Against my better judgement, as well as that little voice in my head, I've decided to try something new to sort of stimulate role playing, battling, training and other activity in Solaris RPG. Starting right now power gains have been increased, and not in the typical sense. Instead of requiring 500 word increments in RP for PL Sessions and Training Sessions it is now 250 words. This isn't really a direct increase, but it does make leveling significantly easier. (I apologize to Jeff for asking his opinion on the matter and then turning around and doing the opposite. However, this is sort of a "trial period" for this idea and I see no harm in giving it a shot for a little while.) As for Battle Sessions, they now receive an "RP for PL Bonus" as well as their normal gains for a Kill, a Win, or a Loss... however, they gain half as much as a normal RP for PL Session would so as not to skyrocket PL gains for a simple Battle Session. As mentioned before, this is a trial period for this idea. I'm really tired of seeing people stuck at such low levels for such a long time, and it's never going to change unless I do something to improve the situation. What's wrong with it taking so long for people to gain levels you ask? Well, nothing for the most part, but it makes for an incredibly boring game when most of the player characters are below level 30 (16 out of 22, which is like 72% of our characters). Out of the six characters over level 30, five of them are well over five years old. Zabolus being the only exception. (Nicely done man.) Anyways, I don't want to make any of our veterans feel cheated, but I would like to stimulate the site and maybe get a little more RP going. That's all, and if you have any comments or opinions on the matter, discuss it here.

As you have already noticed, the site is back to normal again. I have no reasons for the change back to "Solaris RPG" other than sentimental value to myself. I've been kicking myself for ever trying anything different for months now, and here we are now. I've made many minor updates to various pages on the site, and I won't even try to list them all. The changes range from minor sentence changes to entire paragraphs of information and even some full page revisions a couple places in the rules. Also, I'd like to apologize for the slowness of the forums. I can't do anything about it unless I switch hosting services. It's the host and they say they're working on it, but... we'll see. That's all.

I've made a few updates the map areas and the chatrooms. I've added "Neo Vegonia" and "The Crimson Claw" so check them out when you have time. I have a few ideas for the Level Guide as well, so there should be some updates coming to it as well within the next few days. As most of you have probably already noticed I have broken up the "Entertainment Forum" into subsections. I think it makes things a little more interesting and keeps things a bit more organized.

So I was surfing through Steam's game store tonight when I stumbled across this game I've seen before but never thought of purchasing, TwoWorlds. The price had dropped from $40 to $10 practically overnight (with good reason). Through some sheer act of stupidy I got out the old debit card and bought it. After I downloaded it through Steam (which took about 45 minutes) I clicked the desktop icon to discover not a game, but an error. I tinkered for two hours trying to get it to work, and finally managed to get the game to run by turning on some obscure Windows Vista service I had disabled a few months ago. Why this game needed that particular service, I don't know.

So now I figured out how to get it running and finally started it up. Hmm, looked promising. Then I clicked the button to start a single player game, nope, wouldn't work. Turns out you have to ACTIVATE this POS even after buying it on Steam. I'm sure a few minutes of forum review would have warned me of that, but I neglected to do so. So I registered the stupid game and worked up a character with its customization system.

Character modeling appeared impressive, but when I finally finished up and loaded the single player campaign a blurry and horribly compressed introduction video started playing. Oh boy. I cancelled the video out after about three minutes of terrible voice acting and the game finally loaded up.

The controls were assbackwards from just about every other game I had ever played. The gameplay was shoddy at best. I dropped two goblin-looking fellows in what appeared to be a starter dungeon and for the life of me, I couldn't open the gate to leave. I tried to figure it out for about 15 minutes, gave up, quit the game and deleted the games Steam cache. Maybe I'd try it again some other time I told myself... or not.

By the way, PC Gamer rated this garbage an 81/100. Wow. I'd give it a 31/100. This game is just made of suck. I hate to say it, but TwoWorlds is the poor man's Oblivion. Had a bad experience with this game as well, discuss it here.

I hated to do it! Alright? I didn't want to, and I know some of you will be frusterated or perhaps even angry. I've went through pretty much all of the character abilities and flagged all of which I would like to have changed or removed. The reason I do this because I've decided abilities that increase a characters stats, steal stats or PL, or alter stats and PL during a battle are ruining the "battle-side" of the game. I want to get rid of all of it and stick to much more easier abilities that are either purely OFFENSIVE or DEFENSIVE. I've actually even removed one of my own characters abilities, and I hope I didn't miss any others on mine or anyone elses characters that seem to alter stats or steal PL/stats from other characters. I hope everyone can understand that I'm only doing this to improve the quality of gameplay for everyone. I'm trying to make everything I can less complicated and less difficult, especially battling.

So now I would like everyone to check their character profile and make sure they don't have any flagged abilities. If you do have a flagged ability, and you feel angry about it, let me know. I'll try to resolve the issue with you as best as I can. Flagged abiliites can be modified or removed, and anyone who removes them may add a new ability at any time to replace it. So, once again, I apologize for this everyone. I don't mean to anger any of you, but certain things are just too complicated for everyone else to deal with. I don't know how many times I've heard "I don't like fighting because it's just too hard to deal with because of everyone's crazy abilities!" I've had complaints on each of the flagged abilities at one time or another, usually multiple times, and in a final attempt to just fix the situation I've gone through EVERYONE's abilities and marked all of them that I personally feel should be modified. Remember, I want to get rid of all stat altering abilities, stat stealing abilities, PL steal abilities, etc, etc... I think you get the picture.

On a final note, anyone who doesn't contact me within the next month with a revision will have the ability dropped and a new ability slot reopened. Why did these abilities ever get accepted? Because things were once very different, and now they have changed. On another note, I've significantly changed any PL stealing racial abilities such as Feed and Vampyrism.

Next weekend, January 26th and 27th, will be the first "Double PL Weekend." This means that anyone who turns in an RP for PL, training, or fighting session will gain DOUBLE the normal power increase. This will begin at 12:01AM Saturday morning and end at 12:00PM on Sunday night. That's all...

I have significantly changed the way Travelers stats are handled. Please read the revisions to their class and if you're over level five, and are still listed as a Traveler, please pick a new job class. Remember guys, you can have custom titles if you enjoy being considered a lone traveler type. Travelers were not created for veteran warriors, and I just want to make sure people know they should pick a full job class. By the way, civilian travelers do gain a perk! They now get both a PL gain as well a credits for completing "Civilian" quests. To those of you who are high level (Nova and Kia) and are still listed as a Traveler, please let me know what you would like to change your job class to as soon as possible.

Well guys, it's taken me five years but I've finally decided to change the layout and theme of the entire website. I was a little uneasy about it at first, but now that it's mostly finished I've decided I really like it. Not only does this new layout look nice, but it makes a lot of things much easier for me to work on.

I would also like to mention the "Changelog" which is located on the far right side of the navigation bar above. I've added this "Site News" section, which is for more important news, but the changelog is for nightly updates I do to the site. Nightly updates are usually far less important, but still important enough to be noted. So, big news here, little updates there. I just wanted to make everyone clear on that.

I hope everyone had a nice New Years, and a Merry Christmas. Also, I will be finishing up the changeover on the remaining rule sections over the next few days and it shouldn't take long. I've done all of the job classes and races tonight, and I might do more later this morning. Check the changelog for details.