View attachment 43045
Well this is what we built with our EM only to be told once it was finalized and completely built that it couldn't be there and had to pull it all down. One tiny 7x9 house could be placed in one spot, although in 18 yrs noone has ever put one there and within two screens or so you can place a castle if you want, not to mention the 100's of empty 18 x 18 spots and other lesser plots. You can walk around Luna and place multilple max houses just outside the wall, the spot is even vacant on Atlantic, but yeah, our memorial gardens were 'illegal' as someone might wanna place and if we had it there everyone else on other shards would want it, and not sure what the other 'objections' were.
Suffice it to say there is a lot of bad feeling re the whole thing atm. The EM placed all the 'official' memorial stones and we decorated them into a 'wall' and solo plots, an area to have a service if people required it and areas for people to 'sit' and remember etc. All the decorations were supplied by players. We had 5 of the memorials taken up already, with relatives of one (passed away sept 2015), and real life friends of another who (passed away Jan 2016) in attendance when it was completed, both of whom were overwhelmed and so pleased with the area. It was designed so that it was 'future' proofed, which unfortunately is something that is likely to happen given the age of the game and the age of players now. So while 5 of the spots had their engravings there were another 10 that could be used and the area allowed for the hedge to be moved back if in future you needed any more room. The concept was that when someone required a 'memorial' they could select the 'stone' (as per the post above), get it engraved (5 lines), if they used a 'wall spot' they also had an additional 3 lines on the sign, and they could also select what 'deco' they wanted if they chose a pedestal type stone and select a banner for the wall as a further way of 'customizing'. While the stones were place for current visual appearance it allowed future players the ability to then 'customize' it with the help of the EM in the future. The ones not in use just say 'memorial stone' while those in use had detail of the player main char, the time they passed and small memorial script.
Anways, we can't use that whole space and so now we have to try and find somewhere else, and put up 'single' stones or something, the info is pretty unclear. This area was ideal as it was on a point by itself out of town, not in the way of anything and not in everyones 'face' so you really had to be 'going' there rather than stumble over it.
Either way the concept of a Memorial Garden shouldn't be discounted, there are a LOT of players now in their late 50's, 60's or older and this is gonna be happening more and more. One of the above players. had played consistently with 3 accounts for the past 16+ yrs and passed away very suddenly, her husband still plays. It has been a traumatic experience for a lot of us, and a dedicated area should be nominated so that this grief and hassle with requests is eliminated. Surely something coordinated and planned is much better than a bunch of ad hoc stones springing up all over the place with some people getting attended to and others being ignored depending on shard, EM etc etc etc.
Anyways, I guess we will have to try again. Although I must admit it is pretty disheartening to go to so much effort for nil result.