Winter Event 2013

[Gaara]

[quote="Xavian"][quote="+Nyx"]The items that grant you access to a boss' room are temporary and only last 30 minutes from the time you turn the quest in. ...
- Since the bosses are fought alone, and the summoning item lasts only 30 minutes, it is a good idea to check the line for that boss before you turn in your quest book and receive the temporary summoning item! It is also a good idea to ensure that you have enough time to play without distraction before turning in the quest book to receive the boss tokens.[/quote]

[quote="Kevan"I run by Kalare and she converts my quest items into the boss key and I log off. I come back hours later and the boss key is gone[/quote]

What happened may have been a "mistake", however it clearly states in the first post that the quest item to summon the boss only lasts 30 minutes. When you ran by Kalare and she converted it to the summoning item, you only had 30 minutes to use it. Coming back hours later, the item was decayed and you failed the quest. It might suck, but the reality of the situation is that is happened and it's over. You being allowed to do the quest, or log in to the server at all is a privilege, not a right. The quest will likely be held again next year, just don't make the same mistake then.[/quote]

Agreed, you had some bad luck with this but the good thing you'll have a shot next year :)

[Kevan]

Again, two points Xavian:

1) The quest states you will fail it if you fail to finish it after entering the boss room.

2) Whether or not I was responsible for running by Kelare on my way out is nothing something I debated. Yes, I chose the wrong of the 2 tiles to run by her. That's my responsibility. However, I find it hard to believe that anyone on this shard, including the GMs, would say that on its own that should be a reasonable reason to fail the quest. If they, or anyone else, want to agree that no exceptions should be made, then that's fine. That's your opinion and your (and their) right to it. However, I don't believe the spirit of the failure mechanism was to make someone fail who improperly traversed a very narrow tunnel on their way out of the holiday event to fail the quest.

[+Nyx]

While I sympathize with your frustration, you must also understand that great pains have been taken on my part to prevent exactly these kinds of situations. You must also understand that telling me you're a donator has absolutely zero effect on my decision or how I view the situation. Donations do not benefit me personally. They help +Colibri keep the shard up and running, but it is not as if your donations are paying me to staff here. It's also a little arrogant for one to think that we will give special consideration or treatment to one because they tell us they're a donator. It just doesn't work like that with me.

On the main point, the forum post is extremely detailed and informative. The NPC has a trigger radius of only 1 tile. There are line-of-sight blockers preventing the NPC from detecting you while you're walking out, unless you walk literally right next to her (which you don't have to do in order to exit the area).

The NPC says a long paragraph when the turn-in is triggered:

Image2.png (160.91 KiB) Viewed 3139 times

and it shows up clearly in journal as well:

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The item itself is rather clear about the time table:

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You're also able to log out outside of the dungeon without worrying about any mobs or anything.

You also didn't page at that time and leave it for me to see when I was on to say "oops my book got turned in by accident". However many hours/day(s) later you informed me when I happened to speak in world chat, and failing to convince me there, you brought it here. Far after the fact.

I'm sorry that this happened for you, but I won't reset the quest. If I hadn't taken such extensive measures to ensure that this situation didn't happen, I would have reset it. If you had sent a page right then and left it for my attention, I would have considered it and most likely reset it for you. But the fact is that I did take measures so that this sort of thing wouldn't happen within reasonable circumstances and I can't (and do not wish to) cater to everyone's "oops" moments. This quest will be available again next Christmas season, likely with the same rewards (next year, the santa quest gets the new rewards since it didn't this year). You may also still run the Santa quest for the nice earrings, and the deco quests are available and repeatable.

[Kevan]

+Nyx, mentioning my support of the shard is to show that I plan to be here for a long time, and that I'm no player that joined and will leave on a whim. That you would say that is arrogant to bring up is getting way ahead of yourself and unfair to me because I've done nothing but be a kind and courteous shard player since the day I joined. Calling my comments arrogant when I'm stating that I love this shard and am trying to keep it going by donating is not appropriate in any way. I've done nothing to offend you, unless constructive criticism bothers you.

To address your points: I did not page you earlier that I accidently got the marshmallow because I did not know I had it. As I stated ad nauseum, I ran by Kelare in order to log off of the shard and attend church with my family. Please run by Kalare towards the exit, and tell me within reason that anyone would use anything but the two tiles directly to her east to go by. Sure, you could "climb a staircase" with one additional tile to the east along the coast, but I can't imagine why anyone would do so considering the other tiles are a relatively straight pass-through to the exit portal. I think the idea of you testing this walkthrough area to ensure that there's enough space by itself is saying that maybe it's too tight to begin with.

You bolded AND underlined "NO second chances will be given if you do not complete the boss within the allotted time frame." I think anyone who reads that, with it bolded AND underlined, would safely presume that you are stressing that statement for a reason. The line right before that even states that "Once you have entered the boss' room, you have 30 minutes to kill him or you will be ported out." I can't speak for anyone else, but I clearly read that to show that failure is in not killing the boss after entering the boss room. If that wasn't your intention to state that, then I think it could have been worded differently. Nothing in the post that I read infers that a person would fail the quest due to temporary item despawns. Heck, if I loot the who-hash or whatever it's called, and it disappears, it doesn't make me fail the quest, so even if I had known I received the muffin from Kelare, I wouldn't have had any reason to think that it's disappearance would make me fail either.

Obviously you can do what you wish, it's not my shard to run. I'll continue to support it going forward, but I'm honestly disappointed in the result and don't see why it can't be handled differently.

I hope at the very least you can move Kelare, or require the quest book to be dropped on her for a key. Also, I hope you will edit the initial post to make it clear that the failure of killing the boss is not the only way to fail, which is what I very clearly inferred from the way it was posted and emphasized.

[+Nyx]

When you post and your opening lines are saying that you donate, not saying "I love the shard and I'm going to play here a long time", it is because you want the recognition for donating to the shard, when you're about to ask for special treatment. That is an arrogant thing to do.

Constructive input I have no problem with. However, the info post is exactly the same as last year's post, except where I added a "NEW" tag and the info about the reindeer quest. When it is clearly stated you can fail the quest, and that the items to summon a boss are temporary, and that you can't get new books if you lose/fail, then that doesn't exactly say "there's only one way to fail". Nobody really had a problem with this last year, and nobody has really had a problem with it this year except for you. That tells me that the system isn't actually broken, the post isn't worded badly or uninformatively. It tells me that you had an 'oops'. It is unfortunate, it sucks, but it's also the nature of the quest. It can be failed. There can be oopsies. It isn't the staff's responsibility to hand-hold the players, but it is our responsibility to make things reasonably fair and informative, which I have done with this quest.

[Kevan]

Maybe it's never been a problem before because it's never happened to anyone yet until I had it happen today. I don't see how it never having been brought up as a problem before makes it an invalid argument. It's probably not common for someone to add their quest items to the book and then run by Kelare because they have to log off for a few hours. Either way, there's obviously no leeway here so that's fine. Happy Holidays.

[+Veritas]

If we gave leeway for situations like this, then we would be getting people failing the quest through battle or time running out putting in pages saying they lost their quest items because <insert what worked for previous guy here>. This is especially so since this misfortune was brought to the public eye on the forums.

Sorry for your bad luck.

+V

[Kevan]

+V, server logs would show that I received the marshmallow, took a handful of steps and logged off instantly. Not that I expect the logs to be checked at this point, but nobody could use my situation here to their advantage because the logs wouldnt reflect the same evidence.

[+Nyx]

They would all expect us to spend the several hours of time we do not have to spare on each and every one of their "special situations". This is the same reason that Colibri does not do free recoveries of lost items.

[+Nyx]

I announced this in world chat earlier but forgot to make mention of it here:

Reindeer quest
The drop rate for all quest items has been increased, particularly on the Yetis. Further, all quest items have been given a longer time before they will decay, and thus should decay right around the same time the monster itself does.

[Deorum]

Anyone else have an issue with the Oogie Boogie boss? I killed him about 2-3 mins before my ticket expired, yet the corpse disappeared the second I killed it and I wasn't able to loot anything. Tried ctrl+shift, etc. and went through all of the little corpse labels but wasn't able to get his. The only macro I run is a heal/rearmer, so it's not like an autolooter claimed the corpse or something wierd like that. Not to mention there were still a bunch of little other oogie bug corpses on the ground.

[Xavian]

Doesn't seem likely. First I've heard of it, including last year. The corpse likely doesn't have a timer beyond the standard UO timer which is several minutes.

[heyyo]

I really wished I had a bow for the Oogie Boogie boss, I was worried I wasn't going to finish in time getting stunned every 5 seconds. Made sure to bring one for the rest of the quest, and it was much easier.

[Unbeliever]

Would someone be kind enough to give an outline of the goals in the Reindeer quest? :) I was able to knock out the medium (earring) quest with the kind help of scuba, and I payed the favor forward to another player right afterwards. Helped him knock it out really quick even though neither of us could be mistaken for power players. Knowing what to do, where things are located, what you're in for with monsters, those help weaker players immensely. I'd like to think about tackling this with a partner or two. Thanks in advance for any help, it's appreciated :)