Outside of the conceptual and marketing issues, or even content issues this website just has several things that make it look sloppy, many of which are easy fixes.

I'm just going to work through all the pages. This is long, so you can skip down and take the short post at the bottom.


Links don't need underlines, bold, different colors and big font, especially not with all caps for LUSTERNIA. It would look a whole lot better if you got rid of the underlining.

On the front page, the credits option in the tool bar is literally shadowed by the edge of the portal of fate. This looks crowded, scoot the portal over less then a centimeter and you are fine.

Why is there a big link (see above) on the very top of the Game Info page named 'About Lusternia' that links to that very same page? Make that a header, not a link. I can only assume that sort of thing is used to reset to the top of the page, but it's not a particularly long page. All the links on that page need makeovers and organization. Try some sort of pleasant table, a different sort of list, or full on buttons. Just changing the way the links look might fix that though.

On the "Create a Character" pop-up, change the x to close it to something that isn't a square box on a dark background, make it a yellowish-brown beveled button to match the grunge background thing you've got going on. It looks totally unfinished and careless at the moment.

Use the color and way that links were on the old lusternia site, change the font a little and remove the underline. that way, instead of a back and forth between oddly placed links and oddly placed text that I assume is intended to be grouped with the link above them (by content), you get something that goes with the feel. To that end, clump the link and the description of the link closer then the description and the next link on the list.

Though I don't like the idea, I do really like the look of the new character creation sidebar, it goes well with the aesthetic design of the site. Orangy brown, kinda filmy, no awkward links to break the continuity, kewl beans. The brown lettering is good, the transparent boxes don't look slapped on or jarring, even the little pencils go nicely with the background splotch that is right there. The capital 'M' on Make looks wrong somehow, compared to the massive capital 'W' right above it. Shrink that 'W' to make it work with the other capital letters!

The purple, part transparent swatches look like what happens when you accidentally highlight the graphics on a website with broken up pictures. Oops, I accidentally highlighted the menubar instead of clicking on it! I suggest either making it non-transparent or more that direction, or picking a better color that don't seem out of place or washed out. Pastel and awkward transparency right in the middle of the background (talking about the menu here) is bad. It looks alright on the front page with that different purple transparent box and the portal, but unless you standardize that second purple across the other pages, they look weird. It's not too terribly bad on the bottom, except it looks accidental because you can see the normal background through it.

The 'Lusternia Live' part dosn't give the feeling of actual.... live-ness that the one on the IRE site does, someone suggested some sort of divider, that's a good idea in my opinion. I think that adding some sort of icon next to each thing is a good idea also, something different for different things, just to spice it up some.

Favicon.

I actually like the background, it's fairly attractive and it goes very well with the fancy Lusternia icon in the upper left. Some things look terribly out of place on it though, floating randomly. Like the random Login and especially the link above it to recover password. I feel like both are too far up and to the right, first. Align them to the top of the menubar, not on level (or slightly above?) with the name of the game. Oh sorry, thought that was a 'forgot password' button, not yet another link to get you to join. Get rid of that. Also, change the faded and old looking yellow and purple of the button to something that matches the darker looking background.

Actually, change the colors scheme of all the buttons, even the one in the creation sidebar. The faded yellow goes good on the purple, not the other way around, and the purple works best if it's only on the bottom, as I mentioned above.

Oh, when you log in, more random things pop up in the awkward section over there. One of the NEW options is to create another character. If I just logged on as a character, why suddenly give me more chance to join up? The separators on these links allow for the underline, I think. It's alright there. I almost had to take out a ruler, though, because I get the creeping feeling that all that stuff over there is higher then it should be compared to the big Lusternia.

On the login page, do not asterisk the name and password fields. We know they are required fields, they are the only two fields and we have to log into a milllllllllllllion other things all the time now-a-days, I think we understand. Long boxes are long. Oh, and isn't it 'Lusternia: Age of Ascension', not 'Lusternia, Age of Ascension'? The website seems to go back and forth on the exact name


Glancing over them, the racial info pages look okay. In the Races table, fix the weird formatting that puts some links out of line with the others, and fix the links in general. On each page, remove the link to itself at the top, make that a normal word please (make it the same color as the other headers, but leave it the same size). Also, who do some race pages have their picture and some do not? Each race has a drawing, and if you put one up, put them all up please. In fact, I liked having the pictures on the Races page, and that will help to have an anchor for the links!

On the gods page, don't bust out talking about the soulless and Estarra. I don't exactly know how to fix that particular issue, just change how it's written I guess. Do that in general for all of it, but I assume you would be going through doing that sort of stuff and grammar fixing as time goes on anyways. One thing this page needs is frequent top of page buttons, some way to skip to a god, or some other organization scheme. One way to do this could be to have them sort of the way folders are (I can't really put my finger on what this is called). In otherwords, you'd have a big list of all the gods, with the headings they currently have but a little smaller and an arrow next to them, if you clicked the arrow it would turn from this: > into this: \\/ and their blurb would pop out. That way you could expand whatever god you wanted, or gods. That may be complicated though. A sidebar that jumps down to an entry accomplishes the task well.

Whoa. I was going to skip the helpfiles page. It's somewhat ugly, but it's directly what you see from HELP, so whatever. The problem is '
LUSTERNIA'S HELP FILE INDEX'... At the top of the page "Lusternia" is a link and is yellow and underlined and " 'S HELP FILE INDEX" is not a link and is orange. Unlink Lusternia. (It links to HELP LUSTERNIA. There has to be a better way to do that. And, for goodness sake, HELP LUSTERNIA is awesome material for frontpage as it was before!)

The links actually look okay on the Artisanal page, because they are well organized and the underlines look like separators. This page is awesome.

The links on the guilds page are funky with that table, which needs a tad bit of tweaking (though changing links would fix this), but this page is also quite awesome.

The indent on the Cities and Communes page seems random, was something intended to go there? Oi, just noticed, it's all left aligned, not justified... That irks me personally (unfortunately, justifying makes odd gaps in sentences that the site does not need), but it hasn't been an issue until this page, where the indent makes it seem like it's extra far to the right. If you indent, increase the right margin by an equal amount, please.

The crops of the maps are in some cases ugly or annoying, cutting off words and the like. One is just a brown square. Have a thumbnail of the complete map, a decent crop or no direct image please? I rather like having some picture of it on the page, it's a good step in the right direction but some of these are bad.

On the credits page, the Elfen woman's leg hanging over the box covers all but the edge of the little pencil, which is annoying. Shorten the box some or scoot her. I love the way the transparent boxes here have a gradient that fades into the backround, and the yellow and purple scheme isn't terrible on this, and the links go well on orange! If the entire website looked more like this page it would look a lot better. The standard packages link being white is distracting and it looks like it was just plain missed when the colors were passed out.

Oops, accidentally found a bug. Using the nexus player and a client, you can multiplay, naughty naughty.

It seems unnecessary to spawn another play now button when you log on, when it does the exact same thing as pushing 'play now', except you magically can use nexus. I'd say have play now default to one but have a clear option on the resulting page, and get rid of that entire button set that appears when you log on.






tl;dr version is that there are lots of little (and a few large) things that really seem to stack up that can be fixed. Some of it is very good though, in my opinion.

I agree that the targeting here is bad, and the marketing strategy is wonky, but first fix the structure, then fill the content, I'd say.

To the Webmaster!

I personally prefer the old layout and style of the website, this one seems too cluttered and haphazard.