The official end of the beta will take place at 1500 Eastern Time on Saturday, December 9th, with the celebration of King Daeron’s return to King’s Landing in the company of Prince Viserys and the Dragonknight, will be featured at the River Gate. It will be a bit of a reprise of the arrival of the Dornish hostages, except with a lot more pomp and a deliriously happy crowd. A feast will follow, although it will be the first of many. We know the notice is short notice, but it turns out to be the best time given the holiday season.
Within a few days, the king will be holding the first court session since his return—we plan to make these regular events at this point, aiming for one RPed court a month. Once the king and all his various company are settled and rested, there will of course be a rather magnificent tourney. I think the format will be of interest, but that’s a closely guarded secret until we nail down a firm date. Given the holiday season, we will probably have to push the tournament until after New Year.
For those who have or will request personal meetings with Daeron, you’ll start receiving possible dates for this shortly.
At the end of November (exact date to be determined), Blood of Dragons will move from being in beta to being fully open. This will coincide with the IC return of King Daeron to King’s Landing. Since the Submission of Sunspear over a year ago, the Young Dragon has had to fight both long and hard to subdue all remaining rebels, but now it appears the situation is finally in hand.
Would you like to be one of those already gathered in King’s Landing, waiting for the kings return? Or would you prefer to be a returning hero of the Conquest who has accompanied Daeron on his journey back? If so, you may not want to wait too much longer before finding a character to apply for.
The consent policy file has been overhauled. Please make sure to re-read it. The basics are the same, but we’ve restructured the file and emphasized a couple of points.
The player profiles page is now more or less up and running. There may still be some tweaks to the information included and how it is presented (if you have any suggestions, let us know), but feel free to make use of the submission form if you want to be included. Just make sure to read the information about what is and isn’t required information first.
We’ve added three new channels: Politics, Sports and XXX (for those really dirty-minded, late-night talks that might shock new players off the game ;). That doesn’t mean these topics are entirely banned from Public, but lengthier discussions should be taken these specialized channels in order to keep Public from getting too spammy.
We’ve implemented several modular parts of Talvo’s MUSHCode Suite, which provide players some new functionality. We are currently in the process of finalizing help documentation for these and making them available to players.
The new code systems include +Wardrobe, which is a description storage system that makes use of the MySQL database; +Lwatch, a system where players may recieve notifications when selected players connect and disconnect; and +Top, a basic system for tracking the total time players spend on the game.
The information on the Applications page has been updated to reflect some changes in the application process. From now on, the first step once you have selected a character should be to use the +cdb/request command (see +help cdb request) to request this character. This way, we will be able to ensure that no one starts working on an application for a character that is not suitable as a PC during the beta.
At this stage of the beta, we feel we have enough experienced players around to remove the requirement for 1 year of MU*ing experience. The beta application has been updated to reflect this change. Players with less than 1 year of MU*ing experience will be able to apply for Open characters only and initially we will be accepting a maximum of ten applications from new players.
New players should also be advised that our helpfiles are not fully finished and we do not yet have much staff on board. As such, they will be expected to be able to learn the basics of the game more or less on their own. We will help out when we have time, of course, but we have a lot of things to work on both on and off the game.
A useful page for learning the basics of MU*ing is A Beginner’s Guide to MUSH.
After some problems with the latest patchlevel, which brought down the game for awhile, and then the mail system for another while, everything now seems to be correct and proper. Blood of Dragons is now running PennMUSH 1.8.3p0
The beta testing of Blood of Dragons MUSH has now been in progress since early in November of last year. At this stage, many of the core systems (such as the CharGen) have reached fairly bug-free versions, and the work is now focused on adding additional code as well as more website resources. We are currently working on the Rumor system, which we hope will be a core asset to both political and social interactions, and in relation to this we are also working on the Influence and Renown systems.
The fact that these systems are not in place yet has not stopped our existing players from having a lot of fun, however. We currently have just over 40 approved players, many of whom are quite active, and this means we have room for another 20 or so to reach the cap of 60 which we originally set for the beta. If you are a fan of the series and have prior MU*ing experience (ideally a minimum of a year, but if you have somewhat less we can work with that too), why not send in an application?
The official start of beta roleplay will take place on November 11th at 2100 CET (1500 EST). This will entail the victorious arrival at King’s Landing of a fleet of ships under the command of Lord Jonothor Arryn. While King Daeron, Oakenfist, Lord Tyrell, and others remain in Dorne attempting to pacify the country following the Submission of Sunspear, this small portion of the fleet returns with the Dornish royal hostages, the princes Aegon and Aemon Targaryen, and many other notables from the campaign as well as wounded knights and soldiers.
If you have yet to obtain a character, there’s still a chance that you may be able to do so in time to attend this roleplay. If not, plenty of other exciting roleplay is sure to follow, and we will keep accepting and processing applications throughout the beta period. To see some examples of the roleplay that has come out of the unofficial start a few days ago, have a look at the logs page.
To get a character, start by selecting a few likely prospects from the family trees. Then log on to the game and check out the availability of these characters by typing +cdb <name>. If a character is listed as Open and as an NPC, it can be applied for. If it is listed as Restricted or Limited instead of Open, it may not be available, so please contact one of the Admin before filling out an application. It is, in fact, generally a good idea to speak to the Admin about character choices before sending in an application.
A draft of the timeline of the conquest, as envisioned by us for the MUSH, that Elio has been hard at work on for a while has now been added to the Chronicle. When you read ths, please remember the following:
Almost all of this is made up by ourselves. The basic premise of a three-pronged invasion does come from a chapter of ADwD that GRRM has read previously. So, too, does the fact that the Dornishmen focus on Lord Tyrell’s advance in the Prince’s Pass while Oakenfist quickly takes control the Greenblood. Similarly, Daeron’s use of a goat track to slip the Dornishmen in the Boneway is also from that chapter.
This is a preliminary draft. It is entirely possible that there are errors, inconsistencies, omissions, implausibilities, etc. If you notice any such that are really solid rather than just a matter of opinion, please feel free to e-mail or +mail us with pointers.
This should hopefully be the last pre-beta post of information, as we’re expecting to be able to test out the CharGen very soon. In preparation for this, we have created characters for all those who have applied for the beta and have allowed them to go through the brief, initial setup. This means that if any more people were to apply for the beta now (yes, we’re still taking apps!), they could get a character to login to as soon as have processed their applications. Processing apps will be taking a backseat to working on the code at the moment, but its still pretty likely that we can manage to look over an app in a couple of days.
If anyone is interested, download the application and send it on to us.
Today’s the official end of the application period. If you have sent in an application, but have not heard back from us at all, then your application has not reached us and you should log on to the MUSH as soon as possible to get in touch with us.
For those of you who have applied for a tier III or tier II character, we will get the final decision on your applications sent out within a day or two. Following that (no exact date set for this yet) everyone approved will receive login information.
If you haven’t yet applied but would like to do so, you still have until the end of today. Additionally, since we haven’t actually filled up all the beta slots yet, it will be possible to submit applications even after the deadline. However, such applications will have a lower priority as we have to concentrate on getting those already approved setup on the game. It will also be virtually impossible to get approved for a tier III or tier II character, as the quota of such will have been more than filled by those selected from the applications submitted before the deadline.
After processing the applications we have received from the players who had been guaranteed a beta slot and those that we so far have received from players who had been placed on the backup list, we have determined that there will be enough room in the beta for us to open up applications more widely.
If you are interested in submitting an application for the beta period (requirements for being accepted are listed within the application file), please contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we will send you further instructions.
The deadline for submitting an application is September 20th, and applications will be dealt with on a first come, first serve basis. The limit is 60 characters, ideally 30 male and 30 female, though we will allow a deviation of +/- 10 either way.
Those characters already spoken for are listed here: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?showtopic=11975