Community spirit of PlanetQuest
In this little piece I want to engage you in the new ways of community building within PlanetQuest. As well as the future ideas, that will bind us with the eventual and inevitable success of the project which we love and embrace more and more for each day gone.
As I have mentioned countless times in the previous articles about the vital ingredient in any project: the importance of community and its strength, it can not be underestimated at any point during a projects life-span. I have seen games being great but falter and fall because of the lack of community engagement, either from the community it-self or the engagement of the developers with the community.
Well do I have some great news for you about events and sub-quests, both some that you might already know about and a few that could be considered leaks by the Mods. I will certainly get some flak for it, but just to save my self from grief, I wont disclose too much information and especially to much about the many of the planed, and some yet to be confirmed community projects.
We all know about the art-contest that just finished, and congratulations to the winners, great to see so many points for the passport tally being handed out to awesome contributions.
But we have a new way of strengthening the community and it is absolutely awesome. Thanks to the team from the Russian section of the community, and especially Nikita, their leader and the Russian moderator, who during the Christmas time came up with an idea to try something interesting within the Russian section. A kind of a sub-quest called Character Lore Story, that after the test period has reached the wider community, and the engagement is steady, with heaps of community members creating their own story about their character based on the official lore of the game.
With the blessing of the UC and the official community leader of the project Dincy, a new chapter for the sub-quest has been created. This chapter opens up a new way of enhancing your created character, giving the character some life by the means of specializations, abilities, perks and most importantly an avatar. I will be honest with you, I am super excited, not only to read what sort of abilities and their description the community members come up with, but also the visual representation of the character.
There is already a huge amount of contributions and I am sure that it will continue to grow, especially knowing that the community understand the subliminal meaning behind this sub-quest. Not only is it to strengthen and continue to build the community, but as I mentioned in previous articles, the developers are watching us, and have hinted that they take inspiration from us. Even though I know, and you will know from a future article how I know, that Jon is a genius, there is a possibility that something from this sub-quest and the “Create your character lore” sub-quest, could inspire Jon and the developer team to include something in to the final game.
This is an excerpt from my own role-play attempt, which I will for the fun of it, continue to write on, making it a series of “logs” about my own character, a washed up Federal Intelligence Officer on a crusade for truth about events that happened long time ago and the events that we get to enjoy with the weekly story-line and the vote after. Just a quick note, as with the first “log” that I created during the Christmas contest, “Bluie” is the famous Federal Blue Vodka, while “Reds” are a synthetic stimulant in form of pellets created in the Empire, and hence the name Red Pellets.
“Stuck in this volatile mood, enforced by a loop of abuse, where “Bluie” and “Reds” supplement the occasional meal that I remember to chow down.
Some of my own people say I lost it, paranoid for nothing, too involved in things I should have left and forgotten long time ago. But, the truth, how can you forget the truth? History hidden, or obscured by the forces that changed it, changed it from truth to a compilation of lies to suit their own needs, an agenda that will lead us to history repeating itself.
They say we have to keep firm; we have to show our strength and resolve, not to let Union or Empire get any ideas, those ideas that could force that history to repeat itself. Its mad to think that my own are beating the war drums time after time, as we are like the Empire, forcing people to kneel before their weak Emperor as if he is a God-King of old times. Does that make me a worn-down soul, akin Leonidas from fables of the past, leading a few against so many?”
Why I included this in the article? Because I want to motivate you, maybe even inspire you to take that step and create your character lore, then fill that character with specializations and abilities as others have done. I know that some people might be shy or just don't like to write, but there is a simple sheet that can help you, its a sheet you can find on the server and fill out in the time frame only dependant on your imagination.
The leaks I wanted to mention, where one of them ties in into this particular sub-quest is the coming expansion of the sub-quest where you will be able to use your created character and write a short story for a contest on a weekly-basis. After the vote results, each Friday, you will be able to write a 500-words story, including your character in to the surrounding lore around the main-story arch of that specific week.
Examples built around previous weeks: maybe your character was on a ship close to Mirmir? Or maybe your character knew one of the Quantum “infected” members of the Two Suns crew from the Pinnacle? How about you were there to see the light that consumed 5 squadrons during the Montez operation? And to excite you even more, I heard from the Russians that the UC is looking at rewarding the top 3 stories of each week with a few points to fill up your passport, handy for the future mints.
Before this becomes a chore to read, let me quickly touch on what I said earlier, how I know that Jon is a genius. I didn't want to let anyone know, except few in UC and the moderators, but I am going to release a series of interviews with the Core Team called “7 Quick ones for the Big ones”.
I will ask 10 questions to the Core Team, 3 of those are going to be exclusives in another community project, I cant tell you about that one yet or I will be forced to stand in the shame corner, but I will say this “QC” wink wink, sorry team I had to. But the other 7 will be for my Medium series, and best of all, the plan is to get the community involved, where 3 of the 7 questions will be proposed and then voted on by you, and the ones that get most support will be included in the article on condition that it does not compromise the integrity and security of the PQ project.
Exciting? If not then I will also leak three words that you will hear about in the coming weeks: whitepaper, emojis and Valentine. Man am I going to be in trouble, both by the moderators and the UC, oh well, it is for the spirit of the community that I truly love.
And as a little thank you for reading this drivel, here is another excerpt from my character lore sub-quest with a little picture I photoshopped together, and yes, that is real me:
“I stand here, underneath the beautiful night sky of Morn, looking down on the grass below my feet, rushing through all the thoughts that trouble and yet comfort me. I washed down a few Reds with a mouthful of Bluie, ready for anything, as is my trusty friend Joey, the SpyreCorp ion blaster I got as a present from an old friend Sera Varse, before she vanished in the caves of Mirmir.”
Credit to the creator of the background, no copyright infringement intended.
Thank you for reading, best regards, Danny Rush.
If you haven't joined PlanetQuest yet, here is a link to join up:
And a link to the official PQ medium:
