Arelith

Well it sounds like an unrealistic thing to ask for but hey good luck maybe you’ll get it.

I think a more likely request would be some shadow race native quarters on the shadow plane, like a few nice spots that only shadovar and gloamings could buy.

If we look at player numbers, across servers, it's easy to see that the surface (Surface/Distant shores/Cities and Planes/Guldorand) is when combined, far more popular than Andunor.

I genuinly believe that some of this is that the majority of players tend to want to play, if not something 'good' aligned, then at least something netural/leaning on benevolant.

The underdark is not a nice place to be.

This isn't a slight against it by any means. In many ways it's an awsome place for roleplay! A very cool and very intence setting full of amazing roleplay opportunities. But it is dark, dangerious, gritty, evil, and harsh place. A place where death, torture, and enslavement is always just around the corner. A place of brutality, and cannibilism. Of maiming and murder.

A lot of players arn't really interested in playing in that environment. Yes, a good few are, and those should /absolutly/ be supported, but a large amount of players are not. (1)

Likewise, from an In Character perspectve, it's worth noting that for the vast majority of monster races, and races that can be down there, are only down there because they are either extremely native from a background point of view (Gloaming/Imaskari) or - more commonly, because the surface literally won't accept them. They, for the most part CAN'T leave the underdark. They're -forced- to be down there. They don't choose it.

The issue of Lore with Drow nightsight has come up, that therer are many cases in Cannon where drow have acclimatised to the surface sun. I strongly believe that the main reason we enforce it so harshly on Drow, is not to do with cannon, but as further enforcement of the 'No Surface Drow' situation. If we didn't enforce it, if we made living on the surface too easy, then we'd get a LOT more drow going the 'surface drow' rout. We'd see what we have with Gloaming, except at least Gloamings don't count as a monster race and arn't so iconic.

And can we blame Gloamings/Immaskeri for going in that direction?

Leaving aside the ooc predelections of the players, from a purely In Character perspective, if you said 'Ok you have a choice. Live in a city full of torture, murder, slavery and horror, where you could be killed and eaten by a passing goblin at any time for not being 'useful' enough- let alone the fact your racial enemy lives there- OR go to Cordor, where people are more likely to go 'Huh, a walking moth. How odd. Wanna have tea and crumpets?' - I know which I'd choose. Even with the daylight penalties.

I suppose the obvious answer next is to demand Gloamings become monster races. But personally I'm not in favour of that?

Ultimatly an award race should be something someone WANTS to play. One thing I always fought for when I was dealing with awards was that as good as monsterious/evil awards were, a lot of our player base (again, perhaps most!) want to play relitivly NICE and generally ACCEPTED characters. And again - this isn't to say we shouldn't have monsterious award races - far from it they're very cool, but catering only to that side of the player base re. awards is, IMO, a mistake.

'But GrumpyCat!' some may exclaim 'Why are we... pandering to these... lowly folk? These 'noobs' of rpers, who spits to the side Want to play... pretty... empowered... heroes with Ugh... wings! Who want to play characters who can shudder live in pretty houses and be rich and socilaize with nice people! Most people surely, after coming home from a job where they eke out an existance, in what can feel like a harsh, unfeeling and undertain world full of mean, cruel people, who feel insecure about their looks, or fearful of their future, want to log online and roleplay a cruel, ugly powerless monster who lives in a heartless dark world where they can face death and torture every day. People shoudln't play this game for... sneer on their lip escapism or... vomits a bit in mouth f-fun. They should be -artists- and -suffer- for their -art-! To be Consumate Rolplayers! That's what the team wan't isn't it? Amazing roleplayers?'

We run the server so people can have fun. Being a good roleplayer can lead to more fun for yourself, and more fun for others, and there certainly is a -level- of roleplay we look out for and enforce. But being too eleetist in what we expect would be a massive detriment to the server too, IMO. Speaking personally, I'd rather have 300 people on the server, of various levels of roleplay (to a point) than just 10 who are all excellent. Being an excellent rper is nice, but when all you have is 10 people, things can get stale fast.

And I feel if we start forcing people to play concepts that just don't interest them they will either a) won't play that character, because they don't like the concept. Which isn't the worst thing I suppose, but also doesn't feel very nice and fair. It's removing someones fun, for (in the case of gloaming) Little real lore or setting reason, IMO. or b) You force them to play in in a style and setting they don't like, and will rub up against that setting. Pool parties in Andunor! Charity events! Slave freeing! Free cupcakes! Turn Andunor into happy happy fun city so I can play my Lawful Good Gloaming in a way that makes sense!(2)
Do you... want that in Andunor? Or would that water down what those who (full power to them!) enjoy the setting of Andunor.

There's a balence I feel ,between enforcing the lore and roleplay of a setting, and setting the bar so high tht people just can't or don't want to play any more. I think for the most part we straddle it alright, but it's worth keeping in mind.

So yeah, Gloamings and Immaskeri are going to tend to gravitate to the surface. So are drow, given a chance. So are a lot of UD races. It makes sense on IC and OOC levels, and where lore applies it's important to enforce the fact that, for the most part, they SHOULDN'T be lingering too long there. Gloamings however, that lore does not apply to, and given that they are an award race, I personally am very uncomfortable with forcing that on them.

1) To absolutly STRESS this, because some people think 'Popular = Better' - this is not so. Roleplay isn't exactly popular in the grand scheme of the world, but we all think it's rather fun. Presently and historically I'd say Underdark characters probably equiate to a good quarter of our playergbase at any one time, a very reasonable number of people to support. But at the same time, if say, 80% of our awards are based around Underdark/Monsterious/Evil characters, that would seem to be a bit... off, right? You're either going to end up with people frustrated there's 'nothing to spend awards on that interst them' or they'll play the concepts in ways they'll enjoy, but that don't entirely fit with the concepts.

2) This would make sense to the lore actually, given that Gloamings tend to adopt the opposite behaviour of the area they're in. Wierd stuff.

I'm sorry, but we've lost our way. Excusing poor roleplay because "quantity is better than quality" harms Arelith. Arelith has become overtly permissive in allowing players to engage on the server in whatever fashion they feel like in pursuit of server population, and I think this has irreparably harmed the server culture.

There was always an undercurrent of self-improvement in Arelith prior to EE. Write better because you'll have more fun and those around you will, too. Instead of incentivizing writing, storytelling, collaboration, we instead incentivize time online all in the aspiration of pumping up those player numbers. Our systems that offer rewards are aimed towards players sinking more and more hours into the server fiddling with busy tasks like writs or runes or award points completely divorced of actual content or quality in writing.

It's a shame, and it's a paradigm shift that I feel won't ever correct itself. Players that enjoy good writing curate players they'll engage in with that sort of roleplay, and players that enjoy slapstick and barely-ic meme humor will curate their circle. Arelith has never been more segregated. And, this roleplay only exists in between hours of time sunk into crafting or grinding.

If we cared about setting integrity, we'd care more about light sensitivity than a casual reminder and excuses for why races like fey and gloamings are cordor chancellors or guard commanders. So, pick one Arelith. Do we care about the setting or not?

Edit:

I don't know why my post was removed, I wasn't hostile or mean, I was just simply stating observations.

People do only seem to care about settings integrity when they personally want something enforced. Pointing that out isn't unkind, it's simply an observation.

There is many examples of Arelith Changing what would be canon for many species, because of the way the Devs decided the island should be.

Arelith is its own creature, where what is "Canon" is completely up to the people running the server, even if there are examples to the contrary.

Again, that is not a slight towards anyone, that's just how it is, most people can do is advocate for a change, and if someone has the time, energy, and interest, it might get changed.

Edit 2:

Though seriously, vampires should explode in the sunlight, and still be afraid of Sun clerics and the Sunburst spell.

gith r also award locked and also mostly limited to the underdark. quite a few award races have enforced limitations on them, some are shared across other races. this is not a bad thing.

i don't understand why you would add a race, award or no, and not want it to be at least based on what was initially written for them

all in all ork hit the nail on the head, i think. but tbh this issue has been going on for so long and a lot of animosity(?) could have been avoided if something like this had been said sooner.

AstralUniverse wrote: Tue Jun 17, 2025 1:39 am

I didnt even know gloamings' rivalry with the drow. I just thought that it would make sense for the drow to trade exotic creatures into slavery and gloamings really stand out. Ironically, my gloaming was a devil's table treasurer, working for the temple of lolth. I guess sometimes ignorance is bliss? If it were my character in the conversation it would go more like "you heard... what? Keep ye damn voice down, fool. I need no such rumors flyin' aroun'."

Damn, I really wish our characters had crossed paths more. Those interactions would have been amazing.

I do agree with Ork quite a lot, but it's everywhere, not just here. RP spaces in general seem to have become a lot more casual. RP as a concept is pretty mainstream now, a lot of different IPs have gotten popular, all of which have either RP undertones or are outright RP games (DnD 5e, Warhammer, BG3, etc).

Even if there were to be some other space for gloamings, like the grotto is for gnomes, I don't think that many would actually use it, though I would've. Kobolds definitely had a case for having their own space, too. I used to try to get surfacers I was trying to deal with to meet at the UD trade post (I wasn't trying to be subtle), but it's not thought of by surfacers as a meetable place. They're probably right, Shadowvar's PvP ban means everyone prefers that.

Which reinforces the "there's only one place in the underdark and that's Andunor" mindset. Would anyone meet at the UD trading post instead if it had a similar PvP ban? Genuine question.