Hello Aetherian Crafters!

Along with the adjustment in how you craft comes an adjustment in how your crafting items will be considered. We are doing away with a number of tiresome, oft-confusing rules and boiling them down to what we hope will be "common sense." Hang in there, this is a wild ride of a post.

First of all, the priority is now on proper spelling and grammatical correctness. Spelling remains either American or British English as long as it is consistent within the design. That's right... you choose whether you want to write "colour" like one of those Yankees or not!

Along with this comes the abolition of two qualifiers once required for certain tradeskills. First qualifier to be abolished: You will no longer be required to include qualifiers of "when worn," and all other derivations. YES, you should be writing as though there are no assumptions about who or what kind of people are wearing the item (unless it is a Custom item, and those are handled individually). But you no longer have to include "when worn" or "when donned". You may, therefore, write that a pair of gloves "fits snugly about the wrists" without adding "when worn."

Second abolished qualifier: You will now no longer be required to add "in any light" or "when lit" when using such verbs/adjectives as "glitter," "shimmer," or "sparkle." YES, you still have to pay close attention to whether the way you phrase it implies that the item is in fact its own light source, but let's face it: if you are in a situation where you can PROBE or LOOK at a specific item, we're going to assume the room, for all intents and purposes, is lit enough to see that it glitters or not.

Are you gleeful yet?

Finally, and possibly most important, we are doing away with the timeframe being "hard and fast" up to 1700. Instead, think in terms of a fantasy environment. We have all sorts of crazy skills, abilities, and world development that will not always fit into that time period. NO, I do not want to see zippers and hotpants and jeggings and pleather bikinis. And I will be punching anyone who tries to argue for those things. But sometimes there is simply no other way to describe what you want to make without using specific names that didn't originate until after the 1700s. Like: duster, top hats, bowler hat, etc.

For this reason, we will be working through the vast amount of ideas for new patterns over the next handful of weeks. If you have any specific patterns you are just dying to have made, PLEASE, please, please IDEA them now. **Note: this is NOT a call for "can we get <tradeskill x that doesn't exist>". I will punch you if that's all you submit, ever, over and over again.**

We will be in a period of transition with the crafting guild as they get used to the new system of approving (as well as the adjusted crafting rules). If you have trouble with something you believe shouldn't have been rejected, COMMENT with your justification. If you are still having problems, either escalate the design with DESIGN <#> ESCALATE <justification>, or message me to get an individual opinion.

Thanks for your patience in this process. Help files are still being altered for approval help. If you have any specific questions about the changes in code, Eusto is your man, but if you have any question or concern about any remaining rules or the design approval process, feel free to talk to me.

-Alend

PS: Expect a post within the next week about the new DESIGN TIP LIST, which will be available to both crafters and the approvers to provide up-to-date rulings on what is appropriate and not appropriate for Imperian.

Penned by my hand on the 9th of Ferinus, in the year 10 AM.