Thanks for the replies and warm welcomes.
I'm still working on fleshing out the character concept, I noticed that all human models have beards.
But I take it models are just figurative and not necessarily what your character looks like.
Character creation system is what I liked right away, very interesting, involved and engaging right into the story.
One of the character creation options allows for a life event of being a successful politician - does that imply a character's possibility to integrate into political structure? (I.e. to become a Vigesimi?)
Tutorial island is great as well. Very informative and cuts down learning curve by a lot! Great job!
Absolutely loved custom names for everything, currency, months, races - a very unique world I could totally dig and craft a character in.
Hearing spam chat with OOC in it was kind of meh, so I opted to turn off channel 1, but it still didn't work, I kept seeing it. I'm the kind of player who uses only local chat, within character hearing range. When I'm alone in the woods, i like to be alone in the woods, not hearing what someone on the other end of the stalactite had for breakfast
You know what I mean. If I need to talk OOC, i keep it to PMs.
The big turn off I noticed right away on the roleplay server is that you can see other characters' names without them having to introduce themselves. It's what always made me cringe in the so numerous MMOs.
It would be very nice to see other people as "someone" or "anonymous" until they either select you and hit Introduce, or allow you to select them and do /nickname 'name' to give them your own nickname. Not knowing anyone's name by simply looking at them instantly creates a feel of reality and drives me to ask people their name and get to know them. As is, I have to keep a list of characters I met in game and whose names my char really knows. That was one feature I liked about Illarion, the game kept local lists in your character profile of people you have met on that character, making everyone not on that list show up as anonymous. I have read the threads about using "introduce" feature, and people's general concern about how it would work for chat windows, but I never had a problem with chat windows, it's pretty easy to keep eyes on the screen and note who said what by the speech bubbles, because they hover around for a pretty long time, and since you could nickname people, you would see your assigned nicknames in chat window.
Example:
Male elf says: "Hello, what time is it?"
Male elf says: "Oh it seems to be noon"
You quickly nickname the elf who asked time 'Asked time' and the other elf 'Knew time'
Asked time says: "Ah, indeed, it is noon, thank you, Jelerak"
Blam, you just got a name someone blabbed without having to introduce. Rename 'Knew time' elf to 'Jelerak'.
It's really not that hard and brings in a very fun part to a roleplaying game, I used to call it name harvesting in Illarion. By sticking around a crowded location you could listen to what people say and find out their names that way, and there was always a chance people could lie. But even with a crowd of 10 around me, I never had a problem finding out half the names within a minute or two if the conversation is going, which is what roleplay is partly about. Start people talking and drive the dialogue towards using names. it was almost a challenge in itself, and is definitely worth trying, it was tried in one game and worked pretty well, wasn't really hard at all. Especially with camera rotation, where you can easily tell who said what by just looking. One more factor that could be added to make characters unique is size - which would shrink or enlarge a model, make it fat or skinny by widening or narrowing its shoulders and thickness.
Is the community in general fairly RP-strong, as in, if a character attacks or robs you or does something evil, and you know their name OOC-ly, but never met them IC, do people not use the OOC knowledge to bring someone to punishment? Basically what I'm asking is, how well is a villain allowed to keep their anonymity?
Do developers usually listen to the community proposals or just kind of do their own thing? Currently I have mixed feelings about committing to the game, and I appreciate any input.
