Season 1, Update 5: Karma, Sr. Storyteller, Elementalist Updates & Launch Date!

[Valkyrja]

Hello there!

We have some updates this week regarding implementing our 10 point karma system and the opportunity to review your account. We also have more information about the Senior Storyteller position and how it may affect you, and finally, updates on Elementalists and their path forward in Zalanthas.

We also have an important announcement, at the end of this Newsletter...

Enjoy!

Karma Update

Our new 10-point karma system has been implemented, and all existing accounts converted (If you had one karma, you now have two, if you had two karma, you now have four, if you had three karma, you now have six).  See this GDB thread for details.

We are also providing a Karma Review, right now, free of charge, and unlike future karma reviews, you will be able to self-assess in all categories. This is an opportunity for you to self-assess your own account and where you feel your Karma score should be. Typical karma reviews after that will only be for 1 point at a time (and every 3 months vs every 6 from the old system).

We are really looking forward to utilizing this system; it is much more fluid, allows Storytellers to award points as they see Players tick those boxes, and provides more weight and impact to the karma rubric.

Senior Storyteller
We are removing the Administrator role and replacing it with Senior Storytellers.

A Senior Storyteller is a new role that shares some of the responsibilities of the old Administrator role, but will remain focused on typical storyteller activities with the game.  Senior Storytellers will continue to oversee clans, run plots and animations, build new NPCs/objects/rooms as their major focus.  They will not be managing a team of Storytellers or be in charge of a particular region as we are doing away with those concepts for our new Seasonal model. Senior Storytellers will help Producers in approving rooms/NPCs/objects and maintain the culture we are trying to impart to new Staff and the community, and assist Producers in quality control and approving new assets for the game.

What does this mean for you, the player? Our hope is that by keeping the majority of our Staffing team as Storytellers and flattening our organizational structure, Staff can spend more time assisting and collaborating with players to tell stories as their main focus. We hope this makes the game more fun and easier to engage with for you, the player.

Elementalists
In the 70th year of the 23rd Age, amidst a noticeable decline in the status of the city's gemmed population, an elder Drovian named Lirael took proactive measures. She began to reorganize her temple, aiming to present a more disciplined and unified presence within the city. The temple's members in good standing were trained to improve their interactions with the nobility and the Templarate. Their efforts bore fruit within a year, persuading the Great Lord Mondayne Valika to officially recognize their hierarchical structure. Encouraged by these promising results, other temples quickly adopted similar reforms. All parties involved concurred that this initial reform was a stepping stone towards establishing a more robust organizational structure.



Starting with Season One, the default option for elementalists will be full guild mages, with the exception of Nilazis - they have no full class option currently.  The aspect subguild elementalists, including those for Nilaz, are now available only through the Special Application process.

Full-guild elementalists are also no longer required to start the game gemmed - you can play them as unmanifested, a rogue, or however you wish.  In Allanak, gemmed mages will have the option of joining their elemental Temple, rising through the ranks and collaborating with staff to further flesh out the individual Temples.  It's even possible, through hard work and toil, for a player to become the leader of their Temple.

The Launch Date

We look forward to seeing you on the sands of Zalanthas -- Our Launch date has been set for June 15th, 2024. We will let you know if that changes for some reason, but we are pushing hard to make that date our reality.

Until then --

Shade
  and
    Water

ArmageddonMUD Staff

[Halaster]

You originally said April 10 to May 10, why the delay to June 15?

We have a set of items we have to get done to open, and those items could have been done by our original dates.  However, we've identified a few more things that we feel would be best to get get done while we have the time and focus, so those have delayed the date a little.  We want to make sure those items are done correctly and not open with them half-baked.  It's as simple as that!