I have been in a big funk over the game lately. I see it being destroyed by greedy lazy people. I saw a 117lv player today. He was macroing in a hive. I have never heard of him before. Right now the game is totally top heavy with players who have less experience than most 40lvs in Elder.
I made an error by not defining what a chain is. This allowed the chain members to protect their exploit by creating their own meaning to my words.
A chain is an alliance with no ties to their vassals. They are not vassals, only experience generators. The only help a patron might give a vassal is leveling, as it helps them. The bottom people are only there with the hope of moving up. As a player generates more xp they are moved up the chain as a reward. This means a vassal can be taken away at any time.
A player in a chain can be moved at any time. They have no control over who their patron will be or what vassals they will be given.
A chain member must product xp equal or above what they receive. This means a chain member must macro or power level when they play. Stopping to help some low levels will be far too costly to even think about.
Some chains have taken steps to insure their members don't become grief players. As chains attract the greedy and lazy there is a good chance that grief players will be in the group. I praised this but grief play is not the problem, overcrowding at high levels is.
I worked hard to get my two players to high level. Fist just hit 100 and Mage 90. While a lot of Fist's xp has come from vassals, most of that has come from Mage. Mage hunts a lot and hard. He gets xp from some vassals but not as much as you might think.
A lot of the response to last weeks essay on Chains have been as expected. The typical, me, me, me, me and I want posts. One compared traditional alliances with chains, calling the traditional ones worse than chains. It was especially offensive.
After reading his posts I saw that here was a very smart, if immoral and greedy player. He used a lot of the games of politicians use. First he made a comparison of chains with real alliances. Of course they look the same, they use the same tools. As it not the tools but the way they are used that is bad, this was bogus. He presented his lie well.
Next he did his best to smear me. Attacking the messenger is a time-honored technique with people of this type. He pointed out that I would not be where I am without vassals. Of course that is true. The difference is I earn my vassals. I earn them and keep them with hard work and honorable play. If my vassals have needs I spend a lot of time helping fulfill those needs.
XP chains don't have vassal, they have xp providers. There is a big difference.
Another way to destroy a good idea is to change the idea into something worse. Most people reject the bad idea as unworkable. My idea of a 30 day delay in the start of xp flow would not hurt most alliances but would hurt chains a lot. They suggested that xp for vassals be taken away in total. Of course no one would want that. By pushing for something no one wants they change the debate and pick up supporters.
The elitism debate is particularly offensive. This one accuses anyone who wants to do away with chains with trying to hold others down. I have no qualm with anyone working their way to high level, note the work towards, not be given. I have spent two years and over 5 total months of in game time to get where I am. Of course I feel bad to see a guy with less than a month game time have twice my xp.
That is not why I'm so strongly against chains. I'm against them because I feel they will destroy the game. This month we have been hit strong with the effects of too many high levels.
High-level hunting spots are being camped 24/7 with chains. The spell economy had dropped to virtually nothing. You have to stand in line for high-level quests. Monster magic resistance has been raised so high that a 4 school first generation mage has to be 90lv to start hunting in the hard spots.
The relation between vassal and patron is falling apart. Good alliances are trying to hold on to their members. Some have started chains to keep them happy. Elder has taken a stand against chains and will disallow them in Elder. I'm sure that this will hurt recruiting and take away some members.
There was a story about a 90lv Battle Mage that did not know how to Vuln a monster the other day. He had been macroing and in a chain from day one. He has the most powerful and hardest to make player in the game. It was given to him with no work on his part.
What good is it to him? He does not know how to play. He has the power to take down about anything. He seldom suffers from a resist or fizzle. Being that it is not earned he will quickly be bored and leave. He sells off on E-bay while we suffer another high level.
If this is not stopped in the next patch it may be too late. I see most players joining chains. Who wants to be treated like a new player because he is only 60lv. The game will become all leveling and more 100+ players than under 50. At that point it will be useless to play.
Anyone who is not in a chain or haven't spent 2 years leveling will be left out in the cold. The condescending egotistical d00d's will have won and the game will be over.
Unless Turbine is counting on letting this game go to get AC2 a head start, they must act, and act now.
That was my last word on Chains. Turbine will fix the problem or not. I have done what I can. I took a lot of abuse this month over this. I was prepared to do that but it still was not fun. I play for fun. I can at this point hope for one of two things. Turbine fixes the problem or I'm totally wrong about chains effect on the game.
Melee Queen Quest Part 1
Well, we know it can be done. I have heard of several melee players, including Killean, kill the Queen. I have seen it on one quest. The one I saw had a good idea, have two melee's work her. This leaves one with no Queen attacks on them and with luck she will be switching back and forth. So the plan was to get Fist the kill on our next quest.
First step was to get sprayed. The Crippler, my vassal, has just hit 70 and is going as well. With his better template he is only 20 below me in attack skills. Of course I have much more hit points and stamina, which might be handy on this one. Also having spec'd melee defense I'll be taking far less hits than him.
With Mars-Hill, Xandran, Gimp with a Limp, The Big Show and myself we headed out. When I got Mage sprayed there were only three of us. We were in no danger and had little trouble. Because of that I was wondering why we has so much power. I soon found out.
When I did the spraying with Mage we had William the Bat to set us up. He had to travel over one or two acid pits to pull some switches. We had the easy part, just kill Olthoi.
This time we were going to the hive by the Dam. I had been there once and it was not a place I wanted to go to. You end up in the waterfall, taking a lot of damage. The mist is hard to see in, especially with my 1/4 video setting. I cannot go higher without severe lagging. Maybe someday I'll be able to afford a better computer. Just to make it especially difficult they added Vapor golems into it. Cannot see them except for radar.
Mars-Hill had to drop out for some real life stuff at this point.
We dropped into the mist and started to the left. All I could do was try to follow the green dot in front of me. I had to stop at one point to heal. After several fails I grabbed an elixir. Gimp with a Limp also tossed a heal on me. I was lucky that neither of the two Vapors hitting me used spells. A single fireball would have finished me.
I found the ramp after a little difficulty getting free of the Vapors. The two of them blocked my escape and I could not see where the opening was. In the hallway we made a stand and finished them off.
After hitting a switch we moved to the next hallway. Two Vapor golems followed us. I was again close to death but we got them. It cost us The Big Show. Xandran got his stuff and we moved forward.
After fighting a lot of Olthoi we came to a river of acid. I think it was Xandran who ran over and got a door unlocked. I was taking 39 to 40 damage ever few seconds in the acid so I could not be there long.
Here we were stuck behind an unpickable door. Xandran had done this with Moby Dick and was not sure how to get the door open. After all that we did not want to give up. Besides we had to get sprayed.
We found that William the Bat was on. He had been having computer problems and not played for a few weeks. Let me tell you, he was more than missed.
William said he would lead us to the easy one to get sprayed. We ported out and got to another hive. We fought out way to the end and started killing. After over an hour no one had got sprayed. We figured this was broken. Another nice bug.
So our only shot was back to the Dam. We found out that the switch to the last door was in the first hallway. After a lot of fighting and almost dieing again we parked Xandran at the switch. We fought our way to the acid pit again.
I ran to the door, tried my 334 skill on the lock, failed twice and ran back. I healed and tried it again. I have learned I cannot depend on sound. After several times of trying to unlock it noted that the message was not failed but succeeded. "You have locked the door." Hell, one of my attempts must have succeeded but sounded like a failure. Two more tries got the door unlocked again.
From there we got to the door, which Xandran opened for us. William the Bat was running back to do something and got trapped in the acid and died. We all got sprayed and headed back to recover his body.
William had another body at the entrance when he tried to run past the Olthoi un-buffed. We decided to head up to the exit to help him recover. I hit a spot of lag and the other two moved without me.
I tried to follow but took a wrong turn. I ran into a never-ending supply of Olthoi. In time and a lot of stamina elixirs I would have defeated them. Nevertheless I was glad for some help. Gimp with a Limp came back for me and joined in the battle. Now Gimp is a mage so a pile of Olthoi is a bigger problem for him. He came close to dieing there.
I was against having anyone outside of Elder coming on the quest. Gimp with a Limp will have my support on whatever quest he wants to go on. I have played with a lot of mages and I can say Gimp with a Limp is one of the better players I have met.
I also think his name is one of the best I have seen. After a hundred Archermage "insert name here" it is nice to see a name with humor.
Queen Quest Part II
I had Fist parted at Mount E waiting for the quest. I got the word that we were going to let Mars-Hill get the kill. We were lacking mages and needed Mage to go on the quest. I logged Mage and moved him to the start.
Everything was going as it should. We killed the first Queen and ran. We had to make sure the locked door was held as Elder did not have any picks on him. We all got to the jump and Mars-Hill was passing out items for us to bane. At that point I started to lag.
I had done some writing earlier and web surfing. I knew I should have rebooted before going back to play but forgot. Halfway into buffing I was dropped to the desktop. I tried to get back and got a client crash. Had to reboot, which on my slow computer takes a lot of time. Then I had to do the slow log in that MS makes us suffer through.
I got back and Elder and Mars-Hill were waiting for me. I quickly buffed Mars-Hill's items and we jumped down. Moby Dick had done the de-buffing on the Queen. He is a four school old template. Despite being over 10 levels higher than me his creature is 5 points below. I found later it took him a while to get the yield on the queen. That was to be my job. My creature was high and after we started in on the Queen quest I put a lot into it. With proper buffs I'm over 380. My lagging out had hurt us there. It was going to hurt us even more.
We set up and Mars-hill jumped down to kill the Queen. We kept him alive but it soon was apparent my delay had let the level VII spells expire. Level VII de-buffs don't last very long. Remember that if you plan a long fight.
I called for Moby to de-buff the Queen again. I was not sure if he heard me. There was a lot of chaos with the upper spawn. People were taking hits and things were dicey.
I had to depend on the other mages to keep Mars-hill alive and started in on de-buffing the Queen. I landed a Yield after three tries. I skipped the other de-buffs and went right to Imperil. Mars-hill said his damage over doubled after that.
At that point I started getting resisted on every spell. I realized that my buffs had fell. I had lagged out with only a few spells tossed and what I had from the previous buff was falling. I started to quickly rebuff.
With the Queen at almost full they called on one of our young battle mages to start blasting. Unfortunately they forgot about Gimp with a Limp. Gimp held back not knowing if he would be allowed to get the kill or not.
Reality Dysfunction is a deserving guy but has taken some short cuts on his drive to 70. This has created some bad feelings towards him on the boards. So at that point I was not sure what I felt about him. I was glad those feelings were misplaced because overall he went beyond what was expected of him.
The BM template is a big Queen killer. While there is some problems with balance but when combined with and Og there is nothing a BM cannot take down. RD is 20 levels below me but is close or better skilled in War than me.
I had a handful of buffs on but no banes. If I was attacked with one of the upper spawns I was toast. The other mages were having the same problem. Their buffs were falling. RD had the Queen below half so we all started blasting. My 361 War was resisted on 5 of my 6 shots.
The Queen fell but we lost two mages due to the upper spawn, one of them was Realty Dysfunction. Fortunately the head can be looted by anyone and given to the killer. I got caught up in the action and forgot my armor was not banned. I jumped down and immediately started taking big damage. Thank God for the Island recall spell. It is much faster than a normal portal. I got out with 35 hit points.
They gathered up the loot, recovered the bodies and headed to the town. I recalled to my LS and met them there.
I asked RD for the head as I had given mine to Moby Dick when I got the kill. Moby had given his to another member of Elder. Why all that head movement is a long story and not very interesting so I leave it at that. RD was nice enough to let me have the head. Of course with the stories of disappearing items I'm afraid to display it.
Armor kindled
I still needed to get my girth kindled and my vassal Abin Al-Sahad had reached 47 He needed to get his armor kindled. Abin is a BM so the two of us would have no problem.
I posted that we were leaving but no one who needed armor kindled was ready to go. Abin pop'ed a gem to the tired mage shop and we stocked up. We ran to the south dires portal and from there ran to slaughterhouse.
The hall is a short run from there, if you go in the right direction. Abin knows what I'm talking about.
There were a few people at the start and I hoped we could join them. They were just hunting and not going to get any armor kindled. Abin and I stated in on our own. The Wisp at the end had been killed so we had a clear shot to the first switch.
We had a hard battle with five or six Bandies and a Magna Golem. With the two of us it was not too much trouble. I showed him the switch but we did not hit it.
We got up the stairs and cleared the Iron golems. I hit the two switches and we ran without fighting to the last door. I had Abin stay at the switch while I cleared the monsters in the last room. When done I had him open the door.
The battle with a handful of Umbris and some Bandies took longer than I wanted and Abin had to open the door again. I ran back to the first switches room and cleared out the Iron Golems. I jumped down and had to clear the Bandies to the first switch. I hit that and told Abin to hold the door.
I got back up, hit the two switches and raced to the door. I got there to find that Abin had not placed himself right. I sometime forget that not every one has done this before. I showed Abin where to stand and hit the switch. Abin was on the wrong side of the door to help me this time so I had to be quick.
I was fast enough that nothing had spawned. Rather than run down the stairs I jumped. I hit the first switch and ran up the stairs. I hit the next two and raced to the door. LOL I ran through just as the door was closing. I know it is possible to solo this now, just have to be fast.
It took a while for Abin to get his armor infused. He broke a lot of the blocks. As I had broke three with a 360 skill I knew he was going to have a time consuming job. No danger there. A Umbris was de-buffing use through the wall but that was about it.
Another group caught up with us. Fortunately they wanted a different color than Abin. Now that I have taken a good look at the armor I'm not sure I'll use it much. The added 5 to 10 points on skills is nice but the armor level is dangerously low. Even with level VII buffs it is far lower than my GSA. I hear most people only use it for buffing.
I was tempted to use it for de-buffing the Queen. With a fast upper spawn rate I felt that would be too chancy. I'm carrying it with me but not sure how much I'll use it. In spots with more magic attacks than melee I might put it on. Be nice to fight a Chaos Wisp without having to yield it.
Abin's story
On Friday night I log in at the Hall and Fist is there. He tells me to get Abin and we will do the mage armor quest. Now at this point Im excited because Ill finally get to use the armor Ive been carrying for the last 20 levels.
We are in the Hall for a bit looking for others to join us, but no one wanted to or was able to go. So I pop a gem and we are in Mayoii, we stocked up and then buffed for the run. Running through to the Slaughterhouse wasnt too bad, we stopped briefly when we had to fight but otherwise we made it through.
When we get to the building Fist had a good laugh at my expense, I had to rebuff and his comment was "Oh yeah I forgot your were on the Level 6 buff timer", thats my patron, a smartass. (Editor; No I really do forget.)
We go in and there are people there, but they were just there to hunt so we continued on. We had to fight at a couple points, mostly I threw a few heals at Fist as he was fighting a few umbris shadows and bandies while I was dealing with a magma golem.
When we got clear we went down the staircase where Fist told me to throw a switch when he told me to then to stand in the doorway. I did it but misunderstood what he meant by standing in the door and moved in a couple steps too far. So the door closed through me...ughhhhhh, poor Fist had to go throw the switches again.
This time I stood in the right spot but it didnt matter, he moved fast enough that he ran in before the doors closed. Fist rebuffed my will/focus/war and I was pushing 330 war skill, but I kept failing over and over again on the stones. Id get the first one to go but the second one would revert it back telling me my skill wasnt high enough.
I did something that I had to do but didnt want to. I bumped up both life/war 3 points each, over 3 million exp total. After I did this I was able to get the pieces kindled properly to the Exarch armor, Im glad Im war specd. Fist kindled his piece and we were done.
He made it easy, I was surprised that we could do it, just the two of us. But Im glad for the time he spent with me to do it and that I didnt hinder him too much. As I told Fist, Im not sure which I love more, the +10 to my war skill or the mana c VI which has saved me big time during buffs.
Im only wearing the top right now when fighting, depending on what Im buffing I might put the legs on because of the +10 item skill helps since Ive not put anything into item in quite a while. My war buffs now to 291, life to 281 and item to 238, and mana c into the 230s. Now Ive only got to get my cable modem to work but that is a different story.
Queen quest part III
I got a call from Darkside while on a quest. We were in a running part so I could spend some time talking. He wanted me to run the Queen quest for his alliance. He had to work that day and needed someone to guide his group. I felt honored and of course agreed. I asked him to send me an e-mail and gave him my address.
I did not get an e-mail and could not contact Darkside. I needed to get bells from him as well. The next morning I still had not heard from him. I got a lot of tells from members of Darkside's alliance about the quest. As I was not in his alliance I did not want to make promises on who could go or not.
I finally got a tell from Haiao. He was helping set it up. The problem was we had a schedule conflict with another group. Haiao asked if I could run it later in the day. I had cleared my day for this so I could do it at any time. We agreed to start breaking stones at 4pm EST.
I helped Moby get some bell parts for a bit and then logged until it was time for the quest. Haiao had the hard part. He had to turn down the requests and make the hard choices.
I met with the group and the bell breakers headed off to the pillars. Each one was broken on time. I set up the fellow and had us all meet at Mount E.
I had leaned a short while ago why I kept getting lost in the Royal Hive after being sure I knew the way. There is more than one way. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew the route I wanted them to take. Told them how I did quests and what I expected from each member.
I was a bit apprehensive about this for a number of reason. Most of the people were chain members. My stand on chains is well known and had caused some bitterness. Early on I explained that while I feel chains are killing the game, I was not at war with chain members. People do things for different reasons. It is smart to be in a chain if your goal is power. Everyone wants power, even me. So the blame falls on Turbine for not foreseeing chains and doing something to prevent them.
The same thing goes for macros. Turbine refuses to take a stand against combat macros. Instead they spend time trying to remove perches and other places players can exploit. Players are not to blame for doing what comes natural. Turbine needs to fix the problem for good or tell people not to do it.
The second problem I had was I did not know any of the players. Would they do what I wanted? Would they run ahead? Would they be selfish and greedy and mess us all up? All these worries were in my head as we started out.
Two people accidentally entered Mont E before we were ready. Not knowing the way and there being no exit they had to port out. We waited for them to run back. We had a small problem of having to wait for a few people to download in Mount E. If you have never been there it is not a place you want to stand around in. There are four or five Chaos Wisps within range of everyone. Lot of de-buffs and drains.
Second problem was I was lagging bad. I hoped I was not going to have a repeat of my crash. A Chaos Wisp followed us down to the bottom and we lost one player there. Ill Killa held back hand helped him recover.
We had some debate as to how to kill the Queen. Some wanted to form a wall and take her on face to face. This had been done a few times. I was for killing the first Queen and running. We would then come back to use a meat shield to draw the Queen and kill her from the ledge. After explaining both options they agreed to do it my way.
Ill Killa ran the switches. I asked him if he would stay at the switches for the first Queen so we would not need door holders. He surprised me by agreeing. Most people will want to be in on the action. This was looking better and better.
The group kept together and fought as a team. I was feeling that his would be a smooth trip. We got through so fast we did not need to rebuff. We jumped down, cleared the top and were ready for the first Queen.
I de-buffed the Queen while everyone cleared the guards out. We all got by the portal and started blasting. This was fun to watch. Big fireworks as all the mages sent out shockwave after shockwave. I was disappointed to see my 363 War was being totally ineffective. One spell landed of the many I sent out.
The Queen died and I was the first through the portal. I learned my lesson about waiting. No one died but there we a few grunts from people as they exited the portal.
We rebuffed just to be sure. Trying to make runs with short buffs was a mistake. There is no hurry so we spent the comps to keep buffed.
We started out again, this time setting people at the door. I carefully checked each persons placement. After several problems with people being in the wrong place to hold doors I did not want to take a chance. This time I did not need to worry. Each door holder knew exactly where to stand.
My last worry was that Killa would use a different route and get lost. Killa knew the way and had no problem getting himself and the door holders to the end.
At this point I had Haiao pass out his armor for banning. Haiao had wanted to do this in a robe. I explained how the highest armor he could find was a much better choice. He was worried about the time it would take to buff. I explained how passing out the items would fix that.
I knew the buffing time of the players by this time. I takes me five minutes to do a long buff with a lot of banes. I thought that was excessive. I'm not sure why but some in the group were taking 10 minutes to buff. That still left us with 20 minutes. This was good information to know as I had to time the de-buffing of the Queen. If I started to de-buff her as soon as I was done buffing they would have fell before the battle was over.
The Queen killer was a BM. Haiao was the meat shield. We had two healers and myself. We had guards to keep the upper spawn off our back. I made sure each person was ready and we started the battle.
The BM knew to alternate between shockwave and spike. I had de-buffed for Bludgeoning and Piercing. By alternating spells his personal economy was kept up. The healers were doing their job and the most I had to heal Haiao for was 60. They did not get excited and forget stamina.
The back guards did their job and the upper spawn was never a problem. When the Queen was over halfway damaged the BM called for the rest to join in. Again my 363 War refused to land. Bad luck I guess.
The Queen died quickly after that. We jumped down and cleared it all out. Haiao looted the head to be sure it did not disappear on us. We cleared, looted and I called for us to port out.
I have ran into a lot of chain people who have all power and no knowledge. While there were some gaps with this group I would not say they were unknowledgeable. In fact they were about average for people of this level. Where they shined was their ability to follow orders and fight as a group.
Running quests has been described as herding cats. This was not one of those. They worked as a team the entire time. Players such as Ill Killa put their own desires behind them to better support the group. Places where even the best fall down, such as door holding and getting lost, was not a problem with them.
In other words all these members know how to play. It did not change my mind about the damage chains are causing but gives me hope that, at least in Darkside's group, power without knowledge will not be the problem.
Protect yourself
If my best friend wanted to hold my GSA I would find a reason why I could not give it to him. This is an attitude you must have to protect yourself. It is not that I don't trust my best friend. If you hold that ideal you will never be stolen from.
This has not happened often but when it strikes it is hard on people. There are those who will spend a lot of time to set up a theft. They will hunt with the victim, help him and be their friend for days on end. All that is directed for the time they have built the trust enough to make the steal.
A member of our alliance had this happen. He hunted and leaned to trust this person. (I'm holding to my vow to not post names.) After days of trust building the thief asked to check out the victims mattie robe. As soon as it was given the thief logged.
The thief has done this before so it was not a one time thing. The thief is a member of an honorable alliance so there was no warning. (Now broken but looking to get into another one for cover, be warned.) The only way you can protect yourself from this is to hold to your guns. Hard to replace items are never given, ever. No matter who it is, they have no legitimate reason to want to hold your armor.
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