Abditi Caelus [7.1/10]

http://www.acornrack.com/abditi/

Look what day it is! It's a good day for a review and that means there should be a review up on this blog thingy right? Well I best get to it then! Today I'll be reviewing a site called Abditi Caelus, a fantasy, elemental...y site that involves a bit of reincarnation of the elemental gods.

Anyway, the AD for the site is written well and interested me enough in the site itself but the text color is a bit light for me and I had to highlight the text to really read it. But otherwise it's a good AD, I always like overviews and such since with all the pretty words and fluff I tend to lose concentration. Sometimes... Maybe... Okay MOST of the time...

Maybe I should upgrade my status to Jello Deity! ... I'll have to look into that, but anyway onto the review!

First Impression:
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your ... hair! ... What'd you think I was gonna say? Crazy people.... Anyway I have no problems with the layout it looks nice and all the links are easily seen.

The Public Area:
The index page double functions as to where you can read the story in lore form, as opposed to the AD form and it is always a good idea to be efficient with pages.

Rules page, just a small note first of all if I haven't said it yet. Placement of the links and information is important, as it directs the visitor how you want them to see the site as a form of soft control. Anyway, rules are short and sweet. Also I like the whole "fade to black" thing, it's good visual reinforcement even though it is the rules.

Races page, text... there's lots of text. Which is good and bad, first of all I'd prefer hotlinks to each section of the races so I don't have to scroll down past everything to find what I really want to know. Also, I personally would have put the short descriptions first and then linked to the detail as opposed to how it is now. (The quick info should be hotlinked as well...) Oh, and even though it seems redundant a link on the quick info back to the detailed ones would be nice.

Note on Wyverns: Overall fine, not a fan on the whole land based horse wyvern though. Wyverns should be as they are, legendary reptillian winged beasts. But I digress...

Culture page, the only thing I'd like to see is the separate cultures to have larger text for their names. Like "Amid" maybe in a larger font size insead of just white. This way one can quickly scroll down to whatever they want to see. Festivals page should link back to the culture page, for the same reasons as the races.

No real important comments on the other pages.

The Application:
Overall looks nice, the descriptions for what you should put in each section are writen on site as opposed to inside the text area. NO ROLEPLAY SAMPLE REQUIRED.



The Private Area:
Layout Chaaange! It's more like a remix really, but anyway... everything looks fine here the generally everything is within the first screen though the image does take up a bit more space than I generally like. And one small thing, your affiliates are waaaaaaaaaaaay at the bottom. Just pointing that out, won't affect the score.. lol

There are no new pages to review as far as I can see, so lets move on to the next section of the review which is of course...

Forums:
Good amount of forums and descriptions here, and they have of course my preached about hotlinks! The separation between posts is a little odd for me, there isn't any really distinction aside from a long line of -'s.

Other:
Member list is just the default listing more or less, so nothing flashy but sometimes simple is just as good as flashy.

Member profiles are generally filled out well and is organized into different sections. Again nothing too fancy here except some table coding.

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

Rating: 7.1 out of 10 Points

There's a good amount of things going for this site, mostly the plot the layout for me is just okay but sometimes becomes a hinderance. Also with sometimes odd navigation routes and the rather lengthy pages of info it can discourage people from joining. But overall the site is good, and the idea is solid.

Reviewed by: The Jello Emperor