Lucerna

Adventurer! I am so glad to see you.

Lucerna

I loathe to ask this of you, but I was tasked to recruit any adventurer I can to our cause. Something...curious is going on.

Lucerna

You may have noticed this already, but recent rift activity has been weird to say the least.

Lucerna

We recorded many more of them forming than normal. And those that do - strange creatures have been sighted emerging from them!

Lucerna

Not to mention the risk of regular people getting sucked into the reflection, possibly to never find their way back...

Lucerna

I can barely stand thinking of it.

Lucerna

Which is why I hope you will accept this quest. We need any help we can get.

Lucerna

Please get out there and report any rift you find to us so we can close the area down.

Lucerna

If you prefer, you may also want to capture any strange beings trying to enter your Realm from them.

Lucerna

Or perhaps, if possible, you could assist the reflection rescue attempts. Anything will do.

Lucerna

If you complete such missions, we will reward you, of course. Please give it some thought. We must get to the bottom of this.

Bracing unstable Rifts

Duration:  November 1st - January 1st, Realm: Any

Lucerna needs your help! Rifts have become unstable, appearing more often and dragging unsuspecting people into the reflection. Strange creatures have also begun appearing, and the situation is seemingly getting out of hand...Something big is brewing, we just don't know what!

To help Lucerna, you must complete event prompts! They will grant you magic and some fun items from inside the reflection...

Riftborn Invasion

We don't know much about them yet but these Riftborn critters have been appearing around rifts. They don't seem to have inherent elemental powers, but... Maybe you can make some use of them? 

Special Rift Event

For the duration of this event, you may use up to 2 seasonal traits for your rift designs! This is valid for up to 3 designs per person. Get creative and share some love around. You will also be rewarded for it with one of the event prompts!

Participation Award

As always, a new award waits to be claimed for event prompts! 

Monthly Prompt

Monthly Prompt
Earn your easy extra  80 !

Change is near, but do not despair!

It has probably been rather obvious that the decision would sway this way, but as promised I am making it official now. Realms Away will see some bigger changes, but I genuinely believe it's for the best in the long term. If I lose my motivation to work on this site, the only other thing is closing it down and that'd suck most to me.  I even debated if I should call it Realms Away V2.5 instead because it is not like we are destroying everything and building something new (A Realm Reborn style). While changes are coming, a lot will also stay the same. It's a change of focus, not a change of species or content available (although I would argue that content improvements are coming, if anything!)

Because I could not possibly cover everything I worked on the past month in preparation of this post, I made a little slideshow/presentation for you:

> You can view it here. <

This should cover most bases, I think. It may not be perfect yet because some things can't be anticipated beforehand, but those things we will work on fixing as fairly as we can as well. Of course, the discord channel v3-discussion is still open for your questions!

And yes, if you don't plan to read through the document, there will be a new 2 month event starting tomorrow. It is a change from the original plan but it will explain and lead into the changes lore wise too!

Finally, thank you for being so kind and patient to me. I get that change sucks sometimes and that some of you may still be left disappointed despite our best efforts. But I'd at least like to ask you to maybe still give it a chance. Realms Away is my passion project, and I will keep striving for more fun things to do.

Halloween draws near...

It's the spooky season and your characters may want to pick up one of these halloween themed companions~ Check them all out on the companion index!

Bats and Pumpkins

These two all-new companions, Vespi and Pumpel, are now available at Freaque Antique and the Greenhouse!

A mean look

Starbi, Bozzard and Caragoo unlocked new elemental variants befitting of october...

First of, a thank you!

The comments and DMs from members and mods I have received have been so helpful and kind. Even my silly brain that's hard to get through to has to admit that I must have done something right so far, judging from your words <3 I can't thank you enough for this, and all the patience and trust you have in my silly worlds. If you are unsure what I mean you may want to read this post first.

The path forward

To preface this, no final decision has been made yet, but I want to let you in on the current state of our brainstorming! I am currently in contact with a small group of mods and members where we are sharing ideas and discussing ways to change up RA to make it more managable mentally and work load related. This and feedback from the last post has lead me to come up with a plan to ease my mind for now:

October 2024

Throughout october, we will be laying out the plan, down to the nitty gritty tiny details. This will hopefully reduce the initial information overload for new members, and also allow me to refocus on fewer things. I can already tell you some small things that are currently being heavily considered:

At the end of october, I hope that we can come to a decision on whether the plan thought out in october will be coming to fruition, or if it's better to stick with what we have / something else. Regardless of what happens, we will be thinking of ways to compensate for things + might ask around when the course is more clear in November.

If it does happen, the event schedule of RA will have to be adjusted a bit in the following months:

November/December 2024

Events would have to be shifted around a bit:

• November's species release (Ravorbis) will need to be pushed back, because it would be better to release them under the new plan.
• Around the start of November I want to post more information on our plans, so that you all are aware of them beforehand.
• In exchange, there should be a different event that gives me the space to work on the changes for the rework. This event will ideally lead into January with some lore related to the planned changes.

January 2025

If the changes are mostly done, we would go and put RA into maintenance so that me and mods who'd like to help out can start getting the changes on site. I would like to take a full month for this simply because I imagine there would be a lot to change and edit/move around. I also would like a couple people look around for spots that I may have missed without any pressure. During this month we might host some event via discord, which will also probably see some slight changes, Or take a break for a month, let's see :D

I really hope whatever we chose to do, that RA will still be enjoyable to everyone! o7

Preface

First it is important to note that i don't plan to just throw everything away and discontinue my work here at the drop of a hat. Rather, I would like to share this to see if maybe anyone has some thoughts that may help, and frankly, just to be transparent/get it off my chest.

Me & the Adopt Community

I have been around this community and doing adoptables for a long time, since around 2017 with Gleamstic/Nektanine as my first attempts on CS, with a discord or dA group respectively. I grew disillusioned with the community for years because I don't agree with many practices within it, but eventually decided I was not going to let that take away my personal fun of creating species. This saw the creation of Lopilu in late 2021 (I think). I wanted to make something that fixed the issues I had with my previous attempts, and try something new. They had a toyhou.se world, and were posted on my discord as well. Eventually, I randomly decided to build a website for my stuff because I work as a programmer. I did this from scratch initially. As such the page was unique and became Realms Away V1. It had many species, daily activities, very heavy neopets influence. But it also had many issues such as proper Masterlist management, currency management and many many tiny things. This is why, when learning about Lorekeeper, I decided to move to it and start Realms Away V2 from scratch. This solved many default tasks I previously had painstakingly tried to build by myself, and opened new possibilities. I was stoked. RA V2 is what you are on right now, and it is runnin since July 2023.

Motivation

Initially i was very motivated to work on stuff, and sometimes I still am especially when it comes to new code to do, and new thoughts I want to add. I tend to be the type that can't stick to one thing forever and likes to jump between many different species and designs as I love variety. As such making something to house all my favorite species and designs seemed like a fun idea at first. I have always loved designing adopts, and giving them all a home without excluding any seemed like the way to go. I like to see people play, engage and enjoy their characters on here. Overall, I think it was a cool project and I don't regret that I started it even now.

My Grievances

I have finally decided to write this up because I find myself bouncing back to these every now and then, and I really wish I would not. I also want to make clear that no single or specific person or communities are to blame for any of these. Rather, it is just things that were not meant to be, and time changing the way I see my older ideas.

Feeling alone

While I have had a couple good mods over the course of 7 years, overall it has always been incredibly hard to find them. Through most of the time I worked on group stuff, I worked on almost everything by myself: code, assets, lore, adopts, approvals, general management. Im in a fortunate position now where I have a small group of people that really help out with approvals, general site help and the discord, bless you all. But I still do a lot, all of it beside my day job. And I still lack one thing that I have always been missing: a small, active group of friends that works together to create something and bounce ideas, rather than me doing all the event/lore/thinking work alone. Over the past months, observing other groups, I have found myself craving this more and more, losing the drive to really do stuff for Realms because I want to - where I just end up forcing it because it is planned, and I tend to stick to my plans.

Too much going on

As much as I love the idea of giving all sorts of designs I make a "home" on Realms Away, I find myself not enjoying it at all times. If i look at groups i want to join as a member, it tends to be focused on a single species (or their sister species at most), Theming something around one species only seems much more coherent, fun and less overwhelming to me. With bimonthly events, some species just wait forever to get their time to shine! When trying to include everything, I already feel bad because it's not quite everything I do. For example, some of my personal concepts will never make it here because they do not fit. This is inconsistent, and my brain hates inconsistencies. I feel like i would enjoy a smaller focus ARPG a lot more, and I'd like to work on it, but at the same time RA holds me back from doing so.

Traits that are overarching are so difficult to do for this many species as well. I can't trait cool stuff like wings because it doesn't make sense for angels or demons or dragons, for example. While i generally like what we have (I spent a long time thinking about it after all), it's just another layer of "god I wish it wasn't so complicated". Of course, this is also a huge load on mods and GA who have to understand all these different species and their silly little limits. This leads to more inconsistencies.

Species regrets

Gleamstic unfortunatly are something that I would never have created anymore today, and a species I don't see myself ever using again. As you can imagine, it's not fun to keep something up that I have no love for anymore because by design, they are a bad species to me right now. Yet the things I don't like about them is not something I think is fixable or worth fixing 7 years later, since it concerns one of their main design points. I also wish I did a bit more with beastling, they are quite basic, even if I definitely want a lil guy species of my own still. And as much as i love Arma Caeli myself, I know they are difficult to use for most, and as such I have to question if it's worth having them around. I wanted the ARPG to have ways to enter without CS labels through generic species, but I wonder if they just add uneccessary bloat and if it could be handled in a better way. 

Is there any good solution?

This is honestly difficult and the reason I am publishing this in the first place. I genuinely feel stuck, both with RA as is and my feelings towards it. I keep thinking this is fine, but days later I feel all these grievances so strongly again. This could be related to my mental state in general (I am trying to find help on this front, but I don't forsee an easy fix). For this reason, I don't want to jump to fast actions or a badly executed shutdown of RA  - but at the same time, I can't just keep at it without a course of action that might spell betterment.

On one hand, the idea of a dedicated thing for only one or two species is exciting to me and I can feel that I'd love to plan and set it up.

On the other, if I end up doing it all alone again who's to say it won't eventually get stuck in the same spot as RA? Who's to say I will keep enjoying it? Who's to say it will be worth giving up RA for? And that I won't miss RA?

I post this in hopes that maybe anyone has any idea on what I could do in this situation, preferably something that doesn't destroy one thing completely in favor of a risky new thing, but I also know I won't be able to keep things up forever as is. And i really want to keep doing things that you can enjoy. Unfortunately, to do this, I must enjoy it consistently myself.

If anyone has thoughts on this, please feel free to DM me on discord. I would really appreciate it.

Thank you for reading my novel. /vent over.