Cappy

I have seen better behaviour from toddlers in a daycare centre. Get a grip, all of you. Both you drfate and the community at large responding need to cut down entirely on the flame, attacks and trolling. Whether or not you agree with someone's lore, that's not an excuse to attack them. Someone criticising your lore isn't an excuse to attack them either. Now I'm locking this and moving it to denied. Very disappointed in you guys.

Not happening, sorry. Moved to denied.

^^ Don't agree with this part, though. Combat magic should still exist. I personally like magic being represented by standard mechanical fighting and participants using their imaginations. I would be all for mechanical combat magic spells being reserved for antagonist/protagonist groups (although that's another can of worms entirely).

Very well, I'll put it this way. In our fantasy world, magic is common. If you want to do something about it, I suggest taking action in-character instead of going back to those awful days when large portions of role-play (for example, anything that could even resemble evil in some circumstances or anything magical) required strict monitoring and an enormous amount of enforcement for practically zero gain other than letting those who had it grow entitled. Anyone else remember the Wihuns? Getting rid of staff-approved powergaming was the biggest plus of removing the old magic system for me. Making role-play less free of restrictons was a welcome bonus. Now the only thing left is getting rid of all the entitled people whining about the time they spent learning magic and all the new people learning it and the injustice of it all. The main reasons for subtypes being locked is it is only known to a select handful of people (such a runesmithing), or is restricted by some in-character method (such as recieving the Fjarriauga curse to become a frost witch) or the third reason, that it is prone to abuse (such as mental magic and alteration). The third example I disagree with because it is entirely subjective and ultimately means nothing. Anything can be abused. But unless the magic fits into either one of the first two categories, I see no reason for it to be locked. When we get a skills plugin, magic like other skills won't be instantly obtainable. Alchemy and enchanting are just ahead of the curve at this point.

There is a difference between a role-play position and your character's proficiency in a certain skill. Refer to my response to Relgard about the instant learning issue. Magic doesn't break mechanical standard, because it can be represented in mechanics through a sword. You can role-play your magic how you like and simply use a sword, because magic is no more powerful than an equally skilled combatant with a sword. Hopefully magic users will get a wider variety of options with the up and coming magic plugin (Soon™), but you can already represent it with mechanics. In a fantasy world such as ours, magic is suppose to be common place. There's nothing wrong with it being widespread. Why should people bat an eyelid to see a mage in a fantasy world? Please explain that to me. Once again we return to the flawed idea that magic is "special". And I reiterate, this is a mindset we need to do away with. The "restricted" magics are perhaps more interesting because they keep their magic restricted through in-character methods, not out-of-character ones. The only reason they're "locked" is to prevent metagaming to obtain said magics. If you think all there is to swordplay is swinging a piece of metal, I'd love to see you try it based on just that knowledge. There's just as much to learn about the intricacies of swordplay as the intricacies of magic. And that fact is while we do not have a fair (as in, holds every player to the same standards) and mechanically-verifiable way to measure a characters' skill (like, say, a skills plugin), it is up to a player to decide what their character is skilled in and the rate at which they gain proficiency in such a task. This applies to all skills - farming, swordplay and magic alike. That is why, currently, anyone can pick up a book and become a mage overnight. because anyone can pick up a sword or hoe and become a swordsman or farmer overnight. That will (hopefully) be rectified when a skill plugin arrives, but until then those standards will apply, and they will apply to everything.

Why should magic take any more effort to get than anything else on the server? It's not special; we need to get out of that mindset. That kind of thinking is a relic left from the days of the MAT. Just like you can pick up a sword and say "I'm a swordsman", anyone can do something mystical and say "I'm a mage". If you don't believe that, you're part of the reason magic is stale.

http://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/112702-my-proposal-to-fully-unlock-alterationtransfigurationwhatever-you-call-it-once-more/page-2#entry1067637

Magic isn't that complex. You don't need to follow arbitrary lore to the letter to produce good role-play. The fact it is so complex is one of the deeply-rooted issues with the entire way magic works on LotC, which is why I fully support a magic lore wipe. If we stopped hammering magic out to a science and let magic role-play be role-play and deal with it like every other kind of role-play on the server, we wouldn't have these "it's too complicated" issues. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the concept of fantasy can understand what magic is, regardless of whether it's coming from the void, the spirit realm or your ass. Now, if you wouldn't mind responding to the actual topic of the post instead of cherry-picking arguments, that would be great.

Let's all stop pretending magic is a higher form of role-play that requires special privlege or knowledge to role-play correctly. The fact is, it isn't. It's not special, it's just another form of role-play. Let's apply the same argument to other aspects of role-play. Without learning the intricacies of hand-to-hand combat (let's say, swordplay) from someone in-character, you aren't permitted to wield a sword in PvP. Without months of experience toiling in the mines, you aren't permitted to mine ores because you aren't skilled enough. Unless you've been role-playing practicing your speechcraft in the mirror for months, you can't convincingly lie in-character. But wait, magic is restricted because you require special knowledge to role-play it? Nonsense. Many people don't properly grasp the concepts of basic physics and anatomy, and yet we still emote fight each other. I'm sure very few of our numerous in-character master-swordsmen are actually skilled (or even learned) in real life swordplay, yet the basics of swordplay (swing, stab, block) are well-understood enough that you don't need advanced knowledge. And magic is the same. The basic premise is "wave hands, stuff happens". The fine details such as how the magic is channeled, the source of the magic and what colour your aura is are frankly unimportant. What's important is that it's fun role-play. If you'd rather someone commit to boring role-play that follows every guideline by the book than someone practicing magic that brings enjoyable role-play that follows the basic premise of their magic, then frankly you're too stuck in the old ways and you are the reason magic has grown stagnant. Magic should be about creativity and having fun, not reciting a bunch of rules over and over in your head to make sure you don't break the obscure "don't cast this magic 8 times in a row after having a bath during a full lunar eclipse" rule. Role-playing something for a long time doesn't give you the right to be better than everyone else. Sorry, that's called elitism. Someone who just joined should be able to pick up magic and create fun role-play with it, even if they don't understand the full ins and outs of the magic. If they're doing it wrong, tell them that. But if you do it in such a way as "I've been doing this for 396 months so listen up because I'm right and you're not", expect to be ignored and have no impact. That, or scare them off for good. I certainly wouldn't want to join a server where a whole bunch of people are at my throat for having fun with magic because I didn't follow the preset lore by the letter, even if they did. Such an attitude quickly scares off newcomers to magic. If someone's making overpowered weapons, enchants or wards, that's what the mechanical standard and PvP default are for. Deal with them like any other powergamer. Powergaming magic is no different than powergaming anything else. Did you know there were more magic powergamers when magic was restricted? They were called tier 4 and tier 5 users.

We have no plans to implement any form of forced permakilling.

How exactly do you propose something like this could be role-played? Does the victim have to (OOCly, at least) consent? Then what, does the ghost just tag around with them 24/7 pretending to not be there? Are both the ghost and victim then rendered incapable of role-playing when the other party isn't present? Because I have a few issues with that.

You've just doomed everyone who reads this thread to losing hours of their lives stumbling across that site. I hope you're proud.