Site Update [Important] [Updated 27/06/2010]

[reality]

Hey, I'm the new guy.

It occurred to the former Cao Cao that he no longer sought a position roleplaying on this site and now I am here to roleplay the Wei Lord. This is however not the only reason I am here as after a discussion with Liu Yan (Steve) and the other staff members we have managed to come to a new realization with the site:

Few if any people are actually roleplaying here! Yet this is defacto of any ROTK roleplay from the past several years.. each simply revolving around the idea of posting in a palace, joining, posting in a battle thread, the next city and again and again until you've 'won' the game. That's not exactly roleplaying though, is it?

Ask yourself why do you roleplay in the first place. Is it to run around doing typical nondescript tasks or is about writing stories and trying to experience and enjoy things through ones character's eyes? I personally would much rather spend my time enjoying this experience rather than doing simple tasks, and that is the message we are trying to send to you all now.

This is something of a change from top to bottom. But only so we don't see another site die. Now, you're probably all wondering, what's going to change, as I haven't been very specific about exactly what is happening. Now, as addressed before the idea behind roleplaying is the story, so now we're going to try to provide more chances for players to get involved in stories. The new Emperor of the land shall be more direct and in control of the regional lords, who will follow his Imperial decree. For more on this see The Han/Yuan Empire Rule.

Now if you're still stuck, let me explain why we are doing this: we want to make the game better for all of you! By providing new ideas for stories, more direction, we can put a stop to stagnation and provide hope for future writing for everyone involved.

Any other information on the update can be found in the announcement thread located in this board.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below.

[Emperor Feng]

Addendum

First of all I would like to inform people of other changes made to the site. The major new change is with the reputation stat which we start right away. This reputation stat is very straight forward, it will increase the more you write stories with other people – and its increase adds a multiplier to whatever gold rewards you receive. So the more you write and have fun the richer you ultimately become.

The second rule is in regards to personal armies. Personal armies now have a cap dependent on the rank you’ve been assigned. To view the cap check the [ranking class system] thread and you will see the ranks listed at the bottom with the newly updated list inside a spoiler. We are taking an emphasis on building mass armies, hence why a cap exists in the first place. What we all decided we wanted is a site that is fun to play all round.

You see the biggest problem we have is that we open a site with a division. IN our case we had 8 kingdoms all vying for power and control, we alienated each other and created tension and war. Ecven when we declare an alliance it isn’t made into a story; it’s always just a simple series of events with no emotion behind it, no reality. Cao Cao and many others have spoken to me about this and we decided it would be better if we tried to stop this trend on pure war, and look at general twists and plots, look at just writing to tell a story and to have fun rather than for us to do the same thing on repeat as we have been doing for years.

[Zhuge Liang]

Another Addendum

People seem perplexed by what we are trying to achieve. So let's start with dismissing the idea that the sole purpose is to win, the game cannot ever finish without a final victor - so assuming we're dismissing all player control is silly because that is not what we are doing.

The idea behind this was to initially give more control to a staff npc force, the Han...the Han kingdom would act as the main bread and butter for the 6 regional kingdoms, but that does not eliminate expansion or growth. What did we do before, we used the Emperor as a means to go conquering, so that same rule still applies - only you may actually need the Emperor's consent before you torch a city or declare people outlaws or bandits.

We are not removing power from kingdoms, since the majority of the rulers are either staff or work closely with staff to set up scenarios and events they may want to participate in, so expansion and growth exists. We are also open to the idea that later on, much later on - a kigndom may denounce their status with the emperor and declare their own empire, but this is much later on when a kingdom is actually huge. Do not forget how big wei was before they turned into an empire, or wu...or even shu.

I think some people may be misunderstood in the changes we made. Our intention is to primarily create numerous possibilities for additional plots and twists, without having the cliche and epic failure of a 'join, bum a ruler, take a city, fight, fight, fight, watch the site lose momentum/die'

We're not forcing anything, just opening a much large box for us to play with. Please don't misunderstand this as some sort of strange npc dictatorship...it certainly isn't intended to be that.

I apologise for the sudden changes, but majority ruling declared it among staff.

Edit:

Also... The Han are not an obstacle, there are still many ways to expand. Even before i coloured those grey cities they were still han cities, we all posted as if they were, but we removed them for a stronger regional lord. That will happen the same. The Han do not stunt growth, it's merely a tool for us to play additional stories and plots.

[Zhuge Liang]

REVISED Time-Stamp Changes

(sorry for this guys. This will be the last change to the site. I promise)

So here is the list. Brief mind you – of all of the changes existent in the time stamp. it goes in order of what happened first.

• Li Jue and Guo Si are killed in the battle of Central Plain.
  
• Emperor Xian flees Luo Yang after it starts to burn. Guan Shao waits in ambush. The Emperor is killed.
  
• Emperor Xian is found murdered by Cao Cao. Liu Feng, son of Emperor Xian takes the throne and marches back to Chang’An.
  
• Cao Cao heads south and takes the city of Xu Chang. A new regional powerhouse is forged.
  
• The Han Empire removes a lot of its corrupted government. Order and power seems to be restored in the north-west. Ma Teng's region of Liang becomes the new base of operations for the new Emperor.
  
• Sun Ce attacks and claims the city of Wu. His eyes head south yet again to fight the imperial enemy, Wang lang.
  
• Liu Bei marches east and takes the city of Jiang Xia for the Emperor.
  
• Yuan Shao, self-declared emperor begins his coronation. He Bei is united and his greedy eyes look south.
  
• The Emperor declares Yuan Shu and the Nanman tribesmen as enemies of the state. The Emperor goes to Lu Bu for assistance.
  
• It is the year 200 AD and war is soon to be had between Yuan Shao and the united regional lords of the Han.