Non-Playable Races

Started by Strongheart, April 17, 2017, 01:43:31 AM

I believe this has been asked many times before, but I would like to retouch on the subject. I am a bit newer to MUDs in general and Armageddon is my first, so maybe I am missing the experience and knowledge as to why these races aren't playable anymore: those being the Mantis and Halflings.

Looking into the nature of the two, I have noticed that both races have a taste for other intelligent beings but as time goes on I feel as if they would have matured from this thought process, as creatures have been known to in-order to adapt to the circumstances. Of what I have come to know of Zalanthas, it is definitely a rather unforgiving world and yet it is the altruism that exists within the communities which allows it to thrive. While you could say that these communities gain something from one another I believe it is really the belief of these beings to help others, because after the needs of survival are met, what then? Most beings find their existence meaningless without the existence of others, no one (not even a mantis) truly wants to be alone.

So, what is my point exactly? Well, I feel that these two races should be reintroduced to the world with this thought in mind, if that was the reason for not allowing them to be playable anymore. I believe it would be fairly interesting for a mantis or halfling to be "accepted" into society slowly, perhaps having to go through painstakingly difficult ways of gaining trust from the other races. I may be not all too familiar with the history of Armageddon either and maybe there is another reason why they aren't playable, but I digress. It just feels as if these races coming back to being playable would add more clever ways to go about roleplaying, especially when you are playing a race known to be more feral in general, yet want to adopt a more civilized take on the world.

Just a thought, thanks for reading!

The main reason these races are not playable are actually a bit different.

Both races were initially playable to a limited extent. Both races became unplayable because they're heavily isolated roles: at the time, halflings lived in the deep Grey Forest and mantises are scattered toward the edges of the game world.

Halflings, as a whole, effectively don't exist anymore, according to common knowledge. As far as anyone knows, they were wiped out when a sudden flood of water hit the Grey Forest and Tuluk. Very mysterious.

Mantises still do exist, but they're still isolated.

While all of this could change at any time, we don't have any specific plans to change the nature of these races. While you make a good point about adaptability and survival, there are long-held stigmas about these races that aren't going away anytime soon, and the races themselves have certain biological traits and needs that would prevent significant change in their behavior. I can't expound on it much more than that here. We'd expect change to happen on a much longer scale, similar to how evolution works in real life, rather than societal adaptation, since these races are more bestial in nature.