I would really like to log in once in a while (though perhaps not as often as in the past!), but the place where I work/stay blocks telnet.

[enjoyable]

Woohoo! So Iznogoud is still alive! Hehe, nice to hear from you.

I don?t know if I would ever come back to Nanny in the sense of becoming an active player simply because I don?t think I will be able to find that kind of time. But well... here are some thoughts.

I have always thought that Nanny would have a better chance of retaining players if there was something for higher level players to aspire for in terms of power. I rather enjoyed growing in terms of power in any guild. When I reached maximum power in the guild, that closed off one dimension of the game. When a high level player starts bitching about not having goals, people usually treat him like an idiot telling him about all the stuff he hasn't done. I guess in most games it is kind of fashionable to mock ?powerplayers? (or whatever that silly word is... not sure I fully understand what it means). But I don?t really see anything wrong with enjoying the process of growing in power and being able to do things that were impossible at lower levels. When you reach the end of that process, that leaves exploring. I think that happens too quickly in Nanny (at least in most guilds).

I know that most people would argue that exploring is supposed to be the major part of the game. The fact is, not everyone likes to quest and explore tiny puzzles. There are some people who enjoy questing simply because they want to finish all quests. In other words, they look forward to ?mastering the game?. I don?t think about it like that. If a quest is too tedious, or if the clues are too weird, I would rather not bother with it. It seems as if a lot of quests are simply built to be annoying. There may be people who enjoy them, but I don?t and so I simply don?t bother to do them. There are some ?standard? areas in the game that I never bothered to explore simply because I did not like the crude descriptions in them.

To put it briefly, if a player runs out of enjoyable goals in the game, the game is over for him. It doesn?t matter if you think that the game still has content that he has not tried out.

Personally I think it might be too late to do anything about this, but if I could have made a suggestion several years back, I would have suggested making it possible for high level players to get powerful in a genuine sense (not something meaningless like paragon levels). Of course, that would have required high-level content for them too.

Ereshkigal

True. There is obviously always a choice, perhaps several alternatives. To loot or not to loot. To comment or not to comment. What you should know is that your actions have consequences, you are not alone in the universe...

I was simply reminiscing about the past in that note. When I shared my thoughts, it was meant to be a discussion about why people do what they do, about the mechanics of online behavior.  Yes, I have needed "help" in my life in the past. I think I made that clear myself in that note. For you to go and make a flippant comment about the quality of my RL is crossing a line. Obviously, you are incapable of seeing that.

In any case, I'll save my breath.

You don't need to comment on my RL or tell me what I need to do.

(deleted)

No, it wasn't you. It was someone else with a knight as his first char though... I forget his name..something with a Z.

I do have a funny memory about you though! You were idling in the room south of Pet to hide from the tag club people. And I saw you there once and warned you that it was a dangerous place. Then a few days later Ydo (a vampire) wanted to kill Pet and found you there. He tried to get you to move but you were probably afk and didn't move. So he went ahead and attacked Pet and the flames killed you. And they destroyed the corpse and the coins with it. You thought that Ydo had stolen your coins and started complaining on Paragon line. So I said to Ydo in a private tell that I had warned you before. So he immediately quotes me on the Paragon line (and I'm thinking, "Nooooo! Leave me out of it!"). I think you were pretty mad at both of us.

Eresh

[other people]

I don't think it is immature to feel irritated about kill stealing. It is a matter of how you see the game. Most people play the game because they enjoy playing/competing with other people. So they are very aware that there is another human being behind the character and that's what makes the game meaningful to them. So I think it is natural to be pissed off if you think that someone isn't playing fair (even if there is no explicit rule about kill stealing).  I suppose there are some who see other players and NPC's on essentially the same level. That's fine for them I guess, though I don't think I would like to be like that. I'd rather be immature than dead, heh.
 
Also, if I were just looking for beautiful text or interesting puzzles, I'd rather look for them in better places!

Not sure why you try to convince people dark rituals are "incredibly rare", but they are not. Not now, perhaps six months ago or something, I actually don't know. If you think 1 out of 5 is "incredibly rare" there is a language problem rather, and you might be the one being correct.

Well, it should be pretty obvious why I try to convince people that dark rituals are incredibly rare - because I think they are. Yes, 1/5 is pretty rare in _my_ opinion.

However, that was not the point. My point was that things are a lot different than they were a few years back and so a few changes would be good. If you don't think they are necessary, that's fine. You are the one playing, after all.

Anyway, this is a dead issue. Discussions on this forum are purely academic. Its pretty hard to have a discussion like this on Nanny since the people who can change things rarely take the time to even express an opinion if an idea is put forth. I guess one can't really blame them. As Maggs said, it probably gets hard to work up some enthusiasm about coding for less and less players.

Well, talk to you guys on Nanny some day. Bye.

Eresh

Dark] Loque sighs darkly.
[Dark] In the void, a voice speaks: There were no worthy dark ones logged on!
       Thus there cannot be any Midnight Ritual.
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: There were no worthy dark ones logged
       on! Thus there cannot be any Midnight Ritual.
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: There were no worthy dark ones logged
       on! Thus there cannot be any Midnight Ritual.
[Dark] In the void, a voice speaks: There were no worthy dark ones logged on!
       Thus there cannot be any Midnight Ritual.
[Dark] Loque smiles happily at Pyttska.
[Dark] Pyttska tickles Loque.
[Dark] Loque goes 'ah' and gives Hammar a dark greeting.
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: Loque is the leader of the Midnight
       Ritual!
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: The darkness is soon upon us all!
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: The wonderful night is upon us!
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: Follow your leader towards the darkness!
[Dark] Loque: 2w and north from green...
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: The last warning has been issued. The
       ritual can start at any time!
> You have unread news about the dart club, use 'dartnews' to read.
[Dark] In the void, a voice murmurs: The ritual starts now!


1/5 isn't rare. No.

Just a disclaimer: My suggestion for vampires was just in case the guild becomes too inactive for anyone to play. I know creating the option of dueling an NPC might mess with the guild atmosphere. But IN CASE the guild becomes unplayable, this would be better rather than let the guild rot. So... please don't bother writing comments of the "you don't know what vampires are about" sort. That would piss me off.

Eresh

You don't _need_ rituals to advance, but they help. You get a good boost to your void chant/gate through a ritual, so if you are active and playing, it can be a bit frustrating when they don't happen. Also, after some time the void chant power gives less and less healing unless you "recharge" yourself with a ritual. So rituals aren't quite as critical as monk masses, but they are very desirable. What I don't see is...what's the problem with letting a single dark do a ritual? I can understand that rituals are there to encourage people to work together, but if there is only one player on, the issue doesn't even make sense. I really fail to see any thematic objections to it. Anyway, it doesn't matter to me now really. I don't feel like playing now. (I guess my real problem with darks has been how boring it gets past G1. Collecting light sources means that you don't make good xp/money and just have a really lousy time. I wish there were some other way of advancing. Apart from that it is a great guild. But anyway, I guess this has nothing to do with the topic.)

Vampires... I have not played vampires for over a year now. It is a great guild if you can get fights soon enough. About 6 years back when I first played vampires, you could get a fight within 24 hours if you were looking. So losing was not too frustrating. You could always hope to get another shot. Right now if you lose, it means you are stuck for a pretty long time. I guess there are times when there is a brief surge of players, but typically the waiting period is kind of substantial. So I got bored and stopped. I don't think there is anything that can be done about it since the problem is too deep. The guild is not meant to be playable alone. I can imagine one fix - allow players to duel an NPC (of the appropriate age) once every 2 days if they wish. But that would be difficult since duels aren't exactly mechanical. There are lots of tricks that people can use so it would be hard to fine tune the NPC so that it offers the same amount of difficulty as beating a real player. (It might be possible to do this if you are clever enough. The standard duel strategy isn't that hard to put into code.) Besides, it would take away part of the thrill of playing vampires which is to beat a real player (but then this is optional, so it's up to the player whether he wants to use the NPC or not). But perhaps things aren't quite entirely unbearable for vampires if you are patient enough. After all, there are still some players who do play. Its just not for me anymore. I do think it is the coolest guild in Nanny though.

For knights, I would think anyone with a certain amount of "age" in the guild should be allowed to recruit...perhaps anyone who has fought 100+ attacks. But yes, as you said, people won't like that because in theory that would make it hard to ensure that everyone takes the recruitment process seriously. But then it isn't as if RT's can guarantee that the people the recruit are really "nice" or anything. From my point of view the only serious concern is that any such change might hurt the theme. But then, as you said, times have changed. So something should be done. My suggestion: Forget about screening people with interviews etc. Just make up a quest that players need to complete to prove their worth before joining the guild. If you want to make sure they know the rules as well, make up a test for them to take.

Finally, about "Tredon's level of cynicism". Tredon almost seems to suggest that all the admins are out to deliberately make people miserable. That is, to put it politely, a retarded idea. Only one of the admins is like that (you know who). I don't share his level of cynicism either. But I do feel a bit frustrated because I think the admins no longer put any serious thought into changing things. I don't play Nanny anymore. I don't think I will, I already play another game and I don't think I can play two at a time. But I do care about this game and I would like other people to be able to enjoy it.

Eresh

Obviously a problem with less players, but I don't think dark rituals are so rare nowadays. Today at one ritual all four mortal players were in fact darks. I'd say almost 50% of the rituals are in fact held now, and several inactive darks seem to have emerged lately.

So what are you trying to say? That there is nothing to be fixed?

Eresh

This is not just a problem for knights. There are very few players these days and so I think activities that require the participation of many players should be changed.

Dark rituals are so incredibly rare. I used to hate that while I was still playing (which was more than a year back). I tried requesting a change so that rituals could be done by a single player (I still don't see why not), but for some reason no one liked that idea.

I think cultists have a small problem too. I log on my priest once a month to read notes and I find that Cthulhu is usually pissed off.

Simyarins need an apprentice to advance past a certain guild level. That's a really painful requirement and I have had to get my friends to make a dummy char to become my apprentice. I don't think people should have to do that.

Hmm...and what do we say about vampires? Probably not much that can be done there.

Anyway, I don't think anything is going to be done about it. Just thought I would write a note anyway since bitching is so much fun. Blahblahblah....

Eresh

I am not sure how the word "big" came in. Most of them were just a bunch of annoying cheats.

No idea what the problem is. But you aren't the only one. I can't get in either.

Eresh