Lorien Trust

This is the first opportunity that the Lorien Trust has had to comment on the potential attendance of Pythia at the Gathering 2010.  We have only just managed today to commence normal office based business, following the take-down period at Locko Park following our previous events, so we have been unable to see and reply to the many posts on both our Forum and other web pages.

It was Lorien Trusts intention to add a poll to our website today, providing our customers with more details of the possibility of Pythia playing at the event, and to gain our Customers feedback, prior to making any firm decisions.

Due to circumstances out of our control, the Lorien Trust has been unable to discuss and poll our customers, prior to Pythia releasing their attendance and participation on their websites.

Following the results of our poll, we would have discussed the requirements with the relevant departments regarding the logistics required, should we go ahead with Pythia’s performance at the Gathering and any possible in-game impact, whist allowing our customers to give their feedback before making the final decision.

Due to the various reactions that have been created online to the discovery that Pythia may be playing at our event, some constructive enquiries, to confusion over the lack of Lorien Trust official communication and negative knee jerk reaction.  An amazing amount of inflammatory speculation and comments surround this subject.

Lorien Trust feels that with this level of negative response and due to time constraints that we have no alternative but to not look further into this venture and therefore there will be no rock band or any other band playing at the Gathering. We already this afternoon discussed with Pythia our mutual concerns with not continuing this venture.

It is our intention to continually improve our customers experience at Lorien Trust events.

Our idea to allow Pythia to play a set at the Gathering would have been an opportunity for both Pythia fans and Lorien Trust customers to come together and do something they enjoy. Pythia and their fans were all to be in costume and spend the Gathering learning to role-play, for some of them this would have been an opportunity to attend a Lorien Trust event as an experienced role-player from other systems and MMORGs, as most new customers come to us from this sort of background.

The performance would be destined to be scheduled at a time that would mean it would have not finished too late in the evening as to disturb those customers with families. Pythia were aware that we are a family event and would have made sure that their performance was suitable with this fact and unlike the performance of the last Ceilidh that we had onsite, Pythia’s technicians along with our own would have made sure that the sound levels would be of a reasonable level and would not increase throughout their performance.

Lorien Trust also acknowledges the fact that there may have been some typos made on the Pythia website and forums badly explaining our pricing system. Fans of Pythia would have been able to book for our event as if they were any other new customer to our system, using the same offer that Lorien Trust has published for all new customers. This would have meant that they could have come to a Lorien Trust event for 50% discount (£30 if pre-booked before the deadline rather than £60 as an existing customer) and role-played like any other customer.

Lorien Trust did not offer Pythia fans any other discount or offer that was not already offered to existing or new customers.

Lorien Trust would like to apologise to our customers for any confusion and the lack of communication on this matter. We would also like to apologise to Pythia and its fans for any upset caused by stereotyping upon our forums or other media used.

Although the Lorien Trust applauds such a high level of activity from its customer base of avid players, protecting its system (if this was PVP we would never need monsters) we would hope that in future when we have  polls and discussions we will also have such an active customer as it has been lacking in the past.  The Lorien Trust feels disheartened that a minority of Larpers have themselves have caused a stereotyping of the hobby and its players.