Fist de Yuma - November 4, 2003

This and that Sorry but this week will have a few more rants in it. A few things happened that have to be addressed. If you skip to Owanda and then Role Playing you can avoid them. I got a lot of e-mail and PMs on my sleep apnea. I would like to thank you all for the information. The test is in 10 days and I'm starting to look forward to getting the device. Being tired after only being up for a few hours is a pain. Nodding off while fighting in a dungeon is not very safe. Naps only make me feel worse. If I can get something that lets me sleep better any amount of pain in the end test will be worth it. I'm lucky that I have good insurance but worry about getting a good fitting device with everything I need. I've done a lot of study on it. From what I'm reading the insurance will not be a problem. The cost of not treating it is far greater than the cost of treating it. My lack of sleep might be why I'm ending up with rants instead of adventures. The new patch has added a lot of nice stuff I have only started to touch on. I have hopes that my next column will be total adventure. ============== This is a copy of the post I made to the sever boards with the exception of MT. It was a goodbye post. I was told I could not post there any more because so many were complaining about it. I did not want to leave without explaining why I was leaving. I did not know that some people wanted to hide the reason I was not posting there any more. Prissy people There are a lot of people in this world who make a very big deal over stuff that means very little. The courts are clogged with suits that are for the most part meaningless. There are people who get hot and bothered over every little thing. For most of us prissy people are just someone to ignore. If not ignored then laughed at. It is only when they get the attention of the courts or a higher-up that they become a problem. The courts can take someone's prissiness and make it into a law. This is generally something that goes against the will of the people and the legislator. In other words a handful of people can impose the prissy persons standards on everyone. Businesses try to get along with everyone. Bad publicity can hurt them. When confronted with the prissy they tend to give in. So once again the majority of the people have to bow to the wishes of the prissy. Every so often some prissy person will put a nasty note in my VN add. They generally say they don't read my column, have never read my column, will never read my column and hate my column. That is followed with a demand to never post about my column again. I find that the prissy and logic seldom mix. I made fun of them last week but this week the prissy have their revenge. Of course it is not only revenge on me, it is revenge on everyone else as well. There is a new policy on the VN board that states we can only post to one server board about columns. The reason given was they were getting to many complaints from the prissy people. A column add hurts the prissy zero and none. It helps those who want this information. Of course the prissy cannot help being prissy. Being prissy is what they are and there is little hope they will change. I put the fault on those whose lack of backbone makes them bow to the prissy. So I have to say goodbye to the servers other than Morningthaw. The logic escapes me because I write about AC not MorningThaw. I have players on every server but DT and I did not generally post my add on DT. Given this restriction I'll have to pick MT as my main board. I know that we have had some good discussions about what I have written and I'll miss that. Many depend on my add to know when the column is posted. I would rather have kept things they way they were but the prissy have this round. Aftermath I posted the above as a goodbye on all but the MT board. I did not want to just leave their board without a word as to why. All but one boards people seemed to be very upset at this new restriction. Several offered to post when the column comes out to take up the slack. I think that will be allowed. I'll need an e-mail address so I can add you to the general e-mail post I send out. Much to my surprise a prissy Mod took exception to my post. She went to every board and deleted it! I guess it was fortunate that I got a few hours to get the word out. One person started a petition to get the rule changed and that too was deleted. I guess honest debate over one of their rules is not allowed. Not only is honest debate discouraged it is punished. The second thing that happened was my VIP status was revoked. The reason given was I was bashing the people running things. I'll admit I said that in my opinion they lacked a backbone, something I stand by, but everyone is free to decide for him or herself. Unless they count themselves amount the prissy there was one sentence they could take exception to. To quote, "I put the fault on those whose lack of backbone makes them bow to the prissy." I leave it to the readers, was I bashing them? The feeling I get is not only are they gutless they are petty and dictatorial. It is their board and they can do what they want but I have lost respect for them. In any case enough is enough. I have said what the facts are. I'll obey their rules and stick to the MT board. If I get someone from each board to add to my mail list that will be great but if not things will not be that much different. If you want to question me on something in the column then please use the board at Olthoi Lair or send me an e-mail. Without the ability to search the MT board I would likely miss any post there. I'm open to debate. If I'm in error about something I'll be happy to correct it. If we disagree I'll he happy to print your side. Unlike some people I can take disagreement. Patch day I expected to lose some playtime on patch day but it was a lot more than I thought it would be. For one everyone moved to daylight savings but us. So now I'm on Mountain time and lost an hour there. Then the patch went over long. When it was finally up I ran into another roadblock. Like many people I had a window opened with the browser set to log in. For some reason anyone who did this could not update the Zone files. The only way to fix it was to delete the zone and reinstall. While not a biggy to many I have two computers connected to a single dialup 56k connection. In reality 56k is a possible but never reached goal. I feel really lucky if I get to 32k. So even a simple thing like reinstalling the zone is a time consuming project. By the time I got everything out of the way it was time to start dinner. So I did not really get to play until the next day. The next day I logged to find they were doing a hot fix. That ran long enough that I said forget it and did not play until Friday. Owanda I have not had time to explore the patch. The event was over before I could even log on so there was not much to do but go back to leveling Owanda. My goal with Owanda in the next few weeks is to get him to 80. I really want to hit the 80+ Matron. The XP flow is better today than it has ever been so this goal is not that hard. It is amazing that we can get 12 to 18 million an hour there. Even solo I was hitting 14 million. (Which amazes me that people still feel the need to cheat.) The only drawback to the Matron is the size. Three strong players can clear it out and end up standing around waiting for spawns. Any more people than that and it can be downright boring. I have Owanda at 75 and expect to be 76 or better when I post this. That will depend on how much I end up doing with my other players. Almost got them A bunch of people got a ban right after the patch. Turbine worked on getting rid of the admin alarm. This was why everyone had to upgrade to the latest version of Decal after the patch. Those who have been getting away with cheating were caught. What the admin alarm did was make a sound when a +admit appeared or sent them a tell. Many used the alarm to run several macros at a time and act like they were attending the macro when questioned. Others would have the computer close to where they were so they could respond when tested. A standard tactic was to act outraged over being tested. They felt their childish act would prevent them from being tested again. In reality the +admits knew that the more indignant the player the more likely they were to be cheating. With this cheat disabled a load of players got a three-day ban. You would think they would learn their lesson and stop. Instead they are acting like they never cheated when everyone know they did. Instead of leaning how to play without cheating the demanded the head of the +admin who caught them cheating. A lot of hardheaded people hit the boards complaining. Most posts were marveling at how stupid the macro excuses were. It was like, "I was running six account windows and swapping to each one. I hit them every five minutes or so but the +admin only give me three minutes. That is unfair because I was not UCM. The below was typical of the cheaters response to the Turbine changes. "Decal devs have messed up" This title fits this perfectly. They shouldn't have done this. They screwed up. This is going to piss more people off than it is going to help them. What is it that people don't understand, so many people get a lot of enjoyment out of acm'ing. But some people can't let anyone enjoy the game they want to, instead they must FORCE people to play a certain way. Preventing them from cheating is forcing them to play in a certain way. How lame can you get. What joy can you get by not playing? Given that many are doing this to sell the players we can guess what is really making them mad. The title here is almost because the cheaters quickly found a workaround. There is a new admit alarm out that works around the change Turbine made. Instead of fixing bugs and adding content Turbine has to work at fixing this new cheat. How bad is the cheating? I was browsing and came across this data. Born 10/09/03 Level 160 On line 66.7% of the time. Play time 17 hours a day. XP per day 595 million. Born 4/09/03 Level 244 On line 43.9% of the time. Play time 10 hours a day. XP per day 527 million. So it is clear that they have UCM to create these monsters. What effect does that have when combined with a chain? Born 4/09/03 Level 241 On line .4% of the time. Play time less than 6 minutes a day. XP per day 495 million. So while I take pride in pushing Owanda to 75 in two months the cheaters are going to 160 in 20 days. They get more free xp in two days than I earn in two months. They don't even have to play. If I were Turbine I would delete the entire group of cheaters. Rationalizing Turbine disabled admit alarms for a good reason. There is no other use for them other than cheating. Everyone knows this but that does not stop the excuses and rationalizing that goes on. The reason I have read are, dyslexic, paranoid and inattentive. Dyslixic; While I understand the dyslexic a bit I don't by it. Those of us who have it have learned to read if not spell. It was an excuse use by those who are not dyslexic to keep cheating. I for one resent that one more than the rest. Paranoid; Who cares if an +admit can spy on you. It is not likely anyway as they could care less what you do as long as it is not cheating. Inattentive; Don't run a macro and your inability to play attention to the game will not be a problem. This text with the new cheat link was posted on the utilities board. Strangely the same people who punished me for speaking the truth buy this and let the post stay. It's not so much a case of you have a right to knwo as you dont. The admins have the right to run around and do as they like, so long as they also abide by the CoC. What it is is that the blind hunt for UCM's has driven teh admins into such strict and rapid testing that the players who are most likely to suffer (and seemingly are) are the ones that use no playing aids or those that simply reply slowly. I know appologies are made to those that are banned wrongly and mistakes do happen, but even one person wrongly punished through the drive to catch offenders is wrong. It doesn't return that players time lost in game, or remove the interuption to their fun. In real life if you are falsely accused and punished for something, you have resourse to compensation if at a later date it proves to have been a mistake. In Asherons call we dont have that liberty. The judgement is instant and the only solution to an incorrect ban is it's "eventual" removal. Now normally I'd never encourage anyone to run an alarm to detect admins, but I myself have been subject to this "inquisition". I was deemed viable for testing for UCM while fighting a quest boss monster (renegade Weapons). It was a plain non descript tell that I VERY nearly missed. The admin never appeared in view to gain my attention and it was all very easy to miss. I was extreemly suprised at the way it was managed. No chat logs were examined before comencing the test to ensure the report was a valid one (I had spoken to the reporter after he made the report). A while back we were told that once someone makes an abuse report, logs are taken so the admins are able to see what is said. Thes logs would have clearly shown me speaking to the person that had reported me and invalidated any need to test for UCM. Apart from that it was a boss/Quest monster that takes hours to kill for VERY little XP. I could make more macroing baby harvesters. So I now recomend if you hunt or even quest in such a way that means you will be stood in one location for more than 10 minutes, you run an alarm so you will NOT miss that single tell that could get you banned. This Utility is for that use and that use alone. DO NOT use it to run unattended. Unzip this to a folder and then use Decals Add/Remove to add the JW.dll (JW Stands for Just Whistle) Given this is full of lies that should be obvious to anyone who does not cheat I'll not respond other than sum up. This is my take on the post; I made a cheating program that now is getting people caught. I'll pretend that they were wrongly caught so I can post another cheat that will help them not get caught again. I'm going to say don't use it to cheat with because it will be deleted if I don't. Happy cheating. Role playing A long time ago I was in one of the towns while it was raining. As I approached the tavern a player greeted me and told me to get out of the rain. He apologized for the lack of a fireplace and offered me food and drink. He was role-playing the owner of the tavern. It was my first experience with someone who could play a role like that. Over the years I see less and less role-playing. I'll admit that I've done very little myself. Death Mute is my only attempt to play a part. I find it hard to keep that going amid of so many who refuse to let you play a role. When I see a post that involves role-playing I take notices. The below was posted by Yrsa on the Frostfell board; I decided that Oct 31 is a good day to celebrate Martine's victory over Gaerlan. So I took about 20 flowers and plants I had lying around and planted a garden in Martine's throne room. Many thanks to the half dozen folks who came running up there after Bandit Sight or Sixth Sense went nuts for not stealing the flowers from Martine's memorial. It was followed by a picture of the event. http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=58928251&start=58929083 It would be fun if more people did things like this. It would be fun if there were a server what encouraged such play. Failure that was a success I had a goal the other day. As far as the goal went it was a failure. As far as my own rating in fighting ability, one of my tests in doing this, it was so-so. Do to an unforeseen stoke of luck I rate it as a total success! The goal was a Scroll Dark Rain. This is found on a shadow like monster called a Dark Inferno. While I use to see them all the time I had not seen one in a year or so. They are generally found with a large group of shadows on the Plains. The Scroll of Dark Rain will add three to your magic defense. The scroll is generally best used for the last three points of magic defense, as those are the most expensive. Current cost is around 270 million points. My calculations show that I'm three from the max so now is the time to use one. Fist de Mage has a scroll but still needs to earn around 800 hundred million before he can use it. It has been in my pack for well over a year now. It had been a while since I had taken Fist out for a hunt. I mostly use him for quests and events that need a strong melee. Owanda is my main player right now and Fist's Armorer is number two. After Owanda hits 80 I will likely start FA back on the plains. Winter Raven made me a portal to one of the plains dungeons. There I did a long boring buff. I find a melee needs a lot more buffing than a mage. Not only do I need to bane for every possible attack but also I have to buff up every weapon I have. That is 28 spells just for weapons! In any case it took me over ten minutes to buff. It is likely that I can do without banning as I have a base 397 melee defense. I did meet a few monsters that could hit me from time to time, especially after de-buffs, but it was rare. Still those rare occasions could well have resulted in a death so I'll bane for now. I found that my combat magic defense is 357. I had high hopes that it would prevent the massive de-buffs from weakening me and protect me from the chain casting I was sure to encounter. At first I just ran. This was a hunt for one monster and that meant I had to cover a lot of terrain. I crisscrossed the plains trying to cover every inch. Every so often I encountered one of the deep cuts in the plains and had to back track but I covered most of it. After a while I got tired of ignoring the bigger monsters and decided to fight when an opportunity presented itself. This mostly meant Drudges. My first attempts to just charge in did not work very well. While I resisted a lot of spells in time they would start landing. The sheer number of spells was what worked against me. Being the plains I would also have a lot of other monsters jumping into the battle. While with only 338 Life I did not land much it was still a good drawing tool. I would find a spot where the Wars could not hit me and draw the Drudges to me. My biggest frustration is healing. I have 401 healing and a combat health of 309. I find that hitting 150 health makes my healing useless. The failed attempt to heal will also mean more damage as it lowers my melee defense. After two failures I was generally around 70 health and running for my life. In the entire hour I don't think heal worked the first time even once. When I hit the far west side I encountered a lone Virindi. Most things I had ran into were in large packs so this was a tempting target. It quickly died and I found a mask on the body. After a lot of hunting I never got a hint that a Dark Inferno was anywhere on the plain. I'll be making more trips but it is not looking good. Even if I find a Dark Inferno there is a one in four drop so this could take years. I checked my loot and got a pleasant surprise. Winter Raven has been searching for a Virindi Consul mask so he could make a Koji's Visage. He got one and was showing it off to me. I saw that this was an ideal item for Fist. After my hunt I looked at the mask I had found. It was a Consul mask! Now I needed to make the mask. Ordinarily I would try to find out how to do that by exploring and lore. It is time consuming but instructing and fun. Today I had a limited time left to play and did not want to wait for the mask. I hit Maggies and got the information on how to make the mask. The place to get the broken fixed was only a few clicks from my LS. The second required a bit of running but I knew a few tricks to make that shorter. My old helm has Major Quick on them. It was tinkered to al 296. The Koji's Visage is an al 300. The mask gives +10 to UA and +5 to melee defense. I still have not got my sunstone gants for UA so the mask solved that while keeping the bonus to melee my Major Quick gave me. I'll replace my minor UA gants with the +1 melee ones Winter Raven gave me. So I would have rated the hunt as a failure if I had not found the mask. The mask made it all worthwhile. AC, the casual players game There was a post tonight on the general VN board. It was someone asking about AC as a casual player. It struck me that of all the games I have read about AC may well be the only casual player game. The reason for this is the solo ability. All I have read about require groups to hunt. The grouping is fun but if you don't play every day it is hard to get into a good one. Pickup groups seldom work well, which distracts from the enjoyment of the game. AC's solo ability is what is keeping it going. The more people who understand that the better off we are. While casual players are not the XP machines many patrons want they may well be the key for our survival. Hard core players can play anywhere. In fact many of out better players might be far better off in another game. I have a lot of casual players in my allegiance. I have some vassals that log on every month or so. Loki is a long time vassal who started over a month before I did. He has yet to hit 60. And yet I'm proud to call him my vassal. We need to encourage more casual player to try AC. The more we have playing the more MS will value us. That in turn will bring more resources our way. The reason I am bringing this up is there is a true threat to AC coming along. Warcraft is making a game that is exciting and seems to focus on solo play. I have never been tempted to try another game after starting AC until I read about it.