Howdy, TXR! It’s the dawning of yet another year and our community is still kicking and going strong and accumulating new members after its second anniversary. Last night we had a meeting with leadership and our Community Leaders, and it was very productive. So, I’m going to share some of the results of the meeting along with some info on the state of the outfit.

H1Z1 is coming up real soon. Early access starts on January 15th. I know several people in TXR are getting into this game early access, and many many more (including all your Generals) will be involved after the game’s free-to-play full release. Want to get into the early access for free? Meli is running a contest that will hook you up, see the forums for details, and for more information about H1Z1. We expect our existing Planetside 2 players will help us excel very early on in this game. Just like in Planetside 2, we’ll be bringing our organization and teamwork to a game where many new players won’t have it. We expect the game will be awesome, and TXR will be heavily involved.

Speaking of recruitment, it was a big focus of our meeting. When we created the Community Leader (CL) position, the goal was to give people the powers and tools they need to manage their game and the people that played it. We’re going to be giving CL’s full authority to recruit however they want within their respective games. The only universal requirements that will be imposed are that members are 18 or older, use TeamSpeak, and that they follow our Code of Conduct. In order to become a full TXR member, all previous requirements apply in addition to the universal ones. Full members must have a microphone and be verified with it, and must fill out an application on the forums. In order to receive full membership benefits, such as viewing and using the forums, participation in events and contests, and the possibility for promotion, they will have to register on the website in addition to in-game membership. CL’s have now been granted the power to accept forum applications and will do so for applicants from their games.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because it’s basically exactly what we’ve been doing already, we’ve just never really formalized it. Another big difference is that CLs now have the power to do this for themselves. We want them to have authority over their own games and the ability to grow our community by recruiting through other games. So, a few relatively minor changes in line with those goals. We’ve also made a few mostly superficial changes to the forums and TeamSpeak to reduce clutter and get our individual games at the top level.

TXR has grown and changed a shit ton since we started 2 years ago. We started exclusively in Planetside 2, and developed a community structure to match. As we grew and people played other games, we changed our structure to match. Rather than exclude or discourage any side-games people played besides Planetside 2, we encouraged them, brought them under our umbrella, and offered our TeamSpeak and forums to these new games and their players. TXR is now no longer only a Planetside 2 community. We are what we’ve always called ourselves- a gaming community.

If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for us, please comment on this post. If you want to get involved in this decision making process, talk to a leader. We promote people based on their ability and the work that they do. Powers and privileges are given out so that the people who receive them can do a job, recruit, contribute ideas or technical expertise, or otherwise contribute to this community. If you want to be one of those people, or if you want to start your own community in your own game, or migrate or merge another community into ours, post on the forums or message a leader.