Is this the end?

[Altair01]

Under this aspect the writs/dungeon part is more "relaxing" but sometimes I ask my self why I'm not just playing the regular campaign if I'm just doing that by myself.

Because you're struggling with the English language, I assume you're more interested in RP than PvE.

You can do a few high-level contracts in the Shadovar outpost in the shadow plane.

When it comes to PvE, once you hit level 30, it becomes a lot about hunting for high-level runes, runic equipment and adamantine. There are dungeons for this like Red Dragon Isle and Castle Mourn; simply ask people where the adamantine and good runic chests are. You will be spending a lot of money on getting runes to make your equipment more effective. After you've gotten to level 26 and amassed 1 million gold, you stand the highest chance of getting good awards when you retire the character, and thus have a better chance of trying out a variety of interesting character races.

Arelith offers greater variety than the basic nwn, so you can experiment with all kinds of character builds that each offer a different playing experience once you're ready to retire your character.

[Tabby]

(Apologies, I feel a history lesson coming on...)

There is a commonly used expression among players on our server that 'roleplay begins at level 30.'

With my first character, Tabby, i played alot of settlement RP and most of my levels were actually gained when in the middle of heavy RP in Bendir, i would think that most likely 2/3 of Tabby's levels was gained that way...

I would absolutely recommend to RP while NOT at 30...
Your character is 'hopefully' evolving social skills from level 1 -> 30, and not suddenly learns to speak at level 30.

I Agree with Irongrons statement.... Roleplay dont start at 30, it starts as soon as you arrive in Skal or Cordor.. (or Andunor)
Even so! Through RP, i had Tabby change some small paths due to who she met, talked too and so on..
She is half a Herbalist and half a Tailor, it was when she met Merry, she changed path to become a Tailor, since through RP found out that Bendir (at that time) was in need for Tailoring.

I can only encourage that kind of RP, make a character, and evolve it, as the enviroment shapes your character, that could become quite interesting even...

[Arienette]

I don’t avoid RP before 30. But the vast majority of my characters existence will be post-30.

It seems to me that a lot of people get to 30 quickly, then since they can’t make mechanical progress they can’t figure out what to do and roll.

This is crazy to me. Once you get to 30, you don’t “need” to spend time leveling. You can now spend all your time RPing. There are so many things to do!

Get involved in a settlement. Become a city official. Overhaul the settlements finances or be a charming diplomat and build relations with other settlements.

Get involved in a guard faction. Try to work your way to the top, then mentor new recruits.

Start a merchant empire.

Decide to map every inch of the island, Underdark, and planes. Make friends to help you with this.

Join a faction and get involved in espionage and war.

Create a faction of your own and turn it into a pillar of the Arelith world. Make history.

Find some oddball RP niche. Be the character everyone comes to when they need information or directions.

There are so many things you can decide to do, the sky is the limit.

[Manabi]

First, to OP, I truly advise just getting involved. Join a faction or create your own. Do both. The key is to always have something to do and expand the groups of characters that you can have things to do with. Plot, scheme, hang out at a tavern, explore, do whatever is fun to you. Find others that find the same things fun.

Regarding Irongron's post,

I do kind of miss the old leveling pace but I don't at the same time.
I have been out of the game for years at this point but coming back and hitting 30 so quick was shocking considering the absolute lackluster effort I did to actually pull it off.

I do feel far less attached to this character than any others I have max leveled.I feel like if the story goes south and interest is lost from people involved I would be far more likely to roll then I would try to bake up a new idea for the character. For certain if I took a long period break from the game I absolutely would start up a new one.

At the same time, one of the main reasons I played on my first character for so long was the absolute unbelievable chore it was to get him to 30 and I felt that was the same for a lot of players that I knew. Having this system the way that it is allows for people to kill off a character once a story is finished. That, at least to me, is far better than any alternative.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I think the leveling speed was in a sweet spot when writs ended at 20. Sure, people with ooc friends and enough time to spend in a day could still get to 30 pretty fast, but those people are going to go fast in relation to the rest of the server no matter what you do. And people like me, who wanted to hit 21 as soon as possible so I was not just an ant if my group of ic friends did get into a fight but also wanted to slow roll those last 9 levels could play that way. With the way writs are now, the server actually steers me toward leveling super-fast because the only decision on what i am going to do when itching for adventure I have to make is which writ guy am I going to visit. There's no "lets go out and see where our adventure takes us!', it's all just a process. You could say that's an inherent flaw of the entire writ system, but without a replacement I don't think going back to the old prewrit system would be very popular because again, it's not fun being an ant walking among giants. Especially when those giants are sometimes folks who get off on flexing their muscles.

The truth is, of course, many players simply not want this; levelling is a necessary chore in order to achieve the cartoon superhero that was always the intention, and while I will direct Arelith to be more in keeping with my overall vision it is not my philosophy that as a server owner, or as DMs or developers this 'vision' should be so heavily forced upon our playerbase.

It's possible you do this already, I tend to stay away from social media these days, but I would run polls to get a sense of where the playerbase stands on a large variety of issues. Just do them on social media, polls on a forum are too easy to manipulate with alt accounts, ect. You might be surprised by some of the results. And if you do do this already, you should use discord/these forums to let people know. At the very least, it will probably boost the twitter followers by a bit I only say this because it's always possible what you are hearing are the opinions of a small but very vocal minority, and the majority actually shares your opinion. Can't say for certain without the data, but one never knows.

Well not everyone even has accounts on social media and you can make fake accounts there too

[Floral Shoppe]

Judging from years of reading these forums and many Discords I don’t think too many players see level 30 as a “superhero”. More like a “complete” or “competitive build”. Most discussion of building characters is about how they do at 30 in PVP and never how much fun it is to play if you’re taking your time leveling. Is it really any wonder so many don’t feel comfortable mixing things up until they’re at full strength? Level 30 is godlike in most PnP games but on Arelith it's just the median as far as adventurers go. You still don’t even feel like you can hold up against a lot of other players unless you grind grind grind to max out gear too.

Also, I think there’s a phenomenon where all the new and reworked classes entices players to give them a go without a strong RP concept. They level them up, try them out in PVP and PVE content and RP as necessary (but not with a strong sense of story or purpose) then delete for the next experience. When we see all these characters quickly cycling through it’s probably not because the players are driven to play interesting characters. Instead it's “I wanna try a new spellsword then a paladin then a warlock…”

I’m not calling for an end to new classes at all, it's all great, but seriously, this has to be taken into account. When you hand out new toys everyone wants to play with them and most will get bored quickly and put them down.

If we’re going to bemoan the loss of RP standards here let’s look at everything and not just blame the leveling process. Is there unique and interesting low level content beyond a level limit on Skal? As I said before if you want players to savor the low levels it ought to feel like you're giving something up when you level out of them. Do DMs create special events for low level characters? I’ve seen it occasionally, but most events either seem catered to epics or something in town that’s completely level agnostic. Are we letting personal nostalgia for a time when Arelith was new to us taint our experience now? Because that time is over and "you can't go home again". There's so many reasons beyond whatever the boogeyman of the day is.

[Alyxnia]

If we’re going to bemoan the loss of RP standards here let’s look at everything and not just blame the leveling process. Is there unique and interesting low level content beyond a level limit on Skal? As I said before if you want players to savor the low levels it ought to feel like you're giving something up when you level out of them. Do DMs create special events for low level characters? I’ve seen it occasionally, but most events either seem catered to epics or something in town that’s completely level agnostic. Are we letting personal nostalgia for a time when Arelith was new to us taint our experience now? Because that time is over and "you can't go home again". There's so many reasons beyond whatever the boogeyman of the day is.

This is exactly it. There are very few, or so it seems to me at least, DM events these days that don't operate on the assumption that everyone involved is a minmax'ed powerhouse level 30. On the few occasions where such an event is presented, should even a whiff of it get to the nearest clique, you can expect a dozen fully buffed and overbuilt level 30s to shoulder their way in regardless of what the low levels involved already would prefer.

[AstralUniverse]

(Apologies, I feel a history lesson coming on...)

There is a commonly used expression among players on our server that 'roleplay begins at level 30.'

Why? There are many reasons; people sometimes want to make the most out of their abilities, they can be paranoid about PvP, they are following spreadsheet build plans the only come into their own at maximum level, and, in the end, a general pervasive feeling that when it comes to interacting with others on this persistent world then 'Might is Right'.

Going back over a decade ago, it was a very different picture, leveling took place as a truly glacier rate, so the level spread of characters was far more diverse with very few level 30s wandering the isle, indeed when reaching maximum level most people, like myself, felt ready to retire - to move on and return to that early level content which was by then a distant memory.

It's no secret by now, that unlike the majority of our players, and even our staff, I prefer a slower leveling speed, I feel that that currently people reach the maximum level and their story has barely began, they may not have explored much of the isle and they certainly haven't had much of a personal impact on its story.

Whereass with slow leveling the story can develop slowly over time as the character climbs in levels, role-playing everything from a novice to a journeyman to an expert.

The truth is, of course, many players simply not want this; levelling is a necessary chore in order to achieve the cartoon superhero that was always the intention, and while I will direct Arelith to be more in keeping with my overall vision it is not my philosophy that as a server owner, or as DMs or developers this 'vision' should be so heavily forced upon our playerbase.

Time, the world of online gaming and the expectations that come alongside it have moved on from 2005, and insisting characters need to fight the same goblin boss 80 times over a 3 month period is, perhaps rightly, a thing of the past.

Is it over at level 29? No. For most of our players at that stage they have barely begun, feeling that to make an impact in the settlement of faction they need to be maximum level, and with all of the endgame gear fully equipped.

Of course I know that most of our players will roll their eyes at my saying this, and those that have been here long enough to remember what I'm talking about will feel very little nostalgia for an age where leveling was a long, long grind - often taking upwards the 2 years to reach maximum level.

For myself, likely because I am deceived, like many veterans, by my own sense of nostalgia I must say that I miss it.

Basically what I said last thread about this subject (although, admittedly not as beautifully written as this) and I was met with plenty of comments along "well, just stop taking writs, level at any rate you like, and mind your own business". It is what it is.

And to answer the OP:
Well, no. Now you need to gear a lot of Discipline and get to a point where you got all your stats and skills and saves where you need them approximately. Also, the deep wells writs require a group. And if you have hard times finding a group then just drop them and take writs in the shadow plane instead.

[Hazard]

I miss the old days of slow leveling too. It isn't nostalgia for me, because I typically always play (and enjoy) games with slow leveling, loss of progress, full loot pvp, etc etc. I like my games that way, and the slow leveling made for a more immersive and higher quality RP environment where people weren't all just level 30s grinding for BiS gear like a World of Warcraft feverdream, but rather I would meet people of all levels everywhere and these characters would stick around for more than a single year (or just a few weeks/months) before being rolled.

The 'it's your rose tinted glasses' comments are condescending. I'm capable of knowing what I enjoy and prefer.

[godhand-]

I miss the old days of slow leveling too. It isn't nostalgia for me, because I typically always play (and enjoy) games with slow leveling, loss of progress, full loot pvp, etc etc. I like my games that way, and the slow leveling made for a more immersive and higher quality RP environment where people weren't all just level 30s grinding for BiS gear like a World of Warcraft feverdream, but rather I would meet people of all levels everywhere and these characters would stick around for more than a single year (or just a few weeks/months) before being rolled.

The 'it's your rose tinted glasses' comments are condescending. I'm capable of knowing what I enjoy and prefer.

Its funny, a decade ago, i complained always about how slow the levelling was, and never made it above level 15.....
it wasn't until writs were introduced i first got an epic character, and i was so thankful for writs to be able to finally experience all the amazing epic level content in this server.

but now? Now i yearn for the slow levelling again as there is undoubtedly an impact on the quality of the roleplay when things changed.
I yearn for the slower level style roleplay, but at the same time, the gameplay itself is more fun when you've access to the higher level things....
But what is arelith for? is it for gameplay mechanics or is it for roleplay? And the truth of what i want from it is the roleplay experience..... But i cannot have one without the other.
So in that regard i must acknowledge i am not sure that i know what i want anymore, and it a way that makes arelith confusing for me.

[Richrd]

Not to demean the previous posts but isn't what you are doing here just a repeat of that other "atmosphere and tone" thread we voiced our exact same opinions in?

I don't think there's a reason to tread the same ground. That other thread has close to 5 thousand views and 5 pages of replies. I would be shocked if the entire staff hasn't at least looked into it once. Still there was only 1 troll response from contributors and then Xerah offering his quick opinion.
To me at least this gives the impressions that;
A) nothing is wrong with current Arelith and that it will continue it's current course or
B) it's being talked about behind the scenes.
Either way, I don't see why any of us should keep beating that poor horse in multiple threads. It's dead now.

[Hazard]

I clicked on a thread that seemed to be discussing end-game content and contributed my opinion. That's how I expect forums to be used.

I'm not advocating for any changes. I'm happy with how Arelith is, and am playing on it right now. I can enjoy both new and old Arelith just fine in different ways.