Talk:Furcadia

Furry? I think not.

Many of the people discussing this on the Article for deletion page made the assumption that Furcadia is specifically for furries. In my experience, this is definitely not the case. Most of the people I know on Furcadia are not part of the fur fandom. It's certainly attractive to some furries but to assume that it's a furry-only game is incorrect. Should this be mentioned in the article?--Teiladnam 16:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, considering since the avatars, port.. and the "Gods" (Primes) of the games are furry (anthropomorphic). The main drive of Furcadia is for the fun, and roleplay. For meeting people as well. I see plenty of people as humans as well. But Furry is a vital part of Furcadia. Yes, it isn't furry only, but it is a big, big part. Hence the Fur in Furcadia. I am sorry, but I am putting it back until it is further proven that it shouldn't be there. Note that the other categories it is in listed in roleplay as well. It should have some more categories as well. Disinclination 22:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, its a moot question. A GAME is for anyone that enjoys playing it, not some sort of specific stereotype or subculture that has to be forced upon anyone. Its like saying,"baseball and football are for jocks!" Frankly, its an adolescent and juvenile point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.46.60.64 (talk • contribs) 13:55, 23 July 2007

Okay, I reread and thought about what you wrote, and after looking on Furcadia forums, I get what you're saying. I changed the category to anthropomorphism to be more specific. But in the article, it never talks about the "culture", for lack of a better word, of Furcadia. And I don't think it should, simply because it would create too many problems. Disinclination 06:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

See also this discussion on the Furry Fandom template. User:kotra just added something to the article about how Furcadia relates to the fandom, although I'm not sure if it's relevant enough to stay in the article.--Teiladnam 04:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Added my own bit in there. In short, it's my opinion that Furacdia is a part of the furry fandom as much as any other game could be, because it has both meaning to and direct inspiration from the fandom. It's designed by furry fans, it has recognizably furry characters in it, it's been widely played by member of the furry fandom . . . if there was a poster child for "furry game", it'd be a strong candidate. It's not designed just for furry fans, nor are only furry fans welcome, nor is playing it a requirement of being a furry fan, but that's true of a lot of things that are generally regarded as "furry" as well.

As an aside regarding the commercial aspects: Most fursuit makers I know who are in it as an actual business don't just cater for the fandom either - they make "mascots" - but it's a significant part of their market and where a lot of their design ideas come from. Note that Dr. Cat was perfectly acceptable as a Guest of Honour at Further Confusion 2001 on the basis of his work, like WhiteyFawks, even though both probably make most of their money from people who are not members of the fandom. GreenReaper 06:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Splitting Dreams from main article

The "Dreams" section seems to be a good candidate for splitting into its own article, as similar to DragonSpeak. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Yamake (talk • contribs) 11:12, 19 March 2007 (UTC).

I'm leaning towards disagreement here. The "Dreams" section isn't very long, and if it was made its own article, would be difficult to find sources and prove notability for. It would probably not withstand an Articles for Deletion nomination. I would extend this judgement to the DragonsSpeak article as well, to a lesser extent (Felorin has spoken at length about DragonSpeak in interviews, so sourcing may be possible there). However, complete articles on both subjects would definitely be appropriate on FurcadiaWiki. -kotra 01:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

primates?

are there no primates or reptiles? that's too bad.--Sonjaaa (talk) 15:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

There are dragons (a pay avatar). Otherwise, no. -kotra (talk) 21:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

GA failed

Sorry, not quite GA standard yet. Some notes for improvement;

• "Furcadia is the longest continuously running MMO." - needs an independant reliable source
• Infobox image should be a welcome screen or something (if it isn't)
• Gameplay section before development
• "On 16 December 2006, Furcadia became the first-ever MMORPG to celebrate ten years of continual service" - standalone, merge to a paragraph
• "Dreams" section unsourced
• "Main maps" & "Other official maps" sections are listcruft
• Is the "The Beekins" section needed?
• "Business model" section = unsourced listcruft
• "Awards" section could do with some prose

If you have questions/comments, leave a note on my talk page. If you found this review helpful, please consider reviewing another nominee. Cheers, Dihydrogen Monoxide (party) 05:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, it's helpful. I predicted it would fail for many of these reasons (the unsourced sections and the amount of crufty information, particularly). For the "longest continuously running MMO" claim, I think the MPOGD reference is independent and reliable enough, though. Also, I think the Beekins section (trimmed down, perhaps) is notable due to the unique and extensive nature of Furcadia's volunteer program. Everything else I agree completely with. -kotra (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Oldest MMORPG

It's worth noting that Guinness World Records, a far more reliable source, states UO as being the longest running MMORPG. Either they are wrong, Furcadia is wrong, or something technical got in the way (such as not counting Furcadia as an RPG). - 67.166.134.243 (talk) 17:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Guinness probably just hadn't heard of Furcadia, because Furcadia is clearly older by nearly a year. On the other hand, Ultima Online is fully aware of Furcadia (Furcadia's creator was at one point going to make UO), so they either have a particularly limited definition of MMORPG, or they just conveniently ignore Furcadia for marketing reasons. Anyway, we could mention that Guinness considers UO the longest-running while others (and common sense, but we can't cite that) say Furcadia is the longest-running. -kotra (talk) 01:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not seeing where Furcadia is an RPG of any kind. It's a social environment. You can layer an RPG on top of Furcadia - and indeed that is a clear intent of the creators - but it's not an integral part of things, just as Second Life isn't an RPG, and Ethernet isn't a transport protocol. GreenReaper (talk) 04:27, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The creators didn't program in any mandatory structure for how to roleplay, if that's what you mean (though one of the creators did create a voluntary system). Furcadia is, however, still primarily a role-playing game, where players come to interact as a character (if even just as their normal selves with an anthropomorphic animal shell). Perhaps Second Life could also be considered an RPG, though as far as I know, Linden hasn't introduced any formal roleplaying structure like Talzhemir did. However, this definition of RPG (a game where you roleplay) has been largely discarded by the mainstream gaming community in favor of goal-oriented treadmill-like RPGs with tight structure and very little actual roleplaying. But some people are still valiantly fighting for the old, broader definition, like this recent article. -kotra (talk) 06:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It's the "if only as themselves" bit that gets me. At some point, it turns into a chat channel with glorified avatars. Perhaps I'm cynical (or just mistaken), but from what I've seen that's a fair description of the majority of activity on Furcadia — well, that plus looking for tail in FurN — and it's hard for me to see a chat full of furr[e|ie]s as a role-playing game. I think that's why text-only versions like FurryMUCK call themselves "chat kingdoms". GreenReaper (talk) 08:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

This is original research, but from what I know of Furcadia (admittedly not as much these days) at least half of the players at any one time are doing some form of roleplaying (even if it's just "looking for tail"). Your common misconception stems from the most public areas (main maps) being mostly just normal chat. However, a great deal of the players spend all their time in private dreams, often roleplaying. I don't have any statistics, but it's more than people usually think. Original research aside, Felorin and Emerald Flame call it a MMORPG, and there are probably other sources as well. But perhaps to avoid this whole discussion, they just call it a MMOG on furcadia.com. I wouldn't mind changing it to just MMOG (or MMO*) here as well. In fact, it may be better, since Furcadia is really part MMORPG and part MMOSG, and "MMOSG/MMORPG" is kind of unwieldy. -kotra (talk) 18:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Mention in a local paper

I thought this might be interesting to people. Furcadia was briefly mentioned in a college newspaper: [1]

Conner's chosen character is a snow leopard (an animal he has always felt close to) named Satoshi, which he developed from a furry role-playing game called Furcadia.

Probably nothing of use there for citation purposes, but it's something. -kotra (talk) 13:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Screenshots

Hey, any chance you could upload the screenshots to commons so we could use them on Polish Wikipedia too? Plushy (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe anyone can re-upload sanctimonious's screenshots to Commons as long as the two licenses (CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL) and the summary info all remain intact. I noticed though that the screenshot currently being used on the Polish article (Commons:Image:Furcshotee.JPG) does not have the correct license. Since it's a screenshot of a copyrighted game, it cannot be released into the public domain (except by the game's copyright holder, Dragon's Eye Productions). So I've nominated that screenshot for deletion, because such copyrighted works aren't allowed on Commons. For the Polish Furcadia article, I recommend using the other screenshot on Commons, Commons:Image:FurcShot2007.png, since it is licensed freely. Or another of sanctimonious's screenshots could be uploaded to Commons too.

Also, good work on having a Polish article! -kotra (talk) 19:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I guess thanks? And if anyone can re-upload do you by any chance know someone who could do it? I mean I'd do it but I'm not really sure how. Plushy (talk) 08:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

This page explains how to move an image to the Commons. Basically though, all you need to do is just upload the image to the Commons and use the same licenses and description, and link back to the original image on the English Wikipedia. If you've uploaded images to the Commons before it should be pretty easy. -kotra (talk) 21:42, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Adult content

I've removed the section about erotic content again. There are currently no sources to indicate either that it's true or that it's significant. Furthermore, although this isn't exactly a biographic article, it does link to the game's creator's page and we have to be careful to source potentially controversial content. Risking an incomplete article is far better than risking a false one in such cases. Olaf Davis (talk) 13:58, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

If need be screenshots can be taken. Furcadia has a nasty underside that its creators conveniently don't mention. I can't imagine how many teenagers and children are corrupted and exposed to disgusting content by the nasty things that happen in the 'furrabian nights' area of the game. I understand, however, that unsourced content that is controversial in nature is dangerous. Hopefully sources can be found for this. I know hundreds or thousands can confirm the nature of furrabian nights. It is, by nature, an unadulterated haven for sexual immorality of all kinds that continues on without notice. This needs to be dealt with. 216.166.234.203 (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't the place to "deal with" such things. If the area contains adult content, this is something that we might note (especially if others do so in a reliable publication), but you are mistaken if you expect Wikipedia to pass judgment on the presence of such content, or on the opinions of those reporting on it. This is an encyclopedia, not the opinion page of a newspaper. GreenReaper (talk) 21:10, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I have been working with other editors on a possible revision of the "Adult content" section, at User:Twp/Furcadia. I think the text there is reasonably neutral and it is as well sourced as possible. I am happy to have that draft incorporated into Furcadia if and when other editors agree that it is appropriate. Tim Pierce (talk) 02:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks good so far. But can we attest the significance of The Yiffy High School and The Vore Club. There are many dreams in Furcadia, what makes these significant examples among others? RP9 (talk) 03:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with RP9. I'm sure we could find plenty of evidence that Windows Live Messenger is used for cybersex, but without indication of its significance compared to all the other activity that goes on, that wouldn't justify an 'Adult Content' section in its article. Olaf Davis (talk) 07:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

MSN Messenger is a program designed for communication via text, similar to Furcadia, yes. But that's where the similarity ends. Furcadia is a social video game, in which you enter a virtual world and do virtual things. The adult content in the game is not an offshoot of it's design, it is part of it's design. MSN was designed for communication. Furcadia was designed for roleplay, socializing, and entertainment. Whether it be a dream designed for children, or a dream designed for sexually promiscuous teenagers- it's part of the design of the game. It's my opinion that people need to know that this game supports a very vulgar and sexually explicit community- again if I found out the hard way that my child was delving into some virtual erotica section in this colorful and 'friendly' game, I'd be rather upset. Some sort of information (preferabley a lot more detailed than whatever rubbish warning the creators give) on this content needs to be mentioned.216.166.234.203 (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)