Shattered Kingdoms

You are actually implying that being online x2 week isn't enough???

For a leadership position? Yes. Especially when the rest of the group is more active and having to pay the piper in a way most unenjoyed by them on the daily. And especially when those two days of play are wholly ineffective and contrary to the wishes of the rest of the group. This isn't a play by email game. The hours Eralenax was putting in isn't enough to keep one's pants.

Notice the rest of the hand didn't chime in on this thread to say "I was having such a great time, I just can't beleive they got rid of our beloved leader, he was doing such a great job too!"

To Erik: Yes, if you are engaged in a war/conflict on SK there should be some goal - forcing your enemy to submit. Obviously, there are going to be sworn forever enemies that never ally and never get along, but if your team is being dominated (or even dominating) and/or it stops being a fun game of tit for tat for the players, then there can and should be temporary ceasefires that allow one team or the other to regroup. Finding these is a mark of good in-game leadership. In the case of the Hand, there was just a bunch of tatting... No tit to be found. I don't know that anyone on the Hand side landed a Harlies kill, ever (I'd have to check). While the number of Northern deaths was exaggerated by both sides, there was clearly a victor and some wound licking and pride swallowing would have gone a long way.

To Noruko: I am, indeed, aware that Eralenax spoke to Benibana ... before the terms of the truce were modified and a hard deadline was given for acceptance or refusal. During that window specifically, the only leader of the Black Hand to touch base with the other characters in the ranks was the one to gather their opinions and made the decision.

I think it's safe to say that neither of the attitudes displayed in this thread are good for the game. 'Omgz we destroyed you, we winnnn!! You suck!' does not help anything. Been there, done that. The refusal to admit defeat thing isn't good either, and has been a problem since..forever. The problem is admitting defeat generally doesn't lead to any fun, and half the time it doesn't accomplish anything as the winning side will quickly get bored with nobody to kick around. (As evidenced by the massive drop in Harlequin log-ins recently.)

Fair enough, objectives should be in place but I don't think that the staff micromanaging faction relations by removing leaders has anything to do with them. That's why I'm asking about the specific rule if there is one. If there aren't any specific criteria for ending a conflict through staff intervention then it's up to anyone's interpretation when to do that and I've been on the receiving end of very skewed interpretations in the past. Most times actually, the whole 'demands for a truce' game is intentionally unrealistic to prolong conflict. It's pretty bloody common for the demands to be for someone to step down as leader of X faction, stay in the river forever, implement changes in their kingdoms that aren't in cabal leaders powers by any stretch etc. I can't see a common rule that can cover all of that.

In this case who's being protected and from what though? It's not as if the Hand is an empty cabal. They've got plenty of people to defend and counter-attack if they wanted to and they're not exactly playing weak support classes either. We can't blame Nakuro if his fellow players didn't bother to try to learn their classes better, utilise them better, ask for help or make 'alliances' in his absence. Was he supposed to take them by the hand and tell them how to do everything? He seems to be the scapegoat for other player's unwillingness to engage in pk and try to improve at it. If those players wanted to play characters that wouldn't have to deal with any engagements through their whole life they shouldn't have joined a cabal. Cabals shouldn't be a safe place for players to play bad asses to random lowbies, land a few kills on unsuspecting peaceful characters but when push comes to shove, being protected from serious pvp engagements by removing pvp interested leaders through staff intervention. Maybe I'm wrong but I haven't seen many of them post here to claim otherwise so far.

I really don't think artificially reducing conflict is a solution to anything. The common wisdom for cabal recruitment -as long as you don't coordinate creating characters with your mates- is that on-going conflict brings new members. People check out who's fighting who, pick a side and engage. If there should be some sort of criterion for this sort of intervention that should be whether there is any organised pk happening by both sides -not ambushes and ninja kills, I'm talking about proper offence and defence- and whether pk is actually possible. If one or two member cabals only get attacked by six people crews all the time, then there's really little they can usually do to defend and pk isn't very possible. If pk is still happening, then the situation should be left up to the players.

Wow. At this point I think I'll just chime in to to observe that we could be having these very debates in-game, in-character, and such strong feelings and strange loops could animate interesting -- if not rewarding -- RPPK.

1) Agree, and that's why a coded defeat option is a bad call
2) Disagree, that's basically a leader's job on SK. He should've kicked some people out earlier if they weren't willing to engage, but the case for his removal seems to be that he didn't try to engage (other than logging in occasionally to dictate). Dictating is great, and being quick with the uninducts for people who aren't impressing is often a really good decision, but you have to back that up with time played and time spent actually providing leadership and helping people grow as players or you are 100% of the time going to get a [REDACTED] cabal.

This thread is lol-tastic. Two thumbs up for all the rage and QQ.

On a serious note (lulz right), I was actively playing when this war started way back in December 2013. Back then it was Meppe in charge of the Hand, and much like Eralenax he decided to rage retire instead of admit defeat. So a war that lasted eight months or so and saw three leadership changes in the Hand before it ended...

Yeah, that is perfectly healthy for the game - lulz. Back to popcorn mode.

I think that there should have been some IC business that happened from the CoN to inform Earl that he needed to resolve the war or there would be a change in leadership. Just like if The Emperor would have come to me and said 'your soldiers are getting discouraged. I grant you the permission to see an end to this war by any means nessicary' it would have made me more inclined to accept a truce. (even though I tried to accept probably five truces. none of which worked out)

Everyone is being too harsh on Eralenax. Nobody has the ImmView that the imms have. But even they can't watch what he does 24/7. What if he was on the verge of getting a solid group of allies together to combat the harlies? What if he was finally getting to the point to put up a resistance? There needs to be IC passing of the situation before he is ninja removed from leadership. this would have given him a chance to plead his case.

Sure, the amount of time he had to play might not have been sufficient for a war on the size of this one. But take it up with him IC. I'm guessing that this is the main reason he's PO'd.


Someone in one of our afterlife threads said something about the harlies having 30-something active topics in their cabal forum. I was under the impression that Ic info was supposed to be passed along IC. Is this not the case? Because to me it seems like that is breaking the rules of info sharing. Could I have sent a text message to Boirnjolf to tell him that i needed him to give the harlies pardons? Because that is one reason why one of our truces didn't work out. I was unable to find him IC to give him the order. If a text isn't allowed, could I have posted it to our forums? Is this behavior now being encouraged?

I think there should be some sort of 'victory' or 'defeat' requirements that are built into the game. There could be a couple of requirements that have to be fulfilled before a group is actually considered to be 'defeated.' Keep a coded count of how many times an 'enemy formation' has got the killing blow on a PC of a faction they are at war with. Keep a count of how many lawmobs have been killed by an enemy formation. Keep a timer on how long a relic has been held. These sorts of things could probably be easily implemented and would give undenyable proof that an enemy faction has been defeated. Increment the requirements based on how long the war has been going on (20 kills per month and 50 NPCs per month). or something like that.

As for this afterlife thread:
I really liked Eralenax. His RP was very unique and his emotes always created an great image. "Paces the room wringing his hands in frustration." I can see him doing that. It was awesome. He was always willing to help and the way he talked was always entertaining.
"It has the condolences of Trosis."
I hope you do eventually make it back to SK. Take care man and if you do come back, remember: Don't feed the trolls.

You did it a lot with MC coordinating logins, so why not here?


And before you post to refute, you openly admitted to me in game OOCly you did because you felt justified in doing it.


For all the belly aching everyone does, it sure seems folks don't bother to keep their noses clean.