Greetings princes, field marshalls, colonels, captains, and guild legionnaires. As the MOTD has stated, the return of warfare would occur on the month of Cloudburst, in the 1448th

year after the Divine War. I notice there are no greater number of TACTICS or MARKERS created than the ones first produced by Lleu and Necrophona. There are literally no other

owners besides myself who made any nor came to me asking how. Although nobody may have looked at these essential changes to how warfare operates, nor tested commanding legions to

use them, there is good reason for it. You are all forgiven for being remiss in exchange for your great success in others areas and there is no rush to change what you are doing.

In the last month since my post about pausing warfare, you will all nod quietly to yourselves that you have been very busy, just as we have, in creating a burgeoning and strong

community throughout Avalon -- skills, novicehood/badges, economics, website fixups too, introducing new people to the fold, and pushing the young to see where they may carve out

their destinies.

We are postponing legion aggression and sphere changes another two to four real weeks -- 1450 aDW has a nice roundness to it and, realistically, there are too many professional

specialisations we wish to get absolutely right before allowing warfare to trample all over the rose garden.

Even though I can hear you all moan of such a postponement, listen and read carefully as to why. Firstly, when we opened the gates on warfare the first time, and indeed most of it

is working fine enough to compete, we had a large upsurge of lifetimers returning only for warfare, yet unhappily involved in other areas, and a very scary downturn across all

cities of those involved in other meta, who felt punished for not liking it. From my viewpoint, it was night and day who was present during the first two campaign seasons. When we

moderated the impact of warfare with stronger city gates, the motley crew that makes Avalon so colourful and interesting returned in numbers.

Secondly, in March, we started with the economic rebalance to make competition fair and offered 4 lessons per crown so that we had more senior-skilled mortals. We began fixing

issues across novicehood, released the huge badge system, put in place the Masterclass and Honours placeholders (content to come in April), and began working on professional

balance and the specialisations that received mortal lessons recently. The realm's novicehood then took complete precedence. The mid-month of March had a downtrend worldwide

because novices were unable to finish their second, third, and fourth chapters.

Within a day of fixing this, a week ago as of writing this post, you will all recognise a sudden surge of activity in the world. We moved sponsorship out, moved in 14 free days to

ease pressure on resources and seniors who had noted their deep concerns, and seen a huge uptick of aggressive competition, healthy conversation of skills, bug reports, and

enthusiasm worldwide. I cannot stress how important it is, in the mechanics of warfare, to have enough people and, as it stands now, we still do not and we still do not have the

mightily important interplay, as per the FULLMETA experience in the Crucible badge, between those subtle and powerful abilities involved in warfare, like strangling, birds,

flooding in Skymastery and Elementalism, infiltration, and many others.

You have likely been occupied with your cities, especially novice growth and economic success. There is still much to do in terms of novices, professions, Farming, Labours, the

crafting skills, and the economic trade links, tariffs, tributes, shop ownership, and property construction/purchase via the newly fixed Estate Agents. Incidentally, HELP BUILDINGS

is accurate but open to feedback.

Warfare works best when all of these factors are smooth and by smooth I mean bustling with activity and interest. Everything, including warfare, will suffer if we lift the gate too

early, with too few generals actually interested and prepared.

Clarity for Field Marshalls: until we lift the gates, you should stay within your flagged territory and not plant new flags nor step your legions outside of any flagged locations.

You may position your forces, enlist men, construct equipment, test your markers, prepare and use new tactics, and head to Battle Isle for understanding changes we release as and

when they appear in UPDATES.

Cornelius

Written and shown unedited exactly as rendered by text based game bulletin board on Avalon Online RPG and by my hand on the 18th of Eleuthral, in the year 1448.