Shattered Kingdoms

I love the idea for a think channel. I use pray for this to an extent right now on religious chars but I'd love to have some in game way to communicate thought/intent to imms watching in real time.

Iron isn't sufficient because it is so damn heavy. if you have a magic weapon and are a size large or bigger race then your backup almost necesarily must be adamantite. Ironically it is only MR barbs who can really get away with carrying an iron weapon since they have so much free weight from not requiring multiple weapon types or consumables. I like the MR barb concept but agree with Edoras that AON really needs some rebalancing. The notion of 0 prep characters is good but perhaps the number of spells negated should be no higher than 2 per negate unless the MR barb has gone to equal lengths to prepare (ie enchanting and buffing for MR).

Re info sites: I think this is the first time I've seen you publicly acknowledge them. My take is that SK.org shouldn't support a wiki of raw info. I think that's best left underground and I think most players would prefer to be protected from being handed out game knowledge like that. However I do think these forums amd the community at large would benefit from a logs forum-could make a rule that logs must be at least one week old or something. And I really think the forums could use a "lounge" board for shooting the breeze about any topics. These would be flame free zones a la gameplay.

I think most non official sites are cesspools (though well intentioned by those kind enough to support them) and I think overall the community would truly benefit from having a central, moderated place to e-hang out.

I've loved all of the various unofficial sites and log sites since I started playing. Even though I don't participate very much, it's a good way to keep up on current events in the MUD when not playing and often what inspires me to give it a shot with another characters.

Give people incentive to explore the dusty corner of the world. A room that isn't traveled through much will trigger a wizinvis NPC to spawn at that point and grant a reward of some sort to the first person that travels to that room, be it a loyalty token or a small experience reward. Limit the number of such places to 10-20 places at any given time, and non-wilderness. "You have a sudden, odd feeling that you are the first to be here in a long while."

Ironically, breaking up things into EVEN MORE SUBFORUMS is kind of a really, really bad idea. It's better to have "megathreads" in appropriate boards for this kind of thing, believe it or not. Subforums is a really good way to make people feel overwhelmed by an incredibly huge amount of choices. (There are a lot of other forums on other subjects that suffer from this -- not every forum can be Something Awful.)

The idea I was thinking of for the information sharing idea wasn't some forum based thing like we have here. Not at all. I never received an answer as to whether it was alright to share this link, but in light of the speculation about this topic, I feel that I need to. I think the wiki site already in place has good intentions, but I think we need a webpage similar to this: type annwn.info into your browser for the site. Feel free to take a look. The map and quest databases are the most impressive thing IMO, however, there are a lot of useful tools and information available besides that. THIS is what I meant by information sharing. This site is a player ran site and the mud feeds certain information to it. The identified items list is also a pretty nice thing to have.

cabals getting new things to replace old code. (MC) cough cough

@Materia Magica - I wrote this and then I decided to tone it down - but it is my gut response, so here you go:

My gut reaction is to say "no, that's ridiculous" when I look at that website. I believe players should discover that stuff for themselves or go to appropriate lengths in character to discover info. The idea that a barbarian would obtain a new sword and immediately just know its magical properties, instead of having to have it identified, is silly. Frankly, I'm not sure whether it's a recent wave of newer players who've shown a propensity towards cheating that has me feeling distrustful that such efforts would be made, or whether I'm just an elitist.

It's just silly to me that any player, newbie or veteran, would roll a character and as an age 17 human have knowledge of every item and every zone. I do allow my characters a lot of my knowledge as a player. However, part of being a veteran player who tries to play by the rules is having a lot of tricks up my sleeve to reveal my knowledge to my characters. For example, Aodh had to "explore" the outer planes. I first took him there with a group that just hadn't really ever heard about it. I asked around IC until someone pointed me to the gate target near the entrance, and then "looked around" inside and for that first trip did a bit more stumbling around the zones than I might otherwise do. Did I know exactly what I was doing going in? Sure. But I revealed it in a manner consistent with my character's history and experience at the time. I remember a similar trip through Necropolis with Baba (Lothoriel) once and a trip in the Minotaur Keep with Ralium (Edoras). So I know I'm not entirely alone in wanting to see "player knowledge" pushed through to characters in a clever manner. I strongly believe that an OOC database would promote OOC gameplay with respect to game knowledge and I don't like that.

So the toned down version - what I realized hacking that out above is that it's a question of game design and roleplay definition. Shattered Kingdoms is the heaviest RP game I've ever played hands down and I really like it for that. Wouldn't want it changed at all. I've played a few other MUDs in my time, too. They vary, from games where equipment/zones/lootgathering is considered almost wholly an OOC concept (seems like MM is on this side of the spectrum?) on one side to games where every single command entered into the prompt should be thoughtfully entered to best behave as your character would (SK!). I do not know which is right or if there is a right answer. What I do know is that this does not in my experience have a significant impact on player count (WoTMUD, a very OOC-gear game I played that used to have 150+, now has 10-30 just like SK), so I do not believe it is a major retention issue. I think it would dramatically change what SK is about to lower expected RP standards with respect to gear/knowledge, and I like SK as it is.

First I would like to address this: "recent wave of newer players who've shown a propensity towards cheating that has me feeling distrustful"

You've already hinted at this in another thread with implications slightly pointed towards me as a player. I do not appreciate it at all. I understand that things did not go the way you wanted them to, however, your character was not in a position to really have much of a choice and ME the player, had no involvement in your conspiracy theory. I would appreciate it if you would avoid such accusations in the future without real proof. That does not include what your yim buddies have told you and what you've pieced together IC. Mixing the two in the way you seem to have done is unfair to all involved. Moving on.

MM: Yes, it certainly is on the opposite spectrum in terms of RP. However, many of the new players there have expressed their gratefulness to having such sites available to them as it makes the game more enjoyable, easier to navigate and less time consuming in regards to some of the more trivial things. Just so we're clear, that site has been created by a small group of players and has been updated by the entire playerbase over time. The majority of the information you will find on that site has come from the hard work of the community, not the immortal staff from MM. Updates and smaller scale things have been given to the site from the staff, but not what you'd think. The mapping, everything like that, has been compiled by the playerbase. Such a site isn't meant to create an environment where everyone has intimate knowledge of everything from age 17. Let me ask you this, what makes you better able to control all the knowledge you've gained from past experience than someone interested in delving into SK for the RP provided? We are all capable of RPing it out as you've stated you've done in the past.

As far as power word knowledge and things like that... that information is ALREADY available, pat. Furthermore, there are many players who have identified numerous items and save them to their SK files. Its not like this isn't already happening on a smaller scale. This is the kind of idea that keeps new players around long enough to really decide if they enjoy SK. If they become frustrated or waste time and effort over small things, what's going to keep them around? Having guidance is very helpful. If I hadn't been mudding since I was in high school, there is no way in hell I would be sitting here right now playing this mud or any of the others for that matter. My time here is more a matter of nostalgia than anything else, though I really do enjoy my time here with SK. With today's gaming advancements... muds simply do not compete. Only open-minded individuals that wish to try something out of the ordinary, enjoy RP or simply enjoy mythology are really going to be interested in mudding. It is up the the mud to keep the player here once they've logged in. The only thing this would change about SK is the fact that everyone would be on a near equal footing, though I'm telling you right now.. a vet that's been playing forever will do everything 10 times faster and better than the person using a guide.

And yes, you are an elitist. Nothing wrong with that, but you need to realize that most people do not have the time to put into a game like SK or MM. They are very time consuming and you have to put so much of yourself into them that it can honestly have a negative impact IRL. For example... my old mud has over two years of man-hours just from me. My two archons have over 17,000 hours.