Server restarting momentarily. Downtime estimated to be a couple minutes (that's about how long it'll take to shut down and restart. Hehe).

Meet and Greet summary
Saturday, 14 August 2010


Prestige System

• As has been noted frequently on the forums, the prestige system is still undergoing review. There is no set date on when the staff will complete their assessment and when it will be open to applicants again.
  
  Under the proposed system, classes will be split between three categories with various difficulties of acquisition. Categories are assigned based on how powerful the prestige class is. The extremely powerful classes will most likely be obtained in a process very similar to our current system; others will be far easier to obtain.
  
  Players will be able to obtain titles on more than one character, but there will be limits. Variant classes will be available and there will be rules governing their acquisition and use.
  
  There was some discussion regarding unique features that may be accessible to players who complete their prestige title training. The staff will be accommodating for certain prestige classes, but will not determine what those are until the new prestige system is in place. Kretol expressed no qualms with teaching unique spells to those who achieve the higher category of prestige training, but he must first determine which spells can be used without being abused. Classes will not be able to equip armor that they cannot currently utilize (ie, rogues who become gladiators will not be granted the ability to suddenly wear plate).
  
  An announcement will be made on the staff concludes their assessment!

• The staff is watching to determine if tokens are needed, but it does not appear so -- thanks in large part to the success of the .addrpitem command. The general opinion between Kretol and Grakor is that they are happy that tokens are gone.
  
  Prior to the restart there was mention of utilizing other special tokens, such as Copper Tokens. These were replaced by the .addrpitem command. It is not likely that other kinds of tokens will exist.
  
  Concerning special items with use effects that may be beneficial for roleplay, the vast majority should be available in-game through conventional means. Others may periodically appear on the Auction House, so keep an eye open! For those others, players are S.O.L. The staff may consider giving them out on a per-case basis.
  
  A number of race-affiliated special mounts have already been added to the proper vendors; the Alliance mounts have yet to have been done. Once that is completed, Kretol will find a home for the vendor selling the other special, non-racial mounts.

• A question was brought up regarding the absence of gold on undead in Northrend. Under the old emulator, gold was based on the health of the mob. On TrinityCore anything lacking a specific amount of gold as defined by the monster tables drops nothing. Kretol believes that is probably due to an attempt to avoid exploitation, but also explained that it may be due to the original coders just never adding it in.
  
  Hopefully this will be fixed in the future. However, quests are a very viable -- and encouraged -- alternative when attempting to obtain gold.

• The staff feels that it is generally east to get to capital cities. Kretol is also adamant that portals should not be placed in starting places. He wants to discourage over-laxness. Death knight cannot have portals in their starting area due to the requirement to complete the quest chain.

• The staff has in the past accepted custom prestige applications, but this has been very rare. The application has to be fairly flawless in term of the Warcraft universe in order to go through.

• It was mentioned prior to the restart that there may be gradual lessening of restrictions on character development. The staff has not discussed this particular topic in detail.
  
  Grakor believes that we have been moving towards allowing player characters to become more important. The changes being implemented to the prestige system indirectly relates to this by allowing them to become more accessible to players. However, the staff insists that they will still keep things realistic in terms of things like denying character profiles that claim to know lore characters because they have a tendency to lead to a big mess.
  
  It was also mentioned that characters are allowed to be heroic depending on the roleplay with which they end up and the events in which they participate.

• A question came up about the lore regarding aquatic form. Grakor's policy has always been that if a character can learn the spell in-game it can be used while in-character. The player may want to have a good reason explaining why his character possesses or knows how to use these abilities, but they are allowed. Players are encouraged to know when to use them because they should not be tossing around high-power abilities at whim.
  
  Totemic druids are allowed.

• A member expressed a concern about having multiple profiles with similar events in their histories. This is fine unless the profiles are near-copies of one another. The staff will only be concerned if the characters seem identical or if a character is made to "replace" another.

• This is still a work in progress. It is on the backburner right now due to the drive to get prestige classes available again. Kretol's decision is to let individuals get different models, but to not hand them out to the public just yet. The system does work, but the staff does not yet know how it will be done or when.
  
  Not every model or skin would be available to players. There are some morphs that exist for the basic races, but many others have preset armor with no equippable version. Skins for the current races will take a second seat to getting other new races out. The staff will return to it if and when other race skins are available to players.

• A player expressed concern regarding how he feels that players are focusing less on roleplay in favor of the new features available through the switch to TrinityCore. That staff want "retail-like" options to be available, but most of the important features are available to players very easily in order to facilitate roleplay. They do not want to force people to play the game if they don't want to, but they also do not want people to be lazy by placing everything on the GMs.

• The staff does not plan on allowing players to acquire protodrakes or dragons with proper stories and so on. They are considered exceedingly powerful, particularly for something like a mount.

• The staff does not plan on bringing back an IC currency system. They consider it to be, in practice, a failed system. Only a small handful of people actually used it; it didn't work and the other idea that was originally considered was not feasible. Furthermore, will the higher value of gold currently, this may not be necessary.
  
  The staff clarified that there are no rules governing the use of game currency in-character.

• Shamans will need to do their quests in order to obtain their totems. The vendor was provided on the old emulator only because the quests did not work. The staff will not be adding a totem vendor or class skill trainer to the server. The quests work; player will have to do them.

• The staff may discuss allowing players to gain the ability to wear plate and mail earlier. The general consensus was that getting to level 20 is fairly easy, especially given the fast leveling speed. However, Kretol may consider dropping the level requirement down even further, since the experience gains from quests was dropped the match the rate of kill experience.

• The original Scarlet Crusade roleplay was handled by Cressy and Seraphim. They have expressed an interest in returning to this idea, but there are issues with accessing the cathedral in TrinityCore.

• More marks will be placed on the inconspicuous panda in the future for upgraded armor that would normally only be accessible by raiding. Kretol is considering reputation gain spells on items if they exist. Otherwise, he may remove the requirements altogether for those items and patterns that cannot be gained by other means.

• Anksi has made a heartfelt plea asking players to use Azshara Crater. A lot of effort was placed into creating the zone. It is a neutral area that is accessible to the entire community. Also, Kretol has announced that a zeppelin will be running from Orgrimmar to Azshara in the future, providing in-character explanation for how Horde characters can reach the area with ease.

• The staff would like this to be possible. They will discuss this and the possibility of allowing race changes from human to Forsaken or human to worgen as the release date to Cataclysm draws closer.

• It is not feasible how possible this will be; it is too soon to tell. This will depend on what information is available before the core updates to Cataclysm and what the staff can do with it.

• Kretol will see about changing the IDs on a number of items so that they can be added with the .addrpitem command. He may instead just place them on a vendor.
  
  He has no intention, however, of allowing players to use weapons prohibited by their classes. This was a bug in the previous core that wasn't well-liked. Furthermore, the ability to learn any weapon skill regardless of class led to ridiculous arguments in the past.

• The staff will not be making mobs neutral. Grakor explained that being able to go into higher-leveled zones for roleplay is part of the perks available to players when they level their characters. Furthermore, most of these mobs would be hostile to players -- in-character, at least. This is considered a deterrent to people who may want to roleplay in places where they should not.

• Hawk expressed a concern that the staff has noted an increase in rude or sarcastic responses from players, particularly in response to GM requests. It is important to keep in mind that not all people are as well informed as others and that responses do not requirement arguments or attitude.

• A player asked if Kretol sits on Kil'jaeden's throne, brooding over how awesome Sargeras was. It was revealed that, no, they instead brood over how awesome he is.

• If players are engaged in a conversation which another player considers to be insensitive, he should kindly ask them to stop. If they do not comply, they should be reported to a staff member. Be certain to take screenshots. The staff reiterated that there are some topics that exists with which they have no tolerance. They also have reminded the community that failure to report these kinds of infractions potentially encourages more people to do the same.

• A player made a self-proclaimed rants regarding how he feels that too many guilds on the server are focused on their own goals rather than taking the opportunity to roleplay outside of their ranks. It was noted that inter-guild conflict has typically led to drama in the past, which is why many guilds may be focused on their own drives. Furthermore, players may be concerned with losing their characters during these kinds of conflicts. It was noted, however, that many guilds encourage roleplay with those not in their roster.
  
  A suggestion was made regarding an out-of-character meeting in which representatives of all of the guilds could discuss becoming more involved with one another.

• It was noted that the character warning system cannot be replaced or modified to be flawless. The rule is that if a character does something monumentally stupid, the player automatically accepts a character warning. The staff reiterates, however, that warnings should be issues before the conflict actually occurs and not immediately before the punishment is applied. Players should also consider being less hostile to one another (out-of-character, of course!) as a compromise can always be made, whether it be giving another player's character a chance to escape or something similar.

• Rigley loves Oreos!

• Players should not ever roleplay as guards in response to other players' actions. The underlying problem, however, is not that players cannot play guards but that people are essentially being idiots in-character. Grakor has expressed that he is close to responding to these sorts of things by immediately and in-characterly killing the perpetrators. People cannot start fights in town and expect to suffer no repercussions -- or even live!
  
  The guards will not tolerate it. If there is an issue, players are strongly encouraged to PM a staff member.

Loathe as I am to rehash this topic, I think it's time to bring it up again now that we've been accepting profiles again for the past two weeks.

Within the last two or three days, I've had four people contact me regarding comments made on their profiles by non-staff members. Last week two or three others messaged me about the same issue. I don't know if any other members of the staff have received similar complaints, but I'd like to see this nipped in the bud before it gets out of hand again as it has in the past. While at times the replies made by players were helpful, these individuals did not want other players commenting on their threads. At least one of these threads was closer to the bottom of the forums than the top and the comment made was about a fairly minor issue; he is not pleased that he was bumped back to the top, especially since the issue wasn't something that would have been commented upon by a GM.

I'd like to remind people that while commenting on profiles may be deemed helpful, not all players welcome your advice, suggestions, or comments. They should not have to edit their own posts to request that only staff members should comment.

If you have advice to give, that is all well and good. However, I am going to request that people consider again if bumping another person's thread is the best way to do so or even if that assistance would be well-received by the original poster. Private messaging them is an option that provides feedback without distressing other players if you absolutely feel the need to do something.

This, of course, does not apply to profiles posted in the Workshop. The vast majority of those exist in order to garner feedback -- even though most of the time they're neglected by the community until they get posted in the Character Profiles subforum. For some odd reason. Nor does it apply to profiles in which the original poster specifically requests feedback.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

I was just notified by Brutal that the moderators for the guild forums were unable to sticky threads or do much more than delete topics. After wrestling with the forum permissions and forum roles, I have altered their permissions. So, hopefully, you all will now be able to split topics, merge topics, and create stickies for the guild forums.

Let me know if there is an issue or other oddity with your permissions. I suggest playing around with the commands a bit to make sure everything is a-go.

The server has recently been restarted to both add a transpolyporter to Everlook (on GM Island by the others) as well as enable the toggleability of FFA-PvP. You can do this by right-clicking your character portrait, hovering over Player vs. Player, and clicking on Enable.