The village system kind of loses its lustre when we've got five orgs fighting for scraps. It's eased up a bit here recently, but when one org has all of them it's pretty lame.

Having played when Serenwilde dominated villages, I agree that it's rough. But by the same token, is there a real need to punish for being successful?

Symmetry = boring.

I don't think They'll do anything that breaks the 'not everything must necessarily balance out perfectly' image of Lusternia. It's only Gorgulu who grows stronger and gets power for killing Avatars. Cosmic and Elemental planes have self-spawning mobs. Ethereal areas have stronger mobs. Communes get liveforest. Etc. etc.

Last I checked darkspirit did not give undeath mastery - nor that simply having the necromancy skillset made you afflicted by the Mount Dio Spire.

Taint cannot be removed, so saying 'de-taint this' or 'de-taint that' is about as silly as saying 'delete monks/bards, then more people will have crow/necromancy'.

Crow holds influence over the undead - or can, if he so desires. Example: Puppetmasters control the zombies in the nearby hills.

Gorgulu does not get stronger for being fed Avatars (or anything). The power income was nerfed - it's less than 1/10th of what it used to be, I believe. Its effect on fae intake was drastically lowered too, I believe.

I was (comparatively) recently informed that Gorgulu does not actually increase in strength with Avatars these days (although he did during the original event), and of course the power gain was massively nerfed. But your point still stands! I could list another dozen differences, but yeah, not necessary.

If you're going to fix one for being unbalanced despite following RP, you're setting a precedent where you have to fix others, many of which are (in)arguably a greater difference in terms of the overall effect on the game. A significant example would be totems vs statues: two out of six orgs now get totems (same number as can influence undead!). Totems generate power - Serenwilde gets about 3k per day, Glom about 2k. I'm just going to focus on power gain - yes, I'm aware that they require more maintenance than statues, and can only rune select totems, can't stick totems in villages, etc. but I'm ignoring it to make the comparison here easier to show my biased point. For comparison, the power a village generates per day is about 1k - so changing it to allow all orgs to compete for Paavik and Angkrag would allow one org (assuming they got both villages) to match the passive power gain from totems of Glomdoring alone.

Yes, there are things I'm not mentioning, and I'm wondering if I should really bring totems into this - this is something that tends to get people riled up.

Darkspirit does not give any sort of influence with the undead. Crow cloaks do, however. Both, of course, are abilities in the Crow skillset which is why I mentioned Crow users. That would also seem to be the only common trait shared by Mag/BT and hence why they both suffer when Dio is active. Ah well.

As a side note, I would love to see more emphasis on Glomdoring's undead nature, but sadly the skills and Glom mobs are not really conducive for it.

Your Nexus Tutor, the sole person who speaks for Crow, is undead! No one is stopping you (I don't think) from playing up your undeathly aspects.

And Darkspirit is a dead, mad Hartstone spirit who was tainted/driven crazy by Crow centuries ago possessing your body. Likewise, Lich is, well, being undead. Therein, both are affected by Mount Dio.

Viravain. They're barren undead beasts. They're a blight on the beautiful forest. We must remember them for services rendered in the past, though.

(Assuming Vira hasn't changed her mind again. That wouldn't be new.)

I'm so excited you're a forward thinker! I will whole heartedly support you as you spearhead the movement to delete monks and bards. Go Eventru!

I agree with the above poster

Uh... there are lots of things stopping people from playing up the undead nature in Glom, heh. Including 4 RL years of precedent, RP and Divine Mandate. Not to mention years of Rowena being a crazy * and making everyone hate her. Though she has admittedly lightened up more recently, bad feelings die hard.

Also, Dark spirits are as undead as Serenwilde's ancestor spirits, IMO. Taken on their own, they're just a darker, more twisted version of the ancestor spirits that Seren has all over the place (and the ones over in Hifarae). To me, the difference between them is that the Dark Spirits want to actually live in flesh again, whereas the ancestor spirits are content to just provide support / advice.

That is where I feel they diverge from being "natural" dead spirits to being unnatural and breaking the order of the life cycle, and why the Dio Spire hits those of us who "traffic in Dark Spirits". Less because of the spirits themselves and more because of what they and we are doing with them. Which may actually be where you are going with your point, but it is somewhat difficult to tell.

If you're doing totems vs statues as an analogy for undead vs normal influencing, then undead influencing should be considerably more costly.

Yes, there are plenty of things in Lusternia that are asymmetrical, but there's asymmetry and then there's imbalance. Making everyone able to influence undead AND giving lich and crow cloaks bonuses is still asymmetrical but not so imbalanced.

PERFORM ZOMBIE
You rub a bit of dirty on your face, assume a slack-jawed expression, and stumble around moaning softly.

eh, Dramatics is lame

I like.

I like. It helps make Dramatics less lame.

Dramatics is great, especially for bards.

Do eet. If we can play drunk we should be able to play zombie





Edit: I know the zombies are getting beat up but it made me giggle anyway... it's too early