Rants, rants, and... more rants! Awsomeness.
Also, my apologies that this article is late; I haven't had any time to write today. I had school, then went to the store, then hung out with two friends until 10:00 PM... so, yup. Little tidbit of my real life.
Today, I'm here with a rant. Being a co-leader of a pack and all, it's something that manages to constantly get on my nerves. It's none other than seeing Alphas and Exalteds with no pack.
As a pack leader, this bugs me to no end. Shimmer has many high-leveled members, and we appreciate having them, but as any pack does, we want more. The other day, I saw an Exalted with no pack. They're not very active - they log on every few days - but seriously... if you don't play the game anymore, why not put your XP to good use instead of letting it do nothing on your account? It's not like we're going to kick an Exalted for being inactive. We don't require you to actually do anything helpful for the pack. So, really, why do nothing about your XP? It's not hurting you, and it takes seconds to join a pack. I can understand if you wanted to be packless for roleplaying reasons, but our Roleplay forums are full of fail right now. Besides, your wolf character usually has nothing to do with your RPing; if you're an Alpha and you're roleplaying with two other Alphas, you're not all going to lead your RP pack, are you? And since Elder is a higher rank than Alpha, that means that your character will have more power than the Alphas and be old, right? You see, RPing in the forums doesn't actually have anything to do with your character. So, you shouldn't use your character as an excuse for letting some... 7000k+ XP go to waste, you know?
Speaking of the Roleplay forums, they're at a stage of utter fail right now. I've seen many roleplays in Advanced that don't even qualify for Intermediate. Honestly, how hard is it to read the rules? Plus, the people who are writing things such as this...
Seasonal walked over to Juliah and bit her paw off. "That's why you don't mess with me," she said.
Do they actually consider that advanced? I mean, the word "advanced" (to me, at least) means something more complicated and longer. Unless these people consider that lengthy and detailed, of course. You can't really blame it on the Moderators, though. Well, perhaps you could; the problem started from the lack of moderating in that section. If the rules were enforced, it wouldn't be a problem, but the RP forums are like a viruss. They were small and treatable at first, but have grown into something large and that's hard to stop. Perhaps we'll get new RP forums in v1.2? To be honest, I don't actually know what to expect anymore; at first, v1.2 was strictly for code and bug fixes, but it seems to be much more than that according to Karl's Twitter.
While on the v1.2 train of thought, I'm sure that you've all seen the YouTube video demonstrating the new Attack System; if not, you should definitely check it out! My apologies, but I don't have a link. Anyways, now that I have tried it out for myself, I take back what I previously said on my blog regarding it. It honestly doesn't take much more time, and the increased XP is a fair enough compensation.
Now, let's discuss Challenges. If you are active on the Chatbox or stalk my profile, you know that I was obsessed with them. Though I didn't use them as much as I could have, my giant Challenge obsession started close to when they were removed, and I had trouble finding Challenge partners. I have to say, they were enjoyable and they motivated me to level. Perhaps they would have been used more if they were more... well, I don't know. Perhaps if it counted our end scores, it would have been used more. In fact, I do recall several people saying, "I'd do more Challenges if I knew what I won/lost by!" And, being honest, it would have been nice to see how many more animals I could kill than one of my friends. However, Karl probably had planned on removing it before he did, hence he found no need to add to it when he knew he was getting rid of the idea anyways.
On Storm's blog (funny how I mention him in all of my entries; come on, he can be pretty epic when he's not being a jackass!), I saw that he stated something along the lines of, "Why waste time to remove them?"
My theory is that Karl pays for however much memory he stores on the server, how many main webpages he has, etc. or perhaps he has limited room. Since the Challenges were so under-used, Karl decided to remove them to make room for other things. Since I'm not a top-notch web designer (pfft, if you knew how long it took me to set up my Blog to look like this...) I don't know if that is the case, but saving space/money seems to be the most likely. When my computer's files get abundant, I delete the things that I don't need, whether it be useless pictures or whatnot. Since your computer gets slower when you have more files to view, perhaps the same is with Wolf-Haven? Again, I have no idea. That's my guess, though.
It's a shame to see the Challenge feature gone, but I'll have to live with it. I don't hunt much anymore, but I used to have level races with my friends. Actually, I'm supposed to be having a 10 million XP race with Sheri... guess how much I've earned? Probably 50,000 XP. I think I could write an encyclopedia regarding how badly the x10 XP has screwed up Wolf-Haven. I'm actually beginning to wish that we had voted "yes" for a reset. It's not like you can just take away everything earned with the x10 XP; I didn't abuse it. I gained back what I lost. What about the other members who did the same as I did? Can you take their XP away? Then, you'd be taking it away from everybody, and nobody would be happy about that.
Blah, blah, blah... I lost my muse today, which is another reason for the delayed article. What else to write about? My own suggestions? Staff changes? Rainbowsperm? The Chatbox? Seriously, I don't know... ;_;
I'll leave you off on that note.
Challenges were removed because people simply didn't use them. It helped clean up the menu and database a little. I was either going to do it pre-1.2 or post-1.2 and I decided to do it before hand. The reason why is because if I did it after the update, people would see it as lots of things being removed with the update and combine that with the change 1.2 will bring anyway, getting rid of it early would have reduced complaints and gotten people used to it being gone. It was only used around 150 times in total over the span of a year; there would be no point in recoding it with 1.2.
ReplyDeleteOn the note of the x10 XP, It was something that was done to keep people happy after the December thing. If I didn't do it, people would complain and be encouraged to quit. So I did it.
Honestly, the x10 XP did NOT ruin the game. It's thrown around purely to turn a few people against me, how I “single-handedly ruined the game”. Just think about this for a second: What is the purpose of Wolf-Haven?
The purpose of Wolf-Haven is to explore, fight enemies, do quests, collect honours and interact with the community. Has any of that changed because of the x10 XP? No, it hasn’t. The only thing that has changed is that a few users are stronger. “There are less people that I can defeat!” some people will argue, but 30-70 new users join on a daily basis, that makes up for those you would been unable to fight. “I can now no longer get on the top 5!” – Thing is, it is unlikely most of the people who used this excuse would have gotten on the top 5 anyway.
x10 XP did not ruin the game.
Whatever I did and whatever I do -- people will complain and claim I "ruined" things.
~Karlos
True, it really has not ruined the gameplay. It has made the Top 5 untouchable, though. Considering that I could earn about 1 million XP in 12 hours of non-stop leveling, and I need 30 million more XP to get to the Top 5, it would literally take a month. And not everybody wants to level that much everyday, so in reality it would take much longer.
ReplyDeleteThe Top 5 aren't the game though and it has barely ruined things.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind how it is for newbies. Even if the x10 XP didn't happen, to get to the top 5, it'd of been millions of XP they'd need to get anyway.
Given how impressionable newbies can be, when people go on about how the game was 'ruined' by the x10 XP, they'll always see the site as being ruined and end up quitting without getting to know the full story.
On the plus side though, 1.2 will fix a few things in terms of top 5:
1) Top 5's will be expanded to feature top 5 PVP users and top 5 PVA users.
2) Banned users will be removed from the top 5.
The top 5 are of little importance though and should not be seen as the main goal of the website. They should be viewed as simple statistics like those on the facts page.
I know; I try to view it as something that doesn't matter very much. :3 Nobody levels anymore, though, and leveling is the core of other features, like packs.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that there will be some renovation to the Top 5, though, and that PvP will be recognized past Level 4! Same for PvA.
Oh, and thank-you for taking the time to read my blog and respond to it, Karl. I really appreciate hearing from you; most site owners are cocky and stuck-up, but you aren't. You actually take the time to listen to what the members have to say. That's something I appreciate very much.