Posting for Irime. Contract.
Draimon, in the words of one of the best fight game sound-fx, 'don't make me laugh'.
exactly. azhag is the most l33t of minds.
Minds like....Azhag?
in all seriousness i thought it was a mudsex joke. i thought martyr discovered them mudsexing or something and suggested that irime come kill them. no clue it was like a 17 layered joke that only the most elite of minds could comprehend.
Yeah, must be all the fajitas I eat that give me so much brainpower!!
holy fuck. you are right urban. i havent encountered anything this complex since tolstoy
I thought it had something to do with his name since it starts off with, y'know, dry...
i see. far too clever for an unsophisticated mind like my own.
No, its a referrence to where he died and the fact some people have 'dry humor'.
not a mudsex joke. I didn't pick the title, but I think it was a cross between better/wetter, and the fact that he died at a stream.
i only sort of skimmed this log but is the title a mudsex joke? i don't get it. and my 'lawsys abuse' was another in a long line of rules that are not rules that rather than saying 'hey that's against the rules, please stop doing that' they just decided to nuke like 20 chars instead. that's their right to do so but i thought it was kind of a poor decision.
All you jibberers are making far too much sense in this comment thread.
Where are all the DH guys? Mostly they grew up and can not play all day long like back in the day. ;) You know, work, kids, family, house, all that stuff takes a good bite out of the time one could spend on pk'ing people on t2t.
Allso, rust. People get rusty and stuff from inactivity. When you go away for a while, you find yourself not able to locate Alexa when you get back on to pwn people. And that's not good for your health. ;)
When I have more time I'll give you a brief history, Darrick. I caution you, though, that this topic is one which almost precludes a good objective retelling. Try and get as many people to independently tell you about it and assume they're all partially telling you the truth, because nobody is going to give you an accurate or unbiased report (not even me). Don't let the first report or two of the situation (from either side) form your opinion.
at least for once i'm not powerplayer:P
I would be very appreciative if someone could take a few moments to catch me up to speed with the story of this Aryl fella and his Herkimer crew. I stopped playing in '05 and have only recently come back so I'm clueless about this whole controversy. I've met a few people from Herkimer that are as nice as can be. I've also met Aryl and find him to be a douche, along with his buddy Dexter, but what is the real deal? If they are such a problem, why don't all the pkers waste them? Where are the real killers on this MUD? Grimscar, Winnetou, DH guys, etc? The only explanation in my head is that all the powerplayers are now on the same side... Just help me out please. All I know is scraped together from a few random conversations on here and I hate to go off half cocked not knowing the full story.
Oh and Hirgail: Date: 05. Mar, 2010, 21:30:59 By: Hirgail
You people are fucking delusional. Again this is the exact same conversation people have been having for years. How are you not painfully aware each time you get into these conversations that you've already done it dozens of times before?
The game is losing players because it's a 15 year old text game and people get bored of doing the same Goddamn thing over and over again.
Except for you guys, apparently.
We wouldn't keep bringing this up, if you didn't keep copying the same complain about our conversations for the past 5 years. :P
Again I tend to side with Myrddin alot for some reason, I definitely never said Aryl was the sole reason for the demise. In fact, the main reasons behind that are almost completely with the true people with power to change the mud (the ainur). Best way to characterize Aryl vs others in any context except PVP. Aryl does RP in order to be the BEST at RP, not for the sake of actually doing it for fun. He always has to be the best, and he honestly almost never is if ever (there are better killers, better RP'ers, better leaders, cheaters etc). The natural deflection of his rage of not being the best is to PVP and powerplay. Look it up. I have logs of our conversations, he wants everyone to respect him. If someone doesn't bow down or some shit or doesn't feel they are beneath him he is threatened and dislikes them. Its a fact, there will always be better than Aryl, there will always be worse. It is how someone deals with not being the best at everything is how they reflect and work in the community and in friendships on the mud.
Shut up Hirgail we're awesome :p
I was going to have a Hirgail Day celebration a year or two ago, but it never ended up happening. I think I have the resources to pull it off, still, so I may have to do that soon. I miss Hirgy :(
Sunflash, the understanding that I was given is that you are basically correct, though apparently if Draimon hadn't been punished for THAT there were a few other things they were going to punish him for (like, apparently, lawsys abuse) but I could be wrong. I wasn't in Valinor when this took place.
And you, Hirgail, have apparently yet to get bored of making sarcastic, supercilious and often hilarious logpage comments. I think anybody whose truly detached from the game and beyond caring wouldn't feel the desire to check this webpage with any great regularity. I didn't for a decent period of time, but now I'm here again and commenting as much as ever; another lost sheep drawn back into the fold.
On an unrelated note, please get in touch with me if you can. It'd be nice to have a catchup and see how you're doing. My contact details remain unaltered.
You people are fucking delusional. Again this is the exact same conversation people have been having for years. How are you not painfully aware each time you get into these conversations that you've already done it dozens of times before?
The game is losing players because it's a 15 year old text game and people get bored of doing the same Goddamn thing over and over again.
Except for you guys, apparently.
Also, if Draimon got nuked for fucking up scrubs (It seems to be the message I got from reading logpage comments) then it's just more proof of how fucking shitty Valinor is.
Only a shitbag would punish Draimon for being too awesome. That sort of stuff is best left to the players, if Draimon needed killing the players could handle it just fine.
You are an asshole Myrddin. Ill stab you. *giggle*
RE: the first few comments since my last:
I didn't say DH were right or that they weren't assholes, I still think they were. But whether or not their agenda had good foundations, it was at least an agenda, not just randomly misplaced asshattery. That was my point.
In response to Akhazir, I don't think anyone is actually seriously blaming Rhakyrh alone for all the MUDs problems. I am blaming the atrocious administration of the game as a whole over the past yearish that has allowed repugnant behaviour to thrive while coming down like a ton of bricks about ridiculous things like comm policy or not adhering strictly to Draconian definitions of words like 'rape'.
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit/ And the vermin of the world inhabit it/ And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit/ And it goes by the name of Valinor.
While I do think you're overstating the situation (as usual), I agree in principle with a lot of your complaints, Sunflash. I agree that there is too much policing of content in public communications on the MUD (though the alternative - not policing at all - generates 4chan-like places and that's not a good idea either). You have to keep in mind, though, that the admins have a limited toolset from which to work and are obliged to enforce the rules which are on the books, good or bad.
I acknowledge there is a problem, but I don't really see the better solution.
Valinor is a shithole, filled with shitbags, recruited by other shitbags to relay shitbag behavior in the general direction of the playerbase.
Couldn't say best.
i will never actively play until sunflash actively plays again.
I remember why I stopped playing, posted it on the last comment here
http://logs.dyndns.dk/comments.php/14443
Oh, also, in the same condescending conversation where Mathias told me there's 5000 active players and almost 1000 logins a day a couple of weeks ago, he informed me that most (I assume most to be >51%) of the players on T2T couldn't name a single Ainu, nor have any awareness of them all.
What a delusional fucking moron. Fuck Valinor.
My issue with the MUD is Valinor.
I will never actively play this game again, because the draconian enforcement of someone else's moral standards on my recreational activities completely destroys any semblance of fun I might have scrounged out of this MUD after so many years. The Valar's steadfast determination to ban vulgarity on the comm, punish players based on ethical or moral viewpoints with no reference to any rules, or to enforce the rules on a clearly judgemental basis over an objective basis at least 80% of the time is beyond any kind of solution. The problem with this game is that players interact with the devs too much. Their restrictions on things as basic as the player's ability to communicate is game-breaking, and the more extensive influences such as the regular nukes over warnings for these kinds of things, or lax policies on bans/nukes for the players public opinion or in-game rules might say are a little deserving of the ban/nuke, are utterly and completely unacceptable.
Also, Valinor is filled with condescending pricks like Mathias. I'm not a violent man, and I haven't gotten in a fight of any kind since I was in my teens, but a guy like Mathias getting his lights punched out in a barfight wouldn't shock me for an instant, and I definitely wouldn't step in to break it up and defend the guy. And he's not unique, consistently almost every figurehead leader/power for Valinor has held this attitude toward players, excepting maybe Melkor(Who has his own issues, such as complete detachment from gameplay experience and bullshit ideas), Aule and in more recent times (I actually really liked him) Osse.
Valinor is a shithole, filled with shitbags, recruited by other shitbags to relay shitbag behavior in the general direction of the playerbase.
Not that I think a single bit of Valinor's policy will EVER change based on player opinion, particularly rule enforcement, I just think this is a notable problem.
Maybe I'm mistaken on your mathematical skills there Brubaker. As of now, Cruice has 9 of Gambrinus' ears if I'm not mistaken. Also, I think I have died to Gambrinus hmm, 3 maybe 4 times.
If that's not dying a lot to the same person (people), I'm not sure what is.
For me saying you defend Mordor and then killing Shelob ain't really RPish. I mean, she kind of defends passage to Mordor. Going FR to do some quests for quest points ain't RPish also. Being a fucking eorling in an uruk horde is totally not RPish. Thus he fails.
Gamby, don't cross the line :p Aryl does actually want to RP and whatnot, but like Tireless mentioned he always ends up PKing or helping his friends. By now, his reputation is completely tarnished and no one who isn't a complete idiot would want to RP with him. He'll stab em in the back sometime, 'accidentally' forgetting to have merciful on, or perhaps his friends just happen to be there while they are RP fighting. All his credibility is gone, no one in the RP scene will ever take him seriously again.
The thing with aryl is that he wants to be respected.
-He'll say he doesn't use mapper, cause those people are usually called more skilled.
-He'll say he RPs cause those people are also more respected.
-Semms he even married his wife to get into higher position in GB and in ER comminuty and thus to be more... respected?
Guess what? HE FAILED!
I am the best newbie helper, kthx.
There are lots of reasons to increase the number of newbie helpers even if there is always at least one on:
*That one is probably afk a non-zero amount of the time that he or she is logged on.
*There may arise an issue which he or she does not know how to solve
*Consensus is always superior to individual opinion, eg on the newbiecomm.
*Some newbies feel self-conscious asking many questions of the same individual, since most newbiehelpers get annoyed with many sequential questions. More newbiehelpers allow them to distribute their questions.
*There exist some bad helpers. No matter how good the system, some always slip through the cracks.
*Sometimes helping a newbie can take all of one's attention; if there are multiple newbies at once, this will swamp a single newbiehelper.
*Similar to above, newbiehelpers are players too; they may be busy with their own stuff and not be available to help a newbie at any given time.
Well, there is basically always at least one helper on at all times which is why they might say that. However, the helpfulness of different helpers obviously varies greatly though, so more could definitely be put to good use.
Then Valinor and other players need a good talking-to.
Heh, it's quite nice to hear about the glory of old DH and such. But really, it was alot about wanting to confront (and kill) other players witht he backing of a theme based idea. I know, i was there.
We designed the idea of DH from a thematic point of view and used it as a (good) reason to pvp. I loved defending Tenzeks because it was an excuse to attack other players and have fun with that without having to 'randomly' attack people and get retaliated on in the same way.
I bet some people back then thought of me as a bloodthirsty douchebag with a thematic (but poor) excuse to attack and kill random people too. ;)
Allso, Akhazir! Ive talked to valinor and other helpers about becoming a helper on many occations. What i normally get in reply is:
'We do not need more helpers. Don't bother to apply.'
-And it's not about being a disliked person or anything, as i have done the same with different chars (even moral rp'ish chars) that people does not know is me.
--and very well said, Draimon. Two thumbs up from me.
'Aryl simply did the RP parts as a PR stunt, and he only did questing so it would help him look better at PVP. '
This isn't accurate. Nothing I'm about to say is meant to be a slight against you, and you should certainly know that I'm no greater a fan of Aryl than you are, but I'm a firm believer that if one may dislike a person for legitimate or illegitimate reason, the legitimate ones are always preferable, even if the illegitimate ones are more poignant.
Aryl honestly and absolutely does care about RP, probably moreso than virtually anyone here (the logpage). People like Carver (and, oddly enough, Corwin) probably care more - but they're not here. Don't knee-jerk disagree with me and call me names yet -- keep reading.
I contend that Aryl is compulsive about his playerkilling. I think I understand this compulsion better than most. He has created many characters which he absolutely honestly believed he would use exclusively for RP. He came up with better backstories than most of the people on the MUD (because he is a reasonably gifted writer and is thus CAPABLE of generating a strong backstory) and had grandiose visions of wonderful roleplay interactions with people on a non-PK level. There are at least a dozen characters he made with these intentions. However, at some point he _always_ gave in to temptation and wound up PKing with them, then gave up their RP to support his PKing.
It's not that he doesn't care about roleplay, it's that he apparently can't control his impulse to PK. The fact that he has a well-deserved reputation for this sort of behaviour means that it's even harder for him to get into roleplaying. His history of using RP in a backhanded way (to score kills against people he disliked) means that most of the people he would roleplay for and against refuse to give him a chance. I think VC, for example, is not willing to interact with him on any level because they've been burned so many times. (This might be their attitude towards Ravathir -- I'm referring to something Alkath told me before he left) So even if he wanted to RP, there's a paucity of people with whom he _can_ at this point.
As for his use of questing only to further PK aims, I have three brief responses to this: First, when Aryl was exploring new areas he was at the age and stage of his development where we were the closest we ever would be and he told me all about it on MSN. His impressions, his reactions, his thoughts. The way he approached questing was much like Akhazir (who is unquestionably the best quester on the mud, using my metrics. Montog is another alternate candidate, but the point stands.) He was deeply and profoundly interested in questing and exploring for their own sakes. He read descs more thoroughly than many of us do -ever-. Second, a great deal of his behaviour with regards to questing that I think is unethical (I won't detail it here) is the product of wanting to exploit things he's naturally explored for PK uses, not for discovering new things which he wouldn't have found otherwise. Third, questing is a means to an end for all of us sometimes. When you quest a hauberk, after the first dozen times or so, or when you're doing it the third time that boot, it's not about the excitement of fighting the watcher. It's about getting a piece of eq so you can go PK or continue to quest or whatever. The fact that Aryl does this as well is not something for which he ought to be condemned.
All that said, I don't dispute your general conclusions. I just take issue with that one set of claims.
everybody here raises good points. as someone who grew up in this game much like the herks i was always loyal to my RL friends but to a certain point. there are countless logs of us killing each other. did we get pissy at each other RL? no we didnt. and it all goes back to character separation. we realized it wasnt aaron killing sean or nick killing bret etc. it was vie killing jerf or etc etc. i guess it is a sign of the times with facebook etc and all social sites encouraging everybody to give out all their information but i think the MUD would be well served if people did their best to keep their typist info to a minimum. this encourages healthy and righteous RP rather than excuses between all as to who they should and shouldn't protect. OCPP or 2CPP would help greatly in that in the fashion that it helps each typist to truly get into character rather than simply logging onto whatever else it is best to help their OOC typist friend's alt. char separation it's a beautiful thing. doesn't mean you guys aren't RL friends etc but it does a ton of help for gameplay. nick bret and i enjoyed being pricks. bob sean etc they enjoyed helping out their guild. who you are RL doesn't have to be who you are here IC.
That's because she always hid in the MC council chamber lol! Here's the problem with Aryl and his friends: 'Raise the average skill of the playerbase by training the new players to be good'. Player killing is only one aspect but in EVERY discussion on here it seems to prevail as the only one. Aryl simply did the RP parts as a PR stunt, and he only did questing so it would help him look better at PVP. The problem as Shabba has said, relates directly to the population now left on the mud. I am not sure who said it last, but the main difference may be not Aryl himself but the system that allows such a low life mental issue filled player like him continue without any checks (or VERY few) which all he has to do is watch out for them. Back in the day, if you pissed enough people off, there was no possibility for accounting for every person coming for you and therefore you died or never did anything risky. And as people said, I REALLY disliked BKD killing people in erebor for killing their dwarves, but only on a personal level. Same went for GV (and for those I liked DH/Roi) I really respected the groups that actually did that. Even VC did this but ended up usually mercifulling people which made it competitive. Aryl and his crew couldn't give a fuckshit whatsoever about such a motive. He just wants to PK, they all do. Even if it isn't in mordor then they use 'personal contract' or contracts placed by who knows (very likely them sometimes). Do not confuse the motives/convictions behind the different groups. When I was friends with DH and Roi (still am but don't play), they WOULD not let me just walk in as their friend and still maintained RP. Even when I was invited into Roi's territories, they made me wear a blindfold even though I was a good friend of theirs.
lololl
Haha, I wouldn't feel too bad about it. Deboraha was difficult to take down even if you were maxed. I never managed it, and not through want of trying.
go fuck yourself
lolol nub
I remember trying to kill deboraha once. She had quite big C and seemed *peers* to be level 7 so i thought i'd take her down (I was like level 11), she backhunted me and my brothers laughed at me:(
Well, since i actually playkilled before being ever killed, i wasn't that upset.
Excellent post, Akhazir. I hope it opens some people's eyes.
Ambivalence towards the newbiehelpers, I think, is based on a certain segment of the population which took being newbiehelpers very seriously and attempted to (and largely succeeded at) ruining an entire crop of newbies by sucking them in to... well, being a Durm.
There are a lot of patently bad people going into newbie helping and trying to ruin newbies today too. But Akhazir's sagacious suggestion supplies the sort of solution suitable to this situation. The more good newbiehelpers there are, the less powerful the bad ones will be.
Yes there was. There were enough players online that it wasn't immediately obvious that it was going on, is all. Now there's so few people playing the MUD that we notice every player lost.
Yeah well what I'm saying is there was no rage suicide/quit/rant on comm/etc that happens too often these days
we weren't as emotional as all these kids. Newbies these days often take deaths so badly it's pathetic.
Not at all true. Everybody was upset the first time they got killed. Everybody.
azkhazir's post was a thing of beauty
And Akhazir, the reason that environment didn't stop us is because you know, we weren't as emotional as all these kids. Newbies these days often take deaths so badly it's pathetic.
Like I've said, as a newbie I had been random killed several times and repeatedly killed by certain people even though I knew shit all about the game. I thought everyone on the comm was an asshat and so I simply kept it off. I stuck around through it all anyways and here I am now. Everyone else can do the same!
Okay okay, maybe not. They're all needy bitches who have to be spoon-fed every little piece of information. But with that said, I am a newbie helper and it isn't so exciting. I answer questions on the newbie comm if I'm on but there's not often many questions. I get some tells from newbies sometimes because they see me on 'who helper' but that doesn't happen much either. Keeping the old players around should indeed be a very high priority, because the MUD is never going to see a whole slew of people ready to dive into a text-only game.
Colven, I'll suicide if everybody else does. I won't go first because I'd rather not be the target of a very bad joke.
By the way, during my newbie days I've been driven out of Henneth Annun and Tenzek's camp, and in both cases it only enriched the atmosphere of those areas and gave a sense of depth and danger to exploring.
Or we could all just mass suicide and let a new crowd build the game up from scratch.
You first though.
I don't understand how it's all Rhakyrh's fault that we're losing so many players. People are fast to lay blame on others when things aren't going well. Perhaps he is to blame, but if so, then so are most of the people commenting here. What would be gained by nuking Rhakyrh? Somebody else will step up to fill his shoes. So what then, should we nuke that person too? Then the person after that?
The MUD population has been on a very slow decrease over the last few years. It's been the source of many complaints and finger pointing. It was going on even when Rhakyrh wasn't around. If you want the MUD's population to rise, there is only one way to do it: bring in and retain new blood. Oh, keeping the old school players is nice too, but if you're talking about changes to the game with just that in mind you're looking at things the wrong way. See, for the population to increase you need to be doing more than just retaining old members. To not do more is only prolonging the game's death. So that brings me to the point of this comment: Newbie helpers.
If you want the MUD population to grow, maybe apply to be a newbie helper, answer questions that are asked (you know, without laughing at the newbie or killing them for talking). Show them how to explore, show them how to gold. Teach them to recognize huntbreaks and that they will be attacked on occasion. That way when some spree killer comes around to kill them, they won't feel like the world ended when they were ghosted. They'll revive, learn more breaks and hopefully get better. Maybe they'll be good enough that a new generation of PKers will arise to contend with problem players so you won't have to. Numbers won't turn around the instant you start, and it could take a long time for a noticable change, but I'd bet numbers would stop dropping if we stopped losing the new blood. Sort of makes sense, doesn't it?
Since some of you are thinking 'Who newbie: 0' and are using that as an excuse not to apply: I've been a helper for a long time now and there are indeed long periods of time when nothing is asked at all. Then we get a new player asking a lot of questions. Sometimes there aren't any helpers on to respond, or the helpers that are on don't know the answers. We do get new players on a regular basis, though. It's just a matter of hooking them while they're young and that won't happen without the community itself stepping up.
Raise the average skill of the playerbase by training the new players to be good. They might not be some elite player over night but they will have made themselves less of a target and it will have instilled in them a sense that they can and should improve. In a sense you would be dealing with Rhakyrh this way - not through war but by lessening his lead over the casual player. This is how it was done in the old days. In the MUD's later days the community simply got elitist and lazy, letting new players go off on their own and die on their own. It in turn gave a sense to those playing the end game that the game is ending. Nothing new is going on. It's the same old fight day after day and only the names have changed.
Now, the new player is away from the newbie comm. He's got leveling down and he's learning his way. He has access to the comms. What would the comms show the player? It would show him a bunch of bitter old farts whining and flaming at each other about how the MUD is dying and who is to blame. That player might now be thinking 'Hey whoa, what did I get myself into? I'm just here for fun. I better find a new MUD before I waste more of my time.' Think about it. If you were just starting out here, would you stick around after seeing this community's attitude?
I'm not saying you have to be some big care bear, but if you want to point your finger and say 'This person is the cause of all our problems,' then you'd better be facing a mirror. You can argue until you're blue in the face about whether or not Rhakyrh is bad for this MUD or should have been let back, but it will serve no purpose except to fuel the problems this MUD faces. Rhakyrh IS back, and we can assume now that Valinor has no intentions of nuking him, so that leaves it up to the community itself to handle whatever problems it believes he's causing. All the finger pointing you've all done, all the whining and flaming each other - it was all for nothing because the majority of you are just being loud and have yet to do anything to help the population grow.
So here's a reminder. If you've any skill at all, don't want to see the MUD die and are even halfway active, apply to become a newbie helper so that at the very least you can share your wisdom with the newer generation that is still interested in this game. More people means more going on, and more going on means there's more to do. Look to the newer crowd if you want to make this place fun again.
Interestingly enough, Myrddin was one of these critics of DH and FRA! When I'd just started playing, I heard at length about what assholes they were and how they didn't care about roleplay - just wanted to abuse Tenzek's for free random kills.
You're all welcome to start chanting 'Jer-ry! Jer-ry!' now.
I'm glad you think so, Myrddin, because a hell of a lot of other people didn't. The general consensus amongst a number of players, especially those in some of the traditionally moral guilds, was that Daen Hecil has chosen to defend that particular area for the sole purpose of exploiting it for playerkills. An argument given credence by the 'deathtrap' nature of the camp. 'Douchebag' was one of the politer honorifics used in such discussions.
The keyword there is 'policies'. Those groups were actually acting on an agenda beyond mere douchebaggery.
I think anybody whose ever hated another group of players on the MUD has felt much the same way, Pounder. At its inception, Daen Hecil was heavily criticized for their decision to hunt other players in the defense of Tenzek's camp. RoI received similar flack for their protection of Henneth Annûn. As someone who was heavily involved in the implementation and enforcement of both policies, I can assure you that I received a fair amount of tells from people who thought I was 'ruining the game' and 'going against the roleplaying spirit of the MUD.' Much of the controversy and debate surrounding DH is probably still preserved somewhere on this website.
You are someone for whom I have a great amount of respect, Pounder, and I know you always have the best interests of the game at heart. In this instance, however, I feel that your judgment may be clouded. That's just my opinion, though, and I mean no disrespect.
Tireless, I have to disagree with you, there would still be someone to hate, just it most likely would happen to be someone with some style, taste and intelligence, at least more than Aryl. Given you combine 20 or more people together on a game, someone will want to stir up some trouble. The question is, is their 'strife' they create actually harmful to the mud's growth (or in this case causes more rapid decline) or is it something that actually almost makes people play (see old durms/fra/bkd etc). There are two versions of 'baddies'.
Well, if herkies weren't so whiny and i wouldn't be punished for harassment any time i did something for them which wasn't hunt/stab/kill, so it's kinda boring, so i prefer to play different mud if anything *shrug*
I'm bored already
I bet you'd be bored if Aryl and the Herks were gone.
K, i fucked it up. Herkies knows shit about punctation.
If education wasn't on such shitty level in herkimer you'd understand simple maths and be able to count to 50, neither i expect you to understand what i'd mean if i said that my kill:death ratio was 5:1 at least. So i will try to put it in herkish: 'Son, SAFOOMA AND GO CRY SOME MORE.'
It would get boring dying to the same people yes. I don't feel your pain though.
I would like aryl and herks gone. Fighting same people for years gets boring and they are too shitty to team them up.
The education system in the us.... it's like baseball (someone talked about baseball rules/terms here a few days ago), never bothered to really learn what the different terms means. I voted 'other', but i guess that makes me a complete bum or a proffessor or something?
And yes, one can have more then one primary char. If you play 2 chars 1d activity per 30d and have 5 alts that you allmost never play... i would say you have 2 primary chars. Wouldn't you? :)
yeah, but my vote will count as if i have no primary, so i'll count as a non-existant player.
It's not like you can actually have more than one primary char anyway
I have 3 primary chars and voted all of 'em as secondary to counter those eventual liars.
I'm looking forward to seeing the distribution of 'primary' chars versus 'secondary'. I also wonder how honest people will be.
Also, I can't wait to see survey results. If there are more undergrads than highschool grads, people are lying :p
I have to wonder if Mathias seriously believes the MUD is that active or if he's just trying to save face
5000 characters on the mud, 4800 of them are Exhalev and Marthaon and they're just multiboxing that shit. For fuck's sake.
None of this matters, because T2T has over 5000 active players, with close to 1000 active logins a day.
Rhakyrh and Ravathir aren't driving players away, they're attracting them by dozens a day.
Mathias said it, yo.
(And the earlier five points were in reference to people _influenced_ by Aryl, not Aryl himself. I would choose different criteria if the person being evaluated had been him. Those five were designed for Ravathir, and can be applied relevantly to people like Cruice, Aether and Zandramas.)
Valinor hasn't been united since before I started playing. I read about the arguments around Dev22, I remember talking to disgruntled ainur during battlepoints, Castamir's splinter was the symptom of huge disagreements among the admin, and I'm reasonably sure that if you asked all the powers (privately, off the record) whether they thought it was ok for Aryl to be playing here the split would be at least 50/50. There has NEVER been agreement in Valinor over important issues - that's why they take so freaking long to decide anything.
As for my five observations, they weren't meant to be exhaustive -- They were a starting point. I could come up with 20 more, but I wanted to see if people were resistant to the first ones I made before generating more (and in lieu of boring everyone with a 15-page dissertation on the topic).
Etrius, there is a significant difference between Spartan and Aryl. Spartan just does what he does, always has, and will always do. He doesn't go out and talk shit, start a clan and have them all act like stupid 5 year old mental retards in fear they actually might grow a brain (hold the sac vs brain argument here please) and not follow him anymore. He plays the game to kill occasionally level and that's that. Aryl on the other hand, thinks he's god on the game (whilest all it takes is an admin to say NOE BITCH and nuke him), has such a serious mental complex it almost garuntees lower quality of game play overall from the people that play with him. Lower quality in terms of value for the mudding community itself. Tireless, this falls into your description of why people dislike him but doesn't fall onto one of your points. Why would I dislike him according to #5 reason, I haven't played in 2 years, I died to him only in a failed reverse PK when I didn't realize warriors sucked complete fucksticks without armour nowdays. I don't play so I can't possibly be bullied by him. So? Why defend him? Maybe we can't put things into exact words, but what if people simply think the mud would be much much better without him? I am still out on cruice and friends honestly. I wish I had known them without Aryl's influence on them. I think they would have turned out pretty valueable to the mud if they had say joined another guild/person instead of durms/etc at the time. Finally, last but not least, I am guessing if a player can make an observation that Valinor is not united, that means the death of the towers will come quickly if they do not reunite or the superior/good for side does not win and purge the rest soon.
point no.5 is completely wrong, tireless: I like pk, i'm not pk'd by 'em. And i'm not bad in pk and neither bullied by 'em. And i still want 'em gone.
Well, people have done it already, much better than me. someone wrote:
When I confronted an Admin about an assortment of multiplaying violations regarding these players, and asked why they weren't site banned I was told by Mathias (and I am paraphrasing a little but this is pretty much an exact quote): What is the point of site banning people when they will just get around it? And when I asked why they weren't nuked I was told: What does it matter when they can max a character in 48 hours? That, combined with admin changing game areas to favor their guilds and characters is the reason I don't play T2T anymore although I am sure I will return someday. (...) when I changed my legend info to comment on the dirty admin, I was warned before anyone spoke to me to confirm whether my allegation was true or false. Whistleblowers punished while cheaters prosper doesn't encourage the type of players that will let the Towers Prosper.
And then someone else responded:
Yeah, stupid huh... That's bad reasoning anyways. The proper thing to do is ban them so that even when they do bypass the hardban with a proxy they get swiftly nuked and so not too much damage is done. However, if they don't get caught that means they're not up to their shenanigans anymore and no one's being bothere...d so they can keep playing for now. It's a win/win. Ask them why they bothered to ban Quiauh then. They got him eventually didn't they? And look, he just wasted 30 days of his life all over again.
You're wrong because the majority of the playerbase simply doesn't care and would vote 'No opinion.'
From what I can tell, there are a few pertinent observations I can make on the topic:
1.) Valinor is not united -- that is, who 'valinor' wants in the game is a false construction because it asserts solidarity where none exists.
2.) 'Valinor's notion of what sort of player it wants in the game is based on, as far as I can tell, a very short-sighted consideration of the situation. The kind of guys who get sitebanned are not the kind that make up a sustainable playerbase.
3.) The players are not united -- who 'the players' want in the game is also a false construction because it asserts solidarity or clear majority where none exist. If polled, I would be very surprised if less than 35% of the playerbase wanted Aryl around.
4.) The metric which Valinor (seems to be/is) using to determine 'good for the game' is total number of hours logged by players -- so if Aryl ages 10h/d and drives away 5 players who play 1h/d, it's still in the game's best interest for him to be here. (That said, in this observation I am not claiming that Aryl is driving anyone away -- merely establishing the metric)
5.) What people want is not always readily apparent. I doubt that players like Gambrinus or Spartan would want Aryl gone because without Aryl or the so-called 'Herks' there would be nobody to fight. The only people that _really_ want Aryl or the 'Herks' gone are those who don't like PKing but are PKed by them, or are bad at PKing and are bullied by them.
Does anyone think any of these observations are in error? If so, why?
Expand this thought, it'll be fun.
the kind of players valinor wants in the game is completely different from the kind of players that players want in the game.
right and they told me that continous stealing from rhakyrh is harassment.
That lawless shit on Rhakyrh was just more proof that Melkor doesn't know what the fuck actual players do on T2T.
Which, in Rhakyrh's case, is kill the shit out of whatever attacks him since they can't pay fines for attempts. All it really meant was that thieves got to steal his gold and hand healing for free.
And Formid raises a valid point too. What is the world coming to?
I will second Norin's comment. I tried to write up what Etrius said so succinctly and couldn't be fucked. Good job on this one Greg!
I think the problem with the other groups mentioned, and even those players that were widely hated (I guess Spartan would fit the profile), is that the population of the mud at that time was MUCH higher.
There were powerplayers and playerkillers at the time they were around that were good enough to stand up to them and make sure that whilst they could have their fun, they were never able to completely impose their behaviour on the rest of the mud.
Now, thats not the case, the group now seems to compose most of the active portion of the MUD.
Plus, back then I seem to remember the ainur being harsher about stuff like spreekilling etc, now all people seem to get is a slap on the wrist (leveling up a new char is a lot easier now, gold is much easier to get, so a nuked char is nothing to these people). When you don't have a punishment these kind of people care about you have no control over them. If you siteban/remove them then you lose a good percentage of the mud population without any guarantee those who stopped playing will come back, it's a vicous circle.
Hell, look at the whole 'this player is lawless' crap they did with Rharyk etc, they just took it as a favour that people would come and attack them and they could then get free revenge kills.
Etrius says what I was about to say in very fine words and more fluent english. Thanks.
I see your suggestion, Lomar, and raise you a 'c'.
Lets hate on Antartica too.
mud fad? :)
I wouldn't have put it like that. The phrase 'internet fad' makes me think of mudkips and the Numa Numa video, but if you want.
Lol, so what you're ultimately saying is they are just some internet FAD?
I always hated the Cubans a lot.
I disagree, Pounder. Aryl has indeed become the equivalent of Emmanuel Goldstein to the Anti-Herkimer movement, but he is far from the first player to be disliked or even hated by a significant portion of the MUD. Nor is he the first to be held to account for the sins of a group. Spartan was universally despised at one time. Although most of them have come to regarded as elder statesmen nowadays, a fair few of the Old Klokers whom we all so revere were public enemies number one and then some. Some of you need to remove your rose-tinted spectacles and look at the wider spectrum of sociological trends which this game has been repeating for over a decade now.
Ostensibly, a (personal) contract. Irime advertises that she takes personal C's and I see no reason to doubt that this was either filling a normal or personal C. As long as the supply is sufficient to fill her capacity, there are strong disincentives against randomly killing (newbies especially).
So why did Drygulch die? All I see that guy do is explore and help new players. :P Way to go Irime.
Norin, The difference is, the rest of those groups that did not contain Aryl in them, all had some semblance of style or something of the likes. Most followed and passed Tireless's list of 5 items. I would way rather have Klokers/Old Durms for instance than the current 'group'.
Tireless is completely wrong. And that is proof that I am right when i say he fell on Aryl's lap again.
They are the new pool you can pour your hate into. Klokers, FRA, DH, TB, STWA, Durms, Dark Knights, etc, you name it. Since day one, we have had people or groups we (i.e. the general population of t2t) love to hate. :)
1) Still a complete idiot in tells, comm, everywhere but the logpage
2) Sometimes, but I still see him fuck it up. Besides, it's like congratulating someone for remembering to wash their hands after going to the bathroom or some shit, it isn't difficult
3) Close enough to random, he's already started shit with 6+ guilds since creation
4) Not really
5) meh
Dexter tells you: You're the only
This is proof that I'm right and he's improving.
You guys might not see it, but review:
1.) Shittalking on the logpage: Presently non-extant.
2.) Your/you're: Got it right.
3.) PK target selection: Uses a method (doesn't randomkill)
4.) Skill to attitude ratio: Close(r) to appropriate.
5.) Ability to operate on his own agenda without Aryl: Unknown.
So that's 4/5 signs of classical Herkism which have improved in his case and 1/5 which is uncertain. I've detected a positive trend. Pretty soon there won't be any Herks FROM Herkimer.
Dexter tells you: You're the only dumbass with that title, it's old. Get
real.
GUYS I GOT TOLD BY DEXTER THE DUNEDAIN MURDERER :(
1
Where was the humor?