have a strong support network not just on the site but also in the game.

just me thought's :)

I completely agree.

We have to remain committed to each MMO we go into for the long term, just as we are with STO. As well, as we go into a new MMO, we need to get things setup, then stop and catch our breath while things settle in. We need a steady growth and not rushing head long into something we can't sustain.

Quote by doogiegood

I would like to see Stonewall to expand into other MMO's. There are many that are playing CO right now and would like to see Stonewall on there. SWTOR will be great. Many times when I have been part of a group and a new MMO comes out, people loose touch. I have a couple people that I keep in contact from other guilds I have been part of, but I would like to see us stay together as a group.

I wonder what other MMOs we should expand into after SWTOR. Cryptic is already working on a Neverwinter Nights MMO. With our experience with Cryptic games and the Foundry, it would make good sense for us to create a guild in that as well. Although, there are lots of other games for us to expand into. The most important thing for us to consider when going into a new game is the community support. How many people want us to go into that game? I could imagine a User Voice type voting system for that.

I for one am not interested in starting any other games. I barely have the time for STO as it is now. I would like to see some expansion on the "groups", specifically the regional groups. Possibly have a "leadership" within each regional group and have regular get together annually or bi-annually; in different areas of said region. Where the people in the area could meet for a day/weekend/week/whatever and hang out, get to know one another, and play the game together in person.

Obviously Vegas pride is along these lines, but it is more of a whole fleet event; and thats just awesome. However, for most of us in the fleet, that event is just too far/expensive/unfeasible to attend even once.

I have already put out there to the west coast group that SF Pride is at the end of June and I am more than happy to host some people at my place. My team (CHEER SF) will be leading the parade down market street, performing on the main stage both days and for the first time have our own stage that we will be performing at with all of our sister squads from around the country. It's going to be an amazing event!

What about an event/get together in SoCal (Brandon I'm lookin' at you :P)? What about in Oregon or Washington? Reno? Relatively simple to plan and put together. Someone just has to do it!

Thoughts?

Quote by Silver101uk

If we do move into other games then lets do so with caution and build on the new game to a strong group, so the members we might gain from it will have a strong support network not just on the site but also in the game.

Quote by NicholasJohn16

We have to remain committed to each MMO we go into for the long term, just as we are with STO. As well, as we go into a new MMO, we need to get things setup, then stop and catch our breath while things settle in. We need a steady growth and not rushing head long into something we can't sustain.

Very important points but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. From my experience the decision to expand into a new MMO takes care of itself because the guild grows with the game and new members join specifically for that game.

Your eyes actually need to be focused on the central hub of Stonewall which is currently STO. I've seen a few communities fall apart because the leaders eyes are fixed elsewhere and they normally end up passing power from themselves to other leaders in the original game and the community falls apart. Then as Silver says the new game community doesn't fit right and people start to leave and you're left with people scrambling about trying to rebuild on another new game without a base of operations.

I'd love to see us in 10 years time as a fully functional social website, a central hub. Where we all talk and discuss everything and anything we can possibly think of. This would be the new home and we'd instead have "offshoots" into different games and if one falls apart it doesn't matter because the entire guild is still connected through the social hub.

This eliminates the problem we've seen with some of our members quitting STO they also seem to feel that they have to abandon the website because it's tied into STO. It's an absolute shame.

This new fancy social hub should have personal Blogs, btw ;)

Talking about new games I'd like to see us expand onto, obviously since I pre-ordered it a little while ago, I'd love to say RIFT. But it doesn't seem like that many people have interest in it which is a shame because I'd love to be part of a community like this in a fantasy setting.

Quote by Halish

Very important points but I think you're looking at it from the wrong angle. From my experience the decision to expand into a new MMO takes care of itself because the guild grows with the game and new members join specifically for that game.

I understand what you mean and it is what i said i dont mean all from sto goes over to the new game but a few that would be the basic leaders of the group in that game, as they wanted to play it

Quote by Halish

Your eyes actually need to be focused on the central hub of Stonewall which is currently STO. I've seen a few communities fall apart because the leaders eyes are fixed elsewhere and they normally end up passing power from themselves to other leaders in the original game and the community falls apart. Then as Silver says the new game community doesn't fit right and people start to leave and you're left with people scrambling about trying to rebuild on another new game without a base of operations.

A group I was with before did have a central hub the website but they never commited to a game and would let it fall to the way side when the next big thing came out, when I say we go with caution is that yeah make this the central hub, (lots of work for nick :D:D:D) but we support thoughs here that are making a group in the new game and any from that game that join us are made to feel a part of the whole community not just a small section of it.

I see Stonewall expanding into other games, however as it has been stated keeping at our core is the best course of action at the moment, while slightly branching out into other games. Hal is correct when he mentions wondering eyes from the Original. This happened with SBO as well as real life issues, In saying that SBO was a smaller group with just over 100 Memebers at it's prime. So Stonewall is a completely different story.

I wholey believe the most important part of any expansion is to keep an eye on your roots as well so for example, what Stonewall began with doesn't get lost along the way. However, I think it's a good idea to think about the future. Let's face it. STO won't be around for ever. It will hopefully be around a long time, but we always have to remember the shelf life of mmo's tends to be 6 years +. Then again STO has came on leaps and bounds and we never know it may last a decade or two.

I think that the way you are going about developing different website communities for different games is a very smart idea. It allows the communities to stay seperate while becoming combined. I guess an intersting question for you nick, is the Stonewall Fleet site always going to be the central hub if we land up expanding into other games with the removal of everything STO related and STO have it's own branched website like SWF. Then developing a website that is the hub, where all gamers in different stonewall communities can meet with their individual gaming sites or respective pages at the hub. The potential for that could seriously be amazing, with a lot of people coming through stonewall. However, from a financial point of you it must cost a bomb with the way it is at the moment and managing that many members between different communities is a lot of work. So yeah :P I'm just throwing ideas about.

Another question would be are we going to be exclusivly LGBT, by exclusive I don't mean that stonewall hasn't been welcoming to anyone, but I mean state that more to the point, in all games, i think it would be awesome if we are, but I've seen games that are quite limited in that respect. I must also state that if we didn't I guess we'd come away from the roots of stonewall. Then again that's a question of Quality vs member numbers vs what Stonewall stands for. Personally I don't see a difference between LGBT and the Straight communitiy anyways, but I am aware some people place more emphasis on sexual preference. So yeah it's a question to be asked :P I know we are very open, so that's just a random thought I thought lets chuck out there :P

I think Nick you've built a fantastic community and things seem amazingly on track. I just think it's going to be really kool to see Stonewall expand into other games :D

P.S. Sorry for the crappy editing, this stupid laptop is jumping the cursor about etc.... god.

I personally will not be playing other MMO's, as I don't really like the MMO genre. STO is my exception to that rule, because it lets me play in a Star Trek world.

That being said, if there is enough interest in the membership, I see no reason why we shouldn't expand into other games.

Quote by MrIzzy

I for one am not interested in starting any other games. I barely have the time for STO as it is now. I would like to see some expansion on the "groups", specifically the regional groups. Possibly have a "leadership" within each regional group and have regular get together annually or bi-annually; in different areas of said region. Where the people in the area could meet for a day/weekend/week/whatever and hang out, get to know one another, and play the game together in person.

Obviously Vegas pride is along these lines, but it is more of a whole fleet event; and thats just awesome. However, for most of us in the fleet, that event is just too far/expensive/unfeasible to attend even once.

I have already put out there to the west coast group that SF Pride is at the end of June and I am more than happy to host some people at my place. My team (CHEER SF) will be leading the parade down market street, performing on the main stage both days and for the first time have our own stage that we will be performing at with all of our sister squads from around the country. It's going to be an amazing event!

What about an event/get together in SoCal (Brandon I'm lookin' at you :P)? What about in Oregon or Washington? Reno? Relatively simple to plan and put together. Someone just has to do it!

Thoughts?

Meeting you all would be amazing and I can't wait to meet up at one of the fleet's IRL meetings, but planning and hosting those meeting has a number of difficulties, mainly our locations. Stonewall is very spread out.




(Photos from Google Analytics. Visits per City since 1/1/2011. Larger circles mean more visits from that city.)

There are several states where we literally only have one member in, while others like California or Florida, we have several. The above picture makes it look like we have a plethora of members from Northern Europe and it'd be easy for them to get together, but I bet if you asked them, even they would scoff at the idea that it's "easy."

Coordinating with all those people one location at a specific time and date is hard to do considering each person has to make sure they get that day and time off from work and save up the funds far enough in advance to plan and make the trip. Generally, these things need to be planned months, if not a year, in advance and with MMO gaming, the same people may not be active members from month to month.

Even local meetings can be challenging. In my state of Kentucky, there are 4 Stonewall Fleet members, but each of us are spread to the far corners of each side of our state. While I'd love to meet people like Ooom, it's a 6+ hour drive just to visit him. We could meet at a half way point to shorten the distance, but that would leave out members that live farther north towards Cincinnati.

But just because it's challenging doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted or done and I've been wanting to host and plan a local meeting for those of us in the Eastern states for sometime (the timing has never seemed to work out for me). Organizing these IRL meet-ups take a personal commitment and, somewhat, a financial obligation on the host that I would hate to thrust upon an unwilling or unable party. Therefore, I think its somewhat best for people to nominate themselves for organizing one of these events, instead of being pressured into something they don't want to do for personal reasons. We have a number of local based groups and I'd love to see grass roots organizing for these sort of things come from within then.

Expanding SF into other games would be a great idea because it took a lot of work to build this framework, and it would be much easier to simply adapt that framework to another game, than to start anew. There are times when I get STO-phobia, and block the game from my memory for weeks, or months at a time... so it would be great to have SF take root in another game that I would be interested in for when those times come.

However, Fraggot gaming (a gay FPS gaming community) seems to have become very inactive lately, and it probably has a direct link to the health of the core games that it was involved in. There are still several members playing FPS games under the Fraggot banner on a regular basis, but the community as a whole seems to be fairly stagnant. :(

An mmo-based community would not have nearly the same levels of those types of problems, but I think it would be a good idea to make sure and focus on the health of the STO community first and foremost... as suggested.

I look forward to the release of the star wars mmo, and SF's involvement.

taking over the universe. the end.

Quote by MrIzzy

What about an event/get together in SoCal (Brandon I'm lookin' at you :P)?

I was actually gonna plan it for May! I would like someone to help plan it with me, though.

I was also thinking about another one at the end of September/ beginning of October for a weekend at Disneyland coinciding with the D-land "Gay Days"!

Quote by bfelczer

I was actually gonna plan it for May! I would like someone to help plan it with me, though.

I was also thinking about another one at the end of September/ beginning of October for a weekend at Disneyland coinciding with the D-land "Gay Days"!

I knew there was a reason you are so awesome...I would be happy to help ya plan it. May 25th is my birthday! (hint hint)

And I have been wanting to go back to gay days at D-land, miss Thunder Mountain Railroad so freakin' much!

This is a really interesting topic! I've been hoping that Stonewall would branch out and establish themselves in some different games for a while now.

Personally I play a lot of different games, and my play style can be a bit unpredictable. I might feel like taking a break for a while, and then come back after a couple of months, play for a bit, and then take another break again! So what I would find beneficial is if there was one central gaming hub (ie. this website) and one universal fleet/guild/legion represented in all the games.

So that if I felt like doing a bit of raiding, then I could just flag something on the website to notify that I'm up for it and away we go! 8)

And with so many new games coming out soon (Terra, Rift, GW2, Secret Word, BSG...), having a hub might be a really helpful tool.

Quote by Halish

Your eyes actually need to be focused on the central hub of Stonewall which is currently STO. I've seen a few communities fall apart because the leaders eyes are fixed elsewhere and they normally end up passing power from themselves to other leaders in the original game and the community falls apart. Then as Silver says the new game community doesn't fit right and people start to leave and you're left with people scrambling about trying to rebuild on another new game without a base of operations.

One of the things that I've been committed to from the beginning is that the officers of Stonewall Fleet will have nothing to do with who's the officers of Knights of Stonewall. The two officer groups will be separate and manage their own respective guilds. As well, I can tell you that I ain't going anywhere soon. While SWTOR looks like a impressive MMO that will be a ton of fun to play through with you guys, I'm a Trekkie through and through. After I burn threw the content in that MMO, I'll be right back here and I know most of the other Officers feel the same way. Several have no plans to even play SWTOR. So don't fear us abandoning STO anytime soon. I want to make it so that Stonewall Fleet and those not interested in other MMOs don't notice the slightest change as we go into different guilds.

I hope to setup the new guild with a compilation of dedicated Stonewall members shortly that can, with my guidance and assistance, form a stable guild with the same feelings of community and family that we have done so well to form here.

Quote by Halish

I'd love to see us in 10 years time as a fully functional social website, a central hub. Where we all talk and discuss everything and anything we can possibly think of. This would be the new home and we'd instead have "offshoots" into different games and if one falls apart it doesn't matter because the entire guild is still connected through the social hub.

This eliminates the problem we've seen with some of our members quitting STO they also seem to feel that they have to abandon the website because it's tied into STO. It's an absolute shame.

Quote by Silver101uk

A group I was with before did have a central hub the website but they never commited to a game and would let it fall to the way side when the next big thing came out, when I say we go with caution is that yeah make this the central hub, (lots of work for nick :D:D:D) but we support thoughs here that are making a group in the new game and any from that game that join us are made to feel a part of the whole community not just a small section of it.

Quote by SBOSlayer

I think that the way you are going about developing different website communities for different games is a very smart idea. It allows the communities to stay seperate while becoming combined. I guess an intersting question for you nick, is the Stonewall Fleet site always going to be the central hub if we land up expanding into other games with the removal of everything STO related and STO have it's own branched website like SWF. Then developing a website that is the hub, where all gamers in different stonewall communities can meet with their individual gaming sites or respective pages at the hub. The potential for that could seriously be amazing, with a lot of people coming through stonewall. However, from a financial point of you it must cost a bomb with the way it is at the moment and managing that many members between different communities is a lot of work. So yeah :P I'm just throwing ideas about.

Would we ever strip down stonewallfleet.com and make it just a general guild site for all of the guilds that we're associated with? Doubtful. That would present a whole host of problems. For instance, how do we organize a Welcome Center that includes articles and procedures for X number of games? Or how do we operate a store that includes in-game items from X number of games and allows any of them to be purchased with a different games currency? Having different sites for each guild allows us to specialize that site to that guild and game, and having one site for all of them would be very difficult.

We could have one "social hub" site that's mainly just the social networking features that are shared with all of the different guilds, but like I said above I don't think it could handle all of the information that we need for different members to have access to.

The way that multisites mainly work is that there's a Master site that controls and stores most everything and Slave sites that pull information from that Master site. Right now, stonewallfleet.com is the Master site while knightsofstonewall.com is a slave site. For awhile now, I've been planning on doing a complete refresh of the sites and when that happens, I was planning on rearranging it so that the Master site becomes some yet-to-be-created site and stonewallfleet.com and knightsofstonewall.com become slave sites to it. (This is mainly for administration purposes. Having it laid out this way is a lot easier to manage.) When I do that, I could easily turn that Master site into the "social hub."

I think this could echo the organizational structure that I see developing for Stonewall Fleet and the other guilds we create. We'd make a new umbrella organization who's major responsibilities would be to see to the needs of our current guilds and help assist in creating new guilds as desired by the community. Within that umbrella, would be Stonewall Fleet, Knights of Stonewall and so forth. The umbrealla organization could have its own officers who help see to the needs of the community as a whole and managing other areas where the different guilds interact.

How does that sound to you guys?

Quote by Halish

This new fancy social hub should have personal Blogs, btw ;)

Personal blogs are easily do-able. :P

Quote by SBOSlayer

Another question would be are we going to be exclusivly LGBT, by exclusive I don't mean that stonewall hasn't been welcoming to anyone, but I mean state that more to the point, in all games, i think it would be awesome if we are, but I've seen games that are quite limited in that respect. I must also state that if we didn't I guess we'd come away from the roots of stonewall. Then again that's a question of Quality vs member numbers vs what Stonewall stands for. Personally I don't see a difference between LGBT and the Straight communitiy anyways, but I am aware some people place more emphasis on sexual preference. So yeah it's a question to be asked :P I know we are very open, so that's just a random thought I thought lets chuck out there :P

Personally, I feel that the reason why Stonewall Fleet has been such a success is because we are united by one common deep characteristic. We're all part of the same family, community and culture. Even divided by oceans, we're all still brothers and sisters. Departing from being a glbta organization (a for straight allies. They've been totally included from the beginning.) would be betraying our roots. Like you said, some games are short in glbt players, so I doubt we'd have the community pull to develop guilds in them.

Quote by starseed

Expanding SF into other games would be a great idea because it took a lot of work to build this framework, and it would be much easier to simply adapt that framework to another game, than to start anew. There are times when I get STO-phobia, and block the game from my memory for weeks, or months at a time... so it would be great to have SF take root in another game that I would be interested in for when those times come.

However, Fraggot gaming (a gay FPS gaming community) seems to have become very inactive lately, and it probably has a direct link to the health of the core games that it was involved in. There are still several members playing FPS games under the Fraggot banner on a regular basis, but the community as a whole seems to be fairly stagnant. :(

An mmo-based community would not have nearly the same levels of those types of problems, but I think it would be a good idea to make sure and focus on the health of the STO community first and foremost... as suggested.

I look forward to the release of the star wars mmo, and SF's involvement.

I was looking at Fraggot the other day and it seemed really quiet! Sad to hear that such a great community is slowing down. Hopefully it can rebound soon!

To some extent, that's why I think it's important for us to go into another MMO. I, for one, want STO to last for decades to come, but sadly, at some point, they will have to shut down the servers. I hate to think what would happen to the Stonewall Fleet community on that day if we didn't develop other guilds.

Creating the Member's Handbook, Code of Conduct, and the other methods and policies that we've developed over the years is where the real work has been. While creating subsequent guilds and an organization to help them interact isn't easy, it's definitely better than seeing our friends feel the need to leave when they decide to play a different MMO.

For those of you that may be reading and following along, I encourage you to post your own thoughts about all this.

How do you see Stonewall Fleet developing further? How do you feel about us creating future guilds in other games? And more importantly, how do you think all of this should be developed? What ways should we go about handling these things?

I've posted a lot so far about "what I think" or "what I believe," but you're opinion counts too and its deeply appreciated. How Stonewall Fleet develops is up to all of you; so have a voice and make your opinion known.

I believe totally in transparency of the leadership and I'm putting my thoughts out there now so that as I develop a clearer picture on how all this will work, all of you can help steer me in the direction that the majority of us would be happy with.

Now to the topic on hand, i like the social hub idea. Most new games could be supported with just new sections in the forum and new groups.

Someone mentioned Rifts, the only reason that thoroughly awesome game is not on my radar is the fact that so many awesome games are already there. I have Crysis 2 in march, (possibly) SWTOR in september, Diablo 3 sometime next year (i hope). Thats not even thinking of the games i have decided not to try due to all the cool ones im looking forward to. I have dropped down on my estimations of playing Civ 5, Brink, and maybe even Rage. I dont know what i will do if they actually do create a Fallout mmo.