Talk:Dark Ages (computer game)
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Alot of that information is wrong, such as the roleplaying part..There used to be a decent player base that roleplayed, but over the years it has died down as more and more 12 year old AOLers started playing.
[edit] Additional information...?
The player of Etienne and I added significant information related to the timelines of both Temuair, the fictional world, and Dark Ages, the game. I hope this information is interesting - I also added a CVG infobox with as much information as I could divine.
The page is now 40kb. I would like to split it off into sections, but I'm not sure what would be the best way to do this. I also think an article on the social history of Dark Ages would be absolutely fascinating, but it might be difficult to maintain NPOV. Suggestions are welcome! Justin Baugh 06:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Some editing is occuring
I will be trying to clean up and split off parts of this main article, and adding some sorely-needed information like the legend, the timeline, and more. I would welcome any comments or thoughts anyone has. Justin Baugh
[edit] Additional Warnings for this Obsessive Game
As the previous post says, Roleplay is basically gone. It should read as Massive Multi-obsessive Releasefromreality Place to Go. You can meet someone, spend obsessive hours with them and forget that you have a real life with a real spouse and real family. The one you meet becomes your spouse. IRL is used in chat but this is their real life. All other comes in a far second; IRL is only a bygone exsistance and hinders the fantasy. This artical should also use the acronym; MMORPG HRMM/L Has ruined my marriage/life.
Not really gigglegiggle... snort
[edit] Dated Because...
I wrote it a while back, and it was just a stub I added to fulfill wikipedia's collection of them. -Exsequor (Bob)
[edit] Well, well, well..
You people seem to like to insult the game that you all play. You are the ones that ruined roleplay, complaining about how there is none left. When you kids brag about how there is none left, other people jump on the bandwagon. You are the reason why there is no roleplay. However, if you look hard enough there are roleplayers in the community. Too bad you kids can't open your eyes for once and see the truth.
[edit] It's true.
It's true, I've experianced over the past 6 years or so the roleplaying has gone from the most important feature to...not really a feature. Also, the average online players has gone from about 300 to 700+, the guards when I played were strict role-players who enforced the role-playing rules (and the others as well), there were about 30 online at any given time, I logged on a free character the other day and saw that there were 3 guards on the list of 700 players. I also saw many repeat names like "PenguinManA, PenguinManB, etc." All looking exactly the same, each one saying one word of a non-sensical sentence. This game used to be a very fun role playing experiance that I was excited to be a part of, now it seems to be exactly what the other user said, it's full of 12yr old AOLers. I really wish Nexon ('scuse me, KRU) would do something about this and put employees into the game that play as guards and enforce the role-playing in-character speech, and encourage players to do the same, then later remove the employees and let the players govern themselves again... Dave 03:57, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] On roleplaying in Darkages
Yes, the roleplaying did deteriorate over time, you can attempt to deny this, but it's more beneficial to attempt to understand why. I'll present my thoughts as to why I think this is so.
David Kennerly was the propagator of roleplaying in Dark Ages. Legend of Darkness was used as the basis for Dark Ages, but was heavily modified to allow tools for the community, to promote roleplaying. These constructs allowed, when given to the hands of roleplayers and responsible people in the community roleplaying to thrive. The tools are written in the Wiki article, but are specifically the political system, and the judicial system implemented into the game. Being able to make laws that specifically punish those that do not roleplay, and then create a judicial branch that enforces the laws, as long as they remained in the hands of those with that goal in mind, roleplaying would florish, however...
The Laws of World Design - by Raph Koster states:
Community size
Ideal community size is no larger than 250. Past that, you really get subcommunities.
Koster's Law (Mike Sellers was actually the one to dub it thus)
The quality of roleplaying is inversely proportional to the number of people playing.
The community that comprised the bulk of Dark Ages at the beginning of it's debut was fairly tight knit, and only extended into the few hundreds. It was understood amoung the players that roleplaying in-character was the prevalent choice of the community. As the popularity of the game grew, the playerbase did also, and within time Koster's insight into the matter unfolded. As the population reached the 1000 marker, (I can't give accurate numbers, and I don't know them myself) the playerbase was fragmented, with the roleplaying subcommunity or clique, and the non-roleplayers. The game took a fairly liberal stance in the matter, no one was 'forced' to leave for not roleplaying, and in time, Koster's Law proved true.
As a sidenote, I understand David Kennerly left the group, and I'm not sure when in the degration of the roleplaying this was at. Being that Kennerly was one of the champions of roleplaying, it would be interesting to debate how much his departure effected the overal roleplaying within the game.
-Rookerith (posted: 08/12/05)
[edit] Yet more theorizing
Introduction into Dark Ages was done in three separate "ages" during beta: Atavism Age I-III. Before this, the game was in alpha, and had two Chaos Ages. Atavism Age was the first somewhat public beta phase.
You had to apply for these, saying why you wished to roleplay, what you thought about the lore, &c. Thus, the people who were inducted into the beta were the people who (in theory) were most closely tied to the fabric of the game itself. Most of the players lucky enough to be inducted into Atavism (like myself) were absolutely and sincerely enraptured with the detail, thoroughness, and creativity of the story and the game environment.
I really believe that Koster's Law is a gross simplification. Atavism Age III, although criticized by older players, was a wonderful time of great expansion (and yes, there were good and bad apples as part of this, just as there had been in any of the previous ages). I didn't perceive this as being a direct decrease in the quality of roleplaying; on the contrary, the influx of new players was a boon to the game, and a significant amount of the older players did quite a bit of work to retain the cohesiveness of Temuair.
It was when the beta ended, and suddenly Dark Ages was thrust into the light, that the system began to fall apart.
I believe Kennerly had originally intended for the contests to serve as the foundation for a functioning meritocracy (since you could gain clout - the numeric abstraction of political power - through taking part in the contests for works of philosophy, art, &c), as a counterbalance to the general voting that players could participate in daily. The problem was the sheer magnitude of population growth that occured when the game went out of beta. To put it mildly, the people that cared most about the game were absolutely swamped with people who had no interest in being a part of the culture and society that had been rather meticulously developed by the player base for the 6-12 months prior.
The first reactions of the demagogues (at this time there were no real, functioning burgesses) was absolutely heavy handed and totally reactionary: use their political power to exile anyone who didn't (or wouldn't) conform to the existing system. This resulted in a predictable martyrdom among the "oppressed" non-roleplayers, which bound them in a universal struggle. The old players and the roleplayers quickly fragmented due to differences of opinion on the best solutions to the existing problems - and, because, in the end, no one really wants to be an unpaid social worker, trying to keep the waterfall from sweeping away the city, when all you have is a ladder and a few pebbles to stop the tide.
This oppressed group were to later learn that anyone can use the political system within the game, and at that point, the simple majority took over, and the old Temuairan society collapsed.
It was only the influx that caused this. The ratio of non-roleplayers to roleplayers was drastically increased, and those who were willing to take the time to help new players were absolutely overwhelmed. I sincerely believe, to this day, that if entry into Dark Ages had been in limited phases even during general availability, the political system could have survived and functioned as intended. I also believe that such a game could be commercially viable simply by virtue of its attractiveness to hardcore roleplayers. At its height, Dark Ages was a separate world all of its own. Its players and its director submitted beautiful, wonderful works of literature, philosophy, lore, art, and more - all based on Temuair and all contributing to its amazing fabric. I have yet to find any game by any company which mirrors this amazing outpouring of creativity and inspiration, and I still consider myself very lucky indeed to have taken part in it.
Dark Ages was a wonderful and truly incredible thing. Unfortunately, Nexon/KRU lacked the inspiration of both the players and its original director to administer the game properly - and understandably so, due to the cost of the enterprise. In the end, successive directors continually stripped more and more of the old control systems and fabric away (with one or two exceptions, but it was too little, too late) until the game was really nothing more than a graphical chat room with nothing unique about it. When Kennerly left, so did the generation of any significant real content within the major plot itself. To this day, old events are simply re-used again and again.
This is not to say that roleplaying didn't continue for a long while, but the Atavism Age, within nine months, had been almost totally obliterated - and with it all the pleasure and graces of playing.
-The player of Kedian Ta'Null (2005.10.28), or Justin Baugh
[edit] A reply to Kedian.
The roleplaying "golden age" lasted much longer than the Atavism age. Although it is true that in the Atavism age (of which I only saw age 3) people were more serious and "hardcore" about the role-playing status of the game, it continued well into many Deoch. Until at least 11-12, when it started to decline until it was pretty much completely gone. As for the departure of Kennerly it was in my mind, a neccessary thing. Nothing was being updated, and the game was stagnating in the same pool of old, and it needed something new- while keeping all the roleplaying alive. His depart did not affect the decline in any way, it just kept declining, just as it had done before. At least the game itself got better, as there were more quests, more beasts to slay, more places to visit. If only it had been possible to keep the roleplay alive, it would have been paradise. Never before have I seen such an amazing community with flourishing tales that well show the spark that is inside of us. -The player of Sarniva Bantosh, Or Catherine Allaire.
[edit] Contest Section Update
I fixed a lot of problematic wording and half-truths in the section regarding the contest system. Also added Poetry as its own section and Memory, for factual comprehension.
-The player of Parane
[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dark Ages (computer game)
I've listed (much as I regret to) this article on AfD. Please give your input on the AfD discussion page for this article . Faladine 01:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
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