The Theory of CF, a Ludo-narrative?

[Titus]

I'd like to address where the real lore of CF comes from. In many ways CF appears to be a 'typical' fantasy world with a pantheon of deities, bestiary of strange monsters and similarly varied arrangement of spells and prayers. Over the years a story has congealed, borne by those imaginative writers in our midst which attempts to describe the entomology of the gods or the long history of the humanoid races. I do not disagree with any of this.
However there is another lore to CF, that of the real players and developers.
Now ordinarily this Players-History would have nothing at all to do with the game, having no impact on the 'themeparks' a player visits but with CF I think it's a little different.

Many games play tricks with the Fourth Wall, Morrowind and Minecraft are some which stands out to me the most but I'm sure you can think of others. Games which acknowledge that they're games can hint at a far deeper lore hidden somewhere inside this universe we're exploring through our avatar.

CF is far more obtuse than Morrowind. With CF we have the legends of the Builders, of Gnat the GNU and the events of Pre-Bigworld. Within the game we have events which may be immortalized within CF history but only make sense if world at some level knows it's being played by players.

I suggest that CF's REAL chance for dynamic history comes from the out of character interactions between player avatars and between developers.
Some days it seems CF is trying to be a high fantasy, other days it remembers it's primarily an environment struggling for balance like any organic world. Let's embrace that struggle and instead of trying to write stories of things that never happened, let's look to CF's own REAL history and take inspiration for the drama's that have unfolded over the last 20+ years. If we do that we lay the groundwork for an ever evolving history that needs no writers, only players who truly change the course of the servers history.

Ok, so you've read this far and no doubt wonder what all this means for game play.
In an attempt to answer the question of true dynamic history I'm developing a prototype for a 12 million tile buildable area tiled directly to Bigworld. Here players are able to build structures which will persist for the history of the server unless destroyed by their builder.
Players could build public areas and private fortifications as well as choose to wage war on each other for hidden stock piles all in a completely organic setting. From this we will be able to watch an environment truly change over time and add that ever missing fourth dimension, always alluded to but never accomplished.
With focus directed to this expansion pack we might take a break from the fatigue of map making and instead give the players plenty of tools to get the most out of this huge area.
Now high level players have something to spend their money on and low level players know that even at end game there will be a lot more they can do to leave their mark on the world. In the end I think that's all a lot of players want.

Thanks for reading this unedited commentary.