Everyone's complaining that this forum is dead...

[Epistolizer]

Yes, we all know SE is dying. Hell, it's practically dead already;



Two people. TWO. FUCKING. PEOPLE. Have posted today. I'm one of them.

Now I know we all love SE, otherwise we wouldn't be here / have been here in the past, but there's nothing being done to save this (now) little community that we all apparently love so much.

My idea is to have a recruitment week, where we basically advertise the clan / forums whenever and wherever possible. Hell, we might only get a couple more users, but the way it's going, that'd probably double our userbase right now.

If anyone's up for it, contact me on here or on IRC, I'm on there most of the times I'm on the forums.

/E

[KillerHart]

Higher ranks have all moved on or are busy irl. This has been attempted several times already. There just isn't the resources here to make the forums active again. All you will get now, are the oldies poping on here and there. Hell I would love if we could, but its not realistically possible.

[piramatrix]

yeah the in game clan gets less activity then a graveyard, i'm pretty sure i was that up to two weeks ago i was the only active member in there, we coundn't even have a citadell anymore because you need 5 people who try to visit the citadell to actually be able to acces it, hence i left the in game cc bacause i'm hoping on maxing somewhere in june/july and i need that avatar bxp, also i am the only current rank that still plays rs3, not sure for oldschool, but last time i checked even the iemz pc channel looked pretty empty.

[Epistolizer]

Guys I don't mean to get anyone excited but there's six people online on merchz

[piramatrix]

Guys I don't mean to get anyone excited but there's six people online on merchz

yeah thing is merchz still has a decent flow of new members because they are the top google search link when you search for rs merching, also recently divine (admin of merchz and former admin of SM) has become the leader of the ingame cc clan quark with is affiliated with the r quark fc for pc's on rares. most of them are not/would not be intressted in becoming member of the sm forums since atm we have literally nothing to offer

[Gildarts]

Yea i can agree with advertising the clan, but no one will do it or we simply don't have enough people to make a difference in user base.
I am busy in irl but i can make time to help out with advertising if someone wants to propose how and when.
We have the BM back which may also help maintain a user base but its a long-ish shot imo

[piramatrix]

well there are few things i would like more than activity to be picked up on the forums, but we have to be realistic here. fact is at the moment we have nothing to offer people both forum as in game wise.

- for the in game part:
Question: what is the main reason people join a clan and stay with one?
Answer: bonus xp from avatars that are take out as much as possible

now what does a clan need to host a clan avatar? one would need to have an Avatar habitat at the clan citadel. In order to use the clan avatar around the surface world, an Avatar habitat must be built for it, which come in basic, medium, and grand forms. The resource requirements to build habitats are:

Basic - Tier 1 citadel, 3000 timber (provides one avatar)
Medium - Tier 4 citadel, 30,000 timber, 30,000 precious bars (provides two avatars)
Grand - Tier 7 citadel, 30,000 timber, 30,000 precious bars, 30,000 rations (provides three avatars)

now for the main problem with that. our ingame cc citadel is not accessible anymore. for a clan's citadel to be accessible you need 5 clan members who try to visit it through the clan portal. so the first thing you need are 5 people to get the citadel back up and running, furthermore you would need at least 2 members to do their weekly caps at the lumberjack plot at the citadel to have a sustainable avatar habitat and lastly we would need to have a couple of avatar wardens who can take the avatar out as much as possible, preferably on a fixed home world. now to appoint someone as an avatar warden there would be a certain amount of trust. for example to start of these avatar wardens would be picked from the current forum ranks as being a rank you are slightly more trustworthy as the average forum user. later on other clan members could be appointed as they progress through the ranks of the ingame clan.
now here we would bump  upon a secondary problem : i am the only one of the current ranks who still avtivly plays rs and i can't be online all the time, i have my job and furthermore i'm doing some work on the side as a freelance researcher for a university and i'm working towards my third masters degree.

-for the forum part:
now take a second and think what we could offer people so they join and stay active on the forums? wel as mentioned before there is the black market that has been reopened. but then again you can't really call it a succes, correct me if i'm wrong but i don't believe there is even a single buy or sell offer for both RS3 or oldschool gold. yes you could say that we could advertise and get people to join the forums for the black market, but i see 2 problems with that:

1) there are 2 ways you could advertise: in game or online. now for in game advertisement you need a already existing base of active in game members ( which we don't have) the other option is online advertisement, but this would requires money, more specifically a flow of incoming fund ( which we also don't have)

2) only having the black market is not going to cut it to get a flow of new and existing forum members. there are so many other places people can do that : sythe, tribot, PlayerAuctions, etc...


Now what else besides the black market can we offer people? knowledge and merchanting expertise! as i recall the mentoring program was the last thing that died out on forums, they still had a small yet active forum section even long after the rest of teh forum was already dead. now eventually it died out aswel, but not becouse of the unwillingness of people to learn but because we ran out of mentors.

the way i see it the only way we could start getting the forum a little bit more active is to get the mentoring program back up and running and get some active merchanting logs out there. later on when you have some base activity throw in some merchanting competitions, people have a competitive nature. once you get some base activity on the forums you could start working on the ingame cc aswel. wich would lead to the possibility of more people joining the forums, which in time leads to even more people joining the ingame cc, and so on and so forth.
later on you could start getting the guide section back active , etc

now to achief all this you would need a decent amount of people willing to help out, what i am afraid we don't have. everyone has either moved on or doesn't give a fuck anymore. i'm not trying to be a pessimist here but we have to be realistic, three guys willingly to do something is not going to cut it.

[Gildarts]

you have a point 3 people wont cut it, plus we will need one of the admin to move the mentor section and we would need at least one more mentor for flipping as im clueless on the way they teach

[KillerHart]

The only real reason why I used SM over merchz was because of the community here and the interaction. Without this, I personally can't see why people would want to be on the forums.

If you did open the mentoring system again I doubt people would want to make a flipping log on here and IF you did have 1 investment and 1 flipping mentor; IRC probably wouldn't be possible unless if we were to set times when they would be on. Therefore you would likely leave it to be forums based, and people probably would lose interest.

Id suggest make a thread to see who would want to hang and maybe help out but I would predict it wouldn't have too many replies or responses along the line of "why bother".

[piramatrix]

Id suggest make a thread to see who would want to hang and maybe help out but I would predict it wouldn't have too many replies or responses along the line of "why bother".

100% agree with this if you want anything to happen you need a decent amount of people who actually give a damn and who want to put  in an effort.

If you did open the mentoring system again I doubt people would want to make a flipping log on here and IF you did have 1 investment and 1 flipping mentor; IRC probably wouldn't be possible unless if we were to set times when they would be on. Therefore you would likely leave it to be forums based, and people probably would lose interest.

this also is a valid point, it would be pointless to start up the mentoring system with only 1 mentor for each group. therefor again would be need for a couple of people who want to put in some effort, of which the probabilities are very highly unlikely.

[Watinko]

I won't do much to help keep it open, but I'd be happy to help reopen the Citadel. Is it our same Citadel that was actually quite thriving once?

Honestly Pira, I think if you want to see any support or resurgence of old Ranks, the new people have to come first. I know a few of us still check the forums daily or every couple of days, and if there were anything of merit to post on, we probably would. Speaking for myself, that includes people asking for merchanting basics (maybe more, its been a long time...) or posting neat things in the Lounge. Or if there is anything even half-related to the internal politics of the guild, I really miss making long-winded responses.

Maybe the way to look at it isn't as reviving Smokin... Elite... anymore, but as starting up a new clan under its name. We have nothing to offer that many other RS clans don't, but isn't that alright? How do other clans get their start? At the very least, we already have a large, paid-for ( ) forum with a rich history of guides and information. Maybe we should consider putting everything but the guides and stickies away and starting fresh, and start recruiting as if we were a new clan. The problem with this as I see it, is you need people who play the game to help you recruit, and I don't know where you'll find them right now. We should have started at the beginning of December if that was our goal.

A final point I wanted to make. I know this is something that has been debated to death, but if we do decide to proceed as a new clan, it may be worth considering a new name. Smokin Elite, the limping, near-dead calf of a once mighty steer. I get that we're trying to appease some people who didn't want Smokin Mils to ever die, but it did, and if we're looking for a new start (anustart), maybe we should drop the past identity and see what can be reforged. The sense of community we all built in SM was unreal, but we need a whole new community to grow here, and I'd love to see it have its own identity. We should certainly preserve our history (smokinmils.wikia.com ), but maybe its time this all became that history?

Just some things I've been thinking about.

Oh, yeah! And what if we bring the ChatBox back? Its not like we have a reputation to sully anymore if people are badmouthing each other in it.

[piramatrix]

yeah i know that there is no way to revive this once amazing community and its something which saddens me deeply

[d6s]

I check a few times a week. I know Michael would probably come back because I still talk to him almost daily.

[drgius]

came here after 200 days, I'm shocked.

[Tuff Tiga]

The chatbox was removed because people were posting malicious links. I could simply readd it but it would have to be monitored

[Pharcyde]

Shame to see this community is dead. I'm returning from 515 days of leave from both this community, and Runescape. Did not expect to come back and see my favorite gold buying forum is now, literally, and I mean literally, dead.

Anyone know where I can buy some safe gold now??

[Minato]

Is Tiggy the only one who has access to the SM clan leader accounts?

[Watinko]

Man, look at some of these old faces. Hey, fellas!

[Broeder]

Are we doing one of these again?

[Lloyd]

Well hello there

[piramatrix]

Is Tiggy the only one who has access to the SM clan leader accounts?

no idea, but if that is the case sm's cc is fucked tiggy hasn't been here for almost a year

[Gildarts]

Is Tiggy the only one who has access to the SM clan leader accounts?

I think Adrijana has access to them as well

[Julij2]

Some good memories were made here. I still check these forums every few days.

[Tuff Tiga]

Is Tiggy the only one who has access to the SM clan leader accounts?

no idea, but if that is the case sm's cc is fucked tiggy hasn't been here for almost  a year

The CC was linked directly to his main account and still is

[Music]

Is Tiggy the only one who has access to the SM clan leader accounts?

no idea, but if that is the case sm's cc is fucked tiggy hasn't been here for almost  a year

The CC was linked directly to his main account and still is

No to one of his alts, actually. The current cc owner is SM Baws or something. It's a lvl 3

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