Lore Team: Antagonist Stream

[Raomir 1855]

Wooow! I played that entry song in my Orchestra :D

[Tythus 1307]

Starting very soon

[Tythus 1307]

Finished thanks for watching guys!

[Hydroox 11]

Tom Bombadil

Great steam, this really made me excited to play again now that I finally have some free time again, and this antagonist sounds great.

Also here is a transcript for anyone interested who can't watch the steam, or is at work, or for anyone who may be deaf, whatever. Please excuse any spelling errors, also it is not word for word, but it is fairly close.

I probably won't be doing a transcript for every stream or video, just when I have time, but if you really enjoy them feel free to PM me or whatever and I will try to get them out.

 

Tythus- T

Chaqery – C

PRESTREAM BANTER

T: Hi guys this is Tythus here and today we are going to be talking about the antagonist on our livestream of knowledge and intrigue. This we will work much like the last livestream, where we ask a question then we look for your questions, we also have a Q & A right at the end, also all information handed out here will be presumed as correct if it conflicts with anything else previously. However if you do see this could you please tell us, and we will clear up any confusion that might be on this matter. Today with me I have the GM Chaqery who I have been told is a really good person on this server would you tell everyone about yourself briefly?
C: To start off I am an evil White Rose, which everyone on the server knows, I started that evil order. I guess I started out writing stuff for the server and the antagonist was the first thing that I wrote that got any sort of attention from there I started working with the Magic Team and the aspects of that and then I got approached to be a GM and I’m really glad to be one.
T: So out of all your things so far as a GM what have you enjoyed doing?
C: I think honestly it’s been working with players and showing that it doesn’t matter what your character is on the server its more about your responsibility as a GM to respond to anyone who makes a modreq or PM and it’s really helped I guess the reputation of GM’s on the server in general. It’s more about our jobs as GM’s and not what we do on the server.

QUESTIONS

T: Yeah, Wow there are a lot of people who like you and are all calling you evil, and guys I am not a sex god, I’m sorry but it’s true. Right I am going to pop on the server, and if you guys want me to go anywhere or feature certain parts would you please tell me. But otherwise post up questions you would like to ask about the antagonist and I will do my best to pass them on. First we’ll start off with what is the antagonist?
C: Alright, so the antagonist it’s hard to nail down with one sentence, but I guess the whole idea of it is much more inclusion of the general player base.
T: Rather than before when we picked certain people to do certain things, and they were usually staff, because we had more trust of them. So this time are we trying to make it more all-inclusive?
C: Exactly, and the shift is towards something where at the time we didn’t have any antagonist the undead were kind of in this grey area, and everybody wanted something to do so everything shifted more towards wars. Which I am perfectly fine with, but it seemed on the server there was a sort of lean towards we need something.
T: As in something that can come and unite us as one.
C: Exactly
T: Like just a common enemy.
C: Everyone was fighting each other and we wanted somebody that we could all join together and beat up on, and I really liked that idea but what I wanted to stay away from was, and honestly I wasn’t around for the undead and I can’t claim that they were bad or anything I think a lot of people thought really good of them and some people didn’t, the community seems to be very split over that sort of situation.
T: But in Lord of The Craft though everybody is split over everything.
C: Exactly, and what I wanted to approach more towards was an antagonist who was more of an approachable faction as opposed to a select group of players, whether that be staff or players that just came up with the idea. So I sat down and took everything that I thought we as gamers could relate to, so stuff from Dragon Age, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, anything that I thought people generally played, and I sat down and took everything that was recognizably and uniquely evil from all of those sources and I and I tried to throw it all together into one big giant bad guy. What I ended up with was, aspects from all of them combining to make an antagonist that, unlike what we have seen on LOTC can be approached as I guess a sixth nation.
T: It’s big enough to be a nation in its own right per say, but it’s not particularly…
C: Right and it’s not going to be played consistently just through events, once the antagonist really gets kicking full swing it’s going to be daily RP if you have an antagonist character. We are not going to do broadcasts. So the server all doesn’t flock to one area, we are really going to spread the role-play around so everyone sees it and perceives it just as they would perceive Oren, or Malinor, etc… as its own nation.
T: Awesome. Does the antagonist have a name specifically or is it just “The Antagonist”?
C: Right now I guess the term for the general faction is just, The Antagonist, I guess that’s something we really need to brainstorm with. There are different groups in it which have names individually; I guess the famous one that everyone knows is the people who were immolated. The hishgoul, I know a lot of people were coming off saying they were a very undead 3.0 type idea, and I guess if you were to take that aspect individually you could maybe say they are a bit like they undead, but they are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the antagonist.
T: Yes, there is still so much more to be seen.
C: Exactly, and people have asked me “Why is the forum section called Burzûmkûtotaz?” This names all seem so difficult, and the whole point of that is, and this is going to sound really ridiculous, I wanted the names to be ridiculously difficult so people couldn’t just, use them all the time, because those are more names that the antagonists have given themselves. What I want to do is make it to the point where the players were just like “Ok, I don’t like that name we are going to call them our own thing.” So in that way the antagonist becomes a little more personal, because everyone has their own name for the different groups of them and stuff, so one group might call them the Dark Ones, and you hear that and everyone knows who that is, but some other group may have a different name for it. So it becomes more of this folk lore idea, where its kind of mysterious and dark.
T: As of right now there isn’t a single person you are versing per say, its more like an idea.
C: Right, and I guess in essence the goal of this antagonist is to take over all of the other nations, and that is a goal that will be actively worked towards. So I definitely encourage, nation leaders, military leaders, people who think they want to become a hero, stand up lead if you think you can because this is going to be a tough fight.
T: It’ll be interesting to say the least. Where is all the death? As in why aren’t we being killed yet?
C: Alright, because the antagonist wasn’t with the rest of Anthos, and since the north is more of a gateway to the antagonist area, and less of the actual antagonist area. A lot of it has been because we are trying to get everything OOCly tossed together. All I can ask people is please be patient with it, it is going to come soon. A lot of it has to do with meeting the quality that we need if we want this to be a survivable faction and something that players can play daily, as opposed to just a small group of people who are very powerful. We are also waiting for that opportune moment, right now the way things are set up on the server, there are sort of first steps that nobody ones to sort of risk messing up, like this Oren, Dwarven war is the first step to wars on the server stopping being about OOC drama which they have been recently.
T: Or at least trying to make it less OOC drama filled. One can dream.
C: Exactly, we are trying so we are gonna hope that this war plays out in a mature way for everybody on the server, and we don’t want to bring the antagonist around and risk messing something up that could be a first step for us.
T: How is this different from the Undead?
?: In short terms it’s much larger than the Undead.
T: Scale is a big thing.
C: *muffled* the Ibless aspect is gone, but the scale of it you get little glimpses of it in the trailer that Haelphon released yesterday you don’t really get any of the antagonist itself, but you did get a glimpse of Burzûmkûtotaz.
T: Which is massive I must say.
C: Yeah it’s huge I get lost in it sometimes. LOTC was missing those quintessentially fantasy moments and the antagonist is meant to bring those back. So you have moments where, lets say, the antagonist is sieging a keep or something for the players that are not part of the antagonist, things don’t look so good, they are outnumbered, they have siege equipment pounding them, but the antagonist is set up so it creates those sort of movie moments. So the players come off as more of heroes. Which everyone wants to be a hero at one point or another.
T: Well maybe not a hero, but feel that they have done something, and it’s that connection to that thing that they did.
C: I guess that only criticism that I could give to the Undead was that the driving story behind the server at large was placed on two relatively small groups. I’ve had people approach me and say “Are we going to have a protagonist?” and no, the point is not for there to be one set group that is specifically designed to fight this antagonist, because what it should be is the entire server.
T: The server should be trying to find their own protagonist within themselves, as in they are the protagonists. Question; are the antagonist’s lands going to be accessible to those that stumble into the North?
C: Yes, actually currently if you stumble around long enough, you could end up in the antagonist map. Now that’s not saying it’s going to be an easy find, because you are not going to just see it and see oh there it is that’s the entrance, because once you pass the only landmark it becomes like a labyrinth, so we have set it up so that if players want to find their way there, yes they can be there and once the antagonist, takes a larger hold there will be more Easter egg type stuff to find in the North, I think a lot of players have already found some, like shiny things and books that give you some glimpse into the lore itself. Like special named weapons, that are supposed to help you fight the antagonist, stuff like that. We really want to turn this into a whole story line that people are participating and fighting in. So players are experiencing it already, and actually, most people don’t know this but the antagonist, has attacked Malinor.
T: Yes, with the dragon.
C: It’s happened, and it surprises a lot of players that this happened and they didn’t know it, but that’s the thing about the antagonist, the people who do know about it, if they weren’t there they heard it from a rumor, so the stories get bigger and the antagonist seems scarier. It makes it seem more realistic because there is some evil force out there that they aren’t being told about in broadcast.
T: It’s stuff that goes on in the background.
C: Exactly, and as it grows it’s going to be harder and harder to ignore.
T: There has been one thing that has been mentioned a couple of times, which was about antagonist applications and etcetera. What’s going to go on with those?
C: Contrary to how most applications are handled on the server, antagonist applications are… Don’t feel bad if you haven’t gotten a response on yours, because I promise you that nobody has. We aren’t looking through these applications and accepting or denying players, that’s not how we are using them. The reason we ask you all those questions specifically about melee or ranged combat, do you have a magic application, do you have VA’s we want to learn more about you as a player instead of the character which you are putting forth to be an antagonist, and what we are going to be doing, and some people have already had this happen to them, there are raiding groups that kind of sneak around the map and they kidnap people, and if in the process this person we know has applied to become an antagonist, then we say “Hey, that person RP’d to the quality that we find acceptable as antagonists, because being an antagonist is definitely a huge responsibility because it’s something that is set aside from the rest of the player base so we want the people in it aren’t making players mad or, breaking rules and stuff like that. If we stumble across you and like your RP, we will take you and make you into an antagonist.
T: Then we kidnap your children and force feed them to you, and all that like putting you into slavery it’ll be awesome.
C: It’s true enough that you lose your free will when you become an antagonist, you are controlled by the big bad, big boss antagonist. Also once you become an antagonist, that character is not going to become anything other than an antagonist, if the antagonist is defeated that character is most likely going to disappear.
T: Make sure to not be too attached to that character, because you know that you might lose them.
C: Right and know that if you have put a lot of time into a character this is turning over a new leaf, and that is going to affect the people you RP with which is hopefully a good thing.
T: Can villain groups be recruited?
C: Yes! Actually any group can be recruited into the antagonist if the group in general agrees to it. All that we ask right now is that if you are the leader of a group, you PM me on the forums. Tell me about your group, and why you want to be an antagonist, and we will work with you to set up a little mini event, because we want whole groups who aren’t feeling that they are getting the RP they should, or want to do something new, we are definitely accepting them into the antagonist.
T: What is your favorite bit out of the antagonist?
C: It’s definitely the scale I just think it’s great to have an antagonist…
T: That truly feels terrifying that truly feels that it can take over.
C: It feels massive.
T: So run to the hills, hide your children, hide your sister, hide your wife. Are you talking to Telanir and etcetera, for possible plugins to make this more awesome?
C: I know Telanir has discussed with me about the whole racial plugin, which is going to be re-released.
T: Well it was never actually released properly, it was never meant to be available to everyone, and was accidentally exported. It should have never been there in the first place.
C: He’s discussed things like that to try and balance the antagonist. Especially since the antagonist is going to be participating in war claims and stuff just like a nation would, so something to make them seem just as terrifying, even in PvP. Also with the magic plugin coming out that is going to help as well.
T: What sort of magic is the antagonist going to have?
C: Right now it is taking the magic that we have right now and corrupting them, because that is the general essence of the antagonist, it takes things that already exists and corrupts them, and creates its own version of it. That’s largely why we ask if people have had a magic application on any of their characters, right now the whole process of becoming an antagonist is much more free than even being a regular player, because as an antagonist it is sort of expected that you are going to do evil things, so we ask people if they have had VA’s before, but we don’t make you make one just for your antagonist character, because that is just your whole purpose of being, and same for the few magic capable types, they haven’t had to make Magic Applications we just want to make sure they know how to do it and they do it with the quality that we expect.
T: How are these new plugins going to interact with the antagonist, and I know that Telanir has been talking a fair bit to you as you have said, but that’s pretty much is it?
C: I mean there is things that he has told the GM staff in general, but I am not sure I am at liberty to release those. The server with the plugins that it has is taking more of a stance towards more of a complete RPG feel, and I think that could only help the antagonist.
T: There’s always a fine line.

This portion of the livestream does not translate well to text, so go watch it!

T: How much time has it taken so far to build it?
C: Luckily we have had a group, and I am going to admit and everyone who knows me well enough, knows that I cannot build. I can look at stuff and say that looks really cool, but don’t ever ask me to build anything. We have had a team of builders working on this for quite some time; the issue is it’s so so massive. It’s sort of a mix between laying it out what we want it to look like, making it look like that, and then repeating that process so many times because of how large the land is.
T: Is there any time scale you have? Like 2 months, 3 months?
C: I want to say we started probably April, and we had to build the whole map, from scratch so it’s been a while with a lot of people working on it.
T: When is it going to start destroying a town near you?
C: As I said earlier we are really waiting for an opportune moment to release it, and right now the hold up, and this has been discussed with everybody is that we want to wait until, it’s a logical moment for an evil force to attack the nations, and a good time for the community in general. Like I said we are really holding off because the Dwarf, Oren conflict has sort of become World War III on the server and we are fine with that and we are glad that those set of rules created by both sides involved and I think everyone in general has been more happy with this war than with wars in the past because it’s much more about having fun as opposed to …
T: Taking land.
C: Exactly and we don’t want to risk ruining that because we think this is a healthy good step for the community, that being said if the war starts to fall apart, and become what players have gotten in trouble for in the past then the antagonist will definitely step in, or if one side just decisively wins and the war ends, because right now, logically, as an evil force we are just letting them fight it out. Oh and smaller settlements not necessarily involved in the war can expect to see the antagonist much earlier, on a smaller scale with raiding parties and such. I just got a question; would an antagonist player be able to think freely? So due to the nature of the antagonist the large grand be all antagonist is a secret, but a large creature with a lot of magical power. It hates mortals, so it pretty much controls you once you become an antagonist. The reason we do that is so people can’t be an antagonist and be looking for a cure, because that not quite how it works. You can sort of think freely, but a lot of it is blindly following orders that are given to you.
T: Some rate about the plot of Terminator Salvation, the gist though is about tainting characters.
C: Yeah so some characters are tainted and not entirely corrupted which allows us to create sort of Worm Tongue characters that people don’t know are actually agents of the antagonist.
T: So they might, subconsciously try to help you out, but they might not know that they are doing it.
C: Another question that was sent to me, was how would an angel or some other corrupted being interact with the antagonist? The antagonist hates everyone and everything that’s not itself equally. There is that thread where the Dreadknights are trying to join the antagonists and that might happen, but had that move not been made by the Dreadknights, they would have been fought just like everything else. The antagonist is dead bent on being the only bad, evil thing, and they are going to fight every other force that shows up. Would they need to wait for orders to attack a settlement or could they do it themselves? The antagonist is very structured right now, the hishgoul, that everyone heard about the ones that were immolated they serve as the sort of lieutenants to this big bad antagonist, then we have classes as far as a name for people who are the swordsmen, the archers stuff like that, and then there is this sort of in between that serves as the sergeants, that are bigger and tougher than everybody else that’s a regular antagonist and they are allowed to operate sort of one their own. They are assigned to one of the hishgoul, but they are allowed to raid settlements because each one of these so called sergeants are responsible for leading their own, like tribe, so each sergeant since they are the biggest toughest ones, are responsible for kidnapping people from the populous to build their tribe. So they can sort of operate on their own.
T: Was there anything in the antagonist that you wanted that got taken out or didn’t get in?
C: To be honest when I presented the antagonist lore to Mog, Mog actually told me to scale things up, I guess as a regular player at the time writing an idea for the whole server I didn’t want it to be too overpowered and have people think that maybe I was playing to win but actually a lot of people in response threads want them to be a little overpowered so they are fun to fight and scary, and I guess one thing that was not some much removed, but is definitely put on hold until it is kicked in fully. I wanted to create this idea that when the antagonist has a great victory against one of the nation’s then a new sub race for the antagonist opens up, because currently the players who are corrupted are just general….
T: Why does this make me feel like Mass Effect?
C: It is actually I took the Mass Effect idea where they reflect the culture, and a bit of the Lord of The Rings. I wanted to bring back cultures that were cool, but didn’t have enough players, but corrupted versions of them. Like if Malinor is conquered create a new sub race that is elven rangers or the high guard or something like that. That would have a perceived subrace for every nation so they end up fighting corrupted versions of themselves. Will the antagonists change the land? I’m not sure about that, the idea has been tossed around, and it would require the antagonist build team, in creative. Oh well a nation’s capital can fall for example, and then the city will be remodeled to reflect an antagonistic presence.
T: That doesn’t mean that the antagonist has won against that nation.
C: They will have taken the homeland, but players that weren’t corrupted are free to flee or whatever.
T: Or in the case of Oren they will have other places that they can still go to, its just one city has been taken.
C: The idea is that the capital city, will be the last stop on the conquest for an antagonist against a nation. The idea there is that it will become a siege at the end of Lord of the Rings, where it is do or die, and the whole server is there and it really makes a movie moment. The antagonist has tiny things that are like the Halflings, that are the siege engineers they are small, and they crawl around and crawl over people, and to watch them build siege equipment is just disgusting.
T: Anything else you want to mention in the last few moments?
C: Anyone who has questions after the livestream please PM on the forums. Oh are the antagonists going to have their own racial bonuses and nexus?
T: I imagine that you will still have your own race, but there will be an action modifier for like are you corrupted or not and that’ll then change how your race affects you.
C: Are you at all worried about spreading roleplay around with this sixth nation? Normally I would be if this would be a normal nation, but this is different. The interactions with the other nations and the internal power structure will help.
T: The antagonist isn’t necessarily its own race, but modifying other races.
C: Will players be able to be in positions above the sergeants? I want to push for that, but right now the hishgoul are limited to GM’s, but later we will test out allowing other players to move up.
T: Will the antagonist be able to take over all of Anthos theoretically?
C: Theoretically yes, if no one steps up and stops them then that will happen.
T: But I am sure that won’t happen.
C: Will the antagonist have notable features? The answer is yes, I think anyone who has seen the antagonist has immediately because they kind of freeze up, and I like that people are acting afraid in RP, and I think it comes from being nervous in OOC, because they are so recognizable and I wanted that because people kind of freeze up and I find it really funny. What happens when people have characters on both sides? That’s a good question, because even in this dwarf war, I have had to step back from actively fighting in it at all so I think with the antagonist the same thing will have to happen. Like they will have to step back and act like they are there ICly but as far as participating, I am certainly not going to unless my antagonist character isn’t needed.
T: Is there going to be a way to tell people who have changed, like is there going to be a certain level system like the worm tongues would you be able to tell by marks or something?
C: There are no specific things, but the players so far have handled it well because the hishgoul cannot speak, and can only talk by invading your own mind so pretty much the players who have been face to face with the hishgoul act a little cracked, sort of PTSD, or if fully tainted they would act on the verge of insanity.
T: When are you going to start recruiting? I believe you already are.
C: Yes! I believe that 12 players so far have been recruited, so it’s going to grow from there. Somebody asked me, will the GMs be able to keep the antagonist alive with all there chores? The best thing about the antagonist is they do not require the GMs to be active, because about 90% of the antagonist is the general player base. But we have set it up specifically so a GM isn’t required, so things rest heavily on the sergeants. So when it kicks in I think players will really enjoy playing their characters. This is also why we are going to avoid broadcasts, to try and make it more fun for everyone.
T: Will you still have to go through the normal war methods?
C: Yes, but raids would be more frequent.
T: Last question, Will there be any global changes, ie… rationing, training?
C: Maybe, its all how the server reacts.

Bunch more flavor banter follows if you want to hear it go watch the stream!

 

[Annonny 0]

It seems interesting to me and can easily attract newcomers to the server. Also, livestreams answer a lot of questions anyone has here and such live streams are really rare  for servers out there. Tom Bombadil.