When I first started playing Arelith, I messed around with a surface character for a few days, but dropped the idea and went straight to the Underdark to play a drow. I'd never played a villain before, but everything about it sounded more appealing to me - a city ripe with chaos and conflict and intrigue, a mature player base who understood how to handle and develop tension, a centralized design with straightforward paths of progression to counter the aimless meandering of the surface. This was before writs were even released! When I rolled up my drow and played through the world, the Underdark was everything I wanted it to be. My interactions with people felt meaningful, as I could see the rippling impacts of my decisions and my lies. Before I even hit the epic levels, my drowess became a High Priestess in the Temple of Lolth, and she became a councilor of the Devil's Table, all while deceptively concealing the fact that she was a Sharran priestess working to ruin everything she'd been put in charge of. There were so many heart-stopping moments of intense roleplay where I could feel the pressure of one's choices, where all the players on the sidelines eagerly watched to see how they could manipulate the situation to their favor, and it's easy to see why that kind of experience would inspire a deep affection for the UD as a roleplay setting.
Something changed with my next character, almost a year after. I got sick and took some time off, and couldn't get into the old groove, so I made something new for myself. A human outcast this time, with her own host of lies and schemes. Many of the same players and the same characters were around as before, and for a while, the magic was much the same as before. But I don't feel that magic anymore. Here are a few of my personal experiences and conclusions I've come to in an attempt to understand what happened - obviously these are all just musings from a single person's perspective, so of course I have my biases, and you shouldn't read it as a rounded historical account that contains the whole truth and the whole story:
- Writs -
The addition of writs solidified the Underdark as the best possible leveling experience, which meant there were dozens of characters at a time who solely existed to rungrind and die - which led to a sense among many more established and long-term characters that there was little reason to get attached to strangers, as it was discouraging to include people in plotlines only to see them rolled days later.
- Outcasts -
Outcast changes relegated Outcasts almost exclusively to the UD, as the surface took to telling them "leave or die" at first sight, whether they were meeting a contact in the Crow's Nest or chopping hardwood in the forest. This severed the strongest ties the UD had to the surface, and limited the impact that could be imparted between the two worlds. Few people have much awareness as to what happens between one place and the other - and fewer care, as there's the understanding that not much can be done between them beyond raids and revenge raids.
- Conflict -
There was a drow house that, for a time, didn't seem to care much for intrigue to instead simply kill everyone they didn't like, and upon proving how successful that tactic was, the answers given to people's problems more and more often became, "Why not just kill them and be done with it?" Not just that, but there was a feeling of conflict exhaustion resulting from the whole "civil war" that just never went away.
- Updates -
When Greyport opened up there was a pervasive sense of disdain for the district, and in spite of the opportunities it opened up, it went ignored by most everyone at the time. I don't know if that's quite the case anymore, but there was a strange resentment in the air whenever Greyport was spoken of. I don't know whether it came at a bad moment in Andunor's culture, or if people were already fed up with the way settlement and election systems tend to play out in Andunor (indeed, several people at the time were based in Greyport because they couldn't be evicted, and as soon as Greyport's first election went through, they were unceremoniously evicted), but the sense I got from people was a hopeless sort of "what's the point?" vibe.
- Stagnation -
Somewhere along the way, various powerful groups in the UD decided that they had to band together, no matter what, just to keep the peace in the city and make sure Andunor didn't devour itself. Bound by mutually assured destruction, these groups seemed unwilling to turn on each other, no matter what good reasons came to kill each other. This further limited the (already seemingly slim) possibility of meaningful conflict, as most conflicts that emerge will be aggressively tackled and repressed "for the good of Andunor."I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining about specific groups or people because I swear to God I'm not. Every action and every reaction to the UD's various challenges makes perfect sense from both an IC and OOC perspective - as well as a development perspective, regarding those changes to the server. I just don't know how we got here. It can hardly be attributed to one event, but even the people who have loved the Underdark for years upon years - for much longer than I've enjoyed it, and perhaps not even for the same reasons - agree that there's something not quite right, and that it's hard to enjoy the experience anymore. It comes from a feeling of stagnation. It comes from feeling like nothing matters, nothing changes, and there's nothing worthwhile to really do anymore. For my part, I've been hit so hard by the ol' Andunorian Apathy that I can't even bring myself to level a character much further past 26, because I realize (whether the realization is true or not) that there's nothing fun for me to do anymore.
So, what do we do in the shadows? What endeavors are there that are worthwhile to pursue? What meaningful interactions with the world are left to us? What do you think changed, and how can we change for the better?
