Shattered Kingdoms

I thought it would be a good idea to gather a collection of positive changes for game play that might encourage people to return to playing SK.

Happy hour has been around for a while but there are some older players who would have no idea of the 90 min of bonus XP to level with to cut leveling times.
Lump Bonanzas in with that which when there is a global RP event (including Yiggmass etc) there is bonus XP.
Repeatable XP quests to assist with leveling.
Also XP requirements are way lower than way back in the day gone are the days of saving quests until you are champion so you can level

Majorly reduced death penalties that affect your time when leveling. Rez sickness is still a thing but in happy hour most XP loss return to life is turned off. The cost of death quest and raise dead have been significantly changed from back in the day to be less impactful specially for low level characters. The ability to have your tribunal resurrect you for cash also exists.

There are some old old players who might not know about bonus resting/sleeping recovery in capital Inns.

No longer a fatigue with haste and giant strength.

They have been around for a while but the changes for enchanting items made it quicker and similar to finish with that.

Portals in Teron to make some locations easier which helps to get around "timed" entrance requirements.

A good and bad thing is the Anti hoarding code tries to make sure that items are not "stored" this is also an impact of a smaller player base fun items are more likely to actually be found if you go looking. The bad side of it is only so many fun items per character.

Loyalty tokens earnt on one character to be spent on another let you "break" the rules to some level making special race class combs instant mastery of skills can be spent for a rez can be used to re-specialize a merc. With Emails broken this is not great for a returning player as there is a reasonable chance they cant access their old loyalty tokens.

Easier to get into faiths if you can not find a follower no longer need head priest or Imm a high follower can as well as NPC RP to assist ask players for more information.

Forgot the new group code to "advertise your group and objective"

Also Forgot a big one that might encourage some people to return cabal raid system is (temp) suspended.

Shops no longer "close" they just charge extra afterhours.

These are the ones I have come up with having come back after about 10 years of not playing. I am sure there are others that people think is "normal" but is a lot different from back in the day.

Eye washer

Discovery experience

Ally status message in combat round

All of that stuff has made SK better and I don't think that the problem is that SK had issues and no one wants to play. I think the trouble might be for starters SK is a big time drain. It's fun but to do a lot of stuff you have to commit to irl hours sometimes like IC trips etc. Adults often can't put that kind of time in. Another thing is the competition is really stiff. There are great games on your cell phone like call of duty mobile and lots of console/pc games to play. Old text based SK has a lot of competition. It started declining with the release of world of warcraft and pretty much has kept on sliding but all the muds on the top 100 list you can see when you click the vote button have fallen off big time.

Thank you for posting this list. I was active here like 20 years ago and still come back randomly over the years to play once in a great while. I think this was a great idea.

Are you trying to say the original post is wrong? I don't understand how your post fits this thread.

I'm saying that all the changes you got helped. Taking out haste and gs fatigue and all that it all helps but it doesn't change the time requirements to play and keep eq and leadership and the competition sk has that it didnt have before like mobile phone apps. There were no smart phones when SK started and OMFG aren't you Thrakk Rezorak from like 2001???????!!!!!!

Counter point some of the people who played back in the day are might be management so I can play games at work/empty nesters/retirement ages its always good to keep people up to date on things that are good changes. Not everyone was a 20 year old in 2000s. Honestly if you put Old SK from 2000s vs 2025 SK they are similar but very different. Time requirements has always been a negative but you dont have to be a cabal leader on any given character. The hours to keep your gear are not crazy if you play a single character not to mention you could gear up a character with "reasonable" gear that requires zero hours of play time.
Ill give you points that there was not smart phones when SK started ... but you can play SK on a smart phone/tablets (with limited capabilities). To say your competing with phone games and apps for new players yes for returning players Not so much they probably have an idea of what they are signing up for. With a plead to superiority I like to think that people who play SK are above those cheap phone games and are a more mature cliental. (Yes it was hard to keep a straight face writing those words but if it convinces one more person to log in a month I can take the blemish on my honor it took to write it)

Yup, that's me. The good ol' "civilized barbarian", before I realized that it wasn't the most ideal rp choice lol.

Also played Ardamith, Krylark, Hevron, way back and a bunch of other random dudes I can't remember their names of at this point.

Outer planes adventures are happening with regular frequency thanks to Adventurer's Guild in Teron

So many quests driving people to good leveling areas. Better quest system.