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The event "The Assault on Taekir" is beginning in 1 day, 13 hours.

The End of Warlords.
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Abandoned Realms



Joined: 23 Jan 2004
Posts: 346

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:22 am    Post subject: The End of Warlords.

After many long years of battle, the Forge of Warlords is now finally
closed, and the names within left to the memory of the Ages. Let all
within the realms pause for a moment in their day to honor Thera's
greatest warriors.
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jeoparty



Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Posts: 124

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:41 am    Post subject:

LOL kthxbye!!!1
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Xerties



Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 484

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:42 am    Post subject:

Why? Just why?
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Davairus
Implementor


Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 10344
Location: 0x0000

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:59 am    Post subject:

Should be some more news posted tomorrow, I'll get the ball rolling today.

The main reason is that we're replacing it with a new cabal (tentatively called "keepers") that has a much more important purpose. This has been a cabal 3 years in the making. Warlords avoided the chop for so long because of its popularity.

"Keepers" (tenativetly) are followers of true neutrality that take an active approach in preserving the Balance within Thera. You should find more about them in the helpfile. Its not open yet, so you've got time to get your true neutrals rolled up.
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m1co



Joined: 21 Apr 2006
Posts: 149
Location: Tartu, Estonia

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:05 pm    Post subject:

AS i mentioned on IRC, i see no point having keepers at all...seeing how true neutrals should act on ethos helpfile makes me visualize such situation:

Seringale, the Grand City of Corruption:

Knight attacks Legion
Legion attacks Knight
fight fight fight fight fight
Justice comes, tries to apperhand
fight fight fight fight fight
Keeper comes, yells "Please friends, do not fight, there can be balance!
Both good and evil can excist without harming the other! Please stop it this instant!"
fight fight keepers get smashed fight fight fight
another keeper comes "Do not fight! Presude the peace my friends!"
fight fight second keeper gets head smashed fight fight
keeper1 and keeper2 delete
and fight over thera continues

wheres the point Confused
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MrCarb



Joined: 20 May 2006
Posts: 170

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:36 pm    Post subject:

I imagined it more that the keepers would be forever switching sides in the knight/legion war to favour the current underdog and thus ensure that neither dominates the other.
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Soldier



Joined: 26 Jul 2005
Posts: 258

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:35 pm    Post subject:

Fuck keepers up the ass first Sethronu is deleted now you take out warlords I should bitch slap you. Warlords just played out nicely if Warlords and keepers were there that might be interesting and go back to the old warlords style any warrior class any align.
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MrCarb



Joined: 20 May 2006
Posts: 170

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:02 pm    Post subject:

I've always seen neutrals as those with either a vague or flexible ethical code, rather thaan those with a strict code of balance.

If your talking about a character that sees 'balance' as desireable and/or neccessary to the universe and therefore strives to upkeep it than they are, in reality, a good character. (after all, what is more 'good' than desperately trying to maintain what you believe to be the best possible state of existance for the whole universe?)
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MrCarb



Joined: 20 May 2006
Posts: 170

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:07 pm    Post subject:

On the gameplay side of things, i just really don't like the idea of more one-alignment factions. One evil and one good works for me, but even these allow for different ethos to keep things interesting.

I think that limiting cabals to a single alignment-ethos combination may limit the posibilities for internal cabal politics.
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formalism



Joined: 03 Jul 2005
Posts: 83

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:18 pm    Post subject:

Don't really play anymore, but I'll indulge myself and just say one thing: g4y.
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Xazappith
Immortal


Joined: 03 Aug 2005
Posts: 169

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:27 pm    Post subject:

I'm surprised that Warlords is going to just dissappear. I think that Warlords, and perhaps even Mystics could have been kept (or at this point resurected) as Coteries. They would need to be more like Nobles in that you have to be inducted and you can't lose the association without any repercussions, but still have a 'place to call home' such as the herald's taverns or the noble's palace. As a Coterie, they would of course have to have their skills diminished, but I think it would be worth it just to have a place where charactors who are 'nomagic' could be recognized.
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Matthais



Joined: 05 Feb 2004
Posts: 206
Location: New York

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:32 pm    Post subject:

I can't say I am surprised. Warlords have been getting shafted as a cabal for over a year now; Records were already bastardized by allowing everyone to have one, perfecting skills and spells is frowned upon, and Warlords were already getting limited by ethos. I guess this is really not all that big of a step.

Keepers sound dull and meaningless, but thats just me. I guess Ill delete my wannabe now.
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Rezakhan



Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 209

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:10 pm    Post subject:

I haven't played in a year, but I still keep up with the forums and such (of course). So I don't know if it's been building to this or if this is really just out of the blue.
I don't know what Keepers will be like, but I think it's a shame to see Warlords go--they were always my personal favorite cabal to play, and I think they were unique among all the cabals--all the other ones focused on using whatever means necessary to eliminate their enemies (Knights to slay evil, Legion to slay anyone, Justice to catch criminals, etc.) while Warlords, at least on paper, stood for something more important.
It seems like the idea of Keepers is going to only further polarize the characters in AR--the IMPs used to say that they wanted to avoid a 'Red Team, Blue Team' mentality on AR, but taking away a unique cabal and adding one that limits itself to true neutral seems like it will only further such a mentality.
If I am wrong about the role of Keepers (and I don't know what they will be, so perhaps I am), and they will bring a welcome addition to AR, why must it come at the expense of Warlords? Would it not be possible to have both, perhaps with Warlords going back to allowing any alignment? I don't think the two would overlap so much that the playerbase wouldn't be able to support having both of them.
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E-ant



Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 434
Location: Estonia

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:54 pm    Post subject:

I've been waiting for warlords to be deleted for over 6 years.
This makes me somewhat of an expert on this issue.
So I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.
Some of you are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
But you don't. Trust me.
I think some of you are just trying to make yourself sound clever.
This is how bad information gets passed around.
Don't try to make yourself sound like you know what you're talking about when you don't.
Because some AR newbies believe anything they read.
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Burzuk
Implementor


Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Posts: 529

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:16 pm    Post subject:

A decision long foreshadowed:

a) When Mystics were closed with various reasons cited ("free" cabal skills without notable cabal duties, lack of direct cabal conflict, being a class-based cabal for classes that were plenty powerful enough to not need such a cabal, etc), similar arguments were raised (multiple times) regarding Warlords as well. I had mostly ignored that line of discussion at the time, because we had already been planning to close Warlords even back then but I didn't want to open up that pandora's box just yet.

b) When Assassins were merged with Legions, I said as a teaser that one more cabal would be removed to make room for a new cabal, and categorically added that it would not be Justice. Looking at the other candidates -- Knights, Legions, and Warlords -- it wasn't hard to deduce that Warlords would be the one biting the dust.

Truth is, Warlords were an ad hoc solution to the relative weakness of the warrior/berserker class from day 1. However, with the completion of Combat Modules A and B, we've done an enormous amount of work on those two classes. I think it's safe to say that at this point, warriors and berserkers have been handling themselves just fine without a cabal like Warlords. Every cabal has had at least one warrior and/or berserker in it for quite some time now, which you couldn't say prior to Combat Modules A and B. Having brought the warrior and berserker classes to a point where Warlords are now unnecessary is a major triumph of the combat changes we've made on AR.

The main reason why Warlords have stuck around so long (after Mystics had already been yanked) is to give the Imm staff some additional Warlord fights to snoop so that we can fine-tune the combat system using our observations. There are still come more combat tweaks to come, but by this point it's obvious that our new combat styles and weapon types system is already working very well, thanks to the information we've garnered from Warlord fights. It's an enormous accomplishment when you sit back and think about how much more dynamic combat is compared to the old "dual wield maces and dirt spam" version of AR. Thus, in this indirect way, AR's dynamic combat system will continue to be a legacy of the Warlord cabal.

As for Warlords as a coterie, that depends on YOU as players. If there are enough mortals running around with a self-organized Warlord "clan" doing what Walords did, we may very well promote them to full coterie status along with the coterie benefits. Frankly though, from what I've seen people join Warlords for the "free cabal skills", not for the "fight challenges" RP. You're welcome to prove me wrong on this.

I'm not going to say too much about the Keepers right now. The full Keeper helpfile has already been written and is waiting, the cabal's philosophies are set, and at this point we in Impland are just looking at the unique mechanics for the Keepers' cabal warfare and cabal skills. It will take another couple of weeks (or more) before we open the cabal up for applicants. This gives people a chance to soak in the closing of Warlords, level up their Keeper applicants if they're interested, maybe publish a Mystique dedicated to Warlords before the Keepers steal their thunder, and so on. As a teaser though, I'll go into the history of the Keepers a bit, which requires digging deep into AR's ancient history:

There were two cabals that were planned way back during AR's testing period that never made it into AR. One was (and you'll laugh at this) a merchant cabal, long before we saw how bad the problem of hoarding would become. I think this was originally put forward by Kallomar and Tyrone (who was an alpha/beta tester like me, as were certain others who eventually Immed, such as Zafrin). More relevant here is the second abortive cabal, called the Seekers of Balance. This one was by Rahkashe (who wrote Seringale and did work for the purge, coming back afterwards to run Legions as Rodyn) and was supposed to be administered by Virgil. Seekers actually had quite a bit of traction: at one point during testing I could've sworn I saw [SEEKER] tags in Herald-green, but my memory's a bit fuzzy about that. It was decided though that Virgil wasn't a very good candidate for cabal leader, and Rahkashe was too busy heading up Warlords to really push for his Seekers. The decision was made to instead wait to implement them at a more opportune moment.

Well, almost a full decade has gone by now, and we've had all sorts of cabal changes -- Heralds as a cabal, then Assassins as a cabal, then Heralds as a coterie and Assassins merged with Legions -- but now at last with Warlords being rendered obsolete by Combat Modules A/B, we have room in our cabal rotation for Rahkashe's balance cabal from long ago. You'll notice that the name change from "Seekers" to "Keepers" reflects a more assertive and militant focus, and we do intend Keepers to be quite active in interacting with both caballed characters and non-caballed characters alike. Exactly how they do will be disclosed soon enough, but feel free to speculate in the meantime. It'll make for a fun read to compare what your assumptions were once the actual Keeper philosophies are made public. I will say though that some of you already have me in stitches. As a hint: Keepers are not peaceful in their intervention.
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Xerties



Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 484

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:42 pm    Post subject:

I would hardly classify Warlord cabal skills as 'free'. Leveling up through 35/40 without magic is a major pain. Also, though it's true that warriors/berserkers were a bit underpowered before, now they're just equal, which is not really a reason to remove their cabal. Pretty much all the other classes exist just fine without cabals and don't 'need' them to be successful either. The exception there, in my mind, is mages, but hopefully that will be balanced out with this afflictive module which seems to have been just pushed to the back burner.

I do think Warlords had been slipping with their honor RP and whatnot, but with a decent Imm leader that could be turned around. Hell, even a mortal leader could whip them back into shape. It's pretty shitty to just hang all those characters out to dry with no warning. You could have at least let them run their course and just not accept new applicants.

Also, I don't see Keepers working out too well. None of the other cabals will trust them to let them help with cabal conflict because they could turn their back on them at any moment. And what if there are 3 knights, 3 legion, and 2 keepers? Are the keepers going to split up and fight each other?

I think that there is too much emphasis being put on cabal 'purpose' and not enough on 'is it fun?' Do people want to join, that's the question. Warlords was a successful cabal and to pull the plug on it like that doesn't really make sense to me. I would say the same for Mystic, but I'm a little biased there. If there are players who make characters specifically for that cabal, then I think it has 'purpose' enough. You can argue the whole 'player organized clan' bit, but the modivation to go through all that nomagic stuff without a tangible goal is just not worth it. Get whooped on every day by people with purple potions to possible create a cotiere that won't even grant you the reward of your hard work. Many people will pass on that.
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gomer



Joined: 09 Jul 2004
Posts: 162

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:39 pm    Post subject:

Sorry, I didnt read any of this post but the "Keepers" and the balance thing sounds a lot like Nychlas' early roleplay about maintaining the balance - 2 evils and 1 good logged on then one evil died. Also the keepers sound ranger/druid like.
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Phostan
Immortal


Joined: 08 Mar 2004
Posts: 332

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:47 pm    Post subject:

I saw this coming a while back. It just seemed Warlords served no dynamics in the grandoise big pk battles at 50. Everyone just had this unrealistic expectation to go one on one with some Warlord with pimped combat skills and crazy skills, so they can pat themselves on the back. That being sad, I still liked Warlords, because it was a good way to see who was real good with warrior type classes, a bragging rights bit. But in the long run, it didn't add much to spice shit up. This new one I think will be doing just that. It will not just be Knights versus Legion with Justice beating the shit out of anyone who steps too close to Seringale. It'll be Legion versus Knights, with (we'll call them Keepers for now) Keepers ganking whoever starts to win. They might even run into direct opposition against Justice, I dont know about that. But know how sometimes no one has a Knight char, and the few Knights around are all low 40's, and the 50 Legions just gank them all the time? And vice versa, mind you. Well, this will get tossed in there to make it more interesting. Keepers will be keeping down the other side long enough for the other other side to get built up, then they'll back up, everyone will tear each other apart. And it'll happen again. I think they're out to promote what made this game good so long ago. Which was huge huge gank fights. I'm just saying, say your peace about Warlords, and say your bit about Keepers being a gay name(cause it is) But dont knock the idea until we see how it plays out, okay?
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Erlwith



Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 1626

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:20 pm    Post subject:

I don't understand how any of you are saying "it won't work" when you have no idea what the cabal is going to be about and do.
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Slade
Emissary


Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 666

PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:43 pm    Post subject:

Even with keepers, warlords should have been kept around as a cabal or coterie (including with good powers like stance, maybe not all of them like get rid of forms and some crap like that if you want). Who cares if they aren't involved in all the stupid cabal warfare stuff? Is that all the game is? Warlords were a very cool and (usually) honorable cabal that added a lot to the game. You could have even made them more exclusive, like say 5 members at any time, whatever. Theres a million things that could have been done. Even now you could salvage them, make them a coterie with good powers, make it exclusive if you want. They are kind of passive after all (they go around looking for duels, they don't blind aggro on people or meddle too much). But thats not a if-players-show-us-something-huh-huh-huh thing, thats something that should just be done, should have already been done and current(former) warlords converted to it. You have to feel bad for jeo and others that just got completely raped out of nowhere.

If anything, keepers is the coterie. Thats such a specific and rarely seen aim they have, you need a whole cabal for that? Realistically you'd been lucky to see 2 or 3 true balance militants for every 15 good/evils. That could have been the (still very aggressive) coterie. Their function will be helpful and all, but a whole cabal for that on the scale of legion, knight, justice?
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