[quote=@Lugubrious] Well, it's because I'm incompetent, clearly. I thought I was getting at what you all wanted; things that might help set this right. A good example of this might be that I just don't understand what you mean by people not being on the same page. If teams aren't on the same page, I'm thinking, how can they interact with one another? I'd say something like I'm not one for self-pity at this point, but I really, really am. I feel like the scum of the earth. The realization I probably am makes me feel sick. I've just shown that I can't make competent arguments or decisions or do anything to help people. If someone smarter than me could just take over this mess I've made right now, please please do. I'd love to just sink back into the hedges and not have to think about this anymore. I have to get off the computer and go to sleep. I'm sorry for ruining everything. [/quote] Lugu, it wasn’t my intent to call you incompetent, or to make you feel incompetent. I didn’t explain my point as clearly as I would like (chalk that up to my headache and late night), so I’ll elaborate now so you can see it when you’ve had a chance to get some rest. I, with a team of two others, successfully run a game with a playerbase that is, on paper, in the three digits. In practice it’s more like the high tens, but the point is that it is a number much, much higher than what this game has. I wouldn’t advise you to do everything we do, because they’re two different games. But a few of the principles and practices we use would do wonders here, I think. They’re things I and some of my compatriots from that other site have discussed pretty often with regards to games on Guild. Take a step back, and let things go organic. When you have a game of a certain size, running things on a stringent schedule becomes so time and energy consuming that it becomes practically impossible. Keeping things to a strict schedule clearly doesn’t work, and clearly makes people unhappy. At the same time, cutting characters down to meet that level is going to make just as many people unhappy. People don’t want to give up their senior characters (in fact, some people [i]only[/i] have senior characters), and I know of people on the waiting list that would still like to take part. But if you can’t manage the number, and you can’t reduce it, you’ve got to change your management style. So take a step back. Go a little more hands off. Maintain a loose schedule of what day it is, but don’t worry about where people are during it. Let individual characters, and individual teams, roam about as they want to. Let people move at their own pace. Interact with different people and different teams, be in class if they want, don’t be in class if that isn’t their thing. Rather than have missions and combat classes be things that happen when people want to “cut to the action”, have them be scheduled. For example, once a month combat trials will happen. People can wrap up their sparring session at their own pace, and then get back to other things when they’re done. Same for missions. When it’s mission time, people do their missions at their pace and rejoin the flow as soon as they’re done. That way people know when they’re coming, and don’t feel pressured to have things done by a certain time. In short, a lot of what Harine said. Instead of trying to enforce order, let people find their own order. Keep a wide-view scale of when things are, but let everyone march to the beat of their own drum. In short, relax, take a step back, and let people do their thing.