Dying, Dead, Raise Dead.

[Bones Mist and Moons]

Dying: "Oh, well."

Dead: "How much experience? Acceptable loss."

Raise Dead: "1000 Gold? I'll take ten."



Arelith. A Roleplaying Community. We're storytellers. As much as it saddens everyone, every story must come to an end. Who will mourn their loss? Who will take up the mantle? How did they fall? Did they retire on a beach, get dragged to hell, or did they go out in a blazing glory surrounding by the corpses of their enemies? Eventually, inevitably, everyone and everything must die.

When I first tried the Fixed Level Server I thought one of the coolest things about it was the Fixed Mark of Destiny. Ten PvP Deaths and your done. My suggestion is applying this to the normal Arelith servers and maybe taking it a bit further. As it is now, your practically immortal from levels 3-30. You die in your low levels and you shrug it off. Get high level and you act like death itself was the boogeyman that your parents tried to scare you with, but now that your older you ignore it because you think it's not real. There is no threat. No worry. No fear. The Lv 15 Paladin will take on a group of Banites higher level than them just because they think they wouldn't stand down. The threat of dying permanently isn't there, and the idealism of "Dying for what you believe in" is lost. Your paladin never has to consider, "If I die now, I can't grow strong enough to defeat them. Live and run away, to fight another day." When your out leveling you'll explore areas above your level thinking "If I die trying to get better xp, I'll just know not to go there. No biggy."

Fixed Mark of Destiny. Ten Deaths by Players and your character is permanently lost. Why take it further? How many characters do you know that are past the age they should still be adventuring with the young folk? A human that's over a hundred years old? A young woman that is still in her twenties after playing the character for a few irl years? I suggest applying something like; Every ten normal deaths equals one PvP Death. I also suggest that Raise Dead and Ressurection scrolls be either removed from NPC vendors, or restricted to higher level areas.

With this, Arelithians would have to consider the threat of dying as more than an inconvienence. People become more inclined to 5% characters and it generates the next generations of adventures. I can't even count how many times I've seen people prefer to kill a character and drag their corpse back to a prison cell then raise them, rather than actually RP capturing them. People will ignore consequences and shrug off bad situations because they feel that at the end of the day, they'll just respawn and no one will have the upper hand on them. For this reason, I also recommend against suggestions that Raise Dead or Resurrection should return marks. Otherwise people will just keep doing this and the point of restricting raise dead scrolls is lost.

People have to die. Old characters should retire when they get too old. The idea of dying should be scary. Being dead should carry risk of being permanent. Ideals of "Dying for what you believe in.", "Run now, and live to fight another day.", and "Rest In Peace." should matter. Older generations should look to new or young adventures to pass on their memories and lessons. An apprentice should mourn the loss of his master. These lines of Roleplay and the tear bringing stories of loss and lineage are lines worth playing.

[Bones Mist and Moons]

I just remembered something and would like to throw it in.

Nyhmax VS The Abyssal Queen

I was fortunate enough to be present at that occasion. A roleplayed, not mechanical, battle between the Malefactor of the Infernalists and the Queen of the Abyss (I forgot her name, sorry!). It was the final battle used to RP the demise of the Abyssal Queen. Nyhmax and her worked it out and agreed to end her storyline that way. It was an awesome battle. A fun event to watch. I even recall the Hellball that fried my little Lv 9 rogue at the time

If the Abyssal Queen hadn't permanently died from that battle, the memory of it would have been "That was awesome!". Because she died, it was epic. EPIC! A once in a life-time occurrence that can never be repeated. It was valuable. Cherished. The End of a Story is something that very few people even consider when playing Arelith. There needs to be a threat of death for people to consider these things.

[IndifferentPerson]

You should make your suggestion more clear next time so lazy people like me can skip text walls to the juicy part. Also, first controversial suggestion of new forums, yeee.

[Ecstatic]

This got suggested like.. A week and a half ago, for serious, and both Mith and Artos explained thoroughly why it won't happen. I won't rehash the arguments in detail becasuse if that horse is still kicking, it's Rasputin.

But I will say this: that epic battle between Nhymax and the Abyssal Queen? Only possible because neither character had a MoD, PvP or otherwise. This enabled them to have the freedom to write the end of one of their stories and the continuation of another because narrative fit. They went out at a point of maximum awesome, and MoDs do not assist or enable this. Only good storytelling does. MoDs aren't for epic storytelling. They're for gritty realism and sudden, inglorious death.

[Elena]

Player 1, Character Emily, 30 years
Has family, job, vice president of the local chess club, plays the piano and takes lessons evey week, etc. But every Friday evening, he/she takes some time and plays Arelith for 3-4 hours, because its awesome and relaxing. But grinding experience is not worth the time spent online, so it results in 3-4 hours of nice roleplay.

Player 2, Character: John, 18 years
Single, works 50%, not engaged anywhere, hangs out with friends when they have time, but nothing to do else. Plays Arelith whenever possible, sometimes 6 hours a day. If there's no one around for RP, he/she goes killing stuff for experience.

After one year
Player 1 has reached level 7, has earned 100'000 gold through crafting and selling, and is now eager to get that new guild house and all the guild plot started. He's well known in Cordor and has participated in 3-4 DM Events.

Player 2 has reached level 30, has earned ~8'000'000 gold throught grinding, crafting, looting and selling, is working on that last bit of epic equipment, owns a PC ship, was leader of several factions and participated in almost any Event that happened.

Both Characters have died 9 times so far (mechanically): Time to delete your characters, sorry. Player 1 would probably stare at you blankly, because that story is not even half way gone! Player 2 would probably say: Hell yes! An appropriate ending is just what's missing!


If the world AND all characters in it were persistent, I'd probably like the idea. But it's only the world, not the characters and there's always these players who will develop slower and thus, I don't like the idea too much of guaranteed permanent death.

(And I didn't even mention the whole lot of "I'm going to make a new character, but whatever it is, let's make sure it's good at pvp..")

[Rystefn]

Short answer: there's already MoD. If you like it, take it.

[Mithreas]

This got suggested like.. A week and a half ago, for serious, and both Mith and Artos explained thoroughly why it won't happen. I won't rehash the arguments in detail becasuse if that horse is still kicking, it's Rasputin.