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The "Alternate World" theory is almost a standard in Science Fiction literature for decades, of course. The current mode of Steampunk, originally fathered in the Seventies by Michael Moorcock (The Bastable Chronicles), Brian W. Aldiss (Frankenstein Unbound) and Harry Harrison (A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!), named in the Eighties by K.W. Jeter (Morlock Nights), Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates) and James P. Blaylock (Homunculus) and receiving its cornerstone with William Gibson's & Bruce Sterling's 1991 ultimate alternative history novel, The Difference Engine, would have been impossible without it.

I just guess that's the basic future idea for Ryzom, too. It would explain so much (not only different memories, but why have our long-time politicians, for example, never met before?). It, and that's the important thing, would save our characters.

The latter would not be that important to me if I had joined the game shortly before the Second Swarming, but after over eight years here, beginning between the Marauder Invasion and the Temple Wars, my character (I dislike the term "toon", which makes it too abstract and unpersonal for me) was shaped by what happened IG on Leanon during all those years, and I am certain the same feeling have the players on Arispotle and Aniro who are on Atys for ages, at least if they were involved in RP at all. To wipe out the past of the three servers (or of two, or of one) would destroy more than could be gained by a new history for all three together, I think. From the very personal view: I'm not grinding, I'm neither a digger, nor a crafter - not even a fighter, in fact - I'm just a roleplayer, and loosing my history would really be the end of Salazar. You can't start anew, from scratch, after so many years. I couldn't.

P.S.: Don't know that Sterga Hamla. What is his function on Silan? As said before, there was no Silan when I started to play ...

I doesn't contribute to the discussion here, but in fact on Leanon Dexton had the most heroic death imaginable - like Colonel Travis in 1960's THE ALAMO he held Ceratos Gate fighting the invading Kitins before being run over and thus won a lot of respect from Salazar that way. He knew how to make an exit. ;)

Muang Hoi-Gi, the evil Zorai who initiated the assassination of Still Wyler and most likely had more exposure to Goo than any other living homin, is quite a bit older than Mabreka. He studied in Zoran under Nung and then was taken under the wings of Hoï-Cho, but broke with him when the Zorai during the First Swarming left the Old Lands, for Muang decided to stay and fight the Kitins. He's still able to give you a run for your money, this Muang.

Well, since you are with Ryzom for that long you might remember that there was an interview once with Vince about what had been planned for the aging of characters back in 2004:

A few snippets:
Later on this whole idea was dropped though, and after release the FAQs on the homepage stated:
F: Altern die Charaktere?
A: Nein, die Homin sind sehr langlebig und verweilen immer im selben Alter.

(roughly translated:
Q: do characters grow older?
A: No, homins are very long-lived and stay at the same age forever)

There was also another statement by Nevrax somewhere mentioning that homins age "only very slowly".

Now, back to topic:

Many of our roleplayers have been aware of getting into problems because of the three different server's pasts even before the server-merge. We were told back then by our Event-Team (translated from German to English by me):

Ever since then many of us have been trying hard to avoid mentioning too many details of our specific pasts or phrase it like "in older times/in our part of the world/in our city this and that happened". Using these terms most of us were able to get along quite well I think :)

Unfortunately some players have often insisted that their own ex-server's past has to be accepted by everyone as the one and only past that should count and even should be known to everyone... This has lead to OOC-fights and players calling each other inconsiderate - you can find a number of discussions like that here in these Arispotle-forums. I remember the first argument about the war between Matis and Fyros starting on February 24th 2013 during the first Assembly of the Akenak in Pyr after the symbolic incineration of Emperor Dexton.

We political representatives also argue about the lore-differences in the texts of the 3 languages now and then, trying our best to find compromises and interpretations that will suit everyone somehow... And sometimes we need the Event-Team (playing NPCs like the respected leaders of our nations) to sort things out and tell us their current decisions and directives concerning different topics, which will at least make all of our different informations up until now not so important any longer to be a bone of contention.

So some of us are totally used to these conflicts and difficulties with ironing things out like this for a long time already as you can see.

It's okay with me to "fight it out" as long as people respect each other OOC and are doing their best to find solutions and compromises instead of selfishly demanding of everyone to just change the memories and knowledge of their characters (since the lore in the three language is STILL different if you care to compare) to what happened on another server. And how are we players even supposed to know OOC about everything that happened on other servers in detail? It's immensely hard to find out and even Google-translation sometimes cannot manage to translate some parts. Sadly some people are still trying to force other players to agree with them on "their" past only...

Sure, I would also be okay with a new history for everyone "ordered by above" just as well.

BUT in this case the Event-Team would have to work this one history out! Because I can assure you that whenever we players try to come to terms and work out compromises it hardly ever works without the interventions and decisions of the Event-Team. As I mentioned there are still those players who are not willing to accept that other characters made different experiences and even had different consolidated knowledge (lore).

And here's the major problem. We were told that some Event-Team-members have already started to take a look at the differences in the lore of the three ex-language-servers since... well, it should have been since the server-merge... which started September 29th 2012. More than one year ago. But there's still no "solution" in sight. Some Event-Team-members even do not know anything about the most obvious and biggest lore-differences when we're talking IC about such topics during political discussions...

Considering this I cannot believe that the Event-Team will be able to manage the giant heap of workload to put all three different pasts together in a compromise that everyone could be happy with. Instead the most likely solution would be to let all of us adapt to the past of one ex-server. And like Salazar I fear this "one" server could be no other than the one that had the largest population and provides the most roleplayers up to today: Aniro.

In conclusion: if you want this "one single history", you will have to learn and accept Aniro's past. Or else start all of our characters all over in RP basing them on the lore with no history at all ever since 2525.