Fist de Yuma - June 4, 2002

WE BM I've been playing my Wintersebb BM about once a week, generally on Wednesday. I have him up to 22lv. When he gets so Stamina to Mana, Revit works he will start moving up faster. Right now the stam2mana rest means for slow buffing and careful play. I was hoping I could break away from the Citadel. I cannot believe all the players who hunt there. The under 30lv groups that should be there I understand but the rest are beyond me. I was camping a small room that spawns six lugies. If well banned and with careful play I can hold the room. It does not net a whole lot of xp but I generally can have it to myself. People do come there but most will quickly clear the room and leave. There are better places for me to hunt but I would rather not be stepping on others. Plus the people there are if it moves kill it and I don't need the stress. I ran to the room and a dagger fighter was facing a Lugie. I ran by that battle and killed one in the room. The dagger player finished off his and attacked the last one. I finished mine and vulned his for him. I hoped by my passing on two of his battles and helping with one he would play nice. Well no good deed goes unpunished. The next spawn I put a vuln on and he attacked it. This was not a simple error as we were around the corner and well away from him when I started the battle. He rushed off to kill other stuff and I had the room to myself. Being such a weak room most of the player who come by are 15 to 20lv. Close to the end of my buff the dagger fighter returned and attacked anything that moved, regardless if it was engaged or not. After he cleared the room I checked his level. 40lv. Now a 40lv dagger can clear OHN if he is any good at all. Why he is in the Citadel I'll never know. Why he is fighting in the lowest level room there I'll only have to guess at. Earlier I tried to see if there was a better place to level the BM. I had had some dealing with the statues and felt I could level very fast there, if I lived. I took the statue portal in Lin. I banned for anything weak on my armor and fully protected myself with IV protects. I hoped it was enough. As far as armor and protects it worked out fine. The problem is I could not land a single spell. 182 skill is well below their magic defense. So I had to fight in the Citadel again. I'm not sure if the next lower statue room is worth it. I might give it a shot. Please Turbine, get a clue. I understand that Turbine/MS does not want to be running around policing players for minor infractions. There are a lot of people who will complain and demand a boot for very minor problems. If it was known that Turbine/MS would boot people for stuff like this there would be no end to the calls. Nevertheless there are people who don't belong in this game. They are generally known as grief players. Their entire game is causing grief to others. Stealing, scamming and other grief play have driven players away from the game. I have no proof but someone said one player has proudly driven 47 people out with his actions. Currently on MT we have someone who has found the way to maximize the number of people he can upset. He has chained his way to a high level and put most of that into health. With over 300 hit points and a very high level he can run the last part of the island quest without fighting. He logs near Relic town and parks another player so he can watch the progress of their work on the quest. When the last part is ready he logs and jumps the portal. Then he will rush to the end and kill the Lady. He will also log in the Ladies room and skip the run a lot. His intend appears to be that only to get the kill over her. In the last week he has killed here several times a day. Every time the announcement goes out he or his other ppl is the killer. He gains nothing for this except the hatred of those trying to do the quest. The loot is important but many players dream of having their name announced server wide as having killed the lady. This immature kid is determined that they will never get their dream fulfilled. Others will do the work and he will get the glory, or in this case the infamy. These two people are running people out of the game with their play. Even those who don't leave right away find the game less than it was and are pushed toward leaving. The entire server is upset at the quest jumper, even those who cannot do the quest. What is Turbines/MSs response? Nothing. They will say that their wide interruption of the CoC excluded quest jumping as a violation. The guy is harassing the entire server with his actions but somehow it is ok. Someone pointed out that the other much bigger games take action on grief players. If someone is disrupting the game they get rid of them. Their studies prove that letting a grief player have his way cost them money. Turbine flat said the other games are wrong to do this. The results are the grief players kicked out of those games are coming here. Right now grief play is causing many players to try other games. AC is overall a better game. That could change. The other games are seeing that solo play and many of the advantages AC has can be put in to their game. Eq is making a lot of changes but most of them are only talk. If Turbine/MS does not get a clue they will always have a game with far fewer numbers than the rest. Even with MS's name in back of AC we are far behind the numbers of the other games. Those who come to AC from the other games have remarked on the unfriendly atmosphere of AC. I would debate this but having never played the others I cannot say for sure. An outsider might assume the game is; level as fast as you can without regard for others until you can get into a chain. Chain and only fight high xp monsters until very high level. There are a lot of people who really play the game. Unfortunately the above type is far more common than it should be. I hope that Turbine/MS wake up and start removing those who disrupt the game. Really it will not be that many who rate a lifetime ban. Handing one to the island jumper would put a stop to the copycats on the other servers waiting to do the same as he does. The future grief players will have warning and think before they act. I would like to see the same actions to combat macros and chains but that is my opinion and not shared by everyone. Very few would disagree with giving lifetime ban to the real abusers of the game. A Start Right after I wrote the above and posted it on a few boards we started to get word that Turbine/MS is doing something about some of the grief players. It was not anything I did as this was a change well before I posted, we just did not start getting word on it until a little after it started. Several people have been given a month ban for abusive tells. We know one person was required to remove an obscene message from his shield or get a ban. While the bans are being enforced on all servers DT was the one who made the most noise. It could be that more there received bans than other servers we will never know. Turbine/MS is not open on stuff like this. If some gets kicked for a month on an Optional Player Killer Server it is accepted and not much made of it. It will still not get rid of all the grief players or fix the quest jumpers but it is a start. Talk with a Jumper I got a tell from the MT quest jumper today. He was worried about an exploit that let people detect Martine. I told him that if it did not give his location Turbine was not going to worry about it. I took that opportunity to try and reason with him on the quest. He stated that he only was jumping the quests of people who had crossed him in the past. He also stated that he was not jumping Elder quests. I tried to explain that jumping anyone's quest for any reason was hurting more than his target. It hurts him as well. I also tried to point out that somehow there is someone he does not like on almost every quest. I also told him that many on the server hated him and he had to not want that. The only quest he did not steal in the last two weeks was one where a Plasma Golem got the kill. They were trying to steal the kill but the lady got hit by a blast from a Plasma Golem. The results were the same, a busted quest for the people who did the work. He tried to compare the current US war with what he was doing. I found that petty and tried to explain how it did not work. It is very articulate and can be well spoken. Because of this many are confused. I have been around long enough to know a good speaker can hid an evil mind. In the end he finally told the truth. He gets a great thrill out of hurting others. I told him I pitied him and he and I did not play the same game. There are a lot of sick people in this world. When they get power in the real world they have created and are creating vast misery and death. There are a handful of them in power now and the entire world is affected. This poor child does not have power. Instead he takes his mental illness out on people in a game. Anyone he drives out of the game will add to his thrill. PK fun I was at the mansion and Rob Van Dam was asking about going PK. At 42lv I did not think it would be wise but it was his choice. No one was around that could help him so I told him to meet me in Bashi and get some sake. I lifestoned to AB and took the portal. While there I talked to a few people about this and that. There are a lot of great people in the game. Far to many think this game is only about leveling. There is so much more that I cannot even begin to list it. Of course as players you understand that. Rob got there and we ran to the drunk. I showed him the route to the Halls. After that I was not sure of the route. Rob said S L U G had told him to keep going left. Using that we found the alter with no problem. I buffed him before he went red. We ported to the mansion. There were no Elder PK's there so he wanted to try the sub. I was sure if he did he would be killed and looted. As a low level dagger player he had no chance with the high level PK's that hang there. I ported to the sub and give him a run down on the PK's there. I guess he agreed with me as he did not follow. While there I met Prophecy. We talked a while. Rob was still looking for a duel so I asked Prophecy if he would duel Rob Van Dam. After assuring him I was not red he agreed and we met in Tou-tou. I knew it was more a lesson in futility for Rob. There was no way he could win this battle. I was hoping that he would go white after this and wait 20 or so levels before trying it again. Prophecy was nice and did not kill him right away. Rob tried to land a vuln on Prophecy but his magic defense was far to high. After burning his mana Rob took out his dagger and took a few swings. Prophecy had already de-buffed him so it was only a matter of landing a single spell to finish it. Rob was able to avoid one or two spells but a touch of lag and he was toast. Rob got back and Prophecy give him some advice on PK. Rob did not seem to be ready to go white so I logged to fix breakfast. I hope he is white by the time I get back or Rob is in for a long hard day. (Days later he was still red. My new vassal Mage Fluke is a DT transplant and is teaching Rob.) PK repost When I was talking to Prophecy the name Alcoholic Barfighter came up. Prophecy said to watch him fight to learn because Alcoholic Barfighter was one of the best. Later I saw the below post from Zanator Moonblade, a player I respect a lot. I was surprised at how the responses were all thoughtful and respectful. So refreshing after reading some of the DT posts. Public statement about Alcoholic Barfighter.... I fought him either Friday or Saturday (cant remember which), but I used inepts, a couple drains here and there......basically every trick in my book short of chain draining/harming. He made maybe one or two comments about my tactics, but not a big deal. And frankly, I don't really notice chat when I fight...Im too busy trying to stay alive. I just wanted to post that I can NOT beat him in a war/vuln type fight. As Ive said before, hes one of the best PKs I know, and I want to publicly say that. I beat him in that fight, but I had to do it using "strategic" So, Alchy my man, when we fight, Im gonna HAVE to use all the tricks I got. I can't beat you any other way. I just wanted to put it out there publicly, so that you know when we fight that I HAVE to do that. Its a complement to your abilities, and the only way I can beat you. But, you know that. Youre a helluva PK...just wanted you to know. Zanator Moonblade Alchy' response Hehe thanks zan and sorry about the tactical comments. I thought you bringing me to the point of over 50% evasion of my swings was too much. I couldn't bring down your melee D since you also had debuffed my critter LOL. Alcoholic Barfighter The changing quest part I Turbine might be getting this an "us vs. them" attitude. If they think we are winning they will do something to lean it back into their favor. The first hint is the Crystal Lord. Last month Crystal Lord was a great event. Five or six people would gather to take one on and hope for some keepable loot. It was not to easy or to hard. There were a few tricks that made it to easy for those who used them but most people were playing it head up. It might have been the people who exploited the flaws in the system or who knows what else but Turbine changed all that. They beefed it up so much that it is really not worth doing any more. Nothing we try seems to make this anything but a nightmare. We have tried to draw off the Flies. That sometimes works but is too iffy to be use a lot. We have tried to clear the Flies with mages and archers. They respawn about as fast as they are killed. It plain takes too many people too long. I cannot speak for anyone but myself but I will not chase them anymore. I'll help with body recovery but that is about it. With the time it takes a full million points will lose me xp. The loot might have some keepables but only a few even get to look for them. A fun profitable quest has become another "I'll pass" quest. Turbine wins, we lose. The changing quests part II The story is still out on this one but they way it looks now the Queen quest has been pushed into another "I'll pass" quest. When I heard people were failing I thought it was inexperienced players missing some key element. I was wrong. We were set to head off at 5pm. We had set it for 4pm but it got pushed forward. It was Sunday and I was up late the night before. I decided to take a nap around 2. I got up just before 5 so I did not get to eat. When I logged I found they had started early. They were at the dam getting sprayed. Fortunately the door was held so I just had to get there. I never liked the dam. The fog combined with Vapor golems is a nightmare of blind movement. I noted that they put a Pyreal golem in there. Just to make it interesting I guess. Mars-hill sent a few people to help clear the Olthoi out of the way for me. I can fight my way there but it is not easy. I lucked out and got sprayed early. I ported out to help clear the lag and ran to the Hive. Not being able to log there meant I was stuck waiting for the rest to get sprayed and run to the Hive. At last everyone got there. Mars-hill had logged so I was nominated as the leader. I explained how I wanted to do the quest. We were going to do it in a two pass. Moby Dick and a fighter were going to stay back and work the switches. We had doors holders for the second pass set up. We know who was healing, de-buffing and back guarding. It looked like it was going to be a smooth ride. We got to the den without problem. After clearing the top we jumped down to clear the trash. Everyone know not to touch the Queen until the trash was clear and we were ready at the portal. I led the way over the jump. I was a one man wrecking crew for a whole. I killed three guards quickly. Yield, Bludgeoning Vuln and a few blasts had them dead. My skills are not totally where I'm satisfied but I'm darn close. When I can fight a Guard or Brood without adding the Yield I'll be finished. While we were fighting I kept hearing grunts and screams. I thought the new people had missed a buff or something. Miss S died and sent a tell, "I was killed by the Queen." WHAT! I killed a Brood and saw two red legs in front of me. I did not follow the legs up to see if the Queen was attached to them or not, I took off running. My health is being eaten up in rapid gulps but I knew I could make it to the portal. I hit the portal with 60 hit points to spare. Well guess what. You need have been sprayed to use the portal and my 90 minutes were up. By the time I figured that out I was at the LS in AB. Almost everyone died. At that time we assumed that someone had started the quest and did not get the second Queen. Later we were not so sure. We broke the pillars so the quest had to have been reset. Maybe there is only one Queen now? So of course to finish the quest and recovery the bodies we had to get sprayed again. Back to the Dam we went. An Elder fought his way to the switch room and opened the door for us. I was again sprayed early and ported out. I waited again for the rest. I should have known something was not right with the server. We had one person who jumped at the start and ended up bouncing up and down for several minutes before we got her with us. Nothing she could do would stop the bounce. The killer was to he Liquid Assassin. He had just hit 70 and I was not sure if he was strong enough. We had a back up just in case he died. Again everything was smooth. We had everyone at the ledge. LA's armor was well banned and the Queen was thoroughly de-buffed by yours truly. LA jumped and we fed him heals. He really did not do that bad. I have seen higher-level players who needed more healing than he did. His sword was not ripping up the Queen but her health dropping. It was not all that fast but it was sure. I kept and eye on my timer and reapplied the debuffs after four minutes. After this I'll change that to every three minutes. The Queen had hit just a notch over 50 percent and I was ready to tell Moby Dick to start blasting. I figure at 49 percent the two of use would finish her off. At this point we went into massive lag. I mean the type of lag were you cannot even move your mouse. I had seen this before and the only cure was to log on and off. Of course we could not do that. Chock one more up to the cheaters. All but two people were suffering with the lag. We could not even change spell tabs. I was trying to do a Queen de-buff with the delete and page down key to change spells. With the healers locked up LA, who was not suffering the lag, was left to fend for himself. As she has blasted fighters with 50 more points of melee defense it did not take long for him to die. Mars-hill could not even jump down to try and finish off the battle. We had her at 12% but after that there was nothing we could do. Without being able to port out and one minute on buffs I decided to do a house recall. It took a bit for the letters to appear after I typed them but in time I was able to port out. A few people died but most of us made it out. Now it is 10pm and I had been at it 5 hours. Some had been at it even longer. People were logging and it looked like we would not even have enough people to go back. We had 5 people and only two were mages. I got a message from Mage Fluke, my newest vassal. I told him to head to the Dam for spraying. Chain Effect had to leave earlier and we got him with us. Moby Dick logged back and William the Bat showed up. So we ended up with a party even stronger than before. Along with the above we had Taavaz, Duri Gallant, Falodrin and Xan'daran. The problem was not power this time but it was exhaustion. By the time we got everyone sprayed it was hitting 11:30 pm. I had my nap so I was not tired but I was hungry as hell. Between being tried and hungry we did not work well together or plan well. We got almost everyone to the bottom. Because of a miscommunication some people stayed on top and had no way down. Several more went to try and help them. The ones who were lost joined us and we started buffing. Then we found that many of those who went after them had not retuned. It was becoming a mess. I had de-buffed the Queen three times and they were still not ready. Finally the buffs got to short and I had everyone rebuff. Now we had another problem. None of the melees were ready to face the Queen. We had LA set to go but he lost armor when he died. William had what he called paper-thin armor on. Duri Gallant had weak armor as well. Finally we convinced William the Bat to jump. Falodrin and Mage Fluke were to be the killers this time. I figured with two mages it would be over in a hurry. I knew that Mage Fluke was not going to land many war spells on the Queen but even one or two would make a difference. We had been there long enough that I was afraid the lag would hit again. William the bat jumped down and I hit him with some big heals. I mean he was getting chopped up. The mages were blasting away and Falodrin said he was not resisted very much. Mage Fluke could not land at all. From full health William was killed. Must have been a bad weak spot. The Queen moved away and was at full health in a short time. I would like to describe what is was like down in the den. For one the bodies were all standing. I don't know how many bodies were there but there were a lot. Where I died I saw at least three. I guess the "need a spray" on the portal caught a lot of people. On our second and third trip they would start do rot. Di's were all over the floor. One of the guys with us was just there to try to recover his body. So you can imagine with their bodies and ours, all standing, what it looked like. Duir Gallant volunteered to be the next person to front the Queen. By this time I decided I had to do something. I knew that Duir could not to stand in there for long. I did not want to kill the Queen but felt we were off quest and on recovery. I would be dammed it I was going to go through the spraying a forth time. As Duir Gallent jumped I started blasting. With 200+ hits and only a few resists it was over in a hurry. The global message said I got the kill. I was not sure if I would be able to turn in the head. Rumor is it is now a one-time lifetime and not three months like before. Yet to be proven but that is the rumor. I jumped down and was trapped by the Guards, EV and Broods. It took a little bit to clear it all but really not that long. Before I could break free the Queen rotted. The head dropped but only for an instance. It disappeared. I don't know why Turbine made the Queen rot so fast. It was faster than a normal body. Then having the head disappear right after stank. It might have been an effect of the lag or who knows what. All I know was we lost the head in less than a minute and all the work was for not. By the time we were done it was after 2am. I'm sure some are not going to be very efficient at work on Monday. After 8 hours for me and 9 hours for some others we were all just glad to have it over. A quest should be a happy event at the end, not a relief to have over. I cannot say wither or not the Queen quest has been changed so bad it is not worth doing. I do know that 90 minutes on the spray is far to short. If there is a problem you have to get resprayed, which is not fun. Twelve to twenty-four hours would be more like it. Having the head disappear when the Queen rots is a very stupid idea. The fast rotting of the Queen, bug or otherwise, really needs to be fixed. If the quest is like I think it is, it will be moved into the, "I'll pass" category of quests. Turbine wins we lose. Of course the game is not Turbine vs. us. If they keep running it as a contest they will lose customers, which makes it a "We both lose" situation. Two things need to be fixed. The log out at the hive has to go. Mage Fluke logged to clear his screen not knowing he would be booted to the LS. I had to say behind the computer because I could not log out and wait. When we had the lag fest we did not have the option to log and clear it. Second they need to increase the spraying time. Having to repeat the spraying three times was boring, time consuming and just plain dull. I know that both these problems were created to block grief players. Turbine the only way to stop grief players it to deleted the accounts. Handing out Grief and how not to defend yourself. A while back I had a story about a mage I called False'mage. He had stolen some loot off a Lord. Of course most were able to put together the name and started giving True'mage a lot of grief, far more than may be warranted. I got a tell from someone who wanted me to talk to True'mage. I asked him to send me his side of the story and I would post it. Sadly I have not gotten that by my deadline. I'm going to try and put things in perspective given my experiences with the Lord last month. It is all moot for now as the Lord is no longer worth fighting. Radar is not worth much when trying to see if anyone else is working a monster. Myself and Sword Blade had been working on a Lord last month for over an hour. We had new people show up and were about ready to engage. Someone we could not see started the battle. Fortunately it was William the Bat that had stumbled on our battle. (It tells you something about William that he tried to solo it.) At no time did we see William or him us. The distance you have to maintain between yourself and the Lord makes it very easy for several groups to be preparing a battle with no knowledge of each other. When True'Mage's group attacked another group ran down and started cursing them out. They reacted badly. They had to understand that both sides had no idea of the others existence and their claiming the Lord made on sense, given that True'mage's group attacked first. When the other side got the kill True'mage committed his error. I have acted in anger over similar situations so I understand. When I said things I should not say or did things I should not do I'm ashamed later. Still in the heat of battle it is hard to control things. True'mage did steal the loot. The other side did curse them out for something that was not their fault. If True'mages perspective is right the other side also drew stuff down on them in battle. Where True'mage really messed up was his defense on the boards. Really if he had not done anything at all the post would slid down the page and disappeared. He defense made him look like a liar and all around grief player. Even his supporters had to rethink their position after reading the posts. I had several Elder say that True'mage was a good guy and why was I attacking him. I simply had them read the posts he himself wrote. After that there was no debate. Everything I read about True'mage shows that last month was an aberration. He is a good guy who made an error in judgment. His biggest problem is not admitting his error, which he still has a problem with. Pride can cause you a lot of grief. In this case it is time to drop it. We all make errors as we are human. Judge True'mage on his actions now, not what he did in the past. Understand that there are two sides to a story and that True'mage was not the only one causing trouble here. He was just the one who presented his story so badly as to make a bad situation worse. Adventures in house trading The below is a tale from a grand vassal. There are times when we win by seconds. This is one. The writing style is a bit odd but I think you will enjoy it. New Generation, who was leaving the game, had decided to give his house to Alendhae. After he decided who was to get the house, it was time to do the trade. New Generation had given most of his stuff away already and was ready to give the house. Alendhae checked the items and had the Writ, the M notes, and Bunny Slippers. New Generation abandoned the house and Alendhae tried to buy it. He put the Writ in the window. Then he put the 3 M notes in the window and then he tried to put the Bunny slippers into the window. Well, the window wouldnt let him put the slippers in it. Alendhae looked again and noticed that it said a "Bunny Slipper" not slippers. Here is where it got interesting. People would be able to see that the house was available now. Alendhae had to find a bunny slipper. Alendhae went back to the Elder mansion and asked and nobody had one. Then he went and started killing rabbits checking the "/house available" command every few minutes. He went back to the mansion after killing about 10 to 15 and found Murron who was willing to go look for the rabbit corpse. They both went back out hunting. Finally, after going back to Lin LS, Alendhae killed one that had a corpse on it. He got the corpse and was told by Murron that he needed to take the corpse to Lytlethorpe. Murron told Alendhae where to get a portal to Rithwic and then to Lytlethorpe. Murron told him he had to go see Willy. Alendhae got to Willy and gave him the pelt and got the Slipper back. Alendhae then recalled to the mansion and had the bot open the subway. Then he ran through the portal and ran through the subway and down to the portals. Then he took the Zakhail portal and ran to the community portals. Alendhae went through the correct portal and waited frantically because he saw at least one other person run into the portal too. Alendhae popped out of the portal a little faster than the others because he had already been there. Alendhae noticed there were a few people standing at the cottage. He ran up there and double-clicked the stone and had the buy window come up. He quickly put all the items into the buy window and hit buy just as someone else was starting to do the same. He noticed that he had gotten the house and breathed a sigh of relief. As Alendhae sat back and relaxed he noted his heart was beating about twice its normal rate and he was just completely exhilarated that he finally had his cottage.