This is a brain dump of things I noticed, basic event details, and some reasons about why we did things the way we did. It's a collection of thoughts I've had the last couple of weeks as the event unfolded. Some things I liked and some I did not.
Org Killing
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The event was not about us killing any cities or orgs off. We wanted to give that impression and we were open to the option, but we did not go into the event with the mindset that we are going to kill off city X no matter what. In an event like that, no matter what players do, the event is on rails and they can do nothing about it. Players have made it very clear they hate events like this.
When we decide to close a city, we are going to post about it and give people time to clean house.
That said, Antioch was doing so poorly, we actually wrote scripts to do just that. I wrote scripts on two separate occasions in which we would blow up part of the city and give people a week to clear house before the city was destroyed. In both cases players made a miraculous point swing with the city buffers and the chain strength that we could not do it.
The only thing that was going to happen no matter what, was ending the perpetual battle between Silantor and Lhortae and releasing the Tome pages we promised months ago.
If any cities had ignored the event, we would have done something. Even Khandava would have had something devastating happen. They would not be automatically safe because Stavenn has been destroyed. We talked about sucking major city sections into the Rashirmir, displacing them to other sections of the world, and other options.
Event Timeline
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Originally the event was set to last 10 days. We ended up with another week. All of the chain stuff was added mid-event, based on player and entity RP. Overall, I feel it went fairly well. It did drag out two or three days longer than it should, making it boring and repetitive toward the end. That happened as we wanted to end on a weekend. Need to improve some timing there.
Entity Participation
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We made a point of pushing all of the information about the event through entities.
They supplied the divining rods and most of the basic information. Internally, we gave entities a list of rumors they could work into their role play. This included a list of true things and a few false ones. We did not tell entities which rumors were true, and what was not. I think this led to some interesting activities and was more entertaining for entities. A couple of entities were looking in the right direction and a couple were not.
Entities also were encouraged to work the event to their advantage if they felt like it. I feel like this went pretty well for the most part and enhanced the event. It gave entities power within the game by controlling the flow of information.
Ending
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There was a lot of PK at the end. I liked it. I think players liked it. I watched a lot of the internal org channels to get a feel for the event in case things needed to be changed on the fly. Most of that chatter seemed positive. Septus was even dragged in for a few kills. It seemed to go back and forth between Kinsarmar and a massive Council coalition. The RP behind the coalition was fun. The Celidon/Kinsarmar interaction was interesting to me as well.
I know some people are unhappy with killing Esmyrisa, but her player will not be coming back. This is probably the main complaint I have seen so far, and I understand the attachment to your favorite entities. It is the nature of divine roles in Imperian. They will come and they will go.
We had several different ideas for the ending. These ideas were based on how players acted during the event and how things came together at the final confrontation. We shaped the ending based on which item received the most focus, how much PK was happening, and the strength of the Rashirmir and the city buffers. This all determined if a lich would be killed or diminished, if Legion would escape, if an org would be damaged, how much the Rashirmir would continue to influence the Physical realm post event, and if Charon would be killed.
Interestingly, the pool had the most focus and Lhortae was second most. It seemed people did not care about Silantor.
We left a couple of things hanging that will build up over the next couple of weeks. The tendrils, one of which is in Antioch, will have some stuff happen.
Things I felt went bad
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1. The event was too long, as mentioned above we stretched out the final chain section for too many days.
2. We should have had more RP with mobs in order to get info out. I mentioned our Entity strategy above. Next time we will probably combine the two a bit more.
3. Our internal metrics for measuring Rashirmir and chain strength could be more informative for entities. This would allow them to give better information to players about how they are doing.
4. I did not post any event update posts so information would have to be gathered from characters and entities. Next time I will probably do general update posts.
5. My horrible ability to miss typos until I press the enter key. Just kill me please.
6. Shouting mobs and entities in scripts still sound a little corney. Need to improve that.
At any rate, this is my brain dump from the event. I will post an events post in the next few hours. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please message or email me.
Thanks!
Penned by my hand on the 20th of Solis, in the year 151 AM.
