Refugees of Shallam, how are you coping?

Skye

Tvistor said:

Just thought I should mention something.

The last time I tried to run an event with Shallam, I was informed that the city's Divine were being extremely cautious about any events that had Shallam losing (in any form) because the players would take to it badly. This was before the Bal'met event, but after I stepped down as a Viceroy.

Well, barring the fact that their new Goddess just wtfpwnt Bal'met, I can barely recall the last player-driven Shallamese victory in recent times (let's say the last 6 months). Like classic forest conflict, I can't help but feel that the Shallamese feel as though they're shoehorned or railroaded into a certain role. Whether by themselves or their previous administration, I can sort of understand the frustration of having no concrete way of fighting back yet being told to suck it up cause, you know, 'we're giving you something to do'.

I'm really very curious to see what Deucalion and Aurora have up their sleeves for team Good though. Especially event wise.

Tvistor

If anyone remembers, there was an event where Shallam put a statue in Mhaldor for some reason or other. Everyone was annoyed because for all intents and purposes Shallam had lost the raid but still won the event.

An event that involves participation pitting player against player is probably going to result in Ashtan winning (because it's Ashtan). Otherwise the victory would have to be handed to Shallam/not give the Ashtani a chance to save themselves.

Achilles

Skye said:

Tvistor said:

Just thought I should mention something.

The last time I tried to run an event with Shallam, I was informed that the city's Divine were being extremely cautious about any events that had Shallam losing (in any form) because the players would take to it badly. This was before the Bal'met event, but after I stepped down as a Viceroy.

Well, barring the fact that their new Goddess just wtfpwnt Bal'met, I can barely recall the last player-driven Shallamese victory in recent times (let's say the last 6 months). Like classic forest conflict, I can't help but feel that the Shallamese feel as though they're shoehorned or railroaded into a certain role. Whether by themselves or their previous administration, I can sort of understand the frustration of having no concrete way of fighting back yet being told to suck it up cause, you know, 'we're giving you something to do'.

I'm really very curious to see what Deucalion and Aurora have up their sleeves for team Good though. Especially event wise.

Shallam did win the last CTF and the effigy as a result (with a big hand from Cyrene).  Though because of the destruction of Shallam they only got the xp bonus for half the usual time I think? 

Achilles

also...

Mystic Moses (male Dwarf).
He is 334 years old, having been born on the 24th of Phaestian, 279 years after the fall of the 
Seleucarian Empire.
He is ranked 1659th in Achaea.
He is an extremely credible character.
He is not known for acts of infamy.
He is a Peasant in Hashan.
He is considered to be approximately 115% of your might.
He is a mentor and able to take on proteges.
His warcry: 'Welcome to the land of Milk and Honey'
He has been engaged to be married to Lil' Lorelei Lee for 3380 months.


Oh good he was only a imaginary Moses.  We can still be saved.

Oceana

He just needs to join the OIA, talk to the burning tree, then save the lot of you...

Gauthus

Ognog said:

I think you really hit the nail on the head with your comments, Lyr. I don't know whether newbies can choose to join the refugees as easily as they can join any other city, but even if they can the fact that the city has been destroyed is a pretty big deterrent. Every year without a new Shallam is a year without fresh blood renewing the ranks.

Nope I tried during the trial of rebirth and newbies can only join Mhaldor, Eleusis, Ashtan, Hashan and Cyrene or houses from those cities.

Tahquil

Vadimuses said:

Tahquil said:

Just going to put it out there, a lot of the babelites work really hard with their god on an OOC level. They are continuously submitting highly-detailed plots to Babel for assessment acceptance, tweaking etc. etc. While I'm not trying to take the shine of how amazing Babel is, he gets a lot of support and help from his followers which gives him more time to support and help his followers. 

You're gonna have to do the same with Deucalion and Aurora. Want to have events and strike back at Ashtan? Get off your asses and put forward some ideas. Don't just wait around for some event to happen; plot, plan and proceed with your gods, take some of their burden because if they have to drag you kicking and screaming by the nose they're going to burn out quick.

Can I ask since when did these kinds of "hey guy, I'd like to screw over x faction today, can we work that out" relationships you're implying started coming about? This sounds new to me.

I didn't think I was implying anything like that. I thought I was implying that gods don't write all this shit up by themselves and if your active and helping  said god. You;ll get to do lots of fun rituals and shit and maye one every fifty you get to mess with another faction. I'ld hate to break it to everyone that think's every Occultists plot is ends with Occultists winning : Others losing, when they run as many intra-events as they do its seems like ages between outside conflict.

Take a fat bastard and a skinny bastard. The fat bastard hoes into cream buns non-stop and one out of forty might be off so he shares it with skinny bastard. Now while fat bastard is hoeing into this lovely sweet feast, skinny bastard is probably going to think he's actually crazy bastard for eating all those off cream buns. I forgot where I was going with this.

Wait, It might seem like all the events (buns) you get the short end of the stick (off cream), because the occultists( fat bastards) only share a few of them in common with ex-Shallam (skinny bastard) you think they are always picking on you (all the buns are off) when really, they have no idea  because they have so many internal events (yummy buns) in between. Maybe if ex-Shallam (skinny bastard) tried some events (buns) for itself insteading getting them handed to them by fat bastards it wouldn't seem like so many are off!

Aliath

Cooper said:

Selira said:

Are Deucalion and Aurora's orders even up yet, by the way?

I didn't think so until an hour or two ago when we got told Wyverex was one of the leaders.

Which, admin, if you are reading this, is probably not the direction you want to go. Heh.

Hmm I assume both have had an Order back in the day, did those old Orderboards still exist or?

Tagg

If Aurora doesn't have any followers yet, I volunteer. She be hot, yo. Girls with tattoos. :x

I don't have anything productive to add, I'm just sitting here hoping Deucalion and Aurora have the balls to do what's necessary and ignore the complaints that will inevitably come from the people that need to be ignored in the first place.

Trey

Tahquil said:

Vadimuses said:

Tahquil said:

Just going to put it out there, a lot of the babelites work really hard with their god on an OOC level. They are continuously submitting highly-detailed plots to Babel for assessment acceptance, tweaking etc. etc. While I'm not trying to take the shine of how amazing Babel is, he gets a lot of support and help from his followers which gives him more time to support and help his followers. 

You're gonna have to do the same with Deucalion and Aurora. Want to have events and strike back at Ashtan? Get off your asses and put forward some ideas. Don't just wait around for some event to happen; plot, plan and proceed with your gods, take some of their burden because if they have to drag you kicking and screaming by the nose they're going to burn out quick.

Can I ask since when did these kinds of "hey guy, I'd like to screw over x faction today, can we work that out" relationships you're implying started coming about? This sounds new to me.

I didn't think I was implying anything like that. I thought I was implying that gods don't write all this shit up by themselves and if your active and helping  said god. You;ll get to do lots of fun rituals and shit and maye one every fifty you get to mess with another faction. I'ld hate to break it to everyone that think's every Occultists plot is ends with Occultists winning : Others losing, when they run as many intra-events as they do its seems like ages between outside conflict.

Take a fat bastard and a skinny bastard. The fat bastard hoes into cream buns non-stop and one out of forty might be off so he shares it with skinny bastard. Now while fat bastard is hoeing into this lovely sweet feast, skinny bastard is probably going to think he's actually crazy bastard for eating all those off cream buns. I forgot where I was going with this.

Wait, It might seem like all the events (buns) you get the short end of the stick (off cream), because the occultists( fat bastards) only share a few of them in common with ex-Shallam (skinny bastard) you think they are always picking on you (all the buns are off) when really, they have no idea  because they have so many internal events (yummy buns) in between. Maybe if ex-Shallam (skinny bastard) tried some events (buns) for itself insteading getting them handed to them by fat bastards it wouldn't seem like so many are off!

Sylvance

Tahquil said: funny stuff

I think we have a winner

Lys

Skye said:

 
I'm really very curious to see what Deucalion and Aurora have up their sleeves for team Good though. Especially event wise.

So are we.

Skye

why is that lol worthy >_>

Favonius

Skye said:

Well, barring the fact that their new Goddess just wtfpwnt Bal'met, I can barely recall the last player-driven Shallamese victory in recent times (let's say the last 6 months). 

Miramar and the Astraeans blowing up the Obelisk of Darkness?

Sohl

I'm a bit surprised at the massive backlash from what was essentially a very small, quick event - though I suppose I shouldn't be. "We got screwed over, kicked in the teeth, we're always losing, the Gods of faction <x> are working to make us not enjoy the game etc" Do you people even listen to yourselves? Maybe the reason the good faction keeps failing is because all its players are whiny and incompetent.

Valeo

I feel conflicted about the Refugee situation. On one hand, I've been dormant forever, so this isn't my show--and things have changed a lot while I've been gone, anyway, so to jump back in without a chance to acclimate is ridiculous. I've kept to the sidelines where I belong. I've heard a lot of different causes of the Shallam Problem (though more or less the same symptoms) depending on who's talking about it, and I can't rightly say what will fix it. But I -do- know that there's a huge potential for fun happenings in post-Shallam, if the players manage to have the right attitude, and if Aurora and Deucalion take a strong lead while encouraging the right sort of participation amongst the refugees.

That said, (and I'm sorry to be a one-note broken record), it's pretty sucky to be an ex-Lorielaner. I've been gone long enough that I can take Valeo in a new direction (whatever that ends up being), but it's harder for the folks that have been active to be dumped into the Refugees where your recently-former patron is called the Jade Harlot with unoriginal regularity. I'm not sure what the solution is (or maybe one isn't wanted--Are the Samadhi seen as "part of the Problem" as a group?), but I expect an overture from Aurora would go a long way.

Asmodron

Sohl said:

I'm a bit surprised at the massive backlash from what was essentially a very small, quick event - though I suppose I shouldn't be. "We got screwed over, kicked in the teeth, we're always losing, the Gods of faction <x> are working to make us not enjoy the game etc" Do you people even listen to yourselves? Maybe the reason the good faction keeps failing is because all its players are whiny and incompetent.

Yes because that is obviously the point of all this, just general whining for the sake of it.

Antonius

@Tanris: I'm not sure if "Yes, we do lose" has all that much weight if you have to go back sixteen months to find an example. :P

Tanaar

I've been very frustrated by the lack of administrative interest in letting the refugees have input. It isn't that there aren't ideas from all camps within the group, it's that there isn't really any way to get them implemented. I've seen people ask very directly for guidance, and done so myself, and received silence in response. To be fair, @Deucalion and @Aurora have a lot on their plates from what we can see, and probably a lot more that we can't, but we could really use more than "Stop arguing."

Wynedere

The refugees don't need to have input. Your citizenry is generally what made Shallam what it was in the first place. Let the gods handle it. Hopefully, they can do what the players could not.

Blujixapug

I feel like Tahquil has been drinking and is strongly considering a leftover cream bun. I like this meta-narrative.

Aktillum

GDI THIS THREAD.

Shallam's role is usually on the receiving end of the stick, this should not be a surprise. Volunteers don't get paid to write mind-blowing storylines, so we get stuck in stereotypical Good on Defense, Bad on Offense scenarios. Yeah, it gets stupid after a decade.

Fortunately, players can submit event ideas to their patron. Try Godsname@Achaea.com. Hell, you could probably even ask your Divine for their Skype, I've gotten a few.

The problem we have here is that Ashtan has two seperate playerbases that are great at what they do. It has the ritual crowd in Amunet & Co., which supports the Tanraid wolf-pack. It has a loose ideology that allows people who want to grief to come together. 

It works the exact opposite in Shallam. We have the ritual crowd, but usually it feels like they're actively working to keep the militant crowd from climbing the ladder. Most attempts at a more militant Shallam were met with shut-downs, on a player and Divine level.

Since the militant crowd doesn't really RP, the sermon crowd is more involved with the Divine, putting them in leadership positions (in Shallam). This doesn't happen in Ashtan because the sermon crowd is built around supporting the militant crowd. You won't see Amunet challenging Dunn for Overseer because there's no balance-of-power struggles in that group, everyone knows their place.

What's funny is I see a huge majority of Refugees saying they don't like Wyverex, but he's the only one who has contested Halos so far. The reason nobody else has contested, from my perspective, is apparently because Wyverex has been "chosen" by Deucalion. So what? Throw your name into the hat anyways, don't just bitch about how things are reverting to same Old Shallam.

I'm just really sick of this "We need to wait for Divine guidance" crap from Shallam, because Ashtan tells their Divine how they want to do things.

Vansittart

Tanaar said:

I've been very frustrated by the lack of administrative interest in letting the refugees have input. It isn't that there aren't ideas from all camps within the group, it's that there isn't really any way to get them implemented. I've seen people ask very directly for guidance, and done so myself, and received silence in response. To be fair, @Deucalion and @Aurora have a lot on their plates from what we can see, and probably a lot more that we can't, but we could really use more than "Stop arguing."

I think expecting a focus on this during the Bal'met event is stupid.  I think divisive posting, and elections during the Bal'met event is very stupid.  If people like you and whoever posted that ridiculous "How Dare You" post could actually listen to the "Stop arguing" advice, you might actually see that it is, in fact, the only current good advice.

I can't think of anything more likely to doom Shallam than formerly dormant Viziers with a sense of entitlement, and an aggressive, moralising, divisive tone turning up and expecting to be the leading voices and monopolising Deucalion and Aurora's time while simultaneously diverting the attention of the people who are trying to build a new city from scratch.

I am significantly less optimistic than I was after logging in to catch up on the news.  I am beginning to believe that the best way forward is for the Refugees clan to be what it appears to be - a clan for dealing with the death of Shallam, and I would strongly encourage Deucalion and Aurora to start afresh and bring people in on a case-by-case basis to actually rebuild what will replace it.  I don't think the tone on the news is representative of the Shallamese player base, but by god it represents that part which is willing to stamp its foot, yell, bitch, moan and generally render a high fantasy environment as enjoyable as an inter-office dispute over who has administrative responsibility for the stationary cupboard.  (Memo 1742 CLEARLY states that I am responsibile for the disposition of paper clips, how DARE you come and take them without submitting your application in triplicate. I hereby contest you for the position of under-secretary of OMFGSHUTUP).

Tanris

@Antonius:
Oh, ok. Let me use a more recent example. Try events 380 where an item of extreme IC value was taken directly from the Occultists house storeroom (trust me, if you think the caverns is secure, lol), and given directly to Shallam. I actually caught the denizen who did it and wsc'd it on first hit (like a pro), and it was invincible. Now, if I ascribed to this absurd "wo is me, the gods are out to get us" attitude, I'd have likely been quite fast to post a diatribe quite similar to the ones above. Yes, Shallam won the last major event concerning the two factions. Yes, it was possible to stop the rittual with the child (it wasn't an orphan, gdi), no, diving an occultist on a totem and worldburn shrine at the temple of Babel wasn't the best way to go about doing it. Even if it wasn't possible, I have very little sympathy, honestly. Sometimes you lose, in this instance you had an insignificant loss.

During player driven events, as Tvistor said, Ashtan does very well. Typically that means when Shallam gets major victories, there is nothing we can do about it (and I guarantee that's ten x more frustrating), but at the end of the day, losing still supplies you with plenty of opportunities. As for the Achilles comment about the Eschaton, I'm sure killing an npc of absolutely no consequence to the good faction and the eschaton are very comparable and your event proposal will be a resounding success. Looking forward to it.

Cooper

Sohl said:

I'm a bit surprised at the massive backlash from what was essentially a very small, quick event - though I suppose I shouldn't be. "We got screwed over, kicked in the teeth, we're always losing, the Gods of faction <x> are working to make us not enjoy the game etc" Do you people even listen to yourselves? Maybe the reason the good faction keeps failing is because all its players are whiny and incompetent.

Well, I didn't really care, but I can easily see how some people were upset.

1. Dunn came into New Hope and 'stole' a child.

2. People instantly took off after him, but there was no child where he was.

3. A group of people infiltrated your order temple (or whatever you guys consider it) where the child was being held, but since it was a ghost child they couldn't rescue him or kill him, even though they had done the things that should have allowed this.

The main point is number 3.

Tanris

@Cooper: the child was a physical thing. As you might expect, someone was carrying it (what monster leaves a child on the floor of a dark cave). If you'd killed the person who had it (who ironically was the most untanky member of Babel's order), you'd have had success.

Tvistor

The lesson here is the Occultists shouldn't be allowed near small children.

When this story is relayed to future generations of Achaeans, provide no context.

Jiraishin

I just wish everyone would stop complaining because the friend I got interested in Achaea recently plays a Shallamese character and I want him to log in more. Unfortunately, he discovered the forums. At this rate he's going to be a newbie forever.

Asmodron

I say we scrap the whole idea of a New Shallam and just make a new city with a different cultural focus RP. Dark forests!!

Tanaar

People without a Shallamese main need to stop commenting on the direction we should take. It isn't helping, and most of you don't really have a clue how our playerbase works outside of the bitching of vocal minorities on the forums. I don't presume to tell Mhaldor or Ashtan how to act.