A quick explanation on courses, lessons and current content - October 2007

Everything you see for training material on the Academy and the FAO Forums is created by volunteers. So this is not a full time job for anyone. It does take time to design, create, write and publish new material.

Over the last few years I have overseen the rewrite of a major portion of the Academy, the revised current Cadet program and brainstormed the future.

The future of training and training material

• Cadet I is designed to get a brand new player the basics of our community, game installation, how to join a game and how to be able to contribute to the team in a very short period. Using our new FAO WIKI and new/revised content from the current cadet program and Academy. It will not go in-depth.
• Players wanting more can either read the posted Intermediate material here or join Cadet II.
• The existing crash course on the Academy will be slightly reworked and considered as "Intermediate Material". It will carry that label on this site. It will not have a major rewrite. There will be minimum maintenance done on that material.
• The existing "advanced lessons" posted on the Academy will be moved into the new Intermediate material with some minor rewrites.
• The existing Cadet course conducted within our forums (The FAO)will be broken into two programs. Cadet I which will be a short course based upon this new material.
• A new Cadet II advanced course will be created to replace the existing Cadet program. That material will not be publicly available. The course will take place within a private forum on the FAO website like the current Cadet program does now. This will be designed to get a player with some experience the ability to play in squad matches and have an impact.

So what this means is there will be a transition phase where there will be a few gaps in material publicly available, the "old cadet" program will be gutted somewhat while Cadet II is created. To join the existing Cadet program or Cadet II when completed will assume you have completed and participated in the forum based version of Cadet I.

So I am apologizing in advance for having some material scattered around as we complete the next phase.

ACS (Allegiance Command School) will probably require completion of Cadet II to join. As it now requires completion of the current Cadet program.

-BlackViper