Hello all citizen of Argonath. As many mayt know it was 9 years ago that we opened our gates. At the time, the only person who was expecting it to become a lasting community was probably... me. I mentioned to Aragorn and Legolas at the time that if we were to do this, it would not be something to do for a short time and give up on, but something that would be uilt to last.
And while nobody expected, it has lasted. Even through the last years where the owners have been inactive the community has managed to remain present and has been able to renew itself.
We started out Argonath RPG on a single server for MTA:VC. At the time it was the only game where the roleplay we did happened, and even then the number of roleplay servers were far less (about 8 stable ones) as the number of deathmatch servers. The roleplay itself was very different as well. Not in the least due to the limits of the scripting. There was /me (which started the whole roleplay) and money. And one of out innivations was the possibility to mark an area and give it a name, meaning people could buy a house or a shop. As GTA:VC did not have a lot of buildings where you could enter, the only thing you could do to ropleplay being in a house was to stand in front of it and use /me. Same was for any possessions, you did not get health or inventory from buying anything, you had to pretend to have it.
Still the donut shops, clubs and restaurants flourished, as did the jewelery shop and dry cleaning service.
Chat? There were 5 lines of chat with all messages from the whole server. Luckily only 24 players could be on at the same time, and nobody complained about not reading the messages.
The roleplay of a continuing character was something that was for WoW, most roleplays were fast and changed several times a day.
You would go from being an immigrant selling fireworks (grenades!) to a sailor being on guard for the club to prevent the DMers from coming in and blasting the place, as no weapons were barred. Sailors had the ability to regain health, which is why they were popular for the longer roleplays, no need to run to health points in between being attacked.
In order to keep money in the game, every Sunday evening there would be a party in the Club with a lottery. The party consisted of people getting on stage and trying to dance or telling jokes. They got a reward, and further the lottery would give a larger amount to three of the winners. At those times server would be full, if not the occasioan DMer would get in and try to throw a grenade, getting a 30 minute ban.
No swearing or flaming was allowed. And where weapons were free for those who knew where to find them, most people used the ones appropriate to their character. This also because they would spawn with a specific weapon. Cops used the shotgun, where robbers would use the combat shotgun which was more powerful at short range and could even defeat the early hackers.
We were extremely happt to have 15 players at the same time on that day, even if attacks already started.
Since that day a lot has changed. We have learned many new things while trying to improve and defend the servers and community, spent way more money than we should have at times and gradually gave others the chance to lead instead of keeping it in our own hands.
The result is that we are still alive after 9 years, and still looking towards the future.
The future is always unknown, and one of the things we want is to expand in to new areas and servers to keep growing. The main problem is to find dedicated staff that can do a long time commitment just as we did in the beginning. It is easy to set up a server and open it, it is not easy to draw new peple and keep them interested. This goes even more if what you are planning to open does not have a large player base already.
A lot of things have changed, and many things will change in the future as well. However the community will remain, with its main purpose.
Which is to meet people from all over the world and have fun.
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