Danny

At the end of the day, that's exactly it, and that's what it's always been. It's a Minecraft server you roleplay on; not another game. Vanilla, with chat, regions, persona and LWC did it fine without extending things to become something entirely different with interfaces and plugins. No disrespect to the coding team, they're brilliant, but well-made plugins don't equate to what's best for the server, and just because something's had a lot of work put into it doesn't make it best for the server. Learn from the mistakes. Stop treating it like a new game: it is Minecraft. But again it spins around to the players too. Staff ain't gonna manage to learn from their mistakes when player feedback is constantly just berating, insults and complaints with little constructive responses. Remember the staff are players too, and remember your opinion is not fact. The only fact involved is the mission of the server, which beyond the ridiculous mission statement (another prime example of this OTT attitude instead of just being a normal server) is to provide the playerbase with a Minecraft server (not a brand new game) which they can roleplay on. LotC is past its heyday, but that's far from an excuse to abandon its real mission in favour of trying to create a new game experience: if you want to do that, LotC is not the place for it. That's exactly where LotC has collapsed before, and where it's still collapsing now.

Analogy doesn't work. Not easy to fix, but perfectly possible. First step is literally chilling and stopping the pretentious bull**** and getting back to basics. Focus on exactly what you started with there, the roleplay. Cut the unnecessary plugins, keep the beneficial ones. Make sure staff engage in roleplay and with players. And key, be a group of players together not a business and customers. Not easy, but a foot in the right direction rather than continuing in the wrong one we've been going down since 2012 or whatever. Edit: And abandoning a pleasure is hardly a solution to the problem. If people find enjoyment in the server, and think they can again, the focus should be on providing said enjoyment rather than screwing the system even more. Just throwing it out there.

Just a view from the outside. LotC first began losing its way when we got hung up on protocol and trying to treat it like an actual business and we began to turn the tide on that back in 2014 but now things seem to have just spun about again. Cut the crap, focus on the actual job of providing a roleplay platform. At the end of the day, staff are players who run the server, listen to the follow players. And just cut all this protocol crap, chill, that's how you get an interactive and effective staff team that a playerbase will actually like and respect and work with. There's no need for this department initiative or ridiculous over-formality with posts and internal documents, just relax and be human, this isn't Blizzard or ArenaNet, it's LotC... And Jesus Christ, players, stop acting as if you've got a bunch of complete arses hellbent on destroying your fun and the server as a staff team. Until you're in a situation where you're actually in a management position, just stick to the constructive feedback rather than acting like the admin and GM team are a bunch of tyrannical maniacs. Get a grip. They want the server to thrive just as much as you do, and their opinions are equally as valid as yours. Plus, key point, they were players too and still are... People have different perspectives, the key is balancing them - at the end of the day everyone's purpose is the same: it's Minecraft, it's a roleplay server, stop treating it like something different. Admittedly, during my tenure, I never managed to understand this and regretfully it's only now that it sinks in when you look from the outside. I stick my head in regularly to check out the forums and it's actually embarrassing looking in and seeing some of this crap happening and if it's embarrassing for an ex-player, something makes me think it's gonna be killing that new-player vibe. tl;dr: staff & players, it's Minecraft, you're here to roleplay whether staff or player, stop overthinking it and just get to the basics of roleplaying and playing Minecraft rather than overthought complete remakings of the game and OTT extensions to vanilla In any case, please yourself, take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt or take some heed of it. I'm an ignorant, ex-player just giving two cents at something that has not changed since I joined in 2011... I'm back off to real life, ciao.

Sounds a plan. #BroseusRepresent

What an absolute **** I am! I was sitting trying to sift through names.. Pint on me? I'm telling you - an email campaign to all registered forum members about some special in-game event revolving around this and boom, you're gonna get a fair number of people back in play just to check things out. And why not? I'm pretty sure I can make it down to Leeds.

Niceeee!

I picked a pretty good team, eh? ;) AT > VAT.

I don't think crap is even the word.. The newbies now don't even compare!

I was a wee lad myself! One of the first people I spoke to cause we were both so obsessed with the forum!

I don't think it'd be possible to forget that one buddy..

Best memory of Asulon? Shoot.

#Represent. That ain't a memory of your time here though! No getting out of replying!

I remember actually being psychically terrified of them.. That's not right for a bloody Minecraft server! The Undead really were a brilliant feature, and you're right, knowing you could never even win was so strangely entertaining. I miss you man.

Whoops! Damn, I forgot to mention the brilliant staff team that I worked with over the time. Matt, @Geo, @Freya , @Ever and @Gemmylou to mention a few. Even bloody staff meetings and the constant buzzing of the GM Skype chat sticks out as a memory...

I don't think I ever had a clue what I was doing.. Hahaha!

Hi, long time no talk. Well, LotC is 5 years old in only a month or so and I thought it would be nice if we were to have a thread for looking back on those five years and for you to talk about what LotC has done and has been for you, plus, smash in some videos and screenshots! I don't know about you, but LotC was a massive part of my life and it was amazing. I joined in 2011 and it was like.. heaven. I was a thirteen year old little kid, I had no sense of maturity, I was a complete idiot. You meet so many people, you have a great laugh and you have fun. I'd never roleplayed in my life but something drew me in and I'm glad it did. LotC is a brilliant community, and it's one that's gone through a hell of a lot of crap. Realistically if you've been on LotC for more than a week, you'll have seen an absolute ton of drama in your time. I can still remember 3/4am nights (damn time differences) sitting up facing the burning flames of something that went down, people going crazy, the server actually becoming a battlefield.. But at the same time, there's a lot of points where the community doesn't tear itself apart, because no matter how crap some days are, it is a damn good community. We've lost some amazing people over the five years the servers been around - a lot of people have made huge impacts and almost everyone will know their names - @Availer, @shiftnative , @Vaquxine and so many more who are no longer on the server like they once were. And there's those players who didn't have a massive impact on the server as a whole, but on the way we played ourselves, they did. Everyone has those players they roleplay'd with when they first joined who completely shaped the rest of the game for them - in my case it was @Pepernootand Coppercab, turned me from an illiterate, metagaming newb into a semi-decent roleplayer.. And hey, there was some amazing roleplay there - stuff I still remember like it was yesterday, and it was 4 years ago... I'm not around any more. I stick my head in from time to time, and I'll be honest, I recognize very few people. But even though, it's still LotC - yeah, maybe a different LotC than what I knew and was used to, but you know that if you want to wind down, screw it, log-on and go mug some wimp on the road, or scroll through the show yourself thread or go have fun reading the angry feedback threads and ban reports. And I'm sorry, but I will never accept anybody saying Aegis was not amazing. Aegis was the height of LotC for me. And that ain't nostalgia talking, that's just what LotC was for me. I don't know if it's becuase I was staff from there onwards that I missed out on the experience of other maps but it was when LotC was Minecraft with RP, it was relaxed and chill, it was nooby and I loved nooby! Nothing was too serious, if you couldn't roleplay it didn't matter, nobody bloody could! The Bandits on the Kings Road were hilarious. Stepping off the road and just being able to build was amazing. The threat of the undead was terrifying. The bloodied eyes of @Gwonam_Blaze in Alk'hazar was somewhat welcoming... It was terrifying to go North of the city! That was my LotC height. Asulon was pretty damn good too I'll admit. Queue Roseus Aquila (#represent). @Lirinya, @Ascendant, @Tigergamer, @Roze and the rest. Aeri was my favourite character I've ever played (tied with Huurk and Servius Magdu) and it was you that made it that way. And the creepy figure of @Uraseptyou could sometimes see.. Guh. So, yeah. Thank you to everybody who ever rolplayed with me, who ever spoke to me, who ever sent me a modreq! It was my life for three years and it was brilliant. Let's make LotC's fifth anniversary something to remember - admin team go and organise a party, get the old players back, sent an email to every member on the forums getting them back! The server is five bloody years old, let's go and make it something special - the old admins, the old Gms, the old players, the old everything - let's make something amazing for that five year anniversary. And I'd like to make a final little note her about how strong and powerful the community of LotC is. We've lost a number of players over the five years, who have passed in real life. And what do we do? We don't forget them. We stand by them, we've sent their families messages - and even if that is from an online community that they don't know, it's the people who really were their friends, and we've made tributes towards them. This is all shown, clearer than I could ever type, in the beautiful video created by @Song Druid and Seth in dedication to Maeghan. Now I never knew Maeghan, and I'm sure many of you didn't either, but this is what LotC is all about, it's a community, and yes we're only in communication through a little game, but that doesn't change anything. Now, what's your experience with LotC? That's the whole point of this thread, show it.

I thought about it a while back just never bought it. Might have to give it a go.

Hope this ain't too late but I noticed you didn't have much luck. I've not done much Medieval warfare but I've just flicked through the recommended reading for my Medieval History module and there's a few that might be handy. Don't know if your institution has subscription access for the eBooks of them but hopefully you can find at least a few of them. They might be useless or they might be useful, haven't checked any out but just a few pointers anyway. Hewitt, Herbert James, The Organization of War Under Edward III, 1338-62 (Manchester, 1966) - available ACLS Humanities if you can get onto it, handy for the process of war? Simpkin, David The English aristocracy at war: from the Welsh wras of Edward I to the Battle of Bannockburn (Woodbridge, 2008) - on DawsonEra - maybe handy for looking at leadership, etc? Matthew, Donald The Norman Conquest (London, 1966), maybe good for a generic look at the example of the Norman Conquest E.M.C. van Houts The Norman Conquest through European Eyes (article) in The English Historical Review, Volume 110, Issue 438, pp. 832-853 - on jstor if you have access K.B. McFarlane, War, the Economy and Social Change: England and the Hundred Years War in Past and Present, Volume 22, Issue 2, pp. 3-18 - on jstor also, handy for effects of medieval warfare? Like I say I've never read them so they might be totally useless but then again they might give a few ideas. The articles are fairly short so are probably the best bet instead of hunting an entire book.. Hope it helped a bit! Edit: Did a bit more digging and this looks quite good for looking at the practice of medieval warfare, hopefully you can get to it. It's on as an eBook, the print book is about £70 from my uni bookshop.. Gah! Keen, Maurice Hugh Medieval warfare: a history (New York, 1999)

First Total War experience was Rome, fell in love. To this day it's still one of my favourite games. I literally never play anything anymore but I go through little stages of a week or so where I play one game and it tends to be it. I liked Empire & Napoleon a lot, but Rome II just was the biggest disappointment for me ever, it was just awful. Not looking forward to or buying Warhammer - not my cup of tea, I'll stick to the first Rome.

Comparing to 2015 General Election positions, closest to the SNP... Guh.