Hehe, this is quite an interesting thread.

I was around on Imperian from it's opening, mostly until the day Lusternia went open beta. One thing I can say about the playerbase is that is is -very- likely to get much quieter and more quality before it becomes drastically larger. Give it another month or two and the chaos will mostly have died down, and (some of) the idiots will start to leave. Around then, it will likely start to grow steadily till it reaches a certain point which it will hover around. Wait until the first big event, or advertising campaign. Boom. Rinse. Repeat.

Personally I hope we don't go the way of Imperian. At first it looked promising, but after a while things just got a bit stale.

As things are here, I have a lot of sympathy for Celest, because as one of the leading Antiochians I really had a hard time trying to motivate the pacifists who ignored what the city was supposed to be about (Yes, we are in a desert, deserts are harsh, we hate magick. Therefore we are obviously supposed to go and play with Kinsarmarians). One of the reasons I chose Magnagora this time, was because even with the thugs a darker aligned city attracts, its still a lot better than playing a handful of zealots in a sea of whining apathetic pacifists.

I actually wanted at least one of the other cities to be in the opening, even if we only opened with two. But the problem is that many players don't do well outside of the standard "good vs. evil" conflict. Indeed, this was a major problem Sarapis had in Achaea. The original Church and Occultists were not explicitly intended to be good and evil, though it ended up that way. This caused infighting among particularly Ashtan and the Occultists between those that were gravitating towards the evil route and those that were trying to stick with the original vision. Having the Infernals added there, which were explecitly evil, just made it more confusing and caused more rifts. Mhaldor was the solution, and that is why the Infernals were disbanded and replaced with the Maldaathi. Estarra, who of course played Eris and Servelan through all that, did not want to repeat that mess. So we start out with good/evil and will branch out. If we opened with, for example, Magnagora and one of the other two cities then you can be certain that the other city would have over time made itself the "city of good" no matter how much we didn't intend it to be.

That makes sense. It's probably easier for people to simply label themselves 'good' or 'evil' anyway, than to try to work out a more complex ideology like 'logical, lawful and wary' or 'chaotic and secretive'. I'd much rather see Gaugiguch and Hallifax done well, in terms of their citizens' beliefs.

As for the Occultists... well, I won't comment, it seems like the Taint has taken the place of Chaos in these realms as "non-evil thing that some people follow that often does bad things but is still rather intellectual".

What might have helped - mess with peoples minds and then have Magnagora with the Supernals. Undead with Angels, non-undead with Demons - that alone would have screwed with enough heads to maybe kick them out of "good vs evil" a bit.

Actually, there is a third faction in the city, represented by people like Sidharta and others who are more like "Hey, lets THINK" lets call them the "Thinkers" they are the ones who go "Hm.. maybe we need to have a strategy" (holy crap.. when the Emperor was raised earlier, everyone immediately took the word of Serenwilde, and, even if it was true, they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off) or say "Hey, this situation, with Serenwilde and Magnagora being teamed against us... its bad. We need to fix it." and they get looked at funny when they go "Hm, you know, giving the Cherubs back MIGHT be the best option... even if WE know they're happy, if we're dead, does it really matter?"

So, there are 3 groups in Celest - Pacifists, Zealots, and Thinkers. The Thinkers are unfortunately repressed by the other two.

Pacifists can bring down an entire social structure in a war torn environment. They are like beggars among the field of battle, picking up scraps and yelling alot.

I was in a very similar situation that I am now when Imperian first started up. Antioch kind of had this same problem with people not knowing if they were Zealots (Baar's followers had a pretty firm idea on this) or just a new breed of Churchies. This was further complicated by the issue of Magic and to what extent it should be tolerated. I think that the major factor here is just going to be time. It takes time for consensus to form, and any attempt to force a specific ethos on such a varied group just doesn't work out all that well.

I feel bad enough about it... everyone seems to be posting here that Celest needs more zealots, and I go trying to play a sensible character Sorry!

Your a genious! I am oppressed! I love you!

As a note, I hope Lusternia never gets anywhere near the size of Achaea. Achaea is too noisy and chaotic for my tastes nowadays..

And there's always Koster's Law of Roleplaying(paraphrasing)
The quality of roleplaying in a game is inversely proportional to the number of people involved

---

Could you expand a little on this, please? Let's see the arguments you use in class, as I for one would be interested to read them, as I'm sure others would be. Perhaps a new thread in 'The Real World' forum or something? :)

Ta.

--AaminakAra

I thought that Celest was supposed to be full of Zealots - wouldnt it make sense that the thinkers would be repressed?
Of course, so should the pacifists.

The thinkers think too much, they just THINK they're thinkers, but they really aren't, cause if ya don't defend your city or villages cause you're "not a fighter" and instead whine and nag on ct while the zealots are dying, you're a pacifist, not a thinker, if we'd have any real thinkers, we wouldn't be such a chaotic city. If you ask me, all pacifists should be locked in their guildhall and priveleges to talk on ct revoked, untill the zealots established some sort of basic order without getting bugged by the nagging.

Magnagora has several "thinkers"... Serenwilde has like one or two that don't get listened to, Celest has like...none. With thinkers I mean strategical leaders that know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it, AND get listened to. Cause that's what thinkers are, NOT pacifists that think they're smart.

Thorgal, I seperated Pacifists and Thinkers for a reason. The Thinkers are a cross between the Pacifist and Zealot, they are willing to fight for the Light, they just want to do it in the right way that isn't going to turn into a situation where you have all the zealots dying. Most of the "Thinkers" i'm talking about will and do fight, they also don't want to be all "we love j00!" but they don't want to run in and get massacred just for the hell of it. They go "Hmm... an alliance that strengthens are enemy.. we need to find some way to destroy it." not "Lets all be friends!" or "Rawr! Lets smash em both at the same time!" See the difference?

The first sentence definitely makes me think "It's not the size of your boat, but the motion of your ocean."



Anyhoo, quality is what matters, not the amount of people. Because you can have a small amount of avid roleplayers, actually being in character, versus a huge amount of people being like, "Yo, wassup? You fear me! Taste my metallicy blade, it's awesome, yo!"



Riiight. If I came as a novice to a mud where people were acting like that, I'd be out of there so fast, my character would have to time out.

The sad thing is, I could WISH half the novices around here were like that. At least your one actually had, like, punctuation and capitals and all the rest of it. I mean, come on people. It's not hard.

I would personally like to see text-based MUDs promoted, not for the benefit of Lusternia gaining more players, or even any IRE games gaining more players, but to just generally improve test MUDs in all ways. This would allow the creation of many more MUDs, and it might allow people who normally would think that text games are a joke, to actually consider playing them.

I came across MUDs completely accidently from when I was just looking up a book on the internet, when I found out it had a game. Being curious as I am, I went to this game and found out that it was actually a text game. I suprised myself that I enjoyed it. This eventually led me to TMS, where I found out about Achaea and IRE etc. I have tried to get my IRL friends into text MUDs, but they think it's a load of bull'... "Why play text games when there are ones with graphics?"

So, if text MUDs were promoted a bit, people might then hear of it themselves somewhere, and consider it, and might not think it's all crap.

Enter the fascists!

Oh, come on! If the Celestian zealots showed some intelligence, people would be more prone to follow them. But with the botch Erion did with the slaughtering of the Fae, with Cuber claiming that he knew how to organize city defences while offending people on CT, and with Rhysus doing nothing about the conflict with Serenwilde, the Pacifists are the only ones who are not acting ridiculous.

Acting without thinking is not being strategic... it is being plain idiotic.

Yes, we need a leader who can show that he can defend Celest's interests against the war-like Magnagorans using sense and strategy. However high they may think about themselves, the current zealots we have in the city are not the solution we need. Show some sense, and then maybe the thinkers you dub pacifists will support you.

Pacifist: Fix this situation you dumb zealot, I don't care how.

Zealot: Alright, I'll go bash their skulls.

Pacifist: Whatever, 's long as it's fixed.
...
Zealot bashes some skulls, didn't work out.
...
Pacifist: You retard! What the hell were you thinking bashing their skulls? Look what you've done now!

Zealot: Feh, you have any better ideas?

Pacifist: Of course I do, but you wouldn't understand anyway, try something else! Fix it already!
...
City gets raided.
...
Pacifist: We're getting raided! Someone do something! Stop 'em!?

Zealot: Headlong into chaaaaarge!
...
Zealots get slaughtered while pacifists nag on ct.
...
Zealot: We need more men! Everyone able to kill rats come over here!

Pacifist: ...I'm not a fighter, duh. There's no point in going in, we'd get killed anyway without achieving anything, you're all so stupid just running in to get killed, -sigh- wish we had more smart people.

Zealot: Uhhhh...right.

Pacifist: You all suck! You bunch of retards can't even fight properly! I'm outta here.

***
This is what caused me to say that all the pacifists should get locked away and silenced so the zealots can do their job without the nagging... .