I would like to make the proposition of a new spawn location. Seemingly off-world, it will be safe from creatures and pvp, will later feature a server guide and will also provide portals to both established locations (ala arroyo valley, cinder) and also wilderness locations so that you can jump into pvp fast. in the future, there’s the possibility of using the portal chamber as a bridge to entirely new worlds.

Spawn will remain at Arroyo Valley until the poll expires or we get a heavy vote. images for the WIP portal chamber below;

The votes were cast and the results are here. It seems we almost have a draw between full enabled enchants vs no combat enchants with tool enchants.

However, it may be important to note that I did disregard option 3 in my original blog entry, saying that only option 1 & 2 were valid. This most likely gave some voters the impression they could only choose between disabled & enabled enchants. I believe if I didn’t leave that note there even more players would have voted for option 3.

I’ve already made several necessary changes in-game to bar players from creating any new combat enchants. I’m open to all feedback about this change and I would like to hear your experience with it.

What do you guys think about the removal of enchanting? This age being the least PVP focused for a long time I cannot think of a better time to make a big change such as this. The impact of doing this now will be minimal, as previous ages were largely focused around gear & war. I also believe the positive effects from this will ripple into future ages as well.. it could very well become the norm for our server.

For those of you who have been on during previous ages you’re likely familiar with the problems caused by high level enchants. They create an aggressive, unforgiving experience for new players among many other balancing issues. I know that many of you vastly prefered the earlier days when there were no enchants and we had a no diamond armor rule. Traveling the wilds wasn’t ruled by OP Prot IV diamond players. Worst case scenario you were outnumbered but you were never at a huge disadvantage because you didn’t grind 1000x hours.

Some positives I can see coming from this change:

• Ordinators & Demigods become more powerful inhabitants on the server. Currently, a Prot IV diamond armor PVPer is more combat capable than a demigod player. It’s absurd.
• It will add much value to gifts from the creator, such as artifacts & unique gear. (Yes, I plan to do something like this soon)
• Buffs from beacons & artifacts actually noticable in a combat situation
• Mobs actually a challenge again and I won’t need to keep buffing them with unstable plugins. For the last year I’ve tried to balance mobs so they are fair to new players & high level players but with no luck. It’s impossible.
• Old enchanted combat gear will be illegal to use, but old enchanted tools won’t be. This will add potential value to any old tools you save

“I honestly don’t see how you can think this is a good idea. It literally is pushing minecraft back to the pre-XP beta times pretty much. Sure you keep everything like horses but you are unable to repair items without levels or even name items which would cut out a lot of rp. Overall it is a really bad idea, enchants are now a part of minecraft and should be accepted.” -Jakeman664

Enchanting overall was a poorly thought out feature thrown into the game to give it some kind of goal or progression ladder. It’s my opinion that Minecraft is a sandbox game where we can create any kind of world we want. Just because Mojang shoves a feature down our throat doesn’t mean we have to have it in our game. This is why so many are waiting for the modding API. Players want to customize their experience.

Perhaps if The Ancient World was an anarchy server without a theme, or the theme was high fantasy, it would make sense to have enchantments in our world. But TAW has always been very dark, even more so now with Conquest texture pack. I was having a discussion earlier with Tidge and Doyl where they made the comparison between Morrowind & Oblivion from the Elder Scrolls series. If TAW was one of those, it would be Morrowind. When I see players fighting undead on the continents I imagine them wearing rusty, battle-worn iron armor, covered in molten ash & blood of their foes. Not elves wearing perfectly crafted diamond magic armor, magic enchanted bows, & cleanly washed hair.

On another note – It wasn’t my intention to remove custom item names. That is a feature I very much liked. I will see if I can find a way to bring it back without needing XP.

Please cast your vote in the poll below!

NOTE: I put the third option in for those who wanted it. The truth is, it’s not a practical thing to implement. At this point in time I’m only considering options #1 and #2.