Player Retention Report

[Box_Elf 48]

I would say the thing that almost turned me away was when you get jumped on by a forum mod and you are still learning how to use the forum.

It would be better to get some guidance with getting integrated with the forum stuff.

 

Some of the events and things you want to do seem bogged down by paperwork that you have to wait to do.

The crafting system is a pain but slowly growing on me.

[argonian 12836]

1 hour ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

-snip, not relevant-

Could you unsnip that? I thought it showed very well the dynamism and interactive storytelling the server's lost. And that decline in quality is absolutely relevant to why players aren't sticking around

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

1 minute ago, argonian said:

Could you unsnip that? I thought it showed very well the dynamism and interactive storytelling the server's lost. And that decline in quality is absolutely relevant to why players aren't sticking around

I have too much respect for Burnsider so I usually snip anything he says I did wrong. Stupid habit of mine. I didn't save it anywhere so I think it's lost forever. I'll try to rewrite it here, but add a ton as well 'cause why not.

 

My point is that Atlas was a decent map because its freebuild system made the political climate of the server in near constant flux. For example, the Dwarves had several start up holds such as Holm and the Confederation of Hammers that'd later take over the Dwarven race from Kaz'Ulrah, Wood Elves split apart in freebuild when the Dominion fell into decline, Orcs went into freebuild after they got destroyed instead of being refugees until they'd get a charter (which is how it'd normally go down without freebuild), all sorts of wars and human politics were involved in freebuild, etc. Freebuild meant that wars could be brutal and absolute without being too harsh because you could never be denied a homeland while suitable freebuild land existed on the map. Even though the Empire of Man conquered a lot of territory, it never felt quite like the Oren snowball of Vailor or Axios because freebuild levelled the playing field enough that it didn't matter as much. On top of wars, settlements could grow dynamically, such as Belvitz that'd later see Holm settled next to it, thus creating the server's strongest RP hub all in freebuild.

 

There were mild issues of decentralization, sure. There were a lot more settlements than on Arcas, which did spread out RP to an extent. However, nations were still fairly strong, and while many freebuild builds did exist, many of them were just event areas/beautification projects (there was this lovely grove area in the savannah biome that I think the druids made, for example) or small towns and villages that didn't subvert your expectations when they turned out to be empty when you visited them. I feel as though the argument of freebuild decentralizing roleplay is a bit overstated. The argument goes that freebuild spreads out roleplay across the map because there are more places for people to be, which is true, but since most freebuild builds aren't active 24/7, they spread out roleplay far less than having a bunch of populous nation capitals or strong RP hubs rather than just a handful of larger ones. You cannot argue that freebuild creates a bajillion dead settlements AND decentralizes the map at the same time, because if freebuild isn't active, then it's not taking away roleplay from any hubs since there's hardly anybody there, and if it's taking roleplay away from the hubs, then clearly freebuild must be somewhat active in order to do that.

 

It all boils down to expectations. When you enter a big city, you typically expect people to be there. When you enter a small village, you probably don't expect to see a bunch of people, and you won't be disappointed of its empty. As long as every settlement is true to its actual activity, with places having lots of activity feeling as though they ought to be full of people and places with little activity feeling as though they ought to be quiet and emptier, there is no harm and no foul in any one settlement's existence, and no place can disappoint you. It is nice to have areas with fewer people because some people don't like big cities swarming with people, and they ought to be allowed to have what they want instead of getting crammed into a big nation capital so that folks who like cities swarming with people have more content.

 

If people always ending up at dead settlements and never finding where anybody is becomes an issue (as was sometimes the case in Atlas), that's moreso an issue of labelling than an issue of the map being decentralized. There ARE people roleplaying on the server, even on freebuild maps; a simple /list or look at the server tab can tell you that. The roads just need to be labelled well enough so that everybody knows where people are going to be found. I suggest that for future freebuild, we let players build all of the roads and do their own labels and signposts on said roads, so that roads leading to settlements that no longer exist or no longer have as large a playerbase can get rerouted to other locations, and active settlements wishing to advertise their existence to visitors can construct big ol' cobbled roads roads and signposts directing everybody in the area towards them. A downside of Atlas was that despite many freebuild areas being very dynamic, the main roads were totally stagnant and never moved to accommodate for the shifting playerbases on the server. Letting players have control of the main roads instead of just whatever side roads they wish to make in freebuild areas should help fix that old issue and make finding others more intuitive. I think back in Aegis players were allowed to make big ol' roads in freebuild, so it's not like this has never been done before. Also, more road control means more roadside taverns, which is probably the best road RP we're ever gonna get, so that's a big plus.

 

One other problem with Atlas was the issue of how freebuild was managed upon it. The 50-block rule meant that freebuilds had a bubble around them that no other freebuilds could penetrate if they weren't desired to, and this policy was enforced by staff. Sadly, this is probably one of those rules that made freebuild harder to regulate than it should have been. This policy tacked on added staff involvement that made freebuild tougher on staff. Freebuild doesn't need this extra protection, and having freebuilds be at least 50 blocks away from each other makes it harder for settlements to develop organically without coordination between dedicated players, which would usually involved some OOC communication that'd make it less dynamic. Maybe without the 50-block rule, the bandits, wizards, grape-growers, and folks living in the castle of Old Dunshire Forest could've been a sister settlement to Belvitz rather than an uncoordinated mob of semi-active people in the woods, who knows. As far as raiding and villainy goes, while not having a 50-block rule means that bandits can set up shop right next to you, I don't feel as though this is too terrible. As long as freebuilds and nations have the power to destroy freebuilds in warclaims or through some other method, situations like these would resolve themselves quickly. Maybe instead of having any unwanted freebuilds within 50 blocks of another building get OOCly destroyed by staff, building within a certain radius of a location gives them a CB against you, or maybe if you're too close to an already existing settlement you don't get raid cooldowns when they attack you, or they get a longer cooldown when you attack them. I'm open to suggestions here, but I don't think the 50-block rule was the right answer.

 

Also, this right here. Old Atlas post by @monkeypoacher that I think is relevant:

the logical exact opposite of the protected ring around CT we saw in Arcas: having the ring around CT be a zone designed to dynamically grow the new nation roster of the map through freebuild and conflict.

 

Lemme tell the tale of Old Dunshire Forest:

 

The year is 2017, in December, right as Atlas has launched. Halflings have a prebuild inside of the Sutican city, surrounded by the quartz walls. Dalek348, an old Undead player of Aegis who started playing a halfling since Asulon, was not happy with the situation. He thought halflings ought to live outside of walls, and he made his own village on the crossroads between Haelun'or and the lands further to the south (Where FloralHedgehog (who was dkink14 at the time), a halfling druid, built a burrow). He surrounded this village with a large quantity of trees so it wouldn't look out of place next to the other freebuilds in the area. This village was called Dunshire, a call-back to the first ever halfling village on the server: Dunwood.

 

Eventually, the halflings got CT land, and name of Dunshire is given to the CT village, with the old village at the crossroads being renamed to Old Dunshire. The forests around Old Dunshire were called Old Dunshire Forest. Old Dunshire was turned into a ruins covered in vines. Eventually, Old Dunshire was completely overrun with vegetation, and all of the burrows too sunken into the earth to be discernable as burrows anymore. Dalek348 started to build wooden ents in Old Dunshire Forest instead from logs and leaves, turning the location into an Ent sanctuary. As Belvitz grew, so did Old Dunshire Forest next to it. More people moved into the forest, such as a wizard living in a wizard tower, some folks living in a small keep right off the mountains of Holm (with which Old Dunshire Forest had a border), a small vineyard, bandits in a bandit camp, a few lone houses, bahbou123456's halfling village of Buckland, and more!

 

Belvitz kept on growing, and ran into issues getting all the land they wanted for future build projects, since they were right up against the road region and a river. They warclaimed Old Dunshire Forest and Dalek348's ents in order to get land. This ended the days of Old Dunshire Forest being independent from Belvitz, although many builds in the forest continued to exist even after the area got warclaimed. The ents were all destroyed, and a large area of land cleared for future building. On the current world download of Atlas, nothing has been built there by Belvitz. I don't know if they just delayed doing the building until after the world download was taken or if they just never used the land alltogether, but regardless, it's an interesting story to tell, and a story that could not have happened without freebuild.

 

The wizard tower of Old Dunshire. Very strange things in here indeed!

 

One of the ents of Old Dunshire Forest!

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X03_LWRmK-rn9q8J-y0y23YNOq5Qgoj7c0BgQtLO4hU/edit

An old Global Assembly document submitted by Dunshire (not Old Dunshire) to protect the lands of Old Dunshire Forest.

 

here you can see Old Dunshire Forest, from the old GA document. It was right between Holm and Belvitz. This screenshot shows Buckland (bahbou's halfling village that later went inactive as the halflings there moved to Dunshire, seen in the upper parts of the forest farther from Belvitz), Old Dunshire village (pre-ruination, as the party tent still stands in this screenshot, located around the lake), and a few other builds such as houses and whatnot. Most of the trees here were planted from saplings, making the forest a forest planted by players rather than the World Team. Later on from the date this screenshot was taken, more buildings would be added to the forest as well as more trees to extend the forest's borders.

[Cloakedsphere 1462]

7 hours ago, Shorsand said:

Having also been around since 2012, I do think coming into the current world feels a lot more hollow and more like you're entering into glorified SimCity RP. Nations being taxed creates very rigid systems of trying to maintain upkeep financially or otherwise, so the culture of larger cities can be intimidating and turn people off (almost turned me off when I came back after a 4-5 year hiatus). I think I'm tactful enough to try to maneuver around those settings as best I can, but when it comes to activity and meeting new people, you gotta go to a nation capital and get absorbed into SimCity (unless you're fortunate enough to already know people OOCly coming in who will welcome you).

 

GMRO's above post sums up the feeling pretty well too, as does Burnsider's. The addition of more flexible, less-strict settlements (i.e. a Freebuild/Wilds area) would make the world seem a lot less intimidating and rigid, allowing for new people to discover their own niche and develop their characters at an easier pace.

We reinstated free build areas on the map. We took player input on what they wanted and built rules based around our findings and what the rest of the server decided (we had polls running on the forums for a week long period for people to vote on rulings) and somehow when ever staff changes hands, they always think their idea needs to 1-up the previous administration's accomplishments and inevitably fall short. LotC is in an endless cycle of rinse and repeat until someone wises up (ahem, the top admin whose been a top admin for many years now.) and sees that the people we are implementing as admins and inevitably making decisions are hurting the server more than they're benefiting it. As seen by war rules being botched, raid rules being botched, and PVP default rulings being botched. Now everything needs to be redone AGAIN.

I was probably one of the biggest proponents about bringing BACK free build to LotC. It was honestly my baby and of course there will always be land scarring with free build but we saw a great increase in player retention off it. We saw settlements get built and destroyed and even some became parts of nations later on. It was easily the #1 selling point of LotC. The ability to come on here, build what you want where you want and build your own fantasy RP setting anywhere on the map. This stupid tile based system requiring mina to hang onto land and land only being handed out to ones who have the mina to purchase it (which, news flash, new players wont have enough mina for it and they're being forced into dead and stale nations) is going to ruin LotC in the long term. 

I commend @Hiebe for his economy system and the rest of the world team for building a nice world. But the forcing of players into nations to build or RP has never been the answer and never will be the answer. Especially considering the admin team is refusing to let dead nations finally die so a new player and a new idea and a new type of nation can be birthed. LotC is stale. Literally the only thing keeping me here is covid-19 lockdowns and the new vortex plugin which I like. Everything else is just so disheartening to see as a whole and im really surprised Telanir doesnt see it the same way nor does Tythus. Telanir being the head admin for many years now should be the first one to know as an old player from the glory days of Aegis and Asulon that the server is steadily declining when it comes to new content produced by new players and just new players in general. I dont hate Telanir and dont blame him if this is the case but it is almost as if he no longer cares about the quality of the server so long as things are still running somewhat smoothly. 

[Unwillingly 11113]

Recently I've been checking out the new player applications and as a wood elven player, I've been forum DMing wood elf applicants and have been inviting them to Amaethea. Just the basic "here's my discord, come talk to the community blah blah blah hope you get accepted." Most of my DMs get no response, but every once in a while I'll get a message on discord and we'll chat about the server for a little while n I'll just try to help them get settled down easier. Rarely, but sometimes I'll see this player MCly. I'll try to interact with them in RP, maybe even send them on an NPC quest or just give them something to do to keep them busy. Something like, "hey, go find x person." 

I've been doing this routinely for about 2-3 months now, and despite literally doing everything I can think of to help them get comfortable (even offering to make them a brand new free skin) I don't think any have stayed. Like, at all. I can't think of a single new wood-elven player who has stuck around and it sucks bc like other ppl said, a lot of these players have a lot of potential but end up quitting because... ???

I often reflect on myself and how I used to be when we talk ab new players. I joined in vailor when I was 13, led a nation when I was 14-15, now I'm almost 18 chilling with my druid gang and having a great time. I remember exactly how I used to be and it was literally just one of those annoying noob new players that no one wanted to RP with, and I don't know what kept me around. Maybe it was the old guild I joined, maybe I was just stupidly bored or incredibly ambitious, but I stuck around after all these years and now I'm thoroughly enjoying my time on the server, probably more than I ever have before

just like any other garbage that leaves my mouth, I have no idea where I was going with this or what my point was 👍 like and subscribe 

[Harold 3239]

@Treshurebrave post, some interesting conclusions and thoughts but please do look to the answer that lies in the comments for all to see through some very detailed and heartfelt posts. LoTC has lost something along the way, and unfortunately isn’t the same place it used to be anymore. That, and real contender alternatives are available now, with better everything not least to say management who care.

[bobograndman 30]

2 hours ago, Cloakedsphere said:

I was probably one of the biggest proponents about bringing BACK free build to LotC. It was honestly my baby and of course there will always be land scarring with free build but we saw a great increase in player retention off it.

Exactly, free build was great for new players, because people typically don't want to be forced into a stagnant prebuilt world. Right now new players are usually forced into a specific way of playing for their foreseeable future, and the only ways to get out of it seem unattainable. When I first joined a couple years ago, one of the few things that kept me on the server at the time was freebuild wildlands, because it was easy to find, fun rp that gave you the ability to create your own unique rp environment. 

Maybe a player wants to be a hunter living in a secluded woodland cabin, maybe they want to be a roadside tavern owner, these are reasonable characters that players come in expecting to be able to play as, but get rammed into a brick wall of systems. 

[Sham404 464]

Here are a few suggestions that i think could improve the current situation, both in terms of direct correlation between new player and server, and to help retain current server numbers (and help encourage rp and such). These arent final, tweaks will obviously be needed based on feasibility and if there are any flaws i havent thought of.

 

Move CT off mainland to an island, its annoying tilewise, it just gets in the way, and there is no reason for it to exist smack bang in the middle of the territories of three nations.

 

Replace CT warps to hubs with warps to docks in/near nations. Maybe have a southern and a northern dock and then roads from those docks to each nation etc. Carve out a mini tile for this that cant be obtained by nations instead of multiple full sized tiles.

 

Replace warp hubs with roads between nations. Map feels totally disconnected and over reliant on soulstones to move around, breaking immersion that i have to soul stone back to CT and then use a warp if i want to go from Norland to Urguan and cant just travel there. Traveling by road also leads to more ambient roleplay and exploration.

 

Mark some tiles as freebuild, ones that are less likely for nations to want to obtain due to distance or position. Consider charging a fractional mina upkeep for people with active builds there. You build a tavern next to the road, you pay 20 mina a week or something. Obviously monitor the builds to make sure theyre at a suitable standard for roleplay/lore etc.

 

Pursue more 'ambient' storylines, rather than 'events'. Event/story or whoever should work with members of the community to establish situations where it isnt just staff playing monsters/villains, but gives players more chance to flex their villain muscles under supervision from staff without it descending to modreqs. For example, a group of outlaws for nations to send guardsmen after. Get a few players to play the outlaws along with the staff member running things, they get to do naughty things, other players get to fulfill their hero desire by hunting down and stoping them. This isnt an ultimate solution to the lack of things happening as ideally we want it to be more organic, but its better than what we have now, where any villain rp is almost guaranteed to involve a modreq and moaning.

 

As i mentioned before, as a new player i dont really care to talk to a monk, as theyre gunna disappear and never be seen again. Establish the means and encouragement for veteran players to fill the role monks have had, guiding new players and introducing them to rp in a community. Dont leave it to CT to choose a place to leave the new player and then disappear. give the vets reward tokens that can be exchanged for something as mentioned before, or some other system of incentive for them to he on the lookout and help induct new players both ooc and ic.

 

I know it has been done/is being done, but add more random ruins and interesting locations and such in the world. And then put down your sign or whatever for someone who finds it to message the relevant person for a bit of interaction - combat, talking, exploration, learn a bit of lore, whatever it is. As an aside...arent dungeons or something like that planned as well or was that scrapped?

[ScreamingDingo 16799]

why would players stay if we can't even get our "lead" admin to stay for more than a week active lol

 

 

We've got a long journey if we want to pull ourselves out of the dark recesses of the inevitable slow burn and decline of LotC

[Ryloth 4312]

3 hours ago, ScreamingDingo said:

why would players stay if we can't even get our "lead" admin to stay for more than a week active lol

 

 

We've got a long journey if we want to pull ourselves out of the dark recesses of the inevitable slow burn and decline of LotC

"road to 500!"

*goes on a half-year hiatus

[Burnsider 4542]

13 hours ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

I have too much respect for Burnsider so I usually snip anything he says I did wrong. Stupid habit of mine. I didn't save it anywhere so I think it's lost forever. I'll try to rewrite it here, but add a ton as well 'cause why not.

 

Thank you for reposting. Your comments (and many comments here) are always worth hearing even if I either disagree with it or didn't necessarily ask for it. Don't let my opinion make you believe that your opinion isn't worth being heard.

[Shorsand 1744]

 

6 hours ago, Sham404 said:

Here are a few suggestions that i think could improve the current situation, both in terms of direct correlation between new player and server, and to help retain current server numbers (and help encourage rp and such). These arent final, tweaks will obviously be needed based on feasibility and if there are any flaws i havent thought of.

 

Move CT off mainland to an island, its annoying tilewise, it just gets in the way, and there is no reason for it to exist smack bang in the middle of the territories of three nations.

 

Replace CT warps to hubs with warps to docks in/near nations. Maybe have a southern and a northern dock and then roads from those docks to each nation etc. Carve out a mini tile for this that cant be obtained by nations instead of multiple full sized tiles.

 

 

 

Pretty sure CT has always been in the center on every map (maybe not on the temp worlds, I forget?). It's supposed to act as a neutral hub in the relative center of the map. However, yes, it does get in the way, forcing you to largely rely almost entirely on the warp hubs. The Asulon/Anthos CT and road networks were peak performance IMO. The warps just confine people to the cardinal corners of the map, nothing happens in the middle. Ergo, everything happens in a circle instead of a web or network of interaction.

[Sham404 464]

10 minutes ago, Shorsand said:

 

 

Pretty sure CT has always been in the center on every map (maybe not on the temp worlds, I forget?). It's supposed to act as a neutral hub in the relative center of the map. 

I understand that. And please dont take this as me being arsey when i say:

Just because something has been done a certain way in the past doesnt mean it should keep being done that way.

 

I just dont know a better wording right now!

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

20 minutes ago, Shorsand said:

 

 

Pretty sure CT has always been in the center on every map (maybe not on the temp worlds, I forget?). It's supposed to act as a neutral hub in the relative center of the map. However, yes, it does get in the way, forcing you to largely rely almost entirely on the warp hubs. The Asulon/Anthos CT and road networks were peak performance IMO. The warps just confine people to the cardinal corners of the map, nothing happens in the middle. Ergo, everything happens in a circle instead of a web or network of interaction.

This, but don't have a bunch of protected CT land like in Arcas because that just made stuff further away for no good reason.

 

And we did have a non-central CT in Axios. It was on an island and had boat warps to the 3 main isles.

[Ibn Khaldun 7728]

14 hours ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

I have too much respect for Burnsider so I usually snip anything he says I did wrong. Stupid habit of mine. I didn't save it anywhere so I think it's lost forever. I'll try to rewrite it here, but add a ton as well 'cause why not.

 

My point is that Atlas was a decent map because its freebuild system made the political climate of the server in near constant flux. For example, the Dwarves had several start up holds such as Holm and the Confederation of Hammers that'd later take over the Dwarven race from Kaz'Ulrah, Wood Elves split apart in freebuild when the Dominion fell into decline, Orcs went into freebuild after they got destroyed instead of being refugees until they'd get a charter (which is how it'd normally go down without freebuild), all sorts of wars and human politics were involved in freebuild, etc. Freebuild meant that wars could be brutal and absolute without being too harsh because you could never be denied a homeland while suitable freebuild land existed on the map. Even though the Empire of Man conquered a lot of territory, it never felt quite like the Oren snowball of Vailor or Axios because freebuild levelled the playing field enough that it didn't matter as much. On top of wars, settlements could grow dynamically, such as Belvitz that'd later see Holm settled next to it, thus creating the server's strongest RP hub all in freebuild.

 

There were mild issues of decentralization, sure. There were a lot more settlements than on Arcas, which did spread out RP to an extent. However, nations were still fairly strong, and while many freebuild builds did exist, many of them were just event areas/beautification projects (there was this lovely grove area in the savannah biome that I think the druids made, for example) or small towns and villages that didn't subvert your expectations when they turned out to be empty when you visited them. I feel as though the argument of freebuild decentralizing roleplay is a bit overstated. The argument goes that freebuild spreads out roleplay across the map because there are more places for people to be, which is true, but since most freebuild builds aren't active 24/7, they spread out roleplay far less than having a bunch of populous nation capitals or strong RP hubs rather than just a handful of larger ones. You cannot argue that freebuild creates a bajillion dead settlements AND decentralizes the map at the same time, because if freebuild isn't active, then it's not taking away roleplay from any hubs since there's hardly anybody there, and if it's taking roleplay away from the hubs, then clearly freebuild must be somewhat active in order to do that.

 

It all boils down to expectations. When you enter a big city, you typically expect people to be there. When you enter a small village, you probably don't expect to see a bunch of people, and you won't be disappointed of its empty. As long as every settlement is true to its actual activity, with places having lots of activity feeling as though they ought to be full of people and places with little activity feeling as though they ought to be quiet and emptier, there is no harm and no foul in any one settlement's existence, and no place can disappoint you. It is nice to have areas with fewer people because some people don't like big cities swarming with people, and they ought to be allowed to have what they want instead of getting crammed into a big nation capital so that folks who like cities swarming with people have more content.

 

If people always ending up at dead settlements and never finding where anybody is becomes an issue (as was sometimes the case in Atlas), that's moreso an issue of labelling than an issue of the map being decentralized. There ARE people roleplaying on the server, even on freebuild maps; a simple /list or look at the server tab can tell you that. The roads just need to be labelled well enough so that everybody knows where people are going to be found. I suggest that for future freebuild, we let players build all of the roads and do their own labels and signposts on said roads, so that roads leading to settlements that no longer exist or no longer have as large a playerbase can get rerouted to other locations, and active settlements wishing to advertise their existence to visitors can construct big ol' cobbled roads roads and signposts directing everybody in the area towards them. A downside of Atlas was that despite many freebuild areas being very dynamic, the main roads were totally stagnant and never moved to accommodate for the shifting playerbases on the server. Letting players have control of the main roads instead of just whatever side roads they wish to make in freebuild areas should help fix that old issue and make finding others more intuitive. I think back in Aegis players were allowed to make big ol' roads in freebuild, so it's not like this has never been done before. Also, more road control means more roadside taverns, which is probably the best road RP we're ever gonna get, so that's a big plus.

 

One other problem with Atlas was the issue of how freebuild was managed upon it. The 50-block rule meant that freebuilds had a bubble around them that no other freebuilds could penetrate if they weren't desired to, and this policy was enforced by staff. Sadly, this is probably one of those rules that made freebuild harder to regulate than it should have been. This policy tacked on added staff involvement that made freebuild tougher on staff. Freebuild doesn't need this extra protection, and having freebuilds be at least 50 blocks away from each other makes it harder for settlements to develop organically without coordination between dedicated players, which would usually involved some OOC communication that'd make it less dynamic. Maybe without the 50-block rule, the bandits, wizards, grape-growers, and folks living in the castle of Old Dunshire Forest could've been a sister settlement to Belvitz rather than an uncoordinated mob of semi-active people in the woods, who knows. As far as raiding and villainy goes, while not having a 50-block rule means that bandits can set up shop right next to you, I don't feel as though this is too terrible. As long as freebuilds and nations have the power to destroy freebuilds in warclaims or through some other method, situations like these would resolve themselves quickly. Maybe instead of having any unwanted freebuilds within 50 blocks of another building get OOCly destroyed by staff, building within a certain radius of a location gives them a CB against you, or maybe if you're too close to an already existing settlement you don't get raid cooldowns when they attack you, or they get a longer cooldown when you attack them. I'm open to suggestions here, but I don't think the 50-block rule was the right answer.

 

Also, this right here. Old Atlas post by @monkeypoacher that I think is relevant:

the logical exact opposite of the protected ring around CT we saw in Arcas: having the ring around CT be a zone designed to dynamically grow the new nation roster of the map through freebuild and conflict.

 

Lemme tell the tale of Old Dunshire Forest:

 

The year is 2017, in December, right as Atlas has launched. Halflings have a prebuild inside of the Sutican city, surrounded by the quartz walls. Dalek348, an old Undead player of Aegis who started playing a halfling since Asulon, was not happy with the situation. He thought halflings ought to live outside of walls, and he made his own village on the crossroads between Haelun'or and the lands further to the south (Where FloralHedgehog (who was dkink14 at the time), a halfling druid, built a burrow). He surrounded this village with a large quantity of trees so it wouldn't look out of place next to the other freebuilds in the area. This village was called Dunshire, a call-back to the first ever halfling village on the server: Dunwood.

 

Eventually, the halflings got CT land, and name of Dunshire is given to the CT village, with the old village at the crossroads being renamed to Old Dunshire. The forests around Old Dunshire were called Old Dunshire Forest. Old Dunshire was turned into a ruins covered in vines. Eventually, Old Dunshire was completely overrun with vegetation, and all of the burrows too sunken into the earth to be discernable as burrows anymore. Dalek348 started to build wooden ents in Old Dunshire Forest instead from logs and leaves, turning the location into an Ent sanctuary. As Belvitz grew, so did Old Dunshire Forest next to it. More people moved into the forest, such as a wizard living in a wizard tower, some folks living in a small keep right off the mountains of Holm (with which Old Dunshire Forest had a border), a small vineyard, bandits in a bandit camp, a few lone houses, bahbou123456's halfling village of Buckland, and more!

 

Belvitz kept on growing, and ran into issues getting all the land they wanted for future build projects, since they were right up against the road region and a river. They warclaimed Old Dunshire Forest and Dalek348's ents in order to get land. This ended the days of Old Dunshire Forest being independent from Belvitz, although many builds in the forest continued to exist even after the area got warclaimed. The ents were all destroyed, and a large area of land cleared for future building. On the current world download of Atlas, nothing has been built there by Belvitz. I don't know if they just delayed doing the building until after the world download was taken or if they just never used the land alltogether, but regardless, it's an interesting story to tell, and a story that could not have happened without freebuild.

 

The wizard tower of Old Dunshire. Very strange things in here indeed!

 

One of the ents of Old Dunshire Forest!

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X03_LWRmK-rn9q8J-y0y23YNOq5Qgoj7c0BgQtLO4hU/edit

An old Global Assembly document submitted by Dunshire (not Old Dunshire) to protect the lands of Old Dunshire Forest.

 

here you can see Old Dunshire Forest, from the old GA document. It was right between Holm and Belvitz. This screenshot shows Buckland (bahbou's halfling village that later went inactive as the halflings there moved to Dunshire, seen in the upper parts of the forest farther from Belvitz), Old Dunshire village (pre-ruination, as the party tent still stands in this screenshot, located around the lake), and a few other builds such as houses and whatnot. Most of the trees here were planted from saplings, making the forest a forest planted by players rather than the World Team. Later on from the date this screenshot was taken, more buildings would be added to the forest as well as more trees to extend the forest's borders.

 

 

Thank you for bringing back some great memories with reference to Dunwood & the Halflings as well as the player Dalek348. You took me down a walk on memory lane and now I am left wanting to retell my own experience as one of the old heads like Dalek from a gamer's perspective:

 

I find myself arguing on behalf of those wanting freebuild back. I founded one of the first guilds shortly after the start of this server. My guild, the Teutonic Order, co-existed on this server along with guilds such as the Black Hand (Undead cultist group of players), the Druids, and others. Our guild relied on freebuild, both as host to our "settlement" and where we found much of our roleplay which consisted in warring with other towns, forts, etc.

 

The freebuild region is where you have that ever-changing, experimental grounds for roleplay entities to foment and compete. I still think it is that competition, to vie against one another to create the most plausible, entertaining, and engaging roleplay entity, that gave LotC much of its appeal. Invariably, players' different interests would find a niche within this "sandbox" of sorts. For example, those "slice of life" roleplayers who find genuine entertainment in their type of roleplay found a niche with entities such as the Halflings. Those who looked for conflict roleplay found their niche with guilds such as the Teutonic Order.