I just had a showerthought on this topic. what if staff opened up a rollcall for a sponsored tuluki spy/assassin. the selected player would roll up a mundane PC in allanak, but with a background that says they are a Tuluki spy. Staff would play the handlers, communicating and giving assignments via weekly reports. this PC would act in the interests of tuluk, on the orders of staff instructions, but nobody else would know who/what they were (unless they were caught, yikes!).
Lmao

Things I think the game lost with tuluk's closure:
- Jihaen Templars (This is a storyline thing for me)
- Players
- The entire story of tuluk? It wasn't hard for me to buy into the history. I loved the release of the stories about the Sun-King or Tektolnes, or other obscure parts of the history. I think that fell off and just never picked back up. The old 'coming soon articles'. The dragon plots. Potential Alliances, potential wars. The in-between factions crawling together because of the might of a city state from one side or the other. Culture, the commoner doesn't have to bow to the highborn he liberated, its a cool edge to a society. A lot of unanswered history and opportunity to let the player-base build and expand. Learning/building more of the story. I'm not sure how to put it into one sentence and say: This was a loss for me in this regard.
But I joined the game after it was a hack n' slash mud, there were already plenty of those. I played armageddon because the stories blew me away.
- The RP that was provided for GMH organizing logistics and needs between two cities. I haven't played in a GMH house since Tuluk closed/hunter divisions closed so I don't know if that's a more exciting avenue now these days. I can only imagine the RP for Kurac has changed quite a bit now also.
- The city/tribal relations the north found itself involved in at any given time. I found it drastically different from Allanak. Allanak always seemed the occupy/crush everyone out while Tuluk seemed to be on a path like the old persian empire of cultural assimilation with a big brother obedience.
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- People seem focused on the mechanics of Lirathans and how OP they were, despite the outcomes of the last few HRPTs involving tuluk, and despite the fact that the entire removal of that system/mechanic would have to effect OTHER CERTAIN Hierarchies in the game or they'll just be huge hypocrites if we're discussing power in the hands of the templaret.
Also, I wasn't playing in Tuluk at the very end but there were huge plans for a whole templaret revamp that had a lot of potential and seemed interesting. That might have been a response to the players on the Lirathan issue, but I cannot overstate at the moment, how overstated I think that issue is being made. You had every similar chance back in the day of a staff animating a black robe templar and just killing your noble if you were trying something dastardly in the south as you did a commoner getting swept up off the streets by a Lirathan in the north for the most part. I can understand with the game world NOW AS IS (I.E magick revamp) this topic being looked at again I suppose.
It looked like the city was going to go into some egyptian/mesopotamian age-like reformation and it was gearing up to be awesome. Not sure what happened but it went all mad max and the city closed. Maybe an avenue worth exploring.
The note about 'golden ages' in a particular RP area stands true for everywhere, not just Tuluk. There have been ages in both cities with very different feels based on who was in power.