After looking back on things joining an OOC clan ruined so much immersion for me that I had gotten before, I got more familiar with players on an out of character basis which made me be less scared/intimidated/in awe of their character or in some instances just wash out what their character was because I knew the person behind it. I wish I could forget all the opinions I made through talking to those people, and just talk to their character and redevelop my opinions. I am a very different person than Daem is and I'm me in that clan not Daem. I think I've actually washed out more interaction with people on a character level because I had joined some of those clans. In some cases I realize now that I should have disliked a character more than I really did.

For example when Shuyin joined Glomdoring, I was more excited about the player joining that I didn't care what he had done to Glomdoring because I trusted on an out of character level that he would stay loyal to Glomdoring, which affected my actions and opinions in the game. In some instances I found that I would avoid playing with a character because I heard in a clan that they weren't worth the time, and I wonder if I would have had an interesting interaction with someone had I not gotten those predetermined ideas in my head.

Though on a second note it was really helpful that I had a place to have questions and place to discuss them, and I met a lot of cool people by joining those clans. I half kind of miss being in one of the clans because of the conversations were funny and the people were nice, but I have since decided to just avoid OOC clans altogether and it's quite refreshing, if not a bit lonely sometimes, but then again I'm not really playing the game right now, I'm grinding to demigod. After that I'll start playing the game again.

Sorry if this is forum RP but I have to clarify something here.

I have been trying to write a short post. But it ends up being too long so here it is (still long ):

Celest doesn't equal Shallam.

Celest/=/Shallam

Celest/=Shallam

Lusternia doesn't equal Achaea.

Lusternia/=/Achaea

Lusternia/=Achaea

There is no church in Celest - stop pretending/hinting/suggesting there is one. There is nothing "church-like" about Celest besides saying "We stand in the Light" - which is where the Achaean Church and Celest's similarities end. If you've read the histories, you'll know how different Shallam is compared to Celest. Hell man, if you've played in both of those orgs you'd see just how different they are.

forumrp
Priests and Paladins from Achaea are nothing like Celestines and Paladins - they don't have the same roleplaying concept. I know, I played in both games. They are not the same thing. The outer edges might suggest what Malicia said - but there's a lot more to it. Just look at the divine pantheon and what each Supernal stands for. That's what makes it FUN. Celest HAS a dark side, and it's a damn good one too - and yeah, it includes killing heretics, because we released the taint and it's our job to clean it up. It's too bad if you see that as debauchery, but like I've said, Celest ain't Shallam. In Shallam I can definitely see how this could be viewed as foul... but. Well, Celest lives by different rules, in a different world, where fighting your foes is a necessity, not a desire.
/forumrp

That being said there is very little dissent in Celest. I think whoever designed the cities and general concept did a masterful job - Celest ended up being nothing like Shallam, which was full of hatred and dissent and backstabbing. While we have our divas like any other org, their reigns never last long. I was oodles of happy to find this out, and I've loved Celest since my first day playing.

More at this post, though: If you want to play a herpderping Harold Camping be my guest. That will get old fast though.

I think you're missing the point, which was that 'Church' RP is boring and two-dimensional. I didn't hear anyone comparing Celest and Shallam. You're reading too much into it.

Edit: Also, the old school, medieval, Roman Catholic Church has absolutely nothing to do with mainstream Christianity today. There are most certainly parallels between Celest and the old Catholic Church.

My point is there is no church for comparison, and certainly no church-like RP in Celest. The only congregation are the Celestines, and there is far more going on there than your regular two-bit Achaean Church roleplay. Like pretty much every single org out there Celest worships the half-deities assigned to that org, not some mysterious invisible man in the sky. It's just the misfortune of roleplaying the lawful good side that people feel the need to compare it to real churches, or the Achaean church.

The only reason people even make this connection is because Celest/Celestines preach about goodness triumphing over evil. Nihilists preach about Nil but no one is comparing them to Satanists. Furthermore, I don't feel it is at all fair to compare Celestines or Celest to the medieval Catholic Church - everyone may walk their separate path to the same destination, but that holds true for every org.

edit: if you're going to compare Celest to the Catholic Church simply because it's a justice/angelical-themed society, then, well, that's a misinformed view. Because an org (in a game, mind you), has a righteous outlook for roleplaying purposes, does not mean it is attuned to real life churches. Even medieval ones.

But this is a matter of differing opinions. I was raised with a religious upbringing and turned atheist in my adult life, and I just can't see the comparison between celest and churches, much like I can't compare nihilists to satanists - it just seems completely ridiculous to me.

I'd like to think that sort of trust was not misplaced!

P.S. As much as I love the Celest is not Shallam tangent, it's probably not the intent of the thread.

Also, while the suggestions here are noble, it's kind of also stating the obvious: to make Lusternia grow bigger, add more stuff. And they already do that every month, if not more often than that.

Celest is not lolinquisition, nor is it lolcuddles<3. It has its roots in both, though I note Celest, while at times certain individuals have strayed into the realm of 'evil' or at least decidedly bad actions, is wholly a 'good' organization. Love, compassion, protection of the innocent, illuminating the shadows, mercy, even-handed judgment - these are all aspects of what, by its very nature, is 'good'. It's always been my greatest frustration to see people dismiss Celest as "shades of gray under a white cloak" - while you can certainly (and at times justifiably) take the stance that Celest is an oppressive force, the same can be said of nearly any 'good' entity in our own society and in right about any fantasy story - and the arguments will likely run the same rounds, too.

Maybe I should make my next blog post on the subject...

I read that as robots for some reason...

You should. Then I may or may not read it.

I suggesting googling "holy robot" for images!

After my Seren -> Gaudi -> Celest movement, I have to say a lot of why I have enjoyed Celest so much comes from the little things that would probably benefit other orgs, and thus the game at large:

-Stability. Be it through players or admin design, what Celest is is a largely stable concept. The same is true of Glomdoring and Magnagora. Players know what to expect, so you are somewhat less likely to have someone goose-step in with a fancy hat and start trying to scream their way to power, and then start mucking about with things. A few RL years ago when I was in Serenwilde, it felt like the org was trying to get to several different RP places at once, and not reaching any of them. Like if you tie twine together, and then tie each end to a hampster leg. It never ends as well as you imagine it should.

-Stupid little details. The paladin knighting ceremony is incredible. Sure, its mechanically meaningless, it doesn't give you any new abilities or anything of the sort. But it is really slick, and it doesn't feel like someone just throwing emotes at you. Beams of light descend from on high to sanctify you! Usually everyone in the guild turns out to watch. I actually felt like advancing in a guild! I'd never bothered to do that before. All those little quests in Celest make it feel alive- trash in the streets you can pick up. The statue in the garden, the cats, the hummingbirds. Celest feels more vibrant and organic than some other places, it feels like a place Akui should care about, not just a relatively safe series of rooms with pretty descriptions.

-Guild cohesion. This goes to the hampsters and twine thing above. Serenwilde often felt like each of its guilds was going in its own direction. That could probably work, but it didn't for me. Celest has more inter-guild unity in terms of its RP that I find I appreciated.

That's actually one of the things I like about the Serenwilde. It makes for some sweet inter-guild conflict.

It wasn't you're still awesome! I replaced Rawr angry with hey we got a new cool kid in Glom.

Er, what exactly are you imagining would happen? The hamster would knit you a hat?

The reason I have found myself playing other games lately rather than Lusternia (WoW and LoL mostly) is because of more consistent and more gratifying rewards.

In World of Warcraft you have the typical questing which rewards you with xp and gold. Every few hours you level up (unlike in Lusternia where it eventually becomes every few days, and eventually every few weeks then months). When you level up you almost always either get a talent point to improve your character, or unlock a new spell or ability to purchase which also makes you stronger. In Lusty you get a little more health/mana/ego.

In WoW if you get tired of questing you can queue up in the dungeon finder and work as a team to tackle a dungeon. During this time you get xp, do side quests, get gold, and sometimes find a really great item to improve your character. Once you finish the dungeon you get a bag that has some random item in it that's good for your character.

If you get tired of that you can queue up for PvP. Based on how well you do in the PvP match, you get more points which you can spend on more gear to make your character better. Everything you do has some tangible reward that makes your time feel like it was well spent.

Here are some things I recommend to make Lusty (and IRE games in general) more mainstream:

ONE

Introduce 1 skill that has abilities you earn through leveling up. Every level should either give you a new ability or make one of the abilities in this set better. They can be entirely utility abilities.

TWO

Reward people who get kills in the arena or off-prime planes with a new form of currency. Actually winning the arena event should give you bonus points. Have a new store where you can spend these points to buy things already available in the game, but that you currently have to spend gold on. Examples include manse stuff, packages of vials, packages of pocketbelts containing stuff, and possibly some of the cheaper artifacts that I can't imagine many people spend money on (arti vials?). You could also have pre-enchanted great robes, bundles of herbs, shields that have good stats, etc.

THREE

Introduce more world PvP scenarios that are ongoing. Build some towers on prime that in terms of role play serve as vantage points or strategic choke points. It makes sense from a role play point of view to control these. You could even as some neat mechanical abilities to the towers - if you are on the top of a tower you can see into the room of anyone in the area. The win condition for these towers is that at least one person from an organization must be inside it, without people from another organization. During that time a "meter" fills up, and if it tops off at a preset point, you win the tower and every orgs meter resets. If you are in the tower when your org claims it, you get more PvP points. The towers shouldn't have a cool down - let people fight over them night and day. Since the reward is almost entirely personal, people don't feel obligated to join in.

In addition to this, or even instead of, you could have an arena game that is ongoing. People can drop in at any time, and fight as long as they want.

FOUR

Streamline the levelling process. I don't think aetherhunting is too fast, I think regular hunting is too slow.

I firmly disagree with you, one time for every time I've seen a 17-yr old Titan/Demi. Getting to 100 should take a long, long time. But since it became the "standard", it became necessary to make it easy to get to, since you can't fight and expect to win without it.

Yeah, no.

Demigod is pretty much pointless these days; all Demigod gets you is the ability to hunt up more essence to buy some RP toys, really.

It's been nerfed to the ground, specifically because of people saying "it's necessary, omg!" So now it's nothing but a status symbol that you spend a little bit of time to get and anyone can get it if they put in even the teeniest bit of effort, but it's sure not needed to fight and win.

Demigods should be worth more essence/xp!

I have to say, I'm rather jealous of these 17 year olds that get demi so fast.

Consider it done.

(Must train hamsters to knit hats.)

Since bashing to demi is about as interactive and interesting as painting a fence, I firmly disagree with you. Some people love painting fences; great, they can grind essence. Maybe 17 year olds shouldn't have demi, but it shouldn't take until you're 100. And since people play for different amounts of time per day, but your age ticks the same regardless, it's a crappy measure beyond about 20. If you want to aetherhunt eight hours a day, good for you. I want to bash for an hour and not feel like I should do it four times that long or not bother.

While I can appreciate that Lusternia is a business and that people do need to make their living, I also am very disappointed in how commercial it's become. All of the IRE promotions are just... ruining the game for me. Yes, they have been interesting, and I was very pleased that instead of having combat items, we ended up with curios, as I'd probably throw my hat in and quit if we ended up with more items that would become necessary for fighting, but I still feel like... we shouldn't have double xp all the time, and we shouldn't have to do monthly promotions. In my way of thinking, we're not going to be attracting more people that way because really the only people who benefit in the long run are those who play consistently. Focus should be on keeping the playerbase we already have.



I hate how much raiding has been nerfed. Prior to the smobs getting major buffs again, I highly enjoyed both being raided and raiding. Quite honestly, I find that there's something impressive about people being able to take down two or three DLs/Supernals/Avatars. The Master Crystals/Fleshpots, not so much. I don't mind being raided. I don't mind the cleanup work afterwards and the hours of trying to steal essence from every plane. It made it interesting. It made it fun. It also gave us something to do instead of sit around talking on our OOC clans. I love Wildnodes for the reason that I'm willing to just throw myself into combat and have a good time. It's better if you're winning (but then everything is), but Nil, even if you're not, I've got some pretty awesome memories from raiding, pre-nerf.



Once you've "got it all" it's kind of hard to do anything but grind for more essence so that you can go out and die in raids! I wish that we had more demigod power options, instead of just a few mildly interesting flavour powers and some demigod stat buffs. I'm not saying I want to see Ascendance powers as demigod powers, just... give us something to work with, please?



I liked bashing Astral solo. Before the monster buffs, I'd been bashing things like fesixes, linked and unlinked, since about level 80. Now, I can barely handle them. It's been close. This is on a demigod with trans resilience, scroll/sparkle/health curing all set the same that it's always been for bashing, as well as being fully deffed with robes.



Roleplay is alive and well if you go looking for it. I am actually very envious of that knighting ceremony. I'd love for all the guilds to have something like that! It is a special thing for the Paladins, and I think if each guild had one it would make things more interesting and liven roleplay. All of the denizens/mobs in Celest make it a lot more than it looks. I also enjoy going around reading all the signs and the dedications on the monuments throughout. Take a look at them, they're part of Celest's rich history!

I guess my point is Celest is more than it seems. Apologies if I border on forumrp. I just... Celest is so fascinating.

The reality is, I think, railing against the monthly promos and such is just wasting your breath, for the time being. I suppose I don't understand why people hate them so much - if you don't like them, ignore them. They bother you, I get that, but why give them attention if that's the case? We always tell people you can choose what parts of Lusternia you want to participate and can generally avoid the others, and I don't think this is any different.

As to demigod powers, if you have suggestions, feel free to go make a thread with them. We have a small list floating around havens from over the last year or so, but it's not a terribly exciting list and nothing on it seems particularly 'worthwhile'.

Celest does have a vibrant city atmosphere, and I do try to encourage and fill it in as I go - there's quests that aren't even known by the citizens (as they've forgotten), such as in the Athenaeum, but they're there. Of course, Celest pays horrifically high sums for just the chance they might get a quest, so it comes at a price.

If guilds want ceremonies and that sort of thing, they should speak to their patron - that's what they're there for! (Particularly the Aquamancers, who have waaayy too much gold and boy I could use a new Ferrari to make Morgfyre jealous...)