Plague of Shadows [3.0/10]

http://www.acornrack.com/soeki_kumori/

Alrighty, on this Sunday night I'll be reviewing Plague of Shadows. This RP is a fantasy based RP with a light elemental side to it, as it so claims on the AD. The main thing on the site is the current war between Light and Shadow with The Watcher being neutral in the conflict.

The AD has just the background story and of course some other things you should know before joining, as well as having admin contacts.

(Side note: As I review these sites, I add at least one of the admins from the site to my AIM list. To see if they have anything they wish to discuss.)

But now, onto the review!

First Impression:
The Layout is... okay. I don't particularly feel one way or another, the colors match well and everything seems to be fine. The front page has a small portion of what is in the AD, and of course invites you to look further into the site.

The Public Area:
The History page gives you a nice sense of how the site feel is, I have no problems with this page except for one minor thing. While you can easily use the back button or hit the logo for the site, there is no "Back to Home" link or whatever.

This is the same on all the other pages so I won't comment on it again.

The Elements page, generally is a list of what the elements do and which category they fall under: Light or Shadow. Not much to comment on because the list is thought out well, and explains any questions I had. I'll this time to point out a small mistake in the writing.

In the Mind Section, the second to last sentence: Telekinesis is also possible, but the laws of physics remain and obstacle. "And" should be changed to "an"

The Laws page, actually has no laws! It has rules, a bit of inconsistency but nothing major so anyway to the actual rules. (Rules start at 0 apparently on this site.)

Rule #1 - Maybe it's just me again, but I've seen people use "god modding" a bit. I've always known it as "God moding". I just assume this is a spelling mistake... however I actually do have a nitpick here, so in the elements page there is only 1 person who controls time- The Watcher and this watcher is... the main admin. In my opinion, this is a direct violation of this rule and should be NPC (controlled by the admins) and the admin should have a different main character to invest their time in.

Rule #5 - It's more like a list, it would be easier to simply create a new section for these rules entirely.

The Application:
At the top of the page there is a mini-guide on filling out the application, the only problem is there is no spacing between them so it's a mini-text wall. Also, if you look at the elements selection there are two elements that don't seem to be on the list: Justice and Illusion.... oh wait, they're different names. Order and Chaos, better names in my opinion but you have to be thorough and change every part where this is.

Next, there is one text box for your RP sample and Character History. Creating another text area for the history is easy... there isn't even any hard coding involved, copy/paste and change the variable.

The Private Area:
NO Layout change! Again, I'm a fan of this. The text links are swapped with image based links which are also nice however the size of the same makes the images seem a little pixelated. Perhaps if they were slightly smaller it would make it look a bit nicer. Also, there is no "immediate" form of communication such as a cbox. I would invest a short amount of time in a cbox or some other form of immedate communcation.

Also, the news page apparently is inverted. The newest news is on the bottom and not the top, this will be more annoying as more news items are posted so it would be in their best interest to change that order.

The other private pages I cannot see (In a drop down menu, by the way) although from the names they seem to the be same as the ones from the public area.

Forums:
There are... ten IC forums which have decent descriptions. Obviously my first suggestion would be to add more forums people need a large sandbox to play in and some other random metaphor. I will say though that the sections are at least separated.

Other:
The members profiles are ... filled out? They are all actually filled out however, not very well... just short phrases essentially fill the fields. No appearance information or history even though the history part is requested in the application. The user information page needs a overhaul so it will contain more detail for each character.

Roleplaying:
I cannot give an accurate estimate of the roleplaying on this site because at this time there are no threads to base it off of.

Rating: 3.0 out of 10 Points.*

Now you may question my rating here because generally it seems like a sub-par site, however I see potential here which is why I give it a higher rating then Wolves Fly. The plot is fairly interesting and it can be used to gather members. This site essentially just needs more detail and more time spent on it. I personally mark this site for Re-review at a later date for this reason (and expect a higher rating).


Reviewed by: The Jello Emperor