Hi there, Questions from a new player who has recently decided to look for alternatives from his long time home City of Arabel which no longer bears any resemblance to the server it once was. So without further adue here they are: 1) I understand Amia was once apart of Arelith, what are the main differences between Arelith and Amia? 2) What's the death penalty on this server? Harsh? Medium or Light? 3) Is Amia a high level server or more a mid ranged average with higher levels being achievable?
Hi there, Questions from a new player who has recently decided to look for alternatives from his long time home City of Arabel which no longer bears any resemblance to the server it once was. So without further adue here they are: 1) I understand Amia was once apart of Arelith, what are the main differences between Arelith and Amia? 2) What's the death penalty on this server? Harsh? Medium or Light? 3) Is Amia a high level server or more a mid ranged average with higher levels being achievable?
Thanks!
1) Hard to say given I never really played on Arelith myself. 2) light 3) high level
_________________ ================-<Cory ShadowFlame>-================ Risenlord-Shifter(OMG a Non-Dragon Shifter that can hold his own in PvE)
1) Arelith traditionally enforced such things as eating, drinking and sleeping. Also, OOC comments are strictly forbidden and languages your character wouldn't naturally know are garbled unless you have a language widget which takes months and months of RP to quality for, and even then are rarely awarded. Amia split off as a result of forced details like this, and personal disagreements between the DM team. On Amia, most of these things are optional and up to you if you want to roleplay them or not. Languages are done by tag like "[Elven] Gruumsh is the bomb" so you can OOC understand but not IC. The craft system is different too, and much better here. Amia has weathered the years much better than Arelith.
2) After the first death, which is free, you take 10% gold loss and XP loss based on your level. You won't ever lose a level though. Maximum is to go back to the base xp for your current level. There is no cap on the gold loss.
3) Amia is an epic level server, but only up to level 30. No characters are above that.
While Arelith and Amia were once the same, they have been separate for ... 10+ years, so the differences are fairly substantial. If you come from Arelith, you might notice some similarities in the areas around Cordor, and of course, some of the names are similar or the same. But beyond that, we have different Areas, different scripts, different server features, different custom content, different community, and so on. They're really different animals at this point.
Our death penalties are light to mild, depending on your perspective, but very forgiving. You lose xp and gold, and not an incredible amount of either.
Amia's level cap is 30, and there are things to do at any level range. A lot of content is end-game (level 30).
I'm just gonna try to answer the first one in a bit more detail, since Letum and Fennewald nailed the other two really easily and there's not much more to say about 'em.
Yeah, Arelith and Amia are... Very, very different. For sure.
Technical differences like module, quests, content and the like set aside, there's a few big differences I've noted between Arelith and Amia. (Played both for several months and decided to stick with this one, for the record.)
1: Amia's a little more relaxed. Not to say the standard of RP quality is lower, by any means — it's actually been some of the best RP I've seen on NWN, and I've been playing for 9 years or something ridiculous. But the people here, in general, just don't seem to sweat the small stuff as much. Like Fennewald said, an OOC message every now and then isn't going to kill anyone, and you certainly won't be banned for it — but you're expected to keep it to a minimum. Languages aren't translated through a system, and it's more left up to the honour system as to what languages your character should and should not know — but you're expected to keep it reasonable, and don't metagame what you wouldn't know. Basically, nobody's gonna be looking at your every move and waiting for you to slip.
2: There's a good bit more freedom for the average individual. I mean no hate for Arelith, at all, but my biggest issue with it was that it was just kind of boring to me. I played for three or four months and never got any significant RP out of it, nor did my character do anything anyone would remember, nor did he even see anything that I can remember being of any significance. There were dungeons, and dungeon-goers, and bars and streets to RP in, and... That was kind of it.
Amia gives you a little more freedom to just do things. The world is dynamic and ever-changing, and the status quo gets rocked on a fairly regular basis, often due to the actions of player characters. Player factions are often very active and do all sorts of cool things for both outsiders and faction members, and they're often really welcoming to newcomers. I've only been playing here since late October, and my character and his allies (who joined with me) have made pretty significant waves throughout the world. Shoot, Fennewald's character, Ferris, is kinda famous already, and he's been here for like two months. It's awesome.
3: You've also got a bit more freedom in what you can play. Basic monstrous characters like kobolds and goblins are free for anyone to play, as are drow, tieflings, and a few other standard things. (A list of the free subraces can be found here if you're interested.) Further things can be requested with time, experience, and a well-written application. Prestige classes are also free for anyone, if they meet the requirements, and they do some pretty cool stuff.
Yet, despite this, the world's still fairly normal. There's some weird things running around here and there, for sure, but it's surprisingly moderate for a server with a more open policy on what you can and can't play. I really like that.
4: The community's pretty long-lasting, close, and friendly. Again, not insulting Arelith. They were mostly really nice people. But I swear I never saw the same person for more than a week or two. People came and went, a lot, and the community seemed really transient, except for a few cliques who had been around for yeeeears and were not particularly open to random newcomers. In contrast, I've found Amia to be really welcoming to new people, and most everyone has been really friendly and mature out-of-character. (This thread from last month is an awesome, real-world example that comes to mind.) It's a good community, and random folks can become a part of it with relative ease. They just gotta jump into it.
5: Finally, the DMs do stuff. Like, a lot. I see a DM or two online almost daily, and events are pretty commonplace, both scheduled and unscheduled. DMs will also possess random NPCs and the like, just kind of enhancing the world. This isn't really that strange for NWN, but, I'll be honest when I say this is the first time I've seen a big, long-time server that still does that. Mostly only see that on private servers these days. And it makes a pretty big and noticeable difference to how you play and how the world feels.
So, uh. TL;DR. It's different, yep. S'why I stuck around I guess. I like different.
Sorry for the wall of text, I do that.
This post was gonna be two paragraphs when I started.
I gotta agree with all the stuff that has been said here. Especially with the differences between Amia and Arelith. I also figured I'd toss up a small example of just how restrictive Arelith can be.
I'm unsure how much they've change since the time that this event happened. Some people say they've changed a lot, and others say they haven't really changed at all. But back when I started RP on NWN, Arelith was the first server I decided to check out. I was there maybe a day or two before I got banned. I had left myself afk for about ten minutes or so because I got called away and forgot to log off. Wasn't in the middle of any RP or anything. Went off into a bar somewhere and sat in the corner. When I came back, it showed that I had been booted, so I went to log back in. Once I did so, I was in something like an OOC jail area, and not even a minute after logging in, I got booted again. When I tried logging back in, it said I was banned. I went and spoke with DMs on the forums about it and they stated that it was due to "being afk for more than five minutes".
So yep. There's my own experience with Arelith. Haven't even tried to get back on there since then. Also, this message isn't meant to really hate on Arelith, so much as just show how restricting they can be, and how much they apparently dislike OOC anything.
To be still more accurate on the death penalty: there is no penalty if you get raised by another PC. 10% gold and XP applies only to respawning. Furthermore, respawning from PvP death is free/automatic (though subject to PvP rules; you don't miraculously revive IC in the middle of a scene).
_________________
On Joon, Kjetta wrote:
The guy that probably has sexual fantasies about masturbation. I mean, Iron, you're a bookworm nerd that even in your wildest escapism fantasies flee to the internet to play the role of another bookworm nerd? Come on!
...his long time home City of Arabel which no longer bears any resemblance to the server it once was. So without further adue here they are: 1) I understand Amia was once apart of Arelith, what are the main differences between Arelith and Amia?
Hey Wildcard, I played on CoA from 2006 to 2007 and I must say it was some serious role playing.
Amia is a role playing server to be sure, but it is a more relaxed atmosphere than CoA was then and death is certainly lighter. DM involvement is pretty nice here too. I would say that as of 2014, it's the best nwn1 server going out of the 200+ (there are some great servers out there still!) that are still around!
Joined: 17 Oct 2011 Location: The Hall of the Mountain King
To answer your question on the key differences between Amia and Arelith. The first difference that struck me is that lvling is horribly slow on Arelith. I spent like 3-4 days hitting lvl 6, because you got like 6 exp for each kill. The second thing was all the restrictions I weren't used to. For instance, I wanted to roll a good aligned drow, but to do that I had to get a character up in the epic lvls, permakill it, then roll a 1d20 and hope for a 20, before I could roll a good drow. The reason for this was that they did not want umpteenth Drizz't characters running around. Which is not what have happened on Amia, the drow that has the closest resemblance to Drizzt atm is my own, which I made before I heard of Drizz't. Same went for PRC's or special characters (like aasimars I think). In comparison you don't have to make a request for any of this, and you don't have to sacrifice your character for something cool. To put it simple, Arelith seems made to be more serious and likely in the setting, while Amia seems more designed to be fun. I admit, Arelith has a few neat things Amia doesn't, like a disguise system and a language system, but Amia has cool haks. Also, Arelith seems more player run, while Amia is a good mix.
_________________ I am not weird, I am limited edition
First off I've only been playing here for a few weeks myself.
I started my online NwN playing years and years ago on Arabel. I played there for a few years. (were you there long ago enough to remember the Iron Anvil clan) When I played there you needed an application to do almost everything (joining noble houses, yada yada) And the max character level anyone ever saw was lvl 12 (and very few saw lvl 12). Also when you die there you had better hope you are with friends or you can kiss all your gear goodbye.
Once I left there I went to Arelith. I've played there for years and years (eight or so I guess). I even was a DM there for a time but that was short lived. The official policy of the DM team there is "smelt not felt" Which (IMO) reduces the dm team to be little more than ninjas lurking in the shadows just itching to jump on your head for any infractions that they see. You don't know when they're on...and your only course of action if you need to report someone for rule breeches or your character is broken or something is to spam the dm channel and hope there is someone there. That's not the case here, as others have stated DM's are often on asking if anyone needs anything at all. Not to mention the forums will let you know if there is a dm on as well. Also as mentioned they will possess npc's add flavor to the world and surprise you in other neat ways. Its awesome!
I've personally seen incidents on Arelith where DM's allowed metagaming/griefing type behavior to go on due to an offender's ability to point out loop holes in the rules. I'll admit that I don't feel they did this out of favoritism or any such thing but none the less, its happened. So far here there has been no such behavior from the players (at least not that I've seen)
Arelith is extremely "cliquey" This was touched on before when someone mentioned characters that have been around a reeeeeaaaaaallly long time. Its true. There is clearly a core group of players that have grasped the attention of both other players and the staff. This is evident by the rp reward system that's in place there. Some races can only be played if you have a Role Play Rating (RPR) of 30 or higher. Like I said I've played there for years, and the highest I've ever gotten is a 20. (Its of course entirely possible that my roleplay isn't good enough and that's fine) However, I have seen actions from other players that do have such a rating that are so terrible that I would consider a temporary ban (time out) so that they have time to think about how they behave go entirely unpunished. One of these actions is extreme forms of metagaming. On Arelith if a dm event starts and you are involved you had better be one of the "cool kids" otherwise you'll quickly be pushed to the side as said event gets overrun by famous lvl 30 characters who come running into the area fully buffed and jump right in to take over.(how do they even know something is going down) This is especially annoying if the event happens in a non hostile area where they shouldn't be fully warded let alone walk in expecting a fight. It gets even worse those times when you realize that the character in question hasn't been played in months or longer because the player had shelved it in favor of playing a new character, only to log their uber epic for the sole purpose of crashing said event. Like I said I've been here for two weeks...today I was involved in my first DM event. There were three of us...some things went down. The DM followed/allowed us to carry the event throughout various settlement areas of the module to investigate futher and in the end, much to my surprise. It was still just the three of us. It was beautiful. Just a private little event that had intimate meaning for my character on a personal level.
Aaand that's been my experience here in the last couple of weeks. The staff seems fair and willing to help, the player base is awesome, friendly and welcoming (which holds true for the most part on Arelith as well) And I feel like I'm given the freedom to play, and have fun without the fear of being punished for not sitting in the city and chatting my time away.
I will only answer to your first quesiton but the story related differences (the ones that I know for sure)
- Arelith Cordor and the Amian differences have significant differences, such as: Halen didn't make the Mystran tower walk to Cordor, Galverson didn't depose the Duke....others did. - Unlike the Arelith scenario, Benwick was destroyed and Kohlingen stands (On Arelith it occured the other way around, apparently Manfried was able to destroy Kohl and Benwick survived as Light Keep) - Stonehold survived here as Wyrmhold, which doesn't exist since 2007. - Amia has Ruathrym, Mainland and Mulhorandi regions other than the islands. - We have Abyss, not baator - Bendir Dale is no longer a fort, but turned into cosy little village. - Since the map main map changes of 2007-2008, the Skull Crags are now South to the Minmir river, unlike the original map what you can see on Arelith.
I'm sure that there are a lot more but I cannot think of anything else atm
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