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[Frelorn]

Hi there everyone. I hope we all had a good weekend. We got to see some interesting developments in the battle between Varicci and Elysa over the past week. Things appear to be getting interesting in Dereth. I wonder what might happen next.

As promised, this week I am going to go over all of the allegiance improvements in detail with you this week. There is alot to cover, so let’s get right into it.

Allegiance Names
The first aspect of the improvements we will cover today is the ability to give your allegiance its own unique name. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may set the name of the allegiance once every 24 hours using the command @allegiance name set <name>. The name of the allegiance may be changed once every 24 hours, by a person with the appropriate permissions, which we will cover more in the allegiance officers section of this report. Allegiance names may be 40 characters long and may consist only of characters that can be used in character names: that is, alphabetic characters, spaces, and normal punctuation only (‘ and -).

Allegiance Officers
For some time now players have been asking us for more structure and control over what goes on in allegiances. These requests include giving allegiance officers more abilities and a better system then what had been in place. Well, ask and you shall receive! Below I will list the officer ranks and the powers that go along with them.

Level 1: Speaker
Allegiance chat kick.
Allegiance chat gag.
Allegiance broadcast.
Set/clear the MOTD.

Level 2: Seneschal
Promote/demote members under own rank
(i.e. can promote/demote speakers).
Allegiance boot.
Allegiance ban.
Access allegiance info.
Lock/unlock the allegiance.

Level 3: Castellan
Promote/demote members to any rank, including other Castellans.
Change officer titles.
Set/clear the allegiance name.
Set allegiance bind stone.
Change mansion allegiance access/storage permissions.
Bypass allegiance lock with own vassals.
Bypass allegiance lock by approving particular vassals.

The monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can appoint officers or remove officers as described in the table above. In other words:

• The monarch can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
• Castellan (level 3) officers can appoint or remove any officer of any level.
• Seneschal (level 2) officers can appoint or remove Speakers.
• Speaker (level 1) officers cannot appoint or remove anyone at this time.

Any member of the allegiance may become an officer. An allegiance may have a maximum of 12 officers at once (not counting the monarch, who is not considered an officer), but those 12 officers may have any level of permission. For instance, there may be 12 speakers, or 6 speakers and 6 seneschals, or what have you.

In addition, at any time a member of the allegiance can find out who the officers of that allegiance are by typing in the command @allegiance officer or @allegiance officer list.
Either command will display a list of allegiance member names in no particular order followed by their officer title.

Custom Officer Titles
In order to help customize allegiances, the monarch and officers with appropriate permissions can rename the officer levels in whatever fashion they desire – so long as those names meet the following two criteria:
• The new title must be no longer than 20 characters.
• The new title must consist alphabetic characters and normal punctuation (namely ‘ and -) only.
• The new title must not be profane, as determined by the chat language filter.

Note that officer titles may contain spaces and capital letters. If an allegiance has not set a custom name for an officer level, the default title is used.

Allegiance Chat Gag
As you may have noticed, there are some abilities listed above that were not available before. One of these is the allegiance chat gag. The monarch or any officer of Speaker level or above may temporarily prevent any allegiance member from participating in allegiance chat by entering a command. By default, this gag will last 5 minutes and then wear off. An officer or the monarch may explicitly end this gag early, if they so choose. Note that officers may gag each other or even the monarch, but that a gagged officer can always just turn around and ungag himself immediately.

Allegiance Lock
Another ability that was once not available is the ability to lock an allegiance. The monarch of the allegiance or an officer with the appropriate permissions may lock or unlock the allegiance. In addition, any member of the allegiance can see the current state by entering in a command. Allegiances are unlocked by default, to match existing behavior. When the allegiance is unlocked, new players may swear into the allegiance in the normal fashion. When the allegiance is locked, however, only the monarch and officers with the appropriate permissions may accept offers of allegiance. If a player swears allegiance to a monarch or Castellan-level officer in a locked allegiance, the action proceeds as normal. But if a player attempts to swear allegiance to a lower-level officer or non-officer in a locked allegiance, then the swear attempt will fail.

There you have it. The allegiance improvements going in for the May event In the May Letter to the Players we will give a more expanded listing of the commands that go along with these changes.

Everyone have a great week and see you in Dereth!

[BowBearer]

Thanks for the info!

[wolfzbane]

W00t!

Sounds awesome, thanks frelorn!

[Capt Justice]

A long time in coming, but better late than never.


One question though.

With the possibility of so many officers looking up allegiance info at the same time will that effect the game at all ? I know it had a longer timer on it due to this possible problem in the past, and I would hate to think that the timer might be extended again in anticipation of any unforseen problems.

[Gyes]

Outstanding! Thanks, Frelorn - looking forward to these changes.

[robthehand]

once a monarchy names itself will any other monarchy be able to use the same name?

If two monarchys had simalar names it could cause mass confusion on darktide.

Also what does turbine plan to do about monarchy name stealing.
Example is whoever logs on first on patch day makes 5 or 6 seperate monarchies consisting of a few chars each and takes monarchy's exsisting names. For a example Blood or The Last stand. Then he turns around and tries to profit from name stealing.

Turbine should defintaly NOT encourage this kind of behaviour...

[Hamfast]

Frelorn,

This looks great, can we expect it to be included in the next patch?

<edit>

Also, what rank will the current clan elders (officers) have after the patch?

</edit>

[Frelorn]

Originally Posted by Capt Justice

A long time in coming, but better late than never.


One question though.

With the possibility of so many officers looking up allegiance info at the same time will that effect the game at all ? I know it had a longer timer on it due to this possible problem in the past, and I would hate to think that the timer might be extended again in anticipation of any unforseen problems.

There should not be any negative effects on the game. Meaning there should be no perfomance issues related to this.

[Frelorn]

Originally Posted by robthehand

once a monarchy names itself will any other monarchy be able to use the same name?

If two monarchys had simalar names it could cause mass confusion on darktide.

Also what does turbine plan to do about monarchy name stealing.
Example is whoever logs on first on patch day makes 5 or 6 seperate monarchies consisting of a few chars each and takes monarchy's exsisting names. For a example Blood or The Last stand. Then he turns around and tries to profit from name stealing.

Turbine should defintaly NOT encourage this kind of behaviour...

Once a name is taken, then another allegiance will not be allowed to use that name.

And we obvously do not condone what you are suggesting some players might do and we will deal with instances of that happening when the time comes.

[Frelorn]

Originally Posted by Hamfast

Frelorn,

This looks great, can we expect it to be included in the next patch?

<edit>

Also, what rank will the current clan elders (officers) have after the patch?

</edit>

Yes, this is going in for the May event.

Previously, the monarch could assign two allegiance members as his officers. When the May event goes live, those two officers will remain officers; they will automatically become Seneschals (level 2 officers). This is very close to the functionality that officers were able to access before.

[Dragontide]

When an allegiance name has been chosen, where will it be displayed?
If someone IDs one of its members will they still see the name of the Monarch and the new monarchy name?
Like if someone IDs me. they see my monarch's name (say its Dragon Master)
and we name our clan "Cult of Dragons"
Will all of this information be available to the person that IDs me?

[WTFPwned]

Originally Posted by Frelorn

Once a name is taken, then another alleginace will not be allowed to use that name.

And we obvously do not condone twhat you are suggesting some players might do and we will deal with instances of that happening when the time comes.

Wait...

So you're saying we don't have the choice to use an existing name, even though this was never enforceable or even possible ingame before?

I mean, I understand that mabye you shouldn't take someone's character name, but alliegance naming has never been part of the game up until now, unless you were enough of a twit to PL a noobie with the "allegiance name" you wanted.

[Gustaive]

I read it as Once a name has been used as an allegiance name, it can't be used.

...

It could get interesting on Dark Tide.

[wolfzbane]

Originally Posted by Gustaive

I read it as Once a name has been used as an allegiance name, it can't be used.

...

It could get interesting on Dark Tide.

Darktide is like the 9th wonder of the world.

You take all the bad things that happen in AC and put them into a blender with plastic explosives and then throw your creation in a room with a frenchmen and you have Darktide

[robthehand]

thanks for the quick replay Freloren, hate to bring up negatives but it wasnt addressed in your first post.

also I think all of these changes will be great I really look forward to some innovative monarchy names next patch. Much needed content kudos.