Originally, the block effect was most heavily represented in the game via the Rainbow Wall spell that the Ancient Order of Mystics were able to produce. Many many players (including myself) met their death thanks to this spell. As time passed, more guilds were given abilities or spells that produced blocking effects, and this became part of the language of playerfighting. Back in these days, pvp death was *vastly* more common than it is currently.
When Goldberry became AoP (2001 or so) she made the ruling that powers that prevented players from leaving a room were no longer things guilds would offer. This forced a number of guilds (including the Morgul Mages and Knights) to have these powers removed or trimmed from certain spells or specials (the Mystics had been closed, and were no longer a factor.) A such, the game grew accustomed to a new type of pvp reality. It was now nearly impossible to kill a player who knew how to run. Players decided to look to the design of the game itself for blocking abilities, and found their natural ally in the boating system, or various npcs. And so, the art of pvp shifted to carefully planned assasinations, which often were planned quite a long time in advance. Players would observe the patterns of their enemies, learn their daily routines, and decide where and when their enemies were finally putting themselves in a game-designed block (boat, npc, whatnot.) And so, for the last decade, players have always known that when they enter a boat, they must take every precaution, because they are effectively being blocked.
About 3 years ago, discussions started in earnest in the wizard community toward the idea of returning blocking to the game. We felt that the players of the game had, over time, grown quite soft. That is, players have gotten so used to the idea that, if you know what you are doing, you can make it next to impossible for someone to kill you. A result of this fact has been for many players to come to see death as a completely unpalatable outcome. Back in "the day" players died all the time. But in the modern era, a player who dies has often not died for so long, that they have amassed huge stats that they just cannot bear to see compromised. We wizards, and I especially, have not liked this at all. We, frankly, want to see death happen a lot more than it does. We want to see players grow used to the experience, have the culture shift, and have death again be a frequent, anticipated, and accepted aspect of play for just about everyone. We decided to reintroduce the concept, and the Ogre guild was slated to be the first to bring it back. Not long after, the Knights were given the ability that they had pioneered in the early history of the game.
The results were not very satisfactory. Both the Ogres and the Knights were (for numerous reasons) not very organized or populated guilds. As such, these effects were underrepresented in the game. Moreover, there was bitterness on the part of many other guilds who felt that they should also be able to use such abilities. "Crowd control" as it is often referred to is such a key element to PvP, that people felt it unbalances the game to not have it be a universal aspect. And so, we started looking at the globalization idea. I personally felt strongly that before we make it so much easier to kill players, that we needed some tweaking to the death system itself. So I worked hard with the other Arches to get death recovery implemented. The initial iteration of death recovery still ended up punishing players who died a lot, so it was in the end decided to make it a system that offered full-grace, and would always restore you to the largest you had ever been (rather than setting the recovery point lower each time you died.)
This was one of the final big pieces that I felt needed to be in place, and calibrated properly. It was now time to introduce block globally. We sat on it a bit longer, and with the move to the new machine, and the renewed passion and energy that the wizard community has enjoyed as a result, decided to finally get it out of the loading dock.
So ... here comes block. You are probably going to die. This is, we feel, as it should be. Get used to it.
G.
