So I leave for a weekend concert series, and I can't be a priest in Cyrene anymore?

Aurom

That's right up there with the idea for a curse that makes someone only able to gain gold through ratting.

Austere

Aurom said:

That's right up there with the idea for a curse that makes someone only able to gain gold through ratting.

I dunno about the ratting only idea.  Dragon monks have already had their chance to shine.  Would rather see it changed to quest only gold.  

Kasya

Gold from only catching butterflies would be much worse.

Austere

Kasya said:

Gold from only catching butterflies would be much worse.

Catching 20 butterflies is good gold when I need them.  Would gladly pay 5k per net. .when I need them. 

Aereidhna

Ayami said:

Realistically, no city really forces you to defend (especially as a newbie) or is going to make a big deal out of pvp incompetence/force you to learn quickly. I'm completely useless for city defence in Mhaldor and no one's even commented on it, and Mhaldor's definitely the city people think of when they say 'mandatory defence' and 'forced pvp.' People are too worried about a fantasy version of the militant cities to actually try them out, which is why neutral factions have such huge numbers, I suspect.

I've tried out/alted in all of the other cities except Mhaldor and personally not had as great of an experience as I do in Cyrene. Could just be me, and I'm certainly not saying that other cities are super mean and awful about it, I personally just love the environment in Cyrene and it's worked out really well for me. It's probably a right place right time thing and this isn't a criticism of other cities, it's just a rave for Cyrene.

If anyone had tried to pressure me or throw a lot of information at me, force me into drills/spars, etc. or if I felt like people were judging me for sucking I'd have run the other direction and stayed a non-com, but the fact that it feels like a very non-judge mental, stress-free environment and there are opportunities to focus and learn when I'm ready has made a huge difference for me and I'm really grateful for it.

Ayami

Oh, of course! I'm not saying you can't like Cyrene, or that Cyrene is bad or you're wrong or anything. I'm just saying a lot of the fears people have about the factional cities seem to have little basis in reality. Maybe at some point they were worse about it, I don't know, but it feels like word of mouth just got out of hand and created this fearsome reputation to playing in the aligned cities.

Alaskar

On the topic of factions and niche roles for the Cities, I've always wondered if it would be possible for Cyrene to become the economic power of Achaea? I mean, with a few city-sponsored initiatives, they could have citizens depleting and hoarding the commodities of the world and starving the other cities trough trade embargoes and such. Cyrene has a massive population, and I'm sure they have plenty of wealth. They could probably disrupt whatever market they chose, with commodities being the most vulnerable/critical. 

 I don't know how practical it is, but I've always thought it'd be interesting to see a city seek dominance in the world via economics and pure politics rather than PK. 

Makaela

Alaskar said:

On the topic of factions and niche roles for the Cities, I've always wondered if it would be possible for Cyrene to become the economic power of Achaea? I mean, with a few city-sponsored initiatives, they could have citizens depleting and hoarding the commodities of the world and starving the other cities trough trade embargoes and such. Cyrene has a massive population, and I'm sure they have plenty of wealth. They could probably disrupt whatever market they chose, with commodities being the most vulnerable/critical. 

 I don't know how practical it is, but I've always thought it'd be interesting to see a city seek dominance in the world via economics and pure politics rather than PK. 

Makaela secretly suspects this is Cyrenes plan, This is why sh is sitting on 10k of just about every curative and attempting to fill her rift on everything else.

Jurixe

A lot of Cyrenians do in fact have very deep pockets. I've always thought that on a whole it's actually probably the noncoms who aren't interested in pk that have the most to spend, and there are probably more of them than combatants who spend money on pk-related artefacts, which is (one of the reasons) why I've always championed a greater focus on non-pk related improvements. Then again, a lot of people cite Achaean combat as one of its greatest strengths, so I recognise it's really just a matter of priority/time.

In terms of the cities thing, my advice is just to take what people say about the cities with a grain of salt, roll some alts/shift and see for yourself. I started off as and spent four real life years as a Cyrenian and more or less loved my time there, but eventually I decided I wanted something more. I was arguably 'indoctrinated' by the people I played with in that Mhaldor was terrible and strict and all that, but I had always been curious about the 'other side'. I wanted to play with Mhaldorian names and see what they were like in person.

One fine day I made Jurixe, jumped in and was terrified by everything, and the rest is history. I ended up loving the rp of Mhaldor so much that I stayed and made Jurixe my new main. However, just in general: try it, see if you like it, and if you don't that's entirely your decision. There's no right or wrong in this.

Silvarien

Kandra said:

That's a kitten ON a barrel.

@Kandra : The difference is negligible given that it's not a barrel of monkeys.

Silvarien

Bronislav said:

Jules said:

And then, Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly, but we also get lectured ad nauseam about how we "have totems, but still can't win"

And then, Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly, but we also get lectured

Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly

Cyrene gets attacked regularly

Have you seen our Army lately? I'll grant you, our stance toward raiding has largely been, "Screw off, go away, we aren't interested". Cyrene, as a city, has zero interest in stomping over to another city and caving their faces in. But the only difference between Cyrene and the Zerg is that we lack the experience and the drive to deliberately screw with other cities - and the former is very easily remedied:

Spawn more overlords.

@Bronislav : I don't want to spawn more overlords. I want to construct additional pylons. Over 9000 additional pylons. So many pylons that we'll have more Zealots than Targossas, which would reconcilliate us with Targossas and we can celebrate by raiding Mhaldor for the sole purpose of getting carnivorous lycopod salad for dinner.

Makaela

Silvarien said:

Bronislav said:

Jules said:

And then, Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly, but we also get lectured ad nauseam about how we "have totems, but still can't win"

And then, Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly, but we also get lectured

Cyrene not only gets attacked regularly

Cyrene gets attacked regularly

Have you seen our Army lately? I'll grant you, our stance toward raiding has largely been, "Screw off, go away, we aren't interested". Cyrene, as a city, has zero interest in stomping over to another city and caving their faces in. But the only difference between Cyrene and the Zerg is that we lack the experience and the drive to deliberately screw with other cities - and the former is very easily remedied:

Spawn more overlords.

@Bronislav : I don't want to spawn more overlords. I want to construct additional pylons. Over 9000 additional pylons. So many pylons that we'll have more Zealots than Targossas, which would reconcilliate us with Targossas and we can celebrate by raiding Mhaldor for the sole purpose of getting carnivorous lycopod salad for dinner.

Except you all failed to notice as all of your Voyria cures were stolen!

Kakotas

Sarapis said:

Nim said:

Side note: perhaps Achaea is not actually a game of conflict, but a sandbox with various forms of conflict as well as various other attractions. If the game revolved solely around conflict, there'd be little need for a poetry board.

Coming for the Year 700 competition: POETRY SLAMS! Everybody will be randomly assigned a poem form (sestina, haiku, canzone, ode if we're feeling really mean) and will have to extemporize within that form on the spot. While manually curing an Occie's offense.

It'll be right after the coinflipping competition.

@Sarapissomehow I think we may end up with odes like this one.... Can we really survive such poetry?

"Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning"

Putty. Putty. Putty.

Green Putty - Grutty Peen.

Grarmpitutty - Morning!

Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!

Discovery..... Oh.

Putty?..... Armpit?

Armpit..... Putty.

Not even a particularly

Nice shade of green.

As I lick my armpit and shall agree,

That this putty is very well green.

(Credit to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)


And all of you slamming on people for not wanting to be raided and lolpk all the time. Your day will come 6-8 weeks into a raid that hasn't stopped over christmas break and you haven't seen a pillow in about half that time or had a pee break in way too long and the disillusionment of wait this is supposed to be fun but they outnumber us 10 to 1 and have all break will set in and then you will finally understand. Please don't complain about getting what you wanted in your own city. It cost a lot of people things that they preferred to give you that shiny new place. Go do what you want in your city and leave us to our proverbial text based peace accords.

Krypton

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Lycopod salad

Nakari

Ayami said:

Oh, of course! I'm not saying you can't like Cyrene, or that Cyrene is bad or you're wrong or anything. I'm just saying a lot of the fears people have about the factional cities seem to have little basis in reality. Maybe at some point they were worse about it, I don't know, but it feels like word of mouth just got out of hand and created this fearsome reputation to playing in the aligned cities.

I feel like a lot of the fault of this lies in how the cities present themselves in game, really. Once you play for a while, it can be pretty easy to understand how non-mandatory mandatory defense generally is, but when you're not familiar with a place, or not familiar with the game, it can be hard to parse where the IC rules end and the often more OOC leniency begins.

I feel like Targossas' fraternization laws might be the best example of this, really. As is regularly pointed out on the forums, they're not actually enforced particularly strictly, as long as you can make arguments for how what you're doing is furthering good, but it was only when that claim started getting made on the forums that I actually learned that. All I've got access to as a basically unknown Targossian is pretty clear rules on all the people I can't talk to, and sermons about how terrible talking to the enemy is and how I'm going to get asked questions if I'm with an enemy of creation and stuff like that. So the often IC perceptions help to feed the rumor mill, really.

Daeir said:

Still boggles my mind that in a game centered around conflict, the most populous city is one that is founded on not having any external conflict whatsoever.

I'm not sure if this was what was meant by this, but to me this speaks to how cities present themselves. Cyrene feels like a very welcoming, free place, while the more aligned cities, by way of mandatory defense or fraternization laws or what have you, often feel far more oppressive. At the very least, even when those rules aren't actually too bad, navigating them requires understanding and navigating ooc/ic divides.

Basically, I have to wonder if more people would be interested in playing in more "external conflict" driven places if those cities felt more welcoming to people who wanted to follow those ideologies in, say, less pk-militant ways. Basically, if the perceptions that the city's gave off when being introduced to them or reading their laws matched the reality that's already there.