Category: Gaming

 

Goudia sports a few new titles, and I find them a little amusing. I typically keep my titles off, because who wants to deal with having to read all that every time they look at me. She doesn’t even have a last name! Running around Kunzar Jungle last night warranted me enough experience to hit level 75 on the troubador, and make a good deal of coin from vendor sales, as well as obtain my “rubble-rabble rouser” title, and “Quatcha Catcher” title. I love titles, they’re fun little rewards, but I think they’re slightly over the top now.

This is basically how my evening of questing went:

Goudia – Hellos mr / miss / mrs <random name of npc> I’m here to aid you!

Random npc – Great! Can you please head to point A, kill 10 <random name of mob> then come back to me

Goudia – Uh. But didn’t I just do that?

Random npc – Yes, but we’d like you to do it, again! Isn’t that wonderful?

Goudia – Uh.. I suppose..

Spends 10 minutes hunting for mobs, then returns to npc

Random npc – Great! Now, do that, only.. this time. go to point B first. Then visit merchant in point C, grab their quest to kill around the same area the very first quest I gave you made you kill, jump 5 times, and return to me (again).

Goudia – Uhms… ok… *stifles a yawn*

Complaining? No. But just like I need a break from doing any dungeon crawls, I also need breaks from the quests. They all make me run around difference sections of the zone, kill x number of y mobs, return, and then do it again. Numerous times. I did get some fairly nice gear upgrades from doing very little work. But it actually feels as though I have not done anything to get these past five levels. Not complaining, just finding it different.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who live in the states, it’s not turkey day here, since ours was last month, but I hope everyone enjoys it. As for myself… we’re on our second foot of snow in two days, and it’s great. Excited about Christmas!

Got the jeweler to level 71, ran out of vitality and pristine experience so decided to put it on hold for now. I still find it easiest to do the rush order writs on the provisioner, and the location of the tablet to get my writs is an annoyance in every good aligned instance, I have to run through doors and down floors. Grumbles.

 

Here’s hoping the situation on AB changes (with the player base, I see nothing wrong on SoE’s end, they’re trying, but the mean-ness of the server, has been disheartening in particular to the issues) and things cool down and calm down now that the crazy rush of the adventure pack has slowed. Someone let me know how that extra experience boost is eh?

 

Every time poor Stargrace zones into her house, her friendly shiny-finder, Snookie, is sitting in or on the book shelves. Apparently he has some strange affinity for paper. I find it amusing none the less. I had Goudia feed it, and chuckled, as the “shiny” it rewarded me with, was the no-trade no-value lore no-destroy Sword of Destiny quest piece. I petitioned to have it removed, since I couldn’t destroy it and Goudia is past that portion of the quest. I’m still looking for a T8 carpenter on Antonia Bayle to take all these mahogany pieces off of my hands and turn them into pretties, there’s been some fantastic pieces I’ve seen for sale, but they’re also exceptionally expensive right now. With my carpenter sitting at level 30, I’m wondering if I should just bite the bullet and level her continuously. You’d think (and I’ve mentioned this before) that of all the tradeskillers I have (I have one of everything) that the one I use the MOST (carpenter) would be level 70 at least. But no. I’ve typically just bought or quested for my pieces. Oh, and Stargrace looks tiny in the shot since she’s using that billy doll clicky that reduces her by 40%.

What a cute couple eh? That’s Shadowgeist and Goudia sitting on the throne in Fens of Nathsar, after smacking down some goblin guys. Much fun. I think this quest rewarded a legendary item, it wasn’t that much of an upgrade though, so the vendor got to eat it. Ah well. Money is money!

Ever since RoK was released, Antonia Bayle has experienced huge traffic. In my eyes, it’s a blessing. Especially since I transfered here from a fairly dead server a year ago. I love the server, I really do. Understandably, there are issues due to the high traffic. One of them revolve around the amount of items listed on our broker (since they now allow all alts to sell) and the data base handling it. As such, our broker transactions are removed for portions of each day during “peak” play time. For the past four days between 6pm EST and 10pm EST the server is pretty much un-playable. Zone times move from 30 seconds to 20-35 minutes. Log in queues are long, they’re “throttling” the people logging in, which means for some the server says it’s up, and for others it says it’s down as they try to pace it all.

I’ve kept pretty quiet about the whole ordeal. I’ve played EQ1/EQ2/WoW/VG for years now, and this isn’t exactly a surprise to me. What has been a surprise though, is people’s reaction to it. I’ve never been more sad to glance through the Antonia Bayle forums and disappointed at a core player base as I have been over the past little while.

With threads like this, and this and this I can’t help but shake my head sadly. Since when did the server develop this whole ‘us vs. them’ mentality? Since when is it ok to say “we need to get rid of all non-rp’ers because this is a rp-preferred server” – and have people agree with it? Honestly. I’ve never seen so much hostility between players. It’s not anyones fault that Antonia Bayle is a populated server. Take it from someone who knows what a barren server is like, you don’t want it. It’s not fun. I understand that troublemakers most often have the loudest voice, and they’re sure to make it heard, but how on earth can anyone hold that opinion and actually mean it? Role Play means different things to different people. No one player gets to decide what it means for anyone else. There’s all sorts of reasons why we choose this server. Be it a friend, a guild, population, an older crowd (though I use that term loosely after reading the past few posts on the forums) we’re all here to play together. Just because someone doesn’t actively participate in what one person coins as ‘role play’ doesn’t mean they’re any less deserving to be on this particular server then anyone else. After all, we all pay our monthly fees. I don’t walk around spouting thou and thee every which way, but I consider myself a moderate role player. Hard core? No, I’m not, I do attend events though when I’m in the mood to, and I do write my role play stories. Do I think anyone should be removed from the server because we have such a high population? No, of course not. That would be silly, not to mention just rude.

I do think people need to calm down though. It is always being fixed and worked on, and yes, it’s annoying and frustrating I agree. It’s also going to leave a bad taste in all new players mouths. There probably are some temporary solutions out there to appease the crowds that should be looked at before the angry throng of rp’ers and non-rp’ers alike plan a road trip to the SoE building. I miss reading the pages of recruitment posts, the planning of events, and all of the activities that make this a fantastic server to be on. We (as a server, a community) want to WELCOME people to Antonia Bayle, not shun them and scare them away with over bearing rants about how much so-and-so needs to be removed because they don’t conform to our idea of role play.

The whole situation in general has been handled badly on so many fronts. I honestly hope that it clears up in the next few days weeks, and the server can enjoy its high population without the horrible animosity that’s been brought about lately.