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I will be honest, I have always been perplexed by people asking for coded alliance systems as I’m not sure what hard coded alliance systems will actually accomplish, and I suspect those asking for it were expecting some sort of changes in balance that it fundamentally can’t address.

What is the goal that the system is meaning to accomplish? Is to shake things up? I don’t see coded systems doing that. If it’s to help with population issues, I think new content people can engage with to retain playerbase will do more to help that than some minor buffs.

As an aside on I’m really not keen on the idea of one alliance city/commune influencing/bombarding for another. Not being able to do that is actually an interesting dynamic for tension between allied orgs.

While I don't disagree, I think we're derailing a bit from the subject of the thread and what is possible for this feature to address. To copy Ealix from Discord,

The desire is to encourage inclusion and activity.

Lusternia is dying. This saddens me, a lot. 

I think the entire problem is population and activity. I mean this in the best way, but Lusternia is dying. People are leaving and not coming back because we feel unheard and ignored for trivial and minute changes that don't really draw people in and keep them here anymore. Admin and player attitudes have become apathetic at best and I'm sure there's lots of things going on behind the magic curtain that we, as players don't see.

I can't say I know what the answer is but I don't think this is it. 

That will still come down to population, I know during my peak times we have a lot of IHC and not a lot of SL. But if I log in before I go to work in the wee morning hours, SL is booming. 

The problem is the population. We have too many organizations and too few players.

How is the power cost going to work when organizations are dead and have no people to generate power? That's going to suck up a lot of resources for the not-so-active organization. So the least active organizations are going to have to work even harder to keep it going. I'm not going to burn myself out for an organization. Been there, done that.

How is this going to force an alliance shake-up? What's going to stop people from continuing to use a clan for their alliance? 

The influencing benefits? I don't understand, people just walk away from debates now, and no one sticks around for a debate or hides behind sanctuary. Does that mean sanctuary and crusade are going to be done away with and all revolts will be unpeaced? 

While I understand there's a need for things to be balanced, I don't think it's fair to block people from events that give daily credits. A lot of people rely on daily credits. What will stop alliances from tossing their best people in while the others are locked out? I don't think there will be a happy balance here. 

I mean this in the politest way, but I don't understand how out of touch admin are with most players. When we say give us formal alliances, we don't mean 'give us buffs for grouping up with orgs'. None of this formal power and gold costs. None of this upkeep cost. None of this buff bullshit that's just going to make things worse. None of 'everyone else is an enemy' lists

All we want in an alliance system:

combat balance around limiting numbers. If alliance A has 5 in area then allowed Alliance B in combat event also 5 end.  (maybe not a direct 1:1 but you get the idea)
alliancetell
alliancehelp/log

All the things we get out of a clan as a formal 'group'. Nothing more (outside using membership into that 'group' for balancing combat events)

You (admin) are making systems more complex than needs to be. You are trying to make reasons for something when simple and basic is better.

Thanks all for the feedback so far! Responding slightly out of order and instead by theme...

Phase 1 should unlock this! This was one of the benefits that we wanted out of this project.

That idea is definitely on our radar for Phase 2 

Also on our radar for Phase 2

We haven't quite determined the standard for the dates yet. Right now, my focus is on coding the system itself, and then we'll move into a phase of generating all the content. There will need to be discussions about all the standards and norms we want to follow for that content.

You bring up a few good points here. Ultimately, we wanted to build this as a feature of the game for a few different reasons. First, it creates an official record of the histories, which can be edited and maintained by the admin team and which can be made publicly available to showcase the rich stories that fill Lusternia. Second, we feel that the ideal scenario for any game content is to be able to access it in-game and not need to visit a third-party source. This allows players to reference the content in-game (e.g. in GHELP and CHELP files) and makes it more seamless to point newbies towards it, etc. Third, as Qoivhae already guessed, one thing we want to unlock is to have entries and even entire timelines that are thoroughly not public - e.g. specific to an organization or perhaps even 'unlocked' by players. Selfishly, it also allows the admin team to have entries that are not visible to mortals for our own notes and record-keeping. Fourth, the timeline is meant to serve as a hub that can point to other ways to engage with the histories - e.g. referencing player-written books, as Huskii guessed.

There certainly is a good point about the amount of effort to generate the initial content and to upkeep it going forward. As we were evaluating this proposal, we felt that the initial lift for content generation would be worth the benefits above. Going forward, for the official histories at least, our hope is that since an admin will be writing an Events post anyways, creating a timeline entry is a fairly small additional to-do.

Speaking personally, one reason I've kept coming back to Lusternia - and even decided to become an Eph! - is because of the rich storytelling here. For my Eph project, I wanted to work on something that would help highlight those stories and bring a new dimension to that side of the game. Phase 1 alone doesn't hit all of our ambitions for this, but it'll hopefully be a good foundation to keep building on top of.

Please keep the discussion and feedback coming!

-Scout