RELEASE WEEK: Release 3 of 3

INGAME ALLIANCE FORUMS

Communication receives another big boost with the release of ingame Alliance Forums.

You can access the Alliance Forum on the Alliances Tab. The list of forums you can see, post in, edit etc will depend on your Alliance Role permissions and the place of your role in the Alliance Hierarchy.

Access to threads can be restricted by Role in the Alliance Hierarchy. This enables you to create specific threads for (eg) War Planning that are only available to the most senior roles in your Alliance Hierarchy.

PERMISSIONS

There are 2 new Permissions in the Alliance Roles tab. These are:

• Alliance Forum Admin
  This permission allows players in that role to administer the Forums that they have access to.
  
  This permission means that players can delete posts and start new Forums.
  
  The Alliance Forum Admin role, however, only allows players to administrate those Forums that are available to their role or below.
  
• 
  Can Post In Alliance Forum
  This permission allows players to post in the Alliance Forums.
  
  It is assumed that you will wish to grant this permission to most all the roles in your Alliance, unless you specifically wish to limit players from posting in your Alliance Forums.
  

TYPES OF ALLIANCE FORUM

There are 2 Types of Alliance Forum:

PUBLIC FORUM

Every Alliance has one of these by default, but cannot create more. An Alliance Forum Admin can, however, create multiple threads in the Public Forum for different purposes.

Read Access: Every member of the Illyriad playerbase can read this forum and post in the threads already created in this forum.

Create Threads: Only members of the Alliance who have the Forum Admin permission in their role can create new threads in this forum.

Delete Posts: The original poster can delete his or her posts in this forum, as can any member of the Alliance with the Forum Admin permission.

Example Purpose: As a Forum Admin in your Alliance you could create Threads such as:

• Diplomatic Audience Requests
• Guestbook
• Complaints

ALLIANCE-ONLY (plus RESTRICTED ACCESS) FORUMS

Every Alliance has one of these Forums by default, but more can be created by anyone with the Alliance Forum Admin permission.

This Forum is always restricted to members of the Alliance only - and cannot be viewed outside of the Alliance.

However, Alliance can further restrict these forums to people in specific roles.

When an Alliance Forum is created it can be imbued with specific access permissions based on Role.

Access permissions apply to everyone in that role and any role in the hierarchy above that role.

This means it is essential that Alliances sort their Role Hierarchies into a sensible order. This is accomplished by using the "Move Up" and "Move Down" option in the Alliance Role Hierarchy on the Roles page.

If you wish a new Alliance Forum to be accessible by everyone in the Alliance, when you create it, set the "Minimum Access Level" to the lowest role in your Alliance's Hierarchy.

If you wish to restrict access to a new Alliance Forum, simply set the "Minimum Access Level" to the lowest role in the Hierarchy that you wish to be able to see it.

Restricted access forums cannot even be seen by members whose role is outside the "Minimum Access Level", so they won't know what they're missing.

In general, Alliance Only Forums have the following rules:

Read Access: Every member whose role meets the Minimum Access Level can read the forum.

Create Threads:Every member whose role meets the Minimum Access Level and has can post permission can create threads in the forum.

Delete Posts: The original poster can delete his or her posts in this forum, as can any member of the Alliance with the Forum Admin permission who also meets the Minimum Access Level.

Example Purposes:

You could create Forums such as:

• Trade Requests (Minimum Access Level: the Lowest Role in your Hierarchy)
• War Planning (Minimum Access Level: "War Minister" and above - or whatever you have called your Combat planning role)

FUTURE PLANS FOR ALLIANCE FORUMS

We are planning on enhancing Alliance Forums very shortly indeed with Stickies, Delete Threads, Delete Forums, Edit Threads, Edit Forums and Edit Post abilities, followed later by the ability to link to things (map locations, players, other alliances, images etc) via an ingame BBS-style format, from within forum posts.

Hell, maybe we'll even put smilies in.

NEW DIPLOMATIC L2 QUESTS

13 brand new, shiny and exciting L2 Diplomatic Quests (more than 20 if you include all the multi-parts) have also gone live, in addition to the 6 already there.

Each race (Human, Elf, Dwarf & Orc) has at least 2 race-only quests, and some of the background Lore and Themes of Illyria are being fleshed out as we go.

This brings the L2 Diplomatic Quests to completion, and we will shortly begin work on the L3 Military Quests, now that the mechanics are in place to support NPC military engagements - with the Dawn of Factions release yesterday.

Once the L3 Military Quests are complete, the full set of tools are in place for our expert team of Wordsmithing Questwriters to plough through the higher quest levels.

This release brings Release Week to a close! We hope you agree it's been full of goodness.

However, we know that many of you are waiting for the Combat Magic spell schools - and these now become my top priority to complete.

OTHER FIXES

Clicking on the map for volcanoes etc used to say "Impassable terrain". These squares now correctly allow you to scout and send armies to them and only the volcanoes off the edge of the map are completely impassable.

However, you still cannot set up a siege or blockade camp on these squares so they retain this strategic defense importance.

FUTURE PLANS FOR ALLIANCE FORUMS

We are planning on enhancing Alliance Forums very shortly indeed with Stickies, Delete Threads, Delete Forums, Edit Threads, Edit Forums and Edit Post abilities, followed later by the ability to link to things (map locations, players, other alliances, images etc) via an ingame BBS-style format, from within forum posts.

Hell, maybe we'll even put smilies in.