Shattered Kingdoms

I would consider providing this information regularly as a great step towards one of the currently proclaimed objectives of the staff. Promoting player interaction. It has been the premise of a number of alterations and I see little reason why it couldn't serve as the premise for encouraging lists such as Thuban posted. There is the added benefit of helping with organization and keeping track of what's what for those putting those grueling hours into modding areas.
For example.

<Insert Imm> writes this <insert area> has received this many <insert hours> of work as of <insert dates>.
My reaction is simple! Oh hey, an area just got an overhaul and they spent a lot of time on it? I better log on and rustle up some people and go on a fun trip! Therefore player interaction! That is the way I see it.

Also, thank you Thuban for posting that in the first place. I appreciate it greatly.

I concur, many thanks to Thuban. Normally I would have looked at some of the mentioned areas and just been like, "Meh been there, done that." But knowing that there's new things to explore motivates me to get people off their a$$ and go do stuff. Tired of this game being only war war war war war. Much respect to Thuban for this as well as a few other things Thuban has done to make this game more fun.

IMM of the year award goes to you, buddy. Sorry D

Actually, I completely agree that Thuban has been knocking it out of the park.

As a transparency guy myself, I was supportive of Thuban's decision to post a quick summary of recent building efforts. We might've done something similar during the Great Rebalance of 2014, but we saw how much venom that produced, and it was hard not to become jaded, even an optimist and humanist like myself. Now that the forums seem a somewhat happier, more respectful place, I think it's absolutely worthwhile to continue to foster healthy communication between the staff and the players. A little transparency can go a long way.

That said, a monthly build announcement isn't intended to be a detailed log (despite "log" in the subject) or represent full disclosure. However you may personally feel about it, we don't intend to become accountable in that way. At the end of the day, it's a teaser. Thuban doesn't intend to include every little building detail. I fixed dozens of bugs and typos this month, for example. But that's not sexy. If you see something in the announcement, more than likely it's something we think may be worth you taking a closer look. Or not. Value add. Even the bug fixes he has listed are the sort which may have an impact on PvE, generally speaking.

I'm glad some of you see this as a step in the right direction, and I understand some of you will feel it doesn't go far enough. As always, respectful and thoughtful suggestions are welcome.

+1. Much of the staff has been less active the past couple/few months than we might've liked, but Thuban has been picking up our slack and more.

Are you sure about that?

I had a post removed/deleted in this thread that didn't break any forum rules that I know about. It merely suggested that SK should consider a splash page to announce events, updates and changes similar to other highly ranked MUDs on the Top Mud Sites list.

I think yours was just swept up with other posts which were moderated, sorry. Here it is, for posterity:



I believe the "cynical" comment was in response to the idea that players should feel pleased that they've gone from not being informed about specific building efforts to being somewhat informed about some building efforts? Fair play, though I can see it both ways.

Thanks. =)

It would probably be bad form to name the MUDs, since that might be construed as advertising, but if you visit Top Mud Sites right now - the #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 MUDs all have a news/announcements section on their main page that gives information about new zones, events, code changes, etc. I would like for SK to have something like that on the main page.

Why can't we be more like #3 or #7?

Even their websites are more attractive than this one and more likely to draw in players, in my opinion. =)

They're just not as good as the rest of the Top 10. The main page for shatteredkingdoms.org could really use an overhaul.