The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

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Darkprincess69
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The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Darkprincess69 »

Hi girls & guys;

I've been away from the forum for a few years but now I'm back, but I can't access my original account on here as I've forgotten my old password and no longer have access to the email account that I used to register back in december 2003. Hopefully one of the mods in here can help me reactivate the old account so that I can get back into the swing of things :)

If a mod can PM me then maybe we can see if it's going to be possible to reactivate my account. If not I'll have to stick with this new one...

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a look around the forums to see what's been happening in the last 4 or 5 years however long it's been since I posted in here :)
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Calisson
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Calisson »

Hello, and welcome back!
Please PM Daeron and myself, and please provide your old avatar name and your current email, we will see what we can do.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Darkprincess69
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Darkprincess69 »

Thanks very much. I did just try to send a PM but it wouldn't let me as it said I'd only just registered and that I had to participate more before I could send messages. Oh well, maybe I'll try again in a couple of days :)
Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
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Calisson
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Calisson »

IIRC, there is a setting preventing a slave on the altar to send a PM.
Once you reached 3 posts, you should be able to send the PM.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Darkprincess69
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Darkprincess69 »

OK thank you, I'll give it another try :)
Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure
And sensual daydreams to treasure forever

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Red...
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Red... »

...what's been happening in the last 4 or 5 years
*Tumble weed enters, stage left. Tumble weed slowly rolls across center stage. Tumble weed exits, stage right. End scene.*

Yip, now you're pretty much up to speed. Welcome back :)
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Darkprincess69
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Darkprincess69 »

Yeah it certainly seems a lot quieter in here these days :(
What happened? Was it all the Age of Sigmar stuff that killed the buzz here (it kind of did for me, but our group still plays 6th edition WFB anyway with a bunch of house rules and bits cherry-picked from other sources) or is it the anti-fan rhetoric coming out of GW these days that's caused it?

Either way a lot of the people I used to interact with regularly in here don't seem to have been active for a few years either :(
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Red...
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Red... »

Age of Sigmar was the catalyst, sadly.

There was a lot of argumentation in the run up to its launch about whether or not D.Net would survive losing the core game that fueled interest in the site. I was one of the doomsayers, who was contradicted by lots of positivists who claimed that the site would adapt and the userbase would not only remain but would even grow. Sadly, I was proven right. Within about a year, almost all traffic had dwindled to almost nothing.

There were some gallant efforts by some of the mods and more active posters to retain interest - including by posting discussion threats that encouraged input and discussion - but these floundered and ultimately stopped.

Now, the only posts seem to come from the occasional new player who wants help with a list and some guy who posts long-winded (and presumably posted to every Warhammer and table-top gaming site he can find, not just D.Net) posts about things relating to Chaos Dwarfs or even just random history.

My understanding is that quite a lot of folk moved across to the 9th Age Forum and perhaps you can find more activity there.

That all being said, part of the bigger issue is that forums as a form of communication are dying. Many younger people find them too ponderous compared to things like Discord or even just regular social media. So, yes, AoS dealt D.Net a mortal wound, but its failure to stagger on for longer can be partially attributed to the dying of forums as a whole.
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Calisson
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Calisson »

Great summary.

As I recall, there had been for years a decline in sales, which triggered GW to do something.

GW made the End Times campaign, blasting the boundaries between the three Elve races (at least Malekith won). Not everyone was pleased, but those in majority who ignored the campaign just kept playing as before.
Ultimately, the campaign ended with the destruction of the world, Chaos had won. This saddened many players.

Then Age of Sigmar came. The change was too radical for most of the old players.

-=-
This is where various reactions led to split the communities.

Some were disheartened and just quit the game.
Some switched to AoS.
Some kept playing 8th edition as before, but suffered from no longer being supported by GW and having no tournament.
Some reverted to previous editions, includign their own adaptations.
Some created their own version of 8th edition, the most successful being the 9th Age but there are others.
Some went on to play other games such as Kings of War.

-=-
This split meant that not only the community of D.netters decreased, but worse, we had no longer common interests:

No fluff discussion:
- fluff discussions lost most of their interest since the world was officially dead;
- AoS fluff is super-high fantasy, not the taste of most, and AoS factions have no strict equivalent of DE;
- T9A fluff has an equivalent to DE but is yet far from being as developed, especially it lacks currently named characters.

No tactics discussion:
- different games, different tactics.
- some of the games don't have a DE equivalent, even if they have elves. AoS belongs here.
- T9A has a rich tactical development, and tournaments, but is mostly discussed on T9A forum.

No P&M modelling discussion:
- I had hoped that this would stay as a shared interest. It maintained only very limited discussions.

-=-
We tried at least to see whether a merging of the three Elven sites could help to maintain some activity.
The rationale was that GW had reshuffled the former boundaries between the three branches.
But Asrai was clinically dead (still maintained technically by our own admin, Daeron) and Ulthuan refused (although technically, they are now also maintained by Daeron).

My hope was also that T9A would attract DE players - it did - who could be incited to come to D.net where to find a cozy atmosphere and discuss DE matters - they did not.
It took much longer than I hoped for DE to have their army book redone. And even as it ultimately happens, there is no sign for DE players to come on Druchii.net.

-=-
Currently, T9A DE army book is in its beta phase, soon to become delivered definitively.
A background supplement has been already delivered.
But nobody discuss that here, they are all on T9A website.

Myself being heavily involved in T9A, I can tell that the forum thrives and that there are still many players interested by DE.
Other media are used, Discord, FB, Youtube and other chats, but the forum is where I spend some hours every day with many friends.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Darkprincess69
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Darkprincess69 »

Well I guess I'm a bit guilty of some of the above (I still play 6th edition - when I can play - as you can imagine, here in the UK, successive lockdowns have largely decimated the in-store gaming get-togethers (I never played in DW stores, but I occasionally played at a couple of independents around in Cardiff and Monmouth but the lack of support from GW is hurting these places too, especially now they're trying hard to recover from the lockdowns)

Also, GW have priced most of our group almost totally out of the market for minis, and the rapidly falling cost of resin 3D printers has given many of us (myself included) a viable alternative. I've spent the last couple of years developing my 3D modeling skills using DAZ Studio, Cinema4D and Blender to the point where I can now produce my own custom minis (of course this is ME, so most of my designs would be way too NSFW to be posted in here, especially given my Slaaneshi tendencies LOL). So far I haven't made many of these designs publicly available, as I don't need the legal spat with GW, despite my stuff not really being all that similar to their originals anyway, but I continue to design stuff regardless :)

As for the gaming, it's almost exclusively at friends' houses now with our own house rule tweaks to the basic WFB 6E ruleset, and we also still make up new armies, often based on old-school D&D stuff, some of which I was working on years and years ago, with help from a few people on this forum (tastyfish, thagdarf and others), most of which still need a bit of work to make them properly playable and not too broken.

So far we have made provisional (and semi-playtested) versions of the following armies;

Illithids (I had loads of help from d.net members on this years ago, and it's quite well developed now with psionics replacing magic (for fluff - game mechanics work the same as 6E magic), with thrall troops (grimlocks for fluff though any humanoid race could be used here, making proxying and testing quick and easy) and a raft of weird monsters like brain golems and you can even have beholders as a rare choice, because why not - though fluffwise, beholders don't like each other so if you take 2 as rare choices, you'll need to keep them at least 12" apart or they'll get animosity and might start fighting each other. Also the beholder has a brutal 24" anti-magic line of sight rule that imposes a -2 casting penalty during the opponents magic phase (doesn't work against psionics though) :))

Drow (OK the Druchii are basically a Drow ripoff anyway so it's very similar to the 6E DE list but with Drow theming (so spider mounts, driders, giant spiders etc)

Myconids (a somewhat silly fun army that isn't going to win many games but is tons of fun to play - a bit like playing night goblins - you'll have a good laugh but will likely lose :) Some neat special rules like immune to poison and psychology etc. This list still needs work but is already playable in its basic form )

Deep Ones - Lovecraft-themed army with lots of fun monsters and general weirdness, so apart from the deep ones you also have things like Yithians (which work a bit like greater daemons), shoggoths (hard to kill rare choice but can be stupid) I'd been working on this army for a very long time but wasn't sure how you could really use an aquatic-themed army in Warhammer, but then GW made the blatant Aquaman rip-off that are the Idoneth Deepkin, so if it's good enough for GW, it's good enough for me :twisted:

Southlands Tribes (actually based on WFB lore with a mostly human army with lizardmen allies. If the general is human then humans are core and lizzies are special - and vice versa)

Then we do other fun things that should be allowed in the original lists but weren't - such as taking gnoblars as part of an O&G army and creating new troop types, borrowing from multiple sources (such as the dementors from harry potter being a variation on the wraiths in an undead army)

So yeah I'm still very much into the game itself and the hobby but I'm gradually moving it away from GW as much as possible

Then others in our group have been working on things too - one has made new printable minis for Tomb Kings (he's a big fan of egyptology and a long-time TK player - he also plays Necrons in 40K, which are basically TK in space anyway)

And speaking of 40K, I don't really play it but I like a lot of the models and the lore, and I'm in the process of building up a mostly scratchbuilt dark eldar army (because of course I am) and I have made some tyranid stuff too

Game-wise, being old-school, I like the depth and complexity of the old editions and don't like to feel that things are being dumbed down (which is why I don't watch tv anymore - youtube is WAY better) and I feel that AoS has dumbed the game down a ton. Now I'm not blaming GW for making a simplified game to attract the younger and maybe less affluent players - that makes good business sense but to throw away 35 years of wonderful lore like they did is just inexcusable in my opinion.

Also, having GW using derogatory terms like "nazis" or "bigots" to refer to those of us who don't agree with the direction they're trying to take the hobby is a very fast, 100% guaranteed method of ensuring that they'll never be getting another single penny out of me going forward. Insulting your customers and then expecting them to continue to support your business is sadly all-too-common these days, but it won't work with me, that's for damn sure :evil:

So there you go - I'm back (for now at least) I'd like to start contributing articles to the site again (probably mostly in the painting & modeling forums as I tend to do more of that than actual gaming these days)

Here's hoping that things will perk up a bit in here soon, as it seems very quiet here at the moment :(
Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure
And sensual daydreams to treasure forever

All Hail Slaanesh!
Ming
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Ming »

Hi Darkprincess, Calisson and Red...
nice to meet you again.
I was trying some necromancy and logged in on D.net after at least 5 years.
I was glad to see again Darkprincess' perfect signature, and I was saddened to agree with Red... and Calisson 's explanations of D.net demise.
I'm waiting for Warhammer the old world, I hope it could bring back some old lore and be a fun but sensible game.
I keep playing Dark Elves in bloodbowl, where they are still what they were in WHFB (I know, not the same world, or maybe, but who cares).
I keep painting them and collecting them.
All second hand, or third part manufacturers as Raging Heroes.
GW will get my money only if WHTOW is worth the wait.
T9A doesn't appeal to me, as I'm not the tournement guy ttype, but I'm more the narrative friendly gamer.
I have fond memories of this forum.
It brought me out of my 6th ed. misery with MSU and other clever tactics.
I'll log in again in a few weeks to see if Darkprincess will post some of her 3d models, or some P&M article.
Hail Malekith (and Slaanesh to minor extent) and take care
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Calisson
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Calisson »

Hello Ming. Nice to see some old timers here. :)

Raging Heroes models, hmmmm.... Gorgeous.

WHTOW, everyone wonders what it will be. On one hand, there is potential. On the other hand, GW still needs to sell new models.

T9A, I happen to be very engaged, despite... I never attended any tournament.
If you are found of background, then learn that I am a member of the baground team.
A lot has been delivered here.
We just released the background compendium here.
80+ pages to describe the world of T9A.
Additionally, have a look at the interactive map of factions here.
This is better than anything GW ever gave us. Give it a try! :D
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Noble korhedron
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Re: The Dark Princess Returns (sort of...)

Post by Noble korhedron »

Welcome back, @Darkprincess69; perhaps with your help, we can revive this great forum...
Regards,

NK.


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