Antares will be a political candidate for Westonia! Here's some back story on your favorite slayer:

Place of Birth - Valley of Titans (because Jagged Coast is awful.)
Race - Aman
Age - Dragonmen don't have an age.
Gender - I can't tell, there's a blank spot there.
Guild - Symphony of Blades

Main Political Agenda:
-As vanarch, I promise to only incur taxes high enough to pay for the work put in by my guild and I as far as making the area fun filled and safe goes. This means taxes of about 5-10%, a nominal fee when it comes to the large amount of gold gained from questing in Westonia.

-A militia will be put in place to prevent ganking of lower level players in the zone. This militia will be composed primarily of members from Symphony of Blades. Every good province has a system of guards put in place to maintain unified justice, and this is one thing that I promise to everyone who votes for me.

-PvP will NEVER be turned off in my zone. No one rolls on a PvP server to have that sort of realism taken away from them. Ganking will be possible, but if you choose to grief, you'll have to face the zone's militia in combat or get into a city as quickly as possible.

-Delivery services will be offered in my zone by myself and the same militiamen. These services will include the delivery of bandages, consumables, potions, charms, and campfires so that you don't have to stop your busy questing to visit a town. The fee incurred for these services will be included in the zone taxes.

-Furthermore, I promise to offer the best playing experience to ANYONE leveling in my zone. If this means specialty shops and NPCs, you will certainly have them. If this means personally helping you with BAM quests, instances, and gankers, I'll take it upon myself to ensure that you have a great time in this wonderful world of Tera.

With these systems in place, there is many a fun time to be had when questing in Westonia with Antares as vanarch! Place your vote today!

Hello VoT! My name is Audible and I am the Chapter Leader for Tribe. We are very excited to be running for the first ever Vanarch elections in North Shara. I'd like to take a few seconds to give you some details on who we are and what we aim to achieve.

Who is Tribe Gaming?

Tribe Gaming is a multi-game community that has been successful in a number of games for over 7 years. Tribe prides itself on being a community that transcends the game you play by having a very strong moral and ethical code, coupled with an extremely active forums. Members of Tribe are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of all races, religions and sexual preferences. People choose to play with us because it is a safe internet home with a great degree of success as well. The leaders of Tribe are almost always accomplished leaders in their work, homes and communities as well.

About Promises

We are seeing a lot of promises here; a lot of promises that guilds have no intent or no ability to keep. I won't do that. This is the first example of Tribe's moral code in action. We won't ever promise something unless we are sure it can be planned and executed 100%. We won't promise you anti-gank squads, we won't promise you levelling companions, and we won't promise you zero taxes - we can't, no one can - we're just one of the only guilds who will say it. When we promise you something, you will know we have a plan, and structure and the 100% backing of Tribe to get it done. Here are the things I CAN Promise:

• Tribe will provide thoughtful leadership to their province
  
• Tribe will have an open-door policy, accepting ideas and thoughts to improve its rule
  
• Tribe will bring the experience of 7 years of exceptional MMO leadership and organization to the position of Vanarch
  

We will make every effort to find the reasonable balance between taxation and services. We have no desire to profit from the position of Vanarch. There is too many unknowns in this regard to make promises of no taxes or everything-on. We simply desire to provide the most possible services and NPC's without over-burdening the provinces population with taxation.

Tribe's officers will work extremely hard to mobilize their 200+ members to earn as many policy points as we can to support the needs of the province. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to policy points, so I won't promise we will be firing on all cylinders right off the hop, but policy point generation will be VERY CLOSELY watched from day-one. We will do everything we can to make sure that adjustments to how and when we earn points are made so the province is well taken care of.

We have no desire to turn PVP off in North Shara. Some guilds will tell you they will never do it, and frankly, we might in other continents as we move forward. This is another promise guilds are making that is simply irresponsible to keep. We won't make the promise, but we think the players in North Shara provinces want PVP and we want it too.

Want To Know More!?

We would LOVE to answer your questions, and almost anyone in Tribe should be able to give you a good idea of what is going on but here are some people explicitly tasked with doing that:

Mutt
Lupichu
Warrior
Kerupt

We've built some pretty excellent websites for a reason: so you can go learn more about Tribe, our history and get a sense of why we will be fantastic Vanarchs. To learn more about Tribe, visit us at:

http://www.tribegaming.com and http://www.tribefortera.com

Vhen for Vanarch of Ostgarath!

Oh Hi! I'm Vhen Leader of Vicious and Declicious and I'll be running for Vanarch of Ostgarath

Short and simple.

My agenda as Vanarch of Ostgarath is as follows:

•Taxes- I will be keeping taxes low in my area. Most tax money encoured will be used as prize money for various events.

•PvP- As this is a PvP server, I believe PvP should always remain on. You don't roll on a PvP server to have that right taken from you. For anyone running around griefing in my area, my guild will deal with them.

•Militia- I plan on having Milita in my zone to attack reds that attempt to "safe-zone it" in town. Griefers are not welcome.

•Quest Assistance- Are you a healer class having trouble killing... well... anything? Are you trying to get those stupid BAM quests done? Is the next leg of your quest chain in an instance?
Would you just like some help getting through some quests in general? As Vanarch, my guildies and I will be willing assist you through whatever difficulties while questing you may seem to encounter while in our area.

•Various Events- We will hold various events in the area and offer prize money to the victors. There will be no "buy-in" as all prize money will be from taxes.

•All NPC shops- I will do my best to keep every npc shop in Ostgartah open for everyone to enjoy.

Thank you for your time and Thanks to all who will help make this possible!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Friis and I am running for the Vanarch seat of Southern Shara: Val Elenium. I'm the guildleader of Thick as Thieves. My thoughts for my guild, are the same for a Vanarch position. I actively promote fair PVP, but am strongly against higher level players attacking defenseless lower levels. It is a policy within our guild that we do not tolerate players who have infamy. While I will not make ludicrous promises that I, or my guild, will farm BAMs, dungeons or be a personal delivery service to each individual person, I do promise that our careful monitoring of Val Elenium, and proper distribution of Policy Points, will advocate a more stable community, which will then promote an easier area to farm BAMS and quests.

Vanarch Role:
PvP in Val Elenium: PvP will be allowed in Val Elenium. As Vanarch, while I will montior and actively smash down unfair PvP, I will not interefere with equal level PvP, especially on a PvP server. If people are being griefed with unfair PvP, Thick as Thieves and the VoTT Alliance will bring out their force to smack away any griefers.

Ease of Vendors:
I do guarantee that specialty shops, skill instructors, clerics of restoration and trade brokers will be active.

Tax Rate:
I'm not looking to make money on being Vanarch. Tax rates in Val Elenium will be set at 5% until 3,000 gold is made, to make back the money I and my guild have invested, then the tax rate will be set back to it's minimum amount, 1%.

Events:
My main focus in being a Vanarch is showing appreciation to those who voted me in. I think the easiest and best way to do this is to hold events where we are able to reward people with gold. I know people in the Val Elenium area are hitting a nice little grinding wall where all you want to do is level, so these events will take the least amount of time from you guys and reward you guys the best that we can.

I will always offer my ear:
I guarantee, if voted for Vanarch, I will be willing to listen to suggestions in the Val Elanium community for issues that need to be changed to make your gaming experience as enjoyable and fun as possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions, what so ever, contact me in game, or through this thread.

I've read so many posts in this thread and on others like it where guilds advertise a militia service. I disagree that this should be a point guilds focus their manpower on.

I think those who promise to prevent ganking through force in their province will be unable to fulfil that promise no matter how hard they try. Let me give you four reasons why:

There are obvious time constraints:
Players occupy every province 24 hours a day. While an organized guild does have an active roster at any given time, it's just impossible to protect an entire province and all its channels at all times.

With the limited manpower available to them, guilds just can't guarantee a gank-free environment within their province.

It's a waste of resources:
A guild undertaking the responsibility of being a Vanarch is adding new tasks to its schedule. On top of the usual content players have to complete to progress their own characters, a Vanarch guild member will have to make more time to complete specific content for policy points.

If they're scouring every inch of their province looking for outlaws, they're not doing what they need to do to fulfil all the other promises they've made.

It's ineffective:
There are two ways the militia could encounter an outlaw. The first is through luck. They're patrolling their province and happen upon a low level in distress. Something out of a superhero movie.

The second is by hanging around town waiting for the Bat-Signal to light up through Area chat. Let me point out that outlaws can read Area chat too.

Also, the chances of having a player tell themselves "I won't go gank in this province because it has a militia." are so minuscule that they make any efforts useless.

If this method can't counter outlaws and won't act as a deterrent then the guild's time is better spent elsewhere.

A militia will have the opposite effect:
Advertising an active militia tells high level gankers that it's more likely there will be PVP in that specific province. They may kill a few lowbies to to get the militia to come out so they can have a go at them.

What Will Not Fix is going to do about it:
Outlawing is a feature and so is killing lowbies. There are people who play Tera by having 10k infamy and there's guilds that focus solely on that. This means that eradicating the problem is impossible unless we turn Valley of Titans into a PVE server.

What we can do is organize events and keep the community active. This will keep people from getting bored and going lowbie hunting.

Hello, I am Jaw from the guild Plus Eight,

And I have the honor to run for a representational seat of vanarchy within the continent of northern Arun.

About the guild:

We are an original VoT-first guild and plan to sustain a close almost family orientated environment.

I myself am an oceanic time-zone based player but due to my work times I am able to actively play play within american time-zones aswell. Which my guild and I accept all friendly players whether they are american, australian, asian or european. This is to keep an active player base on at all times of the day.

Standing at 95 members our guild has no level requirement as to cater to all play-styles and people. Our goal was to have a solid core focused around maximum quality of our players in personality and skill. We have accomplished this goal much faster than expected and hope to advertise our name throughout the years of Tera to come.

The Vanarchy:

From countless MMO's I have observed the needs and wants that all MMO players (Casual and hardcore) seek. These necessities that benefit not only the player but the entire community and economy itself; impact the MMO lifestyle in a way that makes us feel an MMO
isn't just a game, but more so a way of life.

The problem we as a community have always had in trying to get what we want is that the people have always had second opinion to the makers. What I mean by this is that I believe our suggestions would rarely go through. In saying this, the vanarch system is almost a blessing to us; as we have the power to choose one of our own to help each and every individual player get what we need. While playing Tera or even any other MMO, how many times have you questioned why something is the way it is? Do you think you could make it better?. As a player I do. As a vanarch I will. My power if entrusted to my guild and I by the community; will be used to it's maximum potential in benefitting us all and really making our newly beloved MMO strive to perfection.

I aim to give the continent a democracy over a dictatorship by far (that meaning I will listen to every word of mouth from the people). As a vanarch I will hope to work with other vanarch's of the province of Arun to make sure our continent stands out on top.

I dont need to promise you a list of the obvious things that all players want the vanarchy to tweak and fix.

We all know what we want.
Your vote is all we need to make it happen.

A VOTE FOR ULBOARAX OF ZIONIST WEEDLORDZ OF BONGRIPPIA IS A VOTE TO LEGALIZE IT! END THE OPPRESSION! VOTE TODAY AND BUILD A FUTURE WITHOUT CORPORATE CORRUPTION AND REPTILIAN OVERLORDS. A WORLD WITHOUT ANIME. IMAGINE PEOPLE. THE POWER... IS IN UR VOET. DO OUR DARK LORD SATAN PROUD AND GRANT ME DOMINION. FOR HOLY MOUNTAIN ZION.

Not a candidate, but I just wanted to play devil's advocate for a bit and throw out somethingies that doesn't seem to be very well represented that occurred to me as I was browsing some of these "applications". It is the position that pk zoning should be left open as a viable option by vanarchs should they need to use it for the benefit of the majority of players. What situation may call for it, I don't know, but who knows~ *** just might hit the fan in a way unforeseen by the devs whereas vanarchs have the power to prevent it.

I also feel that the argument of "you rolled a pvp server, thus no complaints if you pvped" is a very simplistic and... if I can say with a grain of salt attached to my words... short-sighted approach to the complex topic of overall player enjoyment in a game. A server allowing for pvp creates a social dynamic much unlike pve servers. This extends FAR beyond simply being able to kill others on sight. Thus, there's a variety of different reasons as many as there are people for picking the server one picks. I believe that a vanarch shouldn't tell players that "they picked the server, so tough luck on the rules" but should be more open-minded about different ideas and reasons that people rolled on this server that they may not even agree with but are in a role to cater to. Rather than simply saying "you rolled pvp server, thus you will pvp" I'm interested in various vanarch stances on where to draw the line between player controls and free-reign.

Another idea I have is that we should vote a guild that has a wide variety of player skillset/levels. Not the highest, not the lowest, something in the middle. My reasoning is two-fold. Firstly, this type of guild representative. Vanarch sets rules for the entire server. If they were a very specific subset of players, they would benefit more with specific rules rather than a general benefit for all types of players. Even if they decide to bend over backwards to set rules for the benefit of everyone, it would be forced. We want a happy vanarch as well, no? c:
Secondly, if we were to vote in an elite-tier guild that sets all sorts of unwanted policies and wanted to vote them off. According to the vanarch system rules, they could simply complete world boss quests to keep themselves in. We'd have ourselves a dictatorship. What's the point of a voting system if we vote in someone who potentially has the power to override such a thing?

TL;DR -> So in my mind, the ideal guild is a friendly, well-run, respected guild with a player-base that represents a wide-range of levels and personalities; it's a guild that respects pvp and player enjoyment of it but knows that they're given a tool, if need-be, that they can use to monitor it.

Pls don't edit me GM, or I'll be a sad panda and you'll owe me like 2341234 hugz to make me feel betta ;C