Is Earthrise going to have any volunteer program? Something similar to ARK's in Anarchy Online, EQ Guide's, AoC "Followers of Asura" and Vanguards "Crimson Fellowship".

All of my experiences with programs like these have been nothing but positive.
Each game handled their volunteer in different ways:

-ARK and FoA: both programs allowed the volunteers to answer basic petitions (certain rules apply to which ones they were able to help with), run in game event help answer player questions. What I liked best was the greeter program in Anarchy Online. As a new player an ARK would pop on by to help introduce you into the world and answer any newbie questions. This was a nice personal touch.
In addition their Events department ran some great in-game events for the players. I participated in a few of these and they are some of my most memorable experiences in AO.

Crimson Fellowship: They were very similar to ARKs but had a little more in game "GM" powers. I believe they could tackle some petition types that ARKs weren't able to cover.

I see a program of this sort very beneficial to an upstart MMO company. Not only does it provide free support, it allows great player/GM interaction.
The RP qualities speak for themselves.

 

Crafting:

1:
What have you done in regards to crafting disciplines to prevent a disproportionate number of players from choosing the popular avenue, such as programming, and as a result forcing other players to choose not the discipline they want, but one that they are forced into in order to create secondary or tertiary components?

In a nutshell: Is each crafting discipline profitable and unique enough in its own right to happily labor in its name or will one be required to labor in (in addition to the player's main focus) lesser crafting paths as means to an end?

2:
Is the crafting gameplay such that it discourages or prevents macroing of crafting skills?

(Addressed, 4/20/2009 ~ m.)

mhh a new Questions about the Guild Base Building

From the other informations know we, that we can build up Bases. Walls, Mines, Defence Buildings aso. They need some Time to build up. Now the Question, spawn the buildings instant in the Area after the time of produktion or will they spawn or build up part of part like the buildings in "The Settlers". I mean can you see, how the Status of the building is, without that iam in the guild who build it. If thay dont spawn instant and will build up are there some drones with build up z.B. the wall and will killing this drone slower the build process?