Excelsior

Why do ppl pm me and ask me to sell them one of my mules for 50 k or 100k , and then get ticked off and put me on Ignore when I refuse?
[cookies!] It took me over six months to get those mules max from scratch, I spent between four and five mil in gold buying tokens and gender change deeds, plus the high level ben 1 mules ive bought.
I have bred them every day, dealing with the frustrations of sterile babys, failed breeding attempts, klicking on the ability point menu hundreds of times per mule....
I sell TOTALLY MAX mules for no more than 500K.. ever... you know what? I payed over 800k for EVERY max mule i bought, and now that I look at them, NONE of them were anywhere near max.
basiclly, what it comes down to, if my prices make you angry, I am sorry... wait, no I'm not... put on your big girl panties and deal with it!
End Rant

People are idiots, live with it.

They simply don't understand the sheer time and luck involved in fully maxing out a non-pack-instinct caster pet which starts off ridiculously weak. Either they never bothered to educate themselves about the specifics of the breeding/leveling system or they are just plain stupid.
In both cases they are not worth your time - if they put you on ignore that is their loss and they can run around with their half-maxed nightmares or unicorns or whatever trashy pet they use.

Anyone who understands will know that 500k is a *great* price for a completely maxed out mule and will gladly pay it if they're in the market for a mule.


Edit 1:
Oh, and you should really have taken a look at EUO and BlaZe's amazing pet clicker script, that would have saved you a lot of manual clicking.


Edit 2:
After some looking around, it appears that your 500k "maxed" mules don't have capped intelligence, I'll have to retract my statement about Highroller's prices being absurdly high, the ones he advertises as fully maxed are really fully maxed out in every stat that matters.
500k is still very fair for the ones you're selling, though.

KnitePrince wrote:Why do ppl pm me and ask me to sell them one of my mules for 50 k or 100k , and then get ticked off and put me on Ignore when I refuse?

That's actually kind of amusing in a dark way. I think they did you a favor by putting you on ignore; I hope you ignored them back.

500K for a maxed mule is very reasonable in this economy. Anyone can make a mil a week just with hives, for example.

Aye, i know Int isnt maxed yet, but i also havent advertised them as max mules either However, on this go round of breeding I should be getting Fully maxed mules, and the price will still be 500k. I want to make a little gold, without being silly, i was just frustrated with people getting angry at me for not dropping my price for them, it just happend at an opertune time after a long hard day of frustration and agrivation, I'll get over it im sure

Einstein used to say that the only limitless things were the Universe and human stupidity, and he wasn't so sure about the first. Relax, it's not worth your anger.

*chuckles*

This is what becomes of a society when the economy was set to make it easy to gain massive wealth. When players are encouraged to start their journey in an area with rats that have rare drops which when resold will make them loads of money (mind you...from hunting normal giant rats!) and then they get either a Cu or some nobles then can start hitting Ballys (which for some reason got their gold super sized beyond OSI while not increasing their challenge level proportionately) or the Twisted Weld (sp?) to average nearly 100k per hour, players feel "justified" to start raising costs accordingly.

Who can blame them? To leave costs low make gold virtually worthless (which in hindsight isn't such a bad thing if everyone bought into that frame of mind as it would go far to eliminate greed, not entirely, but far). But the "arms race" of higher prices to keep pace with increased gold in the game causes some players who do not entirely participate in some activities to freak out when they are confronted by what they consider extremely high prices associated to those activities (for example, a non-mule breeder freaking out over the price of a max mule, not knowing any better).

Personally, I still play by the notion if you don't want to pay that much, don't buy it. Either breed your own, or do without. I do think the pricing on this server is on the high end. But this is across the board, not just with pets. The solution of lets make gold readily available is and always has been flawed from the begining, no matter what shard uses it. If gold is easy to get, vendor prices climb, so a ratio is kept, on "poorer" the prices are lower, but they still keep a certain ratio. It's all relative.

The only thing I am curious about is if this server is EVER going to get substantial new content again (and a silly radio station does not count as in game content!) Having played since the begining of the year, I have seen nada. My friend and I used to donate together on the same donation to maximize the ED ($100 at a time to get the extra 10%), but not me anymore. My family has moved on until new areas, new crafting, new monsters, heck new ANYTHING is added to justify what I can vouch for has been several hundred dollars worth of investment.

I laugh when players complain about other players' prices, when the real problem is there is nothing new to do, but we jump through hoops to get ED, thus someone is paying cash for the ED, but yet, the server is "maintained" but allowed to go stagnant.

Give players something new to do and they may fight less!!

Well as for gold being worthless, i dont think so... you don't see taming powerscrolls go for 3-5 or even 10mil, you see them go for 500-1m which is quite healthy.

New content, well sure. Just needs to be put in by someone
Well i don't think the custom content will just double in size by the end of the year, but we'll try to add a few more things that will hopefully make things more interesting. It won't be ideal for everyone, some might say that a new thing is lame, but we can't overwhelm with surprises every month.

I think that silly radio station made many people happy (and should continue to do so after a few weeks when our main DJ starts again).

Fair enough that the radio station may have made some people happy, but it can not be considered in game content. Anyone with an MP3 player, or heck, most radio stations I know of in my country stream their music over the internet for anyone with a connection.

True enough, you can't expect to wow us every month with new content, but how about something this year?? OSI updated at least that much and there is no shortage of pre-made, easily modified scripts on Run-UO not implemeneted here yet.

My point is, people get nearly to the top of the food chain here quickly. The bottle neck that slows people is during the collection quest phase of game play. After you get your suit of that God armor, ask yourself, "what's left? I can pwn everything now".

Unless signifigant new areas to hunt are added regularly, top end players either get bored and leave, or they get mischieveous and start pushing the limits of the rules causing problems for staff and players (i.e. finding loopholes in item usage to "stack" equipment in the same slot like two gorgets, 2 tunics, etc...)

Two reasons the powerscrolls have stayed relatively low is (a) only a new player with out the ability to do champs to get his/her own scrolls will be buying, and (b) Blaze & Company have done an outstanding job of LOWERING costs by combining smaller scrolls into 120's (which is what everyone wants) and by basically doing champs every day. Once players can go get their own, the sales drop, so there is no need to keep crazy prices. The fact that players don't have a lot of variety in hunting dictates that most players will end up doing champs, and along the way, start getting scrolls.

Look, Coli, I really do love what you have done with the shard. That is an honest statement. This should be considered an observation from a LONG time vet of both OSI and freeshards (and a previous owner of a shard...who got tired of trying to make everyone happy...but I never once accepted real money).

It just seems that I know a substantial amount of cash gets donated, Markus and I donated a substantial amount through his account, as I stated in a previous account. Not looking for anything for personal gain, but to see the shard prosper and grow. It has GREAT potential!! Don't let it grow stagnant, or that statement you said during the last house drop (its hard because a lot of these houses belonged to long time friends), is going to be more commong as vets get bored. It's just natural, my friend.

Don't let it go stale.

Well just this week, no idea why, but i seem to get very few messages, so there's much less administrative work. This got me started on the scripting again.

Also we plan on some more organization this fall... won't happen overnight but we may get some more things done.

And yes, i know vets get bored. I however think that we have enough content here to keep someone entertained for years, if you try to experiment with bio creatures and level weapons, and well you can also just socialize.

Glyph wrote:True enough, you can't expect to wow us every month with new content, but how about something this year?? OSI updated at least that much and there is no shortage of pre-made, easily modified scripts on Run-UO not implemeneted here yet.

Ok, rant is about to start...
I think this is pretty darn rude. I don't even think of going to staff and saying, gimme more, and then compare them to osi and say that due to premade scripts it should be "easy" to add more stuff. rude rude rude. I don't have any expectations of what should happen monthly for events or items or monsters, i just play and go with the flow... and relating 'fighting' with 'not enough new stuff' is ... ridiculous. As for getting bored, i've been here for 3 yrs and never once have i said, im bored. there's always people to help, always monsters to kill, always things to collect, always auctions to save for.. always stuff to do.

alsooooooooooo......... the statement about coli accepting real money.. uh, yeah that is for the service he provides and all the hardware and software im sure he's had to buy... i know what you are implying I guess im just astonished. donation money is exactly that. nicely enough coli has a 'thanks for donating' system and you get a little something nice. *raspberries*

things will naturally change and people come and go for any number of reasons. new stuff comes in and leaves and life goes on. I spend too much time being thankful for what we do have here rather then worried about what we dont have. new stuff is just icing on the cake. Good people, good fun.

and for the love of pancakes, dont speak for 'the vets'... im a true vet and im definitely content.

*RAWR*
Llexa

I'm a man of few words hence my low post count but Llexa has just put into words exactly what i was thinking.

I am expressing my concerns. This is my vet opinion. Open your eyes, Llex before you get on your well used soapbox. I respect you as a player and a vet, but don't pick only certain things out of someone's post to attack and then chose to ignore other facts that I also point out (such as I want the shard to succeed, it has TONS of potential, we haven't had any signifigant in game content added since the begining of the year, and that I also never expected anything personal from my donations, rather for it to help the shard grow (which means everyone can benfit, not just me)).

Yes, I have strong feelings about this. This shard is one of the best I have ever played.

Repeat that till you run out of breath Llexa.

I just don't want it to fall to the wayside into stagnation. It is too good for that. FAR too good.

But let's face reality: Coli hasn't had a lot of REAL help lately (last couple months). I applaud Aphrodite, Ver (and haven't met Socrates since I took a break but I hear nothing but good things about him) for trying to keep the masses entertained.

But that isn't server side help. It's all on poor Coli, and i know from personal experience that it can be a strain on your patience. It becomes work. And it also makes it less and less fun to do. Coli needs to have fun again. He started this shard because of his passion for a game we all love. What makes me nervous is that lately, over the last several months, he doesn't seem to be as passionate. I don't want Excelsior to come to a grinding halt.

I want him to egt excited again as players meet his new creations for the first time, as they struggle to solve new puzzles, or meet unexpected doom. the way he felt when he started the server and opened its "doors" for the first time back in Feb. 2006.

If you don't like how I say things, fine. I don't mince words. But I felt someone had to start a fire under someone's butt around here and quit sugar coating it. You don't have to like me, but never think for a minute that I do not have the shard's best interest in mind when I try to get more.

Coli is a great guy, chatted with him enough in the past to know that. And i personally think he's been a little frustrated with some of his "help" lately. Let staff deal with in game stuff more, Coli, focus on making your imagination a reality!! I know you can do it. You made it this far!!

Well this year has been quite demanding in the administration part... up until may-june, and then the summer i suppose is vacation time. I've found that autumn is a good time for expanding things on the internet, because that's then people aren't outside as much as in the summer. So basically the low player count these days i believe can mostly be attributed to the season.

As for help, well i believe the problem is in me. Many times that something needs done, i think it's just going to be faster if i do it, and therefor other staff don't get to do much, hehe. Which is what i have been thinking about for the past two weeks, how to utilize our staff better. Yes the newest additions to staff, +Veritas +Aphrodite and +Socrates are very helpful - could be more, but i think that's more my fault. Anyway, there's already some reorganizing going on, and with some more staffers in the team till autumn, some big voting, and projects that the staffers can work on, i think we'll get going somewhere.

As for scripting help... well there aren't any applicants for that. Also with those that helped to script, it was usually not a really creative experience... either very little got done or the things they did were bugged and in the end i either had to re-script that thing from scratch, or ended up wasting probably more than a hundred hours over the years to clean up things (like the quest that made a character buggy and the character then got deleted, so at first I was manually re-doing characters for players, then i even made a tool to help port their belongings and skills. unfortunately not many of those players remain here to tell the tale). So until some good candidate comes along would stay here for a long time and also clean up the bugs after the script is already on the server, someone who knows what good coding is (not just scribbling something that happens to work), well until then i suppose i'm on my own.



Anyway, we are getting organized as a team. And hopefully there will be results of that organization, such as events every two days, new decorations for your home, new dungeons, and the new portal i'm working on.

(I know the portal isn't adding new game content, but it's something i like to do, and we're all here on the team to do things we like to do, of course UO related. I'm more of a guy who likes to keep the server running technically smooth, i like to fight downtime and reverts And someone who has ideas and wishes to make a dungeon, will make a dungeon)

As for stagnation... well once you keep upgrading things for a long time, it feels good to just sit back and talk to the people a little, or perhaps to stare at a cave wall as i have done for 10 minutes a few weeks ago lol.

It's all good, Coli. I know I can come on like a wrecking ball some times, but I really do love the game of UO and Excelsior brought the life back to the game (for a time at least )

And don't ever try and down play the Portal!! That is singularly the best thing I have ever encountered for UO, in game or otherwise. I have a desk job that keeps me at work 10 hours a day and even though I can play UO at work, I can watch the goings on and even pipe in from time to time.

A shame you don't have help with the scripting. I get "volunteered" to do all the scripting on our server after the normal scripter got into a love drama with another staffer and quit (lord have mercy what a time that was!!) I managed to sort out the basics and practice with existing until I felt comfortable adding base level content (mobs, items, custom champs and bosses), but systems (such as new crafts, etc) were touch and go. I fully understand how much of a pain in the butt being the sle scripter can be, staring at a script wondering "why isn't it working?" and having no one to ask. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and hated it...lol

Well, we're (my family) not leaving, but we are taking a break as collectively we got bored (kill this, get gold, kill that, get more gold). We'll pop in from time to time to watch the evolution of Excelsior.

Peace.

You're doing a great job, Coli.. all you guys are. This place is amazing and it doesn't matter if new content hasn't been added since the beginning of the year, even though i dont even think that's true lol. ive seen some new deco since then for sure and some new monsters in that excelsior army thing that Veritas and Rayne have been doing, its totally neato.

Glyph: I read your post completely but lots of rude critisism and insinuations and contradictions was the reason I commented on the key things that I did. You said,

Glyph wrote:Look, Coli, I really do love what you have done with the shard. That is an honest statement. This should be considered an observation from a LONG time vet of both OSI and freeshards (and a previous owner of a shard...who got tired of trying to make everyone happy...but I never once accepted real money).

It just seems that I know a substantial amount of cash gets donated, Markus and I donated a substantial amount through his account, as I stated in a previous account. Not looking for anything for personal gain, but to see the shard prosper and grow. It has GREAT potential!! Don't let it grow stagnant, or that statement you said during the last house drop (its hard because a lot of these houses belonged to long time friends), is going to be more common as vets get bored. It's just natural, my friend.

Don't let it go stale.

...

[section where i deduced all of the bold statement: removed for lack of wanting to talk about it anymore.]

Side note- quotes on boredom:

“Life is full of choices, if you have the guts to go for it. That's why I get immediately bored with anyone's complaining about how boring their life is, or how bad their town is... leave and go somewhere else. Or don't.”
- Henry Rollins

“Life is never boring, but some people choose to be bored.”
- Wayne Dyer

“There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.”
- Viggo Mortensen

“If you're bored with life - you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things - you don't have enough goals.”
- Lou Holtz

People come and go, but this is not a burden the staff need to feel weighing on their shoulders. If it's been said once it's been said 100 times.. it's just a game...

I consider staff and all the behind the scenes stuff to be like the weather.. you dont get to choose if and when it rains or shines or tell the sky to be blue or more snow to fall, it does or it doesn't and you either go out of town to avoid it or you stay home and make the best with it. You do things yourself to make it comfortable for you, like buy an air conditioner or an umbrella or wear sunglasses or come to the conclusion that it's Florida and you just aren't going to get much snow.

love,
Llexa