Should we open GothicWatch?

[Gorath]

It seems the interest in the Gothic series is drying up. We could repost all the content from GothicDot and open a new Gothic site.

Do you think we should do this?

[txa1265]

I don't think it is worth the effort.

[curious]

dying up makes it sound so sad. rpgwatch opened up right about the same time gothic 3 was realeased so unlike with gothic 2 and gothic 3 at the 'dot' their wasn't years of people coming in to peek their head to 'wait,wait,wait' for the games to be realeased. so the gothic aspect was only really useful for those of us here who played it which was in the majority the first 2 months. i imagine once this site grows a bit more and a date for the last patch is set a small interest will spike, but moreso when the addon is officially announced with or without a date. then we will have all the months of pontificating and salivating that could be saited at a place such as gothicwatch (i already like the name:)).

[Wulf]

(i havn't voted yet) ....some further info's required to discuss.

1. Some of the data is priceless and should be preserved, rather than if it should ever be erased?
2. How big of a job is it to repost the data here, would it mean "all data" or pruned, selected bits?
3. Could it be tried for an evaluation period to gauge the flow of interest? (would have to be separate)
4. Would there be separated gothic series forums 1, 2, 3.
5. Would data reposted be "copied" or "cut and pasted" from Gothicdot? (eg: would it be on two sites)?

If it isn't a big job in transferring the data, what is there to loose? - I believe it would create some activity rather than none.
I've stopped posting at the dot but would post here, while obviously the gothic traffic-jams have passed the odd roadrunner goes by occasionally.

beep beep! :)

[Gorath]

All content stays on the Dot. Per our agreement with Jolt we can copy whatever we want though. Uploading, integrating, modifying and layouting all articles, Gothic newsbits, stories and newsbits would be way too much work. Just think about all the "Pic of the day" pieces we had. Every single picture has a RPGDot watermark.

A practical solution would be to take all articles and stories. Giving them a basic layout can be done quickly, if we abandon the idea of making them look perfect, because the new software is much more comfortable. The editor is almost WYSIWYG.

Cloning an empty RPGWatch for the Gothic series is no problem. Customising it is the problem. It would make Arhu a lot of work. Furthermore we don´t have any graphics.

Trying it makes no sense. Why would we spent time to create a site and then close it again if it fails?

Separate fora would only be opened if there´s enough demand - and I don´t see this coming. More the opposite, I rather thought it was a problem at RPGDot that the forum software didn´t allow the creating of sub-fora.

The key question is what purpose(?) would the site have? One is preserving the GothicDot pieces, both the content and the control thereof.
We can´t really compete with WoG - and why should we? The one weakness WoG has is the inconsistent news coverage. They´re sometimes very fast, but sometimes also quite slow and tend to ignore the rest of the world.

[Corwin]

Isn't the Wiki attempting to do the same sort of thing?

[Gorath]

No, it was meant to collect complete infos about Gothic 3.

[Wulf]

Preserving only the most essential bits in a condensed form makes sense (thinking of poor Arhu) :wings:

Not sure if the G3 Wiki might take on a new twist depending on upcoming patch content? :thinking:

Thanks for clarifying the issue, in the light of this info' i vote yes for transferring only the barest essentials and creating a minimalist style Gothic site that would not look out of place should expansion, if any, be small. :thumbsup:

[Bartacus]

I agree with Wulf. I don't see why every little thing should be copied, but for example the playerkits and the patches can be put up here too.

I voted 'yes'

[Cm]

It is a shame to not have it all here as most of the info was gathered and posted by the current Watch members. Perhaps some of the members here could help you do it Gorath?

[Gorath]

The patches and mod kit have been uploaded months ago.

What we would need are 2 or 3 people who are willing to help with the transition. This means layouting the articles and updating them slightly to adjust cross references and to using RPGWatch instead the good old ´Dot.

As for a new site. Something similar to RPGWatch is already online. This means articles can be uploaded.
I don´t have the intention to spend my time running the site though. 5 years of GothicDot are enough.
Good content can be found elsewhere. The only real justification to keep updating a Gothic site would be news coverage. What´s missing in the community is a site posting all Gothic news to be found on all the international sites in foreign languages. If we had a dozen news posters each responsible for a few sites we could easily take the lead on this.

[Corwin]

Unfortunately, we don't have a dozen newsposters here!! Any volunteers? :)

[Acleacius]

Maybe if this is a slow (slower?) time, it would make sence to do it now.
It seems that one day it maybe important to new fans and having content is usually a good thing.
I like most here had hope G3 would have been a huge hit but it was not to be, so now we can hope that The Patch will make up for lost ground, until G4 comes around or whatever PB has in mind. :)

So if it can be done, without too much trouble to Gorath and Team, then I say go for it Gothic is what brought most of us together, so the nostaliga alone has value, not to mentione the usefullness. :)

Maybe it can be done like the wiki, overtime if the project will be too time consuming atm.

So I couldnt vote, I vote yes if its possible without too much trouble for you guys.
I would help but my I think my incomepence at grammar, spelling and punctuation are legenary accross the world, at this point. :)

[Corwin]

Everyone has an excuse why they can't help do something. Unfortunately, many great ideas never see the light of day simply because no-one is willing or able to put in the necessary effort!! Fortunately, a group of us were willing to help get this site up and running!! It's still an extremely small staff, who are all volunteers and we have no time to take on extra projects!! :)

[Jabberwocky]

Maybe if this is a slow (slower?) time, it would make sence to do it now.
It seems that one day it maybe important to new fans and having content is usually a good thing.

So if it can be done, without too much trouble to Gorath and Team, then I say go for it Gothic is what brought most of us together, so the nostaliga alone has value, not to mentione the usefullness. :)



I agree with Acleacius' points mentioned above.
I must confess I have momentarily lost interest in Gothic 3. Frankly as much as I value it's strong points, it does seem to have rather weak quests and little to offer in the story dept.. considering the amount that I've played. I've been having more fun playing Medieval Total War II and others. I will always love the Gothic series and I know I will eventually finish the game, but I can understand why interest has dropped off lately.
Nevertheless, I vote yes for the same reasons Acleacius makes.

[KasperFauerby]

I voted yes. I don't know about you guys - but I'm still having fun playing all the games from the series! I'm not *constantly* playing them over and over again, but for some reason, after a certain amount of time has passed since my last "Gothic-run" I'll start one of the games up (usually cycling through the series). Recently I started my 3rd run of Gothic 1, and because my machine is now much more powerful than when I last played that game I wanted to search the web for hints regarding unofficial tweaks and patches. The old forums at RpgDot turned out to have a lot of useful content in that regard, but I thought it was kind of a shame that I had to go to a dead (or dying) site to get that info, when a Gothic community is still very much alive here...

[Bartacus]

I want to give it a shot. I send a pm to Jaz about it too, where I already explained the will and the lack of skill. Perhaps Gorath can give me some tips?

Btw, one of the things I also enjoyed reading were the stories some of you wrote. I know that Jabberwocky, Scribbles, Aaron, Jaz and so many others have written them in the past, but perhaps that's also something that can be done in the future.

[Jabberwocky]

Thanks Bartacus. I had noble intentions of writing the whole story, but life has the nasty habit of continually getting in the way. My stories wouldn't have to be retrieved from the dot though - I've still got them all on file (and have made slight changes to many of the installments). In fact, I copied all of the Gothic stories on the dot (For the purposes of safe-keeping and my own personal use of course - Please don't jump on my legs!) so if it would be easier or whatever, I could just e-mail the files to someone.

[Dez]

I support the idea! It was gothic which brought me here. I still remember the day I downloaded gothic 1 demo. I had heard this great german rpg game unlike any other. You know how it goes..gothic is like swampweed. :D So anyway I googled a bit and found almost no info. How come no one knows of this game? Untill i found gothicdot. I instantly bookmarked it. and came back after day after day. The most difficult part was finding the game. It took nearly 3 months to get the game, but when i did, It was a bliss! I played whole weekend inside..only few hours sleep. :)

And it would be a shame if all the gothic godness in the dot goes in vein. it must be salvaged! Stories, hints etc..is there a way to import stuff from the forums into some kind of archive?

and like many others here. I have an habit of replaying gothic games. Next summer i'm going to replay them all :)

[Bartacus]

You certainly can mail it to me already Jabberwocky, but It will take some time before I have finally something up and running. I need some explanaition from Gorath first.

[Cleric]

I would say no to a seperate Gothic Site.

However, I agree that it would be a shame to lose all the great info at the Dot if they should "go under". There really is a wealth of info there.

It's a shame we can't create matching forums for the Gothic games (possibly a few other's like Arx and Wiz 8) and copy the posts over under a seperate "Old Forums" header.

[Wulf]

How will the lastest Gothic situation re: 'divorce' of JoWood and PB affect the Gothicwatch now? - is there still a need? - will it be kept maybe? - or will the whole trilogy memory fade away into that glorious gothic sunset? :whew:

[Bartacus]

I indeed ask myselve this question too, cause it seems to come to an end. Without an addon in the near future and a non PB Gothic 4 on the table, I don't really see the need. I will however waite for Gorath when he has more time to answer my email.

[Gorath]

Sorry for not answering your mail. :blush:

I´m also totally undecided. JoWooD will probably hire an unknown Eastern European dev - which doesn´t look promising for G4´s product quality.

[mudsling3]

I would like a PBwatch/gothicspiritwatch...hope they survive the split and become stronger. I can only say good luck with G4 for Jowood.

[Gorath]

A new thread has been opened.