[The Ore Baron]

What's the honest status of this project as of now? I've noticed there has been pretty much no activity for the past two months, save for a slight addition to the Spell scrolls section and a hilarious troll who changed the word 'artifact' to 'shit' in the description of Uriziel.

Personally, I love wiki projects, and made some additions to the Gothic wiki myself (anonymously). I was also planning to work on it during summer a little, however, seeing as how this wiki seems to be abandoned by the community, I'm not so sure anymore. What do you think are the reasons of Gothic wiki not becoming a community success?

I, for one, felt helpless every time I visited the Polish wiki - those guys have created an extensive library of Gothic knowledge, featuring information not only on the canon games, but mods, too! Seeing how much they have done and realizing we were just about to start from the beginning made me lose all interest in the project, as a more rational step seemed to be a simple translation of the Polish articles... which would beat the entire purpose of creating a wiki in the first place.

This, and simple lack of time. Writing a wiki is a time-costly activity, one that is hard to match with the hectic life of a university student.

I would really like to see the WoGen wiki returning back to life, although at this moment I'm not sure if that's really possible.

[Bastardo]

This, and simple lack of time. Writing a wiki is a time-costly activity, one that is hard to match with the hectic life of a university student.

Pretty much. The way I see it there is a need for a considerable amount of contributors. If this Wiki was a bit more publicized around cRPG forums maybe it'd get more, I don't know.

[Godcrusher]

one question- what is Morgrad?

[Hellbilly]

one question- what is Morgrad?

Isn't that the name of the world where Gothic takes place?

[Powaz]

Yes. It was mentioned in Gothic 1.

[Godcrusher]

Wow first time hearing that. Where is it mentioned?

[Bastardo]

Probably in one of the books you can find in the Water Mages' library, or maybe on trader mages.

[Ariogaisus]

Not to be a necromancer but is the project dead?

[The Ore Baron]

is the project dead?

Not officially, no. It's just on an indefinite hiatus, I suppose.

My university work is, as of now, finished, and I am currently semi-capable of spending some time with Gothic and the wiki. Thing is, for some reason, I just don't want to, and there's little you can do about that. Been having a blast with Risen II these last few days, however Terrific game, despite it's several shortcomings. Not nearly as bad as a lot of you seem to think.

OK, back to the wiki. Uh... I suppose, we could get things started with setting some ground rules or whatever.

Here are some issues for you to consider:

1. Mods. How much information, if any, should the wiki provide on mods? The Polish wiki has extensive articles on some of the mods, even going as far as adding whatever changes the mod brings to the original game in separate articles on the original content, i.e. the article about Lester might have information on what role Lester performs in one mod or another. Personally, I don't like this at all. I have nothing against separate articles for mods, but I don't like mixing mod information with original content information. Seems... overdone. And redundant. Also, it should be agreed upon whether or not unofficial patches for the games are taken into the account (this is more important for Gothic III).

2. The style of writing. This is both very important, and not important at all, depending on how much you people care about aesthetics - that is, how nice the wiki articles look. I suggest creating different sections for describing characters, locations and items from the in-universe perspective (lore-heavy writing, as if describing actual events, no technical information) and in-game perspective (technical information on the role the subject at hand has in the game, the circumstances of it fulfilling this role, etc). Lastly, some speculation should be allowed - the games have left several gaps of lore and logic, which are begging to be filled with reasonable explanations and valid facts to base them on; however, it's very important that simple gap-filling does not turn into fan-fiction writing, but I think we'd manage. All that being said, http://wogen.wikia.com/wiki/Scavenger and http://wogen.wikia.com/wiki/Ian%27s_list are rather fitting examples of what I'm talking about.

3. The Risen problem. A lot of people still believe that the universes of Gothic and Risen are secretly conjoined. This is apparent in the wiki already, which, despite being Gothic-centric, features a separate tab for Risen games. My solution? Let's have a single, separate article, listing all the facts and information which either supports the joined-universe hypothesis, or denies it, i.e. lizard people, gods being banished, etc. However, apart from this article, speculations of this sort should not be published.

So yeah, my two cents

[Ariogaisus]

It seems that i shall become a contributor. Off to go work. Tataaa!

[Ariogaisus]

Created a WiP page about PB. Feel free to edit!

UPDATE:How do i change the colour from black to white, also all the sources are linked to Wikipedia pages.

[Tolknaz]

Also, it should be agreed upon whether or not unofficial patches for the games are taken into the account (this is more important for Gothic III).

Since the last unofficial patches for Gothic 3 and Forsaken Bugs have now effectively become the last official patches (that is how these games are now sold), i don't see why they shouldn't be taken into account. As for Ironkeeps patches, they're not very proffessionally made and they're not endorsed by the publisher, so no.

[Ariogaisus]

I do not want to be the ONLY active member.

[The Ore Baron]

I do not want to be the ONLY active member.

Guilting people into work is rarely a good thing to do.

I tried looking into something to write about for the wiki a few days ago, but kind of failed.

I did not want to start writing about a random subject, so I decided to collect my material from the very beginning of the series - the manual of Gothic. It's a poorly translated piece of work that gives some contradicting information about the setting and some sort of a necromantic chant I was hoping to at least add to the article on necromancy.

Hoping to gradually move on through all the available sources, writing a little bit about everything in order of appearance, I moved on to the intro of the first game. Watching the video, I noticed that the soldiers fighting the orcs are wearing the same armor Lee's mercenaries are wearing. Heck, one of these men is fighting in his underwear only - certainly not a look befitting a soldier of the official state army. Now, although I understand that PB most likely used these armors as a placeholder and that these soldiers are supposed to represent the official military forces of Myrtana, I went on to come up with this idea that during the war, Rhobar II must have used not only his own armies, but also actual mercenaries. This is further supported by the fact that we meet a bunch of unfamiliar mercenaries in Gothic II, who "were fighting the orcs up north", coincidentally, wearing very similar suits of armor. Now, this is all speculation, so I wasn't sure if all this should be be on the wiki in the first place. Heck, for all I know, this whole mercenary business might already be present in the games, and what this whole idea of mine is not mine at all.

Still trying to make some sort of a plan for adding to the wiki, I continued to think about the aforementioned hypothesis, which led to some more questions; like, how does the armor of the official state army of Myrtana look like? I figured it must look like the rebel armor from the third game, as they're the most likely to posses the armor after the war, but I barely have facts or strong arguments to back this up, so once again, speculation. However, this mercenary idea does come in handy when explaining a few other things, such as the orc mercenaries and the heavy presence of bandits. Also, there's the Myrtanian navy, where Torlof used to serve, but the games give little to no information about that. And then there's the Gothic comic, where Milten goes to Khorinis, and the way the soldiers there are dressed is even more different from what the other sources is giving me. I guess they could be the original city guards of Khorinis, before the militia was set up with the arrival of the knights and paladins. Or was there always a militia? Does it even make sense to think about, based on something I came up on my own?

Lastly, the intro shows the soldiers who are escorting the NH to the VoM. Their armor is completely different from what we ever see in the games. Now, according to the name of the armor they're wearing, these guys are the Royal Guard. What's their exact role? Why don't we see them in the second game? Then again, maybe we do? Martin is, apparently, a member of the Royal Guard. This term is also used in Gothic 3 to refer to several other characters. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm just analyzing the intro. Heck, what are the actual chances of PB having planned all this? Pretty low, I'd wager.

By then, I was already getting a head ache. There were a few other little findings, but again, it's mostly speculation based on few thing that are shown in the video. Frankly, I don't think wikis should be written like that, but these little mind games of filling up the gaps in lore is the only way I can keep myself interested, so maybe I'm not really suitable for this. Also, now that I have actually tasted what gathering source material for a wiki article is all about, I really don't feel like committing myself to this - it's just too time-consuming.

So that's where I'm at now. I suppose I can help out with some thing, but I really don't feel like going all "alright boys, let's get to work" Cheers.

[Ariogaisus]

Guilting people into work is rarely a good thing to do.

I know but.....let me tell you a little story.

There used to be a forum called The Bloody Board(doesn't exist anymore) and i used to be a member of it.
Most people had left the board because, there wasn't anything interesting happening. Only me, a guy by the name of TheVampirist and Jamie_Marsters were left. Me and TheVampirist were chatting on the forums and Jamie was a moderator who just started a flame war with me and TheVampirist. Then TheVamp quit the forum and only me and that mod were left, i of course, left too. After like, two months i visited the forum and saw that Jamie had been literally talking to himself on the forum. Weird.

My point is, i don't want to be that Jamie_Marsters guy, posting shit on the wikia for eternity. Understand?

But i agree with most of your points, Gothic's lore is just, something awful.