Well, we should rp more, Nintrin encourages it, lets try. But, for a prominently hack and slash Distant Lands, this may be a difficult move, especially with the current (imo) lack luster reward system of a staff member looking over logs and passing out mpp when they have a chance. I'm very thankful there is at least that and staffers are doing a much better job and, well, thank you to you staffers.

What can be done? Lets get some ideas going, make it a topic in chat, maybe have a town meeting with staff, and brainstorm what we each think could be ways to improve it.

- Skill reward bonus' - say you train a horse for 30 minutes from a stable master, instead of just that one bonus of the "purple message" you get an extra bonus for completion. This would be similar to the task mark; one would see "Trainer" and could type training to see what type of extra bonus that trainer would give and to what skill it goes to. So, I go to Medinra, I see "Trainer" and type 'training'. A list pops up saying 'Riding' and how long the training session is for. Then I type 'train riding' and for maybe 30 minutes, am forced through a training session where I can't chose other actions unless I 'force quit training' Are you sure? Yes, quit. Then you are removed from the training session and have to wait another half day or so for it to become available again.

- Job system -You'd go to a mob and see a JOB highlight just like tasks. Maybe it could be 10 minute jobs (10 hours in DL time.) Easy enough to rp strict for 10 minutes right? If a staffer overviews the logs and sees you took the job, emoted you begin working the job, then didn't do anything else at all? They can take penalties, delivered in how they see fit be it taking multiples of what the payment was, rabid reindeer battles... I'm sure they could get creative when a player says I will strictly and actively rp for 8 minutes to get a reward and you don't. Ability to force quit the job.

- MPP hourly reward system. Now, with this, people could log on and stay on DL all day but not actually be active, that problem would have to be solved of course. Maybe have a more active auto log out system and if people are caught using macros to prevent it, severe punishment would be appropriate. ALL racials should become available at 100, more stuff to spend mpp on. With an improved, not easily abused mpp system, jobs should reward more mpp. We could get more items to turn mpp in for, say hp, mana, improved weapon specialties.

- Repeatable tasks, such as tasks that you have to kill certain mobs. Also, increase the difficulty of the mobs as you are permitted to redo it at certain level ranges. Repeatable tasks like delivering packages. Maybe repeatable once every half day? The xp and gold rewards would have to increase. Some of the rewards are so small that it's really not worth doing it other than to say you've done all the tasks you could find. The tasks that offer only mana, power, song etc, really should offer 5 to each, for each task. A task for 100k xp at higher levels is pretty much not worth doing because you could kill a handful of mobs for that much xp in as much time as it would take for you to do the task.

- XP rewards for rp'ing. If a staffer sees you're doing a great job, toss em 1m xp. Easily enough done with potions. Pouches of gold rewards. Oh, maybe even xp over time...oh, not only do you get gold for doing a job as stated above, but you get a hefty xp reward as well. I can only draw from an example of another mudd where just for greeting new people, you would get a good chunk of xp; enough that as a very low level, I gained a handful of levels just personally greeting different people. Also, players would have xp bonus' they could hand out like once an hour to players they felt were rp'ing well. It could probably be a percentage of that players overall required xp for that level, say 5%. So a newbie couldn't just get everyones free xp gifts and level insanely. But, that same nub could greet people and get a good bit of help to start out.

So, in order to help a transition from the hack slash leveling that we all know and enjoy, there must be profitable rewards for players to role play. I can role play for an hour my training on how to tame and ride a horse, but at the end, I get 1 mpp maybe the next day when a staffer has the opportunity to check the logs. Good when there's things I want to buy with mpp, bad after I've bought what I could use and have nothing else to spend mpp on.