no dragons...........lol

[Hellios]

Well put Trinx, well put.

And Leonard Im srry for the Anger i had in my last posts, i was in a bad mood due to some personal reasons.

[Pestilence]

hmm well Leonard you\'re not alone. Looking at what someone else is really saying or trying to say is very uncommon if people like bashing what you appear to say. Althhough I am glad to say it seems to have gotten a little better the last months.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Karyuu
What ideas, besides using typical \"dragons,\" \"horses,\" \"orcs/goblins,\" \"fairies,\" \"mermaids,\" or whatever else there is? Clearly similar creatures exist or will exist (Pterosaurs, Groffels, Gobbles, etc.), but they won\'t be the exact same thing. Where is the issue?

Personally I think the issue is that aforementioned terms are part of our history and passed on believes. Creatures like dragons and fairies were parts of medieval culture and when you replace those with something completely new... It\'s like annihilating many beautiful aspects of those times.
It\'s somewhere deep down in our culture, our ancestors believed in those... It really seems somewhat magical.
Gobble, Tefusang... Those have very little meaning and I guess are nothing more than monsters from a game.

Originality is good, sure. But when it destroys certain aspects, I don\'t think it is proper anymore. Many of the mythological creatures could be shown in a different light. That would be a beauty of originality. In any case, something seriously well thought out.

[ross.burns]

What I don\'t get is why you guys think that the \"no dragons\" rule wasn\'t thought out? You don\'t think the Developers thought long and hard about all the aspects of the game, including what to put in and what to leave out? PS is such a great game because of its \"alien yet familiar\" theme. It\'s not set on mythological Earth, its set on an entirely new planet, with an entirely new and unique ecosystem and evolutionary paths for its species. That\'s the whole beauty of it. \"No dragons\" is fine by me because PS doesn\'t need them - why use these old, Earth ideas when PS has nothing to do with that mythos? I love the whole story and atmosphere and novelty of PS, that\'s the core of the game that works so well, do we really need to mess with that just so people can cling to their familiar old ideas of what a fantasy RPG should include?

[Kythag]

Since this world is powered by a crystal, why not have beings based on that. Since there are crystals to be found(or were), perhaps there could be crystal egg laying creatures.  One could fly without wings on the crystal winds and be magical in the glyph sort of way.  They could be by-products of glyph use or crystal existence or any of a million permutations.

They could be extremely hard to kill and rewards for killing them occasionally rewards a rare glyph.  Maybe this could curb the need for dragons, since this world is unique.  It would be an archetype of this world that is dragon-like, but unique to this game world.

EDIT:  Well put Ross, you posted while I was writing this one.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by ross.burns
It\'s not set on mythological Earth, its set on an entirely new planet

And yet we have humans, elves, dwarves, griffon-alike pet, architecture resembling of norseland, western Europe, middle East and oriental countries.
Why I think the originality wasn\'t thought out? It\'s half-done.

Edit: And rats too.

[Kythag]

It\'s still not set on mythological earth even if there are numerous similarities.  You will always be able to equate one thing to another in some way, like my crystalline creatures will resemble something(even if they don\'t resemble dragons).  While certain aspects of PlaneShift might be similar, PlaneShift is a different world with a different atmosphere.

To add all elements of another fantasy world into this would destroy what has been created and thought out.

[Hadfael]

dragons are part of the cultures of different countries, but also with different shapes, some blowing fire in europe, shaking hearth in asia, ... wich one to implement?
Is it mandatory to include and adapt anything just because it is part of the general knowledge of most people?
What about some light saber using the colors of the magic ways? with semi-monks fighting like samurais using them?
It is possible too...but it is not because it is possible that it mandatory.
Let the devs decide of what is Yliakum without jumping on more clich?s than the ones already used to make it easier to assimilate the world. As Draklar said there are already many in use to help people catch the essence of items without asking themselves \"what\'s that\" in front of a book that would be spherical.
Not everyone feels at ease with the architecture of DR already.
It is not a question of closed or open mind. It is only that decisions have to be made. Ulbernauts are not bears, enkidukais are not cats, Ylians not monkeys, and klyros are not dragons either. If you think they are you may question yourself on how much your mind is opened to the world of Yliakum

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Kythag
While certain aspects of PlaneShift might be similar, PlaneShift is a different world with a different atmosphere.

Umm?

When I look at Hydlaa... filled with western European elements, with characters running in clothes normal for that region... And then looking at Ojaveda and its obvious similarities to the middle east...

Where exactly do you take the different atmosphere from?

[Kythag]

Well....

Since I am American, those elements would be foreign to me anyway.  That might be why I feel differently about it.

I was on the kitten thread(I hate cats, but I had to see what was going on in there.), and I get the impression being American here is being in the minority.

[ross.burns]

The atmosphere is not limited to the shapes of the buildings (and as I already stated, it\'s the \"alien yet FAMILIAR\" feel of the game that, for me, makes the atmosphere - afterall, no Bedouin build saucer shaped tents held up on stilts, and no Western villages had the spiky, blade like architectural designs). I guess I get the atmosphere from all the small differences... you know, the entire world contained inside a giant stalactite in a planet-sized cave, just the little things like that. Do we really need dragons too?

Edited to remove awful typo.

[Stephen McNaire]

[nerd alert]
I\'m just wondering how you would expect the dragons to survive in PS. Assuming you want a good size dragon, and if you have dragons why go half-way, if you want a good size dragon it\'s not going to fit very well :P.
I mean a dragon has to eat six sheep-sized creatures a day minimum. We all know they tend to pig out and would probably eat twice that number. And dwarves don\'t count because they\'re too chewy;). If you had five dragons that would be alot of food. PS just doesn\'t have quite that creature count.
And I don\'t know how large the first level is going to be, but as it is, there isn\'t any room for the things to fly around. Dragon\'s need miles to roam for things like food and damsels ect. As it is, they\'d hit the ceiling or fly into the crystal without thinking.
Then there\'s the question of how the buggers got there in the first place. Dragon\'s aren\'t much for cave crawling. Sure they\'ll make a gold horde in a mountain, but it has to be a mountain. They like height. There\'s no good reason for them to have traveled miles underground to get to Yliakum.
[/silly nerdiness]

To be serious, PS is trying to not be run-of-the-mill, so there\'s an attempt to make the world unique. This is of course not totally possible, but I think that they are doing a fine job of it.
True the humans look like humans, the dwarves...dwarves, but remember that they are \'alien\' to Yliakum. Every other creature (I assume) was created from the crystal when the twin gods hollowed out the land.

As for the assimilation of ideas, PS is not democratic. It\'s run by some people who go to great lengths to make things fun for you.
But it\'s their world, we are merely guests. Just stop and try to imagine the mess if they tried to implement every thought. I personally want the PS world to be tight, with no gaping holes or un-solvable questions of \"how?\" caused by wanton creation.
I appluade the amount of things they agree too as it is. I personally write stories and I think I would bite you if you suggested changing things^^.

[Draklar]

About dragons, play ADOM a bit. You seem to have really limited views on the dragons (which in fact would limit the originality :P). And no space for flying? That\'s insane o.o
Look at the picture of Yliakum on the website. Not only space above each level isn\'t limited by anything, but also the center area with nothing but free space is absolutely huge.

Ross: Slight changes in building shapes don\'t count as differences in architecture if their esthetic effect remains the same :P

So far the only atmosphere differences I felt in Planeshift was that it all feels like a game more than a virtual world. Frankly, I can\'t feel any different when I look at Tefusang :P

[Xordan]

I should point out that Talad actually said that there\'s no reason that Dragons don\'t exist in other planes, so guilds and people can have them in their history and stuff because the population came from different planes. But dragons don\'t and won\'t exist in any of the planes that PS will have, and won\'t ever be in PS settings.

[Stephen McNaire]

Bah, I was in one of them moods yesterday. Just ignore my ranting Draklar. Sorry:p, I wasn\'t thinking straight about the flying bit, although I still stand by some of my other thoughts.