Repeat rallies: a rough idea

[Quinch]

Crossposted to CoH forums
Working on the following assumptions;

    The first unity rally gathered a lot of people, and a lot of attention
    The concentration of participants helped drive home the message that we are not willing to let CoH go quietly
    Devs have stated that "keep making noise" is a beneficial factor in whatever negotiations they're undergoing with NCsoft, so repeated rallies, even if they don't bear the magnitude of the first one, can act as a show of persistence
    On the flipside, the unity rally completely gridlocked two servers, and repeating the event might not sit well with those who would prefer to simply play the game while they can
    There is, however, one server that could host the rally, at least in a limited capacity, without obstructing anyone's regular gameplay - the Beta server
    Pro: It is, for the time being, accessible to everyone, whether they're vreem, preem or freem.
    Pro: A large turnout would also help showcase the improvements that would have come with I24 if not for the sudden shuttering, thus helping illustrate that the game wasn't, in a development sense, dying.
    Con: Inconvenience of installing the beta client
    Con: Can the character transfer tool handle a large load?
    Con: Beta might not be able to handle as many concurrent players as live servers.

Any thoughts?

[Vulpy]

I'm sure we'll see less participation if we use the beta server. A great many people won't have it installed on their systems in advance, so we wouldn't get any last-minute push from those that weren't in the know ahead of time. The fewer barriers we can put in front of someone, the more likely it is they'll participate in general.

[Quinch]

Yes, but if they were made regular, say, weekly, missing the first one would simply mean there'll be the one next week too.

[Moonfyire101]

I'm up for beta server but there are alot of folks who are locked on premium and won't be able to attend unless they made beta accessable to premium accounts now. For anyone who doesn't know how to install it we can post a tutorial.

[The-Hunter-JLJ]

I prefer the idea of a rolling series of rallies for a week, three servers per day. That will tend to spread the load out simply because people will know they can hit whatever rally is convenient for them.

Set the first each night at lets say 5 PM Eastern, the second at 6 PM Central, and the last at 6 PM Pacific. If I did my math right, that yields a rally every 2 hours. Announce the schedule well in advance, and post not only an overall schedule, but a specific announcement of the individual rally on each server forum.

Another way to involve people is specifically ask SGs and other server based groups to help organize the rallies. This might be a way to use the "march" idea which has happened on several servers, too. While an event on beta has some advantages, as even the OP points out it has some problems, too. I'd say go ahead and announce a rally on beta, but do it as part of a series of rallies on EVERY server, not as an exclusive event. Do remember that the way things are right now there are some people who can ONLY access beta for a lot of their characters, and they are not going to be happy to be locked out by a rally overloading the server, either.

You can even go so far as to include the suggestion to people that if the first server for a given night is showing a red load when they log in, could they please be courteous and switch to the second server. And if that one is showing high load, please switch to the first for the next night, and so on. Maybe include Beta as the preferred "overflow" server before we go to anything else, if you have it loaded. That shows courtesy to the people who just want to play.

For further simplicity the order of the servers can be alphabetical, which gets you quite a way down the list before there's any ambiguity requiring you to go to the second letter:

Beta          (day 1)
Champion
Defiant     
Exalted     (day 2)
Freedom   
Guardian
Infinity      (day 3)
Justice
Liberty     
Pinnacle    (day 4)
Protector   
Triumph
Union        (day 5)     
Victory
Vigilance   
Virtue        (day 6)
Zukunft     
Beta

[TimtheEnchanter]

There have been unity marches happening on Virtue every couple of days in the past week or so. But for some reason the organizers don't post here AFAIK.

[Quinch]

That might be the problem - there seems to be plenty of flash mobs and semi-spontaneous evens, but nothing really organized since the first unity rally.

[chaparralshrub]

I have another proposal: let's do more task force events like the Positron Task Force.

Anybody up for a Penelope Yin or Sister Psyche TF?

[TimtheEnchanter]

During the last march in Perez, I had the notion that there ought to be a rally that culminates in a massive attack on... something, preferably outside of a mission instance. Of course, within 5 minutes of me saying that, we bumped into the Kraken and it went down in 15 seconds.

The costume contest was a good idea with the original rally. Anything that involves more than just the visual aspect. Some form of entertainment for the players.

[Windy]

I'm up for beta server but there are alot of folks who are locked on premium and won't be able to attend unless they made beta accessable to premium accounts now. For anyone who doesn't know how to install it we can post a tutorial.

I'm premium and have been on the beta server in the last week.  Don't have access to anything to content that VIPs have or new content, but it's playable.