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important announcement: new joint owners.
IP: 82.14.67.140
Posted on May 19, 2012 at 00:07:29 AM by georgia

I thought for a while about what to write for this. I wanted to give a nice little speech to begin a new and unprecedented era in the Shaman history books.

I was seventeen when I made Shaman, in the middle of my A-levels. I’m sure most of you have heard the story. I made a site for fun without intent to run it, was persuaded to open it by a couple of friends who liked the idea and, boom. Total accidental success. Here we are, three years later, surrounded by the monster that Shaman has become. This site has been an influence on other games, has helped its members through tough personal times and has firmly wedged itself into the roleplaying world’s memories. Pretty much everywhere I go in the B2G community, people have heard of us. That’s a pretty epic achievement.

I am now twenty years old and have just finished my second year of university. This time next year, I’ll be graduating and looking forward to starting training to enter the world of full-time employment. Put shortly, I’ve grown up. I think we’ve all grown up together. There’s something a bit emotional and very wonderful about that.

Unfortunately, for quite a while now I’ve been facing a looming problem. The fact is that, as great as it is, I genuinely never expected Shaman to last this long. I never planned for the game in the long-term, and I always run it with a present-oriented attitude. I can’t do that anymore. As of October, I’ll be entering my third year and pretty much all my free time will be sucked away. Every spare moment I’m not working for my classes will be spent researching and writing up my third-year dissertation. I’ve spoken to plenty of graduates who all say the same thing: in your third year, you don’t have time to sleep, let alone partake in the fun activities you used to do. It’s become painfully apparent to me that when I enter my third year, I will be unable to continue the dual responsibilities of running Shaman and posting on it. All things considered, I decided early on that I would rather be posting than doing maintenance work, and I concluded that I must (at least temporarily) hand the reins over to someone else. The one thing I don’t want to do is close the game down for a year, because I think that would be selfish of me. I know that other people rely on this place to relieve stress, and some people only write here and nowhere else. Why should I take away other people’s chance to write on Shaman, just because I might not have time to?

After a lot of thought and discussion with a number of people, I’ve managed to come up with a solution. I will be staying on as owner and administrator of Shaman, and I will be taking on two joint owners and administrators to sit, with equal power, alongside me: Merlin and Equilibrium.

The three of us are, more or less, in the same boat. Merl is also entering her third year and Quil has a hard year of study ahead too. Between the three of us, though, we think we can juggle it. There are going to be a couple of other lower staffing changes, but the three of us will sit equally on top. In version nine, Quil and Merl will each be playing their own deities within Shaman to grant them equal IC power. If you want any permissions, have questions, etc – you may come to any of us. We will be in close communication and I think we all have roughly the same ideas about how to run a game, so we should be a united front.

Like I said, though, this is going to be a tough year for the three of us individually. We aren’t going to have all the time in the world, and while we’ll all work as hard we can, we’ll need your help too. For general IC activity, welcoming newbies and just mucking in now and then, we need you. If you think you’re capable of helping in any way – even if it’s just welcoming new players OOC, or judging the odd contest – then please contact any one of us at our Shaman emails to offer your services. If everyone lends a hand, we should be able to work together to keep the game running smoothly until graduation in the summer of 2013.

Here is my plan, as it stands.

Merl and Quil will take on their new joint-admin roles effective immediately. I always think it’s better to learn on the job. You may come to them about any OOC matter. Their IC deities will be coming in with version nine, so you will be able to have your characters go to them for IC matters once the new version is in.

We will switch to version nine in the late summer or early autumn of 2012, probably in September. Version nine will carry us through to the summer of 2013, after I graduate. New versions are the most time-consuming and stressful part of running this game, so not having any throughout my third year will really ease the pressure. Version ten is already lined up and will be awesome when it’s launched, so don’t worry!

Since I know a number of people are going to be restricted for time this coming year, version nine will be another relatively laid-back version, like version eight. There will be more in-character opportunities and a number of new features, though, so watch out for those.

And that, I believe, is everything. I apologise for length; those of you who have been unfortunate enough ever to receive an email from me will know how wordy I can be. I want to round off by thanking everyone for their continued dedication and support of the site, and hope that you can show Merl and Quil the same fantastic treatment you have given me over the last few years. I honestly don’t know a better memberbase on any other game, and Shaman is only as good as you are, so thank you.

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