You know, I really have to visit here a little more often if I expect you to 🙂

My interest in the game waxes and wanes with how busy my life is and last year was a whopper.  Lots of changes, a 5 week strike at work, and just generally having to be selective in my choices with entertainment.  What brings me back to Realms once more?  News 1090 naturally.

About 3 years ago I was approached by Akael to work on an update to the Darkhaven Art Gallery.  I was really honoured to participate, I know that it’s such a pivotal area for so many newer players.  I felt that there was a lull in the levelling areas for the 30’s so that’s sort of where I put my focus.  I also looked at the gear in those levels and where I was still wearing academy equipment or other similarly low level stuff and thought, hey these are gaps to fill.  You can let me know if I hit the mark or not, but I think at least some people will be happy with the stuff that was brought in.

I’ve been around this week testing and helping to fix some logic errors in the area.  I can’t thank Destre enough for her efforts, that woman is devoted to seeing things in the game be top notch!  Thanks also to Akael, Ceirana, Zistrosk, and all the others who worked on this project in the background.  To my mind having such a great and diverse group working on these projects helps keep the quality up.

I’ve heard people in the past complain about how long these projects take, hey, there’s lots of time spent checking and rechecking and then fixing things.  Let’s not forget our imms are volunteers giving their leisure time to do these things.  I had to take the idea that “I did my part, it’s in their hands” … but it was exciting to see it ported.  This is the 3rd time some piece of work of mine has found it’s way into Realms and it’s a thrill every time.

The first was an IOQC area I wrote as a member of DS waaaay back in the day.  You had to find and return dragon eggs, but everyone just ended up killing the dragons… the only problem is the dragons used “murder” instead of “kill” and so the spam was unbelievable.  Also killing the dragons was ridiculously hard to discourage that behaviour but … when IOQC teams go at it, they are definitely determined teams and view challenges as things to be overcome.  It went … oh… 4 or 5 hours?  Intended time… 90 minutes?  Yeah.  Learned a lot about not assuming how people will approach the problems.  Sometimes when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail 🙂  Funny thing is that it was Destre helping then too, with an emergency assist from Moonbeam if I recall correctly.

Many of you may also recall I worked on the Guild of Spirits, stepping in to help with that project.  Though I didn’t have much to do with the initial design I am happy with the touches I left on it.  There are times I wish that I had been more active in the Guild of Origin build but you do what you can.

So what’s next for me?  To be really honest I don’t get a big thrill out of playing the game anymore.  I see equations when I look at the game… damage in, healing potential, damage out … scheduling problems like getting 4 people online who want to do the same thing etc.  These days I do continue to enjoy mapping as much of the Realms as I can, I do have a project underway that I put down 2 years ago that I think I should finish and share.  I also see a couple of unfinished building projects I think I may be ready to put my hands to and see if they can get to the finish line.  Of course there’s also more ideas … a totally new area … but finish one thing before starting the next!

I have not yet explored the other new paintings that my fellow builders worked on, I look forward to exploring them soon.  If you see one of them online, thank them!