I know the GoA is still a pretty small and tangential Guild to a lot of folks (and I definitely won't argue that it definitely is small ), but I wanted to voice my opinions as a Guild leader, since they've been solicited.

While I'm sure that the Guilds-managed shard won't be the only one out there – open-sourcing the client and server code pretty much ensures that – I think that the Guilds-managed shard has the best chance of any to become a place where we can continue to work towards creating an extended D'ni universe as we were going to do in MORE. While I don't have any resources to commit to actually operating the shard itself, I – and the GoA as a whole I'm sure – am very eager to work with the other Guilds to continue the development of an open and fair system for enabling fans to contribute new Ages and stories not just to the game (as I'm sure that will be permitted on the vast majority of shards), but to the mythos of D'ni as well. It's the difference between fanfic and an extended universe, essentially, but having a place where extended universe stuff can exist an grow can help keep the mythos of D'ni alive and well for quite some time if/until Cyan is able to continue their own storytelling efforts is something I definitely want to see happen. Bringing back the plans for the FCAL Panel would be one good place to start planning, but no doubt we'll need other organizational structures in place for managing the non-content-related aspects of running a shard.

I can at the very least offer the services of the GoA for overseeing the extended universe we create, and of DPWR for people to discuss the development of new stories within the extended universe (a service to compliment the GoW's services for developing new content, if you will).