Disclaimer; this is a long look in from someone who until recently was looking and watching from the outside. While I've always been a supporter of the GA either through small military aid or other things, I never really had a stable GA character(s) until recently. I play [member="Oren"] of the new Jedi Order and [member="Dracken Pryce"] of Rogue Squadron and the GA Navy. Read if you wish, but this is mainly for the Admin team. Pull things and ask questions.
As the spiritual successor to the Republic and the biggest faction map wise I feel that we have an obligation to keep this train rolling. If there are scheduling conflicts with staff try to figure them out or see if new blood is willing to take up a mantle. We
have the writer base I see you all every day chatting in the Discord, but if I'm being honest it seems like the real PvP problem is bad blood between admin teams and faction members of other factions keeping us from doing much. Its not a problem with just the Alliance, its a problem with a lot of factions I've been seeing recently and I think its time we as one of the largest factions step up to the plate and try to be the bigger faction instead of isolating ourselves from our demons. We literally have on this board at LEAST two big enemies with targets on their backs in the form of the First Order and the Sith Empire. We should be
best friends with their admin teams because it gives all three groups of writers potentially endless content. We have
no reason to be this stagnant. The Galactic Empire succumbed to their pride and let themselves die off instead of committing to bettering relatinos with other factions, we should not follow suit.
Things to Look Into
I think it is important for us to acknowledge the things that are keeping us down which the admin team has done pretty well in their opening post
here. However, there are things that I do believe are missing based on interactions in the Discord channel as well as my own observations on the board. So here are some other potential issues I see with the faction as it is now.
- Lack of commitment to the story arc presented "The Great Galactic War": This was hyped up by every faction and their mothers when it started, however for reasons that will be looked into later, things never took off. We already were the faction that was supposed to be taking a stand against the Dark Side, but that also quickly lost steam after the defeat of the One Sith. Then all three (now two, RIP GE) attacked at once. We took some losses and some small wins, and that was that...Let's keep this going OR put an official IC end to this war with a treatise and move on to a new focus. Get new and old writers hooked on a goal again!
- Pride: Unpopular opinion; What other factions do or say about us should not effect how we deal with them. All factions should be treated with the same respect and candor that we give our friends online. Our Discord should not be the place where we foster ill intent or ideas of other factions. Whatever they've said or done IC or OOC should have no bearing on keeping your doors open for new writers. Work through the headache, its why we chose you all to begin with, because we believed that you would get us through those "headaches". Don't let an entire faction die because we can't be bothered to deal with a faction OOC. Especially when they're doing better than us in terms of activity.
- Discipline: Many have tried, and failed but ORC made it popular and the cool thing to do because it worked for them but I am of the unpopular opinion that if you are running a faction with a military that most of your writers will be a part of in some way...You cannot be willy nilly with how you run threads and ops. We need to be less like ORC and more like the SE and have some better organization and a stricter military feel. Have a few people make your standard issue stuff, occasionally give contracts for specific pieces of tech or specific ships or what have you, and consolidate a look and feel to the faction's military that you think will appeal to the Star Wars nerds in us. Imo I would look at Mon Cal for capital ships and Incom for fighters and small ships and have maybe one or two other manufacturers on retainer for small arms, armor and other vehicles. But that's just the Canon Boy in me. Schuttas Love Canon.
Baby or Bathwater, never both. We have a good thing going here. One of the biggest Legends factions is on the board, and its us. We have a great opportunity to keep ourselves afloat, but for the first time in a long while when it comes to factions I feel like the weight of this is heaviest on the admin team. But this part is for us members; If our admins bust their asses to get us a thread with a story we need to post. We can't just look at it funny and walk away.