The Council of Rare - Why is it needed?

A few weeks ago I made a post in the rare collectors forum regarding forming a rare collector's community - A Council of Rare Collectors. Unfortunately, stratics has been at a hiatus so I cannot link at this moment.

One of the key ingredients that I had decided upon very early on was to have an in-game component to the entire concept. This means it would be.. no, has to be... more than a forum based community. As such, linking it to the Rare Collector's Festival was a no-brainer.

So far the response I have received has been largely positive. However, a few of the larger rare collectors have not shown much interest in it. I am hoping that this changes because, as I will explain later in this post, it is very much in their self-interest to see this succeed. I am very happy to note that Manticore, one of the largest and oldest collector, has been very positive about it. I should also note that many of the new collectors have expressed their interest. I was planning on posting a list of all the people who have signed up but that information is also tied up with stratics :P

Taxation without Representation is Tyranny - We have reached a point where people who are interested in collecting must band together to represent themselves. Rare community is facing an unprecedented backlash due to the association of duping with rare items. Under these circumstances, if developers take steps that do great harm to this part of Ultima Online then their will be very few that will think twice about it. It is in our best interest to show that collectors and people interested in collecting are assets to the game. I also strongly believe that collectors are not an insignificant part of the community. Instead that a significant number of people are interested in it and even more appreciate the fact that their are things like museums which display the history of the game. It is one of the core parts of Ultima that separates it from everything else on the market.

So keeping this in mind, we move forward on this idea. Some of the obstacles that I am facing right now is regards to the formation of the High Council. Initially, the plan was to have an election during the rare festival but I realized an important thing: Very few rare collectors really know each other, especially in the game. An election held under such an environment will be like a sham democracy organized by a dictator. Maybe this is what is needed to get things out of the door, maybe not. For now, my goal is to have a breakthrough ingame meeting during the upcoming Rares Festival, involving everyone who has expressed an interest in joining It is there and then that the Rare Council will be declared functional. We will worry about the finer details regarding elections only after everyone has had a chance to see and greet each other.