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1. GENERAL
- Added "Thingwalls", serving the dual purposes of acting as public fast travel nodes, and objects of control for Realms.
- The map has been divided into randomly named "provinces" (e.g. "Lurholm", "Barsand", "Thranhurst", &c), each centered around a Thingwall. The Thingwalls project province claims defining a province, with every tile owned by its nearest Thingwall, effectively forming voronoi regions.
- Thingwalls project their province claims to all cave levels below them.
- Thingwalls are all located by a body of water, making them, in our theory, impossible to wall in.
- Should some quirk of the map generator allow a Thingwall to be walled in, that will be corrected by divine fiat.
2. FAST TRAVEL
- A Hearthling may travel from a Thingwall to any known neighboring Thingwall, at a cost in travel weariness.
- Seeing a Thingwall will mark it on the map, and make it a Thingwall known to your character.
- When traveling to a Thingwall, a character will land within a 15 tile radius from the Thingwall traveled to. The Thingwalls do not care if they, by landing characters, perform wall jumps, so do not build anything you want secure that close to them. Our way of counting 15 tiles may differ from your conception of how 15 tiles should be counted, so use a good margin of safety.
- Thingwall knowledge is not inherited from dead characters.
We hope that these changes will allow for a more interconnected world, while at the same time providing for an increased sense of locality in it, hopefully thereby taking a stride toward solving a long standing conflict in our game design, between the desire, on the one hand, for an MMO-environment where players are connected, and the desire, on the other, for a game world where locality and space matter.
3. REALMS
- Realms expand by conquering Thingwalls.
- Thingwalls are conquered by planting a "War Flag" in the vicinity of the Thingwall, and have the War Flag survive for 3 RL hours. Planting a War Flag constitutes a "challenge" to that Thingwall.
- Thingwalls may only be challenged every so often. Inspecting a Thingwall will reveal its next challenge window.
- Thingwalls are possible to challenge during an 8 RL hour window, during which War Flags can be built in its vicinity. The Thingwall need not still be possible to challenge when it actually falls to a challenge, meaning that you may plant a War Flag in the 7th hour of a challenge window, and successfully conquer the province 2 hours after the challenge window expires.
- Globally, all Thingwalls are on a collective rolling challenge schedule, meaning that some subset of Thingwalls will be possible to challenge at the same time. A challenge window never affects only one Thingwall, but, rather, is a global event affecting several Thingwalls: A recurring time of global conflict.
- A challenge window occurs on every ingame full and new moon, i.e. there should be approximately one or two challenge windows every RL week, during which, again, some subset of the Thingwalls globally can be challenged.
- A Realm may only have one War Flag active at any given time, and can, thus, expand by a maximum of three provinces per challenge window.
- Realms may only challenge Thingwalls bordering a province it already controls, or the Thingwall in its coronation stone province.
- While Realms may only expand contigously by neighboring provinces, there is no requirement that the Realm remain contigous. A Realm may be cut off from some branch of controlled provinces, without losing them, or otherwise being negatively affected. Realms may challenge any provinces neighboring such exclaves as per normal.
- Should a Realm control a Thingwall, the banner of the Realm will be displayed on the Thingwall.
- Realms may change their banner by placing a new banner on their coronation stone.
- Controlling a province implies control over the Irminsuls and Monoliths present in that province.
- Realms with the "Guarded Marches" Realm Blessing extend the time War Flags need to stand in challenges against the Realm's Thingwalls, by up to a maximum of 1 RL hour. Challenging a Thingwall controlled by a Realm with the "Guarded Marches" blessing maxed out will, thus, require a War Flag to stand for 4 hours, rather than the usual 3.
We hope that these changes will make the Realm-PvP experience a lot more focused on personal combat than on strange projections of vast amounts of resources. We hope that it will make participation more accessible, and make it more feasible to stage a comeback for a Realm that has been significantly beaten down. Generally, we hope that it will be a lot more fun.
Taking and answering most any questions, and will update/clarify as needed, with the hope that this post can be, become, and remain an authoritative description of how Thingwalls work.
Do note that all timers, specifics and nitty-gritties are tentative, and that we are very open to adjusting them as needed.