Black/white or grey/grey?

[ncvr]

Let's take a break from gameplay for a while and discuss something which is usually ignored here.

Do you think that, morality wise, the realms are black and white or grey and grey? Are Syrtis and Alsius the good guys while Ignis is evil? Or is it more like Warcraft III/WoW where you have the Alliance and the Horde, instead of, say, Warhammer or Warcraft I/II? Nothing I've seen in Ignis comes off exactly as evil, maybe brutal or dark, but not sadistic or anything, so I'm leaning towards shades of grey.

[Pizdzius]

Hey Necro I agree with grey/grey and I do represent some of that stuff in the comic as often as I can.

[-Logan-]

Nice idea

Taking what I know from the games lore in general, I would say NGD tries to make Ignis look like the evil, corrupt realm. It's kind of weak in my opinion because they just bluntly come off with the point, usually not trying to justify actions or whatnot. When you have cases where Ignean citizens try to play the good guys, they come off totally like Syrtians. So I don't think NGD has succeeded in trying to make Ignis more of a "chaotic good" realm. It's usually more of a straight to the point evil stuff club. There is some good lore there, but most quests generally follow this tone. So Ignis is definitely gray.

Syrtis is the (white) lawful good realm, and I think they come off almost flawlessly in their lore. What makes Syrtis different from Ignis, and especially Alsius is that it has it's frontline lore, and then under that it has a whole other layer or lore related to the realms history, and it's surprisingly good. Ignis has this to some extent, but the full potential hasn't been reached yet.

As far as Alsius goes, sadly (even with the new quests) they seem like the lost child. In my opinion, part of the fail comes in part from the fact that NGD constantly tries to change their story. Right now the current theme is something along the lines of "Oh we'll get revenge on those meanies for killing our emperor 500 years ago!" I will say that Alsius has the best lore for what actually goes on in the realm, yet I'd have to call them gray in the end as well. In Alsius you come to understand how things work in the realm via quests, while Ignis and Syrtis are usually describing some war that isn't actually happening. They (Syrtis and Ignis) make these really noticeable high emotion situations, but then it just dies, they leave most of it to your imagination as if shit was actually happening.

It's really because NGD has no concrete lore for the game, and they don't continue the present lore. Instead they just hop around testing the waters. Sadly, there is probably no single person that dedicates his time to checking if things make sense. I'd guess that when they do make quests they get a new guy to do it everytime, or if it's the same guy he has completely forgotten what he wrote last time, and doesn't give a damn about trying to make it match.

[ncvr]

I'd say the main thing that separates Ignis from Syrtis (lorewise) is their use of magic. Originally, the dark elves were banished because they wanted to use the Igneos' powerful evil warlock magic, but the lawful good elves wouldn't have that and kicked them out. Now, in Regnum we have seen no evidence that usage of this magic, excessive or not, has any major or even noticeable side effects. The only thing that really darkens the Igneans is that they want to get revenge on their brethren. Tbh, I'd prefer if NGD, if/when they update quests, showed more of the 'struggle to survive' aspect of Ignis than the 'I like to use evil magic' aspect.

Overall, I agree that Alsius' involvement in the war is rather patchy and poorly elaborated on. None of the higher ranking Alsius nobles or lords come off as warmongers, considering they signed a peace treaty with orcs some time ago, so I'm surprised they haven't seen the mutual benefit of making peace with Syrtis (but, as always, gameplay > story, so...).

Moving on to quests, I really would like to see some more effort put into writing them. I really enjoyed the lvl 17 - 26ish quests in Alsius because there was one cohesive storyline (corruption, sabotage, etc.) and with more quests like that, leveling will just be less boring. The elections/cross water trading company lines are the only quests which I distinctly remember from leveling even with the new starting zones, and I think they were some of the most well done quests even if the objectives were generic kill/delivery.

[El_Naso]

I think it goes a little beyond grayscale values; each relam has it's own values attached to it: Syrtis, the relam of the wood elves looks like the noble, alturistic, civilized relam while Ignis is savage, vengeful, thirsty for power and Alsius is, well, the third relam. It has snow.

That's what first timers imagine in general terms when they first see the "choose your relam" screen. And they choose wichever relam that matches their expectations of the game.

I think I went a little off topic in the last bit. I think story wise, it's more of a bunch of grays; syrtys is not evil but neither is good (they left their brethren dark elves to die in the desert) and ingis was never bad to begin with but wants revenge. Alsius never plays a part in this war, they are both protecting their lands from the other relams and attempting to gain something for themselves if they can.

[-Logan-]

I'd say that magic barely separates them The thing that separates them in my eyes are their intentions.

The thing with Ignis and igneo magic, is that they barely even mention igneo magic. Ironically, Syrtis quests touch the subject more, and there is even a quest where a guard uses igneo necromancy. In Ignis, igneo magic is described as a raw force, but there is no mention as far as I know of Igneans even tampering with the magic. The only mention that I know is that it was the original reason for their exile, for wanting to study it. The way its described in quests, is as if it's a force that they are still curiously afraid of even after 500 years. It fails so hard though because there have been many times where I've seen new players misunderstand the lore and think that the magic Ignis was banished for using was Warlock magic.

I totally agree with you that Ignis should have more of the struggling to survive theme. In the proper quests, you get the impression that Ignis' current warzone effort in our map is like a colonial project. They are trying to set up a war effort, while the real deal isn't in our map, but far beyond those mountains, where the REAL leaders, buildings, and problems are. NGD should also expand on the story of the igneo's, because they play nearly as important a role as the Igneans themselves.

Alsius should expand a bit more on the story of why the first dwarves left their homeland (The original story is that their homeland was destroyed in the cataclysmic arrival of a beast), and how Ignis and Syrtis threaten them. Because in the current state I get the impression that the Empire doesn't take Ignis and Syrtis very seriously.

EDIT: This is a perfect, sad, example of Ignis typical quests by NGD. Taken from the first dialog in Ignis:

The ruins around us belong to an ancient Ignean Temple.
This place, overwhelmed by the darkness and ritual magic of their twisted kind, was torn down by a tremor years ago, but it still has great supernatural power.

That's just so wrong Because first off their people are the Igneans, the igneos are igneos. Second of all the original story was that the Igneans fought a bloody war with the igneos following their exile, and they conquered the igneo lands from them. The old Regnum intro had art of the Ignean-Igneo war. Just a typical example of NGD abandoning their original lore, and making something new everytime.

The devs barely even talk about lore in their own language, so I sure as hell don't expect them to talk about it here in the English forum. It's probably the last point of interest in Regnum.

[ncvr]

I think the Alsirian Empire should just start showing more of its aggression and expansionistic side. It is, afterall, an empire, and the original story was that they're running out of resources and land and need to expand, but they need to have their own reasons for hating Syrtis or Ignis because otherwise it wouldn't make sense.

To draw a parallel from Warcraft, Ignis to me seems a lot like the Forsaken and the Blood Elves (before the Forsaken crossed the moral event horizon and the blood elves went good again, that IMO ruined two perfectly good races). They're vengeful, hated by those who they would've once given their lives to protect, and are trying to survive in a world that hates and fears them (which means making them different from wood elves in a way other than skin colour and fighting style). They're pragmatic, savage and brutal, placing their own survival above anything else, and ensuring that they do survive by any means necessary. When applying this to their war effort, they'd take a "shoot first, ask questions never" approach when it comes to enemies who dare encroach on their sacred land.

As for Syrtis, they shouldn't be fighting purely to defend their forest, but rather should be zealous about protecting their land, and take the "YOU DEFILED OUR FORESTS SO WE'RE GONNA GENOCIDE THE HELL OUT OF YOU" approach. As it is, they're just generic fantasy elf race #471 and it is not interesting.

[Envy]

Reading this thread almost makes me wish I would have paid attention to the lore on my journeys to 50 in Ignis and Alsius.

I think NGD have tried to hard to make no realm viewable as bad or worse than the others. They should take some inspiration from Warhammer lore in my opinion, that's pretty grey stuff.

[Kyrottimus]

I see it as not so clear cut, as "white" or "black" or "gray"

Just as in the history of the world, nations all go through their good and bad years.

Nobody still hates Germany or Japan for WWII. The same reason nobody still loves the U.S.A. for their part in WWII.

Lately, Germany and Japan have been the cool dudes and the U.S.A. have been starting to act like real asshats.

Just depends on what time you look at any nation.

Perhaps Ignis used to be evil upon their inception. Perhaps Alsius was altruistic upon theirs, but became greedy, but not everyone in the realm agrees with Imperial policy and you get your fringe countrymen who live outside the official doctrine (which is when you run into elves/dwarves running around together killing beasts of the realm for mutual gain [grinding]).

Perhaps Syrtis was a peaceful realm but in light of growing threats they've taken on a more warlike and aggressive outlook.

So currently all 3 realms are neither benevolent or malevolent, merely trying to survive in a hostile world with their own interests at heart, and many characters living within their realms with may varying degrees of gray between both white and black.

Remember: There are exceptions to everything!

[Miraculix]

This whole discussion is giving the current game lore too much credit, but as they say, never underestimate the power of denial.

Regnum's back-story is an extremely badly written piece of lore. High-school kids would be able to write more interesting plots than what we get, no matter how complicated we'd like to think the story is just because we live in denial about the fact that our lore is:

"There was Syrtis, some split to do dark magic so they became Ignis, and oh by the way there were Alsius who we'll force into the storyline by some random plot device that makes no sense (emperor assassination)"

This is all there is to this game's lore. It is obvious in the first 5 minutes that the process went something like "we need to stand out in the MMO market, lets have 3 realms instead of 2" and then a back-story was slapped on at the last minute by someone who gave zero thought or even creativity into it at all.

Sure, there's probably some thousands of lines of text in quests and stuff, but quantity is not quality. Most of this text is messed up, half-written, badly translated ideas based on what that particular author (obviously they were more than one) had in his own mind as the game lore (obviously there was not even a consistent game lore within NGD for quest writers to look up, each quest text writer must have been making shit up as they wrote it).

It might not seem like an important part of the game to NGD and they have flat out said that they do not believe their game lore to be as important:

http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/forum...&postcount=110

But, in my mind, it is, and currently RO has a really, really, really bad one.