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The World of Arelith Profile by Jay Watamaniuk "A bell rings loudly. You hear gruff men outside the boat tying it up to the docks as you finally arrive in the port city of Cordor, at the southern tip of the Island of Arelith. The long voyage through the Trackless Sea has paid off; it's good to be well-connected. A varied assortment of merchants, scholars, scoundrels, and refugees exit the boat eagerly. Guards make their patrols, messengers scurry, and adventurers near the gates are strapping armor into place and readying their weapons for the unexpected as they make their way into the wilds of Arelith. You have arrived."
I see a website is under construction at the moment. What is the schedule for opening?Jjjerm: We're currently waiting for our logo to be finished...a stylized sword with hilt on left and blade pointing to the right, with "Arelith" written in runic letters. Once I get that in, we should be up in a very short amount of time. If you have any bored artists up there feel free to direct them to me. :) Can you direct us to your forums?Jjjerm: Our forums are currently located at: www.arelith.com/boards/. We used the BioWare forums until recently, and now use webspace donated to us. How did the world of Arelith come to be?Jjjerm: Arelith started out very, very tiny. It was originally founded by Arcimedies. I started out with the crew as the host and did some small area work as well. The team at that time consisted of Arcimedies, Oneday, and myself. I brought in Artos13 (a creative genius when it comes to areas and more) to assist with the area creation, and he brought in JPavelchik with him. Over the fullness of time, Arcimedies and Oneday both departed in favor of Real Life Stuff, and then the second crew consisting of Artos13, Jpavelchik, and myself became the team.
The current version, version 3, was implemented when Gigaschatten volunteered his services as a scripter, and is by far the most interactive version to date. Giga is amazing. He's actually put the base engine that we use with his system up on the boards if anyone is interested in it (GSPWE). We've stayed pretty popular throughout the whole time after HoTU came out until the present, but the current version is by far the most enjoyable that we've done according to the players. I gather you do not use hakpaks in your work. Why is that?Jjjerm: There are a couple reasons. Firstly, in my experience, almost anything worth having would eventually come out in an official BioWare update...you guys are pretty good to us about adding/filtering content. Secondly, it's pretty much a matter of principle to me. About 4 years ago, when I was "between servers," I spent a couple weeks trying out new servers. About 80% of the ones I tried would require a hak, and only about half of those at most had one advertised (grrr...). I pretty much determined in my mind that if I were to ever have a server, it would be hak free. Besides, we'd feel bad if the little Hulksters out there had to wait for something to download before they could play. Artos13: As Jeremy said, hakpaks can be quite an inconvenience to new players looking for a server. Don't get me wrong, there's some excellent custom content out there available, but I like it that Arelith is ready to go without any further downloads. As a builder, I enjoy having no haks. The toolset is the adult replacement for my childhood box of Legos. It's fun to make a staircase out of benches, or a bed of flowers out of vases. Having no haks means you look at all of the placeables as units to build other things with. The same goes with tilesets. What's to stop you from using the dungeon tileset to make an outdoor area? What makes Arelith unique?Jjjerm: What makes Arelith unique...well, this is going to take a bit. :) Firstly, the areas. Artos13 is just amazing with what he can do with light shading and the x, y, and z axis on things. We don't need a hak, we've got Artos. Stop by sometime and look at the moths flying around the street lamps at night, and see how many other special touches you notice. Simply put, too much to write down. The guy is an artistic genius. You should hire him and pay him buckets of money...he's that good.
Another thing that makes us unique is something most folks never see, because it's kind of behind the scenes. All of the hostile creatures in Arelith, all of the resources, almost everything in fact, is changeable on the fly (i.e., without turning off the game and updating). It takes 30 seconds for us to completely change the spawns in an area, or the resources, etc. Gigaschatten is incredibly talented, and he wanted his engine to be pretty much "dynamic"...and it is. This means, in the space of a moment (without a restart or going into the toolset in any way), we can have goblins invade the kobold lairs, take them over, and spawn there until someone else invades them. This gives us the flexibility to do incredible things in-game that you normally couldn't even consider without days of work resetting the spawns and such. With Giga's engine, you don't actually place any spawns at all from the toolset, you do it all in-game. Pretty exciting stuff, and it's completely dynamic. Think of all the possibilities.... You can also purchase Guilds, Houses, and Shops in-game without DM assistance in any way. We have a pretty much player-based economy through the custom crafting/resource/recipe system set up currently. You can have your own bank account, and any sales from your shop will go there automatically. There's a complete and unique deity system in place, and you can be raised by your god if you die, or be granted bonuses through prayer, etc. Everything is tied together, and is pretty much driven by player interactions. It is by far the most interactive world I've seen because of all of these things. There is much more, but I don't want to spam you with all of it. ;) What is your proudest moment as a builder with regards to Arelith?Jjjerm: My proudest moment on Arelith, and I'm pretty sure Artos13's too, was when we finally broke the 20 player mark, right after HoTU came out. There was lots of other stuff that we were pretty pleased with, no doubt, too many to name, but I remember when we got 20 players on for the first time like it was yesterday. For the first time, I felt justified for all of the hours we'd put into it, because players liked us, and were playing on our world. It was inspiring. Artos13: Breaching the 20 mark around the time that HoTU came out definitely comes to mind. That felt like a real milestone, and that was the first time (and not the last) that we had to rebuild the module all over again to withstand heavier traffic. A favorite personal moment was the creation of the Arelith Forest Tree House. This was the first area that was added to the module as a direct result from player actions. It actually made one of our players cry and went on to become a very popular guild of Rangers and Druids. Being interviewed by BioWare is a seriously proud moment as well! ~
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It was during this second phase that we became popular, and we really had to work at it, pretty much redoing everything in its entirety a few times over to get it right. Artos became an area-making machine and put in most of the current areas in Arelith. Later on, JP left, and we gave him a copy of the mod, which he gave to a friend of his, and they started up Amia (kind of our sister module in a manner of speaking - they're using version 2 of Arelith with their own modifications).
We're a role play server. One of the biggest detriments to any role play server is the fact that you are limited in gaining xp by either killing things or a benevolent DM noticing your RP ability. On Arelith, the players are given a "Role Play Rating", and from the time they receive that rating, they begin receiving an experience points bonus every game hour. This means that you don't have to go slaughter innocent goblins to attain experience to move up in levels (unless you want to, of course). We let it be known that for excellence in role play, you will receive a higher rating, and this tends to motivate the players to role play well.
