ALFA and it's sister world, Exodus, have resently begun talks about ways in which we can work towrards bringing our two communities closer. Both our worlds already share a lot in common. We both have very similar outlooks on roleplaying; both worlds thrive on DM propelled adventure; and both worlds even share the same base haks. All these things makes Exodus an obvious choice when it comes to inter-community agreements.

As such, Exodus and A Land Far Away have set in course a plan to set down the road of intergration for our communities. As of today, ALFA and Exodus have decided to combine membership pools. That means if you are a member of ALFA, you may now play freely on Exodus. And likewise, if you are a member on Exodus, ALFA's doors are now open for you. If you are an ALFA member looking to play in Exodus, check out our forums for information on how.

With that in mind, I would like to welcome all Exodus members to ALFA. 

Please take a moment to full out an application.

This is for two main reasons - first, as a way of letting our staff here know that you plan on playing. Second, it gives you access to all our player information and forums, to allow for better communication. Not to mention access to the password. Don't feel you have to complete the entire application - just simply mention that you are from exodus, and our application team will be able to cross-check your name with a list supplied by the Exodus Council.

It also might pay to take a quick flick through some of the website - a wealth of information can be found, should it be needed.

After that, you are free to play in ALFA as you wish. We currently have two servers Live - Baldur's Gate, and The Silver Marshes. Both have fair DM coverage and a large standing player base. Two more servers are on the way, currently in their late Beta testing stages - Moonshae Isles and Western Heart Lands. Both Beta servers are always looking for more testers, so feel free to get together with a group and spend a few hours exploring over these untouched regions.

A couple of quick ground rules, for both Exodus players and ALFA players 

• First, please treat all players and DMs with the utmost respect - nothing less will be tolerated. 
• Second, yes, you may have one PC in Exodus and one PC in ALFA. 
• Third, if you misbehave in one world, Exodus and ALFA both bare the rights to ban you from their respective servers - whether or not this will effect your status on the other world is up to the ALFA Admin/Exodus Council.

If you keep these three basic points in mind, I'm sure that this arrangement will bring nothing but good opportunities for players and DMs alike, from both sides of the fence.

In the future, our two worlds have set our sights on further intergration. What exactly this means, we aren't completely sure of yet. All we know is this merging of membership pools is merely opening the first gateway towards greater cooperation.

If you have any questions, please do not hessitate to contact me (Rotku), or jump on our chat rooms (#alandfaraway) and ask.

I'm pleased to say that ALFA has seen a rather remarkable growth rate of late.  A combination of advertising, community involvement and returning members has given us an impressive population bump, with numbers consistently in the teens and even twenties for The Silver Marches server and approaching double digits for the Baldur's Gate server. With the Western Heartlands in final testing and the Moonshaes building up nicely out of the ocean, the population explosion is happily coordinated with a sort of ALFAic manifest destiny. While the numbers can be expected to fluctuate, of course, in the end I foresee a rather happy vision of steady population across multiple servers...the ALFArican dream coming true.

Of course with growth comes change as we integrate both new horizons and new players into the ALFAbetized world of our playstyles and expectations. Anything, however, can be overcome by communication, and so I take this chance to tell everybody, new and old, GMT or wonky South Australian time, hin or human...."welcome." Our door is always open to anybody reading this who wants to join our RP heavy, slow progression, low magic Faerunian community. Drop us an app or pop into chat. My chat window is always open, too, if I'm around. Welcome to our little ALF(and dorf and horc)heim.

Just taking a moment to give three cheers outside of ALFA, to the folks over at the Citadel School of Persistent World Building. It does us good to remember that we're a part of the wider NWN2 community frequently, and I'm glad to lend a hand wherever we can to help out this praiseworthy effort to provide a repository for building and tech lore for NWN.

Check 'em out as they grow and provide more and more information to the community we share. We'll be sharing some of our tutorials and whatever they'll find useful. It's an effort I think is worth being part of. Thanks especially to brianmeyerdesign/Pain, for being the ambassador that reached a hand out to us.

The gnomes of ALFA have been hard at work creating items for sale in a new dynamic store system ingame. Thanks to Audark and Danielmn for so many unique items of late. Now in a testing phase on ALFA Server 003: The Silver Marches, a script that randomly populates new and wonderful items may create one or two goodies at a time in stores all over the server. It doesn't fire at every store opening nor at the first store opening per store, but works on a random timer system. When it does fire, though, the items it provides are frequently of a higher value or more unique nature than the static contents of the store. (Although let's not go overboard -- ALFA is still a low-magic world.) It adds a nice variety to store contents, though, and an element of anticipation to every shopping trip! After the TSM test is over, we'll look at setting it up pan-server. Along with the custom skills, the travel and encounter system, custom languages and custom spells...you can look forwart to this as just another little goodie brought to you by the building and tech team of A Land Far Away.

Even though ALFA's birthday is traditionally April 15th, close to the anniversary of our NWN1 Live date, we've seen more New Year's Eve's than that. Before our April 17th, 2003  (not 15th, hoorah for choosing an official, more easily memorable date)  Live date,  ALFA had been around as a community since 1999. Imagine. 10 years. That's many auld lang syne under the bridge, and many auld acquaintances not forgot. 

For a little historical reading, here's an interview of then Lead Admin, Mandos, from August of 2002, and here's the announcement of our NWN1 Live date. I wish I could find the interview we were granted by Feargus Urquhart and Anthony Davis at E3 of 2006, just to give equal coverage to NWN2, but I fear my copy went with a hard drive crash.  If anybody has it, let me know and I'll put it up for download.  From NWN0 to NWN2, there've been many milestones, and many good times.

Here's to the next 10 years.

I'd like to thank Beyond the Pale for his recent review of ALFA on Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault, entitled Three_Hour_Tour. It was a favorable and flattering review and I'm very pleased that we were able to communicate so much of what makes us ALFA to our gracious guest.

Thank you, BTP. I can see no better Christmas gift for this community.  We're glad you came by. And to all you community members, please post a comment to the review and/or to a post I made proudly,  advertising_it_on_the_Bioware_Forums.

Thank you, and Merry Christmas all.