I have moderated this post. - Fain

^

Let's keep this thread respectful so we don't have to lock it.

Was I disrespectful? I didn't think I was...

I actually liked the Scorpion spirit idea, and I don't think it was purely the admins being the admins here. After all they did set up events just for the nekotai at least once while I was a member to help foster the growth of this very rp they seek to quawsh now.

no

He's referring to Nienla's post. I believe she's the closest to "the line," but if someone takes her post and adds to it, the thread will get locked.

Well, I'm not quite sure this is fair either. We've only heard heard from one administrator so far - though the reactions are understandable, especially give the tone we're being spoken to in (from "ifs" and "maybes" to "definitely").

When you're hearing from an administrator things like "Definitely will lead to Bad Things," you take notice.

That's where this thread came from, really.

It's mostly that its a slap to the face to the players that spent a very long time to create roleplay for a guild that the administrators didn't create any for, nor have any assistance in creating it. Yet, suddenly, they feel the need after years of the guild being out to critique the roleplay of the guild. It's silly, very silly. That's like telling the Shadowdancers that they can't have the Litanies, or that the Blacktalon have to scrap their interpretations of the Aspects of Crow.

I genuinely wouldn't freak out about this so much. If something happens, which I doubt, I have faith in my guild's RP faculty to roll with it.

I'm curious to know how the other bard and monk guilds have integrated, though. I hear that the Spiritsingers are the best-integrated bard guild at present, and I want to know what helped that. Also curious as to how the other monk guilds have tried linking themselves to their nexuses... not everyone had the Scorpion Caverns to build off of, after all.

I suggest there is less flaming and blatant attacking of the administration and more of a constructive discussion with suggestions of possible solutions. I really am not interested in having to close this thread.

The problem is very understandable, and I fully understand that this would get some upset, however, aggressive posts are counterproductive and will just result in the involved individuals digging in their heels. As I understand it, the prime topic (and concern) of this thread after it was split is the concern that, as a player, you must be able to take for granted some (all of) the things that mobiles say in order to be capable of building consistent roleplay. I agree with this to a certain extend. What I agree with wholehartedly however, if that it is crap (both for players and administration) when disagreements occur that end up conflicting between different people's ideals of roleplay and background.

We have had these problems before, the cause of them is that we work with a large amount of different individuals on the administration team (not just the current admin, but also the many many admin (including ephs) that went before) and it is impossible to doublecheck everything. I have been experiencing similar problems with hallifax, where I have been doing a lot of design: some of the things I designed or thought of later turned out to conflict with other things already in place. Mostly these are minor mistakes (family names, racial origins, when one thing in hallifax happened in relation to another) but sometimes there are larger conflicts as well. Misunderstandings have led to me having to redesign parts of the city I am working on at present when I went over them with Estarra. Luckily, these errors were caught, but even if for every ten errors and contradictions we catch, one of them gets through, that is still a very large amount of contradictions that slip into the game.

The interesting thing is figuring out how to deal with this problem. My personal opinion (which may or may not be the opinion of Administration as a whole, mind you) is that such things need to be smoothed over as best they can. This happened in the Collectivist Manifesto, for example, where there are some references that do not make sense when compared along the timelines of the Celestine Empire. If people end up basing stuff on this, it could lead to confusion, however, that is a pretty common occurence in the real world as well: scientific readings often contradict, sometimes leading to vastly different schools of thought about the same subject. In the case of the collectivist manifesto, it could simply be put down to it being a work of propaganda (not the most accurate representations of history, you'll agree) and arguably, if large amounts of people base their opinions on it, it has become a successful work. In such a way, the real solution is, I think, to not simply get stuck in misery on how incompatible these various opinions are, but to realise that there are contradictions, that one (or maybe even both) is therefore an inaccurate representation of history and to let this uncertainty enrich your roleplay experience, rather than diminish it.

Please note that as I really have no clue about Glomdoring background and history, I am in no way commenting on the scorpion issue, on which I have no opinions but the opinions granted to me by others. (Which again shows how easy it is for these contradictions to get into the world).

EDIT: dear lord, since I started typing this, there have been about 10 responses, so the warning at the front doesn't make as much sense anymore.

See, here's the difference. When I hear things put in such black-and-white terms by the Administration, I expect that it will happen sooner or later. And when it is something that is coming out of left field, I prefer to state my objections up front so it can be discussed (and thought about in-depth) before it goes in and causes a larger problem when it actually does happen. It's better to have a discussion on such things I feel.

This is very much out of left field for me and I'm incredibly confused here. I thought that this whole Scorpion/Old Ones business was encouraged by the admin and have led to believe so for awhile, as it's been going for longer than I've been playing the game. If something does happen with throwing that out the window, I'm seriously going to be unhappy since I've dumped over 300 credits into a manse temple for the guild dedicated to educating the guild/commune about the Old Ones.

GG admins.

The Shofangi have made several attempts. The first couple were related to Bull, not as a spirit (we talked to Charune and asked if Bull was a spirit, and he said he had NFI, but we are taking that as a "we haven't planned this part of canon yet" and it may change later) but as a kind of Astral manifestation of the Moonhart, because during the monk design phase Estarra mentioned our connection to bull/scorpion due to the astral spheres and left it open-ended as to why, but that ended up not flying with the admin for whatever reason. There have been some others since pertaining more to Bull as a spirit, some of which were ignored/rejected, but one more we're gonna try soon and pray that some of it takes.

You heard correctly about the Spiritsingers. The ability to partially hijack spirits from the Hartstone and the Wildarrane rewrite went a looong way towards making them more flavourful. Harmony has literally -nothing- of that calibre and the martial specs are only hypothetically and tangentially related to Celest and Serenwilde at their absolute best. Added to that the kephera and illithoid are now linked with 3 orgs each, none of them consistently allied, and you have a recipe for multiple healthy servings of meh. I'll let the other bards speak about their own situations though.

I also have been trying to bug Intendant Kaniun about metal and harmony lately, but I don't expect that to go anywhere (as in, it would be unreasonable to expect the admin to try and accomodate it and it probably wouldn't do the job anyway) so it's mostly for my own curiosity and satisfaction. Also he's afk all the time.

Well, this would be the preferred method, really! The problem is that I'm not sure how to smooth it over without being willing to give a little.

As-is, the current stance is:
Scorpion is not supposed to be worshipped by Glomdoring guilds. If it is, Bad Things will happen.

Thus, the only responses are:
1) Readjusting the "Administrative" view of what the roleplay should be at least somewhat, or
2) Removing Scorpion 'worship' from the guild.

#2, flat-out, with nothing remaining after the time put in at this point is rough.

Let's not forget that few things are set in stone unless they are actually displayed in the histories or by an area. Estarra does care about what players are actually doing. When Wildarrane was open for a revision, it was in part the role play built up over years by the Spiritsingers that informed the direction the new skills took.

I was not privy to any discussion regarding potential negative effects should the Nekotai be too extreme in their reverence for Scorpion, and my immediate assumption is that should it be a problem, Nocht will be active in informing guild leaders that a change is necessary. I would rely on feedback from him or from Estarra herself.

Having patroned the Spiritsingers for a couple of years and able to observe the Shofangi, I appreciate the feelings of being "tacked on" that bards and monks feel. Some steps have been taken to rectify the issue (the Rhapsody and Trialante pockets, the Wildarrane changes, and Grandmother Scorpion being introduced via an area), and there's always something new in the works. I can only ask that you have patience with us! Building is a labor-intensive business. I, for one, am much busier in real life than I was when I took up the role of Maylea, and never build as fast as I would like!

The problem here is that it was displayed in an area.

Though apparently the trigger for the word "Nekotai" has been removed now, it was there up until today. Since the Scorpion Caverns came out.

This is hilarious. It's way too late to start covering asses here since a lot of the people who are loyal to the game have done this quest and know about what's happened. Xenthos has it right about how our characters just can't forget about what the NPC's said even if she stops saying it, especially if the lore means a lot to our character.

I remember Janalon taking me out there as part of my secretary education, which was a fun time.

You forget how awsome Crow memory is, or whatever it is called