Elusia [6.0/10]

http://elusia.acornrack.com/

On this Thursday I bring to you a site that goes back to the days when RPs were simple, back to the times where all you needed to do was become a knight, serve your princess and slay the dragon that has been razing your village lands and burned your fellow villagers and family until they were a bunch of ashes and left you homeless and were brought up into an orphanage which happened to catch the eye of the royal family to allow yourself to be seen and recognized as a potential knight and loyal servicemen to the kingdom! *deep breath*

(Note: Yes, I know that was a run on sentence. But it was used for effect! EFFECT! O_O )

Seriously though, this is a fantasy, medieval RP that prides itself on being simple called Elusia! So the AD for the site starts off with a rant, more or less. My opinions on the matter won't be included in this segment, but if you're really interested feel free to contact me. For now though, grab your quiver, mount that horse and ride off into the sunset which is this review!

First Impression:
Holy Simplicity, Batman! There's like 7 links on the site... and that's counting the advertisement on the top! On the front page is a paragraph which is also on the AD but considering all the writing that is on the AD I'm sure some people may have skipped some of it. Small thing here, perhaps another space would be needed for the "w h a t you need to know part" to make it look nicer. (As opposed to: "w h a t you need to know")



The Content:
While there is technically a private and public area, I'm condensing the two because there isn't much information on the public side to comment on.

The Site Rules, Alrighty I already have a problem with the rules page. There are two stated rules which are fine but the other rules are unwritten. They say these are common sense, but as much as I like to believe in the human race we all know that 9 out of 10 people don't have this. Especially in our selective community...

(For you slower people out there that means I'm calling 9 out of 10 of you stupid.)

The Ranks page, it is as it states the page which lists all the people you can be. I would suggest that perhaps you split up the ranks page into 3 divisions and include hotlinks. Maybe order them alphabetically or something.

From now on is technically the private area but I feel these areas should probably be in the public area as well since it impacts the user before one applies for the site.

Forum information, first of all this page needs hotlinks there is way too much information on here to NOT to. It's already divided into sections anyway, so a simple anchor tag next to these will make easy divisions. In the beginning there is a little FAQ about the forums that answer some questions one may have about it. Afterwards there are all the listings of the areas of the forum. (I'll go into more detail into this in the forum section) There is also a map for each area which is nice for a visual aid.

Elusia information, is all the information about the area and background that you really should know before applying. As I've said before I think this should be in the public area as well. No problems here, but again there is a map which is nice.

The Application:
The application is true to the site's mission: easy and simple, so it's your standard fare. NO SAMPLE REQUIRED!

Forums:
There are 6 forums, 3 OOC and 3 IC. Now as I've said before I'm going into a little more detail about this system. In the forum information page, there is a list of areas in the large area. The one large forum encompasses all the areas listed in the information page and as thus you can go from area to area without switching boards and whatnot.

Alright, I understand the whole simplistic nature of the site and wanting to go against the grind. However, sometimes this backfires and creates more confusion and too simple and not enough structure is bad as well. In my opinion this is a case where the idea is good, but the bad outweighs the good, if any. Most sites expand the areas of the forums to acheive this and if you want to move then creating a new thread isn't all that hard. The burden is too heavy on the roleplayer and doesn't take advantage of the structure provided by the AR system.

In short: I'm not a fan of it.

Other:
The member list is plain but I have no problems with it, the profiles are rather plain as well but are generally filled out nicely.

Roleplaying:
From what I read on the forums I categorize the roleplaying on this site to be Intermediate.

Rating: 6.0 out of 10 Points.

Overall I'm rather torn, I'm all for going against the trends but sometimes the reason their trends is because they work and they work well. This is the case for several things, and especially for a medieval fantasy RP which I think is rather simple anyway. Moving that simple nature even more upsets the balance with no real plot guideline. Perhaps throw in a small plot that someone is trying to take advantage of the king in his sick state, but I'd like to see some spark that I can latch onto aside from: "Well what am I doing today?"


Reviewed by: The Jello Emperor