Hello, dears. You may have noticed that we've had a flood of
class/House/learning-related changes recently, and you may be wondering
at our motivations. Well, it's simple. They're all meant to screw with
rogues because we hate them. Stupid rogues.

Not true! Honestly, this is not true. We realise that being part of a
House isn't for everyone, and that you sexy, free-wheeling mavericks add
your own flavour to Achaea. We're not trying to shunt you out.

We're aiming to achieve a balance between two extremes. If you've only
been adventuring in Achaea since after the summer of 2005, you won't
remember this personally, but once upon a time, Achaea was an extremely
tough place to achieve the life of a House-less rogue. Meander down
memory lane with me... A Kind-Of-Brief History of 'Autoclass'.

Before Houses, there were organisations called Guilds, the prior
incarnations of the current Houses. These Guilds were limited to a
single class -- so the Dawnstriders, for example, were only made up of
those of the Serpentlord class then, the Ashura were only of the Monk
class, so on and so forth.

In those days, Guilds were also the only path you could take to obtain
your class. You had to join a Guild before being able to learn any class
skills at all. Furthermore, you did not gain class permanency until you
obtained a certain guildrank via guildfavours (similar to Housefavours).
If you quit or were kicked out of the Guild before obtaining that
guildrank, you lost your class and half the lessons that you'd put
toward your class skills. Ouch. In short, Guilds controlled all access
to classes. This is the first of the two extremes.

This setup resulted in at least three unfortunate scenarios that played out
over and over again:

1) You could join a Guild, then get kicked out of the Guild before
achieving class permanency, resulting in the loss of 50% of the lessons
you spent in class skills based on the not-infallible judgement of another
adventurer (i.e. whoever kicked you out). So you could end up losing
hundreds of lessons because a Guild Secretary didn't like you.

2) You could WANT to join a Guild to learn a class, but Guilds were often
quite strict about whom they would allow as members, and you could be
denied entrance to the Guilds which control the class you want.
Furthermore, many Guilds had over-elaborate/over-demanding requirements
for guildrank advancement that caused a great deal of new adventurers to
throw their hands up and QQ forever.

3) You could want a particular class, but find that you don't like any
of the Guilds that control that class, or that none of them fit your
roleplay. Some classes were only offered by a single Guild, such as the
Shaman, Druid, Occultist, Priest, and other classes, so if that
particular Guild didn't work for you, you were entirely out of luck.

Increasingly, over the years, more and more people found themselves in
such situations, and the frustration and outcry grew.

Eventually, we decided to remove the institution of class-controlling
Guilds altogether. This was, in 2005, the end of the Age of Guilds and
the beginning of the Age of Houses. Guilds became called Houses, and
many chose new names to mark the change. Class became something obtained
independently of Guilds/Houses.

This has become colloquially called the 'autoclass' change -- though of
course obtaining class isn't quite 'automatic', it is much more so than
ever before.

This solved everything, of course. Everyone was happy that they could
now choose whatever class they wanted and not have to fear losing a
bunch of lessons because some other player didn't like them. Complete
class freedom for all, no more complaints from anyone!

Ok. No. It's not been as simple as that. Of course, there have been many
people happy with the change. It's been very good on some levels. To be
sure, no one's complaining about class being too hard to obtain now.
(Wait, I take that back. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, is complaining
about that...)

But there have been some negative effects as well.

One major effect we've observed has been the gradual destabilisation and
weakening of the sense of community, and Achaeans approaching Achaea with
more of a single-player mentality than a multi-player one. Whereas
before, adventurers would have to seek out other adventurers and interact
with them to gain a class, since the change, they don't need to. They can
just waltz on down to Delos and bam! obtain class.

If they do happen to join a House, but they don't like it, they can just
quit and join another one or go rogue. Or just play merry-go-round and
skip from House to House without developing a particular bond with one.
This is the other extreme of the two I mentioned earlier in this post
(you know, 5000 pages ago).

Listen, I'm really not trying to badmouth rogues. I swear, some of my
best friends are rogues. There have been many fine rogues throughout
Achaea's history. Some people are definitely better suited to the rogue
lifestyle. You know who you are, you intractable rapscallions.

There's also nothing wrong with trying out different Houses before you
find one that suits you best -- as long as you're not just quitting a
House every time something doesn't go exactly the way you want it. Like
your mama told you, adversity builds character. Building character is
especially important in a roleplaying game! Instant gratification
weakens it.

So, these recent changes are aimed at striking a balance between the two
extremes of total control and no control, by providing more incentives
to join and stay in Houses -- especially in the eyes of newbies. Of
course, there are other strong incentives to join a House, such as
greater political power, access to House resources, increased depth of
involvement in a section of Achaea community with similar roleplay
goals, so on and so forth.

However, newbies don't really understand the benefits of all that right
away, so we're dangling some carrots. Making it easier to be in a House,
more beneficial to interact with other adventurers, rather than to start
off playing like Achaea's a single-player game, and they're the only
player in it that matters.

It isn't, and you're not. At the risk of sounding preachy here (I am a
Goddess, after all): That's one of the wonderful things about Achaea.
You're not playing alone here. And that's what breathes the world to
life. Let's all of us strive to remember that.

Maya, the Great Mother

Penned by My hand on the 7th of Aeguary, in the year 520 AF.