That is exactly what I am worried about. I do not want the Admins to have to continuously adjust the realm to help curb the conflict or try to balance out the manpower of the participants. I want the players to learn a bit of self-control and moderation in their actions. I want them to also think of the consequences of their actions. Just because you can perform an act, does not necessarily mean you should. Even if doing the act fits perfectly into the role-play you have designed for yourself, you still must consider what consequences the act may have for you and others in the end. Examples: “Will the continuation of this cause people to become discouraged enough that they just pick up their marbles and go home? Can I find another way to pursue my role-play without causing undue harm to the realm?” So on and so forth. Oh, I am speaking about all participants not just Magnagora and Celest.

We have to remember that everyone comes here to enjoy himself or herself. If people cease to enjoy being here, they will leave. Too many of them leaving can irrevocably harm the realm, causing the realm to spiral into a state of stagnation that it may not return from. That being said, we the players do have a certain responsibility in trying to help keep the realm enjoyable for our fellow players. If we do not place some of that responsibility on our own backs (especially since it is possible to play the game for free), we may find the realm devoid of enough players to continue to be viable.

I'm sorry if you feel criticized, but I think this needs addressing, not dismissing. I've been quick all along to point out the great things the admin have done here too, and if you're going to brush aside like a buzzing gnat these critical ideas I have put some serious thought into, you should at least give me some credit for that. But if after all that's gone by in the last ten months you still don't think of me as someone whose thoughts are helpful on this sort of thing, then I doubt another round of "here are some ideas for you to ignore" would be worth my time to write.

Maybe there's nothing wrong that can't be addressed by a little patch today for whatever is the incident that happened yesterday, just like the last twenty times. I hope so, because in that case, long after I'm gone, Lusternia will be flourishing and the people who like what it turned out to be will still be having fun. All it'll mean is I'm not the kind of player Lusternia wanted, and the only sad thing is that the description it gives of itself is deceptive, and I spent a lot of money on false advertising.

But then, maybe not. Notice how every so often there's some big outburst of complaints and then you do some tweak to villages or demesnes or some skillset or something, and then a week later it all happens again, and you curse to yourself about these damned ingrate players who always complain and are never satisfied. Well, maybe we're not just ingrates -- maybe what's happening is you didn't address the actual, underlying, serious problems, you just put a band-aid on yet another of the triggering situations that revealed those problems that week. No wonder we are never satisfied -- the things we've been complaining about since November still haven't been addressed or even taken seriously. Are you so sure that's not what this is?

So of course the suggestions you're going to get won't be yet another tweak like "supernals are invincible except on alternate Thursdays" because that has nothing to do with the problem; it's just what revealed the problem today. It's not even going to be "rethink demesnes" or "don't make Faethorn an endless war", it'll be deeper stuff, simpler but deeper. In fact, I'd say it's three things exactly. The balance of power and its dynamics; the amount of artificial conflict injection vs. conflict suppression; and the focus or lack thereof on roleplay and its support. That's it. Those three things. Every complaint harkens back to one of those three things.

So how to fix those three things? I could compile a list of the many suggestions made here by many of us, but none of them will be something you can squeeze into the code over the weekend. And as I said, I'm not even sure it's not too late. But since those suggestions got pretty universally ignored for the last ten months, why should I waste a day repeating them, right after you dismissed everything I said with the pat, defensive phrase "treatises on why we poor admin do such a shoddy job"? It sounds to me like while you're dismissing me and my ideas off-hand you're also demanding that people provide ideas, but you only want magic-pill ideas someone can code in a few hours. Sorry, I don't think there are answers like that.

So let's hope I'm wrong, and it was the first case, and this is just an incident of mismatched player expectations. That when I'm gone in a week or so (once I set my affairs in order and discharge my remaining responsibilities) half the game will cheer, a quarter will mourn, the rest won't care, and then the game will go on and the people who remain will be perfectly happy with the game, even though it doesn't match the advertising. If so, bully for you. I won't even ask for my money back.

I love you, Gwylifar.

Run away with me.

Oh, and I hereby nominate Gwylifar to be raised to an Elder God. RIGHT NOW.

For what it matters, I agree with Gwylifar's points as well. Scathing, but understandably so given the ignoring he feels he's received. People like him and Rhysus seem to understand what the world needs most to evolve out of this downward spiral it seems caught in. My ideas are too two-dimensional for such things, but I believe these are two people who should be listened to. *nods*

Heh, another prime example of what I stated before, all I hear is whining about conflict, haven't you people seen the changes that have been done to discourage combat? What else do you want, for people to be able to attack others based on astrology? From what you're saying, that sounds exactly like what you want.

With all the restrictions, you'd think you'd have had enough, they even are peacing villages because all of the whining you people do for crying out loud.

What needs addressing isn't conflict, what needs addressing is the lack of it, and your inability to deal with it. If someone truly dislikes combat so much that they find a reason to whine about it every chance they get, here is an idea, stay away from it.

Oh, and my thoughts on this one..

Well I think this only stops Supernals being killed immediately after they are raised. Apart from that, if Mag wants a Supernal dead, they can mass the army together and raid at the appropriate time.

One thing that I think it would do worse, is that to arrange at that time, it would encourage the use of ooc contacts to make it easier to arrange (such as set times for influencing would be). Wheras it's not bad arranging it in-game if the Supernals are always 'open'.

Harken! Who goes there? Yea, ok, it was a joke. Gwylifar, I think should have his own Order. He has a point, and I agree with it. I voted for other. Quite frankly, I believe everyone does complain. One problem wrong, bam, the whole basin needs changing to make it right again. So, Magnagora can kill the supernals 6 times in a month, what about when Celest or Seren had killed Gorgulu three times? Magnagora didn't complain about the supernals. They looked at the problem and fixed it. Suck it up guys and grow up. The world revolves around no one. Not everything is fair.

I didn't read all this because I'm pretty sure I get the jist of it just from how every other thread of this nature has been in the past. My only grief is how come people run to the forums and whine about an incident that hasn't happened in months OOC. I haven't seen anything close to a full scale Supernal beat down for a long long time and it took alot of people to do it this time. But no one cared when Tuek and Narsrim solo'd all the Night Avatars or slayed the 2 or 3 Nil Lords they did practically alone, BUT its a HUGE deal when an ARMY of Mags comes and does it? Please people.. I mean really.

Eww, the last thing I want to be is an Elder God. And not just because they get nothing but complaining from me.

Shorlen:




Nyla hit it right on the head here, as I've made this same post about 50 times by now everytime someone from Serenwilde comes on these forums whining about how Glomdoring ruined their lives. I'm sorry but Glom tried and tried and tried to extend the hand of peace to Serenwilde, to be allies on the basis of being Communes and fighting the evil cities and Serenwilde was like YOU IS TAINTED! YOU MUST DIE! DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!! OMG BLOOD YESSS -baths in it- and the only excuse I've EVER heard from them is Well uhh faethorn is setup so we got to kill you and the avatars say death to Serenwilde and -whine whine whine whine- sorry but SCREW game mechanics and whats coded, SCREW IT! This s a roleplay MUD and YOU make your RP, not Estarra, Not Roark, nto anyone else, YOU! YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU!



If you want to step outside whats coded and do your own story in your own way then I can bet you almost anything Estarra and Roark would be willing to adjust things to match what the players RUNNING THE MUDS RP ARE DOING. You all give up before theres even a fight and its sickening.. Serenwilde is seriously one of the sorriest excuses for a RP community I have EVER seen and they're the main ones claiming they need more RP. Sorry but you all can't RP for crap, your leaders sit on their hands and wont even enforce the simple cease fire we had, you refuse to ever step outside the box your provided, you can only whine about how your RP is being stepped on instead of being DYNAMIC about your roleplay, instead everyone of you is entirely static.. and I'm sorry this does NOT constitute good roleplaying.


Learn to evaluate your own problems before whining Magnagora needs to fix anything they do is how GLomdoring is the harbringer of your friggin doom. I mean if you people had ANY Sense at all you could open your eyes and see these simple facts because they're all there.

Did celest have 5 villages just a weak ago or was I dreaming it?

True. If Glomdoring had just agreed to be dynamic about their RP instead of static and tried to cleanse themselves of Taint, then the two communes could have been allies. Unfortunately, Glomdoring was too stuck in its own ideas of roleplay and wasn't willing to change.

Sound reasonable? Of course not - in reality, it's all the Serenwilde players' fault for not being 'dynamic' like that.

In what Shorlen is talking about, the problem is poor conceptual dynamics created between organizations, not the choices of the players from ANY organization.

There is a world of difference between Glomdoring becoming untainted and Serenwilde just pulling the stick out of their butt. Glomdoring becoming untainted wouldnt even be Glomdoring, it would be Gloriana, and that RP was already attempted when Viravain failed to achieve said goal, so it was obviously not going to happen. Not to mention the process of 'untainting' is obviously not like something we go up and go Hey lets not be tainted anymore! and it happens.. it would require a Divines power which obviously Viravain wasnt going to do and any other Divine coming in to do it would just ruin any chance of Glomdoring becoming unique if we became another one of Lisaera's children, or Hajamins or anyone else. Not to mention it would require a complete rebuilding of the entire commune, its guilds and skills and everything else. Serenwilde not being so lame would only require the people to go Ok lets be friendly because cities are evil.

Yeah...

"Ok, lets be friendly with those jolly tainted forest chaps that pervert the things we revere, bind the fae against their will, and ruin the forest. Because heaven knows cities were sure evil in causing the taint, it would be much better to ally with the horror itself. Damn you cities, you taint-spreaders! Lovesnugglehug you foresty taint-spreaders."

more like "zomgbqq the taint is hurribel huw can we get 0ver with it????? 0 god, CITIES EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! 0H E|\\/| GEE! I know, we say we aren't allied with Celest!"

COME ON, honestly, if you find such a problem with it all why BOTHER allying with -anyone- then. If it were so easy to make it all better by just whining, I'm pretty sure I'd have abunch of whining to do about Serenwilde and how they think cease-fires work, and Celest and how they get ONE MONTH of massive outbursts and they cry wolf. Giving up that easily after getting strength over the months, wow, they really believe in themselves. So, because we've been receiving massive groups of nearly every non-novice Magnagoran beating at our bedroom doors, lets all scream and run to the Admins to fix the lock, because Magnagora has found the key.

"OH wow, Glomdoring, you complain about being raided and yet you let your commune members raid." Was a shout Glomdoring received after I helped Veonira in the inner sea. When MULTIPLE Serenwilders attacked on people, they would cry "WAR WITH SEREN" And Seren? They responded? "Two commune members aren't all of Seren." So, one Glom Commune member means all of the commune now? But, thats besides the point. As was said before, yes, TUEK alone could kill the supernals at one point. All of Magnagora gathers, and everyone cries to the admins. GIVE THEM A BREAK. They've been working on getting every baby a bottle of milk, and yet they cry for chocolate milk. When will everyone be satisfied? Never, because someone might want the problem fixed to be fixed in another way.

Well, I said too much, I'm just pointing out in one direction. Leave some things be because some people are never happy.

Seriously the levels of constant whining is enough to run off alot of people. Some people are convinced the MUD is destructing just because everytime some little thing happens you got a topic thrown up and days of whining. Hell I vote Estarra closes the forums for awhile and see what happens when people take their issues to RP not a friggin forum.

I agree

Agreed, and 've suggested closing the forums for a while before too.

That's a good idea. Close the forums for a while and let them find a way to handle things IC'ly.