zalanthan obsidian is actually metal

It's retarded to make most anything out of obsidian except for small blades, and possibly larger bone/wooden weapons with small obsidian blades on them. The idea of obsidian coins is outrageously absurd, moreso than any questionable weapon or armor.

There are clocks in game. The one that I've seen personally was made from baobab, ivory and copper, owned by an NPC of high importance in Allanak.

I couldn't say for sure if it is still there, or has been removed along with so many other interesting things the game had to offer.

The obsidian in the game is, or was back when mithril still existed in Zalanthas, considered to have superior durability to Earth obsidian and comparable to high grade metal in it's ability to take sharpness, making it inferior for cutting purposes than it's Earth counterpart.

I still don't think it belongs in game, for a variety of reasons that I'm a little too tired to list.

disbelief. suspend.

problem fixed.

it's doing pretty damn good for a game model created by a preteen who handed it over to a constantly changing grip of staffers to manage early on. weak excuse to encourage ignoring the suspension of disbelief in a fantasy game that has tried in so many other ways in over two decades to balance realism and playability with the world.

twenty says you wouldn't be bitching a fraction as much as you have about their lack of 'realism' if you'd been treated differently as a player.

That... is both funny and plausible.

I always find the justifications of "Zalanthas obsidian is harder than earth obsidian" to be implausible and unnecessary. Earth obsidian is the result of rapidly cooled lava. If anything, Zalanthan lava would cool more slowly, making their obsidian less like obsidian and more like any other igneous rock - ie, worse than earth obsidian for the purposes of hardness and sharpness, if only slightly.

However, obsidian's high value for weapons on Zalanthas (or Athas) could be explained, simply, by viewing it relatively to other available materials. For one, Zalanthas wouldn't have good metals. The rarity of metallic ores would make Zalanthan metallurgists less experienced, and less likely to experiment (risk materials) than earth metallurgists. If you're trying to compare obsidian to steel there's a huge gap in hardness, but Zalanthas wouldn't necessarily have steel (an alloy); they would have softer metals like copper and iron. That narrows the gap a bit. Even on earth, because of the way it fractures into thin sheets, obsidian was a common material in primitive weapons, and has actually more recently been vetted for use in making surgical scalpel blades. It is sharp, that's not fantasy. When you consider that on Zalanthas the thickest armors are only chitin and shell, it doesn't become hard at all to believe that obsidian would be a devistatingly effective weapon material.

What you think belongs in the game does not equate to what does belong in the game.

Something that many players over the years often don't comprehend is that the game was never created with realism as it's core foundation. The game was created to be fun and entertaining, a place for players to congregate that was different from the other MUDs out there. What you have now, no matter how shiny the bells and whistles have become, is nothing compared to the proverbial wild west days of Armageddon.

Where before you had true brutality, in no small part because many players were left unchecked and free to stomp around and behave like the barbarians we all are deep down inside, you now have carefully refined and manicured pretension. A game staffed by people more interested in perpetuating their own egos and the illusion of power they (often, but not always) lack in their real lives. It takes role-play to an entirely new level, doesn't it?

You say it doesn't belong in game. Why do you think so?

The Zalanthas you have is the end game, the last desperate, dying days of a once vibrant, living planet, brought to a strangled end by the very nature of the beings it once nurtured. The Known World is a shattered sliver of that planet, where the game takes place, but is not the entirety of the world. The game world you experience has been has been retconned again and a gain with the changing of hands and endured two radical changes in administration.

The history of the Known World and the world at large is no longer even relevant to what the game is today, but there is an extensive amount of lore behind the game and all that happened before Armageddon opened it's doors. In that history, entire empires were created and annihilated and in it's golden age, people were much more advanced and resources, such as metals, and knowledge, such as metallurgy, were far more refined and common.

The city-states you have now were raised from the shattered, tribal remains of the last (and prior to some bastardizations, "evil") empire, with one them founded by a line of men who amount to being the greatest frauds in human history; using power from the last empire and passing it off as their own. The other was created on a sketchy basis from the onset and has been so muddled by retcons and changes (including a change to red hair, of all things) that it's no surprise it continues to spiral further and further away from the original spirit of the game.

With that sitting in your lap now, does it seem so improbable for those of fabulous wealth, peerless education and limitless reach to have acquired both the materials and knowledge to have such a thing constructed? Or to have one of the many virtual tombs and ruins of past civilizations delved, looted and their treasures restored?

What you have is a game that has become so progressively watered down, diluted and tamed that it no longer even resembles it's original dream. That you can't imagine a place for it isn't a fault of your own, or a flaw in the game, but rather a symptom of the games degradation over the years. A clock, should it or others even still exist, is not just possible but far more likely to exist based on the often ignored lore of the game.

You have vinyl lookalike halter tops, platform heels, hot pants and countless other imports from modern Earth, movies, video games. There is a sword in the game that is the text version of Frostmourne.  None of these things raise an eyebrow, be it here, the GDB or in the game proper.

A clock rescued or re-created by an NPC of great importance is completely within the bounds of lore, yet it's the hot red short shorts with ivory buttons and tassels gets an unblinking pass. That is the state of the game, today.


I don't mean to repeat myself, but the game was never created with real world realism -or- extreme realism in mind. It was created with the idea of designing a unique and fun experience for players, but that vision has changed from person to person and administration to administration. The inconsistencies you see in the game are a result of deviation in direction and different interpretations of the lore, followed by re-re-interpretations, for twenty plus years.

Take it as fact: Obsidian in Zalanthas is both more durable and more difficult to place an edge on than Earth obsidian. You don't need to like or agree with it, but that is how it is and is reflected (or was) in the code. The steel sword that was taken from dead Templar "Hrm" by the fallen Yasania her lover Talia (or something similar) the Mek on the tail of the overthrow of Allanaki forces in Tuluk, the source of so much drama both in the game and between players, did no more damage than an obsidian shortsword sold in Allanak for a handful of coins.

A bit of trivia: Wood is also considered to be much denser and durable than on Earth. With appropriate treatment (fire), a wooden sword should be close to as durable as a bone sword and both lighter and sharper, but to my knowledge this is not reflected by the code and one of the reasons many people north and south spurn wooden equipment in favor of alternatives that are by code, far superior.