As a few of you have noticed by now, there are several horses listed as being power level 10, and the subforums have disappeared off of the main forum index. There are reasons for this! I've made two big changes to the site.

1. To offset the lower level of activity, the herdlands are again merging into the 7 main areas.

This means that there will be only 7 herds, not 15, in Terra. In other words, no more Lords and Vassals, beginning Wednesday. Lead Stallions are still encouraged to post in their own herdlands by this wednesday if they wish to keep their land. In herdlands where the Lord does not post by Wednesday, but a Vassal does, the Vassal will become the new Lead Stallion of that area. If both the Lord and Vassal post, the Lord will remain the Lead Stallion, and the Vassal may choose to live on as part of the Lord's herd, or may venture off to claim his own land. Areas where neither the Lord nor the Vassal posts will be available for claiming. This all goes into effect Wednesday, May 19th. Yes, the subforums will remain... they will just belong to the herd controlling the whole area, not to two or three individual herds.


2. The powers system is completely rewritten, to make it easier to earn and maintain a power.

Spirit Quests, as of today, are done away with. The new method for gaining a power is written on the Rules page and on the 'How it Works' sticky in Terranfall. Users will now be allowed to create their own powers, and may have that power approved or declined by an administrator or moderator. Once a power is approved, your horse will automatically grow one power level for each month, real time, after the day the mod approved their power. Remember, you must still belong to a faction to receive a power, and your power must be within the limits of what that faction's god can give.



EDIT: Wednesday is here, and the herdlands have been combined. My apologies to Stormshadow, who was the only leader to confirm his presence and not keep any land (expect Roundabout, but I can't apologize to myself.) Two herdlands went up for claims - Stargem and the Valley - and Stargem still has yet to find a leader. Claiming is done on a first come, first serve basis, so move quickly if you'd like to claim.

A contest has been posted in the OOC board! Design a power for your characters... for a chance to win it! Please see the post for details. :)

click click click!


Also, a few little changes in the site's layout: as you'll notice, affiliates have finally been sorted into static and scrolling (because, though we request to have our banner made static and visible on all pages, many do not comply, and stick us either in a scroll/marquee or in a seperate page.) I've also added a staff picks section, for sites that I (or the mods) find really exceptional. Note that these are NOT sister sites (except for FSCRP) and no one may ask to have their site put there. Those spots are earned based solely on our opinions.

Also, a bit of moving around with the home page: the Terra stats have been moved to the left nav, since people seem to have trouble finding them, and new members moved to the right side on the home page. The new threads and new replies blocks have changed too, to assure that they no longer stretch the page like they have been doing, when someone posts with a long thread title or username.

That's all for now; get working on those powers! I want to see some great entries. :)

- Michi

Hello ladies (and gentleman.) Welcome to the long-awaited Hoofbeat v.9.0!

As I'm sure you've noticed, with the birth of this site comes many new changes: namely, the elimination of the "light" and "dark" alliances and the birth of the faction system. Also, the expansion of the herdlands and naming of new areas, along with the Lord and Vassal system. And - silly me, how could I forget - magic! Yes, that's right... we've done away with what scraps of realism we still retained, and replaced it with a touch of magic. Don't get too excited; this magic needs to be earned. It will not be handed over lightly.

Please read around the site to familiarize yourself with the new changes. Take a good, long look at the new content page additions... and at the old ones, too. There have been many changes to the rules, to accomodate these new features.

I'd like to also apologize to you: after putting HB through all the hassle and stress of those ridonkulous upgrades, I was unable in the end to copy over all of the user information, post counts, and posts to the new forum systems (which was my main goal in doing so.) I'm so sorry you have to lose all of those posts! To make up for it, the old version will be left up indefinitely as an archive site; feel free to copy and paste any threads that were still in progress in order to continue them here.

I'd also like to point your attention, when re-joining, to the changes to the Character Info board and the user profiles: please adjust your horses' information to include all of the new fields, and be sure to fill out your profile completely, with a link to your Character Info thread and the names of each of your active characters.

With all of that said... welcome back, and enjoy!

- Michi


More to come:
-- Avatars on the forums
-- Tool to select which avatar you wish to post with
-- Images for the gods
-- New layouts