Fist de Yuma - April 23, 2002

This and that This might be a short column this week. It is the same day I posted my last column that I'm writing this and I'm feeling very down. My essays on DT and Chains gave me a lot of heat. My minor comment on Liberals and Guns got a lot more. What surprised me the most was a few lines on guns that created an uproar. I can only hope that the debate caused a few people to study and get informed opinions. What I got on the boards was a lot of rhetoric and repeating of the same old lies. I may have mistaken a report of death per 1000 as deaths per year in the Old West, I'm still looking for the reference. Not that it would do any good as people would rather shout angrily than hear the truth. What I don't understand is the people who say my columns are mostly rants. This was the first opinion piece I have had for weeks. Even then it was mostly adventure. I wonder if they only read the opinion parts? One said all I write about is Elders killing the Queen. Yes there were a few but very few overall. I wrote about them because that is what we did that week. There was no Queen quests in this or last weeks column. So unless my feelings change I will not be doing as much in AC this week. Of course I thought that last week would be a short column and it ended up being over 5,000 words. One last few points. I have never owned a gun. I doubt I ever will. I live in a right to carry state and feel safe. I'm also an expert shot, having been just short of the range record when qualifying one day. (380 out of 400, record being 382.) I might have broken the record but it was windy and raining. Marines are required to be good shots. The only time I shot the pistol was when qualifying. I found shooting to be boring. (lol now I'm in trouble with the other side.) So those that called me a gun nut NRA spokesman need to re-think there their stand. It is possible to be intelligently for something without participating in it. Update Ok here is Sunday and I'm approaching 7000 words. Of course a large part of that is rebuttal from the DT players but I still played and wrote a lot more than I thought I would. For some reason the game had been a pure joy to play this week. Despite my thoughts of just reading and getting some chores done I found myself playing more than ever. As the song said, "It goes to show you never can tell". Powerleveling There are times when even the most boring thing you can do becomes exciting. I find there is nothing more boring than powerleveling. Mindless killing of Corals may advance you so you can fight better things but it is sure mind numbing to do. I'm careful not to over do it more do it more than once a week. There are times when you powerlevel for a goal. I did more powerleveling after the Lightning Prism so I could land on the Pyreal Golem. After a hot fix this week all my skills dropped three points. I decided I needed to get those points back by adding to self and focus. At over 20 million points each this was going to be a slow painful process. I felt it would be boring because powerleveling was always boring before. There are exceptions. This was created by the improvements of fellow xp. Now it is possible to gain the benefits of the Coral hunters while hunting more exciting game. The mid-level people can fight kill all the Corals while the stronger people can do the Flows and Crater. I did this last night. I was lucky at the start. Just as I got there a fellow was being made. Rizean, one of my vassals, was getting into it with me. Shortly after Alala joined. This gave me a lot more xp than I expected as I was getting pass-up xp as well as the fellow xp. We had not been their long when the fellow key had to leave. I was ready to start one up when another guy insisted he be the fellow key. I wanted someone who would there awhile but was glad I did not have to run the fellow. We ended up with a very strong fellow. When both my vassals were in the fellow I was hitting 6.5 million an hour, an unheard of number. When Alala left I was still at 6 million. The fellow itself was doing over 5 million. I started out teaming with Rizean. We were clearing the flows of Vapors, Diamonds, Plasmas, Hellfires, Bones and anything else that dare show its face. We found large concentrations of golems several times. With abandon we faced never-ending streams of golems. It was a whole lot of fun. A few times I was on my own taking down three or four golems at a time. While that was fun it was the times I fought beside Rizean I remember best. I'm not sure how many hours I spent there but it was a lot. Strangely while everyone was dieing around me I was never in trouble. Stan Marsh died twice in a short time. I joked to him I never saw him die that much when he was PKing. Rizean died at least twice and there was a constant flow of "Your fellow xxxx had died." What this meant was we were pushing it. I found that I carry enough comps for over three hours of constant fighting. After that I have to break peas. With the peas I carry I should be able to go six or more hours. I did find that I need to carry more Birch. I don't carry peas for that type of comps and ran short. Someone gave me some and I upped the amount on my buy list. I even got lucky with the loot. After killing a lot of Observers on North ML I got very few keys. After killing only a handful of Observers on the island I got two sings. Pyreal peas were dropping a lot as well. I think I ended up with nine. At the end I found I gained about 26 million points. This let me add to one point of self and get close to a point of focus. I had just added a point of War and that cost over 31 million now. Self is at 28 million and Focus at 20 million. Even my spec'd skills are getting costly. Life is at 15 million and Creature at 10. True fun There is no better fun than hunting with a friend. Today started out with the plan for Jr to get his pincer. Following that I would get Mage and Fist theirs. I fellow Jr with Fist and Mage when they turn in the pincer. This helps Jr level a bit. Jr had little trouble fighting his way to the bottom of EVL and getting his Pincer. It takes him a hard battle to take down a Ev but he is not hit much. I'm finding that because I spec'd melee I have far less trouble in places like this than players of similar level. It was not that he was never hit but the hits were few. From there I moved to the Grotto and picked up that pincer. As you can see I have one day a month were I go get them all. When I logged Mage for his Jeff was at the mansion. I was talking to The Crippler and Wuyung before Jeff sent me a tell. He had bodies in a tight spot and needed help. He also had a buildup of vit and needed buffs just to make a portal. I invited Wuyung to go with us. I knew we would not have a lot of trouble but having a strong melee along never hurts. Before we got to Jeffs body another Elder had recovered them for him. So Wuyung and I teamed up to clear Jeff's vit. Jeff expressed surprise at how fast his vit was falling. "What are you guys fighting?" was the tell. I guess the answer would have to be, whatever got in our way. After stomping a few things Jeff said the vit was clear and broke from the fellow. I think we cleared his 15% vit in about five minutes. We had just took down some Observers and Directors. I was checking for Sing keys. I saw Wuyung was fighting a Drudge. Holly Mother of... he was fighting a Ascentant Drudge! Now I can vuln and blast them with little trouble but even Fist has a hard time landing on these babies. Not melee friendly. I decided it was his battle and went into support mode. Imperil to start. He might land and I wanted him to do max damage if he did. Then I started using my queen de-buffing spells on it. I must have lowered his melee defense by 60 or more points. In between spells I would hit Wuyung with heals and stamina. He must have got a nice hit in because it was at less than 1/4 health. At one point he started to hit but the imperil had worn off. Also three more Drudges spawned. The Ascentant dropped at last and I blasted the others before they could cause any problems. Next I had to finish up my Pincer quest. I asked Wuyung if he was set to go again. He said yes and just had to unmule a UA weapon. Wuyung uses both sword and UA. I think he would be better off hilting a rapier and using double strike but he has more experience with both than I do. We met at Plateau and ran to EVL. I created a fellow "Lets Rock". You could see the mood I was in. We preceded to show the bugs that a mage and fighter is something to be feared. As they hit the lifestone they had to ask, "Did he have a truck in his hand?" Two to four fast swings were all it took after an Imperal. Almost to the bottom we met up with Hot Sauce. This was another player of a direct under Wuyung. I put her in the fellow. This kind of made me think that Wuyung was wrong to be using UA. She was killing with her sword faster than Wuyung with UA. From there we moved to the Grotto. Here it did not matter much what weapon he used. They fell fast. It took two buffs to get both pincers with an early buff and time left over. It was also a bale of fun. From there I logged Fist to do it one more time. One of the advantages of a fighter is he can talk and fight. I was talking to Wuyung and The Crippler during the run. In EVL I met up with Jeff. He is a little low to be there but moving up fast. He was about to go stock. Somehow I had the fellow set for no share so he did not have to drop out. I was to meet Hot Sauce there but it seemed she had left. As I got deeper and deeper I got the idea I was alone there. Sure enough I fought to the bottom without seeing a single person. After getting the pincer I headed back to the top, having yet to see another person. Now I know it was late, 3 or 4 am but EVL is always packed, always. Well I guess not. For this time anyway I had it to myself. To bad as I was only there for the pincer. I'm well over the level of EV's and only get 10k a pop for them. There was one spot that had me wondering if I was going to leave my 84th body. I had just fought a big battle. It was a short distance out of the second room from the bottom. I had two minutes left on the buffs and decided that I did not want to run through. With that much time I would be unable to fight. I rebuffed. I moved forward and there were three EV's. As I engaged them three more ran down the passage from the front. Then two more came up from the back. I tried to back up and get them all in front. Before I finished the maneuver three more came up from the back and two from the front. At that point I lost track but that's 13 if there were no respawns. I did not even know there were that many there. All I could do was right hug the wall and fight it out. I was down to about 25 stamina elixirs at this point. I'm sure that without the new changes I would not have made it out of this. I was dropping stamina but nowhere near as much as before. The problem with sucking down elixirs is it lowers your melee defense. With a buffed melee d of 425 and a +28% weapon I'm setting at 544 effective melee defense. This means getting hit was a rare event. When I sucked down an elixir the EV's missing me was a rare event. It is somewhat disconcerting to see a full page of hits on the screen. With level VI protects and GSA armor the hits were not devastating but we are talking about a lot of them. They add up fast. Before the patch sucking down an elixir in a battle like this did not always work. You would gain stamina but take a beating. Healing loses stamina and you would receive a dozen or more hits, dropping your stamina even more. In other words it was very hard to keep up with your health and stamina with this many monsters attacking you. Normally this was resolved by making a hole and running, healing to max and porting out or dieing. Many times the porting out left a body at your feet by the lifestone, if you made it out at all. With the EV's three deep making a hole was not an option. With the new patch I was not losing stamina as fast. I would suck down two elixirs and do a heal. I would then go back to the battle where I would kill one or if lucky two of them. Rinse and repeat. To say the least I was proud of myself. I did not count them but I killed a lot. Sure was lucky I did that buff. From there I killed my way back to the top. Jeff told me he was back but I did not see him. A fighter had cleared the top part. Grotto was simple for Fist. One less protect to worry about and faster dropping Olthoi. I got the pincer and ported to Lin. I had a load of junk I had picked up in EVL and wanted to clear the packs before turning in the pincer. Statues As I entered Lin I saw something I had not seen before. I know that some people are camping the statue 24/7 but I had never seen them spawn. Here were four of them. What was really cool was I was buffed! I grabbed my weapon and attacked. After the battle I found I had grabbed my unbuffed fire weapon rather than my buffed one. They look the same in the pack. It did not matter. They fell fast. A good thing they are not that hard as there were more than four. I was under the impression that only one spawned, not seven or eight. That is what I get for not checking the quest out. They dropped two weapons, a bow and a mace. I found that I could pick up one of each. I quickly informed Jeff and The Crippler that there was 50k of free xp sitting on the ground. I then logged Mage and ported him to Lin, followed by Jr. After a quick trip to Hebian-to to unload the weapons I headed Fist and Jr to Redspire. Darn heavy stuff. The trip through the subway was less than graceful at 150 burden. The turn in got Jr to 71. Four more levels to Creature. I figure I'll still have some work to do before I can use VII's but at least I'll be able to drop the low al Creature armor. Future Mage love? There has been some rumors on the future of mage love. The most welcome with be longer times for buffing spells and a more steady economy. The time length will be very welcome. This will be a big boost to all classes, not just mage. In fact most of the long buffers I see are Melee. The way things stand we have far too much down time for buffing. In groups it is especially bad as we have to wait for the person taking the longest time to buff and rebuff at the shortest time. Some people are taking up to ten minutes to buff. That is way too long. Most of my buffing takes three minutes and really hard places might take as long a five. Nevertheless I'm waiting there for the long buffers. Being on level VII buff times I get 30 minutes between buffs. If grouping and just one person is on level VI we are all on VI times. Combined with long buffers this can mean as little as 5 minutes of questing between buffs. Of course this is an extreme situation but not unheard of. After the last restart all my skills dropped by three points. I have spent well over 60 million points and still down one. I did nothing wrong to be punished in this way. The overabundance of high levels are the cause. The rumor is the economy will be based on the skill level. This means that the higher the skill the more points above base you will get when the spell is tossed. A gain of 40 is the base for a level VII spell. When VII's first came out we got as high as 46, we are now down to as low as 41. I'm betting it will be on the base skill not buffed. If it is based on buffed people will be buffing a skill twice, at least for the first time. The first buff will get your skills high, the second to take advantage if the higher skill level. Under extreme situations you might even do it a third time. To prevent this it will likely be based on your un-buffed skill level. Og mages will be in much greater demand if this is true. Most buffing is with Creature skills and Og's have the highest Creature skill of all. If they ever fix Awakener so a non PK can use it Og's will be the king of group mages. BM's will still be the power mages and solo kings but the game is getting more and more toward groups. It sure will be nice if they fix the group loot problem as well. Balance It is very pig headed to never admit when you are wrong. At the same time it is dangerous as the truly pig headed will use that admittance in the next disagreement. Nevertheless when I find I'm wrong I'll admit it. Honestly will always win in the end, even if I'm the only one to know it. I'm not admitting I was wrong about DT, more that I may not be totally right. I'll let you read the below and make my comments after that. I asked a few people who thought I was wrong about DT to write an opposing view. As I have said before perception is going to be different from person to person. Sometimes a person is out-right wrong, as I have been many times. Mostly there are shades where nether side is fully right or fully wrong. I'll let you decide. As my patron Talaq said, "Having a different opinion does not mean I'm attacking yours." I would rather be wrong from time to time than be afraid to speak. This is sometimes one of the best ways to learn. Many posters seem to think I'm always wrong. I never understood people who are so self-center as to never consider a different point of view as anything but wrong and not worthy of anything but contempt. I challenge those who disagree with me on subjects to defend their point of view, not attack me personally. There have been many who have changed their point of view by seeking to discredit the opposing view. They set out to show where the other person is wrong and find they are right. For some reason this technique is not encouraged in our colleges today. This will only happen if you have an open mind and debate. Personal attacks only show your lack of knowledge on the subject. The first post is a copy of a poster on the VN boards that allowed me to repost it here. This is from Shen Ru. This is a repost from a different set of boards back when I started on DT, it sets out how much I enjoyed myself because of taking the right mindset into the game. I think that's the main thing (oh and yes, Im a lot more ruthless now)... Ive actually been really enjoying DT. Some of this may be because I joined a good allegiance fairly early, so missed a lot of the grief play that most newbs put up with. I did have to put up with some of it, but as long as you take the attitude that its just part of the initiation and not take it personally its not a major hassle. Course playing when hardly anyone is online means I probably met less of them than most would. I joined up with Belexus and the Darktide Regulators. A small, close knit group of mainly Americans and Canadians. Fortunately for me a few of them have strange work hours so I actually spend a bit of time in-game with them. I think Belexus has logged on every night (morning for him) before Ive logged off so far, which is better in-game time than Ive ever had with a patron before. Belexus met up with me when I was level 7 and portalled me out to a lifestone near his house and where the regulators maintain a presence (no, I wont mention where it is). He then took me out for an hour or so of twinking, which quickly got me to level 13. The next night I went back to leveling the hard way and got to 16 fighting in the wilderness. Only red dot I saw in this time was another Regulator who dropped some buffs on me before Id even had a chance to type Hi. Some time in here I met up with Hollow Dan (our very own spam master) and Topgunn ( a RL friend of his) in game, who had also joined the regulators. Theyd met a mage at the LS (not regulator, but anti) who offered to take us to get our hollows. Lets just say it was a less than successful trip. The mage was not really high enough to escort 3 low levels on the run to get the ore refined, and I thought lacked some experience also. That said my colleagues could have been a bit more understanding and not reacted as badly as they did when things went sour. Fortunately things seem to have sorted themselves out by now and were all friends again. The real unfortunate thing here is that Belexus was just waiting till we could LS recall before taking us all himself. Later that night met up with Belexus again and an hour or sos twinking to me past those annoying late teens and I logged off at level 19. Next night it was time to hit the cits. Or I should say the cit. There's only one on DT that's safe for general antis to go. This is where the real fun begins. Bloods love to raid here. It was a really interesting experience. With the new fellowship bonuss we would really rake in the xp, but then after a raid wed have to avoid the place for 1/2 hour on average. Died a few deaths here to pks, but managed to portal out a few times. Problem is the only time Im at the entrance is because my buffs are down and Im about to rebuff. Had one experience where a higher level in the Regulators was buffing me at the entrance, but was unbuffed herself. One of the main raiders ran in and killed her in front of me before I could warn her. As he started looting I leapt into revenge mode! Lets just say I was less than effectual. Eventually he turned around and asked if I really wanted him to kill me. Bearing in mind that hed already 1 shot me twice that day I meekly replied Errm, preferably not and slinked off. Strangely enough ever since then whenever hes raided hes avoided killing me. Even to the stage of telling friends hes raiding with to leave me alone. Respect maybe? Not sure... So generally speaking raids at the Cits are one-sided. Theyre higher level, specifically buffed/baned for the purpose, and most people at the entrance are there to rebuff anyway. Where it gets interesting though is restocking. Knowing that danger could strike well always buff up before heading off. Ive died a couple of times doing this, and chased off bloods a couple of times. One in particular stands out - Dark Claw. This guy ran like a girl, then turned up 1 min later with his much higher level patron. Rather than recall I decided to try to take down DC before it, got my vuln on him, but only got a swing or two in before his patron sent me to the LS the hard way. Another time just as I was about to head off to restock I hear that Hollow Dan got killed restocking. I found out the name of the guy and what he was using, while Dan ran back to see if he was still there. He was so I ran down to find him. He took off running (strange this, as it was only me, dan wasnt on radar, and Dan and I are the same level), but I landed a vuln on him before he got too far away, also noticed he was Dark Claws vassal. Then started a long run. He was faster than me, but after he got off radar hed stop to see if I was still chasing and Id catch up again. Normally Id have given up the chase, but this was revenge not a normal hunt. Eventually he stopped and I took him down rather fast. Ran back to the restocking place feeling the most excited I ever have in AC. Then of course he called in Dark Claws patron who once again took both Dan and I down in short order (I got stuck in that bug where you have your wand out, but your in combat mode, not spell casting mode), but it still didnt dampen my feeling of exhilaration. So that was my first PK kill, and my first Blood kill. Later that day I got to level 26 and picked up creature magic. Long road to get melee defense now, but Im hoping to become a useful PvPer by mid-30s to mid 40s. All in all how do I find DT? Well Im there fulltime now. Its the most fun Ive had at a computer for ages, and the most addicted Ive been to a computer game since... um probably since my first month or two of AC. As long as you realize raids are part of the fun, and not grief as such its enjoyable. Im yet to get any trashtalk or spam. Im sure I will, its definitely out there, but I think that's really the minority rather than the majority like youd think reading message boards. The thrill you get when another red dot enters the radar, the adrenalin rush you get when you realize theyre rpk, the indecision when you cant id their level. Its like nothing else AC has to offer. There's also a good reason to level. Rather than kill creatures so you can eventually kill bigger creatures, Im leveling harder than I ever have before so that I can defend myself and my friends better. The character interaction is also so much more meaningful. You really know who your friends are, and who arent. Allegiances and politics play a big part. You id everyone who comes onto your screen, and often your looking more at their tag (monarch) than level. You can meet complete strangers and know their trustworthy if theyre with the right guild. Cause the good guilds dont let losers hang around. Ive got a lot to learn, one of which is to become more ruthless. Ive actually let Bloods off the hook with a warning instead of KoS before, but the more their high levels kill me the more that will change I think. Its not for everyone, but if you can take the right mindset into the game its unbelievable. ================ The next post started out as disagreeable. So much so that Cassie deleted the post before I saw it. He then flamed the fact that he could not do as he wanted. Cassie runs the site as she feels fit. She does a darn good job of it too. The board has been praised a lot for the mature posters. Cassie keeps a close watch on her site and will be quick to delete an offensive post. I have found that many people can have a bad day. The way to separate people having a bad day from true grief players is to be nice to them. That will either frustrate the grief player or remind the person having the bad day that his conduct is wrong. I took this approach with Iorweth and invited him to write a response to my posts. I don't agree with everything he posts but it is a starting place for debate. Here is what he sent me. I just read your reply to my rather immature thread (CENSOR THE LEFT) on the boards at Crackednuts.net. In retrospect, that was posted after (yet another) flame war on the DT server, so I was a bit riled. The tone of my posts also wasnt very conductive to conversation, and Im going to start off by apologizing for that (in my defense, however, part of it stems from frustration of having to defend my way of playing/my server against people who have some very deeply ingrained prejudices and are unwilling to see how things actually are.) You stated that you do not understand the reason that I am so upset. Id like to elaborate on that: Upset implies that I have a problem with an individual or identifiable target, and this is not the case. Im frustrated, as I said above, that misconceptions about Darktide are taken as fact when they have no actual relevance. Darktide deserves some of the bad rap it gets. People are definitely much more willing to cheat and hack, because the desire to compete and win is much stronger. That's hardly a justification, but it is the dominating mindset. Now, to be up front: Im a member of the Blood Monarchy since lvl 20 (currently 40 after taking a few months off). Blood, as you know doubt know, is famous for being the "worst" guild on the DT server for its use of hacks, cheats, etc... Prior to Blood, I as part of the Devils of Kimone, until they decided to join The Last Stand, which was politically (on the server, at least) a move I and my patron would not do. The common DT perception, even among those who play Darktide, is that since Im a Blood, I cheat, did cheat, dupe or did dupe, hack or did hack. But some of Bloods rep is ill-deserved. For example: GEAR: A well known CS Cheat...this one was passed around the "cores" of the two main monarchies, Blood and GEN, until it was made public...hard to say who used it first, but the first Darktide GEAR ban was a GEN leaders reroll, Moon X. Client-Hack: This one comes from GEN(now TLS). A GEN core named Khosaf wrote the Client Hack that let you get around the jump timer, but still give the "You have jumped to recently" message so their members could produce screenshots showing that they did not cheat, despite the fact that they did. Duping: Server-wide, several Blood accounts were banned by association (the PNOT story, if your interested, I can explain it) but all were reinstated, and only one ever actually did the duping on his/her own account. That last part seems off topic, but just want to dispel any stereotypes about where Im coming from. Now, on to the content of you article that is the source of my (and others) frustration. First, your statement about Darktide being like a Quakefest. The Quakefest ends once you leave the starter areas and stop living in towns, around lvl 15-20. About that time, you can also join a guild, and that's when you being to build friendships and rivalries, and really participate in the political scene---the main reason why some of us (myself included) play Darktide. Next, Racist comments/trash talking--this really isnt as normal as you may think. Its really just one small circle of players who are very vocal. Anytime one of them visits the VN Boards, their trashed for their racist remarks of "shit talking". Which brings up the VN Boards. They are harsh, but they are also self-policing. Like when an in-game racist comes, hes quickly dealt with by the community. The mods on Darktide understand that most conflicts can and do resolve themselves, and only step in when needed. Most of the negative VN Board reputation comes from when "carebears" (non-PK server players) come over and post things like looking for Powerleveling, or cross-server trades. Two things that really make the community mad, because we worked in a harsh environment for our levels and gear (and the DIs to cover them), but they want them for free by trading something they got with little or no risk to themselves. If a Darktider posts on a white-board, its pretty much an insta-ban, but not so for the inverse of this statement, so DTers feel like the mods are against them, and tend to lash out at the white-dot posters. Most importantly, VN Darktide is not really Darktide! Next: Statement regarding how PvP is about numbers, not skills: Untrue. A comp and connection will only help so much. Especially in the higher levels, there is a great deal of skill involved. Careful use of wars, fast-cast technique (NOT a hack or cheat, btw), when to throw a war bolt or a streak, a drain or a harm, when for a mage to go melee, etc...there is a lot of skill involved. But for the first levels, it is a quake fest, because of low starting health (10 end is almost a given at creation on DT to be competitive in the long run) Next: Your rendition of the explanation of the bannings of the Last Blademasters post. You call them blatant lies. Actually, its true. Read the last 4 pages of the boards prior to his post, and see the reaction any "carebear" post gets. Blademaster got the same as they did, but because he was a VIP, and because he posted about how rough the DT Boards were, "Carebears" came over to the DT boards to stir up trouble, a lot of the DT posting community was banned. If the roles were reversed, it would have never gotten that far, because "carebear" mods are taught to hate DT and ban them for posting outside the DT Board (an exaggeration, but its become how we feel). That's why we feel its "our" board. We arent welcome on your boards (see what happens when a Darktider posts...even if it isnt inflammatory in the least), so why should we welcome you on ours? The last issue to address, is you ascertain that the cheaters on DT have made the server unstable. That's simply untrue. Weve had a special hotfix to address these issues, which stem from why DT has the worst lag of any server, even with less people. The population is more spread out than on a nPK world, so the server keeps more things loaded and update, thus, more resources are constantly being used. Add in the RQs, which were not implemented in the best way, and the steadily rising DT population, and that's what caused the servers recent instability. Its comments like that, the assumptions based off stereotypes, that keep decent players away from DT and help more people like the ones you describe as the "typical Darktider" to arrive en masse and take over the server. That's why I was frustrated, or upset, if you will: Too much of your article was based on the low-level side of the game, or it came from second-hand observations from someone who has likely never played DT past the Quakefest part, or is simply untrue, but seems feasible in light of the other stereotypes. I think that explains my side fairly well. I just would like, in the future, that you get some input from actual DT Players before you write about DT. (Actual DT players dont only play there when their world crashes) -Tom aka "Iorweth" aka "VN_Iorweth" ============= Rebuttal Before I start I want to point out that Fast Casting is an exploit. Turbine has stated this is a bug that will be fixed soon. I'm hoping it will not be a fix that hurts the non-cheaters. I'm surprised you do not consider this a cheat. A few points. DT is different. I agree that DT is harder. This does not make the DT players superior to the PK optional servers. Their feelings of superiority are unfounded and quite immature. Calling the other servers a demeaning name invites hostility. I dislike the name Carebear. When I hear it my bloods boils and I will not be at my best mental state for a while. It servers no purpose other than drive the hostility of the other servers to a new level. Playing a different game does not make one better or worse, just different. We play for fun, remember that foremost. If someone's idea of fun is chess they should not feel they are somehow better than a checkers players. As a mountain bike rider I did not feel the street riders were as macho as we are. After doing both I understood that it was a different thing. I still prefer a mountain ride but if I just want to relax and have fun there is nothing like a street ride with friends. When I raced motocross I did not have much respect for the flat track riders. After seeing several flat trackers killed I regretted my immaturity. They may not be flying off hillsides but they were a lot faster. If someone prefers not to be on edge when playing a game you should respect their choice. Playing on DT should make you a better PK player but as we well know that is not always true. PK is a very small part of AC in any case. It is not how Turbine wanted it. I remember a statement by a developer a long time ago who said that everyone should be PK after 40. It did not go as they felt. I disagree that a DT poster will be banned for posting on another server just because they are DT. Posting a DT type curse fest will do it you can be sure. I agree that most servers boards do not have much respect for the DT board. There is a very good reason for this. Respect will gain you respect. Disrespect will return the same. The nose in the air attitude of many of your posters will always hurt your server. Your feelings of superiority, no matter how much you think it is true, will create a feeling of distain in return. Drop the name-calling and you may find that others will be more willing to listen to your views. We are Optional Player Killer servers or OPK, we are not "Carebear" or O.o. For that matter drop the PK label from the name. We play Asheron's Call. PK is a small part of that game. If you prefer to play full time PK that is your right. The rest of us are not affected until we are called names or have our game changed to stop the PK's from cheating. Lastly you are mistaken about the lies. The people received the ban for far over the line insults. Yes many of the immature players thought that describing The Last Blademaster's father raping him was funny but no one else did. It was disrespect of that sort the brought the other servers to that defend the Blademaster. If all cross posters got that kind of treatment the DT board should be wiped. Somehow I think that is not true. (If you quote the first line you must include the entire paragraph.) The mod who passed out the bans said those posts were over the line. I just wish people had understood that rather than slander the mod. I'm not sure if the thread is still where you can get to it but if it is I suggest you read it for yourself. There was no defense to what they did. A short ban was very light punishment indeed. The posters who said otherwise were lying. I understand that many today prefer "misspoken" or some other spin word but I believe in speaking the truth. Misspoken is unknowingly telling a lie, lying is knowingly saying it. Lastly I have talked to former DT players. I admit that their former status undoubtedly clouds their view. They left for reasons and told me what those reasons were. So while you many are happy there are many who started on DT who are very unhappy with how it changed. Somehow I believe if the real racist curse masters were to be gone DT would not change as a server. The fun level would be the same or better. This is what I call on Turbine to do. Clean up the worst of the people and it will be more fun for everyone.