Alan

It depends on the staff member. I myself believe I do a relatively good job of maintaining a face on the forums for official decisions and interacting with the players for feedback and suggestions, though most of the work I do is also behind the scenes. For instance, for the past month or so, I have been working with the Lore Team on a massive project for 4.0. Essentially, our goal is to create a rich and detailed back story that will go along with the map, that way RP can be created for it and the world can actually feel alive. My opinion on Asulon and Anthos is that they felt like carcasses; they were awesome to look at, but underneath there was really nothing there, and RP was created solely by events and the will of the players, so nothing was generated from the map itself. Fantasy worlds aren't supposed to just hold the story, they're supposed to be rich, immersive and actually contribute to the story's progression, which is what we plan to achieve for 4.0. We're in the brainstorming stages as of now, and we have discussed everything from the actual purpose of the lore (besides simply creating a backstory for 4.0) to if and how it will affect the future antagonist to how it will provide RP and events for the players when the map is released. So far hours and hours of time have been put into this project, so I don't expect it to be a flop. Besides that one project, I have also been working alongside the Developers and other GMs in regards to the main development aspects of 4.0. Additionally, we as a team have been in constant discussion (that at times can last hours) involving community suggestions and how to act upon them to ensure our server improves for the better. We've been recently hounding certain teams to ensure they are working up to standards and as efficiently as possible, and we've been brainstorming and coming up with ideas for plugins that can replace or even improve some of our current ones which are either broken, too complex, or simply not right for the server. This is just general stuff though. Each GM has a variety of things that they do that is special to them that might take up most of their time. However, the reason most of this isn't known is because it is behind the scenes for a reason; because it is meant to be kept on the down-low and thus is often not meant to be shared or discussed. Blame Bukkit, lol. It's not really the plugins that hold us back, but rather it is the fact that our server runs on Bukkit and we have to wait for them to create not only an updated build but also a stable one. For instance, the first appearance of a build for 1.6.4 did not appear until three weeks ago, and it still isn't as stable as needed. Now Minecraft is 1.7.2 and a build isn't even released for that yet, which means our next update will still be to an outdated version. With that being said, I don't think it's as much of a turnoff as it used to be. Changing versions is now built into the Minecraft client, so it's as easy as simply changing an option when you log in.

This is more like a list of topics than a list of questions, lol. I apologize, but it's hard to actually figure out what you're asking for most of them and thus I can't answer, so can this be reworded a little? Additionally, a few of these topics have been discussed in a few previous replies of this thread, so you might find your answers there as well. Fast travels were wiped unexpectedly around the time that mines were no longer accessible. They are working still, but it's incredibly pain staking and time consuming to remake each one, and there's also the fact that they reset yet again each time the server restarts, hence why the mines aren't up yet. The Tech Team is currently working on finding and fixing this issue, so when that's done the fast travels will be remade. It's incredibly hard to answer this question professionally, more than you know. What it comes down to is this. Some Admins don't believe that another Admin is necessary (not that they refuse to add one, they just think of it as a want rather than a need), while others do. We generally agree that we're fine without one, that we can make the changes necessary as we are, but there's also the opinion that we could still do more with another Admin. Knowing that, I can say that we have been "considering" it, but the topic has not received as much attention as more important issues, such as Nexus' removal or magic. However, I can say that, should we decide to go through with it, it will certainly not be in this month unless something completely changes our mindset and priorities before then. Each Admin has his own opinion on VAs and MAs that they can share themselves. As a whole, however, a decision regarding magic will be made during the meeting, and that may or may not include what we are doing with MAs (IF we do anything with them). VAs are not a primary topic of discussion, though we may get to it if we have time. As for lore, my own personal opinion is that your "Make fun not lore" stance is incredibly silly. In the past it made sense because the LT was too restrictive and this DID prevent much fun, but that is no longer the case and has not been for many months. Lore, if done properly, is often a factor that contributes to entertainment, immersion and fun, it doesn't detract from it. Even back then, however, the fun that was lost was because of the restrictions on lore, not because of the lore itself. Thus, I can answer your question by saying that I love the idea of making fun AND lore, as well as fun lore. Lastly, changing the look of the website isn't a primary concern as of late. IF we decide to change the look and theme in the future, it won't be until we have the time to do so, as well as the actual desire to get rid of a theme that works perfectly well for the time being.

"[10:05:29 PM] Kevin [Viper3X]: The high-ranking Black Scourge members are having a meeting this weekend to discuss future plans and to organize the North release." Hopefully this answered your question. If not, I suggest PMing Viper :) Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it seems to me like you are using this Q&A as an excuse to vent your frustration over recent events on us and masking it in the form of questions. We are not a ban happy server, and when we do ban players it is for good reason, even if some might not see it that way. If you have an issue with our reasoning, then I suggest taking it to PMs, but please leave it out of here. Additionally, we have taken apparent steps as of late to move away from our "application happy" status, including things such as the recent suggestion of my own to remove the need for lore proposals. This, among many other recent suggestions and decisions, which have arisen after considering the community's own ideas, is what we the staff are doing to improve our relationship with the players.

What I said in regards to magic being nerfed was my own personal opinion and not that of the entire staff, as I'm sure many GMs have opinions that differ from my own. With that being said, Magic will definitely undergo some changes, but the details have not been decided upon yet. Again, magic is a topic of discussion for the GM meeting on Sunday. In fact, for the sake of answering possible future questions regarding the meeting, here is what we will be discussing: 1. I will not promise a time, so as soon as we are able to. I know this doesn't satisfy you, but I'd rather do that then promise a date we could potentially miss should complications prevent us from meeting it. 2. I'd like to get it done this weekend, personally. I know Native and some GMs have been working on an event to surround its movement, and they've been itching to get it done. 3. Refer to item #1. It will be discussed in the meeting though, as noted in my response to the previous quote in this reply. 4. Refer to item #1. We are still deciding whether or not to use McMMO because it is not as configurable as we once thought it to be, and thus it does not fully meet our needs. It /might/ be used as a temporary system, but no promises.

It is indeed being considered, and a final decision regarding it will be reached this Sunday during the GM meeting.

Self explanatory. Ask any questions that you might have for the Staff (the GMs and Admins), whether they be in regards to recent decisions or long standing policies. Please try and avoid asking "common" questions, AKA stuff that can be answered by anyone or by simply reading the forums (like "Where is the Cloud Temple?" or "How do I get a horse?"), and also refrain from trolling, being unconstructive, or being disrespectful to either us or other players. Any useless or inflammatory posts will be hidden. P.S. It's odd that something as obvious as this wasn't done until a player suggested it, lol.

Yep that's actually pretty much right, though you would probably have to stick to current ghost protocol just a little bit, assuming we'd even have any if this went through. Also, I can now officially say God loves me. I'll add that to my "Bucket List" (lolcwatididthar)

I advise putting all those thoughts into their own thread, because although everything you said derived from the current discussion, it's a bit of a tangent. With that being said, some of the things you said don't add up. For one, I am confused as to how this suggestion is a way for the staff to gain control over the playerbase. This suggestion calls for the removal of lore proposals while simultaneously changing lore regulations so that people can take their ideas and RP them IG immediately without having to go through a process of reviewal at all. If anything, is that not giving more freedom to the players? In fact, this is pretty much doing the opposite of what you're saying it's doing as it's taking control of new RP away from the Lore Team so that the players are less restricted. Additionally, I completely disagree with your assumptions regarding 4.0. I'm actually surprised by this quote the most: This isn't meant to be rude, but to put it simply, this is quite simply untrue. If anything, we have never been more open about what we've been doing than with our development of 4.0. We have an entire subforum devoted to ideas and suggestions that we not only take into account but that we actually use. Orcs and Dwarves want to be close to spawn? That's where we moved them. People wanted more land? The map was made larger. Less regioning? We agreed to only region the areas directly surrounding the main road and capitals of the nations. Everyone wanted less prebuilding? We decided to go with small tent camps outside incredibly small and basic settlements to start the map. This isn't just "talk" either, in fact Native has been doing an awesome job of livestreaming 4.0 development every couple of weeks, changing the map according to what the players feel is best. Truthfully, 4.0 is really a project that we are developing based on the whims of the players, not ourselves. You're next paragraph implies that the change in attitude of the playerbase is the fault of the staff. Could the staff have prevented it? Maybe, but that's just wishful thinking. Blaming something on the staff that is really just the result of our community being here longer and thus having more "experienced" veterans who therefore feel superior or elite is grasping at straws, not reality. Following that paragraph, once again the claim that we're a "dictatorship" couldn't be further from the truth. Technically Lord of the Craft IS a dictatorship given the fact that it's an internet server where players only have as much as power as the staff gives them, though no real life law actually prevents those powers from being taken away, which in its most basic form is essentially a staff with absolute power (which we couldn't change even if we wanted to, that's just how it is on the internet). With that being said, we as a collective certainly don't act like that, so I'm not sure why you would think we do. In fact, as of late, we have been giving MORE power to the community by paying more attention to their complaints and suggestions. Nexus, for instance, was queued for removal or at least heavy changing after so many players provided proper negative feedback on it, but rather severe last minute complications forced us to postpone it. Lastly, you're essentially calling us lazy for spending all our time focusing on fixing important issues (Nexus, for example) and trying to fix the state of the server rather than taking the time to create a single event for a single day. Sure, it would have been neat to have an event on Halloween, but what's so bad about us doing one a couple weeks later when we actually have time? Would the players rather have us focus on events to keep them happy while we slowly let the server crash and burn, or let them create their own events while we spend our time trying to not only keep it alive but improve it to the best of our abilities? As for the MPM situation, you're taking an irrationally aggressive stance against the GM team for what was most likely something a single GM said "in the moment", rather than something one of us said officially after thinking it through. Who's to say that GM didn't think about it immediately afterwards and go "Hmm, maybe that wasn't the best idea"? GMs aren't robots, we're people just like everyone else, and thus we make mistakes from time to time. All in all, and I mean no disrespect to you, but it seemed to me like you were using this thread as an excuse to go off on a tangent completely unrelated to the purpose of the thread to discuss your issues with the staff, which is odd given the fact that this actually likely derived from a misinterpretation of the actual message of this thread, as well as the fact that most of the stuff you said was exaggerated or, in a few cases, false. I'm not mad at your for expressing your opinions on the staff, in fact I encourage you to continue expressing your discontent (in a polite way of course, don't want flaming :P), but please in the future do not derail a discussion in order to do so; that's why we have a feedback forum. TL;DR I went off on a tangent to tell you to not go off on tangents. :)

Moved to the Your View forum.

Keep in mind that this is a very flexible idea. I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the OP, and if I did I probably did so without thinking much, but stuff like Magic lore won't be included in this. Proposals for new Magic could still be made, and as always they would be made to the MAT, not the LT. I also am in agreement with this: New ideas can be merely posted in the "Ideas" forum, and if we decide to accept them, then in such cases that the ideas require lore we can get the LT to write some, unless of course the proposer of the idea wants to write the lore themself.

Again, it's hard to say without actually making them, but the entire point behind overhauled lore regulations would be to still allow player ideas, such as creatures and magic, to flourish without actually requiring proposals at all. However, again, certain things that give people an advantage would be disallowed for the most part (For the most part = keyword) considering these are the things that cause the most conflict IG OOCly. If anything, this would allow new stuff to come to the server a lot easier and quickly, as stuff would be added instantly upon a thought and a whim, allowing for dynamic ideas and RP rather than queued waiting and reviews. Players are still allowed to write lore, in fact I encourage it. Writing lore for anything is awesome, but should this idea go through such lore will be for documentation purposes only rather than propositional lore. For instance, if you decided you wanted a new orc weapon, you could just make one as long as it's not advantageous over other weapons. Then, perhaps, you might feel the need to write lore to explain it, but that lore would just be documenting the weapon rather than trying to get it accepted.

Yes and no. It would both restrict creativity and promote creativity at the same time, because it would prevent people from getting things that give them an advantage over someone else, though simultaneously it would allow for people to add stuff to the server without the need for proposing it that fits lore regulations that would essentially be more specific yet in the end much more loose.

Keep the responses constructive please. Close but not exactly. As mentioned in the OP, the lore regulations would be HEAVILY overhauled so that stuff like that could go through without the need for proposing lore, though obviously we wouldn't allow just anything through. Essentially it would be like "You can have your special awesome super weapon thing, but only if it doesn't give you an advantage over someone else and it fits the server's theme". Stuff like that.

Please explain, as without explanation I simply have no idea how this would help. Lore Team does a lot more than review lore, so I firmly believe this wouldn't work. But again, I'm open to hearing what's fully on your mind.

EDITED with a TL;DR, courtesy of Aislin/Gronkk. Apparently I'm not very good at explaining myself and my post was giving off the wrong impressions. :( Sup everyone, here looking for some valued feedback ^^ Alright, might as well start at the beginning. Lore, as we all know, is reviewed and controlled by Lore Team. However, like everything in the world, there will always be complaints surrounding things that emanate from those who have issues with them. To date, the two most common complaints surrounding LotC lore are that the Lore Team "restricts creativity" by being too selective and strict in the reviewing process, while the other (and the topic of this discussion) is that there is simply an extreme overabundance of lore, so much that no one can keep up with it all (not even the LT!). Some of you might have realized what I'm about to say by reading merely reading what the two complaints are, but here's the thing; those complaints contradict each other. Complaining about Lore Team being too strict implies that we're being overly selective and restrictive, meaning that we're not allowing enough lore through. However, the other issue (often complained about by the same people, ironically) is that we have too much player lore, which implies that we're allowing too much lore through. So the obvious question comes, how does the Lore Team not allow enough lore when simultaneously they are allowing too much lore? The Lore Team has changed so much in the past few months, from new lore regulations to new lore reviewing procedures, all with the intent of meeting the expectations of the players. Yet still, there are lingering complaints about it, and the fact that the complaints contradict each other is the exact reason why the team can't do anything about it; because as soon as we tip the scales one way to solve one problem, the other one becomes worse and thus even more issues arise. However, I have delayed the point of this thread enough, as this feedback is not actually about Lore Team. Rather, this thread calls for the opinions of the playerbase in regards to a solution I'm proposing to solve one, if not both, of these issues. I do forewarn you all that are still reading this that the title of this thread is properly named, the following suggestion is incredibly controversial and will receive quite a lot of hate from all sides, but that is why I have come to the feedback forum first after all. I'm suggesting removing player lore altogether. Here is my reasoning. There is a third factor that is the cause of the two main complaints regarding lore being so contradictory, and that is the present of an overabundance of PROPOSED lore. Even if we accepted 1 out of every 10 threads (theoretically speaking, we're not actually this strict), if there are 1000 proposals, that's still 100 threads that make their way onto the server that the majority of players will never know about, which for some is "too much". The problem, as you can see, lies in the quantity of proposed lore, not the reviewing process. So the solution, as far as I can tell, is to simply remove lore proposals. It's a fact that many people don't want to waste time reading unofficial lore that makes its way onto the server, even if it's only in small amounts, when they've already taken the time to go through the actual official lore. However, because of that mindset, very often unofficial lore in game creates problems because at times a few people involved with are unaware of its acceptance. Have you ever stumbled across someone using an incredibly powerful weapon (or a similar situation) that shouldn't be allowed normally and someone asks OOCly why they can use it, only to find out that it's accepted? This OOC barrier is a direct result of people not keeping up with unofficial lore, and it will always be present as long as there are people out there that want to get something added to the server (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) that gives them an advantage or majorly impacts everything. Obviously there are plenty of cons to this solution, most of which I am fully aware of. I guess the trick is overhauling the current lore regulations so that it encompasses ways for people to bring new RP to the server WITHOUT the need for formally proposing lore for it, though obviously in doing so we'd have to exclude a lot of stuff from having the chance to be implemented. For some people this is a terrible thought, though I'm guessing for many it's wonderful. We'll just have to see. So that's it folks. Give me your thoughts, spare me some of your time. What do you think of this proposal? Do you agree with it or disagree? What are the pros and cons, the good things and the bad things? Can this proposal be altered in any way to make more sense or better impact the most people? All opinions are welcome, though as always, please do not flame anyone for theirs. TL;DR I am suggesting eliminating lore proposals. Instead of players having to write a lore proposal, players can simply roleplay lore as they wish, as long as said lore doesn't violate any rules (which will be stated in a new, overhauled lore regulations thread). Staff will take charge of major lore changes. P.S. Do not worry about how this will affect Lore Team. There's always more for the team to do other than simply review lore, though we can discuss such things when we get there.

I remember when I had a working mic

Everyone comes to LotC for their own reasons, and whatever those reasons are, they are entirely their own and respectable. However, not everyone came to LotC just to RP. In fact, given that this is a server on Minecraft itself, it's safe to say that the vast majority of our playerbase came to experience a new side of Minecraft itself where they could both RP and still have fun like they planned when they first got the game. Obviously we cater to roleplaying as much as we can, but we must also not neglect the fact that this is still a server in a game, and thus the vast majority of players, old and new, are here because they wanted to play that game in the first place. That is why we no longer see ourselves as RP, but rather as RP-RPG. Though there are certainly exceptions, I find it very hard to believe that there are many hardcore roleplayers out there that sought out a strictly roleplaying environment in a place such as Minecraft.

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