Ok, for the second time this year they have messed us up good. We use to have a simple, fast, easy way to log on. Then they changed it to simple but slow. For those of us with two accounts it was a big pain to switch between them.
Now they have changed it to very slow and hard. Of course they had a good reason. Of course that reason had everything to do with making MS money and who gives a dam about us.
I have no proof about the next. It is just my observation. MS started this passport junk in response to other people making money. Yahoo and other portals are making money and MS wants it.
So they make a portal. Now comes the hard part, getting people to use it. To get people you have to give them a good reason to use it. To get venders and other things you need to make it attractive you have to have numbers. If you can show that a lot of people use your portal it is easy to get venders to sigh up. It is your classic chicken or egg problem.
In typical style, MS cheats. By forcing the zone members to use passport they have an instance show of numbers. Of course they we not using passport, only going there to get to where they really want to go. MS shows the numbers to the venders while we are forced to play with this slow, chunky piece of garbage.
I might be less angry and more resolved if the dam think worked. Right now I'm locked out of my account because it thinks someone else owns my zone name. I have had repeated attempts to hack my account so I'm understandable worried.
Zmaster has been typically helpful. I got an auto response message and nothing after that. Being that MS's customer service reputation is on par with its reputation for security I'm not surprised.
Of course calling got me a phone charge and nothing else. There is no phone support for the zone or passport. I did not find this out until after a long hold time and talking to two different people one of whom had trouble understanding English.
Most of the time with the second person was spent correcting the errors the first one typed into the computer. After that was done I told him the trouble and he told me I had to mail Zmaster. I told him it was not a zone problem but a passport. No matter, Zmaster handles both.
You would figure something as important as passport and the zone would have someone to call. No dice. So maybe in a few days they will get around to handling this small trivial problem. Like who cares if someone cannot play a game.
On the third day zmaster said, "Let Fist Play"
Took them three days to fix my account. At least I could play Fist de Yuma Jr as he is on my second account. I know of some people who are still locked out after a week. I guess I'm lucky.
Going to cool it a while
No, not leaving game or skipping columns. I have gotten back into the trap of writing too much about grief players and thieves. I'm finding these people, at least on MT, are being well taken care of on the VN boards.
I call it a trap because it is far to easy to let your emotions run wild and let any small infraction set you off. I got into a big beef with a guy over looting on ML last week. The item taken was trivial but I let it got way out of line. The guy seems to be a known ass but that was beside the point. I did not know it at the time and should have just let him steal the key.
In any case I removed that part from the column but not before getting into a big pissing contest on the VN board. That is not what I'm about.
Also my stands have made me add to my squelch list a bit. I get random people swearing at me in tells. I have no idea who they are, only that they are mad at me for an unknown reason. I play this for fun. It is not fun dealing with children who are unsupervised in an adult game.
I guess that statement might get a few added squelches.
Also taking the high road can lead people into thinking I'm something I'm not. I have been described as egotistical and worse. One guy sent me a letter on how I stole a Mattie C from him on ML. Seems he ran out of buffs in the middle of battle. While he was off to the side buffing, I came along and killed "his" Mattie. For this I was called hypocritical.
I don't hunt Matties though I seem to have good luck with hides. Found three so far and not killed all that many. If I knew he had been fighting it I would not have killed it. If I saw him having trouble I would have helped. Perceptions are more important than truth. To him I stole his Mattie and no amount of logic will change that.
We all make mistakes in the game. In the heat of battle we can do stupid things. When having a bad day we can all commit grief to other players. Tolerance is called for in most cases.
That is not to say we take the liberal line and not judge at all. People need to be judged for their actions, if not society breaks down. At the same time we need to reserve that judgment to important things and forgive whenever possible.
So for now anyway and maybe forever I'm not talking about people. I might tell the tale but I'll leave out names. The tale might be instructive; using the name would be destructive.
Stupid things we say
I was in a hurry but that is no excuse. I really wish I had gotten the name of this player as I made a total ass of myself. I'll give you the background.
I saw the message that there was a swarm in the plateau. I rushed over and started buffing. I was missing something or had a reason or mistake, I don't remember but ended up having to port off the plateau. After running back I was even in more of a hurry to get going.
When you buff it is very hard to carry on a conversation. Someone with Cat in their name handed me a couple of notes. I wondered why but was in too big a hurry to ask. Next I was handed a shard. Again I had no idea why.
As I finished I rushed off to battle. I then felt that I had been rude in not at least saying thank. I ran back and said, "Thanks by the way." Of all the stupid things to say! How that came out of my fingers I have no idea.
I was hoping it was the Cat I know so I could apologize but it was not. That was a day I let my being in a hurry overwhelm my common sense. If the Cat who saw me that day could please contact me I would like to personally apologize for my rude behavior.
Other errors
A while back I wrote about a Queen quest we finished because the people in front of us had disappeared. There seems to be more to this than I know. I saw a rather bitter post on the VN board about it one day. I asked him to send me a letter explaining but I guess he did not believe I would print it.
We all have a personal perception. That perception is seldom the total picture and in some cases outright untrue. I'm sure I fell into that a time or two. At the same time we cannot begin to doubt our eyes or disbelieve our beliefs because of an error or two.
People have to understand there is a difference between being wrong and lying. Being wrong means you believed you were right about what you say. Lying is saying what you know to be wrong.
This is where a lot of people misunderstand me. I stand for what I believe. That does not mean I will not listen to the other side or be totally fixed in my position. I will listen and at times change my mind. Understand you need to have your ducks in line to convince me.
There are those who are fixed in their positions and believe that anyone who does not believe as they do are evil or stupid. Fortunately this type of person is rare.
Who knows, someday I may be convinced that xp chains are not evil vassal stealers and are a great benefit to the game. That will take some doing.
Two or more computers playing
I have two accounts. I use two computers networked together to run both accounts simultaneously. As the second computer is a bit weak it is mostly for muling. While reading on the MS board I was reminded that the information for running two accounts is not readily available.
I'm assuming you have the computers set up properly for internet access. That is a whole different problem.
First step after installing the game on the second computer is to click on the icon created on the desktop. You will see a button labeled settings. After clicking that you will see two things you can click. Specific Port is the default. Change that to Derived from your IP Address. Close the windows and you are ready to go.
I use it for muling but many people use it to play together. Wife and husbands teams are common and college's have roommates doing it. Of course if you're on a dialup like me having two play may be a bit laggy.
Strangely this information is not really available. Being that MS should love one person having multiple accounts it is strange that they do so little to help people run them.
Crossbow
I have stated in the past that I never found a bow template I liked. There are just not enough points to get all the skills you need. The killer is Fletching. While Fletching is cheap it add 20 levels to finishing a strong template.
I never looked at Crossbow as the skill was almost unplayable. The slow loading made it a drawing weapon at best. The fix to that in the last patch made me take a new look at the template.
80, 10, 100, 50, 80, 10. I would love to lower strength but with all an archer has to carry it just cannot be done. I would like to lower quick but running and melee defense would suffer too much.
Spec Crossbow, Life. At this time I will not recommend any template that does not spec life. It is just too important at high levels.
Healing at 7, even with life healing is imperative.
Fletching at 12, I know some will pass on Fletching but I feel it is far to limiting for an archer to go without this.
Mana Conversion at 26, I take this here as Creature will not be much use without it.
Creature at 60.
You will note that we still have to leave out Lore. When you get creature lore is less useful. Still I would take lore at 80 to simplify some things. Many are switching to take Fletching at 60 and Creature at 40. I don't recommend this but with the right support it is can be done and will level faster.
I have a vassal trying this one out. I powered him to 12 and planned to do more. He was 17 last time I talked to him. He will never be a tank but what he can hit, he can hurt bad.
Why Life?
As I said I would not recommend a template without spec'd Life. Well with one exception, sword. Sword is a powerful weapon, best on the game. It is also the most costly. You can spec Life but only at the cost of not spec'ing melee. I strongly believe a melee must spec melee defense.
There are a lot of obvious advantages to having Life. Protects are the number one. Jr at 58 is better protected than Fist was at 70. With level VI spells I can forgo the pain of trading, begging and searching for the one item needed to complete a protection setup. Fist was not finished with that until over 80. He also had to add and immense amount of points to Lore. Fist will never have VII protects and Jr will in time.
The one spell I'm finding extremely useful is revitalize. I finding myself pulling a wand out after every battle and getting my stamina back. This has meant I only use my stamina elixirs in battle. I carry half what I use to carry in elixirs and they last twice as long.
Buffing is a lot simpler with Life as a skill. Without life you have to use a life wand or use Life mastery with a limit of level one spells. With Life I can use stamina to mana at any time while buffing. Health to mana and heal is simple and fast.
Fist has Creature and tosses Life mastery as part of his pre-buff. This lets him use health to mana level one without changing wands. When he buffs he must health to mana, heal after almost after every spell. I've added a lot into mana conversion to try and help this. At over 10 million a point I'm not adding much more.
Jr on the other hand can use level VI health to mana. This returns much more mana. One or two health to mana will put him at full.
Lastly will be de-buffs. Jr's skill is not high enough to take advantage of this yet but I see the buffed skill reaching 350. I may not be de-buffing everything all the time but enough to get all but the highest monsters.
Another advantage is something I saw Dagger Stom do. He was buffing and there was a sudden spawn. While we grabbed weapons he started to drain. This kept him out of danger for a short while, long enough for us to finish off the spawn. (Hint, when in a danger spot do alternate buffs. Half the people buff while the other half guards.)
So unless things change I highly recommend you spec Life in any template you use. If not at least plan on having it trained at some time. Training it will mean a costly xp drain and never being high enough to de-buff strong monsters. In time trained will have all the advantages, with the exception of de-buffing, that spec Life has. It will just be very costly in xp and take a long time to get there.
Turbine takes a stand.
Well, 400 accounts down and I would bet over a 1,000 to go. The cheaters found a nice exploit that had the potential of costing us all two weeks. Yes, one of Turbines options was a two-week rollback. The other option was to delete all dup'ed items. That is what I personally was hopping for.
I doubt if the rollback was one of the top options but it's scary it was even on the list. My worry that the dupers were using toss away accounts was put to rest. All accounts owned by the cheaters went away. That is why I believe a lot more will go as they track these down. People have up to 10 accounts so 400 accounts is not 400 people. There are a lot more out there.
There was a big uproar on HG when a big time player was dumped and MS had logged the account to check on stuff. People don't understand that MS can do what they want to any account. We have no rights. Fortunately this power is only used in dire times like now.
Dire times
We are in Dire times for the game. I'm seeing accounts now with double 100+ players. There is no way these accounts were played to that level. I have two players at high level, 89 and 99. I have played one over two years and the other for over a year. I also have a lot more playing time than most. I have more members under me than most Alliances.
Chain members with less than a year's time and little actual playtime have higher level players. As they started with third generation templates they are also a lot better than mine. I have to complete with them at the high level hunting grounds.
I know people who have played over a year and have mid 50's players. They are first or second generation templates. They cannot get anywhere close to the hard spots without being totally ineffective. The magic resistance of the new monsters is set to give the chain players a challenge. What should be something for only a handful of top long-term players is now close to average.
Unfortunately there is nothing that Turbine can do about them. They did not cheat to do this. It is a perversion of the alliance system but not cheating. I can see only one way to fix this and even that will take far to much time.
Step one will be to find a way to stop chains. How I have no idea. Just saying don't do it will not work. Enforcement would be a nightmare. Stopping xp from vassals would also hurt the people who really play the game. How they do it I don't know, all I know is the game is in big trouble if it is not fixed. As it is something that should take two years can be done in a month.
The second step will also be very hard. That should be a total ban on transferring accounts. People will get bored with these made up high levels. They did not work to get them so they have no stake in the unearned player. They will soon be moving on. It would take time but in six months or so the game will return to normal. If they are allowed to sell them the problem never goes away.
To do this would take a stand like we never thought Turbine would do. We never thought Turbine would be banning accounts in wholesale. I now have hope they will fix this.
I can hear the screams but the rest of us gain.
Turbine is bringing back Matties and returning Greater Shadow armor to its original state. The people who were using these items for an income are going to take a hit. The rest of us will have better armor.
With Fist getting Creature I have dumped my armor with spells for some nice very high al stuff. It is heavy and sure to drop on death. I'll be happy to lose 30 to 35 point of al to make it no drop and lighter. I'm so glad I had not turned in the gems I have. Of course Shards will be going for a lot more now.
It would be nice if they had an upgrade program for the old GS armor out there. I doubt they will do that. It will be some nice stuff to give a vassal.
Matties are not as big a deal with the robes that are currently in the game. Only real advantage to them will be the ability to transfer them. New robes being no give are a pain.
They really want to make us happy? Change the color. Having everyone in the same color GSA sucks.
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