ARK Event Summaries

Since we're having some issues with the Editor News forum at the moment, I thought I'd write up OOC summaries of ARK events here. I'm hoping this will help people get involved and perhaps provide some current affairs for RP.

Bear in mind these are just what we call "produced" events - planned, GMed ones - and doesn't include things like LTC social interaction. Otherwise please let me know if there's anything more you'd like to know about these events. In the last month we've had:


Subway Research

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Date: 15th July 2017
Location: Abandoned Subway, ICC HQ
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: A team of engineers was escorted into the subway by players to check structural integrity. They encountered various threats including a pack of dire wolves. The engineers successfully took their readings and some players apparently liberated wolf cubs from their parents.

Council of Truth Meeting

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Date: 5th August 2017
Location: Truth Tower, Tir
Reoccurring chars: Simon Silverstone, Kisra Delus, Alan Jacobi, Sir Tristram Solis and Joshua Kahn
Description: The Council discussed new intel on the cyber attack: Omni-Tek has also experienced a similar loss of data, informants are disappearing and Omni-Pol Clan Watch is searching Northern territories for a neutral named Corker in relation to the hack. Other topics included Raguun's alien goo and Solis's garden party. Please note that ICly the Council has not made this information public (the CoT is predominantly player-run. More info here.)

Return of the Expodragon

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Date: 12th August 2017
Location: Versaille Tower, Pleasant Meadows
Reoccurring chars: Expodragon, Dragonkeeper
Description: To complete a ritual, Exarchs of the Cult of the Immortal hired players to capture a baby dragon from its mother, the Expodragon (kidnapping baby creatures seems to be in vogue?) They visited a dragonkeeper at Versailles Tower and killed her to summon the beasts. The majestic Expodragon was slain by players, but the baby dragon escaped.

Rimah'Uri Retreat

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Date: 14th August 2017
Location: Last Ditch, Stret West Bank
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: After being alerted to Kyr'Ozch activity in Last Ditch, players arrived to find the place overrun with aliens. Fighting their way towards the centre of the town, they noticed aliens building a mysterious tower on top of Reet Retreat. Having none of that, players destroyed the tower, killed an alien officer and retook Last Ditch for humanity. Yay.

Aliens in Athen

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Date: 8th September 2017
Location: Old Athen
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: Just your everyday alien invasion of a major city. Probably nothing to worry about.

Omni-Pol goes to Clanland

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Date: 13th September 2017
Location: Old Athen
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: Omni-Pol Clan Watch pays a visit to Old Athen in their search for Corker. Though they politely demand compliance from the residents, things quickly turn ugly as the clans eject the Omnis from their city. The defenders fight off a host of riot police and robots and eventually bring down an OP-CW Command Vehicle.

Message in a Bottle

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Date: 16th September 2017
Location: Stret West Bank
Reoccurring chars: Captain Elbatross
Description: At the Talk Like a Pirate Day festivities in Reet Retreat, one of the (many) empty rum bottles contains a note from a ship captain marooned on a hidden beach in Stret West Bank. Players figure out the location, find the unfortunate captain, kill a giant lizard blocking their escape and bring Elbatross back to the party. She then tries to recruit the party goers as her replacement crew. (The party was hosted by ARK CR and Gridstream Productions)

For the Wine

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Date: 7th October 2017
Location: Wine, Belial Forest
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: Having learned some lessons from their previous incursion into Clanland, Omni-Pol show up in force, occupying and searching the town of Wine. Clan reinforcements arrive from Old Athen and after a large battle against a new, heavily shielded OP-CW Command Vehicle, they manage to retake the town from Omni-Tek.

Council of Truth Meeting

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Date: 7th October 2017
Location: Truth Tower, Tir
Reoccurring chars: Sir Tristram Solis, Corker
Description: The Council is surprised to find their usual meeting-place transformed into a refugee camp, and a woman demanding to know why they are there. They discover the woman is Corker who, after feeling partially responsible for the destruction of homes in Wine, brought displaced Winers to the mostly unoccupied tower for shelter, using her (surprisingly valid) security clearance to gain access. The Council discussed these developments as well as the return of a missing informant before leaving to investigate the events in Wine. (The Council of Truth is predominantly player-run)

The Guns of Galway Castle

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Date: 14th October 2017
Location: Galway Castle, Galway Shire
Reoccurring chars: N/A
Description: Emergency broadcasts alert players to the occupation of Galway Castle by Kyr'Ozch forces. Defenders spring into action and fight their way through the streets until the Rangers build an anti-air battery on top of the mansion. The players defend the mansion from waves of aliens as the battery shoots at the alien ship. Finally, with just one gun remaining and the Kyr'Ozch officer defeated, the heavily damaged alien ship retreats and the town is retaken.

where are announcements for these posted? how do people even find out about them? wtf. this is the first time i'm hearing of any of this lol

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Originally Posted by Lazy

where are announcements for these posted? how do people even find out about them? wtf. this is the first time i'm hearing of any of this lol

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Only event ever announced ahead of time is the Council of Truth meeting, as that is a player organized event.

ARK driven events are never announced, I haven't caught a single one of these myself. Looking at the dates though, I can guess Saturday is when most of them happen at some unknown time. I guess that means we have to camp major cities on Saturdays or stalk Feynrose if we hope to catch an event? :D

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Originally Posted by Lazy

where are announcements for these posted? how do people even find out about them? wtf. this is the first time i'm hearing of any of this lol

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Very generally speaking, we will target a city with broadcasts or blue-named charaters. Whoever is there at the time or hears about it can join. As Hilfy said, as a general rule these kind of events are not usually preannounced. The main reason for that is ARK Events are supposed to bring the world of RK to life and enhance immersion. That's why alien city attacks happen with very little warning and Omni-Pol doesn't announce its raids.

Personally, I do like to announce our events ahead of time, and will try to when it's appropriate. In the meantime though, for anyone who's reading, this is how to get involved with ARK Events:


Keep an eye out for our broadcasts in cities
These will appear as system messages. On Saturday for example, players in ICC and Borealis will have seen this message: "ATTENTION: Kyr'Ozch activity reported in Galway Castle. Citizens are advised to avoid the area until further notice."


Always talk to charaters with blue names if you see them around cities
These are ARK-run "NPCs" and are usually either recruiting for events or are storyline/social roleplay characters (AKA LTCs). Bear in mind these toons are ALWAYS IC and will not break character.


Get in touch with the roleplay community
Hilfy keeps this post updated with info on how to do that (saying hi in the #rkrpooc channel in the unofficial discord server might be a good place to start). The RP crowd tends to have a good idea about what we're up to.


Join/run one of the faction-specific roleplay meetings
These are generally organised by players and supported by ARK Events where possible. I believe the clan Council of Truth is the only one running at the moment.


You can contact us at events@aoark.org if you have any questions about any of the things we do
You can even use that address as an in-character contact for NPCs and storyline characters. So if you're following the current storyline and wanted to send a message to Alan Jacobi, leader of the Vanguards clan, that's how you can do it.


And finally, share info!
If you know about an upcoming event, or see one happening, please let people know in the your org chat, OOC channels, or discord. Everyone's welcome :)

there really should be at the very least tara-like global announcements. i've played this game since 07, and literally this is the first time i'm hearing about any of this happening ingame (besides the alien city raids of which i've seen maybe 2 in the last decade). i really don't understand how it's possible to clock over 500 days /played, have a toon in an rp org for a couple years, be involved in the professional program, antagonise developers and ARKs on IRC, and still not run into a single one of these events

I'm with Lazy on this one. I've been around for a long time and I can probably count on one hand the ammount of times I've caught any of these events.

You really should reconsider not advertising them effectively imo.

In 15 years, I think I ran into less than 20 of these events and the only reason I ran into any was just sheer luck. I never had any idea that they were announced.

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Originally Posted by Lazy

there really should be at the very least tara-like global announcements. i've played this game since 07, and literally this is the first time i'm hearing about any of this happening ingame (besides the alien city raids of which i've seen maybe 2 in the last decade). i really don't understand how it's possible to clock over 500 days /played, have a toon in an rp org for a couple years, be involved in the professional program, antagonise developers and ARKs on IRC, and still not run into a single one of these events

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i haven't checked it in awhile, but I recall at one point there was a chat channel (dunno who may of had access to send to it) just for RP news... IRRK or something? if its still around and working, that's really what should be used, to keep things more in character, and be like "we've heard rumours/reports of X near Y".

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Originally Posted by shadowgod

i haven't checked it in awhile, but I recall at one point there was a chat channel (dunno who may of had access to send to it) just for RP news... IRRK or something? if its still around and working, that's really what should be used, to keep things more in character, and be like "we've heard rumours/reports of X near Y".

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The IRRK Newswire channel? We used to use it a fair bit. Sadly it went down in 2012 and never came back.

We also had regular articles and occasional announcements on the Editor News Forum but we're having some issues with that too. Even characters that we made to replace the Newswire channel have been lost over time. So I hope people understand that we get it and do our best to involve as many people as we can with the tools we have available.

just post on here the night before? what's the issue? having never been to one of these events idk how many people show up but surely sacrificing engagement for immersion isn't a good thing, right? can ARKs do global announcements like the tara and gaunt ones?

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Originally Posted by Lazy

just post on here the night before? what's the issue? having never been to one of these events idk how many people show up but surely sacrificing engagement for immersion isn't a good thing, right? can ARKs do global announcements like the tara and gaunt ones?

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On server-wide broadcasts: We've looked into it a few times in the past, and the short answer is no we don't have that ability, at least not for these events.

On the figures and annoucnements: Engagement with one-off events has always been high (and we usually get the blame for associated lag/FPS drops, but hey!). Obviously the numbers are a lot lower than they used to be and I want to do what I can to raise that, including preannouncement whenever appropriate/possible. It's not like we haven't done it in the past. Here's an example from the big battle I ran in 2013 that changed Borealis from Omni to Neutral. The current engagement concern is with people being able to follow our storylines since we can't currently post on the Editor News forum. That's why I started this thread.

On what the issue is: Please bear in mind our tools and resources aren't at the same level as 2013 - we might not know the day before if we can run an event, or what level of turnout we can support, or even if someone is available to post on the forum. We're still here though, trying to make RK that little bit more deadly unpredictable :)

Since in-game and forum tools seem problematic at the moment, would using Discord be something that's possible / permitted for the event announcements?

Rumour has it that an in-character channel might be added to the AO Discord (*stares at shadowgod - feeds more noodles* ), if so then would ARK be able to make in-character emergency broadcast or PSA of the event coming up? Maybe something like "Omni troops seen moving towards Old Athen. Estimated to reach the city in 30 min." or "Clan rebels noted in Clond(y)ke, suspected to be moving towards Notum canons."

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Originally Posted by Hilfy

Since in-game and forum tools seem problematic at the moment, would using Discord be something that's possible / permitted for the event announcements?

Rumour has it that an in-character channel might be added to the AO Discord (*stares at shadowgod - feeds more noodles* ), if so then would ARK be able to make in-character emergency broadcast or PSA of the event coming up? Maybe something like "Omni troops seen moving towards Old Athen. Estimated to reach the city in 30 min." or "Clan rebels noted in Clond(y)ke, suspected to be moving towards Notum canons."

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Sounds good! ... But you've probably realised by now: nothing is that simple. :P

Seriously though, clearly there's demand for us to get the word out more, so I'll speak to Mmir and ARK management and see what we can implement that we don't already do. Obviously I can't make any promises, and even with more means of communication, the producer would have to decide what is and isn't appropriate for the event. For example: Zagadka, Hilfy and co, I'm sure you want more engagement with the Council of Truth, but even if I was allowed to I wouldn't message the entire server with a Truth Tower waypoint at the beginning of the meeting. I imagine you'd agree!

In the meantime, everyone reading this, please help us spread the word as much as you can. And please do email the team with any feedback and suggestions: events@aoark.org

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Originally Posted by Feynrose

Sounds good! ... But you've probably realised by now: nothing is that simple. :P

Seriously though, clearly there's demand for us to get the word out more, so I'll speak to Mmir and ARK management and see what we can implement that we don't already do. Obviously I can't make any promises, and even with more means of communication, the producer would have to decide what is and isn't appropriate for the event. For example: Zagadka, Hilfy and co, I'm sure you want more engagement with the Council of Truth, but even if I was allowed to I wouldn't message the entire server with a Truth Tower waypoint at the beginning of the meeting. I imagine you'd agree!

In the meantime, everyone reading this, please help us spread the word as much as you can. And please do email the team with any feedback and suggestions: events@aoark.org

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Yup, and I agree. There are times a notice would be appropriate while others times it would be slightly silly.

I think we can add this topic as a point to discuss at the Green Cloaks meeting, and not derail your nice thread of Events. :D

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Originally Posted by Hilfy

Yup, and I agree. There are times a notice would be appropriate while others times it would be slightly silly.

I think we can add this topic as a point to discuss at the Green Cloaks meeting, and not derail your nice thread of Events. :D

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I'm reading this with great interest. Very valid points. Looking forward to the Meeting. :)