And maybe I'm biting off WAY more than I really want to chew here, but I can definetly see a benefit if some of the players want to do some area fixing on a purely desc level.

As the mud has evolved, our standards of area writing have gone up significantly. Years ago, it wasn't required to have an exit description for all exits, or to have extra descriptions hidden in room descriptions for little details. Sayto descs are another good example of this. They've only been around the past few years, so many areas do not incorporate them even though they would add quite a bit.

That said, we now are looking at some of our older areas and cringing a little bit. Good examples are Arboria, Whitecloaks, Balator, Emerald Forest, Arial City and the Aryth Ocean. Valg loops Sirine Island in there though I don't think it's a badly *written* area necessarily. Actually, I shouldn't say any of these areas are badly written, more that they just no longer conform to the current standards. They are all good areas that provide something to the mud as a whole. Since we generally feel that the mud is large enough to support our player base, and many people feel that it is TOO large, we would rather rewrite or replace these areas instead of adding in more volume of rooms. Any area replacement would have to keep some of the important aspects of the old area in. For example, Arboria has the lich quest area and mob. Any new Arboria will have to have this in it even if the entire functionality, layout, and plot of the area is different. If someone wanted to rewrite Chessmasters, for another example, they would have to think about how that area works for xp, how it links two sides of the world, how it has higher level gear, how it has a unique locking function, its no magic room, etc. Not that these things *have* to stay but they should be thought about when looking at a revamp.

Ok! That was a long tirade. Sorry, the area team is my baby. In general, if someone wanted to do some general sprucing of an area to make it more Loch Grynmear'y, they can contact me directly about it. rayihn@carrionfields.com