Why do we have it? I mean, I understand that starting things off with a generally available means of communication is handy for getting organizations off the ground, but what of now? Yes, yes, I'm not really one for deep introspective stuff, but I'm curious - if the common language was removed, would it deepen ties or would folk just be more alienated? Would Lusty right now thrive or wither?

I mean, remove the common tongue and shove in organizational languages, and you'd have things like:

-Less inane shouting matches
-Bookbinders who have more use
-Reason to use racial languages

But, on the flip side, you could have:

-More org snobbery?
-Other things I'm too lazy to look into

Anyways! I know some races (read, quite a few, actually) don't have their own racial language and could easily be tweaked to have their own/be able to learn one and some skills (read, Infiltrate/Eavesdrop/Thoughtstealer) kinda function off of listening in (could probably tweak those too), but I'm bored and curious. I'm interested to see what people come up with.

First off: Will never happen.

Second: I just picture the shouters getting a translator. It could end up like that episode of 'I Love Lucy' where they have to translate from Italian to French to Spanish to English.

Third: Racial languages are too used already. And always in the most annoying places.

Fourth: Gigantic advantage to Illithoid.

Fifth: Hallifax would invent a universal translator for this situation, anyway.

What would be nice to see is city languagess.

Clearly if Hallifax will just make a translator, why haven't they done so for the non-speaking critters like their hunting dogs? I mean, hellew:

Hallifax already made a tool for communication, it is now referred to as the common language.

I think at one point there was a discussion on the aeromancers channel that made me start to think that the common language is actually trill

Why would we want to hear such an inferior creature speak? It also explains why my snub list is the way is.

Well that's just cruel. And here I thought the science-y city would be all up for wanting to know everything.

Anyways, I doubt it'd happen, but I do still wonder how the game would fare. -twiddle-

Isn't it like this for one of the newer IRE variants? (i.e. each org has its own language?)

Only that which matters. All else is to be EX-TER-MIN-ATED.


Anyway, I think it would be an annoyance that further isolates us into our pitiful little cities and guilds. I think affinity already pushed people a bit more into their city/commune than some might be, and I think that change would basically force you to stick with city or commune and no one else.


Also, what about the rare rogues? Would they be mute?

Also, I think organizational languages would be nice.

It's a curious thing, really. MKO started me thinking about it, but then they've had it set up from the beginning. Their languages are segregated with a few races being able to communicate with each other since they share the same language, but I wonder about the already ingrained Lusty.

@Casilu: Wouldn't Halli's dogs be exterminated then if you don't think they matter enough to know fully about?

-counterlogic-

All part of the plan. I'll be livin' the dog-genociding dream.

It's just not all that feasible, here, unless aethers are unrestricted by language. Even then - meeting someone for any sort of trade agreement would require spamming up Market just to understand eachother.

It may lead to some interesting RP, for a time, and would probably make for a neat event every now and then, but it wouldn't work in any long-lasting way.

Actually, aethers are unrestricted by language. This has been proven by science since you can be speaking a language and use an aether and they can understand you. What would be FAR more annoying is when you use market and get a reply from someone in another org, you couldn't understand each other, but they would understand your request.

It would be very frustrating for people on asian time, that's for certain. Sometimes there's just no one in your org, but being able to talk to people from elsewhere while you do X boring grinding exercise is enough to keep you occupied. Negatives vastly outweigh positives, which would get old fast.

I don't see it working out. Overall, you won't encourage fun, positive interaction by limiting communication. Spontaneity would take a big hit. I think there would be a big, and steadily increasing, tedium factor. It would make it harder to look beyond the people in your own city.

I think MKO rescinded their language limitations. I'm not sure on the details.

MKO



They didn't actually rescind it, but if someone has the credits to spend they can learn every language as some people did once the artifact was released. And they had a promotion to learn one extra language, and humans there can learn one other language from the get go, so through the promotion humans gained one more language and I believe all the other races already knew two languages so unless someone bought the artifact, each regular person who spent time for the promotion got three languages.

Though this is old info, since I haven't actively played in some time.

Forum RP? Or do you just normally talk like that about non-scientific things?

Achaea had racial and org languages too. Racial languages were used like they are here: a few newbies standing at nexus thinking they're cool because no one else can understand what they're saying (which is never anything important to begin with). Org languages were sometimes used during raids, except that made it hard when foreign defenders came along. Then when the party system (similar to our squads) was introduced, everyone just switched to that for the same purpose.

I have wondered why there are no org languages here though. Lusternia is generally better about RP anyway so there's a chance org languages would actually be used and would add depth to the game. But I'm just talking about adding org languages - not removing common. Removing common would be a bad idea for the reasons everyone already listed. I've seen one person who RPed not speaking common, and I've heard there have been a small handful of others, but it didn't really do much, and it didn't make sense to me because she could understand it in tells or aethers, and read it in letters and books, but not understand or speak it when it was out loud in front of her.

This might be a bit off topic and I don't want to derail this one so if it gets enough replies I'll just move it to a new thread. This reminds me of something else I'd been wondering about - racial RP. I know there's some, and I hear there was more before I joined, but it surprises me that there are no clans or other kind of formalized race-related stuff. I think it would be cool to have a clan for every race, and a manse where only the clan members could go, which would be appropriate for the race (like a little wooded grove for Elfen, a lake for Merian, a crystal building of some kind for Lucidien etc). I think language and race can add another dimension to RP (and RP conflict) besides just orgs. Now I don't mean to encourage racism or the Lusternian equivalent, though that would be a likely byproduct, but I think it would be fun to be able to go to a place where only other members of your character's race could go, have a bookshelf with books about the histories or poems about how awesome it is being furrikin or praise to a Divinity that might be associated with that race, and just generally enhance what it means to have chosen a specific race, for more than just its 'stats'. I was just remembering how Achaea had a place for Tsol'aa to go, and they had a book to teach you the Tsol language - not just "speak tsolaa" but actual words, probably based on Tolkein (or else some Lendren-like person seriously created it all themselves) but it was pretty cool anyway.

I kind of like the idea of making the languages more useful somehow. I've always thought that they're neat flavor, but they're so underused that I forget that Druken can speak elfen. Someone up there ^ already noted that language barriers are annoying (Casilu, maybe?), and I agree, but it'd be nifty if certain organizational languages were incorporated somehow.

Every organization already has a racial spec. Maybe make those racial languages necessary to respond to different organizational quest things (I'm not referring to the epic quests, so don't freak out)? Because the languages are strictly for flavor's sake now anyway, why not add flavor quests or other flavor things to give the races, bookbinders and the generally interested parties a tasty smorgasborg to play with?

And you didn't find it as annoying as I did there? Heck, not only could I not talk to people in other orgs (I was a troll), but the moredhel in my org would speak eledhel at the city center, so I couldn't understand them either. Can't say that I've found the language barrier a satisfying experience