Fist de Yuma - December 16, 2003

This and that I'm grateful for my program of getting guest writers this week. Otherwise making my low limit of 2k in words would be in jeopardy. The reason for my lack of stories is simple; I reloaded Morrowind last week. At first I figured I would play for a few hours at the most. That simple start became an 18-hour marathon section. It went all to waste by Wednesday when I figured my player was a total gimp. I wanted to go the magic route and soon found that Morrowind is more of a melee game. Not only that but I made creation errors and had far to little mana. I could barely finish one battle. After a lot of attempts to fix it, such as building up my axe skill some, I gave up and made a hybrid mage melee. I'm still stubbornly sticking to no armor. I'm not sure if that will pay off in the end. I have an armor class of 42 right now, a touch more if I don't use the boots of speed. So far it is working great. I am up to 16lv with 67 Destruction and Blade. Some battles are still a save, do it over a bunch of times until you win, but those are gratefully rare. I'm starting on the story line but not sure how long I'll keep at it. I need to get back to AC and Morrowind is taking up far too much time. Relief You might remember that I wrote about a mistake we made. We did not get approval for the first sleep study I took. We were very afraid that we would have to pay for that study. As it turns out that was over $700 bucks! We got the bill today and the insurance paid for both studies. We only had a small co-pay that we were happy to write a check for. Good news Long time readers might remember the name Randolph. Randy was the ultimate social player. He was a good friend to everyone. When I last wrote about Randolph he had logged to give away all his things and log off. He dropped as my vassal and I assumed Randolph was deleted. He also deleted his e-mail address. He had been in very poor health for some time and we were much afraid he was doing this because the end was near. In fact he had quit AC but was very much alive. After gaining back some of his health he acquired an account on another server. He quit as per doctor's orders a few months ago. He wrote me this week and I was able to get this update. If you knew Randy on the old days and want to contact him, drop me a note. I'll pass it on to him. Looking for history I would like to have the history of your allegiance. I'm not restricting this to MT as this is an all server column. I would like to hear how you started. Changes in leadership. What drove your allegiance (chain, ideas, quests, leadership etc.) You can PM me your story at the Vault or send it to me at csd2@mindspring.com Bracelet of Essence The Bracelet of Essence is a must have item in my mind. While useful for a mage it would be key for a melee, especially one without Life. I've been pushing this quest a lot so I can get it down and help others through it. Fortunately the main people in my allegiance are behind me in this. In fact they are ahead of me as they have taken the lead in getting people through. I started the first run on Saturday with Yodha. We buff up and got a ride from the bot. As we ported in there was another group there. They were waiting for a few latecomers. I felt it would be best for Yodha if we joined a group. He is a touch low in levels and would have a far better chance with helpers. There were others who showed up later and one that dropped out. This was the names I did get; Very Bordette a-oc - 126, Amorph - 126, Yiakes - 105, Drnius - 107, Fist's Armorer - 112 and Yadha - 69. This is not a criticism though it may seem as such. Everyone plays different and at times styles will clash. I'm someone who hates to waste time. Others play at a more leisurely pace. This group is was the later so I was a touch antsy for a while. A few had not been flagged so that was how we started off. I had to hold my tongue when one of the higher levels, that did not need to be flagged, killed the Guardian by accident. We waited a while for the re-spawns. Finally we were done with that and recalled back to the start. Just to be sure we rebuffed. It is a nasty place and no way to stop and rebuff if things go long. The run was as nasty as can be, especially at the start. Those with slower computers had a big problem. We finally got to a clear spot and re-grouped. Yadha is still kind of slow so it was a big problem. Someone stayed back to make sure he did not die. I was kind of embarrassed thinking about it, I should have done that. We got in and from there on it was a pure fun battle. There is one spot in a hallway where the Shadows and Virindi are four or five deep. I'm sure this was where Fist got trapped and had to port out in his first attempt to solo it. I was in total War mode there. FA is more of an attack mage away so he was in his element. We finished that battle and many others. While it seemed longer it was really only about 15 minutes before we fought our way through to the end. We all got the bracelet. When we got back I got a tell from Nene Romanova. She was making a bracelet run with Soul Riper and was checking to see if I wanted to go. I quickly loaded up Fist de Mage for a run. After swapping armor to Fist de Mage I discovered I forget to transfer my Fire wand. Yodha loaned me his before logging. Yodha wanted to come but it was late for him. Gonder was there and asked if I could use his help. Gonder is a mid level macer so I was thinking he would not be much help but I would he happy to help him get the bracelet. When I said that he said, "I meant as Abin Al-Sahad dummy." Doh, of course. He loaded up Abin and we got a portal from the bot. Included with the group was Soul Riper and a bunch of others I did not get the names of. As we started the run I got a tell from one of Dur Gallant's players. I did my best to talk to him while making the run. Every so often I would be typing and get stuck but was fast enough to get out of it. This group was far more powerful than the last one. We got through easily. That just leaves Deadeye Fist and Owanda to get the bracelet. I figure I'll take Deadeye through next even though Owanda needs it more. When we got back Rene said that BM of El had lagged out in the dungeon and had to port. We decided to make the run for him. Dur Gallant asked if he could go. The long time readers may remember that Dur Gallant is called Bookworm. He got that during a quest. Me, Balash and him were in a switch room while a second group was fighting their way to the reward. No one knew the quest so Dur was reading a walkthrough and then trying to direct them with tells. We had a big spawn and Balash and I were fighting for our lives. Dur Gallant was just standing there! After the battle he said, "Sorry, I was reading." From then on we called him Bookworm. As we buffed I joked to Dur that he could go but could not read on the way, I wanted his full attention. I also had everyone buffing with me to send him the same message. (grin) This run was about the same as the first two. Nasty run, big battles, massive battle in that one hall and then a quick run to the Bracelet. All and all a great way to spend a Saturday morning. I have a plan that will need help from a few people to pull off. I want to do something that we use to do with the Focus Stone quest. I want to have enough people to clear the dungeon for an hour or so. This would let anyone who could make the overland run get the bracelet with little trouble. I figure we would need a full fellow of high-level mages to pull it off. I can supply four or five, Rene, Soul Riper, Abin, Dreadlord and me. If we can get four or five others who are willing to spend a few hours I think it would be fun. I'll also need players who know the run to lead people. A group for getting flagged might also be necessary. Getting a time and getting it advertised will take some work but I'm willing to do it. If you're interested then PM me on the VN board or send me and e-mail at CSD2@mindspring.com. There are those who really need this bracelet but don't have the support groups many of use have. I would like to set this up for next Saturday and repeat it when we can at different hours. As there is no wait at the alter this would be a big help to the players of MT. A little history As we have past the four-year mark people are starting to post their thoughts on the history of their servers. Four years is a long time for a game. A lot of the allegiances started in Beta. Elder, Killean and many others had plans for allegiances long before AC hit the shelves. Many of these allegiances are still with us on one form or another. My first allegiance was Cobra La. Many future monarchs came from this group. There are some who became great that I did not know. Ami and Watorn are two of the biggest names I do know. (Possible spelling errors on Ami as it has been a while but she was a big time monarch for a long time.) It is possible that Rosa and other big names were in Cobra la but I'm not sure. Sidhartha was the person who got me into Cobra La. He never became a monarch but should have. I don't think he was ever happy as an allegiance member. Wartorn broke from Cobra La and took me into Requiem a short while later. I was still friends with Cobra La until he quit. Cobra La was a re-roller who never got to high level. He would restart as soon as he got too high. Who knows, he still might be playing. Wartorn quit a while back and gave the ppl away. That player is a strong monarch today and one of the best Archers on MT. Jann quit long before that. I wish she had stayed as she was one of the best mages to ever play the game. With the ease of playing a mage today she would dominate. Requiem had a bad reputation. The leaders made errors that hurt them. One was letting to many bad apples in and not trimming them when needed. Requiem started out as the strongest PK allegiance in the game. They had several of the best PK players including Pyreal Rat. They told other PK's to join them or die. While funny today they were dead serious. I asked Jann to release me when Requiems reputation stated to effect me too much. No one would trust me because I was in Requiem. There were other problems but the bottom line was I just did not feel right being in that allegiance. I had been in contact with Elder on a board. We would talk about hunting Olthoi and other things. I contacted Elder and asked if he would be my patron. The allegiance was Killean at the time. We were based in Lin. This was before allegiances halls so the Inn was where everyone met. There was a lot of heat over Requiem's join or die policy and other problems. Cooler heads prevailed and they worked out a way to counter Requiem without making it a hate fest. At the time looting was rare. If someone did loot it was universally condemned. I know that this would seem strange today but that was they way it was. What Killean did was ask almost everyone in the allegiance to go red. I was not in on this at the time but I'm not sure I would have gone along with it if I did. They ended up with a horde of PK players. I never got a count but it was somewhere between 40 and 100. Imagine if you will them sweeping through a town. At the time you saw maybe one PK player a day. There were no subway fights. Those that were PK did not attack on sight. Things were rather pleasant compared to a short while ago. There was one time when Requiem tried to stand up to this army. The fighting was chaotic to say the least. I think as many people were killed by friendly fire as not. It was my honor to have observed this battle. In the end Requiem was swept from the field and a truce was agreed on. Places were off limits for fighting and the join or die was dropped. There was one other big PK event but that was the last big allegiance war I know of. In fact I think it was the only real war there ever was. The Requiem/Killean war was over issues. The results of the war solved most of them, if only for a short while. Most so called wars we have seen are arranged events done more for fun than to affect anything. I would rather think of them as jousts than wars. There were some things that Killean was doing that members did not approve of. While I'm not sure if it was true or not but I tend to side with Killean. In any case Killean reluctantly agreed to step down and let Elder assume the mantel. We started with around 500 people from a high of 1600 under Killean. Those numbers quickly rose as Elder's leadership took effect. Elder led the biggest allegiance on MT for some time. He was the first to hit rank 10. While its current form, under William the Bat, is one of the greatest allegiances on MT, if you combine the spin offs it is the greatest there ever was and likely ever will be. If you add in Under Hill Gang, Casa de Yuma, Heideggar and the many others you have an active allegiance base that is unsurpassed. This is a bigger accomplishment than it looks at first glance. All the Elder spin off allegiances are non-chains no macro allegiances. In other words they get members by leadership. The chains allegiances also have good leadership but much of their numbers come from the chains. Many of their people are acquired at the expense of non-chain allegiances. Future of AC At this time our view of the future of AC is clouded. We have no clear picture to what is going to happen. MS is not selling AC and seems to be giving it zero support. There are a lot of rumors about AC's demise. As for me I'm as confused as can be. This is not the first time I have had a problem with MS and products they did not create. I'm an old Foxpro programmer. Foxpro was acquired by MS many years ago. Foxpro seemed to get little support from MS and only a strong user base kept it growing. It is a powerful product that deservers far more respect than it got from MS. MS had another, far weaker, product called Access. This was invented by MS and gets most of the advertising money. As the sole programmer at a school district I was horrified when my bosses said I had to convert a 200,000 line Foxpro program, that was created over a 3 year period, to Access. They wanted it done in one year! Needless to say that was my last year there. So I can see where MS would treat a product they did not create with disrespect. They have done it before and will do it again. At the same time Foxpro is still with us and is still being improved. It is being improved far to slowly for our taste but it has not been dropped. So I see parallels with Foxpro and AC. Turbine insists that the rumors are not true and AC has a great future. I want to believe them but understand they would have to say it if it were true or not. History has shown that people will praise a product's/company's future right up to it being dropped/going bankrupt. The MS history has shown they will lie about changes. This is a direct lie to people. I say this because of what happened to the Sentinel/Advocate program. We all knew that the stupid people who volunteered and then sued for pay had killed the program, weeks before it was dropped. When asked they directly lied about killing the program. I'm sure they had good reasons to lie but that makes MS a liar and nothing can change that. Association tints Turbine as well over this. The way MS is acting there can be three things happening. 1) AC is shut down in the next year or two as their lack of support and sales decrease the user base. (The least likely.) 2) They announce an AC expansion and give AC the big push it deservers. (I have a suspicion/hope that this is it.) 3) AC will limp along as it has on momentum alone and nothing changes. (The most likely.) I tend to think AC has a bright future. I would just like to see MS act like it does. Guest Writer: Neonator (Editor's notes: There are a few errors here but not anything that distorts the picture. If you have a history of your server and want to make the write up, I'll be happy to post it here for you.) History Please note: First off this is for recreational purposes only, please don't take this seriously. This is by no means an all inclusive of every major guild, clan, allegiance or group that's ever influenced the server or will do so in the future. Notwithstanding, the author has undertaken fairly extensive research on the subject in an effort to gather information on the Server's main guilds, their approx. period of dominance or event dating and noteworthy personages if any applicable. Hopefully you will find this informative and please feel free to make corrections here or in PM messages to me. Ichi-Jin-Ra. Beta-January 2000. The first major group to step forward and elevate itself above the pack. Tiny by today's standards it can't be fully appreciated until recognized that almost all its 200 or so members were active players. It was well organized and quested much. When the monarch achieved a "higher calling" ala job at Turbine, the guild disintegrated much sooner than it should have. The first true attempt at Server control by its sheer organization had this guild lasted longer it no doubt would have made an even deeper impression. Peer Guilds: Killean, Requiem, Elminster of Iceland, Romside, Lrd Hades, Zanator Moonblade Requiem/Iconoclast. January 2000-July 2000. With increasing achievements in server lore beginning actually during the reign of the first major server power and the Frore event, Requiem members began to distinguish themselves. Practically single handedly however Baalzevuv, the true monarch behind the scenes, put Requiem on the map through pk exploits, personality conflicts, offensive posts and satires as well as sheer leveling ability. It was well known and established that the character Requiem owned by Shiner, was a mule. Characters like, Wartorn, Jann, Baalzevuv, Iconoclast, Pyreal Rat Shiner and many others put the face on the first guild to achieve server-wide dominance in a particular area. In this case pk. Although pk dominance and its duration can be argued, during the height of power, very few opposed, notably the infant group Demono with its rising son Vortec. This group cultivated and perfected the "bad-boy-in-your-face" image. The general feeling was until you can stop us, we will keep on doing what we want. Its top members also achieved previously unthinkable levels (60-80) while the vast majority of the server was in it's 20s. After the deposing of Shiner/Requiem, the guild fell to Iconoclast. In a joint move that shocked the server both Iconoclast and Baalzevuv sold within weeks of each other to Yavie for thousands of dollars. The guild under Iconoclast remained together for a great deal of time and even lent some of its influence to Meginjarder, a guild that would follow much later. However, when its true force of character disappeared, it ceased being a server wide dominant. Peer Guilds: Elder, Elminster of Iceland, Owen the Nator, Romside, Lrd Hades, Arcimities Orion, Pandora, Zanator Moonblade, Rosa Elder. Circa summer 2000. With the personality heavy superpower just passed, the server's next dominant proved to be a bland but highly stable one. Its monarch never erred on fan sites and message boards, carefully avoided controversy and step by step began assembling a much more organized and stable leadership base. After the departure of Killean, the guild went through a few growing stages then slowly but surely began assembling strength in player base. This group made the first serious attempt at rank and eventually Elder was the first and possibly only monarch to achieve rank 10 on the server. The introduction of a ruling council replaced the dictatorship of Requiem and the guild concentrated heavily on Questing. It played a major role and was near its supremacy around the time of BZ's defeat. This power is the first that still exists to this day and marked a major turn to the "good guy" guild verses the "badboy" image cultivated by Requiem. Peer Guilds: Elminster of Iceland, Romside, Lrd Hades, Arcimites Orion, Owen the Nator, Zanator Moonblade, Rosa, Demono, Logan. Nyneve, Fastallia. Myriad Allegiance. Principle monarchs, Thor Azaroth, Baalzevuv/Yavie. From the dust of the Rosa monarchy came the stirrings of the greatest empire the server had yet known. Although still future, this early form of it must be recognized. Its eventual absorption of the Zanator Moonblade allegiance put it truly on the map. The monarch became the first character on the server to attain level 100, and later 126. Times were rapidly changing. The previous superpower had shown the relevancy and benefits to rank mules. Numbers in guilds swelled as cross server mule trading began and this group next achieved the 3000 mark, first broken by Elder. Cheat portals to the then new Aerlinthe Island, Tusker Camps and other locations of prominence also helped the guild grow very quickly in knowledgeable and experience Questors eager for a tie to ply their trade. This group has the distinction of being the last major power in the pre Experience-chain days on the Morningthaw Server. Its development of plugins to communicate, track experience points and locate monarch representatives was the first stirrings of modern guild management. Peer Guilds: Arcimities Orion, Elder, Zanator Moonblade, Nyneve, Fastalia, Smirking Revenge, Logan, Romside, Wartorn. Smirking Revenge. Perhaps no other guild changed the face of the server quicker and more drastically than this one. Rebelling against previous and rapidly outdated guild and monarchy structures, this group organized itself into the server's first successful experience chain. Although not the first chain either on the server or on other servers, this group patterned itself after the best and perfected the formula. By now AC was mature to aging and the influx of new players had reached its current level of minimal to none. Thus this group truly drained its peers of members as many realized the xp and levels merely dreamed about were now within their reach. New plugins were devised to track it and systems of punishment and exclusion developed to deter abusers. The draining of other guilds best members alienated it from the rest of the server as much as the badboy image its leader attempted to cultivate. Although not anywhere near the potency or legacy of Requiem, this group can lay solid claim to ending AC's medieval times and entering it into its industrial age. Peer Guilds: Meginjarder, Elder, Nyneve, Alando, Romside, Logan, Archmage Lara, Fastallia, Drunk'n Madman, Fist De Yuma, Mars-Hill, Moonlaydd Cutler Strongmad, Zenobia, Wartorn, Ashake, Jerry Maguire. Meginjarder. The largest, longest standing Server wide power that remains to this day currently in power. Although other guilds have made inroads into its success, Meginjarder refuses to pass into the night. This group, actually the Myriad allegiance reincarnated has become the first and only guild to be completely dominant and yet rotate monarchs at will. The perfection of the multiserver plugin "Meginjarder" lent the guild its greatest and longest lasting success. Here it was xp chain with a twist. Reward systems and exclusive privileges for a lucky few speckled the factory-like chain system introduced by Smirking; softening it and making it more palatable and possible for a wider group of players. As the numbers grew, so did the xp. Snowballing since more xp draws more players, this guild truly ended the careers of more than a handful of old time monarchs. Cresting 11000 at its peak it remains at 10000 strong under its current leader Aka-Hung. This group also boasted one of the server's best quest systems at the time and the now infamous Aerlinthe Foundry macros. Personality players included Thor Azaroth, Og II, Hardside, Archmage Lara, Desire, Layla, Porcha, Machine, Spacekorn and too many other notables to remember or mention. Peer Guilds: Evoker II, William the Bat, Staffstroker II/Que', Mistikal, Wartorn, Lightning-Storm, Alando, Scorpionic, Pew the Mottled and others. Who's next? Only time will tell. ? If any can help me make a more complete listing of these with the additions of approx. dates this would be helpful. AC is truly a game and hopefully this brief recount of its history brings back some good memories or a couple of chuckles at the ludicrousness of it all ? Neonator, Dereth Historian.