Preface

Greetings, everyone. I want to speak of Achaea a little. If it's the wrong place to do it, please move the thread. I'm not going to advocate the realm of Achaea, I'm not going to argue which of the worlds is better or which is more interesting. They are just different, it's obvious. But there was a thing, which I enjoyed in Achaea beyond any limits. Infinity, endlessness.

1. Territory.

A: Achaea is huge. There are countless things to explore. You could delve deep into the ocean to find the kingdom of Riparium. You could explore the underground Moghedu. Temples, fortresses, villages! When I was tired, bored or just swirling with thoughts, I could travel to the Northreach and feel that charming sense of isolation, detachment from the whole world with all of its concerns. I always had a place to go. Not to bash, even not to explore. Just to go.

L: Either you're in your city (good chances are you're enemied to everything else), either you're in one of your villages, either you're on a hunting trip with like four-five available place choices. Planes? A battlefield. Nothing else. There's nothing in the whole Basin I would like to visit again.

Q: Will we ever have the world suited for life and not the endless kill-die-conglute cycle?

2. People.

A: Once I was venturing in the Northern Ithmia and saw a nice guy chatting with his fiancee under the trees. He was a part of the assault group, which raided us a little while ago. I played a serpent, he was unaware, so soon he was hanging on the tree. Later I got all his family hunting me. It was just great. We circled all the Sapience - from the Southern Vashnars to the Inbhir Nest. It was a pursuit, it was a chase, it lasted for many RL days - neither of us were going to claim any PK-rights or write issues - it was just a bloody competition, wild joy of a beagle and a runaway. What is my point? After my defeat :), I have never met any of the participants. Never. I had lots of friends from different cities, who never knew each other. I was seeing new faces every other day. It was like a real world.

L: Logging in, I can tell you who's there with 70-80% accuracy without doing QW. Everyone knows everyone.

Q: Will we ever have the population, comparable to the Achaea's one?

3. Conflict.

A: There were the raids, the city CTFs (not in arena, I mean) - there was a conflict. Battles. Wars. It all was there. But it wasn't enforced, it wasn't the only way of living. There was a harmony.

L: You log in, raid enemy's plane/defend yours, go bashing to get the lost levels, return to participate in the village revolt, raid enemy's plane/defend yours. It is all about conflict, and conflict is all about killing some supernals/demons, returning home, emitting some stupid shouts and making a forum signature "You have slain Luciphage". Not to say that actively participating in your city's "life" (aka raids), you get enemied to everything what can enemy in a few RL weeks or even sooner, thus reducing your world to like 20% or so of the whole Basin's territory. Almost every corner of the world is claimed by someone, so even this 20% part is somewhat dangerous to wander around.

Q: Will we ever have anything more than a village of brawlers?

Afterword

I like Lusternia. No, I love it. The world is truly fascinating in many and many aspects. I doubt I could return to Achaea now. But make it perfect, make it ideal. Make it more than a wargame. Please.

All said is nothing more than my personal, humble, subjective opinion, not pretending to be true.

I apologize for numerous language mistakes, my English is far from being perfect.

Whoa, this should be Idiots, if not Real World.

Well... we just don't have the playerbase. Achaea is older, that's all.

And we have a CTF equivalent called Wild Nodes, it happens every other Sunday (today).

Also, I highly doubt you've been to every area in the basin. We have more than you think. Especially if you count aetherbubbles.

I kinda like this post actually. But there's veeery little that can be done about either of the first two things...the Gods simply can't control that, as much as they (I don't doubt) would like to. So we just have to make do.

In answer, I can only say that if you treat the areas like a bashing ground, then that is what they will be to you: enemy territory good for the XP. If you treat them like real, giant places that are great for exploring and questing, and relaxing in? Then that's what they will be. Our Seas frankly OWN Riparium for sheer size, and our map is easily as big as Achaea's. Certainly, I know we have much, much more involved quests. I love Maya and Clementius, but giant complex quests aren't their focus, and I accept that. Tosha Monastery, Mount Zoaka, Snow Valley, Bondero Bay, the villages... my character's a bloodstained monster, and even he can explore a whole ton of places without being enemied.

As for population? That's something people who walk into the game will have to determine. For myself, I like the cosier atmosphere (Even in Mag? Say it ain't so.).

And I think you're stressing out a little hard about being enemied. Most of the world will be open to you unless you're enemied to Serenwilde: if that happens, you can't enter most villages freely (only for now, however!). The solution? Uh, try moving to another city if you're so unhappy over who they make you fight. Even in Mag... I'm pretty much only enemied to organizations that harm the taint, like Celest, Observatory, and Shallamurine. Write books for your Great Library, spend time influencing, do comm quests, be a propagandist for your City, RP with some friends... sky's the limit. I'd go so far as to say that Lusternia has the most non-violent interaction options, especially in ones that you can use to bring benefits to your organization.

So maybe try exploring a little more, or making some life changes if you're unhappy with your current city. There's a huge world out there.

Regarding your statements.

1) I have to agree with what others have said--Lusternia is barely two years old, compared to Achaea's 10 year life. It will grow slowly, but I expect it to be just as big as Achaea. This type of growth in terms of physical locations takes a lot of time.

2) There's not much that can be done about the playerbase, except to try recruiting as well as see what we can do to make this game more palatable to potential recruits.

3) Conflict is a bit of a problem because it is "always on", so to speak. Part of this seems to be the attitude of the player base, IMO, and part could be mechanical. I would like to see some non-violent means of competition, such as culture, become more of the norm. The administration has taken some steps to fix this, such as removing conflict quests that ended up being more of a burden.

It's hard to get a "neutral event" going. I tried to put on a fashion show, even offering prizes, and I only got a few responses even while giving people 3 weeks to prepare. I'd like to see more of these types of things taken up by the playerbase, or, at least, a way to make the conflict a little less ingrained--maybe add economic or other costs to war that make a community suffer if they go on a blitzkreig. I'm sure that will happen.

Shallamurine harms the Taint? How?

When I played Achaea, I explored the entire game world in a month. I was 10th in the explorer rankings. Then what? There wasn't anything much to do in most of those places but bash. The quests were, in my opinion, uninteresting, and the flavour was rather lacking. Few of the places were really rooted in the game's history, most were just... kinda there. Nothing against Achaea or anything, but I didn't enjoy exploring it in the slightest.

I played Achaea for about two years, got into the high level 70's some guild/city posistions and then just stopped because I really didn't have anything else for my character to do...

So I started player Imperian, got that character to level 80, also got some guild/city posistions and well not to long ago stopped and started playing Lusternia...

I think all IRE games are good (much better then aardwolf) some are better then others and each has its ups and downs and totally different playerbase.

The ONLY, and I mean ONLY think I like about Achaea is the bashing. I could bash to my heart's content without worrying about being jumped unless I was infamous. Here, I've learned to just quest and don't bash that often.

Other than that, I am SO so so glad this isn't Achaea. The player base here is simply awesome!

Why? Not a rant, and it's about Lusternia.

Besides which, most of us have played Achaea. Therefore Common Ground is pretty accurate.



There is quite a lot of conflict in Lusternia, and it can be wearying.. but by and large, I think it's pretty fun. It only stops being fun if you've had enough but aren't able to stop. Having said that, there's much more to Lusty's playerbase than 'a village of brawlers'. We had a pacifist god for a while and plenty of people refuse to fight and do just fine not doing so. Unlike Achaea, where you'd claim to be a pacifist and then go bash mhun.. here you have an option to do so without retarded rp, because you can influence.

Marani's singing harms the Viscanti in the Presidio, or so I'm told.

Actually, Tully's idea could be extended into a competition for "judging" multiple entries in forging, cooking, tailoring, etc. competitions. The different basin organizations could try and compete for massive prizes according to a panel of judges grading the desirabilty of particular craft items.

Just a thought, really.

I noticed that Imperian congratulates some of thier mortal builders. I wonder if Lusternia could get more mortal builders to build aetherbubbles. I realise that the basin has a set history that they wouldn't want to give mortals access to, but Aetherbubbles seems more open.

I appreciate the smaller base of players in Lusternia compared to Achaea. Yes, Achaea is huge in this way. Yes, the number of people I see on CWHO is roughly the number of people I would see on HWHO in Achaea.

Still, when I count the actual -quality- players I know from Achaea, it doesn't take very many digits to do so. More is not automatically better, and in Achaea's case, the number of players not worth playing with -vastly- outnumber the people who are. That's not to say the latter don't exist by any means; I'm just pointing out that Achaea does have greater numbers, yes, but greater numbers of what kind of player?

In Lusternia, I am gratified to find that, even though not every person I've met is going to win an Oscar, everyone at least makes an effort to portray some kind of connection with their character and their chosen affiliations. I'm sure not everyone is like this, but the fact that I can play for about an RL month and still not run into someone going, "yeah so ima get mah boyz n we gonna kill that one dude, but rite now ima play SOCOM," or a firestorm of licking and pouncing emotes... well, that's priceless. I could run into either of those two things by just going to some public area in Achaea and standing there for an hour.

As for the role of conflict in the lands, once again, I've found Lusternia to be far superior. Achaea does not have wars. In Achaea, you have raids. Side A raids Side B. Side B drops the shrines of Side A. Side A puts up the shrines and raids Side B's icon. Side B puts up their icon and raids Side A. There's no making allies of neutral, NPC villages. There is a war system in theory, but to date, not a single entity has ever used it. Conflict in Achaea is largely just random raiding, "good" and "evil" are just labels for opposing teams like the "Raiders" and the "Seahawks," and PK for no reason whatsoever and griefing abound. I direct you to the Achaean forums, for reference.

All that to say that I'm not trying to invalidate or minimize the things you'd like to see in Lusternia, but some of the areas you pointed out as weak compared to Achaea, I actually appreciate, and are part of the reason I'm having a blast in Lusternia after getting sick of Achaea.

Frankly I think Aetherbubbles are the last thing we need for more areas.. Too hard to get to.

They are crazy expensive. To be self-sufficient to some degree...meh, need credits/gold

On the contrary, aetherbubbles should be used more for bashing.

Most cities/communes have ships available for use by the citizenry. You don't have to own one. It really just takes the skill to know how to pilot combined with Elryn's maps.

Crumkindivia is wonderful for gold, experience, karma, and esteem.

Agree. Those who say bubbles take too long to get to are spoiled on teleportation and instant travel, inept aether pilots, or both.

Also a way to get people to buy Shorlen's aether system

Meh, started another Achaean 'alt,' if you wanna make Lusty like Achaea, plz keep Lusty's non-OOC-ness