Elves

Most of the new rooftop places in Allanak seem to be made specifically towards elves in the sense it doesn't make much sense for other races to be up there.

That said, elves are still pretty lame. Set up macros to speed-run from certain checkpoints in Allanak to other checkpoints, and you'll wring what little utility it provides out of it.

In Dark sun, There was no such things as City elves.

There was Elves. That's it, they all where like Desert Elves, except not retarded.

They ran city to city, stealin', dealin', and generally concealin' what ever they were really up too. They were perfect slavers, black market merchants, and smugglers.

Now we have ineffective gimmick race for the city.

And a bunch of d-elf clans who are so bored out of their mind they just find loose reasons to PK non elves who wandered into the wrong area.

there has been no city elf clan for how many years? patuk made one, but presumably nyr wouldn't generalize it and implement it on a regular basis because it wasn't controlling enough and didn't have enough restrictions and mandates.

that said, city elves can be helluvafun, you just have to play then as lonefoots in the rinth and forget the whole 'tribe' shit that they purportedly have.

I think the biggest issue with the guild is the sometimes extremely low life expectancy of 'rinth characters.

That and constantly having to go south side to remind yourself you're not playing a solo text game.

I like dcdc

The theft/swindling as a major part of "culture" that for some reason hasn't gotten them all killed off or driven out of cities where they don't even make a decent slave ruins believability as well as any desire for me to play one.

Other than the thieving part, I think the rest of the stuff about elves is alright play wise. Unless you're one of those people who likes playing in a clan, and doesn't like combat clans. Which is kind of ridiculous, as their agility (nimble fingers) and intelligence/wisdom (keen eye) seem like they'd pretty naturally lend toward really fine work with tiny, detail oriented craft stuff like embroidery or sculpture, and their physical weakness makes the fact that the only clans open to play as an elf combat clans which tend to travel a LOT... make no sense for me. Because I don't see why they would join them.

I mean... -maybe- someone would say 'Yes, I will let you beat me senseless daily for a year and pay you three hundred coins for the priveledge because.... stew'... but that seems a bit of a stretch. Maybe I just suck. Heh. Personally, I loved the IDEA of the Akai Sjir as a tribe of craftsman elves. But I hated that they were elevated so far above other elves, it rendered playing a highly discriminated against minority kind of pointless.

The real problem with elves is that their stats suck. Their wisdom was nerfed to be barely higher than humans, and ever since the big combat code tuning of 2008 (or whenever the hell it was), agility has been fairly inconsequential compared to strength. If you take two otherwise identical fighters but where one has 12 strength and 19 agility while the other has 19 strength and 12 agility, the latter is a substantially more dangerous fighter and tankier as he can wear any armor he wants and remain below the penalty threshold. Plus he'll have higher hit points from being a human. And can join any clan. And can ride. And doesn't have to sit through an endless cavalcade of contrived racism.

The clan situation and racial roleplay is tricky for elves as well, and the anti-travel stuff is stupid, but the real problem is that almost nobody is willing to play elven combat characters. I've tried it, I've had a pretty skilled and well-statted c-elf warrior. Even with E.G. strength, he could wear nothing sturdier than ordinary leather armor and had to pick light weapons and forgo a backup weapon. When human warriors are at that level of stats and skills, they're beasts. My elf was not.

The only good thing about him was that he could occasionally dodge attacks from other warriors who couldn't miss against normal people anymore, as I had exceptional agility and good defense, so his Byn mates always wanted to spar him. Also he would routinely reverse kicks, but that's pretty irrelevant as people aren't going to use kick in any live fight. But he couldn't beat similarly proficient humans outside of lucky streaks, and he wouldn't be of much use in PvE as anything with natural armor would take shitty damage from my attacks, nor would anyone be excited to bring him to any PvE content outside the city as I couldn't ride. Apparently staff also frowns on people playing c-elves with wanderlust.

Because of all this, it's nearly impossible for c-elf clans or crews to persist. They'll be full of merchants and assassins and burglars, and that's hard to sustain without real fighters, both because those are important to have and because that's what most people like to play if they aren't playing nobles or aides. Even if your clan's setup happens to not rely on warriors (and rangers, which c-elves can't be), you do need enough people to keep the clan sustainable, and that's hard to get when anyone with an interest in combat decides against playing that race for coded reasons. This prevents any real elven society from ever developing.