I just wanted to make a short entry to THANK HENTEZ for all his work on icons. He does an EXTREMELY good job, and allows the world to be much more colorful than it would be otherwise.

It really does take a lot of skill to make something that is 25x25 pixels look like what it is supposed to look like.

It's law school finals time! I am always insane during finals. Lots of people get banned or quit the game during finals because of my constant chemical imbalance thing and my incredible paranoia and frequent bursts of uncontrollable rage. SO BE NICE TO ME OR I WILL DESTROY YOU. Verily. haha. Oh man, I hate this stuff. Well, it will only happen one more time after this EVER, and then I am scott free and only have to worry about getting a job and paying off 80k in loans. Its kinda like having a mortgage on a house but not actually having anywhere to live to show for your investment. Zing!

Well, I don't think people believed me. I really tried to steer this one, too, so people would NOT chase away the folk. I worked hard to put lots of little clues in the NPC's bios on their characters, and did the same on the forum. Most people figured it out. Those that didn't figure it out usually took messages such as "leave us now or we will declare war and never let you into our continent again" seriously and THEN left. Heck, such statements are so clear and blatant they are close to being OOC, but I made them... often multiple times. The last group got warnings like that three times over the course of about 2 minutes of chat. They didn't leave.

You can't say I didn't try.

I think maybe they (and others annoyed by the Ethucan mannerisms) just haven't had much experience dealing with traumatized, paranoid, xenophobic folk in their life. I guess it is a testament to the free world that most people have not had to deal with that sort of thing in the real world within their lifetime. Of course, as we have established before, this is not the real world.

I think some automatically decided to slap the label of Nazi Germany on the Empress and her folk. Some of the same themes are certainly there, probably not by accident: a powerful empire, folks in power, paranoia against a certain race/class/profession and persecution of those folks...

but of course we know that, in the real world, Crazy Hitler and the Nazis had no place persecuting the Jews... so anything mirroring that in the game is automatically viewed with suspicion by your Earth-based mind. However, your CHARACTER should know NOTHING of Nazi Germany, and should have no preconceptions. This leads to one of the hardest parts of roleplaying... leaving your preconceived notions based on Earth experience and history behind.

The thing is nobody really knows if the Ethucans were paranoid little Hitlers, or paranoid people who actually were right that all enchanters are evil. Unfortunately, they were chased away before anybody could find out the truth. Some just decided that it "wasn't true that enchanters are evil" without any real fact-finding attempts... because as we all know, if something is declared to be "completely evil" in the real world, it usually is propoganda and lies. There IS no pure evil in the real world... no Demon Lords prancing about killing folk just for the joy of it. Even the aformentioned Hitler thought he was doing the right thing somewhere in his crazy mind.

Valorn, not being the real world, DOES have pure evil. So the supposition that Ethucans are racist/classist Nazis, which would be a very VERY likely in the real world, falls all the way down to "oh we are living in a crazy fantasy world where anything can happen" likely... meaning its a toss up and you really should have no idea.

Does that mean the Ethucans are definately NOT Nazis either? Of course not. It is fully possible that they actually were evil themselves, and I had planned for them to come out as evil eventually all along. Or not. What does it all mean in the end?

All it means is YOU DON'T KNOW. And really don't have a good way to find out anymore.

P.S. Anybody who thinks I WANTED things to end up like this is dead wrong and is just making excuses. If I wanted things to end up this way, I wouldn't have spent so much time posting warnings and updates on the forum nor would I have made the almost-OOC statements (ie "back away or we will keep you from visiting us ever again. I'm serious." over and over and over. This whole concept stems from my love of the game Asheron's Call, my first MMORPG. In that game, each month there was an event that changed the world, and the people who played had a direct effect on influencing that change... but it would happen over and over. I always wondered what it would be like if instead, people's decisions could only happen ONCE, and that once that decision was made the quest could not be repeated by other parties and corrected over and over. Things in games like not being able to permanently die tend to make us think of game worlds as places with no real consequences... where you can do anything and everything will just reset the next hour. This tends to make people sloppy. I'd like to see what a game world where being sloppy equals real, lasting consequences is like. Fortunately, I help run a game world, so I am free to run that particular scenerio. =)

Why is everyone trying to be so good?

If you would be mean to the nice Empress, then I could just stop building Ethucan, set the permanent level limit at 62 or so, and call it a game. That would be relaxing.

Anyways, I dunno if people think I am bluffing and all with this diplomacy thing, but I am serious. =) Already are a few people who will find travelling in Ethucan extremely difficult. And unless you want to level to 80 killing level 55 monsters, Ethucan is going to be an important place for you to go, methinks.

Should be ready to go in about 6 months or so. If not in 6 months, then not for a year. The bar exam is in about 7 months. =D

WHY??????

Why do I always get the drive to worldbuild an entirely new continent right when its time to study for finals and not do anything on DG? =)

Hooray pretty website! We have been trying to get a more professional look... according to web statistics, a lot of people show up to our website and then never sign up for an account. Being pretty is important for a game like DG... they assume that the quality of the game can be judged by the quality of the front page. Unfortunately, neither Cory nor I are artists. Investing in some quality art to use is DEFINATELY worth it. I hope this helps us get more people in and keep them in. Every little touch helps!

Okay.... so what kinds of things are people hoping will be on Ethucan? Mini-suggestion-forum time! I'm looking for things to make cities and towns more interesting... you know, along the lines of the theater in Dundee. I'm already going to put a sports complex in Valorn, since there seems to be a budding interest in sports. Could use a good kickoff place, I figure.

Anyways, I have all kinds of new clothes, armor, weapons, robes, buildings, NPCs, etc that will be planned for the new continent, but would love to hear what YOU guys would like to see.

Even though I might just ignore you. =P

Been lots of fun movement on the BANISHMENT front lately. Cory has made all kinds of cool tools making it really easy to dole out punishment to those worthy of pain. Good times!

About the children... sorry about that. What happened was that I was stupid. One of my strengths, usually, is looking at ideas Cory and I have for DG and then analyzing them to kind of forecast what the long-term effect the change will have on the game will be. I did a bad job of that with the children. Mostly it was because I was blinded by my own opinion of "who the hell would want to play a child in the first place?"

Unfortunately, by letting my own opinion on the subject blind me, I accidentally created a NEW FAD. Now, this is sorta good, because I have always wanted to create a new fad. I was hoping it would be something along the lines of clothing or a style of dance, though, not a booming desire in the hearts of hundreds of DG players to suddenly shed the last 10-40 years of their lives and become annoying, obnoxious, dirty little children. What a weird fad. Nevertheless, that is what it was.

NEW SHINY ITEMS + YOU CAN ONLY GET THEM IF YOU GET PERMISSION FROM BEN + ROLEPLAYING OPPORTUNITY + UNIQUENESS BECAUSE NOT MANY PEOPLE DO IT YET = AUTOMATIC DG FAD

Whoops.

So there you have it. I don't want kids running around in the game. Sorry. You know, it IS slightly important that Cory and I do not become annoyed at the game. See, if a player gets annoyed at the game, then that player leaves and Cory and I lose a few bucks... the rest of the player population probably won't even notice, unless the player had close friends. If Cory or I lose interest or become annoyed and leave... you would probably notice quite a bit. So it is important to always keep this game non-obnoxious for us deities. I hope that makes sense. =)

I RETURN! Well, as long as nobody whines on the board about my writing in here. I figured... hey, if I can't talk about our new secret projects (of which there are a few, including one that hasn't come up for a LOOOOONG time but that people used to know about *wink wink*) I can talk about DG. Well, that is why you all are here anyways (DG), so why the heck not?

A little inside info: Fall Festival ends next Monday. Not going to put that on the board, so y'all feel SPESHUL now that you know. Then begins work on Ethucan. Right now I am planning on making the city of Iscax open to the public first, and then not opening the rest of the continent until most of it is complete. Those wishing they could deck themselves out in more Roman empirish garb and weapons will be generally pleased with the alternate fashion of Ethucan.

Well, some guy on the DG forums wrote sort of a mini rant/whine asking about the new game, so Cory and I had a conversation and decided I should stop dropping hints about the new game. He has actually always been against dropping hints about things, but now has an actual reason to be against them.

So... sorry everybody. This journal will be going really inactive until such time as we are getting closer to releasing a new project.