On the topic of OOCly destroying communities to make them more active, a Goodborough post-mortem

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

Introduction

I was digging through old forum posts about the staff destruction of Goodborough back in 2015, when I realized something. The idea of a settlement being directly destroyed by staff was not as common back in those days, yet is a much more frequent occurrence in modern LOTC. Since I’ve experienced the post-Goodborough destruction halfling race, and the final recovery from the instability caused by Goodborough’s destruction, I thought I’d make a thread talking about what happens when a community has to revive itself from scratch after being destroyed by staff.

 

(The following information comes from the forums and not personal experience, so I apologize for any inaccuracies)

Back in 2015, Athera transitioned to Vailor. Land at the start of the map was to be given out to nations, which were determined by activity. Halflings, who had traditionally been given land at the beginning of every map despite being far less active than the average nation, were given a 100x100 plot under the conditions that they became more active under it. This led to the creation of Goodborough, the first halfling village of Vailor.

 

Some time passes. Goodborough becomes an established village. However, the staff weren’t happy with the activity of the village. The halflings were still less active than what was required for a nation. They tell them to get more active or they’ll destroy the region. The halflings try and get more active, but it’s still not enough. The staff give the halflings a new ultimatum: either become a vassal of Oren or High Elves and keep the current Goodborough region, or have Goodborough be destroyed. The halflings choose to become a vassal of Oren.

 

There was a lot of miscommunication between the staff and halflings over this. There were some angry skype calls between the two groups. It’s been theorized that the staff weren’t even communicating properly between themselves at the time. Whatever the case may be, despite many staff promising to leave the Goodborough region alone, the final staff decision is to destroy Goodborough and leave the halflings to figure out the rest.

 

So, what happens when a community is destroyed?

A lot of things. Let me run through what might happen.

 

A: The community is destroyed. There’s nobody who wants to revive it. There’s not enough interest in the community’s roleplay niche for there to be people who want to revive it sometime later. The community is gone forever.

 

or

 

B: A few players band together to revive the community. Through a lot of effort, they manage to scrape something together. Their first attempt might not work, but they’ve probably managed to gather up enough interest in the community for a second attempt to be possible. Leadership changes much more quickly than usual. There’s likely to be several settlements per map. Ambitious players might seize the opportunity to declare themselves leader of a community and gobble up its players and roleplay niche so that they might rule it for themselves.

 

Eventually, after a long time has passed, the community achieves stability again. Leadership becomes more long-term. The community is more stable and has higher player retention. People rest assured knowing that the effort they put into the community won’t be thrown to the wind all of a sudden. The period of relative tranquility might not last forever, but the community is no longer afraid of not existing in the near future.

 

Option B is what happened to the Halflings. It’s happened to other groups as well, I think.

 

Why do staff destroy communities?

Because they want option A or B to happen to the community. They might look at the community and think “Wow, there really is nothing of value to the server going on here. This should stop existing.” and then destroy it with that exact intention. This is what happened to a lot of less active charters during the Charter Reform. The staff just didn’t want there to be that many communities in existence, and thus they trimmed them down by destroying the ones they deemed unworthy of existence.

 

The staff might also look at a community, think “Hmm... this community isn’t very active, but I’m sure that there’s enough interest in the niche it provides for it to exist no matter what we do to them. I think it would be wise to destroy what they have currently so that in the process of rebuilding they will achieve greater strength”. This is what happened to the halflings of Goodborough. The mentality was to destroy the village so that the halflings might live.

(This reply to one of the drama threads surrounding Goodborough getting destroyed sums up the opinion of the staff who wanted Goodborough gone pretty neatly. It was phrased as though the staff were doing the halflings a favor by letting them rebuild and become active elsewhere. Also shows the tension between the staff and halflings at the time. It got real nasty. Harsh words were exchanged.)

 

Destroying the settlement so that the community might live

But does that actually work? Does wrecking a settlement hold the potential to revive the community who lived there? Let’s look at what happened to the halflings after Goodborough was destroyed.

 

The first attempt to create a new halfling village was Petyrborough. It lasted for a little while, but eventually some dwarves terrorized the halflings of Goodborough enough for them to move elsewhere. So far, not so good. The destruction of Goodborough hadn’t done any good to the halflings yet.

 

The second village fared much better. It was right next to the Wood Elf city, and it was called Willow Hollow. There, the halflings finally started to get active again. Halfling culture came back in full force, with Shogging Tournaments and festivals being held, halfling families reestablishing themselves, and other such good things. This boom of halfling activity lasted into the next map too. When Vailor turned into Axios, the Willow Hollow halflings created the village of Reedsborough, which shared Willow Hollow’s prosperity and had many festivals of its own.

 

So, that’s that, right? Halflings were destroyed by staff in Goodborough, but came back to activity in a new village. The destruction of Goodborough had done its intended purpose. Halflings went from a quaint 100x100 plot begrudgingly created by staff due to the precedent of giving halflings land every map to a bustling village next to the Wood Elf city suitable for shaders videos with Concerning Hobbits playing in the background. Mission successful?

 

Not quite. Halflings had activity, sure. They did not, however, have much stability as a community. They had recently reimagined themselves under new leadership, so what’s to say that someone else couldn’t try and do the same? What’s to say that their vision of the halfling race wouldn’t be as valid as what had already been created?

 

Bahbou123456, the richest player in early Axios, created a charter on an island above the deserts of Tahn. There he created a village called Mellsburry. He was a good leader, at least OOCly. He also had a lot of friends, and he had all of them play halflings. Suddenly, there was more than one halfling village in Axios. Mellsburry kept growing and growing and growing as bahbou had more people create halfling characters. Soon, Reedsborough was less active than the new village of Mellsburry. Bahbou would literally go burrow to burrow in Reedsborough, /realname’ing the inhabitant of every dwelling, finding some way to contact them, and then beg them to leave Reedsborough to join Mellsburry. At first it was just annoying, and it led to a lot of tension between him and Reedsborough’s leadership, but as Mellsburry grew and grew, the halflings of Reedsborough became more and more inclined to move to the new village. This was the first halfling village I’ve ever played in, so I remember quite a lot about it.

 

Mellsburry became a very thriving village. Bahbou even tried to turn it into a proper nation instead of just a charter, and he almost succeeded in doing so. Then he had to go on hiatus for a month or so, which was the beginning of the end for Mellsburry. I was chosen to lead the halflings of Mellsburry in bahbou’s stead, but I wasn’t fir for the job at the time. I eventually left Mellsburry ought of boredom, seeing that yet another village, Rivershire, was being created. With its leadership either on hiatus or fully abandoning the village, Mellsburry quietly fell into inactivity, never to see a halfling soul walk in it ever again (except for when persona creation got bugged and automatically put new personas inside of Mellsburry, which got fixed after a while).

 

At that point, halflings were dead. There were no active villages. Reedsborough was a ghost town, Mellsburry was slowly dying. There were more halflings wandering around human cities than there were in any village. It was a dark time for the halfling race. It lasted for a few weeks or so, though I don’t remember it well. I mostly played other games during that time, since I had nothing to do on LOTC besides wander aimlessly.

 

Halflings becoming relevant again was a slow crawl. It started with the creation of Pendlemere, a new village designed to bring the halflings back together again. Pendlemere succeeded in doing so, yet started to fall into inactivity as well after a while. It took yet another village, Mapleshire, being created in order to bring life back to the halflings. The inhabitants of Pendlemere wanted to end the map with a bang instead of a whimper, so decided to purposely abandon the village in favor of something they could get Limited Creative on.

 

From there, the halflings moved into Atlas. Early on in Atlas, the halflings were going to live within the walls of Sutica. That plan did not work out, however, and a second village was created in freebuild in hopes of living outside of city walls. The drama was ended prematurely when one of the halflings asked the Admins for a region inside of the Cloud Temple and was given the ability to do so. Thus, Dunshire was created, and halflings finally, after years of constantly moving villages, sudden periods of incredible activity followed by near complete death, and general confusion, were able to become a slow-burning, stable race once more.

 

Conclusion

So, did the destruction of Goodborough work? Can destroying a community make them rebuild back into activity?

 

Potentially. The path that a community must take to revive itself is full of drama, stress, anxiety, and instability, yet it does indeed hold the potential to generate more activity. The question, of course, is whether or not it would be better to find an alternative method to make a community more active.

 

I personally don’t think it’s the best option. If the staff want to destroy a community for being inactive somewhere with the hopes they’ll be more active someplace else, it’s probably a better idea to just worldedit them to the new location. If the staff want to make leadership of a community active again, it’s probably better to hand over the region to the community’s current active players instead of destroying everything and hoping that strong and resourceful leaders will arise from the ashes to rebuild everything. If the staff want to make the community work harder to improve itself, it could provide a positive incentive for doing so within the current settlement instead of forcing them to spend the effort making a brand new place to live and roleplay in.

 

Making a community rebuild itself does indeed make them more active after the dust has settled. Heck, my community has even done that to itself purposely by moving to a new village to generate more enthusiasm. It is very crude, and not for everyone. Even if it does technically work a lot of the time, it’s probably not the best way to make a community more active. It’s much easier to go wrong in starting fresh than it is in reinvigorating something old.

 

Thank you for reading my thread. I shall now go back to sitting in Brandybrook waiting for chickens to lay eggs.

 

Other stuff:

This thread isn’t a feedback thread. Also I’m not dissing staff. The whole thing with Goodborough happened years ago and halflings are on much, much better terms with staff now.

I’d like to hear from other communities that were destroyed by staff for being inactive yet managed to rebuild themselves. I’m sure they’d have some interesting stories as well.

 

[drowknows 696]

Halfling Rights!

[JokerLow 1189]

halflings arent the only ones that lost something, truth be told, halflings have been very inactive

i dont remember seeing one in a long time

[Urahra 5359]

Certain types of RP are always going to be niche. The simple fact with most fantasy settings is that the most popular races are almost always elves and humans.

 

Let’s look at World of Warcraft as a case study. If I recall correctly, in Vanilla WoW, the Horde lagged severely behind the Alliance in terms of player count and suffered as a result in PvP matchups. Purely for the reason that the Horde was mostly “monster” races. But then, in Burning Crusade, they added the Blood Elves and Horde activity spiked.

 

People like to play elves and humans. So races outside of the elf-human dynamic – your orcs, your dwarves, your halflings, etc. – are by their very nature going to be more niche and attract less players. 

 

That doesn’t mean that they’re bad! Absolutely not. However, it does mean that races other than elves and humans SHOULD NOT be subject to penalties simply because they lack the activity of the elven or human races. Dwarves, orcs, and halflings all have players who are deeply passionate about their culture and their RP.

 

Activity checks seem like they need to be reconsidered.

 

 

[Trigamar 77]

43 minutes ago, JokerLow said:

halflings arent the only ones that lost something, truth be told, halflings have been very inactive

i dont remember seeing one in a long time

To be fair, he did mention that other chaters had been destroyed- I really, really don’t want to start anything, especially with a staff member, but he did mention other charters.

“The idea of a settlement being directly destroyed by staff was not as common back in those days, yet is a much more frequent occurrence in modern LOTC.”
Unless that wasn’t what you were referring to, in which case, I apologize. And, yes, we have been somewhat inactive, but I think i’m starting to see a slow climb. Late mornings aren’t really the best time to go looking for us, from experience. I’d recommend closer to sometime during the afternoon or later, if you want to see a halfling, and there are usually a bunch of us at events. But then again, I could just be an idiot.

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

42 minutes ago, JokerLow said:

halflings arent the only ones that lost something, truth be told, halflings have been very inactive

i dont remember seeing one in a long time

I do know that, yes. I made this post so that I could hear from other communities who had lost something in the past and then regained their footing. I want to hear their story.

 

There’s not much halfling presence outside of Brandybrook. There’s a handful of halflings who live in and around Helena and Oren, but they’re few in number and tricky to find. There’s a few halflings who live in the Druidic Grove, but they’ve done all the fancy Druid stuff to become immortal and don’t look like halflings anymore. If you’re not visiting Brandybrook, you probably won’t see many halflings.

 

Brandybrook itself isn’t inactive though. We had an event that attracted 10 halfling players just yesterday. You’re probably not going to see anybody during off-peak times, sure, but it’s very likely that there’s a halfling or two mucking around the village if you visit it during peak hours.

 

36 minutes ago, Urara said:

Certain types of RP are always going to be niche. The simple fact with most fantasy settings is that the most popular races are almost always elves and humans.

 

Let’s look at World of Warcraft as a case study. If I recall correctly, in Vanilla WoW, the Horde flagged severely behind the Alliance in terms of player count and suffered as a result in PvP matchups. Purely for the reason that the Horde was mostly “monster” races. But then, in Burning Crusade, they added the Blood Elves and Horde activity spiked.

 

People like to play elves and humans. So races outside of the elf-human dynamic – your orcs, your dwarves, your halflings, etc. – are by their very nature going to be more niche and attract less players. 

 

That doesn’t mean that they’re bad! Absolutely not. However, it does mean that races other than elves and humans SHOULD NOT be subject to penalties simply because they lack the activity of the elven or human races. Dwarves, orcs, and halflings all have players who are deeply passionate about their culture and their RP.

 

Activity checks seem like they need to be reconsidered.

 

 

I agree with everything you’ve said here. Halflings are never going to be as active as human cities. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any people who enjoy playing the race.

 

I’d like to hear your opinion on whether or not it’s a good idea for staff to destroy inactive communities with the hope that they’ll rebuild into activity. Do you think it works? If it does work, is it worth it? That question is what prompted me to make this thread, and I’d prefer for people to talk about that topic rather than how certain races aren’t as active as others.

[Nozgoth 2897]

faux boomer alert

On a real note, this kinda reminded me of how the hou-zi switched leadership and places like 1000 times this map.

[Urahra 5359]

1 hour ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

I agree with everything you’ve said here. Halflings are never going to be as active as human cities. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any people who enjoy playing the race.

 

I’d like to hear your opinion on whether or not it’s a good idea for staff to destroy inactive communities with the hope that they’ll rebuild into activity. Do you think it works? If it does work, is it worth it? That question is what prompted me to make this thread, and I’d prefer for people to talk about that topic rather than how certain races aren’t as active as others.

 

Honestly?

 

Absolutely terrible idea. I believe that has the opposite effect. As a player, seeing the community I invested in destroyed would... break my heart and make me not want to roleplay anymore.

 

There’s a lot of things that might affect activity levels in a given place – not all of them dependent on the number of dedicated players that a race has.

1. Is the community centrally located and easy to find from the main road?
2. Does it take a long time to get there from spawn?
3. Is the RP friendly to new players? Or players from other nations?

The most hopping places tend to be locations that are relatively easy to find in relation to the Cloud Temple. If you follow the main roads from CT, you’ll eventually run into Helena, Sutica, Haense, etc. They’re all located on a big loop. The first time I logged into Arcas, I immediately and easily found all of those locations just by wandering.

 

It also depends on how friendly and accepting the RP there is toward wanderers. If I just walk into the city, can I hope to find RP right off the bat? Is the RP exclusive or intimidating? 

 

I actually think the Halflings would be a great “introductory race” for new players. Halfling RP tends to be friendly, light-hearted, silly, cute, and fun. Putting them close to CT would be great. It would attract new players who might be shy about diving into a big city like Helena or Sutica. When I went to Helena for the first time, there were SO many people and I was terrified of talking to anyone. (Despite being an old hand at RP lmao. Social anxiety’s a *****.)

 

But like... stopping by a nice lil’ halfling village and having some tavern RP with a buncha cutie-pies? Much less intimidating and a great way to ease into LOTC.

[𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖚𝖘𝖍 2236]

12 hours ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

Option B is what happened to the Halflings. It’s happened to other groups as well, I think.

 

Orcs circa 1581 of Axios, The Siege of San’Kharak and what was challenged to be the “extinction of the orcish race” 

 

Very good post. It’s certainly a unique server in the way that it will go as far as leaving a community to ruin, over some preservation of their story and culture, and leave few people to pick up everything that was shattered and attempt to piece it together again.

[osumanduas 1436]

If you’ve started hopping in skype calls and driving your blood pressure up over a community in a video game; that seems like a good place to stop. Go play CoD or binge Netflix instead because this place isn’t changing and you’ve become too invested. I’ve known a lot of people in my time in this community who stick around far past their point of return. Just reevaluate and come back when you feel like you can have fun again, then drop it again when it becomes too much.

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

1 minute ago, osumanduas said:

If you’ve started hopping in skype calls and driving your blood pressure up over a community in a video game; that seems like a good place to stop. Go play CoD or binge Netflix instead because this place isn’t changing and you’ve become too invested. I’ve known a lot of people in my time in this community who stick around far past their point of return. Just reevaluate and come back when you feel like you can have fun again, then drop it again when it becomes too much.

Do note that this is not a feedback thread nor is it trying to drag up old drama or anything. While I do mention that previous drama existed, it is for the purpose of providing context rather than trying to make the old rage boil again. I was not playing LOTC at the time that the Vailor halflings had their village removed, nor did I have any relation to their playerbase whatsoever at the time. I am not raging or driving my blood pressure up over anything at all, as I literally have nothing to get mad about.

 

I do not think you’ve understood the point of this thread. I made it to promote discussion about an aspect of LOTC’s being, not as the typical rage-post that pops up whenever something goes wrong for someone.

[Hiebe 2475]

I think with lairs being avaliable now to these niche rp groups get them land and space. If they become super active they can upgrade to settlement and get their perks. Lairs require no activity check just that its being used.

[Aehkaj 516]

I think I may have seen 1 or 2 halflings on the server while playing