Changes to the Website!

Greetings! Serein here to discuss some upcoming changes to the website.

For those from the GW2/DAOC eras who may not know me, I joined Nord back in 2013 in Rift. Lizbit (who you may know as Grobbet) and I became co-leaders of the Rift chapter when Rostol stepped down in early 2014. Ever since then, there’s been a steady flow of people coming and going into the guild, with a persistent core of players that has been around as long or longer than me, and we’ve had all sorts of fun guild activities over the years.

Back in late 2018, Rift was bought out by another company and future development was essentially stopped, so we began looking for a new MMO to call home. Most of us eventually settled on Final Fantasy XIV, where we’ve happily continued as a guild since (FF14 calls them “Free Companies”). A few of the Nords from the earlier days are even playing with us there (such as Ocilakon and Vaijon), and I can see the FF14 chapter staying active for many years to come! One thing that has always stood out to me about Nordvegr is how persistent we are as a guild. It blows my mind to think that I’ve been here for 7 years now, and yet there are members who have been part of this guild far longer than that. I feel very proud of this community and am glad to be a part of it!

One of the challenging parts of Nord leadership has been finding the balance between streamlining and maintaining a connection to the long history of the guild. For example, in Rift we had a player rank called “Valhalla’s Chosen”, which was used for inactive members we didn’t want to remove due to their contributions over the years. When we starting maintaining the site years ago, we made sure to preserve parts of our history while keeping it useful for current and potential future members.

Unfortunately, Enjin has not kept up well with the times. Many of the plugins and functionalities the site once had are now broken or buggy (shoutbox, event calendar, game rosters, etc.), and modern features found on other platforms are often just not possible here. The switch from Vent to Discord also meant that new members no longer had a reason to register on the site, and the forums here are now mostly discussions from 5+ years ago. The site has also never worked well on mobile, which Discord does quite well. And when (if?) Camelot Unchained finally releases, it will have direct in-game Discord integration.

As such, the plan is to move the website to a different platform, sometime within the next couple of months. For the vast majority of members, all that means is a fresh look for the site, which already happens from time to time (remember Guildlaunch!). It does mean one other thing: the remaining “interactivity” parts of the site are being removed, including the old forums. Over the years, I’ve been saving screenshots and carefully documenting information from various posts, and one of the plans I’m excited about for the new site is a more fleshed-out “History of Nordvegr” page. However, Discord will be the place for out-of-game interaction from now on.

If you have any comments, feel free to leave them here. If you have not yet joined the Nordvegr Discord, come chat with us! I promise that even though we may play different games, we are not scary people…most of us, anyway. Of course, if you are interested in playing FF14 with us, we keep extra mead available at all times and our house (pictured above) has plenty of spare rooms! But Discord is very flexible, so for Camelot, or whatever else comes along in the future, we can easily make additional channels and roles.

Nordvegr Server: https://discord.gg/kPaQMvC
My Contact Info: @Serein#4693

Updated 9 May: The new site is coming along nicely! If you notice things disappear from here, that’s because once they are transferred and working, I’m deleting them from the old site. Another month or so and the new page will be public!