I disagree with regards to Magnagora as a whole who learned a great deal from Visaeris in the early days. For example, Visaeris tried to raise Crow early on and quickly spread details of the initial parts of the quests, which later helped Magnagora against Serenwilde.

So, does what you just said discount anything I've stated? Your statement makes you sound like all of the accomplishments of your city is because of you and you alone? I think an attitude like that is extremely presumptuous.

I would've loved to be a Beta tester. Honestly, it'd really put you ahead a huge amount in the game to have had all the knowledge of the Basin, and the way things work from the moment you step out the Portal. A big help for getting ahead early in the game

No, I disagreed with your assumption, that every bit of our strength came from beta testers. And we did not learn about Crow from Visaeris either.

Where did I state that all of your strength came from beta testers? I said that having the most beta testers go to your city would give you an immense advantage over the other cities. Nothing in my statement indicated that I thought all of your strength came from them.

I'm not sure about the quests and whatnot, since I've never been involved in them... but from my perspective I'm somewhat glad to see the balance of power shift and change like it is now. In time, it will shift back, but at least it isn't one city or commune that is dominating constantly.

I don't think Magnagora needs to be 'denerfed' (a common complaint... its not our fault, we just have the WORST skills ever!), Serenwilde needs to be encouraged to stop helping Celest. Unfortunately, as I've said before, the whole Life vs Taint, Light vs Taint and Life vs Light thing is naturally unbalanced.

Does Magnagora still know how to do the tainted fae rituals? Maybe they could threaten to use what they've discovered against Elfen/Faelings (since they don't have as much inherent nature magick as Fae) unless Serenwilde removes itself from the conflict? Not sure. I'd much prefer an RP solution to a hard-coded change, however.

Tainted fae rituals involved extinguishing the Flame of Glinshari. That's like saying "Bizzatch, if you dun stop, we'll do what got you pissed in the first place!" That's like poking hornet hive with a stick, and in an attempt to calm them down, hitting it with a sledge hammer, yet not killing a single hornet in the process, only pissing all of them off.

I think it will be very hard to make Serenwilde detest the Light... There is more support for Celest nowadays than there has been in the past. Magnagora can't really go threaten Serenwilde anymore, of they wish to be at easy going terms with Serenwilde and just try to get Celest against Serenwilde. An all out war Celest v. Serenwilde should tilt the balance into a more neutral stage, I believe.

Right now, it is disgusting to see the commune so favorable of Celest.

There's a hornet near the computer now. It is quite docile.
Oh, wait. Its dead.

Please, while we're all saying how much Serenwilde loves Celest, keep in mind that there are many of us who would be more than happy to have nothing to do with either city. Sadly though, smart politics dictates that we hold onto thei agreement we have.

As if it does.

Serenwilde: Screw you Celest.
Celest: ... Damn.

You Serenwilders have a lot more power then you think, if you think you need to be friendly with Celest or Magnagora.

- Neither of us is going to team up to take you down, simply because it would hurt us more in the long run. Not to forget that we're complete opposites in terms of what our cities want to do.
- Neither of us can actually harm Serenwilde 1v1 now, its just impossible.

We know just how much power we have - we have a fairly fluid form of RP and politics available to us which allows us to bend and manipulate to suit our goals - but it's still smarter for us to use one city when we want to bring another down. Smart politics.

Smart politics? I am not sure... I think that Serenwilde has gotten the best they can out of Celest right now, if anything. Serenwilde controls three cities, and Serenwilde now seems very good organized... I'd say it is never wise to compromise too much with an alliance. Right now, any relation with Celest is far away from the convinience it provided during the war times. Now it is just growing to be plain prefference over Magnagora. Cease ties with both cities, I say.

It's smart to use your enemy until they are useless. Celest still has a few good fighters we can call on with our Agreement.

I think it's funny how the tables have turned on Magnagora, even now, when alot of bugs have been fixed and things have been made harder for both sides. Even though it does take Serenwilde and Celest both to get it done.

When the realm first opened, from what I heard/saw from other testers where that most did join Magnagora, a few joined Serenwilde, and I think one or two joined Celest. We used to make fun of Celest and how no Beta's joined them. Though in Beta'testing it was understandable seeing as how noone could even figure out what inquisition did at the time or how good tarot was.

about the whole beta-tester thing. Everything I heard from an alpha or beta tester about quests turned out to be wrong. The people who did the most to push Magnagora forward in the begining where not beta testers. The amount of changes that happened to combat and races in general I think put everyone on basically even par when the game started. Even paralysis worked very differently.

As a beta tester I was an aquamancer and a paladin and a wiccan. So no, I think the reason we did better in the begining of the game was because we had people who are just good at such things, and there was no readl political manipulation to make serenwilde like celest. If you remember, Serenwilde HATED celest for a while because they killed fae.

I don't mind your charachters saying you have to like celest, but I really dislike this idea that in this OOC forum, you truly think that Celest and Serenwilde are naturally going to be with eachother, or that "Crow" is some be all end all excuse to be constantly aggressive.

Its a choice, its not forced upon you. I would prefer silence to OOC falicies, to make players think there is no other option but to make quests keep on changiing so that somebody doesn't get hurt.

Celest and Serenwilde are naturally going to be with each other if they find a mutual respect because, due to -necessity- to avoid being crushed, they had to band together to survive. It's not just an OOC bias.

And, well, the Crow thing has more to do with it than you seem to want to accept. If we raise Emanations from your Demon Lords, you'd not like us. If you try to get Crow to slay Brother Hart, we don't like you.

OOC fallacies? Like what?

The fact is that Serenwilde and Celest are both fervently against Taint, and while Serenwilde doesn't -like- cities, we haven't been set up (as an organization) to want them obliterated, unlike all the other polarities. My character happily believes that Celest is equally as much of an enemy as Magnagora, but I don't have the luxury of such clear unreasoning bias oocly.

Anyway, clearly Magnagora doesn't mind taking on both other organizations at once, I believe Daevos just raided Rockholm.

Celest suffered a lot in the early days of open beta. Regardless of there being more closed beta folks joining one side or another, I think Magnagora got more experienced players to begin with. I mean, how many good MUDders have wanted to play a satisfying villain somewhere like in Achaea and found that it absolutely sucked to be Mhaldorian? Daevos and Valek are both extremely experienced fighters outside of Lusternia, it only makes sense that they could learn the ropes here with a little work, and easily become killer. From what I heard, Visaeris was a builder.. even if that's not true, he did a helluva lot in the beginning before anyone else had a clue.
If you think of the RP dynamics, also consider that besides there being a lot of inexperienced, not very knowledgeable people in Celest in the start, most of the noobs who join and want to play "good" characters aren't really interested in things like combat. It scares them or turns them off. There's few active fighters in my guild, and I'm only starting to become more of one just because it's rather necessary, as Galvy's char has a strong desire to help his guild/city prosper and keep everything together. He's one of a few chars that is high-level enough and has some decent skills, so.. I kinda feel obligated to help more.
Me personally, I never whined.. at least not on here.. I saw a lot of imbalances that'd I'd moan about on channels sometimes, but most of those things were eventually addressed, and I saw Mag's early ass-kicking as being inadvertantly necessary in pointing out a lot of flaws and imbalances. No major changes were ever made that I could see that were really unfair, as they generally were applied to everyone.. all the ways that Celest gained to protect itself were extended to the other cities(communes).
I joined open beta like, the 3rd or 4th day in and fell in love with Lusternia. I saw the way everything was meant to work together, the attempt at creating a more balanced dynamic, the genius of the huge multifaceted quests.. it seemed to me to be a place where people have to work together to prosper, and as a player, as a human being, this really pleased me. (I stayed up all night and nearly missed work the next day the time that Celest raised the star to get it's dome up. The way everyone came together to do it just made me so happy. It was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in a long time, and just made me love the game that much more.)
I came from a year of being a nobody on Achaea, and while the experience there helped me prepare for this, I'm still basically learning everything a lot for the first time. I wasn't allowed to PK there because I could never get off probation in my guild, but here, I had to be involved from the start, so.. I've been frustrated at times, but overall it's far more exciting and rewarding.
Personally, I'm happy to see Magnagora sweat a little. It makes my suffering feel more worthwhile. It's not like they haven't had their jollies kicking other people around, or like it'll last forever.

There's a difference between sweat and getting screwed in the proverbial ass.

Have I mentioned there's things I want to do, yet can't because people insist on trying to find things to piss Magnagora off?

There's a reason I stoped participating in raids a while ago.