The Future State of Illarion Lore

[Aegohl]

Illarionites and Illarionettes,

As some of you are already aware, I'm currently working on a lore project for Illarion. I feel it's necessary to talk to you about how this will effect you, your roleplay, and your character stories.

As some of you might be aware, the current state of Illarion's lore is rather messy. The website is filled with outdated, overly-wordy, and unnecessary lore. The vast majority of it is irrelevant and about places your characters will never go. Much of it is unrelated to how players actually play. Lots of it is misleading. The rest is just awful to read and/or poorly translated. As though that's not bad enough, the storyline of Illarion lacks direction, conflict, and character. There is even more lore that is not even available for players to see.

It's my job to fix all that. To that end the lore is being refocused on the places that players can go to and interact with and do things with and also re-focused on how players actually play. The fat of the lore is being cut and items that aren't immediately necessary for new players to understand the game is being moved ingame where players will, at the very least, be adding to the player count rather than sitting on a website.

The reality is that for most of you the lore changes will not effect your play at all. I hope that, in fact, it opens up new opportunities for all of you to play your characters in new, interesting, fun ways, but let's face facts: you can go days in Illarion before anyone says anything more indepth than mentioning where they're from or namedropping a god about the website lore.

However, there will be changes. For example, when the lore gets in the way of how players like to play or takes focus away from the players, their actions, and their decisions the lore has to go (because otherwise the players will go). When the lore is completely superfluous (see here for an example of a lore item you will never, ever possibly use or care to read about) it needs to go. When the lore is illogical or obnoxious, it needs to be fixed. When the lore is not available to players, it needs to be made available or cut.

In the meantime, it's inevitable, no matter how hard I work not to break things that I will break the lore from time to time and there will be times when the new lore doesn't fit something ingame or elsewhere on the website while I continue into this project. Some lore will be broke on purpose where the lore just doesn't resemble what players play or like to play. Some lore will be changed to become local lore and some will be cut because it's not local lore.

Most importantly, this represents a "soft reboot" of Illarion's lore. Items that are changed supersede lore items from the past retroactively. While I'll try to avoid changing the past where it's not necessary, it will happen. Where the changes can be added organically as recently changed I will take that option first. If you're wondering how you should roleplay any changes, you should roleplay as though there was no change and that the past information was never there. I reiterate that these changes will be as minor and organic as possible.

Please be patient and please do report anything you notice in case it was an oversight. Feel free to tell me what you do not like as well, especially if you have a better idea. This lore is your lore. However, please, no input until you've seen the work.

I appreciate your patience.

Mitch

(translation forthcoming)