I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I'm prepared to try anything that a sizeable part of the community likes and doesn't disagree totally with me. To describe the extent of it, I would even play WoW, because I know that this community (when it wants to) is capable of a level of RP I have never seen before in an MMOG.

That said, I think both URU Live and NWN2 are strong possibilities. I'm not really very fond of the D&D fantasy setting, but I also know how versatile NWN was in terms of creating words. However it should be said that it's likely to be a while (two to four months) after the launch of NWN2 until the amount of custom content really becomes versatile enough to enable us to make a truly interesting persistent world. Also, I believe NWN2 will be seriously taxing for people's hardware. I won't have any trouble running it, but I've quite a few heard people mention having older hardware.
That said, I have a few old ideas for game world concepts that could become interesting foundations for a persistent server. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I also have some experience with the Aurora toolset and how NWN works, though I'm really more of a hack and designer than a scripter. (I really hope they haven't treated variables the same way in the parser this time.)

Oh, and since the scope of this thread has gone outside SoR, I move that it is moved to the Games Discussion category.

Very interesting. Sounds like there was a lot of fiddling and trial and error while developing the technique, and we all know that the end-result was as stunning as it was unique. I especially like the occlusion map details added to the texture. Great idea there.

If only a tenth of the games out there had this kind of inspiration and ingenuity.

Great reading. Should be of use to anyone getting into a similar project.
Cheers.

I actually tried AO on a free offer. I found the controls astoundingly tricky to manage though, and controls are a major hang-up for me. I'm still leaning towards trying it again at some point though it's going to be hard coming into a game this late. Also, it looks very dated by now.
I don't know...

Yes, I agree. After pieceing together the lore, this was more or less what I came up with as well and I'm rearranging my backstory to work along these lines.
It works, but only if we all stick to the same story. If we suddenly have two or three contradicting backstories concerning where we are and how it is that we're here, it gets bloddy complicated.

( No, I don't think you'll confuse me more. I live in a permanent state of confusion but it's rather impervious to outside influence. )

Hm. I definitely see your point, though I am in favour of some level of restriction based on how good a magician your character is. I also see how limitation is not as necessary if actual telepathy is restricted to epic magicians. I can't help but think that this is pretty similar to the other suggestion, with the difficulty scale eased off. I think both ideas are great though, and I'm happy with either.

And Victoria, if this group/community reverted to using unbracketed OOC liberally in /say (/around), I would most likely quit.

[Edit: End quote ended up in the wrong place.]

I think I may have expressed myself a bit vaguely. With grind-for-XP I mean just grinding without a basic IC reason. Obviously a forager will to some extent "grind" for materials, but there's a difference between putting in that (in-game) day's work of foraging and grinding the skill for three hours just to get up to that bonus.

This way, yes, we will advance somewhat slowly in the game, and as it seems, that won't be enough for some. There's not much we can do about that. For those people, it might not be enough to settle in an area and just play things out around it, and to some extent, I suppose we'll have to accept that while the limitations of Seed kept us together, different playstyles will separate us in a game like SoR. For those of us who have play styles that are compatible enough, this is about finding a balance that accommodates as many as possible.

For myself, I wouldn't have much issue with being a lot better or a lot worse than someone else. I play my character by ear more than a set concept. Of course, that requires that the other person (whoever that may be) doesn't have a problem with it either.

Yes, in Second Life you buy land with real money. Also, I think it costs money to bring new things you designed into the game.

Given that some of us don't grind to insanity, I don't think we're likely to have a level variety as wide as a hundred and if we do, well, are you really here for grinding monsters? There may be an issue or two when we do missions and such, but if you just relax and let your character be dynamic enough to accept that you're not teh best figher evah, you can just play it out like it is - someone is a lot better than you. It happens. In Seed we had to contend with the fact that the old Seeds could do pretty much anything any newer Seed could do and more. We made it work there.

In crafting I'm guessing we'll see a lot of specialisation, so there won't be as much "competition", and even if there is, there's no problem with having several crafters. Makes allegiances interesting. Are you going to go to your brother or his rival who happens to make better weapons?

I'll go a bit vague for now because this is what comes to mind.
Make sure you get the "feel" for your character early, so that it feels right to play it and you don't have to think too much about what the character's choices are in a certain situation (unless the question is really hard for the character that is). There are many ways to do this. For some it just comes natural. Others never really manage to get in-character. If you need a bit of help, there are various theatre exercises you can do. One of the most useful ones in role-playing is to set up a list of questions only your character would know (such as "what is your favourite colour?", "what do you think of your name?", "what is the first thing you remember?" and so on.) Once you've gone through some of these, you'll most likely find it gets easier and easier to come up with the answers.

This is something I subject all my players to in PnP if we're going to play something seriously. It's great for exploring a character and adding some detail and texture to the personality.

Your explanation definitely works Tantavalist. The techie variety would be much easier to explain, as I hinted above. The bit about "world" and "area" is a bit of a stretch, (though wonderfully ironic) but it doesn't bother me because I'm not going to use them anyway. Still, I'm a little concerned with using OOC and saying it's IC because of the form of communication. If the communication is magical and telepathic/empathic, I'd much rather roleplay that. I can live with it, though.

Hm... hm... I really like the idea of limiting these "magic" messages in length, at least for those of us who are not so attuned to the sap. Not only does it make a lot of sense, it's atmospheric and it limits metagaming.

I'm not sure why, but the main problem for me is having OOC show up in the same place that I expect IC. It breaks my "flow" in the character immersion (and those of you who have met Tinai probably realise that flow is rather important to me) and jettisons my mind back into the being-myself-level. Somehow, having a separate window (like /tell or even better, IRC in another application entirely) allows me to ignore the OOC as long as I need to. I can get mightily annoyed if I'm in the middle of a roleplayed encounter and suddenly, in the same field as the roleplay text is displayed, I get "WOO I killed [boss x]" or something like that. When my character is alone, it's less of a bother, but still not wanted. Also, OOC within brackets work if it's brief and to the point, probably because the indication is clear. The strange thing here is that when I do get back to "myself" and start chatting OOC, I enjoy it, but it doesn't work while I'm IC, and so I want the separation to be distinct. I've heard others say the same, and it's often people who get rather deep into roleplaying.

Reflecting on this, I suppose I should get behind the idea of a completely separate OOC channel that I can toss into a tab of its own and ignore until I'm not as immersed, like I do with IRC. The question, however, is which one. As far as I've seen, the SoR chat system doesn't support creating new channels (a flaw, most definitely) and it's not given that we're all going to be part of the same guild. Then again, I suppose not everyone needs to be part of every OOC channel, so guild would work.