I personaly have found staff to be quite active in the current game. Normaly getting less then a 5 minute wait if I need help with something.

Quote from: "X-D"I personaly have found staff to be quite active in the current game. Normaly getting less then a 5 minute wait if I need help with something.

I think that you and a few others might be unusually fortunate.  Perhaps you might have earned that level of attention, but many others might not experience that degree of participation from staff.

I don't think we're necessarily over-clanned. If it were my decision, I'd instead clamp down a little on karma/special roles. It seems like we're running a number of karma and special roles that could be easily supported by the 70+ peak before 2.Arm was announced, even though peak's drifted back down to 30-40.

Flushing more regular characters back into play revitalizes many of the real key Armageddon clans by giving them more folks to recruit as guards, spies, agents and thugs.

Quote from: "Nameless Face"I think that you and a few others might be unusually fortunate.  Perhaps you might have earned that level of attention, but many others might not experience that degree of participation from staff.

I'm in the same boat with X-D. Everything seems to be handled pretty much as soon as it's brought up, or fifteen minutes later, or at the very latest, a couple days later (in the case of emails, requests, et cetera).

Quote from: "Only He Stands There"

Quote from: "Nameless Face"I think that you and a few others might be unusually fortunate.  Perhaps you might have earned that level of attention, but many others might not experience that degree of participation from staff.

I'm in the same boat with X-D. Everything seems to be handled pretty much as soon as it's brought up, or fifteen minutes later, or at the very latest, a couple days later (in the case of emails, requests, et cetera).

Same. I've never had an app go over even four hours in the past year. Any emails or requests, I'm basically on par with Only He Stands There.

If you think something deserves some attention IG or with your character, email the mud. Chances are one of the staffers will look at it as soon as they can and not kill you bringing it to your attention. They're nice like that.  :wink:

Wow wow wow... slow down, mansa.

Quote from: "mansa"The Armageddon Staff have stopped the old game.  There is nothing new that will happen in your clans.

This is just a laughable statement. I'm fairly sure that the imms staffing current clans will be making sure things happen.

QuoteYou cannot create a new clan of players to join.  You cannot create a gambling house in the 'rinth.  It's not going to happen.

True, there may not be left for anything *new* on a large scale. No more Atriums will be popping up. That doesn't mean the game has ended. It doesn't mean no more new NPCs will be created, no more areas will be altered, no more world changes are possible.

QuoteThe feeling that the world isn't alive and changeable really sucks.  It feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft, without the levels, graphics, and players.

Go look what happened to the old mul outpost and tell me the world isn't alive and changeable. That change happened after the announcement was made.

QuoteYou can't go out there and let House Borsail, or House Oash fall to the second tier of nobility.

Sure you can. It's just as easy as it's ever been. In fact it may even be easier now that no PCs are around to defend those clans. Of course, it's always been pretty damn hard to do things like that, so don't get your hopes up any more than you would have before - but if destroying Borsail before the end is your goal, go for it anyway! If enough PCs move into the Allanaki political scene to make running a plot like that profitable in terms of time spent on it, we might see some very interesting intrigue between Tor/Fale, or between either of them and an NPC family.


I'm sad that some of the clans I've played in and loved are no longer around. I'm sad that there are less players now than there once were. I'm sad that I won't get a chance to play some of the roles I had hoped for, and that some of my favorite thematic areas of the game are gone. We've probably seen the last of pampered, pretentious, haughty-beyond-belief nobility of the Oash/Borsail style, both for Arm 1 and Arm 2. But there are still PLENTY of other areas in the game that ARE still around (and thriving!) and the only thing I have to be sad about there is that there's not enough time to dive into all of them.

The staff are still responsive, active, and working hard for us. I see no reason why we should just give up on them and on the game we've all played for so long.

Thanks ale six for your post with which I heartily agree.  I agree so much in fact that I hereby...

...accuse ale six of being a bender!

For she sucked all those thoughts right out of my mind ('cept she expressed in than a much better way than I would have).

Ya' know, I know this isn't going to come as some big surprise if you've seen my other posts on the boards but I agree with mansa.

I'm just bewildered to see how in denial so many people are.  Numbers this low are normal!  Nothing about the game has changed!  Things are going to look up!  And then what?  Things will look up?  The game will go down.

And mansa was being truthful, clans have been closed.  Even Sanvean has said that there is a decent percentage of players that are now mindbenders and I personally have seen a jagged decrease of players in the cities after the announcement.  I just find it kind of funny that people keep insisting this isn't the case.  Maybe you just weren't on when there used to be *double* the players at peak times (or more!)

I didn't play for two months, I logged on for one hour, within that time my character was spam killed.  That has never happened to me in the two + years I've been here.  Then after that more bad experiences.  I definitely can see a decrease in the game, and I too have noticed errors gone unoticed in the game or belated resolutions to issues.  I currently don't have a character but I have all of these ideas for ones that will never be realized.

Part of the reason we have such good (usually non twinking) players is because people are able to make concepts and aspire to make them great, long lived etc.  And we were encouraged to do that, the game seemed limitless which is more than I can say for any other game.  But now all of these concepts I have will take a long time to accomplish and I don't want to start a character knowing I may never get there or get there just long enough to see the game end and have to kiss that character goodbye.  I play to aspire, it's fun it's a challenge and thats where the word play comes in - strategy.  When I know I'm just going to die or be stored anyway, it sucks alot of fun out of it and I think I might as well just wait for the new game where I can aspire again.

I want to remember Armageddon in a much better way.  And this prolonged death has already killed that for me.  My last memories of this game will be some IMM decided ending and a decreased playerbase with some bad experiences.  That's my experience may not be yours but I've heard from others that feel the same way so I just don't think its me.

It is my opinion that people need to stop being pessimistic, loosen up a little, and have fun living out their character's stories. Every story in Armageddon comes to an end, and this will be no different, save for the fact that this ending may be of a more epic flavor.

In other words, quitcherbitchin' and just play the game already.

Amen. Agreed with Delirium.

Yeah you guys, it's not the end of the world, seriously.

I honestly dont understand the philosophy of unwilling to begin a character who will most definately die within this year. I mean, permanent death is one of the foundations of Armageddon. Not beginning a character out of fear that it might die sounds simply ludicrious to me.

There are newbies out there who place posts in GDB, stating their character got insta killed or mugged, or robbed. And while that's unfair and saddening, they are told to steel themselves, try again. Sometimes, when the newbie death was actually rped out, they give them the "if you think someone was mean to you, they probably were." line. If they were just insta killed, well just adviced to try again. But if this happens to an old character who was lucky enough to avoid such events for awhile, why then it's a sign of a declining quality of the game, nothing less.

I remember reading near similar words somewhere around last december, or january. Where someone was unwilling to play a character who would only live half a year. Alright, so some began their characters then, and whoever wrote those words didnt. Now those who began their characters that day, have six months old characters who are in progress of achieving their aspirations, and 'still' have atleast 3 months lifetime ahead of them. And that's 'atleast', because who knows how often 2.Arm will be delayed again. Ofcourse, those peopel who did 'not' begin or stick to the character that december/january, still dont have a character ...

People say that the playerbase fell, and that mat be true. But in my opinion, atleast 'one' portion of the problem are the people who ... have plenty of ideas for new characters, they're just ... not playing them. Kind of ending up robbing themselves, and others obviously, of a nice armageddon experience.

QuotePeople that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

-Dan Quayle

I have to agree that the pessimism seems a little exaggerated at this point.  As others have pointed out, we've always had dips in numbers (especially this time of year) and trendy upticks in one thing or another.  Right now maybe it's magickers, but you can go back as far as you want in the GDB archives and find threads about too many magickers.

It's worth noting that, although we may have had recent peaks around 40, but we're still getting a couple hundred unique people playing every week.

One other point: it seems like special aps have become the bogeyman of the moment, in that people want to pin any perceived problems on too many special aps.  Yeah, surely some of the karma characters around are special aps, but I'm sure a lot of them aren't.  If a lack of mundane characters is a really problem, then that's something we can all work on fixing.  Be the change.

I -am- the change, simply because I'm new, and I can't imagine playing a magicker or a special app unless absolutely necessary.  My original complaints were just that no matter where I went outside city walls, I'd see people surrounded in fire shields, flying on wind, and stomping quakes. It was a bit ridiculous. However, there ARE other people that play mundanes, just need to find when they play

I find this whole idea of low player numbers rather strange.  My frame of reference for player numbers has been, for a long time, around 97-98 or so.  Which, for those of you who weren't around or were too stoned to notice, 2-5 during the day and 10 to possibly 15 at peak.

So I have a hard time empathizing when we get SO MANY FREAKING PLAYERS all the time.  Sure, if you look at only the ASTONISHING recent history of 2-3 years, it might be depressing, I suppose.  But honestly, I couldn't see a long time player here quitting for lack of numbers or interaction.  Historically we are still doing very well.  Nevermind that we are one of the most populated free DIKU-based muds out there at this point (I don't count LP and all those non-hard coded kinds because I detest them).

There were 60 people online tonight, a Monday, not attached to any (American) holidays.

HRPT in progress.

It's been nice to see the numbers in the sixties again.  I think the lesson is not to get too panicky about dips in the numbers, especially this time of year.

Quote from: "flurry"It's been nice to see the numbers in the sixties again.  I think the lesson is not to get too panicky about dips in the numbers, especially this time of year.

What she said.

There are good days, and there are slow days (this being one of them, at least in Allanak... sheesh). Sometimes all of your PC's friends log on when you do and stuff happens. Sometimes you spend 5 hours frantically searching for and failing to find anyone that your character can have meaningful interaction with. While I don't get to play peak hours often enough to comment on the population, I find that off-peak numbers have actually been pretty good lately. I was stunned to see 37 online one day when I logged on from work at 11am GMT+1, although it's normally closer to 15-25ish at that point. I haven't seen the dreaded 0-5 in months which is what we used to get all the time at off-peak hours. It's really depressing to be the only player online on a mud that supposedly has several hundreds of active or semi-active players.

Quote from: "Malken"HRPT in progress.

Just to clarify officially, there was no HRPT (Highly recommended playing time) in progress at that time.  An HPRT is a -very- significant event, and would have been announced by the staff well in advance.

As an aside, we did have 3 separate RPT's (Recommended playing time) the day before on Sunday the 3rd.  Our peak at that time was 68 players.

Quote from: "Belenos"

Quote from: "Malken"HRPT in progress.

Just to clarify officially, there was no HRPT (Highly recommended playing time) in progress at that time.  An HPRT is a -very- significant event, and would have been announced by the staff well in advance.

As an aside, we did have 3 separate RPT's (Recommended playing time) the day before on Sunday the 3rd.  Our peak at that time was 68 players.

Heh, I know, sorry, was just trying to see if we could up it to 70+ players  :oops:

[/quote] eq. All Borsails are wiped out by "I hate borsail" Whiran sikrit clan. =).[/quote]

I hated seeing borsail close, but it simply won't function without naiona. Nobody likes seeing parts of the game close, but Allanak's foremost house?

Anyway, I'd close things in the cities last if more must close down before the game ends, and get rid of virtually non-existent clans like the silt-winds.

But there's a lot of elf players, so I won't touch on that

QuoteAnyway, I'd close things in the cities last if more must close down before the game ends, and get rid of virtually non-existent clans like the silt-winds

Dun dun dun.......