Future house drops.

[Nick]

Hunger games event (start naked and collect resources craft weapons and gear to only 1 remains) is by far my favorite event. I would love to see it once a month or more... A monthly champ would be amazing...

[+Colibri]

We will try how things go with scheduled drop events.

I was skeptical about these events, that's why we didn't have them for so long, but there's an important advantage that these events have to automatic un-announced drops. While natural drops are better at sinking items and resources of all sorts, there was a problem - as these things fall into obscurity, less and less people were monitoring for house drops, and some get very good at it. There was a problem where this obscurity came to a maxium about 5 or more years ago, when one player made a script to monitor houses for drops. If i recall, that player got banned for some unrelated other exploiting, and that got forgotten. Some years later, another player picked up a similar practice, and was running the script 24/7 (obviously AFK, and probably some alert came up on the computer when an interesting house fell). While I congratulate the player for ingenuity and making the effort to put together a script like that, the problem here is that this player collected virtually all good loot from fallen houses. So during that period when the script was in operation, not only that there was very little sink in resources, all of the items were taken by one player.

Well, having the house status written on the sign is a step away from obscurity.

So I think there's overall 3 options:
- houses simply get deleted with everything in them, nothing falls (but then excelsior's history isnt preserved)
- natural IDOC so that you have to keep an eye on when it will fall (but over time less people will be aware of it and it can become very obscure again)
- IDOC events, which also make for a fun evening of scavenging through boxes and a competition for placing a house at good locations (but very few resources are lost, there's no know-how/specialization to it).

So for a while, let's say a year, I think it's best to give the announced IDOCs a try. I remember when I restarted the server just 20 minutes before the drops started, and in minutes we went up to about 190 players online, and almost all were active at the time (that's probably a record, or at least close). For a monthly house drop event, there wouldn't be enough houses dropping to make it interesting, but probably about every 3 months if it's consistent, should make for a fun event, and land still frees up frequently enough.

(Currently there's backlog of accounts who haven't yet been notified by email and would have to drop, so the next IDOC will be sooner than 3 months, probably mid september).

[Wil]

one player made a script to monitor houses for drops.

Heh. I wrote a script at the idoc to cycle through rune books until I found a dropped house with stuff left to loot. Yesterday I wrote a script to record the house signs as I ran by. I could see myself winning the "scout the IDOCs" game.

-Wil

[dreamstalker]

i really dont care how u do it + C...just pick an option n let us know basic rules and let those of us that luv house huntin ....go house huntin yall doin great makin the shard fun agin wooooooooohoooooooooooo!!!!

[zoras]

I am ok with how ever you do it +C, it was a fun event.

Please PLEASE DON'T make the next one between Sept 18th to the 22nd lol

[arrow]

Natural IDOC's were always the most entertaining to me! Where'd that dang mule go?