theworldofdreams.com

Well, I've been here for quite some time, and to be honest, the little quote on the Top 200 site describing WoD really isn't accurate... WoD isn't nearly a "close-knit, family of friends, etc, etc, etc..." It's more of a group of cliques. The way I see it, WoD definitely needs at least a few more GM's, and a LOT more seers for starters. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way bashing those we already have, it's just that they have their hands full each and every time they log on. There really needs to be a GM on 24/7 to deal with issues that arrise. And there needs to be a seer on 24/7 because I have been here for as long as I have, and not once have I ever got to participate in the VERY few "quest" events that have taken place. Ok, one might say "Well, you just weren't on at the right time." So... what IS the right time? What about all the players who ONLY play in the off hours when there only happen to be around 5 or 6 other players online at the time? We forget about them? Or do we say "Hey, your tough luck pal... play when everyone else does, or you get squat!" Seriously... once again, a reminder, this is not a bash or flame. This is the way I see it.

Another thing: seers and the "quests" I've heard about... huh? Quests? All I've heard about are random spawns of insanely powerful monsters who simply repeatedly kill everyone who attempts to slay them. THAT's a quest? What happened to "the damsel in distress?" or the "evil mage attempting to raise an army of undead" or the "you must find the 7 pieces of so-and-so's disassembled staff so we can seal the planar gate" and whatnot? THOSE are quest basis ideas. Dropping drakes and dragons on the lone miner and watching their lifeless body fall to the ground is not. Also, a "quest" is usually something that everyone gets to participate in, at least in some way. The shadowpack invasion, while the initial explantaion and "quest" part of it omitted participation from nearly everyone on the shard, was at least an open invitation to everyone to participate. Hell, I've even played on shards where players put in requests for "personalized" quests... you had to write a little background history, and a possible "something" your character might be seeking- be it knowledge, a specific item, whatever... and they would actually DO IT for you... and that was on a shard with a player base of nearly 500 people. Sure, it took sometimes 2 weeks for you to get the message that your quest was ready, but there were interpersonal relationships with each and every player on the shard. Really all I've seen here is a bunch of cliques... and if you're not in the clique, you get diddly-squat. Now, NO- I'm not ranting on and on about "I want to get 'STUFF' too!" I'm simply saying that, from what I've seen, it's almost as if "Oh, so-and-so's not on, we'll wait till they are to start this quest thingy..." and if you're not that so-and-so, you don't count. Yes, I may be totally wrong here, and it may just be all a matter of timing... but then that just raises my question about having a seer and/or gm on more often- maybe to give those people who aren't ON each and every time one of these "quests" takes place, and opportunity to participate in a group experience...

Now, I'm sure a few of my *favorite* people will have a few choice words to say on this subject, so just let me say one last time, to clarify for all, that this is NOT A FLAME OR BASH ON WOD, OR THE STAFF OF WOD. Furthermore, this is not a whine, gripe, bitch-session or anything of the sort. I realize that a few of my "fans" are going to say "well it sure sounded like one to ME"... but I assure you, I am simply making a statement based on observation. That is all. If it "sounded like that to YOU", read it again. If it still sounds like that, go outside a while, get some air (the sun is your friend, btw) and maybe come back and read it again. Hopefully you'll see my point, and if not... oh well. I'm not real concerned with what those people are going to think, I'm really just trying to make a point. It is a valid point, and anyone who does manage to see it- those are the people I was speaking to.

That's just "The way I see it..."

Cel

Quite an interesting observation, and one not without merit I will add. The times I remember are pretty much gone and forgotten when quests were a weekly thing. I agree we definately need more story lines as well as some cool shorty quests. I could no more comment on the reason for their decline than I could explain why the sun rises in the west. (my fantasy and it rises where I tell it thank you very much!) As far as the "clique" thing, that has rissen more out of ,pardon me for lack of a better word, "newbs" pointing fingers at older players saying things like "why do you hate us", or "wahhh it's too hard for me now why do you want to change it?". The same thing can be said from the reverse side, but only because it is easy to lash out from the other side to rebut a blind oppinion, several older players have sat and listened to people such as Simon, or Fitz, or Orion whine and cry about how we oppress them or we want to change it for our own reasons. This is where the "cliques" came from. Now that said, you ALL should know I may be krass, pointedly honest or brutaly oppinionated when it comes to subjects that I feel adequitly versed in addressing, and this is one of the main reasons I wanted to address this post first thing. Our "family" shard is simply going through a phase that I hope will weed out the pissing and moaning, and this could very well be the reason for the decline in events on the shard. It is hard to have the drive needed to put on a show for an audiance that bashes you left and right for a job you give your own sweet time to do. My honest oppinion is this, and you may quote me at the board meeting, I would clean house of the miscreants, get rid of the dissention in the ranks and let the chips fall where they may. This shard was once and could be again, a fun place to be, but as it is it is little more than a pissing contest between a few morons and some people that are getting more and more irritated at them. I hope you do not take this the wrong way and I assure you I am not bashing you for your post, I thought it was a valid and serious view point. I myself rarely wait more than a day for a responce from a GM, am I privilaged? hell no, you can ask around, I have spent my time in hot water without a doubt. Nor will I say I agree with each and every thing that comes from the admin side. But, and this is a huge BUT!, I also understand that they are trying their best to make it worth playing even under the scrutiny of the few nay-sayers that no matter what is done are never happy nor satisfied. Now this is just my oppinion, and each of us has one, and I have found oppinions to be very similar to that round muscle group known as sphincters, more specificly the one that allows passage of feces from the body, in that they are always accompanied by a stench. (at least to the people they are pointed at)

Our staff to my knowledge, has never been unfair, never never BANNED ANYONE FOR THEIR OPPINION!, nor have they ever held a grudge when dealing with that person in respect to a page or a matter they may be experiencing. This is the ONE and only reason I will stand by them come what may. I hope this says something to a lot of people, take it like you will, respond to it how you wish and know that I have the thickest skin you have ever seen and am absolutely flame proof. You will only make yourself look more ignorant by starting a new and improved flame war over what I said. Take it with a grain of salt, and learn from it. I do not hold grudges, and absolutely without a doubt can accept an appology and know well how to give one, as I have been wrong many many many times. The point is to learn from it, not get caught up on it and repeat it over and over.

Heck I managed to piss off quite a few people early on but today I count myself as one of the most respected people around. NOT because I am an oldbie, or whatever, but because I look at things objectively and then look at myself just the same and ask what if anything could I have done to make it better, not how can someone else improve to make it better fit me. That is the key to making this place better, Ask NOT what your shard can do for you, Ask what YOU can do for your shard.


I am Azzo Ranar, and I endorse this post!
(still 10X the evil of Marrius!)

Celeste Kendreyl wrote:...The way I see it, WoD definitely needs at least a few more GM's, and a LOT more seers for starters. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way bashing those we already have, it's just that they have their hands full each and every time they log on. There really needs to be a GM on 24/7 to deal with issues that arrise. And there needs to be a seer on 24/7 because I have been here for as long as I have, and not once have I ever got to participate in the VERY few "quest" events that have taken place...
Cel

This is true, we (few Finnish players), have been talking that WoD needs at least one European seer, 'cause all the quests are happening at 2-6am Finnish time and needles to say, it is a bit late for the Europeans to participate. And if I'm correct we have pretty much European players around - at least 10-15 Finns, some Swedes and British people that I have seen and talked to (is there any player/country statistics?). So if it's not too much work, can there be one or two European seers/GM's around?

Whoa, Hey, leave me out of that, I never felt opressed.

I don't know as I'd agree about a shortage of quest/events, a quick perusal of the quest board shows a fair bit of activity, and I'd be suprised if more than 50% of special events actually get posted about. Also the freqency of quests does tend to be a bit cyclical, sometimes they happen almost nightly sometimes there are extended periods with only a few.

That isn't to say that more wouldn't be a good thing, but it's probably better to let the admins pick seers as they see someone who might be appropriate to the task then it is to try to rush them into elevating people to a staff position before they are sure the person is acceptable to the role.

As to GM's, I'd think what we have now is probalby enough, the shard is very well put togeather and by and large I don't think there are all that many situations that require GM involvment. Perhaps I am atypical but in the almost 3 years I've been here I've paged I think about 5 times.

Celeste Kendreyl wrote:WoD isn't nearly a "close-knit, family of friends, etc, etc, etc..." It's more of a group of cliques.

Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, you are correct here. I think in a lot of ways, that statement is probably more of a 'statement of principles' than anything, and like any time you make a statement of principles, the reality is usually a bit disappointing. As anyone who's played any MMORPG knows, people are broken.

I do think that WoD comes a lot closer to fulfilling that statement than just about any other shard out there, though. There are a LOT of kind, friendly people here, willing to help others, even if they don't know them. Are there unfriendly people? Of course but I think you need to be careful not to paint everyone with the same brush.

There really needs to be a GM on 24/7 to deal with issues that arise.

Probably the only way this would ever happen is if we'd make everyone a GM... I really don't think there's a major problem at the moment with GM staffing. Yes, sometimes there's a wait because there's no one online, but being completely serious, I honestly think that the average GM response time on WoD is better than what I've experienced in other (commercial) online games.

When it comes to seers, though, you're probably right, in that we need at least another one. Choosing a new seer isn't exactly an easy thing to do. In a lot of ways, I almost hate picking someone as a seer because in my experience, it invariable winds up destroying most of the 'magic' that makes the game fun. I've compared it to DisneyWorld in the past: even though you know the whole thing is fake, the Haunted Mansion is still quite fun - until you go behind the scenes and see how everything is done. After that, its just never the same again.

There's a lot of other considerations that go into picking a new seer: How long they've been around (seniority counts, basically), how much they interact with others (loners don't make the best seers), how WELL they interact with others, how much imagination they seem to have, how mature they seem, their language ability, and more. One final test that I tend to think about is a phrase I heard long ago (wish I knew the original speaker...): "Those who desire power rarely deserve it."

Ok, one might say "Well, you just weren't on at the right time." So... what IS the right time?

The best time is when there's a number of people online. The reality is that its just not feasible to run quests when there's very few people on. If there's 6 people online, 4 of them are probably macroing, one of them was just about to log out anyway, and there's only a 50/50 chance whether the last person is going to want to participate. There are times when it can be difficult to get a quest going when there's 20 people online...

All I've heard about are random spawns of insanely powerful monsters who simply repeatedly kill everyone who attempts to slay them. THAT's a quest?

They are, we've found, usually rather popular. It pretty much comes down to 'giving the people what they want.' It annoys me too, at times, because it can be quite difficult to get a 'quieter' quest going (*cough*Vernon's return*cough*) because half the people there are demanding to know when all the monsters with the uber loot are going to spawn.

For those of you who enjoy those sort of quests, you need to let us know. And the best way to do that is to post about the quest after its finished. Its rather discouraging to spend a lot of time and effort to come up with an detailed story with several plot elements, spend an hour talking to players and answering questions, dropping major hints about future quests, etc, etc, and the sole post about it is: "Well he told us of the new druid changes and then said Farewell and die oh and he said something about the Abyss Lord is not happy with him don?t remember why sorry." (Sorry, Jon - not a knock against you specifically. You at least posted SOMETHING, which is more than the other 10 or so people there did...)

Hell, I've even played on shards where players put in requests for "personalized" quests...

I can't imagine how that would work out to anything beyond 5000 accusations of favoratism...

Celeste Kendreyl wrote: WoD isn't nearly a "close-knit, family of friends, etc, etc, etc..." It's more of a group of cliques.

Newcomers often get a slanted view of things. In many ways we are a close knit family that bicker and complain and yet still will do almost anything for the others.

The way I see it, WoD definitely needs at least a few more GM's, and a LOT more seers for starters.

Please...don't. Simon already got roasted for his obvious disrespect of the staff. You get roasted enough for other reasons.

There really needs to be a GM on 24/7 to deal with issues that arrise. And there needs to be a seer on 24/7

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

"Well, you just weren't on at the right time." So... what IS the right time?

Whenever a Seer does a quest is the right time. It is not up to us to dictate what kind of quests or when quests should be held.

Another thing: seers and the "quests" I've heard about... huh? Quests? All I've heard about are random spawns of insanely powerful monsters who simply repeatedly kill everyone who attempts to slay them. THAT's a quest? What happened to "the damsel in distress?" or the "evil mage attempting to raise an army of undead" or the "you must find the 7 pieces of so-and-so's disassembled staff so we can seal the planar gate" and whatnot?

You've missed a lot. Yeah, people talk about the MOB drops a lot because they are exciting almost to the point of nausea but I've seen many more interesting quests and from talking to the true "old timers" I've heard of even more marvelous quests that I can only hope will return someday.

Really all I've seen here is a bunch of cliques...

You honestly just haven't been around long enough to apprecite WoD. Outsiders often get a skewed vision of the shard. Could it be your attitude? Everyone has a different perspective of things and have their own ideas on "how things should be run" but that isn't necessarily "right" for all.


[quote
Now, I'm sure a few of my *favorite* people will have a few choice words to say on this subject
[/quote]

Ooooh, oooh, am I a favorite. Mr. Bayn, as you endearingly say? By the way, it turns me on when you say that. You don't wear a nurse outfit do you?



By the way, I want to thank you for your other thread where you got your butt stomped. Made me realize that I haven't been playing a lot and thus have not been giving a lot. Was at the bank a few minutes ago and a (Young) druid came trudging in with a deathrobe and a candle. I'll keep his name anonymous in case it would embarrass him. Anyway, Macitor was there too and we queried him and he admitted to suffering his first death. The nasties at the fort between Trinsic and the Brit moongate were responsible. Mac and I headed down there and needless to say "We came, We saw, We kicked ass!" (Note to moderators: Ass is not a bad word because I didn't append "hole" onto it)

Anyway, we retrieved a few things but his corpse had decayed. We returned to the bank, pack bulging with loot and gave it to him along with a few of his owned items we had recovered. We also set him up with enough gold to handle the next 10 sets of death taxes and I found some nice indy studded armor I had squirreled away in the bank for an emergency. Macitor gave him additional things as well.

That felt GOOD! I need to make time to be online more often.

Note: he wasn't in any clique I knew of. We did it because it was the WoD thing to do.

Drocket wrote:For those of you who enjoy those sort of quests, you need to let us know. And the best way to do that is to post about the quest after its finished. Its rather discouraging to spend a lot of time and effort to come up with an detailed story with several plot elements, spend an hour talking to players and answering questions, dropping major hints about future quests, etc, etc, and the sole post about it is: "Well he told us of the new druid changes and then said Farewell and die oh and he said something about the Abyss Lord is not happy with him don?t remember why sorry." (Sorry, Jon - not a knock against you specifically. You at least posted SOMETHING, which is more than the other 10 or so people there did...)

*GASP* I am heartbroken. Hmmm, maybe my post got deleted. Lemme check.

Bayn wrote:*GASP* I am heartbroken. Hmmm, maybe my post got deleted. Lemme check.

I was referring to the 'Vernon goes bye-bye (again)' quest. Nothing terribly exciting happened, but it was a serious role-playing moment, with a lot of discussion, hints about the future, etc. In a lot of ways, this is a good example of what I was saying: a huge monster drop quest got posts describing what happened.. A quiet role-playing based quest got a single, rather incomplete post. When a seer is trying to decide what kind of quest to run, it seems pretty clear which type of quest is appreciated.

Well, Drocket, is it maybe possible to get an European seer in the future?

von Hel wrote:Well, Drocket, is it maybe possible to get an European seer in the future?

Well, at the moment, I don't think the number of people online during European prime time is really high enough to 'support' a seer... If the number of European players we have would go up, though, it would certainly become a lot more likely.

There are some feasibility issues there, though. One is the learning curve. It definitely takes a while for a seer to be up-to-speed on all the dot commands, functions, special features, etc (I try to make things as simple as I can, but there's a limit to how simple things can be and still give seers the maximum flexibility...) During that time, the seer usually spends some time 'helping' other seers (sort of an apprentice seership while they learn the ropes.) Then usually they run a quest with the assistance of an experienced seer, who helps out and makes sure that things go OK (its real easy to miscalculate and wind up killing everyone on the shard by mistake ) That would probably be a lot more difficult to set up for a European seer...

Well he told us of the new druid changes and then said Farewell and die oh and he said something about the Abyss Lord is not happy with him don't remember why sorry."

I would have posted more if I would have remember the specifics and I'm not to good at telling a story sorry Drocket (Its ok I don't mind being knocked on some times)

P.S. I love the way you all used a quest to into some new druid spells!!!

Was alot of fun =)

Drocket wrote:

Celeste Kendreyl wrote:All I've heard about are random spawns of insanely powerful monsters who simply repeatedly kill everyone who attempts to slay them. THAT's a quest?

They are, we've found, usually rather popular. It pretty much comes down to 'giving the people what they want.' It annoys me too, at times, because it can be quite difficult to get a 'quieter' quest going (*cough*Vernon's return*cough*) because half the people there are demanding to know when all the monsters with the uber loot are going to spawn.
For those of you who enjoy those sort of quests, you need to let us know. And the best way to do that is to post about the quest after its finished.

Personally, I was one of those few people who was VERY pleased with your work in the Vernon quest. It was a return to the old styled type of quest that I so enjoy participating in (ok, so maybe there was more shadowpack killing than anything else but at least there was a clear, interesting plot, with a beginning, progressive story line, and successful ending). I think it is quite unfortunate that somewhere alone the line our basic WoD history/storyline was lost, and presently all that remains are some random characters from past quests who get to appear once a year or so.

As you could probably guess, I specially miss those quests that involved the Queen and/or those characters fictionally associated with the Queen's court (Bishop Duncan, Guildmaster Connor, etc). The Queen's storyline seems to be the most important to me primarily because her role in our fictional world is of the central figure, the head of government, the person who keeps things running. All quests, from the small dig-up-a-treasure-map type to the worldwide evil-mob-invasion have to fit somewhere (implicitly most of the time) in that basic framework. The ruler of the land and her seat of government (in Britain) act as the foundational setting on which all quest plots must be written and the ever-present variable to take into consideration when introducing new storylines.

Take the shadowpack, for instance. This quest implicitly admitted the overseeing power of a ruler (in this case represented by one of her knights, Lt. Malark), some entity who took decisive action (if not effective) to manage a potentially disastrous situtation. Unfortunately, newer players would not be so quick to make this kind of connection between Malark and the Queen, and even older ones are likely to miss or ignore any relation between the shadowpack and the underlying WoD storyline. Vernon himself failed to make any allusions to the Queen or her central government in Britain (and had I not mentioned Malark, he too would have been ingnored).

This is less a criticism as it is a statement of fact. There are a few essential facts every WoDian should know about the shard's ongoing storyline (and I'm assuming that we wish to continue to have one). Right now, there are many new players who don't have a clue who the Queen is, and while they may have heard of her, they've never seen her or don't know (or care to know) what she does--i.e. what her fictional purpose is.

The case of the Queen is just an example (though the most poignant one in my opinion). There are other storylines that were once directly linked to the shard's ongoing history/plot. The last great Villain of WoD, for instance, Lord Gizash, seems to be a thing of the past, forgotten by most who once knew of him and nonexistent in the minds of those who came after him. Instead of telling stories about the great villains and/or heroes of the past, we've relegated ourselves to comment on last night's 'loot split' and how difficult that spawn boss was to finish off.

I think what WoD needs more than new seers is a new generation of writers and RPing gurus who would be willing to come up with some good storyplots, and willing to dedicate the time and effort to ensure those storyplots are introduced appropiately. These "writers" need not be seers. After all, not everyone can/should have Admin powers. But having a plethora of rich ideas to choose from could be a great aid to those seers who are much more content implementing rather than inventing.

Thank you, Drocket, for replying to this. As I said, it was in no way, shape, or form a bash of any kind on the current staffing. And, I must admit, I see your point on the gm thing- there really isn't a need for more gm's. But the seer thing... and I dunno if I'm alone in this, or if there are others out there who know a good quest can net you a total of "0", nada, nothing except the knowledge that you participated and had a good time. I personally love the type where you have to go to the ends of the earth to find specific items or unravel some mystery by speaking to the right people, etc. to get the correct information in order to perform some silly ceremony in which nobody gets anything, but the bad guy gets HIS in the end. I guess the point about giving them what they want holds true though- if that's what they want, you really have no choice but to give them that... And as far as "looking behind the curtain", I totally know what you mean by that- makes some of the magic go away. hehe But, thanks for replying, and knowing what I meant.

The total number of posts something gets doesn't mean it was better, if there would have been something for nercos I would have posted something for sure, but I don't have a druid so I wasn't really all that into it.

Samething the night after, I helped kill, but didnn't want a share of the loot, so I left, done other things and assumed others would post, my posts are rather short and blunt, so I felt it was best to leave it in other hands.