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The Monarchy of Wintreath
The Monarch's New Years Message 2019

Happy New Year, Wintreans!

In my holiday message, I talked about all the good things we did in 2018 to make Wintreath a better online home. Now we're in a new year, and I want to share my thoughts on what I'd like to do this year to make Wintreath even bigger and better. It's something that's easier said than done after five years, but I think it's possible and I'm excited about the projects I want to embark on in the new year.

I feel that 2019 will be the year that we finally achieve one of the aspirations we've had for the last few years: to grow beyond NationStates and to diversify into other things. This doesn't mean that NationStates won't continue to be important or a focus for myself or the Cabinet, but my hope is that this is the year that other things will grow to be just as important, giving us whole new worlds to have fun, attracting new people who would not have given us a second thought before, and ultimately becoming a more self-sufficient and self-sustaining community. So this address will focus on the projects that I believe will get us there and that I want to devote time to this year.

Bringing the Minecraft Server out from the Shadows
As you may know, in December I put some time and money into our Minecraft server to get it up to speed: upgrading it to the latest version, increasing the memory limit, and switching to a dedicated IP. At about the same time, @trader graciously volunteered to take on some of the work as an op over the holidays, and he's done a great job fixing up permissions and getting things going on the server again. I've noticed that in the last month, the server has been more active and once again seems to have a few regulars.

In the new year, I would like to look into improving our server further, to the point that those few regulars will grow into a community of their own, much like the RMB community or the Discord community. I'd like to see our server become good enough to draw people in on it's own, and to be worthy of top placement on Minecraft server toplists. I have to admit, I don't know what that might involve right at the moment, but I'm encouraged by the incident where people found server because another server used to have our IP address. We weren't equipped to take them in at the time, and we still aren't...but I'd like to look into what it will take to make it so that we are. Who knows, perhaps in 2019 we'll be bringing new Minecrafters into our community intentionally rather than accidentally.

Reviving the NSFW Community
This is something that I've put a great amount of thought into, and this is the year that I would like to rebuild our NSFW community. I took down the NSFW Discord a few months back because it had become fodder for those who don't like us and as a result a source of stress for me. But since then I've had a lot of people tell me they've missed having a place for NSFW chat, and to be honest I feel that it's a special part of our community...in a way, it's the most zealous form of Wintrean personability.

Several months ago, I put together a small committee to investigate how to reopen a NSFW area in a more secure manner that did not depend on using personally identifiable information (something the community was wholly against). Their work ended about a month ago, and equipped with what we want to do, I hope to implement the new forum and Discord areas soon in 2019, with a more stringent but streamlined application process and new features that will let our NSFW community better express themselves if they would like. It will be something new, but it will also be something better, and I hope it will foster a vibrant and lively NSFW community for those that want to be part of it.

Building our own Fun and Games
The most exciting thing I'd like to do this year is to build new, dedicated games. It's something that I've done during the last few Summersend Festivals, but I feel like I can take it to the next level now. If this comes to pass, we will no longer just consume games, we will produce them as well. This means that we'll have something concrete that's fun and unique to us...something that brings us new members,keeps our current members active and involved, and ultimately makes us a more self-sufficient community.

Did I mention that this is something that I'm really excited about? Building games has been a dream of mine for years, but it's something I mostly put behind me when I got involved in NationStates...there just wasn't time for work, running a region, and everything else in life, but the revival of the Cabinet this year has taken some of the burden from me and allowed me to dip my toe back into it...first only occasionally for Summersend Festivals, but now more regularly. It's exciting to be able to marry this dream with another ongoing dream: building and growing this community.

If all goes well, you should be hearing more about this very, very soon!

Improving the Wintreath Infrastructure
Finally, we have to acknowledge that in order for all the things we're already doing and plan to do to be at their best, we have to make improvements to our infrastructure: our forums and Discord server. At a time when more people than ever are using mobile devices and we run into more people who have never used a forum before, it's imperative that our forum and Discord be as easy to join and use as possible.

We have to keep making the forums more accessible for mobile devices, and we have to make it easier to link Discord accounts so that Citizens can get their masking on there as quick and as painless as possible. We also need to look into restaffing the forum and Discord ops teams, which have fallen into disrepair over the last several years. This will make it so that everything else we do will attract more members and enjoy more successes, because the easier it is for people to use, the more people will do just that. This is one case where it truly is a matter of 'if you make it better, they will come'.

I'm very excited about these projects and what the future holds for us in 2019, and I'm eager to get started. This is the year we're going to do new and exciting things, without changing who we are. Each project I discussed is either about building new fun things, improving fun things we already have, or making it easier for people to get involved with fun things. In this, even as we grow, we will stay true to what we are: an online home for people to relax, have fun, and make friends with awesome people.

I hope that you're as excited about our future as I am, because I truly believe this will be our brightest year yet for our home. Likewise, I hope that it will be a bright and happy year for you and everyone in our community as well. Let's keep doing all we can to make it a great year for each other.

Inric Nordrim Kestar (Wintermoot I of Wintreath)
Monarch and Founder of Wintreath
Suzerain of New Hyperion
Regent of Nowhere