Slain by Elf

I have occasionally considered that a lot of the problems associated with MMORPGs is the 'massive' part. It's interesting, because being 'massively multiplayer' seems to be what attracts people in the first place, and then a lot of the complaints about the games are because of all the people. They are either griefing, spawn camping, gold farming, kill stealing, role-playing badly, ninja looting, or generally just being gits. On top of that are the complaints that the end-game instances require so many people, indicating that players don't want massively multiplayer content. Considering that most of the interesting parts of the game are 'instanced', shut off from everyone except the current group of players, a tiny proportion of all those on the server, it seems that getting rid of the people would make the game significantly better, while also you do other things to improve your game, like a big screen TV as you can call home theater installation atlanta ga experts now to install this for you. There are also issues with the games' subscription models, in place mostly because of the servers the company makes available that are necessary to play the game. But there are games that are multiplayer and require servers to run that don't include a subscription, and don't require hundreds of people around to make life difficult, so why not World of Warcraft? or online casino games? you can get mor einfo about online casino games in breakfastattiffanys.co.uk.

Imagine Blizzard releasing a server edition of WoW. You buy it, install it, and you have a WoW server, ready to be played on. You can play it solo, or invite friends to join. It has a one-off cost to buy the software, and then any expansion updates, but no subscription to run it. Many casual gamers seem to play a weekly group, where the same characters are only used in that group and they can progress together, and solo or play in smaller groups also with friends at other times with alts. A small server that allows only their friends to join would barely affect the gameplay for this kind of casual gamer. Someone who plays a lot of solo content would hardly notice the difference, apart from being able to find named mobs and other spawns more easily. The more hardcore and PvP players could play on hired servers with better latencies and with a more open policy. It worked for previous games, after all. If you need a suitable internet connection for your online gaming, see this cheap internet and data only sim plans.

There would be issues. Towns and cities would be empty of players, and there would be little need for an auction house. The huge range of random loot could be scaled back to leave more useful drops. The grind for materials could be reduced, although the professions could remain the same, perhaps allowing for one character to learn more professions instead of having to rely on alts or friends choosing separate professions. Perhaps the most important issue is finding new players. There can be few players that haven't met good new players in a game and started playing more regularly with them, and having closed servers limits the new interactions drastically. This could be mitigated by the proliference of gaming blogs that can spread the word of good servers or players, and a real community can be built instead of the artificial munging together of players that is created by picking a random server from a list. If you will like o try a different online game, find here the twinkle slot game.
Characters can be stored locally, so you can take them from one server to the next. Issues of cheating or hacking can be solved by server admins or trusted players, banning the bad players. Characters really become the focus of the game, the heroes of the world. When you rid the Deadmines of Van Cleef and Stoutmantle cheers your group, you won't feel silly when he cheers someone else two minutes later for the same accomplishment. When you clear out the Scarlet Monastery and pluck Whitemane's Chapeau from her head it will be (almost) one of a kind, and you won't see dozens of others running around each city wearing one.

I'm sure I've oversimplified matters, and there are doubtless issues that I've overlooked. It still interests me to consider the possibility of private WoW servers, or those for other games, that allow friends to be the heroes of the world, to remove the douchebag from the MMOG equation. Do people really want massive games where everyone is a hero, thus no one is, or where few people are heroes and there is a risk that you are not one of them?

Our cover is blown! At this point in our subversion it's the equivalent of Scooby Doo pulling a white sheet from us to reveal we're not actually ethereal. Nevertheless, by stopping the apparent leader of the seditious movement against the city from murdering a spy our plans to infiltrate the group and bring it down from within are coming to a violent conclusion as we only just get our foot figuratively in the door.

Managing to escape the cellar, despite an acidic cloud belched from dogs that don't belong in this realm, our position looks rather more like it can be survived than before. Just to make sure, Geoff decides to drop some burning oil down the trapdoor, which has had its rope ladder cut, hoping to set fire to the tapestries and wooden fixtures that predominate below. Working as fast as he can, Geoff rifles through his backpack to find the oil as well as his flint to light the wick.

This takes him longer than he realised, and is left without time to light the oil before there is more action around him, even though he didn't sheathe his weapon and dropped it instead to speed up the process. He is left wondering how quickly he'll be able to drop burning oil in to the cellar to prevent our attackers from engaging us again.

Ann-See comes up with an excellent plan, telling him to 'drop the oil and flint down the trapdoor at the same time, and let nature take its course', but Geoff decides not to follow this advice. A handful of seconds later the oil is lit and the tapestries below start to catch alight. This buys us valuable time to regroup, and we need it as the leader of the movement has sneaked out and ambushes Dexter.

A battle of attrition is then wreaked, resulting in the death of the leader of the movement and her lieutenant, the destruction of the house above the cellar temple, and Dexter, Tal and Geoff being knocked unconscious and bleeding. Ann-See tends to their wounds once we are safe from further attacks, reviving all of the party. Me? I was stopping the saved spy from escaping who turned out probably wouldn't try to escape anyway, as well as apparently babysitting a wannabe thief, so I was mostly useless. I need to work on that.

Ann-See's character wasn't around this week, so she was put on 'follow' and we continued the adventure to infilitrate the seditious underground movement occurring in the city slum. Dexter makes a running journal entry for the benefit of Ann-See, although 'benefit' may be the wrong word for it. Some of the names have been changed because we simply can never remember them. We even have trouble with party member names, as Ann-See is referred to as 'Bunny Ears' in the following.

We are invited to Ammeretto's study for a discussion following our victorious bout in the arena. Dexter convinces her that we were no great fans of the city and its officials by means of brute honesty, and we are invited to meet her later that evening.

So on we go. Dexter tells Illoya that she can't join us, much to her disgruntlement, and we set off to meet them outside the arena. Radish is despatched to buy some flowers to appease her.

We meet Ammeretto and are led through the maze of Beggars Flow to a building much the same as any other. Inside, go down, past some guards into some persuasion of temple, to hear Ammeretto's monologue. She's crazy, and bent on general chaos and destruction, and wants us to join her cause.

Then there is a scream from upstairs, and Illoya is brought down by the guards - she'd followed us here, and sold us out, telling Ammeretto that we are working for Councillor Bloke. It turns out that she's working for Councillor Other Bloke, and was sent to spy on us and find out what we're up to, and was now desperately trying to save herself.

So we convince Ammeretto that, while we were sent here on those grounds, we were still prepared to throw in our lot with her instead. Suitably satisfied with our high rolls, we are set to lead a band to ransack the city. So Ammeretto tells the guard to kill Illoya as she's now disposable.

Conscience gets the better of Dexter, who charges Sandpit (of Slayer fame, set to dispose of Illoya), and intervenes, and the guards and some curious otherworldly dogs that I haven't mentioned in my recap but which were there all along attack. We beat a hasty retreat out of the cellar, vision limited by an acidic cloud thrown up by the dogs. When the cloud dissipates Sandpit, Ammeretto and the dogs are gone. We're mid-fight against some guards above the cellar, ready to pull the building down.

Bunny Ears is on the brink of death, and outside of the building, while Geoff, Dexter and Tor (will remembered with a Cairn) are inside dealing with the last couple of guards. Bunny is on the brink of death, but hasn't had healing yet, since I haven't reached her, and we forgot she could do that herself.

So that's about it.

And what of me? Well, knowing about the meeting in advance and not being an official member of the Dexter's Midnight Dancers gladiator team, and thus not directly invited to the meeting, I decide to tag along unofficially by hiding in Ammeretto's office before the meeting takes place. I would be able to hear all the happens and be available should anything go wrong. And something did go wrong, of course. Unfortunately, what went wrong initially was that the party met Ammeretto outside of the arena and she then led them away to a secret cellar, some distance away from her office inside the arena. It was awfully quiet in the rafters above her office.

Thank goodness for Dexter's journal, otherwise I may have been up there for quite some time.

Jonathan Drain posts in his blog quite a few nifty trap ideas.

I enjoy thinking up traps, even if I don't get to implement them, and my creativity was spurred by Drain's post. I like the CR 1 razor wire across the corridor, but what if the razor wire was also a tripwire for a trap with a higher CR? The adventurers might sagely decide to disarm the razor wire so that they don't need to remember where it is, and make beating a hasty retreat safer, only to trip a second trap that they didn't even think to search for.

With Max 'Expendable' Redshirt turning up asking for a progress report from the councillor, we let him know what little we've found out. Our main hope of getting closer to the political mind behind the possible revolt is still fighting as gladiators in the arena in the hopes that the currently sole agitator sees the potential in us and recruits us for whatever cause she is promoting. The fighters in the party head back to the arena to see the organiser of the events and get us on the bill again, this time at the top of the bill playing a special fight. The only downside is that our opponents have an extra fighter, and we are asked if we could find someone else for this fight. I remain staunchly on the side of believing that dying in the first round isn't much help, so it's lucky that Max Redshirt had turned up, and that he's itching for some friendly combat.

We find out that the fight will be special as there will be barrels full of water hung from the rafters in the arena, and that the gladiators are encouraged to try to cut the ropes holding them up so the barrels drop to the arena floor, preferably on top of an opponent. This gives us an idea, and I get myself a ninja outfit for the big night. When the night comes, I manage to get myself up in to the rafters where it is dark enough and I am stealthy enough that I am unlikely to be detected. I then position myself close to the barrels, so that should the opportunity presents itself one of my team can haphazardly throw any weapon up at the barrel and it will be guaranteed to drop the barrel. It's a plan that works quite well, and whilst I am up there I also notice that the office areas in the arena don't have ceilings, so once the barrels have been depleted I head on over to the office of the agitator and hide myself as well as I can, hoping to find out some new information after the fights of the evening.

Meanwhile, the fight is interesting. Tal, being the strategic mastermind that he is, charged headlong in to all the opponents right at the start of the fight, getting himself surrounded by four of the five, and flanked by two, and being in dire straits quite early on. We manage to salvage his situation and get ourselves positioned better after a few rounds, and although we have taken quite a beating so have a few of the other side, and it could still be anyone's match. Dexter looks pretty bad, though, and one more blow, however glancing, could knock him down. A solid hit could end him. Even though yielding to the opponents is unwelcomed by the audience and takes one out of the fight, it is far more preferable to being killed, particularly in a simple gladiator fight for entertainment.

Even so, when Dexter gets to act his critical state of health doesn't really register with him immediately. He turns to a wounded opponent and swings his hammer mightily, crushing the man's skull, killing him. It is then that Dexter realises that perhaps he should not be in a position to be hit again, and shouts 'I yield! I yield!', dropping to the ground and crawling to the edge of the arena. It's an interesting tactic, to kill someone before yielding, but it was certainly effective.

I wonder if it would be possible to ready an action to attack someone who said they were yielding. After all, the readied action technically occurs just before the action that triggers it, so it sounds like a valid move, and there cannot be much more of a softer target than someone who is so wounded that they have to yield. It would certainly make yielding a less attractive option.

An old player who left the group because of moving overseas popped back in to the country and came along to a session to catch up with everyone. We kept our current campaign running and the GM had to think of some way to weave him in to the story temporarily. We start playing, and do so for quarter of an hour or so before we find ourselves back in the inn and working out what to do next, the old player's new character still not introduced.

'Do I recognise Graham's character as a plot device?', I ask, rolling a D20. The die lands on 19, and the GM points out his character as suspiciously uninvolved at the moment.

'But couldn't you have phrased the question better, like 'do I see anyone new taking undue interest in us?' or something like that?'

'Hey, I rolled a 19, I don't need to.'

There are some obvious problems with loot, and Melmoth covers many of the more absurd properties in the World of Warcraft system in one of his wonderful stories. He misses at least two aspects that are peculiar to loot and drops. One is how certain creatures don't drop body parts consistently. Using a boar as an example, sometimes you'll get a snout, sometimes a liver, sometimes both, and sometimes neither. It is possible to rationalise this by considering that you have just killed the creature and that the physical battering you gave it has made its snout a bloody mess, or its liver gets mashed up. But consistency is missing. Is it more likely that a critical hit will mash the body up and normal hits, with their low damage, will leave the carcass intact; or the greater quantity of normal hits mash the body up and critical hits will do so much damage in a short time that most of the body will be left untouched? Either way could explain it, but neither seems to make a difference, nor do they explain magical damage. It also doesn't explain how a boar can be obliterated to the point of having no tusks, snout, liver, intestines, nor recognisable meat left once killed, presumably leaving nothing but boar pulp oozing in to the ground. Maybe at times like that the player needs to step away from the keyboard and work on his rage issues, I dunno.

It would be nice to have an explanation as to why half the boars roaming the world have no livers. It would be more satisfying if there were at least some indication of why the liver cannot be taken, for whatever purpose you need it for. You could kill a boar and then, when you go to open it up instead of getting a liver you get a crushed liver, or an obviously unhealthy liver, offering a reason why you wouldn't take it for your quest or to put in your pie. Ah, if only it were that simple, because the game doesn't prevent you from picking up even the foulest object and, for some reason, this practice can pay well. The problem is that you cannot show every bit of useless loot on a body if it can be taken and sold for profit, but if you don't you get the situation above where you wonder how an animal survives with no intestinal tract. That's not strictly true, because you could show every bit of useless loot, and just let players' bags fill up to bursting point until they need to decide what to keep and what to leave behind, and judging by the number of times this decision needs to be made it does indeed seem like every bit of useless loot is thrown your way. However, we then get to the initial problems Melmoth noted, particularly the vastness of your loot bags.

A quick and easy solution would be to prevent useless loot from being picked up. After all, it's useless. It may offer an extra bit of money for players to gain, but if you remove the income from useless loot it can easily be factored in to the useful loot instead. If this were implemented, we could see ruined organs, or other spoilt quest drops, and not bemoan how so many wingless buzzards are flying around, and it could give us more realistically sized bags, as they won't need to carry so much spider hair or troll sweat. Vendor trash is an odd concept when considered, and one that perhaps needs to be avoided.

With Plan B out of the way, the party signs up to become a gladiator team in the arena, without yours truly for the good of the team. After a couple of days preparation, which pretty much consisted of trying to acquire tremorsense and staying away from the toxic booze in the only inn in the ghoul-infested slum, our first fight was scheduled.

The team, Dexter's Midnight Dancers, so named because of the hope to use some form of interpretive dance to befuddle the opponents as a tactic, turned up to the arena early and got behind the scenes. I stayed in the crowd section, mostly because even I'm not stupid enough to insist on joining them after the DM asks me earnestly if I really want to try to do so, considering the head of security took a dislike to me after I tricked a guard in to letting me in to the arena out of hours. Although, to be honest, the DM had to ask me quite sternly three times before I was put off the idea.

There was quite a buzz about Dexter's Midnight Dancers, as we were a new team and, although we'd gained a small reputation in the slums since coming here, still considered to be not exactly fit to be gladiator material. The impression isn't helped a great deal by Ann-see's bunny ears and turquoise-dyed hair, although the turquoise colour itself is our team colour. Even so, her small, 16-year old frame disguises a competent combatant, and one that is surprisingly experienced for her age. This didn't stop the crowd from making her firm favourite to be knocked out first in the betting stakes. I took the option to gamble a little, being out of the fight myself, and put 20 quatloos on the newcomers. I supposed this to be a safe bet to make, because either my friends would win and I'd make some easy money or I'd probably have to find a new line of work after the fight.

Ann-see heard the crowd's eagerness to see her drop first, and caught the odds on this happening, and was determined to prove them wrong. It looked good as the fight started, as her quick reflexes were more than able to determine the early course of the fight. She stayed back, ready for one of the bigger fighters to move forwards and provide her with some protection before she dashed to the centre of the arena and let loose her strong arm, flinging a dagger at one of the opponent gladiators.

Unfortunately, by getting close enough to make the attack dangerous enough, Ann-see opened up her flank to another opponent, who got a firm blow in as she sent the dagger flying through the air, only to be deflected off the armour of her target. Whilst the other members of Dexter's Midnight Dancers were struggling to keep up with the more agile gladiators, the opponents moved forwards and ganged up on the seemingly frail bunny-eared girl. Sadly, the crowd's expectations were met, through no fault of Ann-see, as two solid strikes, one of them critically hitting a vital organ, are enough to make anyone seem frail, and Ann-see dropped to the arena floor amidst roaring cheers from the crowd.

Ann-see was brought around after the fight, and was told of how the team won in the end, and how Dexter's cousin, Jeff, decapitated one of the other team 'by accident'. I'm not one to criticise, as I didn't even enter the arena. I made a nice chunk of change on our team winning though, so victory booze and bandages were on me.

As a group, we are discussing our options on how best to infiltrate what on the surface appears to be some rabble-rousing but we have been told is part of a greater plan of sedition against the city state. As the sedition is being spread primarily at the gladiatorial arena, and it is believed that this is indeed the centre of whatever treasonous plans are being formed, half of the group are keen to become part of a gladiator team and try to get close to the owner of the arena, who is giving the stirring speeches to an excited crowd hopped up on violence and blood. A more subtle approach is favoured by others, notably me, as I have no hope of surviving gladiator combat, although there is no problem with the others creating a team and my watching on the sidelines. The owner of the arena would be approached outside of the arena, in some fashion, and some swift and persuasive talking would demonstrate that my ideals were compatible with my own, and a relationship of trust could be built up from that.

There was much discussion. Other options were advanced but nothing better or more convincing could be thought up than the two options we already had, and neither method was more convincing than the other. The night of the next arena fight was approaching, and we needed to decide a course of action before we turned up.

'What plan are we going with?', asks Ann-see, firmly wanting to join in the arena action.

'Plan B!', I announce, inducing a sigh from Ann-see's direction.

'...wait, which one was Plan B?', asks Dexter, after realising that we hadn't assigned letters to our plans, and I had just said that to deflect attention away from still not having made a decision of any sort.

Stratholme, the Scholomance, Blackrock Spire and Dire Maul are all lost. Just before Burning Crusade was released some friends came out of retirement and sharpened their blades again, to get ready for the opening of the dark portal to the Outlands, and we entered some of the level 60 dungeons. I had visited them many times, having done so before becoming raiding Molten Core and beyond, but they had not been in them much at all. It was great to run them, much better with friends, and they are a lot of fun.

And then Burning Crusade hit, the dark portal opened. I opined that the level 60 dungeons would not be run, because the quality of loot in Outlands surpassed just about anything found in the dungeons (and I still don't accept any reasons I've been given why the loot was made relatively so powerful in the Outlands). I was told that that wouldn't be the case, and that people would still want to explore the dungeons as the content is still interesting.

But, sadly, the instance runs stopped. Sure, the instances are fun and interesting, and quite well designed. The problem was overtly highlighted when we completed a quest in Scholomance and got a previously-amazing blue quest reward weapon that turned out not to be as good as a green drop one of us got the day before in Outlands. We battled for a couple of hours, defeated the end boss in a challenging 4-man battle, and got no tangible reward from it apart from the sense of achievement. It was fun to do, it was a good achievement, it was nice to see the dungeon, but there was certainly no point in doing it again. What with all the new zones and new instances in the Outlands, there was far more to explore without having to spend a few hours in a level 60 dungeon where there is realistically zero chance of getting even an incremental reward of loot.

Maybe I just think it's a shame because I have fond memories of all the class raids and five-mans I ran through the dungeons, finding their secrets, getting to know them inside and out. I certainly don't care too much that I'm no longer running Uldaman or Scarlet Monastery, because there are greater challenges to face. Even so, the level 60 dungeons are not even going to be used as a stepping stone to the next levels any more, because of the easy progression through from Azeroth to the Outlands and the significant increase in loot that can be gained in the Outlands over Azeroth. When you get past the Sunken Temple and have gone in to Blackrock Depths a couple of times, it's far more rewarding, and a better investment of time, to head to the Outlands and get ready for Hellfire Citadel than to head off to Stratholme. There are some wonderful adventures to be discovered but are being ignored, and that is a terrible shame.