Dry Crackers

A scarred Elf wrapped in a tattered green greatcoat reads the poster. He grimaces. "Good luck, old friend," he grumbles into his collar, and rubs the truncated end of his left ear. "You weren't the smartest of us, but for damned persistence. . . " He sighs, and steps away on to the road.

I wouldn't say Athera missed completely, it just didn't do as well as we might have thought given all the effort that went into it. It "missed", as it were, because it was literally built around a contradiction - on one hand, the map was designed to concentrate roleplay, while on the other hand it institutionalized shitty wilds settlements. It's actually interesting that no one saw this somewhere in the 4.0 dev threads. It is time to begin anew, but BEGIN only. Making a map takes a long time. We need to take as long as it needs to take to ensure we make the best map possible. Athera is not so irraperably broken we need to get a temp map right this moment, in fact I strongly oppose that idea. Let's keep this map at least over summer. If people would get off the forums, get in the game and work on improving things, there's almost nothing but the restrictive mountain ranges that can't be fixed. And in making a new map, take time. Recall the old maps not through rose-tinted glasses but as well as you can objectively remember, there's much to be learned from their performance. First among those lessons is ADMIN TEAM INVOLVE YOUR COMMUNITY. Community involvement got us this map, which hit the dartboard at least. GM dev alone got us Anthos, which was so bad it did need a speedy temp map. I'll also say developing a map will take COOPERATION. We need to have the attitude that we are all together in building a better future for the server, not "grr that damn cyndikate snarking at me I'll show her." Incidentally, what are the "larger issues" a new map is supposed to fix? A new map fixes map problems, little more. If we want to fix larger issues... Go fix larger issues?

What is the direct object in Elvish?

Let's not have a temp map over summer please. If you have a problem with the map, there are ways to deal with it. Don't give up! We need to have the attitude that this map is here to stay. We've been to all extremes of map-making and I think now we have one that is workable. Certainly it's not perfect - nothing is - but we shouldn't just throw out everything that's gone into it. It's not broken on Anthos levels yet. What does need work can easily be done by a few dedicated people and maybe a week or two. Upshot of this is that there's nothing irretrievably broken if we are willing to work to fix things. The only thing broken is this attitude which suggests we can solve all our problems by a quick map change. That's just not true. I will say I'm not adverse to the idea of beginning to design a map, much as we did for this one (community input, sketches, all that,) but in no way is it time to just throw out 4.0 in favor of a temp map, especially over summer when we want to get people on.

I'm putting this here so it doesn't get hastily denied, as this isn't a suggestion per se. DISCUS the possibility of cannons on LotC as if there were no silly OOC restrictions. Do they have a place in our world? How would they fit with existing seige engines? What about boats? GO.

((MC name)): Longbow5 Name: Emanaf Delsaran Age: Four hundred and some. Race: Wood Elf Previous Military Training/Experience: Extensive. Are you a citizen of Laureh’lin? Yes

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