I will not be a doomer

[Tentoa 3160]

I'm not going to format this to be pretty, this is going to be a text wall of my thoughts and criticisms of the community.

I was a kid when I started this server, I played an orc named Narguk wandering around in Aegis to kill time while I was waiting to have surgery. Yeah, the server was very enchanting for a young man who wanted to creatively write with other people; there was a certain unknown quality to the server prior to the introduction of systems like MAs, TAs, CAs, activity checks, and so forth that perhaps we lack nowadays. This is not a bad thing; we sit and try to pretend as though things were better and that we have ultimately degraded in quality as a server from now until then and that RP is dead, it's unrecognizable, it's all just grinding materials for potions and rare weapons. The funny truth of this argument is that it was always just that, it was a thinly veiled faction server with next to no quality control because it was a server primarily played by stupid kids with poor social skills who wanted to write escapist fiction in their block game. Now I may be brewing potions to use in CRP when CAs camp the roads looking for victims but before I was just looking for diamonds to wear in PVP when bandits camped the roads looking for mina. Fundamentally, the difference between these two groups is not their purpose to the server - both are antagonistic thieves but each holds a different attitude toward the server - in Aegis/Asulon/Anthos these bandits did not exist for the function of driving RP forward or making conflict and we cope by saying 'nah they totally did' - no, the rules we have today about halt emotes and PVP and CRP stem from the fact that a lot of those aegis era bandits metagamed and camped the road in order to click you down and piss you off because it was funny and there was no rule about being as toxic as possible regarding the acquisition of items/mina or OOCly scheming because you didn't like a guy. 

Magic is a big thing, a lot of people are upset about how magic has been presented in the server; strictly regulated to the point of having no creativity but these people are either ignorant or in denial about the fact that magic either didn't exist and had no rules at all (In Asulon a mage took a sword to the chest and healed himself while burning me and my friend alive because magic was freeform and the only rule was 'you have to learn it'). There was no regulation to magic no Story Team, I don't think Lore Team was even conceived of until late 2.0 past when INSANITY had ruled - no one seems to remember the crazy nonsense of being maimed against your will, purposefully exploiting cloud temple revival through suicide to heal yourself, golden apples (yes the Minecraft item) erasing the memories of elfs. Hell, the concept of void magic didn't come around until 3.0, and before that, magic was earthbending or hypnosis or literally whatever you said you could do. The point of a lore piece was not to make something cool that you could do with your friends; the point of a lore piece was to put as much vague wording in as possible to allow you to exploit as closely as possible. Liches could see 360 degrees around themselves, there was no durability count or respawn timer, there was no such thing as a redline or an emote count, it was pure chaos and that's why PVP was so big back then, it was to avoid 'nuh uh I have a shield' RP. Some of you look at the Lore Team like gatekeepers of fun and elitist because you've never seen what people being allowed to do whatever they want results in.

Speaking of people being allowed to do whatever they want, how about public safety? We've improved so much on the front of protecting the minors and the neurodivergent among our servers by the fact that now we ban people. You don't understand the kind of things that were said to me in skype, the things that people said to me as a minor that were so wildly inappropriate that you would be ToS'd for having DM'd me that alone - when I was a young boy it was an open and acknowledged fact a mid twenty something year old woman was in a 'relationship' with a 15 year old and no one got banned or even looked into. The administration didn't care and even ended up with sympathizers among their number because no one gave a shit. The quality of safety on this server, thanks to things like Omni, Discord, and our updated ToS, is phenomenal - it ain't perfect but it is a system that tries to protect the adolescent members of this community.


Onto the complaint that everything is arranged through discord and you no longer have to find people, you can still play a character fine without use of discord. IN Aegis you just /t'd the person you were looking for *a bird arrives* and they looked at it and IM'd you IC within moments anyway and all had group chats in skype for organizing RP and btw alarm bells weren't a thing so you could just 'I'm being attacked' in your skype group and have your friends all log on and moderation wouldn't do shit about it because we had no standards for fair play. Most things you did were never discussed IC and were done with flimsy reasoning not for the pursuit of a narrative but the pursuit of a personal goal, only you didn't have to care about other people's fun at all. Anyone telling you something otherwise is blinded by nostalgia for the innocence of their youth. Metaplay has been a problem since the server's launch we just have a name for it now and are attempting to enforce a standard, and while that's not going perfectly, it is making progress. 

"Ah, but the spirit of roleplay is lost. Everyone is doing Baldur's gate quips and D&D references and trying to be a hero" Everyone already did that. In 3.0 we were copying Game of Thrones, in 4.0 it was Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, the list goes on and on. There are no original ideas, roleplay is inherently derivative. No, we have lost nothing it's not different, RP has been kind of goofy since day, 1, but we're more critical of ourselves and others because we're more media literate now and/or older. There was no golden age of free RP, the same as it is now it was you and your buddies running around and having fun, we did not lose the spirit of RP because the spirit of RP is the cooperative hobby we all share where we write together each playing our own made up characters. LoTC is a persistent world RP setting, and it has the unique and fantastic advantage that all the lore, mechanics, and things that you enjoy are made by your own hands. That has never changed. 

You cannot convince me to be negative about a place I've seen improve so much since I got here. It still has room for improvement, and that starts with our attitudes.

 

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 15456]

Put a girl on

[SimplySeo 6999]

This is a good take. 

 

Is it perfect? No- but it has improved wildly even from when I joined in 2018

[Laeonathan 5889]

3 minutes ago, SimplySeo said:

This is a good take. 

 

Is it perfect? No- but it has improved wildly even from when I joined in 2018

Yeah. 

 

Thank you Tentoa.

 

This negativity is annoying me. Stop pretending LOTC is sooooooo bad. And then you stay for another four years. Lol.

[Venomous_Pup 2978]

Fake it till I make it, fake it till I make it, fake it till I make it.. (Will comment something real once I get a chance, I'm making Pizza and shit but looks good.)

I return and read : ) 
It's definitely improved since my time from 2019 and being on/off. While there are a few pain points, its not worth spoiling your own or others' fun over it, I think I've had disproportionately bad luck with some of the people I've encountered, I'm glad to have the friend circle I've got now, and thankful in some small way I did what I could to direct them into having fun than doing a full trauma dump of all the terrible things that can/have happened. The community is hardly going to improve if we don't cultivate fresh players and only focus on the negative. I don't think inherently calling out the negative is a bad thing per se, but I'm pretty sure most people agree that plenty needs work on, the main issue comes to figuring out how to give actual constructive criticism and going beyond that, fixing why these issues crop up in the first place. The other factor is that no matter how good/right your point is, no one wants to listen to you if you've presented yourself poorly, so always strive to be your best. I agree with some of the more recent comments where it's in this weird place of wanting to be a sandbox, yet somehow more structured. However, I found that some of these issues are circumvented by just avoiding people who don't want to get along, and chilling with people who enjoy the same vibe. No point in trying to make something big and epic for someone if they don't want to run with it and will just make you feel you just wasted your time.

[PrimnyaQuorum 3999]

I joined late-ish 2022 so I have no real idea how bad/good things were back then and I equally have chosen not to think ahead what I write, but;

 

It sucks. Can I just state that as a fair observation without gauging it to anything else? Yea the wording could be made nicer but I 100% assure you I've been told most, if not all of this with worse wording.

 

I, and many many people I talk to and consider friends across various goodguy/badguy, human/elf, combat/tea-drinking sects of RP have minimal or no trust in staff teams, staff management, or server management. We trust various individuals because we know them, and we trust them to give us the facts straight; not hide behind forum post and hidden channels, not trollpost across discords to the point people rely more on each other then actual accepted pages or ST for guidance on lore and rules. I don't really need to know how severe the IRL crimes committed back in 1910 on LoTC were to say, fairly, it stinks right now. 

 

Yea I'm still gunna log on and play in my friendgroups, regardless, but it's a bit silly to see people pretend publicly to save face everything is fine and dandy. Mod's are so screwed they can't figure out where the edit button is on the rules page for a rule they actively enforce, and ST can't seem to decide if they like to make random changes that bothered no one and write them down, or make random rulings and changes and not write them down; then cope about "guides" that they haven't updated in 5 years and will continue to not update. Yea man, let me read the Air Evo guide - oh wait, that's for the old Sorcorio Air Evo write. Oh well, if the greenman says it, it must be true! Except where they say "lol why do you listen to what we say lol we're wrong"

 

At some point in time, shit really does just flow downhill. If the simplest details, the most basic of things cannot be uphold with even a fragment of integrity to the point Staff feels a need to announce a banwave of Players and Staff regarding a total abuse of PEX [not just a single ban, multiple within the same period] there needs to be a serious evaluation why half the server's functions depend on these teams that are basically integrally fighting and shitposting at one another about players in their chats where they think no one ever leaks. 

 

I can fairly say from what this reads as yea, christ, we're in so much a better state right now; ToS and IRL crimes get banned, there's an attempt to include a staff presence [if so laughably horrid that we trust individuals and not teams, which is half the mess we're in at the moment], and there's some sense of community; we oust people who harass, who use slurs and discriminate [mostly], and communities protect their players. That is by no means a good enough reason to throw in a towel and give up the fact 30 Metaplay bans later and we'll probably see another banwave when the next big human war rolls around or something. 

 

I would say the general "staff" are silent, but we're beyond that - they actively avoid any and all confrontation and conflict to whatever ideals they possess about doing things. They can do no wrong, and you need to shut up and enjoy the server! Is it a surprise in any form to absolutely anyone nothing gets reported until it reaches a literal breaking point, which people either take a exodus or someone get's a long duration/perm ban? No one trusts staff to be staff, to intervene and be a person you can go to with a problem and get a resolution; they trust their friends & certain individuals to advocate for them, because self-advocacy is the fastest way to get on someone's shitlist who has a fancy tag under their forum name if it's not done through a middleman, anonymously. I know the reputation I hold and I could frankly care less; I'd rather take it and advocate for my friend's who don't want to deal with all the baggage that comes with saying anything that's not "I love LoTC and I enjoy conflict in all forums and across all IRP & OOC Mediums! :D" then sit back and pretend it's much better if I just wait for everything to be better. 

 

Moral of the story, people HATE writing down anything on a RP server that upkeeps any integrity required for it to go smoothly, and the Staff response is to go CIA and pretend the problem doesn't exist harder and avoid writing anything down. I don't need 10,000 rules to work things out with people; what I need is, at the barest minimum, is that the rules upheld day-to-day are written down publicly, for everyone to see. I could care not one ounce less if a fall from 5m or 6m is fracture vs break - but if we're somehow going on month 2 where the entire Raid Tool section of the Rules [in example] is just totally wrong and 3 shout emotes, regardless of moderator's claims its a "one off thing" with "no precedent" then I have to ask what the hell is being smoked on the bluetag team that prevents anyone from clicking edit on the rules. 

 

I'll keep saying this until it happens. If it sucks to see it, please consider; speak up. Do something. I am doing what I can; if you can do more, and you spend your time griping back at someone with 0 PEX instead of doing anything that about half the server is too afraid or too demotivated to speak up about that you CAN do, you're probably in the wrong "volunteer" spot. 

[xDK 1205]

55 minutes ago, Tentoa said:

 

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. It definitely wasn't perfect back then. People used Skype to call in backup, group chats were full of OOC scheming, and metagaming was constant. You're right that a lot of what we now call "problems" were just normal back then and went unchecked. And yeah, we've made real progress on safety and rules. No argument there.

 

What stuck with me though, reading this, was the part about Discord not being that different from Skype or TeamSpeak. I see what you mean, but for me, the difference isn’t just in the tool, it’s in how it reshaped the social structure. Discord changed the way the server feels. I'm not talking about lore or CRP rules or even the magic systems. I'm talking about how the actual structure of interaction has shifted.

 

Back then, with TeamSpeak, the major nations all existed in one place. Everyone used the official LotC TS. Even if you had your own private TS for your house or guild, you were still tied into the wider nation’s space (One of the VIP Packages literally gave you a TS channel in the main LotC TS). That structure created tension. You’d have inner factions that clashed. Nobles would scheme. Orders would argue. Groups inside a nation would compete for influence, and it created RP that didn’t need admin approval or some scripted conflict. It just happened. And yeah, sometimes it got toxic, but it also made things feel alive.

 

Now it’s all in one Discord per nation. One server handles recruitment, events, politics, and every piece of OOC communication. It’s clean, it’s centralized, and it kills any real narrative diversity. You don’t get meaningful internal tension anymore. If there’s internal conflict, it’s usually a power grab between OOC friend groups, not something built up through RP. And yeah, people say you can still play without Discord, but we all know that if you’re not in the Discord, you’re not part of the story.

 

I don’t think we’ve lost the spirit of RP completely. But we’ve definitely lost that internal messiness that used to push RP forward in unexpected ways. Everything feels flatter now. Safer, sure. But flatter.

 

11 minutes ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

 

 

From where I’m sitting, the real problem is that there’s no proper top-down direction.

 

Everyone just kind of does their own thing. Not because they want to be inconsistent, but because there’s no clear leadership setting a vision or priority. So different people interpret things differently, push in different directions, and yeah, it feels like a mess from the outside. You’ll see stuff written down one way, enforced another way, and when players call it out, staff are just as confused as anyone else. That’s not some conspiracy or attempt to be shady. That’s a leadership vacuum.

 

There are people trying to fix stuff. Trying to get guides updated, trying to clarify rules, trying to move things forward. But when there's no one coordinating that work, it doesn’t land right. It just looks like more noise or random changes. I think a lot of staff are stuck in that space right now, doing what they can without really knowing if it’s even aligned with anything bigger.

 

So yeah, I get why players don’t trust the system. But I don’t think the answer is "staff are just being staff again." I think the problem is there isn’t enough actual structure to make anything feel consistent.

[Islamadon 9158]

2 minutes ago, xDK said:

 

20 minutes ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

 

Guides have always been awful and always outdated, that is why I killed their requirement this year during the last major Lore Update and now just require emote examples in the actual Lore Subs. Prior precedent is understood by individual ST differently, I always tell LT to defer to either 1) the lore page or 2) SquakHawk. Some things are so minute and unimportant they don't require amendments and can just be told "no bro" or "that's fine".

As for amendments, we vote on every amendment (unless genuinely unneeded) and debate as to whether they are required or not, and we post amendment logs in the Story Discord so that people can be aware of what was changed. Most amendment subs we get are normally derived from spiral theory-crafting where people either end up trying to shadow-buff lore or "fix" problems that aren't actually there. We see through these things, and understand much of it is the pursuit of clout (even though lore-writers will never admit to it).

[xDK 1205]

3 minutes ago, Islamadon said:

 

 

Yeah I get that, and honestly I respect that you killed the guide requirement. That was the right move. They’ve always been outdated or half-finished, and expecting people to rely on them like they’re gospel just creates more confusion. Emote examples in the lore submissions itself makes way more sense.

 

I don't think people are saying every minor thing needs an amendment, but if a ruling is going to affect how a player can or can’t use something in roleplay, and that ruling sticks, it probably does need to be written down somewhere public. Doesn’t need to be pretty, just more accessible.

 

I get that people abuse the amendment system to sneak in buffs or push their own agenda. But if everything stays locked up in internal debate or gets posted in a Discord most players aren't in, it just reinforces the feeling that there’s no transparency. The “no bro” ruling works when it’s something small and isolated. It doesn’t work when it turns into the new precedent and only three people even know about it.

 

Just saying how I see it.

That said, I think this is part of a bigger problem. There's no top-down leadership or shared direction between the teams. That’s what really kills coordination. I’m on Tech, which should be working directly with Story, Moderation, Events, all of them, but I have no idea what any of the other teams are doing or what they even need from us. There’s no real communication, no cross-team planning. Everyone’s just kind of off doing their own thing, in service of no bigger picture, and that disconnect is exactly what players end up feeling.

[Laeonathan 5889]

Quote

But if everything stays locked up in internal debate or gets posted in a Discord most players aren't in, it just reinforces the feeling that there’s no transparency. The “no bro” ruling works when it’s something small and isolated. It doesn’t work when it turns into the new precedent and only three people even know about it.

ok but thats really not a ST issue, everyone can join thar discord

 

its even linked in main discord - only thing i'd see as improvement is having lore audit etc be transmitted into main discord announcement as well 

[xDK 1205]

1 minute ago, Laeonathan said:

ok but thats really not a ST issue, everyone can join thar discord

 

its even linked in main discord - only thing i'd see as improvement is having lore audit etc be transmitted into main discord announcement as well 

Right, and I agree with that. It’s not just an ST issue, it’s an everybody issue. I’m not talking about isolated cases either, I’m talking about the structural stuff. The fact that there’s no system in place to make sure key decisions, changes, or expectations are actually passed across teams or made visible to the broader playerbase. It’s not about who’s hiding what, it’s about how scattered everything is by default.

[the GOAT of the craft 606]

My biggest gripe with how things have been is the enforcement of metaplay bans. The war between the Haense coalition and the Pontifical States should have been delayed until the bans were over for the Vinovians, and I say this as someone that was on the PS side. The two battles that were fought were a complete wipe for the Haense side, it wasn't fun for either side to join and steam roll or be steam rolled by the opposition. We now have another human empire that has been created, I feel, solely due to a large contingent of players from one side being banned. In my opinion this is narratively poor.

 

I do agree that a lot of Aegis era bandits were shit tier. It was clear then, and there was a lot of push-back on people who did the "Minas or die!!!" RP at the time. Every crap bandit back then got a reputation for being a crap bandit. These, from my experience, were weeded out pretty quickly and they knew  what that what they were doing was crap. The threat of a modreq usually stopped it and you could move on, and if not it would be sorted quickly by a member of the mod team, and usually these people would leave the server anyway because they can't do their lazy bandit roleplay. Banditry RP back then did have it's merits. The OG Flay's for example went from nothing but a group of bandits to a noble house entirely from aura. They were something to be feared, on the same level as the Undead. 

 

RP has evolved since the first map and it should continue to do so. My issue is that RP hasn't evolved much since I stopped playing in Asulon. It's been around 10/11 years and human RP is firmly stuck in a Game of Thrones/Crusader Kings permastate. This is stale. I have been a predominantly human player since I came back in October so that has been my experience, and my opinions have been formed from that.

 

Dalek made a great point in the thread I created about freebuild. The server has relied on worldpainter to create their own maps. This does have it's positives in creating aesthetically pleasing maps, but it brings with it negatives too. For example node mines and an inability to actually play  Minecraft. I remember in Asulon when the human kingdom completely fell apart. Activity had completely dropped off and the build was, frankly, shit. It was when Mogroka came in as Horen that things picked up. One reason is because he had the human community involved in building projects. I remember there was a huge aqueduct being constructed from a water source nearby and connecting to the city, and there were loads of people involved in constructing this. It was great for RP, not only throughout building but forming connections with people both IC and OOC, and it was great for gameplay.

 

There is an over-reliance on building something on the build server, importing the plans from the build server and then paying X amount to build it on the main server. Players should have to go on trips to get materials. The closest thing we have to that now is running around the map visiting every mine you can possibly think of, or running around the map to get herbs. We have seen that the server can support multiple maps as we have resource island. I would be so down for a free build map alongside the new worldpainter map when the new map launches. It would give players a reason to leave their nations, go on a perilous journey to another land to secure whatever resources they need, instead of doing mining runs for the billionth time. This could be regened as staff saw fit. Hell, throw in a plugin so people can claim land in this wild, unruly new land that we'd be in similar to how the new nomad system would work. Create some points of interest for players to explore. Have mythical places with interesting rewards, have hot spots for resources like netherite that players can't lock behind 5 iron trap doors and 15 iron doors. It would create conflict focused on something other than OOC dislike. I think RP would thrive here in a place where people can get creative and let their imagination flow.

 

You are completely right on the protection aspect. I remember the mod team having, to put it lightly, some rotten apples in there. There seemed to always be a story of inappropriate behaviour between an older person and a minor. I remember one member of the mod team reading minors bed time stories then switching to reading 50 Shades of Grey. That shit would not be allowed to happen any more, and if it did happen I feel like the person would feel far more comfortable to come forward and have it dealt with immediately, and that is an extremely good thing. 

 

I logged on for the first time in weeks on Tuesday night, and the player count was around 130 people online, when weeks prior it would have been hitting around 200. It is fine to defend your experience of this server. Yes, my post was written with rose tinted glasses on and I am clearly nostalgic of the old days. But it's fine to criticise this server too. There are valid complaints, there are things that can be improved. It is only by voicing our opinions that we can hope to see change. This server was a huge part of my formative teenage years. I made some great friends on here that I speak with to this day. I want LOTC to be great, to provide for others who are younger the experience that I had, not what it is now. 

Edited May 23, 2025 by the craft of the lord
clarification

[Rig 17580]

I've discussed this with my friends at length. LoTC is not the same anymore. It's not a sandbox now, it's really more similar to a theme park. Everything is catered, less dynamic.

That being said, less does not mean that things from the past don't still happen. I still manage to have fun on the server because I don't let other people ruin my fun if I can help it.

 

If you try on LoTC, you can enjoy yourself. But I don't think people's criticism is misplaced either. Complaints about staff fall short with me due to personal bias. Yeah, stuff isn't great, but there has been progress when it comes to the sheer amount of evil that used to be regularly perpetrated on here. I don't think the state of the ET is perfect. Nor do I imagine the Mod Team to be perfect. However, it never has been and I am not sure it ever will.

 

I feel that this old Aislin quote suits my needs for this whole debacle:

"Next time you want to make a post about fixing the server, just play the server. You'll do a lot more good for both yourself and the server."

Threads are very much paralysis by analysis. I'm glad to see somebody else around who isn't doomering.

[Laeonathan 5889]

19 minutes ago, rigorous said:

I've discussed this with my friends at length. LoTC is not the same anymore. It's not a sandbox now, it's really more similar to a theme park. Everything is catered, less dynamic.
 

 

How would you say it is, for example compared to 2018? Yeah, Freebuild maybe. But otherwise? 

[NightcastorKitty 2779]

Anyone who thinks Aegis and Asulon were the golden years either wasn't there or is flat ignoring very very wrong things that transpired and happened that has scarred many people to this day. Be beyond grateful it isn't that era anymore. Nor the vast amounts of staff members defending certain things or practices. Freeform doesn't always mean 'better'. Some redlines may be over the top, but then so has the lengths people went through to bypass mechanics to pull stupid shit for that redline to be warranted. Yeah it sucks sometimes and the server has matured some to lax some rules or redlines. But stop pretending its worse than it ever was.