Tag: zistrosk

Trick or Treat! Happy November

by Tharius

Ahhh November 06 after reboot. For us pumpkin chasers and killers of Jerry it’s a calm, relaxing time. Not so much for Zistrosk and the quest to deliver the prizes.

I want to start today’s blog off by thanking him for his efforts on Oktoberquest 2018, as he put it, “it’s like a third job”. I know many of us felt like it was a part time job, constantly checking in on the pumpkins, coordinating our groups and on and on.

In the last blog I talked about some of the tricks people were using to get ahead, and I’d love to report that post-blogging things cleaned right up but alas, when the competitive spirit is in the air you can be sure that there will be people who will push every lever to try to get ahead.  I’m not here to talk about that right now, I’m here to talk about the Trick that Zistrosk pulled on us.  As the quest started to wind down some people figured out they could give away more than 5 helper points a day.  It’s believed that Inconnu figured this out first, but we know that Mossweaver tripped over it by accidentally sharing his Jerry mob with more than 1 group in a single day.  Do you know what that means?  All the gold, all the trash talk, all of it was a waste of time and effort.  It also made for a crazy last day where a room full of people banded together to swap points off each other.  Even if you didn’t want to really work with some people, you had to be there to make sure you didn’t fall behind.  After averaging 30-35 points a day to suddenly jump to 50 at a time when the next guy down is 60-80 points behind you?

Now certainly, if we had all just gotten along and all 67 questers had traded points evenly, then we’d all be bunched up in 1st place, so that wouldn’t work.  There would be groups that would decide only to trade internally, or to restrict some people so that they had an edge, but there would be less incentive.  Getting a good rapport with people and having them want to help you would mean more opportunities to trade points regularly.

Zistrosk … you bugger … you put a moral in the story!

He made good with the treats though.  Most questers got some glory, 20+ seeming to be very common and 2 immortality potions in a jack o’lantern container.  The next group up also received a piece of the drow equipment set, either the bracer or the earring.  The next group up also received a piece of the Guardian’s Exigency.  Finally, the very top tier people got a nifty anklet with 15 ac and aff protect on it.  The top 10 were all over 1,000 points.  To put that in perspective, 31 days of doing your 1-6 and taking your 21 points would be mean 651 points.  The rest were either 1 at a time, or in bursts of 10 for a kill blow.  My 14 pumpkin kills gave me 140 points which meant hundreds of helper points, 1 by 1.  The top 20 all managed to be above the 651 marker, with #20 coming in at 746.  Towards the bottom of the pack we do see people who game in for 1 or 2 days and then didn’t reappear.  Thanks for helping and visiting.  Come back soon 🙂

Let’s talk about some of the positive things I saw during this quest.

  • As the need for more bodies to share Jerry points grew I saw people in several organizations reaching out to older players and getting them to log in.  Getting people back and logged in is fantastic.  Some might have left because of a specific thing that was going on at a time, something that’s long gone, and they have a chance to check it back out.
  • I saw a real outreach to the solo questers to get them to be part of a team and band together.  Yes, in some cases this will prove superficial, but in many others we’ve broken the ice.  The newer players got to work with some experienced players and now feel comfortable asking for help or engaging in conversation.
  • I saw a ton of cross order co-operation between groups that aren’t traditionally working together.  That’s not to say one group locked to another – at one point Arcanes was working with Dragonslayer and other times with Ringbearers.  Baali’s active members were well represented and competitive, even spotted an Ascendere or two, though one looked like a Guild of Origin character (teasing Bri!!).

Personally I got to chat with a few people who I don’t know that we’d regularly chat.  People like Indious and Semiramia and Merit.

There were definitely caches of people who were playing hard but clean and I really appreciated that.  When I started using Quantum Spike scrolls on Pumpkin Day because the mob tank switching was nerfing circle at DYING some people’s initial reaction was “cheese” or “trying too hard”.  Fair enough.  I disagree, you’ve gotta hit hard at the end and it still takes luck, but ok.  A short time later many were doing it.  Cool.  To me though, the person who took that idea and innovated was Semiramia who switched to Quill mage so that she could recite spellbooks that cast 3 quantum spikes at a time.  She stepped up and proved mages can get kbs on quest mobs.  My hat is off.

I finished in the top 10, tied for the 2nd most kill blows on the pumpkins with 2 others.  Dang it Sartanis, you got the 15th one!  I’m pleased with that finish.  More important than the finish though is that I’m glad I was part of a group that coalesced almost out of nothing and managed to challenge an contend in this quest.  Good quest to Sartanis, Jethren, Morphina, Klaatu, Strador, Netherwood, Aisic, Brianey, Emrakuja, Ceir, and the many others we worked with.  Today some of that group went an chilled out at Corsterix for a while, got some Nasrs and helped a couple new players with gear.  That’s the big prize.  For those already in working teams, tend your garden.  It takes work to keep teams engaged, and lots of engaged teams fall apart.  I hope all of our groups stay busy over the next while, busy groups are good for the Realms as a whole.

I offered Zistrosk the final word on today’s blog, he earned it:

Zistrosk tells you ‘I loved how everyone came together and helped each other, and it was great to see so much activity.  More questors signed up for this quest and actively participated than any quest I’ve ever run before, which was totally awesome.  I hope next year’s quest is as popular, and not as exhausting!’

 

From working on the database to working on the guilds …

by Tharius

I am still working away at some trigger problems, so I’ll return to that topic soon enough, but now for something completely different …

When I returned to Realms one of the first things I did was ask Gonnil to port an area that Julie had almost completed before she died.  I want to see it completed and in game to honour her but I also don’t want it to be too pansy and need to be tweaked and updated to accommodate the new reality of the Realms (for example barbarians weren’t in the game when the area was designed).  Part of that education has been to learn what tactics and techniques are currently used and work them into my design.  That’s still an ongoing issue.

In the mean time as I discussed building things with people I was steered to approach Melindora and Zistrosk about contributing to the guild overhaul.  As I understand it the guild revisions had been proposed quite a while beforehand and should have been completed by March 2013 according to the original timetable.  As it was early May and they were not done we can safely assume timetables be damned but there was an urgency to getting this project completed.

So a bit of backstory.  It’s not widely known but it’s not secret either.  I was passed a log of the meeting at which the changes were announced to the leadership of the guilds and I must say I was not surprised by resistance to the idea of the merger but I was disappointed with the way that rather than contribute to the new ideas some of the guild leaders elected to abandon the project and even their guilds.

After this announcement many guild run programs became idle as no one wanted to accumulate points towards gear and not have those points recognized in the new guild.  This led to wholesale inactivity in guilds as far as I can tell.  I think that if people had continued to be active in their programs and had gone forward with an agreement to honour the old point systems then perhaps the merger would have gone on with a more active userbase but … it didn’t happen.  With some notable exceptions people abandoned the old guilds and moved on.

When I joined the project my original idea was to work on Guild of Origin but I was happy to contribute to the Guild of Spirit build.  At that point Guild of Nature was well developed and a lot of what you see today was already there.  Zistrosk was in full shine and polish mode, though through working together and using each other as sounding boards some things evolved.

Melindora had already established the layout of the Guild of Spirit and I started a process of adding extra descriptions and programs into the guild, polishing each room description as I went along using Melindora’s original descriptions as a guideline.  We have differences of style but what eventually came out of it and is in the game now I’m quite pleased with.

I think that at first there was an outpouring of effort but that as personality conflicts arose people dropped off the project.  By the time I was working on Zist’s port it was not uncommon that only he and I were on.  In time Bern stepped in to help get GoO completed and Malkatov dropped in to start designing the guild port quests.  The whole while there was a ton of support and consultation with Ceirana and Destre (hand holding too sometimes).  Gonnil was a big help with unkinking some programs.

As I worked on the guild project I really got the chance to brush the dust off my creative side and take it out for some exercise.  I originally was uncertain about revising an area but it really did leave a lot of room for creative expression.

When we were finally finished with the builds they went back to the Build Council and finally the CoE for approval, some things got nerfed but some the important things stayed.  Zistrosk and I were asked to find suitable locations to put the guilds within Darkhaven and had some idea of the timetable as we moved into September.  When the guild only quests started we felt sure that the time was near for the ports 🙂

I think my involvement with this project is the reason I was asked to step from Guild of Thieves First into the Guildmaster of the Guild of Origin role.  Leadership is a verb and if you’re not actively out there leading, then you’re not doing the job.

I will find some more time to reflect on this time period soon but this gives you an idea of what the behind the scenes process was.  A thank you to everyone who did contribute positively in any way including constructive criticism before the port and since.  Some of the things I put in GoS were boneheaded (Joy should have had sneak and should have had a lower % on her progs!! Sorry guys and gals!!) but I learned. 🙂

 

Here, There and Everywhere

by Tharius

It has been a little while since I popped in here to leave a few words, and I thought I’d share what’s been going on.

As many will already know June 13 brought the RoDpocalypse… the couple of weeks of downtime when the server decided to go for a permanent coffee break.  It started with a few updates, a force quit by Conran and apparently the server just couldn’t take it any more, went out for cigarettes and never came back.  I will say that bringing up an alternate port was a good idea, I’m not a huge fan of Helter Skelter mode but it certainly got some people interested in player killing (PKill), so huzzah, and allowed the rest of us to stay in touch at least.  I will express my thanks to everyone who worked hard to bring the game back up, especially to Thoric (Derek Snider) who has been keeping the lights on for almost 20 years.

The RoDpocalypse had little affect on me personally, as I was renovating and painting our new rental house and honestly had very, very little time for any online activities.  I did lose 2 level 2 rerollers, good stats but nothing I can’t roll again 🙂  The biggest disappointment … no birthday cake!  Ah well, maybe next year.

So that’s a little of it… the other part is that I have been hanging out on another SMAUG mud … yes, I’ve been unfaithful… but it’s not what you think!  I’ve been over on Zistrosk’s port helping to get the Guild of Spirit built.  The guild merge has been coming for a long time and I think one of the problems that’s been stalling it is too many people starting and quitting over personality conflicts.  That’s just an opinion, I haven’t been around this since the beginning so I can only comment on the little I’ve seen.  GoS also suffers from the fact that some of the guilds that are merging into it are, in this author’s opinion, the most inactive guilds on RoD.  I have observed that at least one of the guilds that could have really chipped in and made this area something special chose to simply oppose the entire merge idea.  It’s too bad because their headquarters was one of the nicer written headquarters and their input would have been valuable.  Notwithstanding, I’ve worked as much as possible to incorporate them into this new guild and I really hope they participate, but I won’t hold my breath.

I’m excited about the guild merge, I think it’s a good thing.  I will say I’m impressed with the new Guild of Nature, kudos to Zistrosk, Elendure and all the others who worked on it.  If there was a guild I was going to be critical of, this would be it, having been long time members of both Guild of Rangers and Guild of Druids.  I think it has a new feel to it but does work to incorporate a fair amount from the old guilds without feeling cut and pasted.

There and back again …

by Tharius

After many years away I decided to check out what’s been going on with the Realms of Despair.  I was active in the game from about 1998-2003 or so and returning after so much time has been quite the experience.

I logged in on Thursday April 4, 2013 and created a new character, hoping to find either someone I knew or perhaps even the keeper of my old characters.  It wasn’t long before I found Zistrosk, the Guildmaster of the Guild of Druids, who has been a friend of many years.  With a loaner avatar from him I was freed from the constant need for food and drink, a simple but annoying part of pre-avatar life!

Even logging in and sitting at Guild of Druids recall brought back a flood of memories.  When I regularly played in 2002 I was engaged to a lady who also played the Realms, known as Aurale.  When we broke off our engagement I simply left the realms and didn’t find a way to play the game on my own again.  It seems odd after all this time that I would have to face that, but that’s exactly what came to the surface … mourning an old relationship that we both have moved far past as if it was still fresh.  I also had memories surface of the time I spent with the immortal Julie off the MUD and my grief when she died but I did mourn her back then and so while sad, the hurt was an old one and perhaps better healed.  I have to admit, it was the hardest part of rejoining the Realms.

There are many, many friends who are no longer in the realms; people from the Guilds of Druids and Rangers, from the Order of Dragonslayers, from the Symposium or the Newbie Council, the immortals I was acquainted with, heck even people who were just characters everyone knew.  So here’s a little shout out to some of them, drop me a line if you ever visit: Alisia, Illiana, Shingo, Pheayre, Hoerkin, Xopus, Forgrim, Dirca, Hawpch, Linda, Edmond … The list grows all the time as I wander the Realms, wherever you are, I hope you are all doing well.