Shattered Kingdoms

Yes or no, and why?

there's no legit reason the hand should have been removed to start with. something about consolidating people to make the game seem more full, but the three remaining cities (menegroth, exile and nerina) are still empty most of the time so mission not accomplished on that front. the fact that there are still at least two guardians seen frequently on the who list only exacerbates the situation.

Okay, no. The Black Hand's demise is the cause of IC events that went largely ignored by the playerbase.

With all the massive outcry about Ayamao and how everyone was forced into participating, I decided to target the roleplay with the actual members of the Hand instead of making everyone else get tangled up in it if they didn't want to. I let the players set the pace. When the ball started rolling, there were plenty of members that could have driven the roleplay to turn out differently. They didn't. They didn't involve allies. They didn't dig at clues and make political moves. They didn't send logs or determine how they could alter the story line.

In fact, the people who DID show up to roleplay actively worked against the Council of Necromancers; therefore they got defeated by IC events. They aren't coming back.

On a related note, since the Black Hand isn't coming back, can the IMMs please set peace flags to the other factions? It's really frustrating to be perpetually at war with an opposing tribunal faction that has no representation, because it's a constant drain on your own factions' coffers, and in the case of tribunal war, it means that you're not able to travel to the capital without being attacked on sight.

"No logs were sent in" is such a funny thing to me.

When Patrisaurus was playing Tzernobog and I had Rhylsjin, he had me sending logs to someone who was evidently considering them, but that's the only time I ever remember doing much of that. I can't ever remember seeing a guideline for this, on the forums, help files, or otherwise. How [REDACTED] are new players who don't realize that they're supposed to be logging everything they do so they can stage the show that their imm friend wants to see? Also, who are these logs supposed to be sent to if you don't have an imm friend?

I'm sure I'll be back around here again sooner or later given that I've started lurking the forums again, but one thing that always keeps me back is just the total lack of any sense that an imm will pick up a potential RP storyline I'm interested in, or that once I start trying to figure out what's going on that there will be any flexibility in it if I'm not coordinating it OOC, or that I'll be able to get involved in anything really meaningful other than brutally PKing everyone of the opposite alignment into the ground.

It's been done, for the Hand at least..... There is one faction that hasn't accepted, but that's sort of on the other faction's leader at this point.

McBeth - if you are interested in advancing a plot line, you should assume that an IMM is -not- watching you constantly waiting to find breadcrumbs. Most of the staff is very good at acknowledging player roleplay and getting involved in implementing things... when we know they're happening. That is where IC prayers, logs and email/forum PMs come into play. It has nothing to do with being friends with players, either: It has to do with active interest being shown. I'm more than happy to put in the effort for anyone who's willing to do the same, and I'm not alone in that position. If you start something, 9 times out of 10 you don't get ultimate say in how everything will pan out, but it's not often that a staffer just shuts something down without any sort of interaction in-game.

I remember the grp event "Battle at Borderlands" and admittedly, I do not think it was fair to the north. The members were largely inactive around that time and the event was held on a sunday at 7pm. Primetime would be to hold it on a friday or saturday night.



I basically showed up with my griffon bard wielding an iron landsknecht and killed a level 20 florence trilani (yeah the nephew who picks his nose). I wouldn't exactly call that a gruesome defeat. I was never met with any real resistance, no council NPCs, necros etc, and the who list was minimal at the time. I was the only one who actually showed up (just out of curiousity) along with ezmir who basically did some exploring.

I think it is really a waste to see the north just kinda stagnate when there is a potential for new players to explore and reside in a very unique and well made city.

I'm not responsible for making people join the Hand and be active participants. There was an open dialogue in the forum, there were plenty of opportunities for them to get involved and involve everyone else. They didn't.

And if I had forced everyone to be involved in the GRP, people would have complained about that like they did to Dabi with Ayamao. Based on the interest level and participation (and the fact that Hand members actively worked to help the tribals leading up to that event where you were the only participant), the outcome was the outcome. The NPCs drove the storyline.

Basically, damned if you do, damned if you don't as an imm....

I was never advocating that you were responsible for making people join the hand and actively participate in saving kol's moot. I don't think I ever knew that losing the north entirely was part of this grp until after the events took place. I certainly would not have killed the 1 NPC florence to lore his scale armor if I had known that he was the last thread and deciding factor of losing an entire city.

As for the previous grp, I wasn't overly active in it and felt that the outcome would ultimately be decided on playtimes and which factions had more players. It was. Players complaining and numbers not being even are nothing really new. It is really a shame for new and old players to lose access to a nice city over trivial grp events.

In all honesty, to me, it really looks like minimizing starting cities was an effort to bring more interaction between players. Some feel it has, while others feel it hasn't. One thing I can certainly tell though is that so far, the majority of people would like it re-opened. If it doesn't, oh well.

Please re-open these possibilities.

Narrowing city options has not been successful in garnering the desired affect.

And I think the playerbase misses these closed societies and cities.