Info Update: Bear with us, and your patience is appreciated

[Jimmy]

I do have a suggestion:

How about a beta-tester user group?

It might spoil some of the fun of surprise, but maybe that might help the DM's and Players?

Count me in! I'd love to help you guys out in any way I can. My RL issues that are stopping me from playing will be over very soon. If doing this would help the server be ready and better for everyone, like I said before, count me in!

-Jimmy

[Mia]

*smile*

No worries folks. You all know that it's been a tense time for those of us on the development end of this update. The changes were so far reaching, that there were bound to be things that we forgot about, or just plain didn't think about. As always, we appreciate you bearing with us on these issues. By the same token, we realize that each and everyone one of you are directly affected by all of the changes we're making too. It's difficult sometimes to play in a world that is still experiencing a few technical difficulties, especially the glaring ones.

To Nob, thank you very much for your list. We are trying to keep a checklist of all the things we need to fix, but you provide a good addition to that checklist. We will try to get all of those things corrected as soon as possible.

To my dear and loving brother, your words are direct and without flowers as usual No worries. I understand you, even if the world does not. *grin* Feel free to abuse me incessently in private, or at least let me review your posts before you make them.
By the way, I'm very glad to see that you've decided to come back, at least for the moment.

Mia

[Astamyre]

Please think about this in a role-playing sence.

A few pointers:

The Monks: maybe they were taking care of the lizardmen, the lizards are somewhat inferrior to the monks but still a strong ally of Varana.
Also why would varana move into the baran area that is the responsibility of their allies?

This is to me a very basic and obvious reason the monks are at the state they are in now, well at least to me, it took me less that 10 seconds to come up with an ingame reason for them seemingly not effected.


Daris: Why would there be shops and the like? Dasarians have been in Daris maybe one day (realistically in game time) since it was destroyed.
No one can expect anything to happen when Dasarians are spread from Dasar to Daris, there needs time to organise these things.

Shops: There are still shops, the Scout camp in the forest offer one as do the monks, try actually walking out of town.

Raven: She/He is a dragon, DRAGON, a fracking old and powerful one too and you expect to defeat her with normal weapons... shesh
Item restrictions: Who can fathom what gods want or do, generaly not mortals, we can only hope they are doing it for good cause.
Or maybe one of the evil gods Drugua for instance, or their minions placed a curse on us all while in the varanite prison to discard any thing as junk with a magickal aura, Having forseen the Dasarian's escape regardless of what they did to stop us.

Trades items: Look around your house im sure you will find more than 20 items that are not being used for their intended purpose.
Also refer to the Daris point, you can't learn what you dont know.

All these things are just the first ideas that came to mind to explain why these things are the way they are in an in character basis.

We have a total of about 8 GMs with maybe 4 hrs a day (though im sure they spend more) to work on this, more on weekends, and only half of them working on stuff cause the rest of us dont have that 4 hrs to spare.

Add a few aditional builders and it still takes alot of time, optimistically we are looking at about 30 hrs a week a dm can spend time on this, thats not alot.

The alternative is that there will be no Dasaria, this transition is basically going from Beta to Release stage.

Hell look at Temple of Elemental Evil, and you have to pay for that.


Note: Nobby, thanks for sharing your concerns/queries, this is not realy aimed at you more a general rant, I'm sure alot of people think similare things with less understanding.

[broncoblitz]

The new areas are built for low-levels and mid-levels. The only hard areas in the Forest of the Damned for instance are the 3 ones in the centre. I am not sure, but has anyone found the Goblin Forest and the Serenity quest yet on Daris

i found the goblin forest and there was a nice army of goblins standing right at the entrance that tore me to bits

I guess thats what i get for exploring on my own hehe

[NebUnderfoot]

I just wanted to offer a nod and a bow for all the folks who didn't misinterpret my post... Especially Ercoupe, Mia, Jeh and Astamyre for not waving the Sword of Anonyminty at me. In the forums or in character, if any of you ever have an issue with me (or a character of mine) and want to engage in a debate I'm usually open to that. Noted for it even. That doesn't make my PC's griefers and it doesn't make me a whiner.

Since I posted the bit that spawned the most comment I just want to reiterate my intention - To offer some constructive criticism and also tender my feelings of empathy and encouragement for what the staff is currently experiencing, while trying to voice in a reasonable manner, what the players might also be feeling.

I'm not a DM or Admin here, I just play the game. And in wandering around and trying to play two of my characters (one 5th and one 16th if it matters) I couldn't help but notice some things that seemed amiss. I wasn't angry, I wasn't namecalling, I wasn't inferring emotional reactions from other players or staff other than varying levels of frustration which we're all suffering to a degree I suspect... I was just pointing out some of the likely spots with potential issues that any player would encounter... Since they were all nearby the village and tend to be well travelled.

I respect Jeh's comment that Dasaria has always been in a state of virtual Beta - I think that's to be expected on a project like this. There's always new content to be added, old minor bugs to be fixed... issues come up. I think what I was trying to communicate was that we seemed to be in a worse state than normal.

I feel much better in reading the posts that followed which acknowledged that and offered the rest of the community some glimpse at what was going on behind the scenes. Just having the staff come out and say words to the effect of "Hey, we're working on this and we know it's broken but we're going to let you come in and play while we fix it" is the coolest thing ever. Anyone playing with that information will have a very different time playing and a perception of the world than if they didn't.

I appreciate the positive comments and also the dialog that came out of this - I read the forums very regularly and at the time I still felt like I didn't know what was going on behind the scenes and whether it was a scramble to UNFUBAR something or if some of these things were oversights, or if they were intentional... or what. I think I came to that conclusion because it seemed like the refugee camp outside Dasar was given to us as a temporary area to still get some play in... While we waited for the modules to come up. When they did come up, I know I wasn't expecting things to be quite the way they were but again, I hadn't really heard much officially from the staff so I figured they'd fixed the problems and we were set to continue on with our stories and lives.

Now I feel much more informed and confidant in the entire communities commitment to Dasaria.

For what it's worth to the staff.. In the past I helped playtest here - I know Mel took me through the city of Dasar before it went public and memory is fuzzy but I may have gotten a sneak peek at the Shai Quest too... Jeh walked me thorugh the Beetle Warrens as Corum pretty much the first week he had it up - And Joker and I worked on Lingville together but that was much more of a pet project. Anyhoo - If you do want a players perspective and playtesting input just send me an email or a PM - I'd be happy to help.

I have zero coding ability but I can go out and test live areas if you want, or proofread dialog that's in game... things like that I can do. Mia - I'm happy to make you lists of anything you require.

Anyway... sorry if any of my post caused a commotion - Glad to see things are progressing, happy to hear news and updates from the DM's and looking forward to squashing the rest of you in a debate on the subject of your choice ... BUT... at some other time, and in some other place.

[NebUnderfoot]

Oh... lest I forget...

A special apology to Deph - I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my initial post - I know that distracted you from a thousand other things you could be doing but it wasn't wasted time I assure you.

[Jehannum]

New Patch Update News:

We are working in a sort of shifts on the issues, and i wanted to outline a few of the changes coming up tonight or the next time the server crashes : There will probably be yet another update beyond this before morning. The DM and builder team estimates probably 2-3 days of rapid (Rabid?) updates and all the woes that accompany them.

Llarinael has returned to her rightful place as Warder of Daris with hopes to provide healing to the wounded populace as well as healing supplies to the battle-worn.

Peribo is the 1st merchant to get a shipment through and is open for some meager business. She is also helping out newcomers (level 1's)to get ready themselves for the defence and rebuilding of Daris.\

The angry farmer is back in Daris for the newcomers and he is even more angry than before...

Some of the varanites and other fell foes are giving up more salvageable equipment.

This version included a sweep of the entire menagerie of monsters to removed old and restricted items.. Some may be missed- you know how it goes. Some of the quest items for present and future quest rewards and special items had their properties changed in proportion to the new loot-model.

Some vendors had stocks cleaned up so as not to temp Nobby with unattainable power and glory.

The areas to the north of Daris, from the eaves to the bottom of Talon Hold, were combed for stray and restricted item drops. Again--- some may be missed- please report them on the bug section.

My personal goal is to lay groundwork to make the module more hospitable to new players and characters and to lay the ground work for the next round of things which will involve-- remodeling of some of the good-old content and the pushing forward with lots of new quest lines.

[GoJo Ryu]

Uh, Nobby....erm....*cough, signature line, cough*

Unlike some I read the forums only to enjoy Nobbys varied signature lines. I await patiently.

[GM Joker]

Ditto on that Gojo.. I was expecting something like "Lord Nobby 'The extremely misunderstood but ever patient and vigilant debator' Underfoot."

Or maybe "Lord Nobby 'The 3 foot Arnold of Dasaria' Underfoot"...

*Taps foot impatiently*

Let's see it Nob!

~Joker

[Mia]

Gateway Patch f

You'll notice very quickly that the first time you log into the Gateway, you will be in a very small room with just the Greeter (well, my first draft ended up with just you, the barmaid, the bartender, and 20 Greeters in that small room). Anyway, if it actually works the way it's suppose to now, you'll be in a small room with the Greeter.

The Greeter will talk to you about Server Rules, and various other important details about Dasaria. More importantly though, she also sets your default spawn point to Daris if it is not already set.

If you read through some of her information, you might also find a few other interesting things.

You will only have to go through the small room once, for all of you closterphobes out there.

This should also fix all of those people who were having problems getting through the Gateway earlier.

Mia

[Mia]

oops, one minor flaw in the last update to Gateway.

I added the pit official to the dueling arena. However, I forgot to disable the code that kills both of the people who were fighting....

If there's only two of you in there fighting, you'll both just be a couple of corpses lying on the arena floor.


Mia

[ercoupe44]

To all of the DMs,

I fear I may have been slightly misunderstood. As Mia said, I rarely pull my punches, but I also don't really mean any harm. I had meant to be critical of Dasaria's current state (I can recognize a train wreck when I see it), not it's staff. I think the staff is amazing and generous (I can't imagine giving that much time and effort to something like this for free, and I really am in awe of those of you that do.) I do think that if one or all of you get burned out though, you should take a break, even if it meant Dasaria would have to take a break too. This is supposed to be fun, even for you guys.

I appreciated Nobby's post because he took an intelligent look at what was wrong and tried to offer some constructive criticism. I am in the same boat as he, in that I can't code worth a crap, but I can offer advice and lists of what I've found wrong. I've communicated these things to Mia and Jeh in the past, and I will do so again. I also don't mind playtesting, I helped playtest the Shai quest, the Gnoll caves, and the arena among others and I enjoyed doing so very much. I just mentioned that not everyone enjoys Beta testing.

I also understand that Dasaria is constantly under development, and I appreciate that it's always changing (that's one of the things I love about it), but the mess of the last few weeks is something different. I don't think beta is a bad word, just a fact of life. But, usually, even in the past changes of Dasaria, things were playtested more before release. The scope was much larger this time, which made things more difficult. I just suggested that next time, perhaps you should consider biting off smaller portions. But, hey it's your world and I don't know all of the planning that went into this thing. It just looked to me like it fell on its face and missed deadlines by long margins. From a project management point of view, that looks like a train wreck to me.

To Mia,

I hope you don't feel abused, at least not incessantly. I've never let you review my posts before, I doubt I'll start now, but thanks for the offer. I very much appreciate your atttempt to help people understand my intentions better. Thanks!

[Starkwolf]

I have held back from responding to any post until now, because I needed to form a response that would be acceptable. Due to work and other obligations I found myself near flying of the handle at some posts here and in other places, for the first time in my long stay here I held my tounge, knowing the intentions behind the posts were not negative, but I was seeing red, so I took them as flames without digging deeper. I never really get that emotional over Dasaria, but after all the work the team put into all this I became over protective, so even though I didn't post anything, I apologize for wanting to be an all out ass to some of you.

There that is out of the way, now on to something more important. I am god damned proud of the players that stuck with the "Lost and alone in the Shadow Forest" time, when the servers were getting fixed.

Never in my time in Dasaria had I seen such RP from you folks. I have seen lots of great RP in my time here, but some of the best took place when folks couldn't hack and slash. I am so PROUD of you guys for the work you put into your characters, most of them came more alive than I have ever seen them. I truely enjoyed the many hours I got to spend, just playing like all was lost. I have learned much about most of you and trust me...what I have learned will get used.

Thanks for working hard when the server wasn't offering you kill kill kill item item item.

I'm looking forward to more of this guys. I have had more fun in the last month of downtime than I have in a year and a half.

Thanks...

Stark

[Mia]

I've got to agree with Stark whole-heartedly on this. Some of you folks continued to stick it out and really spend quality time on the server, even while there was really nothing to do but hang around the campfires or Palequine's home. In some ways I really wish we could have carried this aspect further.
Of course, we recognize the need for a little more activity on a day to day basis. Thus the critical need to get Daris back up, even though we were still struggling to get everything finished on it.

For those of you who were doing your best to stay involved, we greatly appreciate it. That level of involvment is exactly why Dasaria is such a wonderful world to be a part of. I have to say a very special thank you to Justin Godspeed, who was consistently on the server at 3am when I was trying to get things tested. He alone kept me going on some of those long nights when I had to get up again for work in 3 hours.

As for what ercoupe just said, I have to agree that from a project management perspective, this update really did fall short of its deadlines. Of course, that has to be expected when it's all done in the few free hours between work and work, and between dusk and dawn. My main problem was thinking I could squeeze more free time out of my schedule than was really possible. That said, for my part, I'm happy to have it out there now, in whatever form. It takes a huge weight off of my shoulders to finally have the update primarily behind us.

Mia

[Inahnia]

Well, I am looking forward to playing again...I still have to get the expansion and then PATCH FOREVER~~ But it looks like my timing is pretty good, since a lot of stuff is in the fixing process. Can't wait to get back on.... See you there.