Ardenn

I used to talk about writing community guideliens and rules for engagement. Roleplayers hate being told what to do though and it was struck down every time.

Some old dregs of history you may not know about; There were people who intentionally kept me out of the South Burb organization, as well as several of the other townships. I'd actively wanted to join up and support those projects in the past and was repeatedly told by multiple event organizers that I wasnt welcome because I had too much weight in the community. There were even a few RP Raids and combat events Aiidoneus told me outright not to attend because he was convinced my sheer charisma would cause people to change sides and whoever went up against me would lose. I never considered myself to be particularly powerful, but there were absolutely roleplayers that were terrified of me showing up to the point of not playing whatsoever if I was present. I ended up having to make my own events and parties and leave them open ended to whoever wanted to show up. Not to mention I have a long history where Hope Springs have literally thrown out every single one of my characters. I've made a vast amount of characters with vibrant and different backgrounds. 90% of the time people cannot detect my alts as I completely change how I behave "out of character" between handles with different slang terminology, grammar, punctuation, etc. I've actually had people PM me on some of my alts mistaking me for a completely different player. Every single one has been kicked out of Hope, and only one ever actually started a fight. PVP trivia; Despite being a Warcheif for the CHOTA for 2-3 years, I only ever killed 8 people. 3 of them were in Hope Springs trying to lure lowbies into flagging so their friends could snipe them from range for free Death Toll because "roleplayers dont fight back". I literally told the server on a daily basis that I was the worst PVPer in the game and no one believed me.

I spent years hyping up this game and jumping up and down about campaign ideas and lore ideas and maps I'd want to make and mini-factions and combat arenas and PVP tournaments and everything else under the sun because I used to find this game really cool and unique and exciting. And I still do. I flat out dont like Post-Apocalyptic games but this one really grabbed me by the balls and didnt let go for about five years of my life, and it was a wild ride I (mostly) dont regret! I wrote a damn book about how much fun I had in Fallen Earth! I was so excited when the announcement came that the servers were coming back online and wholly un-prepared when they actually did, scrambling to try and gather all my notes and resources together. I heard Hooligan had the Market back up, and some of my old Lightbearer friends from the old days were popping back up to see how things were going. I even heard a few of the old rival Saints were lurking around and I might have some challenges on the battlefield that could throw down a good fight instead of running away after one death. Gosh, even Hope Springs got back up and running, and my old Arch Nemesis in Roleplay was seen in the woods again. Oh, Oh, I was so excited! Then I caught Covid. I recovered about three weeks later but my ability to write a story has come to a grinding halt. I've been wracking my brains for months and the ideas just stopped. I've been thinking about how to write this post for a while, because its a really strange feeling to just be totally disconnected from something I was so passionate about before. I havnt been on since Reapers Bar closed, I just dont have stories in me any more. I'm sorry if you were looking forward to "Storytime".

The saga continues. tdlr; 18 hour gaming sessions elsewhere with an IRL group that doesnt want to give me time for FE. I'm going to have to put my foot down after thanksgiving, Im exhausted and need some chill FE time.

Thanks for stepping in with better info, I'm always looking to expand my own history of the game as well.

Maybe I can field a bit of pondering thought. It depends on when you started playing the game. Icarus had a pretty fair idea of what they wanted the game to be, but through testing they had to remove and rebalance some of their initial ideas. There were people who felt this was the golden age of the game but it had plenty of loopholes, exploits and problems of its own. As an example, There used to be Capstone skills, every faction having a cool and wild skill they got when they reached level cap. Those had already been completely removed by the time I started to play here, and a lot of older players lamented their loss, but they were also hugely overpowered and made the game's complexity minimal at best. Some veterans told me one of the capstones was a literal Fireball and they ultimately decided it felt like it was too "Magical" and removed it for weaker skills. If you joined during the Gamers First ownership of the game, they didn't really do any positive favors for the game. The Defense Towns, The District PVP zone, the Football Duo Arena and GORE came out under their ownership. All of it busy work, none of it added to story (As far as I know of, Alpha zone was incomplete/had no story). They screwed the placement of nodes and all the custom, hand crafted loving care that Icarus had added tot he game int he name of atmosphere and fired anyone int he staff that was considered "Too friendly" to the playerbase (mostly the GMs who were most willing to give players free items at RP events and such). GORE came out under their ownership and it completely split the community and combat had to be rebalanced multiple times. Telepathy was also completely removed outright and replaced with Illumination. Overall at launch the game had enough skills to rival Final Fantasy, but G1 thought it was too complex and killed all the mutation lines, reducing them to 3 skills each. Most these skills arent even very powerful compared to their previous state. The game was ultimately sold to Little Orbit in a really shabby condition, and Matt had seen the older content a bit and wanted to try and bring the magic back. Other projects they had to prioritize before Fallen Earth are taking longer than expected, and they put the Classic server online to try and give us a go-between while they try and root out all the code int he base game that was being exploited and re-write it. Fallen Earth 2.0 is probably many years off yet, but I wouldnt blame Little Orbit for all of the problems. Gamers First buggered the code in the name of cash shop greed. When G1 couldnt fix their mistakes, they just remapped and sold vanity jackets and helmets until they could sell our game to someone else. Its pretty cool someone was willing to buy our game and try to maintain it. It might be a shadow of its former self, but theres a few hundred of us glad to have it back online. Edit; fixed errors

If you want stories, I'm the Story Man. Used to keep a character journal of everything I experienced in the game, from quests to real player interactions. Fact is, running into a wacky group of players is indeed what caused me to spend years with this niche game. I dont know if the event will return, but I was introduced to a group that were role playing a huge biker gang that used to meet once a week and ride around the low level zones as a pack. If it wasnt for them and getting to hang out with a handful of Apocalyptic Radio DJs and all the effort the roleplayers put into their events and the PVPers that go wild in the ybrid RP-PVP system, I probably would have passed this game over in the first month. Personally, I missed the Monoserver game. Everything else is expanding into megaservers and diluting populations of communities down to smears of acronyms and icons on a random roulette of bright colors and poorly written questlines. Trying to get to know someone and help them achieve goals and celebrate milestones together feels so rare these days, and I cherished all those personal connections I made here. Even the people I fought with gave me experiences to learn and grow from. Hell, I still have the grandmaster list of the 200 people I wrote about when I played FE 10 years ago. I dont know if I'll make those same connections again, but Fallen Earth still has a charm to it that I cant find anywhere else.

This post is entirely a joke and a laugh about my situation, not to be taken seriously. FE Classic went up in the middle of my wedding anni. with my husband, so I wasn't able to get on for days but I kept getting tons of messages from people who were excited to be back in game and all the plans they had for leveling and collecting again. Most of them didn't care about past items and were just happy to be home. Many of them were making new characters with new story ideas and bringing in friends and it was pretty heartwarming overall. Our vacation ends, things go back to normal, I settle down to log into FE and start making characters, ready for my turn to "go home" and hang out with all my old friends and enemies. Thursday; Of course I pick the one time to play when the server is offline (or at least thats what my launcher was telling me) and I fall asleep waiting for it to be reset. Friday; Power out. Well, there's always tomorrow! Saturday; Internet's out. Well, there's always tomorrow! Sunday; Storm flooded the cable box. Monday; Uh... well... Maybe if I use the Wifi... Nope, thats out too, maybe tomorrow... Tuesday; Oh-KAY, Time to get on and-- The servers are offline. God Ffffff..... I'm going to bed, I'll try again tomorrow.

Was this really posted 26 minutes ago? Did I really get jumped by multiple people when it went online? Man, I was planning on sleeping today... Good luck, Boss. You might need it.

I laughed at how many people tagged me on this when I've been watching the forums and Twitter rather closely. The flurry of delight from non-posters was pretty adorable though. Looks like a few folks want me back in Classic, too. I have no problems starting over, been talking with people a long time about different characters I'd make if/when things went back online and getting to run around in even a shell of the old game sounds great, especially if its testing an effort to update and revive a custom engine. Hmmm, Henerkin posted... I better watch my tongue if he's around, I'd like to keep it in my head. (This is an old Roleplayer's reference, not an IRL threat <3)

I also remember this company openly admitting they had never done any kind of MMO or online gameplay experience before. They had experience in story writing and converting a popular IP into an RPG format but live services was new to them and they thought our games were small enough projects that they could handle them. I wish them the best, but suspect they may be eating their words now. I would describe the projects they took over as "chaotic" and likely a stressful transition as Disney executives are a vastly different beast than several communities being able to constantly outreach and express displeasure at you. Not everyone can take that or even know what they are getting into when stepping into the "always online services" territory. There's a reason I only organized once a month events and didnt get into game dev

You'll see a bit more activity out of the company over on Twitter, but not much. They've been busy and dont really have a lot to openly talk about. Among other things, they had to take over a project a totally different team kick-started and then abandoned, and are now responsible for. Not to mention trying to update APB which is still a live service and... not going as planned from what I've gathered. Not impossible, just difficult for a team that took over a whole bunch of spaghetti string projects and then a pandemic screwing the supply chain for... just about everything. Actually saw Matt post yesterday, so, they aren't dead at least.

I dont know about the official FE Trivia events, but the trivia masters that showed up at the Crafters Market's were pretty wild. I still remember there was some long winded paragraph that had people scratching their heads for ten minutes until someone who wandered in late heard the question repeated and was like "Oh yeah, the Textiles trade of 1732? Yeah, that was a wild year." I havn't heard from any of them in a while though. Most of them were Enforcer players and as a CHOTA, I didn't get a chance to mingle much outside of the Markets.

I paid $150 up front for multiple games in the recent years on the sheer concept that I was paying into the idea someone else would get to play the game even if I didn't have time to play it 14 hours a day making content for it. I'm still subbed to FFXIV even though I havn't played it for nearly a year now. I've been thinking it'd be nice to divert those funds into a different game but there are very few actually unique and interesting games to feed. Fallen Earth was a damn nice niche game that didn't have to rely on caving in to Anime and memes to keep the player base interested, and I miss that mature flavor like a fine wine. That said, I've been casually watching the progress on APB and Unsung Story. I see progress being made on both projects, and I think I'd rather see them finish Unsung Story rather than split the team on 4-5 different projects. If a Fallen Earth server could be feasible run without causing undue stress to the creators, I'll dogpile with the players who miss their home, but I think it would be a disservice to both the new developers and the customers to put something online just for the sake of having something online. Give me a sandbox and I'll build you a city with events and stories. We'll meet again some day, I have faith.

I remember the day I found out specific outfits and shoulder pads were proven to alter your hitbox size in combat and folks went from big burly suits full of heavy armor stats, to rushing the vanity tabs to put on T-shirts to reduce the size of the hitbox around the shoulders. Fallen Earth was a weird, janky old engine. If we're going to mention how much GORE destabilized PVP, though, we also have to address how positively badly balanced Heavy Weapons were, to the point that I accidentally forced the previous Devs hands to make them virtually unusable. Remember Snipers having a 90m range you could push a little with good aim to about 120? Remember Heavy weapons had bullets that didnt despawn no matter the travel distance so you could shoot them further than targets could render? Remember when I sold all my build info to the Enforcers because the CHOTA were running out of people to fight, and they made a 30 man army to keep The Dump under their control with a mass line of torpedo style explosives in any direction? All I ever hoped for was they'd be unusuable in zones under 40 and the old Devs responded by completely locking the levels that could participate in open towns period. I really miss the hybrid pvp play and the community that let in a dirty casual roleplayer in to their games, and kept inviting me back. Once splash damage and oneshot kill mechanics were implemented, it was chaos.