What to do with Tuluk

[evilcabbage]

open it up as a nightmare area where things went from bad to worse

exploration could yield great rewards, treasures and the like...

and a -very- untimely death.


something like that would appease dungeoneering folks like crazy.

[Riev]

open it up as a nightmare area where things went from bad to worse

exploration could yield great rewards, treasures and the like...

and a -very- untimely death.


something like that would appease dungeoneering folks like crazy.

I'm kinda down for a dungeoneering/artifact retrieval area. Especially if its super hard and isn't just "send in some invis burglar and win".

But it would never happen, because OP psionics and being able to see the future.

[TheGoose]

I would really rather the city reopened so that we could have an entire culture that's accessable to PCs, and PC antagonists, which will always be 100x better than NPCs no matter what.

Just undo the problematic stuff if it was changed to be problematic. Tuluk ran for what, 15 years? Longer? Clearly it wasn't always a problem.

[sleepyhead]

open it up as a nightmare area where things went from bad to worse

exploration could yield great rewards, treasures and the like...

and a -very- untimely death.


something like that would appease dungeoneering folks like crazy.

I'm kinda down for a dungeoneering/artifact retrieval area. Especially if its super hard and isn't just "send in some invis burglar and win".

But it would never happen, because OP psionics and being able to see the future.

Maybe Muk Utep abandoned Tuluk. Maybe no one knows where he went. We can get him out of the picture.

[LucildaHunta]

Would staff take ideas we throw out there and run with them?

Here's a fun one, since we're throwing ideas out there.

While whatever is going on in Tuluk is going on a third faction comes into the known. Let's say they are from beyond the Grey Forest. They are an NPC faction, lead by another sorcerer king or queen with a horde on the scale the known has never seen. They smash into Tuluk, Muk Utep disappears, Tuluk falls and is conquered. This faction isn't stopping there, they're rolling southward. Allanak meets them in battle and is pushed back. They finally manage to push NPC faction back. The wars with both Tuluk and Allanak greatly weakened NPC faction to the point where they're still in control of Tuluk but the old social structure is gone. New, player run houses rise and fall in this new Tuluk.
Alliances are made and broken. This is the new Tuluk full of Murder, Corruption and Betrayal!

Tldr version. Tuluk becomes the player agency area. You can start your own house or clan. You compete with other players for resources to do whatever it is you do. If everybody dies, there goes your clan. Clan warehouses, housing, manpower....that's all on you and your clan.

[TheGoose]

Betcha Allanak would empty out like that.

[LucildaHunta]

I think I already know how it would turn out ultimately. Buuuut....just throwing it out there.

[Molten Heart]

.

[evilcabbage]

so staff already had trouble running -two- cities plus all the merchant houses and indie tribes and elves and such...

and you want an ENTIRE city based on player clans?

yeah, i don't think that's gonna happen.

[Molten Heart]

.

[evilcabbage]

i already said what i want to happen.

[Riev]

All you mentioned is what would appease dungeoneering folks. Is that what YOU'D like to see happen to Tuluk? Most of your comments on this thread have been why someone's idea would not work.

[evilcabbage]

well i wouldn't say to do it if i didn't want it.

[LucildaHunta]

I think we all have ideas on why a "Free Tuluk" scenario wouldn't work. One of the biggies would be the burden it would put on staff. How could the burden be mitigated?

I'm thinking the easiest way is staff sets up and provides basic city structure: Ruler (NPC), Military and financial. Those three things would be too big to fail and would have the traditional clan structure. I see that taking three storytellers at most.

The government, minor merchant houses, general scumbaggery all come from the players. There are no GMH's up north. Luirs is as far as they go, it adds another layer of espionage and intrigue by keeping them out. Dummy corps anyone? Wagonbuilding could become a thing and so could wagon theft. So can being a caravan guard. So can starting a mercenary company. I could go on and on.

What do you guys think? Add to it.... tear it down.

Make Tuluk great again.

[Riev]

I'm on board with a Warrens-opens-up-trade sort of scenario, but I feel like that wouldn't be "enough". It'd just be an excuse to put some Tuluk-only vendors in a new zone and that's what it'd be treated as.

I'd rather Tuluk stay closed to players, but Staff take the reins. Control scouting parties. Send out some bagheads looking for "supplies". Have a small contingent take over a few points of interest and start trying to shore up defenses, and players can either assist or combat it.

[TheGoose]

What's a 'baghead?'

[Delirium]

1641 (Year 24 Age 22)
Unaffiliated southern refugees are rounded up from various slums in Tuluk by the Legions. Several weeks after the first disappearances, a force led by High Templar Jurinia Winrothol takes a force of listless figures masked by burlap sacks to the northern gates of Ten'Sarak, along with regular soldiers of His Legions, including the Sun's Furies, and various Faithful. After a short siege, the Tuluki forces break through the northern gate and systematically slaughter the remaining southern troops in the encampment before setting it ablaze. Tuluk abandons the razed camp and claims victory over Allanak.

High Templar Jurinia's shambling force grows as citizens and non-citizens alike begin to disappear from the streets of Tuluk. Riots begin to take place, and templars for and against High Templar Jurinia square off in the Red Sun Commons. The encounter ends with High Templar Poma Uaptal knocking High Templar Jurinia unconscious and calling for the gates of Tuluk to be closed. Denizens of Tuluk flee as fighting emerges between the two factions within the Unified Order.

[Molten Heart]

.

[Delirium]

[Hauwke]

Huh... So my IC bullshit that one time was an actual thing? Neat.

[Veselka]

1641 (Year 24 Age 22)
Unaffiliated southern refugees are rounded up from various slums in Tuluk by the Legions. Several weeks after the first disappearances, a force led by High Templar Jurinia Winrothol takes a force of listless figures masked by burlap sacks to the northern gates of Ten'Sarak, along with regular soldiers of His Legions, including the Sun's Furies, and various Faithful. After a short siege, the Tuluki forces break through the northern gate and systematically slaughter the remaining southern troops in the encampment before setting it ablaze. Tuluk abandons the razed camp and claims victory over Allanak.

High Templar Jurinia's shambling force grows as citizens and non-citizens alike begin to disappear from the streets of Tuluk. Riots begin to take place, and templars for and against High Templar Jurinia square off in the Red Sun Commons. The encounter ends with High Templar Poma Uaptal knocking High Templar Jurinia unconscious and calling for the gates of Tuluk to be closed. Denizens of Tuluk flee as fighting emerges between the two factions within the Unified Order.

See, this simple synopsis seems on the surface like a great set up for some other things.

#bagheads #bagheadpatrols #bagheadsarepeopletoo #dontbecomeabaghead

[Fredd]

Just please bring back Tuluk and its rich culture and clans. It is my favorite part of this game and without it, it is just not as fun for me. I miss the Bardic Circle, the Faithful, the romanesque feel, the cotton fields, and the stark difference to Allanak. I miss the that. I even miss the halfling, fearing that they're waiting in the shadows with their blowdarts to eat my face.

I get that many of you are Pro-Allanak, that's cool. Power to you. I'm Pro-Tuluk. I miss the Light.

I am probably one of the biggest pro tuluk people you'll meet (there is literally a statue of one of my PC's in the warrens) But if you take game population into account, there is no way we can populate a second city. That would mean doubling the clans, essentially.  The playerbase, and admin base, can't support that.

I have to VIOLENTLY disagree with you on this, as we technically have the same number of staff now as we used to (depending on current activity) while sustaining multiple spheres.

We can support, and have supported, this before. At the time of closure, Tuluk had gone through a lot of changes and iterations by people trying to improve it and, unfortunately, those efforts did not 'revitalize' in the manner they hoped. At that point, to keep it running, it required far too much micromanagement and staff to assist "in the proper way".

Not talking about Staff. I'm talking about players. And the playerbase being able to support a doubling of clans. It can't.

As of now,  the highpoint seems to be high 30's low 40's of players.

Now split that Up amongst clans.
Kurac, Kadius ,Salarr, Byn, His Arm.

That leaves less then ten players in each clan and we haven't gotten to the smaller ones.

Guild, Sun Runners, SLK, Human Tribals, East Side Elves.

What's our average across the clans now? 4 or less

How many people does that leave to be independent? This game doesn't flow right without Indies, say what you want.

edit: I think we have so much staff, to cover all the coding changes they want to do. If we end up with a cat race, we know what happened to arm 2.0

[ghanima]

I'm pretty sure peak hours of play sees higher than 30s to 40s. Added to this, while it's true that the general peak isn't as high as it once was, the off peak hours are way more populated than they ever were before. Go back 10 years or so and it was a pretty Americentric game. Now? You wouldn't believe the number of players I've met who live in Asia, to speak nothing of our Aussie and Kiwi players. The quiet hours where the who list generally would say 7 on a good day, I've seen it reach around 25 now! That's nothing to scoff at. So even if the who list doesn't say 70 on a Sunday night at 10pm server, I think the overall number of players isn't quite as low as you may think. Filling all those clans you mentioned doesn't really have anything to do with the highest number of players to be found at 10pm. It has to do with the overall total number of players.

Also, there was a time when Tuluk was nearly as hopping as Allanak. I don't think the population has shrunken a whole lot since those times, only shifted. It's about what people want to play. Someone used the old Field of Dreams quote earlier in the thread of "If you build it, they will come" and it really is true. Make something interesting and people are liable to give it a go. I'm not interested in badmouthing past staff/players but it's just a fact that certain individuals trying to write and rewrite Tuluk into oblivion basically destroyed it. There are ways for it to be undestroyed and made playable once again, and it might not even be as large a task as it sounds (in fact that was always Tuluk's problem from the beginning: being overly complicated and failing to respect the KISS rule).

Alternatively, Tuluk could just be lain to rest once and for all. Whatever the case, it is my belief that some sort of closure is long overdue.

[The Lonely Hunter]

Returning Tuluk to the way that it was during Allanaki occupation would be great. You do not need to support any new clans (maybe rebels) and the upkeep is small. The culture itself never had a place in Armageddon, imo. The idea was great but the majority of players couldn't handle it - they have a hard enough time handling Allanaki RP.

[ghanima]

Returning Tuluk to the way that it was during Allanaki occupation would be great. You do not need to support any new clans (maybe rebels) and the upkeep is small. The culture itself never had a place in Armageddon, imo. The idea was great but the majority of players couldn't handle it - they have a hard enough time handling Allanaki RP.

I think you do a lot of players a disservice by saying they can't handle Allanaki RP. Allanak isn't exactly the most fleshed out culture to begin with so it's very likely that you just don't like the way they RP rather than they are doing something inappropriate to the setting. Unless you're being completely removed from the game world and trying to turn it into some sort of CareBearMUD with unicorns and rainbows around every corner,  you're probably not getting Allanak wrong.

I agree, however, that returning Tuluk to its pre-liberation form would require little upkeep. The trick there is doing it in such a way that is original and unique. Simply copy/pasting what already happened would feel really cheap. Also....

Wishing no disrespect to current staff, the individuals who ran the Occupation were damn good at it. You can't assume the next set of staff members would be so equally skilled. There are certain characters I believe I could play and do it with gusto and others that I think I would fail miserably at. The same goes for everyone. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I don't know why Tuluk has been left in limbo for so long or what discussions staff are having on the topic. Maybe no one wants to pick up the project because they don't feel it's their forte.