#cloudcraftgaming

Note: 

Just like everything else in my life, I procrastinated typing this up. Also, this is pretty long so I will spread this out into multiple parts. Please read the entire announcement because it is EXTREMELY important. 

 Part one: 4Kingdoms Community

Obviously, its clear that very few people have been active recently. This is caused by many reasons and is not just a one time issue, nor is this something you should need to apologize for. Many of the factors involved are out of our control, but with the changes that will be detailed below, we hope the minimize the effects of these factors and have a constant stream of new players, old players, and a thriving community and RPG. 

 Part two: Future of 4Kingdoms thus far

 4Kingdoms will continue existing, so there is no need to worry about that, though I (Nova), Ghost, and Ken have been discussing ways in which to improve 4Kingdoms and bring the community back from the dead (Halloween pun, I am not sorry). We have been considering these changes, and changes like these for awhile now, but finally decided to take action about a week ago.

Part three: Plan of action p1; Calendar 

The first action we, and you, will be taking is a public calendar (link below). This calendar is linked to on the main wiki page and on my website. The top calendar is a public display. This will display all future 4Kingdoms events. The second part is a place for scheduling events. Click the day, time slot (2 hour slot), and enter the required info (last name optional, email required for confirmation, and info on the 4k event). This calendar will be used for scheduling ALL 4kingdoms events (aside from very small ones). Anybody and everybody in 4k can schedule an event. This way everyone knows of events ahead of time, and reserve timeslots for events (youll see why this is important in a bit). I will monitor the calendar for fake events, but please take full advantage of this!!! 

 Part three: Plan of action p2; Community

 As many have known, the 4kingdoms community is small, and dwindling in size over time. So, in attempts to keep 4kingdoms alive and successful, we ask that you help to advertise 4k to everyone. Post on tumblr, instagram, facebook, etc etc. Get as many people to join. This way when we lose someone, we don't lose 10% of the 4k population. Hopefully, once enough people are involved and active, the community continues to grow and thrive.

Part three: Plan of action p3; Story & Characters 

In attempts to help make the community bigger and better, the main style of 4kingdoms will be altered slightly. There will still be a major plotline, however, like many RPGs today, there will be many more side stories, missions, and characters. The main storyline can also be altered by players’ actions and characters. All players may create events (via the calendar) that can alter their character’s story. New players may create their own characters (and if you would like to, old players may kill of their characters if they get tired of them and don't enjoy playing anymore). A full set of guidelines on story, mission, and character creation will be on the wiki within this week. Players will now be allowed to create very customized characters, events for those characters, and even missions given by them for other characters. 

 Part three: Plan of action p4; What you need to do

 Along with the information above, there are some additional things you will need to do in order for these new changes to truly be successful. We must take full advantage of the wiki. Many of our members have already spent hours working on it. But we need all of you to pitch in. Create pages for characters, places, events, and missions you create. Edit pages that involve you or that you know canon information about. I cannot stress this enough, the more information on the wiki the better. The new players can quickly read up on there and catch up on what they missed, all players can better keep track of the lore and world of 4kingdoms, and allow players to simply delve into the world of 4k without worrying about missing important information because they could not get on the server.

Part four: What this really means

 Honestly, yes 4kingdoms is changing, but this is for the better. It may be hard to get used to, but we all think that this is the best course of action for 4k. Currently 4k is a static pole. It's very bland and unchanging with limited interaction. With these new changes both within the RPG itself and outside of it we hope that 4k will change into a fluid tree. This tree would be comprised of its main trunk (the main storyline) that has many, many roots, branches, and leaves coming off of it, allowing for both greater interaction with the story and the ability for players to truly make 4kingdoms their own. 4Kingdoms will still be what it always has been at its roots, a group of friends creating a world of their own. But now, not only will it be that, it will also be a living entity, constantly growing, changing, and welcoming new members. 

Part five: Links!!! 

4K wiki: http://4kingdomsrpg.wikia.com/wiki/4KingdomsRPG_Wiki New calendar page: http://www.cloudcraftgaming.com/4kingdoms/calendar Staff app page: http://www.cloudcraftgaming.com/cloudcraft-mc/staff-app/ 

 Part six: Extras

6/24/16, 7:50pm CST: We will officially be ending support for Skype on July 1st. There will be no group for 4Kingdoms or CloudCraft on Skype. 

 All players who wish to stay in communication with staff and community members outside of the server should make sure to be on Discord. All staff members can be reached via discord. 

 If you know anyone within the community that is not present on discord, please send them this announcement so they are fully aware of this switch. 

This is the link to join the Official CloudCraft & 4Kingdoms Discord (If you are not a member or CloudCraft or are a troll/spammer/etc you will be removed from the server): https://discord.gg/xVSen5E 

I am pleased to announce that we finally have an official 4KingdomsRPG Wiki.

It is still a work in progress but will hopefully be getting better in the coming weeks. This will become a central and public hub for character info, story and plot details, and other 4Kingdoms info. This wiki will contain major plot events, canon characters and more.

Visit it here 4kingdomsrpg.wikia.com

If you would like to help contribute to the wiki, please create an account (This is to reduce bots and trolls), there will only be a few pages regular users cannot edit, but aside from that, it's editable. Please keep it appropriate and accurate. Thank you. And as always, feedback is appreciated so that we can further improve it.

Okay, so, I have been doing a lot of research and exploring. For awhile I have wanted to start a forum for CloudCraft, and have wanted to start up a serious community for this server. But there are some "down sides" however there are way more good things to come out of it. Now, because of this, I will basically be taking a poll, and depending on the results and the feedback from you, I will either go through with this or will hold off on doing this for awhile.

First question is, would you use the forums? Yes or no, would you use it and why. Information about the forum-to-be: It would not only be used to keep players updated with news on about the server but also allow players a place to talk to each other and have better dialogue than on the actual server. It would also be used to show players online, keep track of your activity and even show statistics about your progress in different worlds, such as faction and stats from minigames. And more things.

The second question is, how often would you use this service? We are not asking you to use this all the time, or never use tumblr for the server. Instead I would like to know if you would use it enough to make the effort to set this up worth it. And, having a user base on the forums would also allow us to get better services such as a larger teamspeak server, and not have to depend solely on donations for keeping this server.

Now, the last question is, would you be able to donate to help us start this up? Not at all required. But in order to start this up, and get the good forums software, and support, we do need some money. So, even if it were only a $5 donation, it would help out quite a lot. And, you will not only get rewards in game for helping out, but also rewards on the forums.

So to those of you paying attention last night, I told you that at some point today there would be a video up of me messing about on Cloudcraft with some friends.

Well, I finally managed to get it edited... sorta.

There’s a huge chunk of nothingness at the beginning, and at the end where it didn’t cut properly, but other than that, I have a video up of our time playing Infected last night. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev5a-4AVgn4

go watch and enjoy and tell me how badly I can edit videos |D