First of all, the whole concept of 'good' and 'evil' guilds feels artificial to me. Even in game worlds, guilds are complex systems for which such a wholesale description is too simple. As you noted yourself, even if a guild has goals and procedures which can be considered 'good' or 'evil' in the context of the game world, a lot depends on the actual behaviour of the members. It doesn't help that often there isn't enough imagination for interesting good/evil guilds instead of the old 'Bards good, Necromancers evil' cliches.

I think that evil guilds are very hard to play, for several reasons.

- In your average mud is no place for an evil guild. An alignment system is difficult to implement properly, and far too many muds use a wishy-washy system where the players have to do good to other players (no playerkilling), and can't avoid doing bad to everything else. If furthermore an evil alignment is more a hindrance than a bonus, hardly anybody will play evil.

- People can't play evil characters. It is not enough to curse, behave obnoxiously and kill everybody. Such behaviour is not evil play, it's just annoying. You have to think about the character you play and its mindset, and how it affect the characters actions - you have to roleplay it, and you have to want to do it.

- People don't distinguish enough between character and player. If you play evil, you are automatically playing against all the good characters in the mud, even though you are playing together with their players. People make the mistake to confuse these two levels of interaction.

In short: evil guilds need serious roleplaying on behalf of the player, something your average hack&slash mud simply is not designed for.

I'd say this is a more appropriate forum then the usenet groups.

I think there is one fact that has been overlooked so far: What a guild mostly needs is not the support by administration, or good roleplaying players, this will come - if there is a dedicated wizard, writing good code, who gets good support from his domain leaders. This is not something that is easy to find, and you will find one of those lacking in each failed evil guild.

Angmars army was probably doomed allready when rhovanion failed Khiraa failed because Sarr, who's code I really admire, tried to much at once. Probably should have finished the other guilds and kalad first before starting with raumdor and khiraa, but mainly it seemed he was alone in the domain. Old vampires failed because of a terrible bug being abused by players.

The question is: Why is that problem more severe on the side of evil ? It happens to good-alinged guilds as well, ( wizards ), but not that much.

I think it's mostly a question of who becomes wizard. As somebody wrote here before, the default way to start is being good, it even was for me. After a while, people get bored by this, and then have the choice: Become evil - or become wizard !

Thats why we probably have more wizards coding for good, because that's what they know, and wizards creating and maintaining guilds they would have liked to be in themself. There certainly are very old good-aligned players, or used-to-be-evil wizards, but those are exceptions.

We are seing some used-to-be-good wizards coding evil guilds now, maybe these will be more successfull allthough I am not that convinced that dragonarmy and priests of takhisis will have a chance they will by default be at war against much to powerfull enemies, and I wonder how much support they will have in a domain that's setting up deathtraps for evil players trying to have some fun.

Monika T'Sarn of the Red Hand, Ferocious Captain of the Red Fang, the Renowned Gladiator of Athas, champion, female goblin

I don't know any more than the next guy, but I get the feeling that they're demolishing parts of Genesis in order to build new stuff upon the ashes of the old. And I guess they don't want things to become stagnant and stale. Because it isn't just evil guilds that's being shut down, is it?

A Genesis without Good and Evil wouldn't last long, would it? And a Genesis without change, without any alterations wouldn't survive either. I, for one, have high hopes for the possibility of a new Army of Mordor, though I'm on the Good side myself. Just for the fun of it.

I have a hard time believing they would tear down peoples homes, level old hunting grounds, and then just leave it be. But then again, I could be fooling myself. There's been much talk and little to show for. You've been in the game longer than I, what were it like in the really old days?

Remember the Clans, remember the Clearance!
Anderson

1. They're rushed - Probably hacked code from old guilds (like Vamp code became Angmar)
2. Lack of depth and theme - Khiraa had a good idea for theme really badly done. Angmar was a throw-together that never fit.
3. Bad-ass vs Truly Evil - Evil guilds haven't really been evil, just chaotic. The only guild that encourages evil RP is the Morgul Mages.

I hope that future guilds can offer players the chance at a quality evil culture that will be rich and fullfilling, and with a quality that leaves the admin nothing to complain about.

In order to be able to have selective recruitment policies you need to have enough evil guilds so that people can fit into the appropriate guild. If you only have one option of a guild to join, it is very difficult for the guild master and council members to keep everybody out.

The Mouth of Sauron

Perhaps you will find my confidence in the administration a little naive, but I should really think that most wizards are capable of understanding the importance of evil characters.

Roleplay is supposed to be increasingly encouraged in Genesis these days, which is great in my opinion since that is what I go there to do. As this is my first experience with roleplaying, I have chosen the easier option and created a good character. If I ever make a second character, it will be an evil one. Among the people whose roleplaying skills I admire the most are those who have managed to create a convincingly evil character.

I call playing a good character the easier option for several reasons. First, everyone wants to be a hero. I think we all spend more of our day-dreaming time imagining ourselves in heroic situations than in villainous ones, so the role is simply more familiar. It always takes a better actor to play the role of the villain convincingly. Secondly, most people find it hard to stay in character constantly, and since most of us are probably quite nice people in RL this must be harder for an evil character. Thirdly, not everyone in the Realms are very good roleplayers, and those who are not tend not to understand evil players, like the audiences in medieval times who used to throw rotten vegetables at the crook in the theatres.

This is getting as long-winded as... (no names mentioned), but the reason I bring up the difficulties of being evil is that I believe this to be very much connected to the problems encountered by evil guilds. It is popular in any world to blame the administration, but I think this problem may to some extent be caused by us mortals. Since there is a general shortage of people capable of or willing to create evil characters, evil guilds in the past have contained a lot of other types of players. To use everyones favorite flame term at the moment, I think there have been lots of power players people who use Genesis as a sort of combined chat forum and a pure who-can-collect-the-most-xp game. While many people may see nothing wrong with this attitude, I definitely believe the administration does. Another group attracted to evil guilds have been the compulsive p-fighters. P-fighting is an essential part of Genesis, and in many cases a natural part of roleplaying, but people who simply run around in big mobs, killing anything that talks generate a lack of sympathy from the wizards, I think.

It is worth considering that the one evil guild that has (to my knowledge) never been closed, is also the one with the best roleplayers, the Society of Morgul Mages. There were certainly many good roleplayers among the Angmarrim, but I also remember many cases where soldiers from your army simply failed to comprehend why I wouldn't team with them just because I was a Ranger.

I have very great expectations to the new evil guilds. I hope there will be enough players out there wanting to make use of the opportunity, and enough wizards willing to invest their time and imagination. The evil players will probably always be a minority in Genesis, but the greater is their importance, and the wizards should perhaps bias their attention a little towards the dark side in the future. For the future guildmasters and councilmembers of the evil guilds: Perhaps you should consider being more restrictive in your recruiting policy. This was the consequence the Rangers took lately, when a decreasing quality of roleplaying threatened our existence, and it seems to have alleviated some of our problems.

While Nitramin of course hate you all worse than the plague, and would love to see all evil creatures gone from the face of Arda, I would like to give my thanks and my encouragement to the people behind her enemies. You make the Realms a lot more interesting!

The best wishes from
Nitramin's player.

As most of you would know, just about every evil guild that has ever been created in Genesis has been shut down, some times almost immediately, and some times after a couple of years. Why is this?

Is there a role for evil players in Genesis? Do the administration want evil players? Do the wizards? To me, it seems like there is little point in being an evil character in Genesis, as your guild will inevitably be shut down.

Would anyone else like to comment on this?

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I look forward to seeing you there.

Bonk, brother of the way.