KrogothRO

Link - http://www.krogothro.com

Masamune RO's backstory and creation is rather involved with another small server known as "KrogothRO," which was started by an old friend of GM Masa who is known as "Krogoth", "Little Demon" or "Discount Ninja" on the web. Krogoth asked GM Masa to help with the server, who was originally interested in the idea and the possibilities it could have. KrogothRO, in its original state, was rather raw. Most of the races had no backstory, the cat-people race was known as the "Kilrathi," Dragons were known as "Imps" with no backstory provided for them, no Angel or Fish-people race existed, "Undead" was a terribly, terribly over-powerful and poorly balanced race, etc. Mostly, Krogoth favored the "Kilrathi" race and over-developed them while leaving all others completely unformed. GM Masa saw that a vast amount of improvement was needed and personally oversaw the new development of these races and their backstories.

However, soon after starting to help with storyline races formation, contentions arose. Krogoth wanted complete control over everything that happened on the server. He would often make changes, at random, without informing anyone of what he was doing. He did not feel accountable or responsible for his own changes or the impact they would have. He also believed that role-playing events should have pre-defined scripts that are read by the participants. It was generally accepted that he was rather bad at what he was doing and needed help. His influence was, ironically, ruining the server. After a rather involved argument Krogoth apparently had a change of heart and, in a lengthy E-Mail, gave GM Masa "full control of the storyline." While this seemed great, and prompted GM Masa to write a lot of material and come up with some reasonable race names under the assurance that it would not be warped by Krogoth, it did not last long.

Not two weeks later, Krogoth broke this "contract" and began making more changes to the storyline and characters without consulting or informing anyone. Race balances, names, specific events... Just whatever felt his fancy, he would alter, without informing anyone else on the GM Team. This caused problems for GM Masa, who was attempting to write cohesive racial backgrounds that kept changing as Krogoth altered the races and failed to inform anyone. The more the two worked together, the more it seemed that Krogoth was not so much interested in the progression of the server as an interesting game; Krogoth was far more interested in the glory and praise he might recieve for building and maintaining a server. Eventually, Krogoth started threatening GM Masa, stating that he would remove his GM powers and possibly even his characters if GM Masa did not submit to Krogoth's "authority." After more arguments, the two eventually seperated. GM Masa wanted Krogoth to be accountable for his decisions; Krogoth wanted complete servitude from GM Masa. In the end, Krogoth told GM Masa to "leave him alone." It was not until later that GM Masa learned this was meant to be "perminent," and that Krogoth no longer "considered him a friend."

GM Masa would like to take a moment to say that this is all overly Emo and ridiculous at this point, and would like to apologize for the LiveJournal-style he-said-she-said relationship drama. It is riduculous and not the way he would have been prefered things to happen, but Krogoth was too immature and self-important to recognize his own part in all of this and nothing yet has been able to bring him to his senses. Emo emo emo wah wah wah i want a shouter, etc.

Anyway, about 2 days after pulling out all of his creative material from the game, GM Mune was talking to GM Masa about their characters, Masa & Mune. They were both getting sick of re-starting these characters on new servers that only turned out to be unstable and go down or be overrun by tyranical GMs. She prodded GM Masa in a conversation between the two, asking "so why don't you make your own server?"

...later the next day, Masamune RO entered official Alpha and was playable online. Two more days later, it entered official Beta-stage, with a hexed Client-file, full 77 palette support, all Racial items created, an NPC to assign them and a MySQL database for all of the server-side information, compiled and running on an Ubuntu Linux box in GM Masa's bedroom.

That is more or less the story of the creation of Masamune RO. A day or two later, people from the original "Twilight" OblivionRO server were offered the chance to transfer their characters, with more or less the original personalities and backstory intact, onto Masamune RO.

If you visit KrogothRO, you will likely notice many similarities between the races and subtle parts of their backstories, as well as its loose ties to Norse mythology. This is due to GM Masa's original influence on the server and the ideas he presented. The racial (un)balances are now different and the server itself still run by Krogoth.

Overall, no grudges are really held on the Masamune RO end of things. Without the brainstorming and eventual frustrations that were had at KrogothRO, Masamune RO likely wouldn't even be around. While it is true that a significant portion of the overall structure of the races on KrogothRO were developed by GM Masa, Krogoth's version has been significantly altered to the point of no longer resembling each other, except for that underlying structure and small suggestions (like "afflictions" being on a different slot then racial items) and names (such as the Einherjar). They are similar, but different at this point.

Interesting Facts

• A "Krogoth" is a Godzilla-sized mecha unit in the tactical strategy game "Total Annihilation."
• The "Kilrathi" are a race of space-fairing feline-like aliens from the "Wing Commander" series of games.
• KrogothRO Beta had it's own custom music pack, which mostly changed the Einbroch and extended area music into music from "Total Annihilation" and "Rogue Spear" and other videogames and anime. The current music pack appears to only change the Login and Novice areas, as well as the fields around Prontera.
• The "Einherjar" may make their way onto Masamune RO, though entirely different from whatever version will appear on KrogothRO. They stem from the same suggested race made by GM Masa while still working as a storyline GM on KrogothRO; but the idea was never discussed in length, just the name. Though, even the name is likely to change, so they're resemblance will be minimal.

Similar Pages

• Twilight