Danny

Mogroka.

Well, it's been quite a long time since I joined the staff team as a GM, and I think I've enjoyed almost every minute of it, but it's reached the point where I can't sit on it any longer. I'm simply unable to dedicate enough time to you guys to justify staying as admin, or any other staff rank for that matter, so I've decided to take my leave. I was hoping to stick around and work on making 4.0 the very best it possibly could be, on helping to return the server to it's greatness and so on and so forth but I need to dedicate myself to the next two years of school so I can actually get into university: and juggling LotC and them is something I've never managed, and it has hurt my school life. I'd like to think I've done my bit for the server: although, I'm sure some will disagree and some will be glad to see me go - but I can honestly say good luck to you all for the future, and I hope that the server lives up to what it once was. Thanks for having me since late 2011, and I'll try and still be around occasionally on the forums and on Skype, as usual - if anyone ever does need me. As it's 1am my time, I'll be saying my final farewells in Skype chats and settling a few things tomorrow: but, this is the last news post I'll ever make. (Y) I'm sure that the staff team will continue to do a brilliant job and continue to improve the server for you guys: and hey, if they don't, I still have their Skypes, so I can shout at them. :-) Now, I couldn't go without giving you a bit of news, so expect some decisions and things to be implemented this following week, after the GM meeting is over - some things that I am sure you'll be happy with. Finally, I hope that whoever replaces me on the admin team will be capable of actually living up to the time needed, I simply couldn't anymore. Also, sorry for any typos: tired Danny + iPad = not great. But, anyway, without further ado, farewell ol' chums. #DannyOut

Seems you didn't read the OP. As it states, it doesn't have restrictions, only benefits from higher levels.

Territories are settlements, farms, mills, etc. Actual buildings / settlements -- not defined land areas. It says that, does it not? McMMO does the job fine if configured correctly: making it not required to be able to play, and there if you want it, is what we're doing with it if we choose to use it.

Capitals should really be considered safe, in most cases. With 4.0 my bets are that we'll have the nation capitals safe -- right now, there's no real verdict on that.

I know. :|

Hello folks and womanly folks, Long post, but bear with us. There’s no TL;DR - read it, or don’t, essentially. I recommend the latter former. Firstly, I want to give a bit of insight into the decisions about 4.0 that the GM team made the other night, and afterwards I want to detail the war system that is from this point on now in play. If you want to read the war rules, they’re in the spoiler at the end of the post. But, that’s for later. Remaining on the present however, I just want to add in a wee note here. There’s a lot of changes coming in the very near future. A lot of them are aimed to prepare us for 4.0 - so many of the things we say will come with 4.0 (including those in this post, e.g. skills) will actually come before, but right now we don’t know exactly when: so, these things aren’t to be released actually with 4.0, but rather, before and/or nearer to it. There’s a lot of changes that we really are focusing our efforts on: streamlining new player experience, making everything more user friendly, removing restrictions and restrictions -- however, this does take time and discussion, which we’re hoping will be much quicker than the PVP-RP combat escapade we’ll all remember. Decision making has been going much quicker and more fluently recently, and hopefully that will continue, especially with the decision we’re about to make: whether to keep or kick Nexus Combat - but that’s something you’ll need to wait for another post to find out, if you can’t anticipate the answer. But, now we’re looking to the future with 4.0. We know that there’s been quite some debate about the future of the server over the past few days, so, it’s really great that I’m able to announce numerous things right now, as well as actually emphasise some of the things we’ve already said. If you haven’t seen Aislin’s fantastic experiment about the current way new player’s see the server, check it out: http://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/100077-through-the-eyes-of-a-virgin/. It’s very insightful, and it’s really going to actually allow us to understand even more of what we need to do to streamline player experience. However, onto the actual ‘decisions’ that’ve been taken. These are things we know for definite, although the exact little details, etc haven’t been decided yet. Firstly: skills plugin. What we’re doing is returning back to what we’ve termed a ‘Vaquxine-esque’ plugin with a /skills command, assignment of skills when you first start playing and levels that go up as you build, mine, craft, etc, etc. It’s unclear whether we’ll include combat skills in this or not just now, however, I can say that it won’t actually restrict you from doing anything. It’s a plugin that will give benefits for higher skill levels, not restrictions -- e.g. you will be able to mine anything, but with a level 100 in mining, you can get a chance at a double drop, and things such as that. Exactly the plugin that we’ll go for: whether it be custom or pre-made, e.g. McMMO hasn’t been fully decided either yet, but regardless, it’ll follow the kind of idea listed above. And onto mining: we’ll be introducing vanilla style mining back into the game, but located on a separate ‘mining-only’ map so that we can reduce lag on the main one! This means that you’ll be able to simply go onto the mining world via multiverse teleports and you’ll have the freedom to mine to your heart’s content. Simple. Faaaaaaaaaaaast travelsssssss: will either be gone or very few in number in 4.0. We want to encourage everybody to be centralised into the ‘middle sector’ of the map so RP is condensed, hence distances are very small, so fast travels is really defunct. Chances are we’ll have it only for travelling to event locations, etc *coughcough* the Gauntlet *coughcough*. Mobs. We’re actually going for a bit more of a complex system that we’ve ever had, at least on the technical side: for you guys it’s fairly simple. In the middle of the map, mobs are few and far between and are pretty pathetic chaps. However, the further out you go, the more you enter into their territory. Again, aimed at keeping people in the central areas of the map, if you go too far out you’ll come across zombie pigmen laden with gold armour looking for some poor chap’s skull to pan in, but, if you’re sitting on the main roads you’ll probably just find a lonely zombie. Horses. There’s neigh chance of any more of the current system - rather, you’ll actually be able to find yourself a wee steed galloping around in the vast land of 4.0 and just hop onto him and you’ll be pals for life. That does mean, however, there will be sooome form of restrictions on them, however, not to the extent where you need to wait a week to breed them and can only find them in certain stables. The poll did have quite a few other things, but they still need more discussion because there was a pretty mixed vote, so I don’t want to say anything about them until we know more! With 4.0 - we’re not returning to Aegis - what we’re doing is taking the brilliant aspects of Aegis (nostalgia aside) and morphing them into a map and server that’s also orientated around what we’ve learned. Super-quick ‘mechanic change’ finally with regards to the War system. We’ve had a rather rubbish war system for a while now (if you could even call it a war system), so a group of Nation Leaders, players, GMs and Admins banded together and wrote up a new war system. I’ll throw in the new war rules below, and also upload them to somewhere on the site shortly. And with that, that’s this post over. Have a great day, and please, if you have any feedback for the current state of affairs or any ideas or proposals for 4.0 throw them up on the forums: 4.0 is largely designed around what you guys think, so don’t think you’re wasting your time. Thanks for reading. #Out.

The entire purpose of this thread was to move on from discussion of the ban, and actually go back to doing what we're all here for. Clearly, thar hasn't worked. I'll emphasise again: head off and roleplay. I will, however, reply to the posts that caught my eye whilst reading through. I'll say again, look at the appeal - Alan's reply - he wasn't banned solely for the Skype event. Onto the admin point, I can't help but wonder if that's actually an issue of your own: we don't go out speaking to individual people just out of the blue, no staff member does that. If you come to us, we speak to you. If you're in OOC, we speak to you. If you're in TS with us, we'll speak to you. People speak to the admin team on a daily basis: in-game, on Skype, on TeamSpeak and on the forums. Simply go and have a look if you don't seem to think that as true. Sure, not ever admin is entirely active on the forums specifically, but they still do post. Indeed, admin activity has increased over the past while - and that's not solely my opinion - it was acknowledged in GM chat earlier. Despite what some people like to think, we aren't 'hiding away' - we're available if you want us at almost any time, but we can't just magically assume that there's an issue and appear unless someone speaks to us about it - same as the GMs. We reply to threads, we speak to players who come to us on a daily basis. The only votes that really are admin-domain are unbanning and the occasional decision that for some reason was decided to not be GM done. The GM team vote on the vast majority of decisions that we takes, as it's been for a very long time. The reason we totally outlaw ERP altogether is the legal implications it can bring if there are minors involved. I wouldn't say that we have any actual objection it it - although, I for one wouldn't engage in it - but, that's the simple reason. We don't want it done on our servers, because if it is, and a minor is involved, we are liable for it. That's not the full story: he was banned for other things also. As with other bans, however, we don't publicly post evidence and details for the world to see. If the user requests the server ban, we'll oblige and give it to them, but we aren't going to make an exception and give out one because other people are asking for it. And like that, it's 2am. Need to be up at 7ish. Night, I'll check back in the morn.

You can go ahead and be an ass on another server:- as long as you aren't cyber bullying another LotCr we won't ban you for it.

I will not be releasing screenshots, logs or anything else regarding his ban to anyone but himself. We don't just lob around screenshots and images of bans for anyone to see. If AiiM wants to see it, he can ask for it:- although, I wouldn't be able to supply it for around 20 hours as I don't actually have access to it on my iPad. Well, cybering on the server results in an even more harsher punishment that bullying because, depending on who is involved, it can actually result in a breach of law and we're liable - that's why we're so tough on it, not because we want to be. When it comes to Skype, we are not liable:- we also don't moderate Skype, as I've said. Because somebody cybers on Skype, doesn't mean that they're a problem to the actual community. If someone cyber bullies someoneon Skype, we'd consider them to be a problem, as they're clearly willing to do that to another one of our players, which can cause huge issues. The staff team having to deal with things like this isn't anything new. I saw it when I first became a GM last year. I wouldn't say we're now "socia counsellors" - I'd say we're still doing the same job as we've always done, except, we're having to deal with things like this a bit more often than previously (excluding the recent period). Frankly, all that needs done for issues such as this to stop, is for people to get the idea out of their heads that we're out to 'get them'. Without players, we don't have a server to run and moderate, so of course we don't go looking for reasons to ban people and be unreasonable. The post doesn't call them minor past incidents, it simply mentions that. It says the ban itself's reasons include... [insert reasons from post here]. I won't repeat them all, as typing on this iPad is laggy enough. Like I said to Aislin, however, if AiiM wants his ban screenies, etc then he can ask and do with them as he wishes - however, we won't just post them all public. He can show you if he asks, however, I'm sure he's aware of his wrongdoings. Ask him to pop me a PM if you're interested. Major trolling, like what we saw today from people on status' and threads is what he was meaning. We wot perma ban you for having a wee laugh: we do have senses of humour, despite what some think. ;)