So I let this sit for a bit before answering - I guess I'll bite the bullet and give my response on the matter of Half-Giants.
Half giants have been moved out of rotation, not permanently but with no warning and no reasoning why it was selected under the announcement, it has been difficult to find much in the way of official reasoning from anyone on discord.
Race rotations happen without notice or warning - this is to not have people stockpile races and never do anything with them simply because they are being rotated. The reasoning of any race rotation is to cycle in new opportunities, re-evaluate other races, and consideration of lore and how something can be accurately represented, population density and ultimately the vision of the server as decided by Irongron. No rotation has gone without his input.
Now I don’t have the census data as its missing from the last post. But I do my best to keep up with Half giants new, returning. I have recollection on the numbers, but I don’t want to post false data here. What I find is typical is that there tend to be two types of half giant players, those that start a giant and keep with it a few months before going inactive, and those that tend to find a community and becoming long lasting characters, be it Jotunhold or otherwise.
I apologize on the loss of data - Discord change its stance on being a file hosting system and put expirations. It is why I recommend people NOT save images exclusively to Discord. All my tables from then were Discord links and expired. I could likely regenerate them myself, but at the same time I am not looking to do so - I intend to continue to move forward and potentially release more useful information in a more presentable manner.
There are always multiple cases to how a race is played and how numbers are reflected. You have those that get the immediate interest, but then lost the interest over time and shelve or delete. You then have those who stick around and play the character. But, you also have those that play the character sporadically and also not true to their representation and can bastardize a concept. In the end, the numbers I present are not reflective of the roleplay but of the level of activity and accessing of the server during a set time, and whether or not it is deleted.
2) I am not able to speak archaic or old english which is a major let down if the RP surrounds this particular concept, granted you can certainly start learning and all but hey, we're here to play and enjoy ourselves. Some do enjoy learning...just not me.
I have seen this a couple times in the thread - I am not certain where the focus on archaic or old English came from. Is there some direction that I have missed?
I admit I don't understand the logic in removing a race that has had areas built around them, for the race specifically, for an indeterminate amount of time.
Areas are built based on what fits in the vision of the server direction, to add new content and to do something interesting. Yet it is never promised to be permanent. Take all the Banite strongholds you find - they had shifted over the course of time and repurposed. Areas will always evolve and change. Jotunhold is no exception. But, there is no intent to change it at this time.
What manner will determine the rotations, what numbers and values, how are you measuring that data, simply total or are you measuring active characters, if its active characters how are you measuring the activity?
Consideration of rotation comes from:
Popularity of the race vs the intended number.
Balance - is the race released in a balanced state, overtuned or undertuned and needs to be reviewed?
Length of time - has the race been available at a particular tier for some time?
New race opportunities - can we introduce other races that may bring new blood to RP avenues and then look at migrating others?
Lore - Does it fit? Is it a homebrew that we have taken on and is not new player friendly? Is it easy to reference without having to sit and study?
Sensibility - Does it actually make sense to suddenly have a large number of these races around, interacting? This also ties to lore.
I am no expert on lore. I am never going to claim I am, so I always excuse myself from those discussions or reach out to individuals to gather as much understanding as I can. But, I can provide numeric values and input from what I see and gather to give my opinion. Whether it is accepted or not is another thing. And, even if we come to a decision collectively, what if Irongron doesn't want it that way? Then we make adjustments, compromises and present our case to see if what we feel can work or not.
How long will these rotations last, are we talking weeks, months, years?
Race rotations tend to happen every 6 months, give or take. We had a pause for a bit, and we have other races already in mind to be released eventually. But, focusing primarily on races alone means that our developers lose out on introducing new content. That being said, this does not mean in 6 months that a rotated out race may return, but it may be considered. It could just yield others being rotated out for newer race opportunities.
Why are half giants being painted with a broad brush and not the individual subtypes?
I would not say keeping around particular sub-types were ever the intention. If we were looking at rotating out Half-Giants, it would be the collective. This race came into fruition from a homebrew idea that was a testing ground. Irongron had said it himself, and you can find the quote on the wiki for Giants, that we were hesitant to add them for frequency and RP. It is good to see a collective of Half-Giants rally and make interesting RP. That means the race was successful in doing that. But, at the same time, it did not have the lore that was easily adaptable for new players to take up. As well, balance also had to be considered - the Half-Giants went through changes from their initial release and I understand people were upset there. Much like people are still going to be upset regardless of what I write here.
Why are Frirbolgs not being included in the rotation?
They were suggested to be rotated out as well. They were not excluded from the conversation. However, there is more lore surrounding Firbolg and how they are represented on Arelith, and Irongron wished to continue to have them remain available. As well they had a supported place and mythology. For now they will remain as is, but it does not remove the opportunity for them to be rotated out later.
Why have no other award races that have been around longer not been cycled like aasimir, tiefling, avarial, gloaming.
Some races like Tiefling and Aasimar have a more lore accurate representation and do have higher population numbers. Gloaming, correct me if I am mistaken, are not that old of a race. Avariel could be rotated at any time. However, other races like Dragons have been rotated out and have remained out for years - there was a kneejerk reaction then for it like there has been from some when Half-Giants were rotated. There is never a time where any race is exempt from being rotated out unless its a base race (even though I'd do away with all Gnomes).
I think that overall, this is going to harm communities that already exist such as jotunhold, and in jotunholds case RP outside of it as we tend to be quite inclusive. With a lack of new blood, the communities that centre around particular races will be harder to maintain as old blood dies out, becomes busy with life, etc.
Jotunhold really expanded around the players, and the developers took pride in it as they helped build the homebrewed lore around it. The community will remain and the characters that exist are not being taken out - you still have the rest of the server to interact with. It is just preventing new characters from joining as that race while it is rotated out.
But all races go through ups and downs - even the rotated ones. People will hold onto their characters, people will play when it fancies them or they have the time to dedicate to it. But Jotunhold as an area will remain - and if it ever fizzles down to emptiness due to the race still being rotated out and people not playing their Half-Giants further, the area can be re-evaluated and opened. Nothing is ever permanent in Arelith and should not be used as a reason to keep races in circulation versus not in circulation.
I fear the logic fuelling this train of thought, while sincere, may be misplaced or lacking in context that could further create an unhealthy form of roleplay in which when new races come out, people won't make a character of the new award but because they fear missing out on it, in the long run hampering the RP communities that could have developed when people don't do it for an earnest love of the lore of a race.
I would put more trust in the community - the same could have been said about Half-Giants. There was a fear internally from the team that players would not know how to represent a newer race as it came out and that it would dwindle RP. Dedicated players that care for the story will make it work, and will work on representing their character and race to the best of their ability. This is also the reason things get tied behind awards and applications as well, so that if there is too large of a concern it can be controlled.
Now that the team has decided to shelve the half giants from awards for an unknown period of time would create even more problems for bringing activity to Jotunhold, no matter how inclusive the players there could be, for me, this is a flaw in the design of Jotunhold itself.
An area / faction can live as long as the players put the effort in and want to tell a story. You need not a home to do it. You just need an interest in what you are doing. I have found that activity fluctuates based on the level of effort a person puts in and how open they are to outsider roleplay. I mean outsider in the sense of outside the faction - not just races.
I do not think the current players will have any issue attracting roleplay and telling stories based on us rotating out the race for an undetermined amount of time. I believe it stifles the new blood like they mentioned. But, that can happen to any race we rotate.
I would like to mention how the jotunhold community is in my opinion the pinnacle of what Arelith should be trying to facilitate. The group here is overwhelmingly welcoming and inviting to all players, sharing lore, adventures, build help, hosting movie nights and so many positive aspects which exceed what is above par for a guild house on Arelith. Since that group has been inspired and centered around the Half-giant lore and play, it has absolutely inspired others to want to join along similar interests. No one is required to be a Half-giant to join in the revel and adventures and Discord, but it can be hugely rewarding to feel part of ownership of that RP through the lense of playing this reward race.
I am glad that you feel so positively towards their community - it is nice to hear. I would encourage people that encounter this in any faction, in any interaction, to let the DMs know or to do a -recommend so they can be evaluated.
I will say that build help, hosting movie nights and other OOC activities through Discord or otherwise does not bear any weight on whether a race is rotated or not. These are all outside of Arelith. It is great that you can have an OOC community and feel part of it and I encourage people to find something they like doing and enjoy it. But, I don't think it serves any relevance in a defense of a race rotation.
At any rate, I'm not sure it makes sense to remove these races. The only way it would is if you pre-planned a schedule for rotations of races so people could be aware (and even that is questionable to remove them in that situation)
Unfortunately this is not our intent - while a schedule would be nice it would have negative effects on racial representation, roleplay and population density. Players have a tendency to prematurely act upon changes that they know are coming - take the Dweomercraft update, we have seen how players have already adjusted knowing OOC'ly the system is changing. This should never have happened. The same thing would happen with races.
Half giants themselves are a bit of an arelithism but I’ve seen nothing that comes to lore breaking proportions more so than many that I’ve seen tout 4e/5e sources because they wiki warrior.
A failure on our part is deviating from supported lore and creating Arelithism-esque races and lore that makes it hard for people to follow, requires investment in a lot more research and detracts from enjoyment of the game without the stress of getting it wrong. There have been many examples over the years, and I am not painting Half-Giants in this light only - so please do not take it as that. It is just that its a homebrew without as much lore supporting it as there are other races.
Along with that, what others have question, the data on the March numbers of level 30 half-giants. If there could be some sort of public information on it, that'd be wonderful.
I could pull the numbers again and I might. But roleplay does not happen at level 30 - any numbers are inclusive of all level ranges. I could care less if a person is 30 or 3, they are equally represented.
Regardless of what I say here, and I've said a lot and tried to answer a lot, people will still not be satisfied. I cannot satisfy everyone, and no change will ever satisfy everyone. People will always have an issue with it. But, we do discuss things and we do rotate out other races as well - who knows how long Half-Giants will remain out? For now, they will continue to remain as such unless advised by Irongron to reverse the decision.
Cheers.