Community and Communication

AC has two main social groupings - fellowships and allegiances.  Fellowships are temporary groupings adventurers make to fight monsters, go questing, or just to be social.  Fellowship members have the option of sharing the experience and treasure the group gathers.  The more people in the fellowship, the greater the experience bonus to each kill, so a good fellowship can enter a dungeon, spread out, and maximize their experience production.  The Fellowship window also displays everyone's vital statistics, so healers can watch their fellows carefully.  Hunting in a fellowship is a great way to earn lots of experience quickly, especially if you are a more support-oriented character.  One important note - to share experience evenly, every fellowship member must be within 5 levels of the creator - or - everyone in the group must be over level 50.  If these requirements are not met, then experience is divided unevenly, giving the more experienced character far more experience.

Allegiances are far more permanent groupings.  The most basic allegiance is the patron/vassal relationship.  Every character has the option of swearing fealty to one person.  In exchange for taking a vassal, the patron receives a bonus percentage of the vassal's total experience earned.  This pass-up is a bonus and in no way affects the vassal at all.  The amount of experience passed up is based on total experience earned, the loyalty stat of the vassal, the leadership stat of the patron, and the time the two have spent together.  Any character may swear fealty to any other character, regardless of level.  However, a vassal will only start to pass up XP if he is of equal or lower level than his patron.  Once a vassal starts passing up XP, he will never stop even if he outlevels his patron.  The patron does not have any responsibilities built into the game, but most patrons reward their vassals with gifts and knowledge and take their vassals questing.  Swearing fealty is something to be taken seriously!  It is possible to break your oath to your patron, but it costs experience.  Patrons can break a vassal's oath without cost if the vassal becomes troublesome.

Monarchies are formed by patrons swearing to other patrons and thus becoming vassals, like one giant pyramid scheme.  One character at the top is a vassal to no one and is called the monarch.  Monarchs have a great deal of responsibility, given that everyone in the monarchy has a reasonable claim to the monarch's time.  Of course, the monarch also gets a great deal of experience passed up to him, as well as other perks, such as the chance to own a Mansion and various other monarchy tools.

All of these groups require special commands to communicate.  The most simple form of communication is /say, which is the default method of speaking - just type your message into the dialog box, and you will say it.  /say is public and everyone within earshot will hear it.  If you want to discuss an issue privately with a person, use /tell <name>, .  This chat can only be seen by the recipient.  You can use /r to reply to the last person to /tell you, or you can use /retell to send a message to the last person you sent a /tell to.  If you are in a fellowship, you can chat with the group by using /f.  Talk to your patron by using /p.  Patrons can talk to their vassals by using /v.  Co-vassals can talk to each other and their patron by using /c.  If you need to talk to the monarch, use /m.  The newest chat feature is /a, which allows everyone in the monarchy to talk to each other!  Allegiance monarchs and their officers can use special features to set the message of the day or to send messages to everyone in the monarchy, even if they have the allegiance chat room disabled.

Additionally, you have a friends list.  New in January 2006 is the Friends Tab.  Instead of just having text, the new Friends Tab shows you who is online at any given time.  To add a name, simply type in the name in the text box and hit 'Add'.  Any time a friend logs in or out, the game will notify you.  The game will also notify you when your patron or any of your vassals log in or out, so you do not have to add those people to your list.  You only get 50 names, so make them count!   You can also mask your presence by hitting the 'Appear Offline'.  I don't know why you'd want to do that, personally...

New in September 2005 are global chat channels and additional chat windows.  The channels are General, Trade, Looking for Group, and Roleplay.  The first three are defaulted to on, so they will appear in your main window unless you change things.  Check out the 'Chat' and 'Character' tabs of the Options page to change the defaults and where the messages appear.  You can set up your new chat windows so that all your chat is directed to a particular global channel, but if you'd prefer to type in the main box, you'll need to use the correct prefix.  General is /cg, Trade is /ct, LFG is /clfg, and Roleplay is /crp.  Note that none of these channels are moderated, so there can be some very inappropriate language.

At some point, you will probably run into another character who is rude, foul-mouthed, or is just someone you don't want to listen to.  Fortunately, you can filter out everything he says in any channel with /squelch.  You can filter out just that character if you like or you can be a bit more thorough and filter all of that player's characters with /squelch -account <name>.  You have a 64-name squelch list.