Taking a step back

Just a forewarning:  this post is long and rambling.  You might want to save it for bathroom reading.

There has been a lot more of a stir surrounding Sidonie's idea post about changing the way sleep/poison/pinch works than I expected, and an interesting discussion came up on OOC yesterday which was suggestive of an ongoing clash of perception.  For the sake of just delineating where I (and I think the other admins) are coming from, I think I'll ramble about it.

The issue that came up yesterday was centered around sleep's duration of 50 ticks at level 50.  There were essentially two camps here:

1. sleep's long duration is good way to force people to cool off; if a BR is pestering you, or if someone is freaking out and going kamikaze after getting KO'ed, the 37 minute timeout is very useful
2. sleep's long duration is unreasonable since it doesn't let a player actually play.

Oogon then mentioned something that really sheds light on this rift of perceptions that splits our current playerbase:

[OOC] Oogon: 'But really, how often is sleep used in that regard?'

[OOC] Oogon: 'To just let someone 'cool off'.'

And you know, it's the truth.  I've the benefit of remembering when sleeping pester characters (BRs, naked rogues, etc), was relatively normal, and during those days, slapping a player-mandated time-out was really the only recourse available.  However, something that a lot of older players seem not to realize is that Dark Risings really isn't the same game as it was five years ago; sure, it has the same name and the same backstory, but take a look around.  The areas are no longer static: Lilith has the power to corrupt the entire town of Three Firs, gypsy mobs remember their enemies, and the game is dotted with mini-quests that offer 5000-10000 experience for completing them.  The races are different:  avariels are no longer vuln to all fire, and ogre weres aren't vuln to all magic.  The classes are different: there are now templars, which offer a wildly different approach to PK.  Pick any aspect of the game, really.  I'll bet it's not the same now as it was five years ago.

More importantly, though, is that the whole process of implementation has wildly changed.  This point may not be as evident to players, but I think it's really the single largest change that separates "old Dark Risings" from "new Dark Risings."  Take, for example, the aforementioned avariel vuln to fire.

When avariels were made vuln to fire (this happened in around 2001), there was no discussion or player input.  There was a reboot and a terse note saying "avariels are now vuln to fire."  Since my main character was an avariel, this was a pretty devastating change; I went from having no vulnerabilities to being vulnerable to a spell that almost every class can cast (fireball).  I immediately protested since avariels really weren't very good to begin with, but my notes fell on deaf ears.  I wound up leaving the game a few months later, and while I was gone, flashfire was changed to no longer do fire damage since it was deemed to crippling against avariels.  This mitigated the problem to a degree, but it also left one of the "elemental" spells doing unintuitively and decidedly non-elemental damage.

I think these sorts of changes were very telling of the "old Dark Risings" approach to implementation; imps did what they thought was best for the game with a sort of players-be-damned attitude, and if the change proved to be unpopular or unbalancing, another change would be rolled out to mitigate.  This sort of implementation practice also meant a lot of decidedly reactionary changes went in; old players are rife with stories of how some skill got changed because an imp got beaten by someone gimping that skill in PK.  I'm not sure if these stories hold water, but it doesn't really matter now.

Fast forwarding to the "new Dark Risings," we really don't operate this way at all, and I think this is clearly evidenced by the fact that we solicited player input regarding this poison/sleep/pinch issue.  We also solicited (and continue to solicit) feedback on the brawler scoreboard idea.  The new spells that Arcaenum has are 100% player conceived and designed.  In fact, I don't think there's a single change that we've posted in the last year (except a few exploit fixes) that were done without player involvement.

So what has been the driving force behind this transition from "old Dark Risings" to "new Dark Risings?"

At the "old Dark Risings," the imps had always been people who were at Dark Risings from the very beginning.  All of them had always been imms or admins, and they all had a hand in creating Dark Risings out of nothing and making changes before there were even players to upset.  In many ways, they had every entitlement to do as they saw fit, because everything that Dark Risings had become was a result of their design.

However, this also created a rift between the players and the staff at times, and in many cases, set the stage for an "us against them" mentality at many levels.  The people making the decisions had always been the boss and never enjoyed the "player experience" of not being in control and having changes go in without their approval (or knowledge!).

The "new Dark Risings" really began when Sidonie and I took over the active implementation of the game.  When Mark relinquished his position as active imp, Dark Risings was, for the first time, being run by people who had started DR as regular old players.  We remember what it was like to be a nobody, and to be a player, and to be the victim of sometimes-heavy-handed changes forced down through the ranks.  We also weren't operating under the assumption that we always know what's best for the game, because much of the game was designed and played without us.  Dark Risings is "ours" in the sense that our names are on the paperwork, and we do have the benefit of being long-time players with some amount of wisdom, but I think the defining characteristic of the "new Dark Risings" is that its implementation is far more player-inclusive.

I'd like to think that Dark Risings is less dictatorial and more communal now.  Of course, that's not to say that us admins still aren't the boss.  We are the boss, and we make no bones about letting people know that from time to time.  But this new Dark Risings has become a product of player-driven efforts and RP, so we have nothing to gain by excluding players.