NotEvilAtAll

Lived in a settlement without walls for most of my time on LOTC. It’s fine, so long as you aren’t too large to tempt bandits to chain-raid you. Small settlements can easily get away with not having walls. When bandits do come for you, they get bored after a while and stop raiding you all the time. The only problem is if you get OOCly targeted, which won’t go away after a while unlike bandits just doing it for fun/loot. Cities, on the other hand, yeah, those places need walls more often than not. Or a really active guard force.

The average LOTCer might not be all that engaged by less active rural areas, but there is certainly a roleplay niche for the types of roleplayers that are fine with it. It is not fair to deny those players their preferred roleplaying environment through harsh activity checks just because there are other players who don’t prefer it. The players who don’t want to live in a rural area can just choose to not do so. Nobody is forcing them to live in some random inactive village out in the middle of nowhere. I know that there is a niche for less active, more rural areas because I’ve been a part of one of those niches for a long time. In those types of settlements, it’s more about creating your own roleplay than riding off the back of other’s roleplay. You drive your own narrative. You go to a city in order to find large quantities of other players so that you may coast along in their roleplay. You go to rural settlements so that you can personally know all of the inhabitants there, so that you can establish less relationships, but much stronger ones, so that you can be the one who starts your own roleplay. It's not as easy as living in the city, but it can be just as, if not more, rewarding. Some people just don’t prefer cities. The massive quantities of people burns them out, and they don’t want to roleplay as much. Sometimes not being hella active can be a bliss. It’s absolutely not for everyone, which is why it's still important to have large centralized cities, but there is absolutely no detriment to the server for less active rural places to exist. Yes, it is a problem that people log online in rural settlements and then log off because there isn’t anyone else online. That’s not a problem that the staff need to fix by removing the settlements all together. It’s solved by planning when people can be online, by creating events and eventlines to keep people engaged. It’s fixed by leadership, by the will to tread forwards. If a rural settlement with less activity than the walled mega-cities has active leadership, event planning, and a playerbase that is more than happy to keep living there, there is literally zero detriment to the server that I can think of caused by the existence of said settlement. You’re not going to make anything better by forcing them to live in a city.

PvP lag is caused by current versions of Minecraft being very unoptimized for servers, so when there’s too many people in a chunk at once, it can’t really handle it very well. I don’t know if the lag or hit registration would be slightly better if 1.9+ PvP was used in the current version of Minecraft or not. What I do know is that we’re probably not gonna have lag-free warclaims unless Mojang fixes the server lag in recent versions, or if we somehow downgrade the server/war server for lag reasons.

Matchlocks are cooler than Flintlocks

Never change Noz, never change.

Man

If you can’t fight the Demons directly, blow ‘em up instead! +1, good lore.

Name of your plant/reagent: Pipeweed Appearance: The pipeweed plant is a green, leafy stalk. It’s leaves shoot out from the stalk at regular intervals, giving it a somewhat bushy appearance. It can grow to up to 3 meters tall, although higher heights have been achieved when given lots of care. It is eventually capped with small flowers, which serve as its method for reproduction. Every fall, pipeweed flowers that have been fertilized will produce seeds with a light tuff to them like dandelions, which then blow away in the wind. Pipeweed seeds can be told apart from dandelion seeds due to their much larger size. Every winter, pipeweed plants die off. Their seeds lie dormant until spring, where a new batch of pipeweed plants will grow. Pictured above is a pipeweed plant in its early stages of growth. (From the LOTR minecraft mod wiki.) Location: In the wild, pipeweed is usually found along rivers, lakes, streams, and other sources of freshwater. Pipeweed grows best in temperate climates, preferably with a bit of wind. Pipeweed can grow in less favorable climates, although it doesn’t grow as well Raw effect(s) of the plant/reagent: Pipeweed, when smoked through a pipe, provides a slight euphoria. Its side effects include coughing, shortness of breath, mild addiction, and lack of awareness of surroundings (some consider this an upside, though). (image from The Lord Of the Rings movie adaptation, directed by Peter Jackson, produced by New Line Cinema and WingNut Films.) Harvesting: Pipeweed, due to its pleasant properties, is frequently farmed as a cash crop. When given enough water and a decent amount of sun, pipeweed can grow just about anywhere that isn’t too hot or too cold. In order to harvest it, the stalks are chopped off in late fall, and then all of the leaves are plucked off to be used in smoking before they fall off of their own accord. The leaves are then dried, crushed, and used in a pipe or cigar. Red Lines: -Pipeweed’s side effects must be roleplayed. To smoke pipeweed and not show any of its side effects is powergaming. -Smoking pipeweed provides no other benefit than a pleasant sensation. It has no medicinal value. It provides no pain relief. {field_name_279} {field_value_279} Alchemical Sign(s) (put N/A if none): n/a {field_name_281} {field_value_281}

One day, I tried to play Dalek348’s personal world download of Branborough. It was all jolly fun, until I managed to fall through the void when inspecting the mineshafts underneath the village. This is where I respawned. It turns out that the save of Branborough actually had other chunks saved on it. A LOT of other chunks. I talked to @Kaiser about it on Discord. He helped me confirm that it was indeed a functional map of Asulon, a map that nobody had access to previously. That was a great day to be alive. This is a thread I made about the map of Asulon I’d discovered. While it’s not the original thread (since I first discovered this in 2017), it has a lot more information on it. Here are all the coordinates of places within the Asulon save. Sadly, the Dwarven capital is only partly there and there doesn’t appear to be any Orcish settlements at all. Still pretty good though. If you were an Elf, Human, or Halfling back in Asulon then it’s quite likely that your home is preserved in this save. Heck, it even has the capital of the Mori’Quessir: Very cool city. I love it. A real shame that it looks so disheveled. Probably wasn’t having the greatest of moments when this world download was taken, or maybe it just looked like that all the time as some sort of weird aesthetic. Funnily enough, no matter how hard I looked, I could not find the proper entrance to this city. It just doesn’t appear to have any connections to the surface that aren’t outrageously long, winding, and confusing as hell. I think it might’ve only been accessible via fast travel. It has the Kha village too! Goes down quite a ways! While 2012 didn’t have the highest build qualities, it was filled to the brim with imagination! Here’s Malinor: Some bits of it burned down on my save because I couldn’t do /gamerule doFireTick false fast enough! A whole lot of wood with fireplaces galore is bound to ruin any world download if you don’t do /gamerule doFireTick ASAP. I give all credit for this save’s existence to Dalek348. He made the world download, after all. He also helped find coordinates of all the cities that were preserved on this save. A true epic gamer indeed.

Do note that this is not a feedback thread nor is it trying to drag up old drama or anything. While I do mention that previous drama existed, it is for the purpose of providing context rather than trying to make the old rage boil again. I was not playing LOTC at the time that the Vailor halflings had their village removed, nor did I have any relation to their playerbase whatsoever at the time. I am not raging or driving my blood pressure up over anything at all, as I literally have nothing to get mad about. I do not think you’ve understood the point of this thread. I made it to promote discussion about an aspect of LOTC’s being, not as the typical rage-post that pops up whenever something goes wrong for someone.

I do know that, yes. I made this post so that I could hear from other communities who had lost something in the past and then regained their footing. I want to hear their story. There’s not much halfling presence outside of Brandybrook. There’s a handful of halflings who live in and around Helena and Oren, but they’re few in number and tricky to find. There’s a few halflings who live in the Druidic Grove, but they’ve done all the fancy Druid stuff to become immortal and don’t look like halflings anymore. If you’re not visiting Brandybrook, you probably won’t see many halflings. Brandybrook itself isn’t inactive though. We had an event that attracted 10 halfling players just yesterday. You’re probably not going to see anybody during off-peak times, sure, but it’s very likely that there’s a halfling or two mucking around the village if you visit it during peak hours. I agree with everything you’ve said here. Halflings are never going to be as active as human cities. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any people who enjoy playing the race. I’d like to hear your opinion on whether or not it’s a good idea for staff to destroy inactive communities with the hope that they’ll rebuild into activity. Do you think it works? If it does work, is it worth it? That question is what prompted me to make this thread, and I’d prefer for people to talk about that topic rather than how certain races aren’t as active as others.

Introduction I was digging through old forum posts about the staff destruction of Goodborough back in 2015, when I realized something. The idea of a settlement being directly destroyed by staff was not as common back in those days, yet is a much more frequent occurrence in modern LOTC. Since I’ve experienced the post-Goodborough destruction halfling race, and the final recovery from the instability caused by Goodborough’s destruction, I thought I’d make a thread talking about what happens when a community has to revive itself from scratch after being destroyed by staff. (The following information comes from the forums and not personal experience, so I apologize for any inaccuracies) Back in 2015, Athera transitioned to Vailor. Land at the start of the map was to be given out to nations, which were determined by activity. Halflings, who had traditionally been given land at the beginning of every map despite being far less active than the average nation, were given a 100x100 plot under the conditions that they became more active under it. This led to the creation of Goodborough, the first halfling village of Vailor. Some time passes. Goodborough becomes an established village. However, the staff weren’t happy with the activity of the village. The halflings were still less active than what was required for a nation. They tell them to get more active or they’ll destroy the region. The halflings try and get more active, but it’s still not enough. The staff give the halflings a new ultimatum: either become a vassal of Oren or High Elves and keep the current Goodborough region, or have Goodborough be destroyed. The halflings choose to become a vassal of Oren. There was a lot of miscommunication between the staff and halflings over this. There were some angry skype calls between the two groups. It’s been theorized that the staff weren’t even communicating properly between themselves at the time. Whatever the case may be, despite many staff promising to leave the Goodborough region alone, the final staff decision is to destroy Goodborough and leave the halflings to figure out the rest. So, what happens when a community is destroyed? A lot of things. Let me run through what might happen. A: The community is destroyed. There’s nobody who wants to revive it. There’s not enough interest in the community’s roleplay niche for there to be people who want to revive it sometime later. The community is gone forever. or B: A few players band together to revive the community. Through a lot of effort, they manage to scrape something together. Their first attempt might not work, but they’ve probably managed to gather up enough interest in the community for a second attempt to be possible. Leadership changes much more quickly than usual. There’s likely to be several settlements per map. Ambitious players might seize the opportunity to declare themselves leader of a community and gobble up its players and roleplay niche so that they might rule it for themselves. Eventually, after a long time has passed, the community achieves stability again. Leadership becomes more long-term. The community is more stable and has higher player retention. People rest assured knowing that the effort they put into the community won’t be thrown to the wind all of a sudden. The period of relative tranquility might not last forever, but the community is no longer afraid of not existing in the near future. Option B is what happened to the Halflings. It’s happened to other groups as well, I think. Why do staff destroy communities? Because they want option A or B to happen to the community. They might look at the community and think “Wow, there really is nothing of value to the server going on here. This should stop existing.” and then destroy it with that exact intention. This is what happened to a lot of less active charters during the Charter Reform. The staff just didn’t want there to be that many communities in existence, and thus they trimmed them down by destroying the ones they deemed unworthy of existence. The staff might also look at a community, think “Hmm... this community isn’t very active, but I’m sure that there’s enough interest in the niche it provides for it to exist no matter what we do to them. I think it would be wise to destroy what they have currently so that in the process of rebuilding they will achieve greater strength”. This is what happened to the halflings of Goodborough. The mentality was to destroy the village so that the halflings might live. (This reply to one of the drama threads surrounding Goodborough getting destroyed sums up the opinion of the staff who wanted Goodborough gone pretty neatly. It was phrased as though the staff were doing the halflings a favor by letting them rebuild and become active elsewhere. Also shows the tension between the staff and halflings at the time. It got real nasty. Harsh words were exchanged.) Destroying the settlement so that the community might live But does that actually work? Does wrecking a settlement hold the potential to revive the community who lived there? Let’s look at what happened to the halflings after Goodborough was destroyed. The first attempt to create a new halfling village was Petyrborough. It lasted for a little while, but eventually some dwarves terrorized the halflings of Goodborough enough for them to move elsewhere. So far, not so good. The destruction of Goodborough hadn’t done any good to the halflings yet. The second village fared much better. It was right next to the Wood Elf city, and it was called Willow Hollow. There, the halflings finally started to get active again. Halfling culture came back in full force, with Shogging Tournaments and festivals being held, halfling families reestablishing themselves, and other such good things. This boom of halfling activity lasted into the next map too. When Vailor turned into Axios, the Willow Hollow halflings created the village of Reedsborough, which shared Willow Hollow’s prosperity and had many festivals of its own. So, that’s that, right? Halflings were destroyed by staff in Goodborough, but came back to activity in a new village. The destruction of Goodborough had done its intended purpose. Halflings went from a quaint 100x100 plot begrudgingly created by staff due to the precedent of giving halflings land every map to a bustling village next to the Wood Elf city suitable for shaders videos with Concerning Hobbits playing in the background. Mission successful? Not quite. Halflings had activity, sure. They did not, however, have much stability as a community. They had recently reimagined themselves under new leadership, so what’s to say that someone else couldn’t try and do the same? What’s to say that their vision of the halfling race wouldn’t be as valid as what had already been created? Bahbou123456, the richest player in early Axios, created a charter on an island above the deserts of Tahn. There he created a village called Mellsburry. He was a good leader, at least OOCly. He also had a lot of friends, and he had all of them play halflings. Suddenly, there was more than one halfling village in Axios. Mellsburry kept growing and growing and growing as bahbou had more people create halfling characters. Soon, Reedsborough was less active than the new village of Mellsburry. Bahbou would literally go burrow to burrow in Reedsborough, /realname’ing the inhabitant of every dwelling, finding some way to contact them, and then beg them to leave Reedsborough to join Mellsburry. At first it was just annoying, and it led to a lot of tension between him and Reedsborough’s leadership, but as Mellsburry grew and grew, the halflings of Reedsborough became more and more inclined to move to the new village. This was the first halfling village I’ve ever played in, so I remember quite a lot about it. Mellsburry became a very thriving village. Bahbou even tried to turn it into a proper nation instead of just a charter, and he almost succeeded in doing so. Then he had to go on hiatus for a month or so, which was the beginning of the end for Mellsburry. I was chosen to lead the halflings of Mellsburry in bahbou’s stead, but I wasn’t fir for the job at the time. I eventually left Mellsburry ought of boredom, seeing that yet another village, Rivershire, was being created. With its leadership either on hiatus or fully abandoning the village, Mellsburry quietly fell into inactivity, never to see a halfling soul walk in it ever again (except for when persona creation got bugged and automatically put new personas inside of Mellsburry, which got fixed after a while). At that point, halflings were dead. There were no active villages. Reedsborough was a ghost town, Mellsburry was slowly dying. There were more halflings wandering around human cities than there were in any village. It was a dark time for the halfling race. It lasted for a few weeks or so, though I don’t remember it well. I mostly played other games during that time, since I had nothing to do on LOTC besides wander aimlessly. Halflings becoming relevant again was a slow crawl. It started with the creation of Pendlemere, a new village designed to bring the halflings back together again. Pendlemere succeeded in doing so, yet started to fall into inactivity as well after a while. It took yet another village, Mapleshire, being created in order to bring life back to the halflings. The inhabitants of Pendlemere wanted to end the map with a bang instead of a whimper, so decided to purposely abandon the village in favor of something they could get Limited Creative on. From there, the halflings moved into Atlas. Early on in Atlas, the halflings were going to live within the walls of Sutica. That plan did not work out, however, and a second village was created in freebuild in hopes of living outside of city walls. The drama was ended prematurely when one of the halflings asked the Admins for a region inside of the Cloud Temple and was given the ability to do so. Thus, Dunshire was created, and halflings finally, after years of constantly moving villages, sudden periods of incredible activity followed by near complete death, and general confusion, were able to become a slow-burning, stable race once more. Conclusion So, did the destruction of Goodborough work? Can destroying a community make them rebuild back into activity? Potentially. The path that a community must take to revive itself is full of drama, stress, anxiety, and instability, yet it does indeed hold the potential to generate more activity. The question, of course, is whether or not it would be better to find an alternative method to make a community more active. I personally don’t think it’s the best option. If the staff want to destroy a community for being inactive somewhere with the hopes they’ll be more active someplace else, it’s probably a better idea to just worldedit them to the new location. If the staff want to make leadership of a community active again, it’s probably better to hand over the region to the community’s current active players instead of destroying everything and hoping that strong and resourceful leaders will arise from the ashes to rebuild everything. If the staff want to make the community work harder to improve itself, it could provide a positive incentive for doing so within the current settlement instead of forcing them to spend the effort making a brand new place to live and roleplay in. Making a community rebuild itself does indeed make them more active after the dust has settled. Heck, my community has even done that to itself purposely by moving to a new village to generate more enthusiasm. It is very crude, and not for everyone. Even if it does technically work a lot of the time, it’s probably not the best way to make a community more active. It’s much easier to go wrong in starting fresh than it is in reinvigorating something old. Thank you for reading my thread. I shall now go back to sitting in Brandybrook waiting for chickens to lay eggs. Other stuff: This thread isn’t a feedback thread. Also I’m not dissing staff. The whole thing with Goodborough happened years ago and halflings are on much, much better terms with staff now. I’d like to hear from other communities that were destroyed by staff for being inactive yet managed to rebuild themselves. I’m sure they’d have some interesting stories as well.

In that case there’s little I could do to help you, unless you’re in need of a mediocre editor who only figured out how to do non-cut transitions a week ago.

You can ask @Madyssey for some help in getting shaders footage of the area. He has a hardcore gaming PC apparently. I’m already trying to make a video in collaboration with him where I do the editing and he records the clips, but we’ve been stalled by a lack of new footage.

After you’ve done the spotlight on Sutica, could you do a spotlight on the Aegrothond tile? There’s a lot to show there, from the fortress of Aegrothond to the villages of Siramenor and Brandybrook to the islands scattered about between Korvassa and the mainland. After that it’d probably be best to head north a little ways. Urguan? Krugmar? Whatever Dark Elf settlement is active right now? Those would be cool.