What You Liked About Tuluk

[Miradus]

I see what you did there.

[Cind]

One Templar Order, with both men and women

Yes, this. The gender thing, while its harmless and politically correct when you aren't thinking in real-world terms, is still restrictive when you're thinking about choices to play inside the game. There is literally no reason, I'm sure, for the gender separation other than an 80's OOC categorical thing. I'm sure a lot of people don't care and would simply redo the pronouns in their initial bio but there are people like me who literally never play one of the genders, or to whom the gender is important for gameplay for some reason, like being a mother, or a deadbeat dad.

[palomar]

I liked the idea of Tuluk most, and when that idea was brought to life through the efforts of dedicated, creative players.

[Ender]

One Templar Order, with both men and women, squabbling and in-fighting just the same as Blue Robes, but with a different flavor or bent (Psionics compared to Magick).

That actually happened already while Tuluk was still open for play.

[Dar]

It's only positive quality of importance was that it was not Allanak. So if you've played a long lived character in Allanak that had his/her fingers in a lot of pies. You could've played in Tuluk to be away with everything you interacted with prior.



That Is All. Forgive me, but I think the 'benefits' of Tuluk are being 'highly' romanticized due to it being gone for so long.

It is my hope that when it is open, it is sooo dramatically altered. I realize it's hard to impliment, but if you want to have murder/corruption/betrayal, you cannot have an All Seeing Eye as a non virtual concept.


The irony that I'm being a lot less subtle in this post then Yam's answer is not lost on me .

[Bushranger]

Chosen Lord Mesmer Dasari
Mirau
Kiris
Keyrena
Zari
Tallis Irofel
Siamaca Kadius
Raleris Winrothol

[ghanima]

What I liked about Tuluk are also the things I disliked about it. I'll explain.

I liked the greater focus on descriptions there. You could easily see the difference in the generation that wrote up Allanak and the generation a full decade or more later that wrote up New Tuluk. In Allanak you have things like "a bone dagger" and it has a half-sentence description that literally reads something like "This crude bone dagger looks deadly". Fast forward to New Tuluk and things are a lot more immersive. The problem is I think it went too far. Page long descriptions are just ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned. Unless it's something super unique and rare like maybe a magickal tree, if you're writing a page to describe something, you're just going overboard. There's a point at which a good thing taken to the extreme is no longer good at all.

I liked the attention to detail with clan creating and the desire to flesh out documentation. I saw some of the original clan docs to very old clans from back in they day and they were pretty sparse. Even some of the ones still in existence now are! Tuluk fought against this by weaving a rich and detailed background for itself. But you had these vastly convoluted and over complicated storylines that often resulted in contradictions. It just seemed to go a little too far. It's possible to be descriptive while still being concise and to the point.

Anyone who remembers Old Tuluk will recall a fairly unpleasant design. Once New Tuluk was rolled out it had absurdly long roads, some that literally went nowhere. You'd walk 20 rooms in one direction and suddenly come to a dead end. Thankfully staff reduced this but it was still never much fun to navigate the city unless you were on a running mount.

Tuluk took all the things that were wrong with Allanak and made a concerted effort to improve upon that. I'ml glad for the effort. Unfortunately that goal was often taken so far to the extreme that it just went to the opposite end of the spectrum.

Where Tuluk really shined was of course the Rebellion days. There were some really good plots being hatched at that time and there isn't much criticism to be said for it. But that was all pre-New Tuluk. After the transformation from Old Tuluk to destroyed Tuluk to New Tuluk it just felt too big for itself. If anything is to be done with it currently, these are good lessons to learn from!

[Riev]

Chosen Lord Mesmer Dasari
Mirau
Kiris
Keyrena
Zari
Tallis Irofel
Siamaca Kadius
Raleris Winrothol

Creek.
Faithful Lord Kieandatu.
The Fattest of the Fat Lord Dragean

[fade]

Chosen Lord Mesmer Dasari
Mirau
Kiris
Keyrena
Zari
Tallis Irofel
Siamaca Kadius
Raleris Winrothol

Wait you were raleris??

[Riev]

I think he's saying HE was Mesmer, and misses all those other people.

[Cind]

Siamaca and Raleris were awesome. I only really know about Dragean because he was so fat, you could see him from a mile away.

[Grapes]

Tuluk was nice because it had way too many taverns. Some times you want to poison the drink of an undesirable without witnesses.

[Boogerbear]

I liked Tuluk when it was just a burned-out shell of a city with ruins, barrens, the Sanctuary, and Freil's Rest.

The entire way the city was rebuilt has always been a point of contention, with staff actually shortening its roads towards the end.

Basically, with the rebuilding of Tuluk, tons of resources and docs - some very in-depth, like the Poet's Circle - were created for an area that would eventually be closed.  Reworking the city extenisvely, opening and closing zones, creating and changing docs... I guess one could say that you can appreciate Tuluk for the fact that it received more attention in terms of docs/new clans/new policies/new rules than Nak ever did in that time.

I like it when nobles got force stored for banging commoners.

But most of all, what I liked about Tuluk was that it was once open, but now it's closed. 

RIP shartists.


Edit:  It also demonstrated the problem of trying to impose clan caps on groups playing in an area where the playerbase is small.  No, you can't do that, or, whenever an engaging leader does enter a place like Tuluk, they are severely hamstrung when it comes to involving the one or two PCs who have stuck around for a IRL week or so because nobody is around to hire her or the current clans won't because they've reached their hard population cap. And if not a human native, good luck.

Experimental policy changes like that did not serve well in keeping Tuluk.

[Bebop]

The Poet's Circle
When it was hopping you had commoners competing for commoner level title, affluence and work prospects.  It was really cool because at face value it had nothing to do with combat.  It set up scenarios where commoners could court and be courted for work without using any coded abilities.  It allowed really cool ways to promote products, slight your enemies, and use OOC creativity.  On top of that, of course, many were shadow artists and artisans.  It added culture and guidance and a lot of fun RP opportunities.  There was also the Ghatti Teahouse that bards were rumored to work at so I had once PC that always waitressed there for fun.

It's odd.  Because right before I quit the Bard's Circle was so popular I got force stored for not playing enough (even though I was kinda busy and out of town at the time).  I come back a few years later and Tuluk is completely closed and getting ragged on.  Huh?  I'm so confused!  Also, oddly enough according to these messages this was exactly almost to the date of today six years ago.

2012-09-09 07:58:03PM (2192 days ago)
I just went to log in to Bae and it seems I've been stored.  It doesn't look like I even received an e-mail.  I recently logged on a couple of times then I [redacted was basically out of town and super busy IRL]  I went to log on tonight and no character.  What happened?

Nyr
2012-09-10 20:14:31 (2191 days ago)
[account name redacted],

When Eurynomos sent you that e-mail a bit more than a month ago, it was specifically asking about your playtimes because there is a lot of interest in the role of a bard, and you were not playing--and we have plenty of people interested in both auditioning and playing a sponsored one.

You weren't playing.  You logged in briefly that night (less than an hour).  You logged in briefly more than a month later (less than an hour).  There had been no other communication from you at all, so I made the decision to store your PC (as well as any other PCs inactive to that extent).

Good luck with your next role.  If you'd like to play a bard in the future, that's wonderful, but we will definitely expect more playtimes in these coveted roles.  You can't sit on it indefinitely.

Regards,

Nyr

I hold no grudge here.  It is just baffling to me that this was the state when I left and this is the state upon my return.

The Option of Exile
Exile was a viable option in Nak for Templar's that wanted to get rid of someone without PKing.  One time I got exiled in game and I literally have no reason why.  Maybe the Templar was cray.  Which is cool because Blue Robes totally can be that.  Another time I was running a leader in the Guild and had to keep my head low so I scuttled to Tuluk and did just that.  As a city-based character I got to use my skills in a new setting which was fun.  If you get exiled in Nak IG now your options are Luir's which of course are ran by Merchant Houses still trying to get in good with Nak.  Plus it's not super easy for a city based character to stay active there.  When you ran off to Tuluk as an exile it was fun because you were an Outsider but could still find common ground on being like, fuck Nak!

The Baddies
It saddens me that new players won't know what it's like to have PC baddies.  I don't just mean the Templarate.  When everyone would get together for Luir's Fest and you would have Allanaki and Tuluki PCs together you could cut the tension with a knife at times.  It was so amusing.  And you had GMH family trying to play both sides.  It was finely tuned balancing act.

On top of that, you of course could put a face to thine enemy and find ways to fuck with one another from afar.  Now the game seems more PVE.  That IG antagonist is gone and the game world seems far more empty to me without it.  Yes, that relegates conflict to a few spots remaining IG but it really isn't in the same at all IMO and sometimes now leads to pettiness at times due to boredom.

The Economy
It was fun having certain items more rare on either side of the world.  Obsidian in Tuluk and wood in 'Nak.  It made the trade routes seem so alive to roam across the Known, gather some things for trading and then scuttle back with a bounty if you could make it.  Did some people take advantage of this?  Totally.  Did it need some tweaking?  Yah.  But it was so fun having a living breathing economy on both sides of the world.

The Tattoos
From shadow artists inks, to commoner markings.  I loved all of the ritualism.

Playability
Let's be real.  Sometimes Nak is overrun with people you don't wanna play with, or Templars overzealous on PK.  When Nak felt un-playable you could scoot on over to Tuluk and vice versa.  And some people just preferred Tuluk.  It fit their vibe and play style.  I started out not playing in Tuluk for the first few years because I thought it was "froo froo", then I started to give it a try and got hooked with all of the ritualism, stylization and beginning to realize the oh so subtle nuances of Tuluk that were ultimately no less brutal and sometimes even more so than Allanak.  That playability is lost now for those that were primarily Tuluki players.

A Breath of Fresh Air - Reset
When I would get tired of Nak, I could play in Tuluk and it was like playing the game anew if I had been0 isolated and didn't know what was going on on the other side of the world.  I also could get a whole different feel for awhile.  It made the game again feel more expansive.

Magicker Hate
Being a sekret witch there was scary as hell.  And in general it was fun to be in a city-state where that shit was NOT tolerated, fam.

Summary
Tuluk had it's issues but so does the game.  There were times it was a really immersive, vibrant and brutal place to play.  It irks me when people say it wasn't thematic.  Thematic to Armageddon?  It absolutely was.  You can't call half of a game that's been around for decades not thematic.  Maybe it wasn't thematic to tribal, desert life or harshness or what ever notions you had in your mind.  Was it thematic to Allanak?  No.  For some reason people seem to default to that.  Tuluk wasn't Allanak but it was still a brutal city in the scrub and I have a lot of good memories of playing (and dying) there.  It was thematic to the game because it was just as much a part of the game as the other cities.  Alas.

I don't know what I missed by I'm super surprised and bummed to see Tuluk go from bustling to straight ass gone.
I volunteer as tribute if it ever gets revived.

What's ironic to me, and I obviously can't specify as to why my opinion is such, is that to me right now?  Allanak feels a WHOLE lot like Tuluk, actually.

[Heade]

@Bebop

That's a well-written review. I appreciate the time you took to write it up and agree with the majority of your points

I wish Tuluk was still around...

...and I do agree that Nak feels more like Tuluk than it used to.

I think a part of that is, quite simply, not having real PC north/south enemies. It's a lot easier to successfully run materials between the north/south now than it used to be, because there aren't PCs that are really auto-aggro towards people from the other side of the world.

That, and a lot of the PCs who would have created characters in Tuluk are playing in Nak now, if they haven't quit the game, bringing some of the attitudes and RP styles that brought Tuluk alive with them.

[roughneck]

I miss dust-ups in the grasslands. There was always a shit ton of hunters out there, and often desert elves, and sometimes invisible whirans and sorcerers.

There was all kinds of great skirmishes, standoffs, tension, murders and bounties to be had.

There's still some fun to be had, but not like it used to be. The grasslands were like an unofficial tavern when Tuluk was open.

[Vex]

I would have liked to try it.

[Veselka]

The world appears much smaller without Tuluk in the game. Macro has appeared to become micro; groups that may have been privateers or working as agents for Tuluk against Allanak, or Allanak against Tuluk, simply become targets for all who are willing to jump on the bandwagon.

As a white elephant in the game world, it serves only the purpose of speculation. What is Tuluk? What is happening in Tuluk, or with Tuluk? It is, and it isn't -- a subject best avoided, both in the game, and outside of it.

Every protagonist (self-perceived) needs an antagonist (self-perceived). These self-perceptions of either extreme offered nuance and double dealing, subterfuge and sabotage. It put entities like the Greater Merchant Houses in bigger pickles, as they had to play against and with both sides.

Instead, it appears that our story has changed -- The protagonist/antagonist has become micro, rather than macro. They are within one city state, within one circle of friends/enemies/acquaintances. Problems can be vindicated, blamed, or mislead within a shrinking Venn diagram. The original purpose, or purported purpose, behind the closure of Tuluk was consolidation, and if that has been achieved, it has lead to just that -- a condensed player base, a more homogeneous and cliquey player base, where long lived characters dictate culture more than documentation, and where antagonism appears as a welcome break from the mundane.

Often, the mystery of Tuluk or Allanak created further imaginative plot-hooks and articulations than what actually occurred. Allanak might be as dead and dry as a desiccated corpse, with a low player base and trouble getting Aides and new hires through their clans. But in Tuluk, who knows? Allanak might be planning its next attack, its next spy craft campaign. The same obviously went for Tuluk when it had its long dry spells of inactivity -- It still presented a real and present danger to those in politics in Allanak, and as the often imagined foil to their own plots and plans.

In essence, to have Tuluk 'around' but unplayable is perhaps the most Tuluki thing to happen to Tuluk. Tuluk would have liked it that way, in all its bloated subtlety and heavy documentation, to be, and to not be, at the same time. But from a gameplay standpoint, it's almost worse to have it exist and not exist.

As to what I liked about Tuluk -- The reformation, the drastic changes happening towards its closure, appeared to be a train on the right track finally. It was a shock to see its closure especially in the timeframe which it happened. I hope one day it will reopen, but beyond that hope, I hope to one day have a more macro game -- where the story can appear larger than it actually is, rather than as small as you perceive it to be.

[Bebop]

Instead, it appears that our story has changed -- The protagonist/antagonist has become micro, rather than macro. They are within one city state, within one circle of friends/enemies/acquaintances. Problems can be vindicated, blamed, or mislead within a shrinking Venn diagram. The original purpose, or purported purpose, behind the closure of Tuluk was consolidation, and if that has been achieved, it has lead to just that -- a condensed player base, a more homogeneous and cliquey player base, where long lived characters dictate culture more than documentation, and where antagonism appears as a welcome break from the mundane.

*applauds*

[Krath]

Instead, it appears that our story has changed -- The protagonist/antagonist has become micro, rather than macro. They are within one city state, within one circle of friends/enemies/acquaintances. Problems can be vindicated, blamed, or mislead within a shrinking Venn diagram. The original purpose, or purported purpose, behind the closure of Tuluk was consolidation, and if that has been achieved, it has lead to just that -- a condensed player base, a more homogeneous and cliquey player base, where long lived characters dictate culture more than documentation, and where antagonism appears as a welcome break from the mundane.

*applauds*

+1

[Delirium]

While I do think something needs to be done about White Elephant Tuluk, I also want to point out that the microplots/pettiness and the dogpiling on potential conflict out of boredom and the influence established PCs can wield is not a new problem. It existed when Tuluk/Allanak were both open. It's just harder to escape now.

[only_plays_tribals]

I miss Tuluk because

Step 1: wash with soap on the way to the north and participate in gossip about the south in The Firestorm ...

Step 2: kill ten things on my way to the south, remain bloody and participate in gossip about the north in the Gaj ...

step 3: ....

step 4: profit.

[ShaLeah]

I liked Tuluk before it was...revamped.

Ditto. Under Nakki rule, rebels plotting underground and all that shit. What ended up being was badly executed. I think they *wanted* to be the opposite of Nak but they weren't. It ended up being the opposite of Zalanthas, of murder,  corruption and betrayal. 
Preservation, morality, loyalty.
Live long and prosper.   
Vulcans. Tulukis were vulcans, heh.


All kidding aside:

from a gameplay standpoint, it's almost worse to have it exist and not exist.

Agreed.

It's closure,  imo, has led to things softening all around. I'd like to see it return,  Tuluk 2.0, with one templar order,  without tattoos, with shadow artistry that was as elite as they claimed it was,  with true patriotism.


I keep hearing we need a larger player base though.


I wonder what staff's stance on the reopening is.

[Heade]

I'd like to see it return,  Tuluk 2.0, with one templar order,  without tattoos, with shadow artistry that was as elite as they claimed it was,  with true patriotism.

I can get behind this. I think it would be nice for that one templar order not to have a particular set of "all seeing eye" powers. It would allow for more intrigue. Maybe have those people be far fewer in number, and not called in to deal with the petty squabbles between GMHs and independents, but rather be reserved for dealing with the security of Tuluk itself from it's southern counterpart. Perhaps as NPCs only. Could be the Tuluki version of a Red-Robed templar, as much as I dislike the glass ceiling idea.

[Aruven]

I never understood the gender outcry of two divided orders. I thought it was unique, and their was a great story arc for tension, culture, and competition.

Everyone that played their was fine with potentially nerf'ing the one order type thing with the proclaimed "plot ruining powers."

I was tuluki fan o #1 for a long time, but the winds shifted and the ship sailed south, as did all the staff. Id say about a third of the players I know left the game at the time and a good deal havent come back. I dont know anything for sure, especially regarding staff decisions, but im fairly confident it will not ever be a thing again outside of an hrpt or extended plotline.

I like another city over the silt sea. Lets make that a real thing!