Nellnight Shadowstar of Winterholm Ashen Eye of the Dragonbound, Obsidian Dragonmaster of the Tempest Moon High Priest of the Dragon Order of Kaheda (maybe one day )

Does anybody still wonder who was behind the war that saw the closing of the Angmar guild? If so, they need look no further than the knights, and the incompetent fools who masquerade as the council of the knights.

I must confess that I laughed long and loud when I heard the latest news from my spies throughout the lands. You see, the knights feel a little threatened by the emergence of the dragon armies, and are doing their best to discredit them. Doesn't this sound all too familiar?

Do you all realise just how low into the gene pool the knights have had to dive to come up with their current council? Let me give an example, that unfortunately, is taken from a real situation.

Most people within Genesis have heard of Monika, and most have some opinion of her - they either love her, or hate her, bless her evil little soul. However, it seems that the council of the knights, and most particularly the sad little individual Morrigan, really really hate her, and view her as an implacable threat to the knights, and their way of life (not that this way is worth preserving).

Did people know that Monika is such a threat to the knights that Morrigan mailed the officers of the dragon armies, stating that the knights would declare war on the armies if Monika was not kicked out of the blue dragon army?

Hmm, that sounds like a shallow reason to me - I tend to think, instead, that the knights are simply spoiling for a fight, and don't want the responsibility for starting it. An interesting thought really, that a single individual's presence within a guild should be the justification for sparking a conflict that would undoubtedly bring in the Calians, Rangers and Neidar who have missed a good fight since Angmar got closed. If I didn't know through experience, I would wonder what the administration would think of such a thing.

And to those who don't know the response of the blue dragon army - they promoted Monika to officer. Ahh, this brought a tear of merriment to my eyes.

Well, knights, your bluff has been called - will you use your trumped up pathetic little reason to spark another great conflagration that ruins the enjoyment of all bar those who instigated it? Now is your chance to once again take the fun out of Genesis, through the actions of your grossly incompetent council.

Yes, you are quite correct when you say that there are some good wizards out there.

However, before being too disparaging about us players, just remember that all of the wizards were players too, once upon a time… and the big problem is that just as there are some lousy players, so too are there some lousy wizards - normally, those who are too stuck on their guilds to look at the broader picture.

It is rather a shame when decent wizards are chased out of Middle Earth, while another wizard is allowed to stick around who purposely codes his guild to have advantages that are not within the framework of the game. The knights were recoded and had their tax adjusted, so too the monks… has this happened to a certain middle earth guild? No… because the guild would have to be closed down, and a certain wizard wouldn't like that to happen.

Things get to a pretty sad state of affairs when that wizard decides to take the game into his own hands and code hacks against the coding of other domains… I think this says a lot about that wizard.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy genesis on the whole and like the work of most of the wizards. I just think that it is a shame that certain wizards are allowed carte blanche to indulge themselves in what is essentially cheating. I guess they just know the right people, and are happy to circulate their 100k quest files around, as Imrahil knows all about.

I wonder how many of you realized, back when the Army closed, how close the Rangers came to sharing their fate. And mainly for the same reasons: The "roleplay-shit" as Cereal puts it simply wasn't good enough, and so the guild was losing focus. There are several reasons why we still exist, and you don't. (Which I suspect is the main cause of the bitterness you direct against Imrahil's note). One of them is that yes, our theme is more consistent with the current development of Middle Earth than was that of the Army of Angmar. Another one is that we as a guild actually made an effort and got our act together, rp-wise. Like it or not, Genesis is mainly a roleplaying MUD, and increasingly so, something which I am very happy about.

That said, there were many great roleplayers in the Army, and when it closed it did leave a huge gap. I think the Army of Mordor will fill this gap though, and I expect it to be even better and to have learned from the problems of the old guilds. As for simply rewriting the guild without closing it such as the Kahedans are doing, I think that this could have been done with the Army of Angmar, and I suspect that it would have been done, had theme consistency been the only problem.

As for the attitude towards wizards, let us agree on one thing: The wizards create and develop Genesis, and we benefit from their work. If you have problems with specific actions of wizards, I usually find that most are ready to listen to reason. But noone, wizards included, enjoy people just yelling at them and calling them stupid. If you have personal problems with one or two wizards it may be easy enough to simply steer clear of them, but if you find a great part of them petty and pathetic and don't share their visions at all, it must be very frustrating to coexist with them. If your solution to this is simply to whine about how cruel and unfair and petty and pathetic the wizards are, I wonder if you wouldn't be better of finding a world where you can respect the authorities. Wizards are authorities they create the game, you play it. Although individual players can do a lot for the quality of Genesis, the average wizard is a good deal more important to the future of the game than the average player.

If you can't accept these facts, I honestly think that you are wasting your time playing Genesis. (Yes, yes, aren't we all, but to an even worse extent...)

And by the way, this is not "kissing wizard arse" either. Wizards are people some you like and some you don't. With a bit of courtesy and common sense, you can actually avoid starting fights with every person you don't like, in this world or any other. (This note is not a good example of that, by the way, but then I'd hate to see the discussions die out on this board).

Nitramin Caleniel

My sympathy for those who fit that description is null and sincerely hope that they will get sufficiently bored to leave for other realms.

You have to hand it to the boys in blue in charge of Middle Earth - I mean, it's so true to history having the rangers having little pacts with the nazgul. This really fits in well with the history of Middle Earth, doesn't it?

What you have to keep in mind is that it is just a game, and if some people are petty and pathetic (peer at the Middle Earth wizards), well, just ignore it, and try to enjoy the rest.

Personally, I think that there are some pretty good and consistent domains out there, so there is really no need to bother with the farce called Middle Earth.

Man, that was a major case of kissing wizard arse. What's up? Need brawl upgraded again?

Anyway, what's going down in Gondor these days? I haven't noticed anything new in ages. And while I am at it, when are they going to fix the smiths? They are hell bugged, but do they get closed? Noooo... 'cause they 'fit in' to the theme of things, are true to Tolkiens work yadda yadda yadda (cause they ain't AA).

That's my bitch for the week. Red Fang Forever!
Grumph.

Cereal, your note was directed towards wizards, but I want to comment on it nevertheless.

Do I feel that the downfall of the Army of Angmar has left a void? Yes I most certainly do, and the same goes for other guilds which for various reasons have disappeared.

But it seems to me as a much better approach to re-write a guild than to re-write history. Apparently the wizards judged that it was a better approach to create a new guild from scratch than to modify the Army. This is something we players need to accept and respect.

As I understand it the Army was from an era when the idea of how the domains of Middle Earth should present themselves themewise, was unclear and uncoordinated. On travels through ME you can easily see other traces of this.

Today it seems that the timeline and mood of the Middle Earth domains is directed to more strictly match the one in the War of the Ring trilogy or just before. It is not always an easy process since, as many of you would point out, Genesis is not a pure Tolkien world, but I still believe it is possible. I for one applaud this, despite the sadness I feel when guilds and places are lost.

I'll take the opportunity to also applaud the administration of Genesis for steadfastly keeping to a medieval theme in general and for being strict when it comes to things like global 'tells' etc

I do hope that we will soon get more refreshing news, especially for those with an evil inclination, but, with all respect for all sad and disappointed Army members, to open up old wounds seems both futile and pointless to me.

Imrahil of the House of Haladin

Greetings all travellers and visitiors.

My note will go directly to some wizards who perhaps read this board.

As I see it, and as we all heard, The Army of Angmar was shut down because of the history was a little wrong. My question is: Why do you _always_ have to look at the roleplay-shit? Why not just rewrite the history and put up the Army again?

But then ofcourse, there might be other factors which was in the wizards mind, which they dont want to reveal, I fully understand that.

But, The Army of Angmar was a well-coded guild, with little bugs as well good balanced. I see no reason why they should not begin existing again. I bet you have heard all this before, but please, we are not children who will have nightmares if you tell us the truth, and if there is no other truth then that the history was a little wrong, why dont you just edit the history a little? I dont think there will be many protests about that.

Dragonarmies, seems like a good guild, though not even near the Army of Angmar.

I hear the Army of Mordor is coming up, perhaps they will fill the hole a little, but never completely.

Cereal Guggug of the Bone Smasher, Standard Bearer of the Army of Angmar.