Hello all!
I realize I'm necro-ing a dead thread, but in my defence I was specifically ordered by the server-owner to do so.
On October 12th.
Of 2017.
( IronGron and I are both members of the Gallifrey Base Doctor Who fan forum, and I logged into that site this morning for the first time since August last year, to find to my surprise a PM from him suggesting I check this thread out. So here I am! Opinionated and all. )
(( By the by, IronGron also advised me there's a ton of Doctor Who easter eggs around Arelith; I'm wondering if anyone's been attacked by a Weeping Angel? Because if the Devs haven't figured out how to script it so statues only attack when the camera-angle is turned away from them and then send the PCs they kill back in time over to the Fixed Level server, I shall be mightilly disappointed ))
((( On a further-note, if anyone's sent PMs on this forum to my old Meglith account, I've lost my password and can't be bothered to bother the admins to help me log in. Sorry! )))
Xanos950 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 11:32 am
I occasionally hear the name mentioned on the forums as ".. back then in the good old cycles in Udos.." and I've ever since been wondering how it actually was back then? Are there old players around that can describe what it was like?
It's been made pretty clear that Andunor isn't a drow city, but it's then also compared to Udos and Pit town. Something that even in ingame lore is kept pretty vague, and i don't care about the FOIG response as I'm just curious myself, as i want to learn about server history.
So... any oldtime players here that can tell me... What is Udos, what was it like, and what the hell happened?
Hey there! I'm an old-time Udos player. Jagel predates me, but I predate Norf, EnigmaticSpirit and Cuchilla. Though clearly they have more staying power. 'Sup dudes!
I started playing shortly after the Amia and Arelith servers split, with Arelith going more hardcore RP and Amia staying casual and kooky.
Udos Dro'xun's creation predates me, but when I started it was very small and the Lore wasn't really enforced. Udos was originally one map-area. There was a bar with a rat-challenge for newbies, there was a market, and a few buildings for factions to hang in, but nothing like what we eventually got. There was no Underdark, per se - outside Udos' city-gates were a few maps with epic-level monsters, but as a noob I never got to explore those.
In the centre of Udos there was a portal to Cordor, where you'd find cat-ladies and "vampires" and celestials and High Priests of Bane hanging out and chatting and teaming up to go hunting for XP and gold. Arelith was on the road to being a serious RP server, but still had a ways to evolve. There were no dedicated Underdark areas for noobs, so low level Drow hung out in Cordor like everyone else and joined parties with elves and dwarves and paladins to go hunting for XP.
Drow RP was definitely casual; there were four Houses (Baenre, Elg-Carin, Fuma-Vhid and Dria'fiend) that sort-of competed politically, but no one took it very seriously.
Some players would indeed use the Lingo, but not too much. As a noob I was told I should learn the military-ranks, learn to say "Thank you" and "Of course" but nobody expected you to know anything else. 99% of Drow RP was in English and everyone was chill.
About a year later, the Devs of the Day revamped the server, banned Drow from Cordor, clamped down on cat-ladies... etc.
Udos got a pretty sweet redesign. The whole city now hung over a bottomless chasm; buildings were placed on ledges atop stalagmites connected by suspended bridges. We got a bunch of NPC soldiers patrolling the streets, we got expanded markets with NPCs whose dialogue suggested real personalities, we got revamped faction-Houses with dungeons for torture-RP, and the wild-Underdark got a few expanded areas for mid-level hunting... but the wilderness was still very sparse compared to today. For the most part, my now-mid-level Drow still went to the Surface to hunt. Most of my contemporaries at this time were higher level than me, so I also just tagged along with them and just collected XP and gold without much bother...
...but that's because the "in-crowd" had accepted me. For newer players, it was tougher, and few stuck with it. Udos became a town with solely mid-to-high level PCs, and no one else coming up the ranks.
Ork wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:39 pm
Pretty much anyone that refers to the "good old days of Udos Droxun" are blind to how terrible the place was to everyone else.
Well... I don't fully agree, and I'm not actually sure if you're referring to my generation of Udos-players or the groups who replaced us (more on them later) but I have to admit these words can, from certain perspectives, accurately apply to me and my group.
We became, very much, a clique.
I want to say, though, that part of the problem was geographic. There were no low-level areas in the Underdark to hunt in for quite some time, and the portals to the Surface where the low-levels could hunt were harder to access. A higher-level player had to escort you through the high-level NPCs to reach the Surface, get you to a Surface-portal to activate it, and only then could you explore and hunt at your leisure.
And to be honest, the higher-level Drow were disinclined to make things easy for newbs.
We were wary of A) Drizzt-clones, and B) pridegamers, and C) players ignorant of Drow lore. We were happy to give newbs tips on what Drow RP was so long as they knew the background and were fun to hang with, but we were trying to enjoy our spare-time - someone whose comprehension of the Drow was limited to "Evil elves" required a heck of a lot of mentoring before they'd fit in. Didn't always have the patience.
So we became, I think, too insular and way-less-helpful than we should have been.
Plus, in-character, the cool RP was with the council-meetings to plot the downfall of rival factions, the prisoner-sacrifices in the Temple of Lolth... As we took the RP more seriously, these events became invite-only. You had to have a high rank, in character, to deserve to participate. Newbs needed-not-apply. Our RP became much more crisp and "realistic", but much less welcoming.
This fed the impression that Surface-players had of us as being, y'know, rude.
I remember Septire made a Drow mage and stuck with it for several months, despite having nowhere to hunt. He started using an exploit - sending his familiar into the Vault to draw out Epic hostile NPCs, then drawing them all the way back to Udos for the Udos NPCs to kill for him, for XP. I remember berating him in Tells for using an Exploit, but he of course flatly pointed out he had no other options if he wanted to level up and be able to join the rest of us properly... None of us had taken the time to get him to the Surface to activate portals.
And Septire KNEW the Drow lore, he was an eager RP-er, he could have fit in well... So you can imagine how hard it was to fit in for a more casual player!
Still, while we were way too clique-y, our RP was genuinely awesome.
Irongron wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:10 pm
At its height Udos was extremely well roleplayed, really the first settlement in Arelith that established a strong sense of narrative and setting. It was a place of heavy RP, and many of those who chose to play there did so because it offered a level of immersion that was unmatched elsewhere.
The extent to which the players established social structures, hierarchies and a definitive sense of place is something I would love to see done in the more 'generic' settlements...
...For all its ills, my hat is still off to those early pioneers of Underdark roleplay.
Thankee kindly, I'd agree with you - we were awesome RPers
At least half of us earned 40 RPRs, the rest had 30s. I don't know how things are nowadays, but back then, only something like 3% of the server had a 40 RPR, and to so many of us collected in one faction meant the DMs paid us a bit of extra attention, if only to be entertained by the stories we were telling. Those DMs started saying on the forums, regularly, that the best RP around was happening in the Underdark... which I'm sure made many Surface-players a little jealous - especially when they made new Drow to join us, and then found they couldn't A) level up, or B) get invited to our awesome, private RP.
As our insular RP got more and more serious, we did start using the Drow lingo more and more around this time, but it wasn't (yet) as bad as...
yellowcateyes wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:24 pm
Xas, shows dossta heart is still that of a kivvil. Dos are naut ready to join a qu'ellar. Llolth tu malla, aluve' jaluk.
By-the-by, you're close, but it's "Lloth tlu malla"
All that hyper-lingo garbage would come later - but I'll get to that.
Durvayas wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:16 pm
At its peak, it was a bustling drow city with up to five or six active houses at once, or so I hear.
Nah, we only maxed out at four. And bottomed out at one.
In fact, during our "RP-er's golden age" Udos only had one truly active House.
Not all of the Drow Houses evolved with the RP-serious tone of the server. House Baenre died away, and House Fuma-Vhid became largely inactive - though one Fuma-Vhid player continued to log in every few weeks to join hunts. House Dria'fiend had some brilliant RP-ers, but unlike me they also had jobs and social lives to occupy their time, so the political RP of Udos Dro'xun sort-of died away, just at the time when we finally had an environment to encourage Drow RP awesomeness.
The Drow players who were most dedicated coalesced into House Elg'Carin, which became the First House of the city. (many Elg'Carin players also, it should be said, knew each other IRL so that further exacerbated our clique-i-ness). Political RP became purely about advancing rank within the House. While there was scheming and back-stabbing, it was all among the same 10 players, so... I'd say that things became a little static.
Also, because we were banned from Cordor, we became really isolated from the rest of the server's factions. Everyone else started in Cordor, formed relationships, had a web of RP going on among factions that wove in and out of Cordor - but when Surfacers and Drow crossed paths, we were all encouraged by the Devs to be hostile and to "take no prisoners". Which made sense, and was fun in it's own way, but started to feed an impression by the other factions that the Drow were standoffish, elitist, and uptight.
Durvayas wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:16 pm
What I know is it used to have a functioning gate, where you could only get inside if you were in a party with a drow. There were a pair of fleshwarp golems/monstrosities that guarded the 'towers of woe'. It was once an impregnable fortress, from which the drow would sally forth and raid the surface.
No, not at first - anyone could get into Udos for a good long while, though the NPCs were scripted to be hostile to non-Drow (unless in a party with Drow).
But, you know, if you were a bored Epic level surfacer looking to raid a hostile faction, having a city of hostile NPC's working with Epic level hostile PCs was great.
There were times where two or three times a week, I'd get back from a hunt with loot to sell, only to find every NPC in the city dead... It was frustrating. I don't remember any specific player or group actually tagettoing us for griefing, but the fact the whole Surface was hostile to us meantwe'd be targetted by one group less than 24 hours after another already had. It was frustrating.
So the Devs put in an Uber-Gate and the Demonflesh Golems to guard us against effective griefing - but this "special treatment" that no other faction had further exacerbated surface-player's impression that the Drow were elitists who whined and then got ridiculous perks.
Nitro wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 11:40 am
I think the word "empty" describes it best. Sure, you could log in on a lucky time and catch a handful of people around, but for most of the time it was an absolute ghost town.
Yeah, it's true.
The Underdark was getting developed more and more, there were now NPC Goblin warrens, Stinger tunnels, and Drider Pits for newbs to level up in without going to the surface.
And a new Drow faction- House Drak'aa - was started by a new player we all instantly liked RP'ing with - 4sakN - who broke into our OOC clique and who also proved great at encouraging other newbs to stick with their Drow. It was exciting; I was hoping that in a few months we might have inter-House politics / RP, not just the internal stuff.
...ebut then, our awesome collective of 40 RPRs started getting scooped up to DM. 4sakN also became a DM, which stunted his new House's growth. Remember, the Drow old guard was basically a faction of 10-ish players, so having 5 of us take on DM responsibilities all at the same time was bad news. Udos definitely became a ghost-town.
For me, still playing a lot but not being a DM, it started to feel like I ~was~ the Underdark, all on my own.
Still, so many Drow-DMs all at once, having better access to the ears of the Dev team did spur Underdark development.
(that, plus the entrepreneurship of a couple Duergar players who showed there was real player-interest in having non-Drow opportunities in the Underdark!)
It was decided that two new PC settlements would be created - Urblexis Grond for goblins, kobolds, Duergar and Svirfneblin (Orogs and Gnolls were added later), and Jhared's Trading Post, which was originally just a Duergar NPC with a tent or something, but got expanded to a full trade-hall midway between Udos and the Surface. The plan was to give Underdark newbs more variety for RP to encourage repopulation of the stagnated PC population of the Underdark, while also having Jhared's be a neutral spot for Drow to RP with Surfacers without the open hostility that was requisite everywhere else - it was quite refreshing.
I think if there had been a more dedicated group of high level Underdark players to encourage this growth, it would have gone smoother - but like I say, too many of us had responsibilities as DMs to devote time to this.
The Newbs in Grond were fantastic, though - I remember hanging out there a lot and really enjoying seeing those factions start from the ground-up.
But the Drow RP was suffering. New Drow players... They didn't have the same mentality of the older Drow players.
Memelord wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:53 pm
Aaaaaand then we had a big influx of players from Arena/PvP-servers, most of whom were barely English-literate and had a somewhat tenuous grasp on what RP was (hey, almost all of us were at that point at some time, right?) and most of whom settled down in the UD, and it was all downhill from that point on.
Yeah, that's... I would agree.
Although I should also note that it's around this time that Norfildor joined and tried to follow in 4sakN's footsteps of establishing a new House to rival the Old Guard, and got a fair bit further, working with a fair bit less, so kudos to Norf on that.
Norfildor wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:33 pm
TBH, my greatest beef with Udos was the way how priestesses of Lolth had been automatically given power over other drow characters as early as upon the character creation.
Yeah, I advocated on the forums a few times that Drow Clerics should require a 20 RPR to go ahead, but the Devs never took that idea...
But yeah, we got a bunch of Arena-minded players influxing to Udos Dro'xun and setting a fairly shallow tone of RP I didn't really enjoy. Maybe if I'd taken more time, in the earlier years, to encourage new players in their Drow characters, I'd have been better equipped to help these Arena-folks in adjusting to Arelith's game-style. As it was, I was used to being standoffish to players outside of my clique, and I stayed that way.
(in my defence, I did try with some of them - found one of them was a 9/11 Truther who would not stop bothering me by Tells with his conspiracy theories!)
And like others noted, their skills with English varied.
Cortex wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:16 pm
All I remember is when I tried playing a drow, every other drow played spoke some form of common-xanalress dialect(before xanalress was added as a language) and I couldn't understand anything.
Me too.
I'd been playing a Drow for years, held a 40 RPR for years, and I couldn't keep up with the lingo these Arena-folks were using. Which, well, I guess, given their limited English, I guess I'd have struggled to understand them even if they only used English.
I believe this is why the Drow lingo started getting ridiculous - if you're already being told to RP in a foreign language when all you want to do is level your min-maxed character, I can understand the appeal of 1) seeing Drow lingo as equally appealing as English, and 2) using Drow lingo as a mask for your shallow RP-style.
Definitely got off-putting.
Though the upside was - until now, we only had Elven and Undercommon as Drow languages. I think the Drow lingo bullshit being vomitted out by these jokers spurred the Devs to implement the Drow language too, to make them look as ridiculous IC as we all knew they were OOC. And the Drow language function is pretty sweet, right?
Jagel wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:23 pm
*deep breath* I remember the Underdark before there was an Udos Dro'Xun. There were a couple of houses, that's it.
I was convinced by a friend to try Arelith because of drow rp and I really fell in love with it. I could probably write pages about the glorious days of yore. There really were some incredibly fun times back in the different versions of Udos Dro'Xun.
The old Elg'Carin days, playing both Qu'el'saruk and Ul'saruk, shaping Melee Magthere rp, going on patrols, doing promotions and trials, house wars, intrigue *deep sigh*. Dria'fiend and Elg'Carin merging under Shai'rin, squaring off against the Killian Yath. Warring with Urblexis Grond, being part of the first Web (wait, those never existed nvm). Those were indeed the days *another dreamy sigh*
Mmm, yeah.
The sequence of Dria'fiend and Elg'Carin merging was a true highlight for me, too.
OOC it functioned as a way to wrap up characters and storylines from players who weren't interested in playing anymore. It wasn't really planned to be that, the whole story was IC-driven... But organically, it happened to shake out in such a way that the characters of players who had mostly become inactive had one last dramatic hurrah before dying, and leaving the characters of players who were still active able to enact a transition of power, all IC and in an awesome story.
One of our House mages attempted to stage a coup and put a new Priestess on the throne, but was betrayed by her snivelling former apprentice (me!!!
). A brief civil war started, and the would-be New Guard went down, with my mistress backstabbed for triple-digit sneak-attack damage by her best friend, Elg'Carin's master-assassin.
To celebrate the victory, the Elg'Carin Matron ordered the Old Guard on a grand expedition to kill our other Drow rivals, House Freth in the Vault, but the hunt went... bad... Many big cheese's died, including the Matron herself. Though my character did manage to activate a portal lens and escape
With both the Old Guard leadership and the New Guard leadership dead, the First House of Udos Dro'xun was cast adrift, but with many powerful males still alive - notably Jagel's chief warrior, as well as the aforemented Chief Assassin, and of course lil' old me, representing Sorcere.
We three commanded a sizeable portion of the city's army and so couldn't be exiled or executed, but also couldn't lead the city, being males. So we negotiated for House Dria'fiend's matron to absorb our forces and leap-frog from Third House to First House.
It was a crazy great run of RP that fulfilled all my fantasies about what Drow RP should and could be - and for a few months it worked, as the Dria'fiend players became much more involved in Udos than they ever had been before... But real life crept up. The Dria'fiend players were all friends in France in real life, they found they had other things they wanted to do with their lives rather than run a fictional faction, and so eventually we crumbled.
The old Elg'Carin players were absorbed by House Z'Ress, led by Norfildor, who was still soldiering on to make / keep Udos awesome, but... the game just wasn't so much fun anymore for me, and I guess Jagel also felt his character had come to an end. He retired his main Drow first in an epic story of betrayal-by-Norfildor, and the Devs honoured him by trapping his soul into an NPC-golem. A few months later, I RP'd that my character died quietly in his sleep; dying of old age (a rare fate for a Drow).
I gather that Jagel still plays casually, every time I pop in I see traces of him and every few years we catch up over Tells if I happen to catch him.
But I'd lost interest in Arelith and in Udos; the RP on the whole just wasn't as good as in the "good old days" now that almost all my original clique-y friends were gone
Plus I had real life to start living; I travelled, went to a good school, met a few girls, started my career. Tried returning to Arelith a few times, over and again over the years, but never sunk back in.
Jagel wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:23 pm
I agree that the Pit Town days are not exactly glory days to be fondly remembered but I had a lot of fun playing a drow from a fallen noble house and getting dragged into plots that involved other races and a lot of other delightful players.
Yeah... I was only barely playing at this point, but what I saw of Pit Town, I didn't really enjoy... I did try my hand for a few weeks at playing a Drow Priestess looking to restore the "Drow empire" and had some laughs, but...
Jagel wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:23 pm
I really do not miss Udos Dro'Xun. The only way to make a drow exclusive city fun would be to make the underdark part server mechanically drow-centric and I don't think that's a good idea. I love what's been done with Andunor.
Mm, I'm sad Udos is gone, but I'd agree it had to go.
I wasn't present for the Cataclysm, so I can't comment on how it was executed, but,
A) The quality of RP in Udos when I left was... frustrating, and I think there were some players who bullied others (which I was also guilty of, at times)
B) As Jagel says, the Drow-exclusive city just doesn't work for what the Underdark has become.
I would actually argue - despite how much I loved Udos - it was actually a mistake from Day One, given how it encouraged clique-y-ness and isolated us from the rest of the server. The best possible option would have been that Udos hosted Duergar, Svirfs, Goblins and Kobolds from Day One, and that the sharper Drow RP that evolved would have incorporated them from the beginning, in a fleshed-out Underdark that had ample hunting grounds for low-level PCs.
Obviously that was impossible given constraints on the Devs time - they couldn't snap their fingers and create a perfect server, it had to evolve organically.
But if we'd had, then, what we have now... the clique-y-ness, the OOC drama, the Cataclysm, all of it... Maybe it would have been better?
Or maybe not.
Hey, Arelith is still going strong almost, what, TWO DECADES after it started, and now with an evidently thriving Underdark centered about Arundor. Looks like it all worked out for the best.
More power to you, peeps!