entlefolk of Genesis!
The changes to core gameplay have seemed to settle into the fabric of
reality, and thus we are moving forward. Thank you all for your excellent
and essential feedback on how things have been working for you.
The time has come to move into our guild balancing phase of the process.
It is at this point that things get personal very quickly for players, as
messing with their guild has a direct impact on that which is of the
highest stake to them, generally. We are therefore trying to anticipate
and avoid the problems that players have often felt with regard to guild
balance:
1. Feelings that we are favoring any single guild.
2. Feelings that we are nerfing any single guild.
3. Feelings that we are playing favorites to good or evil.
Taking on all guilds at once with our current workforce is not possible.
Yet, to avoid the issues with #1 and #2 above, we are taking on five
guilds as our opening effort toward global guild balance. The idea is
that these five guilds will give us a representative sample of the sorts
of guilds that are out there, and let us work out the balancing rules on
real situations so that we can then apply it to the next set of guilds
we choose to balance and open.
We are choosing two specialist magic guilds, two specialist combat guilds,
and one generalist combat guild. The last of these will be the first to
open, and the only to open by itself. And thus, I will announce:
- The first guild to be opened under the Global Balance effort will
be the Army of Angmar.
- It is a combat generalist guild, and thus has far fewer issues to
work out in terms of rules and regulations.
- It will have its special abilities reworked to align with the new
standards and open as soon as possible.
- Thematically, it will be almost entirely unchanged from its original
form.
- We will open it as soon as possible, much earlier than the other
four.
- One of our fastest wizards, Novo, has been placed in charge of the
recode.
The other four guilds will take longer, but the details are thus:
- To represent magic specialists, we will recode both the Morgul Mages
and the Spirit Circle of Psuchae.
- These guilds represent opposing factions, and have both been
very controversial.
- Navarre will oversee these projects, aided by Petros and Toby.
- To represent the combat specialists, we will recode the Calian
Warriors and the Vampire Coven.
- In ancient times, these two guilds were in direct conflict, and
represented opposing factions. Though less in direct conflict
in today's game, they still represent opposing factions. The Vampires
have been very controversial. The Calians have not been particularly
controversial, but have been badly neglected and underpowered.
- Gorboth (me) will oversee these projects, aided by Petros and Novo.
- All four of these guilds will be opened on the same day as soon as
the recode is finished. Until that time, during the recode, the
guilds will remain open and run as they currently do.
- There will then be a period of fine-tuning that takes into account
those issues which emerge which we had not predicted to make the
guilds work in balance with one another both PvE and PvP.
- All five of these guilds are likely to be at least as powerful (but
often moreso) than they were before the recode. In many cases, though,
they will also be given harsh drawbacks to account for their
specialties.
- As always, we will keep copies of everything the way it used
to be in case it is all a horrible failure and we need to revert. :-)
And thus we move onward and upward! This will not be a terribly fast
project, though we will get it done as fast as we are able. Those guilds
who are not included can expect to see their names in lights in future
iterations of the process.
G.
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