Rising threat

[Jorquin]

This is more of a discussion point that anything else at this stage - please weigh in, I'm looking for input from others.


Every wipe we see the same thing happen. The single largest playing group goes "full nerd-mode", plays non stop for weeks on end until they are super powerful by comparison to everyone else, then begins to get bored. As they get bored they begin to pick wings off flies - killing others for various reasons (which are usually bullshit) in order to amuse themselves. This leads to lots of people quitting, then they themselves quit once either they go so far that an immortal intervenes, or they just get bored altogether.

I want to break the cycle. I've been considering what to do - simply having conversations and asking them not to be jerks has no impact. I've tried this on several occasions over the last two wipes - they do not listen. Anyone have any ideas for how I could handle it?

Some of the things that came to mind are:

• Give a few level 36/37's cheat characters in GOD clan with the sole purpose of helping the oppressed fight back against tyranny.
• Give some tools to the people who RISE murder to help them fight back (I don't like this option, it's unfair on other neutral parties).

I'm not sure how to deal with this, but it's an issue which needs to be addressed. Post your thoughts please!

[Gatir]

Give everyone that causes problems a taste of your sandwich.

[Kronos]

Here comes GOD Clan.


Balanar utters some strange words.
Murphy is stunned momentarily, recovering quickly.
Gronx <----------------- IS POWER WORD STUNNED!!!!!
With a quick weave, you slip out of the way of Balanar's attack.
Bannon is stunned momentarily, recovering quickly.
Phobos <----------------- IS POWER WORD STUNNED!!!!!
Sokar is stunned momentarily, recovering quickly.
Sfyn ducks out of the way of Balanar's attack.

414H 81V 10891473X 90.34% 7537C [Pos:standing] Exits:NE>
Balanar utters some strange words.
Balanar's hands issue a spray of prismatic color!
Murphy is caught in a spray of shimmering red!
Murphy is struck by a spray of murky violet!
Gronx is blasted by a spray of scintillating blue!
You are caught in a spray of shimmering red!
You are struck by a spray of vibrant green!
Bannon is caught in a spray of shimmering red!
Bannon is struck by a spray of vibrant green!
Phobos is hit by a spray of gleaming indigo!
Phobos is caught in a spray of bright orange!
Sokar is struck by a spray of murky violet!
Sfyn ducks out of the way of Balanar's attack.
Eclipz utters some strange words.
You shiver as Eclipz unleashes a world of nightmares.
Murphy's eyes widen and jaw drops as terror invades his mind.
Murphy succumbs to the nightmare and falls into a deep, dark sleep.
Gronx's eyes widen and jaw drops as terror invades his mind.
You wince and spasm as terror invades your mind.
Bannon's eyes widen and jaw drops as terror invades his mind.
Phobos's eyes widen and jaw drops as terror invades his mind.
Sokar's eyes widen and jaw drops as terror invades his mind.
Sfyn ducks out of the way of Eclipz's attack.

Welcome to Hoss Mud 2.0

We play nerd mode? WTF we play to get the best gear and then use it. What a joke. We have killed what, 3 characters this wipe?  The way you handled this showed your true colors.

The truth is over the past 3-4 wipes we have become more and more friendly, killing less and less players. This is a PK mud. We play within the RULES. PERIOD. WITHIN THE baptING RULES.


"What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of baptin' assholes. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your baptin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!"  - SCARFACE/RISE

[oom]

Why not just make the game nopk? That seems to be what people want and pk is discouraged in the current state of the mud.

I don't know exactly what happened earlier in the day because I wasn't on but getting jumped by a bunch of cheat characters has caused at least one self deletion to already occur. I know the eq was left there or whatever but that's not really the point.

I mean I never really did much pking when I was myth and even with RISE I haven't done much since I've always played a shaman, but I guess I just don't understand why pk is even allowed by the game rules if it isn't actually allowed.

I'm not defending anything about RISE behavior or whatever I'm just asking a serious question. If PK isn't allowed/encouraged just change the game rules to match what is enforced.

We literally sat in voice chat for like an hour just talking about how much we love this game and how crazy it is we are all legit friends who've never met each other. Making plans for a meet up in vegas next year.

Obviously we all love this game and appreciate all the work that goes into it regardless of what some of us might say at times. Maybe the play style isn't 'correct' at this stage of the game but if not then just change the rules.

"There is little emphasis on role-playing, and character interactions are handled in a real-world manner left up to the players. This means that when there is competition or disputes between players and characters, these confrontations can sometimes end in violence. Stealing from and killing other player-characters are not necessarily encouraged, but it is allowed."

This above quote is still on the front page of arcticmud.org. If this is no longer the case just change the rules of the game, it seems pretty simple to me.


Pragor/Oom/Troggdor/Bannon Goodie Tim

[Kir]

This thread is just a poorly veiled attempt at disguising blatant immortal cheating. There is a rising threat? really? because we pked Taj's botsquad? Rise pks a botsquad for helping our adversaries pop an Onyx Shield (and lying about it) and then jorquin uses cheat characters to pk Rise? uuuuhh hrmm k sounds legit.

Immortals nerfed animate dead. Rise prevailed.
Immortals nerfed shards quest. Rise prevailed.
Immortals nerfed dragon orb. Rise prevailed.
Immortals nerfed group limit size. Rise prevailed.
Immortals nerfed druid entangle. Rise prevailed.
Immortals nerfed teleport. Rise prevailed.

Let me do you a favor. Instead of looking outward for reasons why Rise succeeds year after year and trying to nerf them to hinder Rise, instead look introspectively and figure out what it is about yourselves that make you such losers. Whining and crying won't get you anywhere in life. You may be the best on arctic if Rise gets deleted, but you'll never actually be the best. So pathetic.

[newbie123321]

So if they are the largest group that play the game, Why are you abusing imm powers to make them quit playing? if they went full nerd mode, didn't they earn it? They played really hard because they like the game. You are going to kill them because your friends who are afraid to play and refuse to play won't play unless we are ran off the mud by Immortal abuse. Oh run us off the mud so Your Friends can go full nerd mode all wipe which is what they have done every wipe they play literally the whole year and when we want to have our fun for the first month or so of the wipe. You have to at all cost stop us from playing. Why not make 2 servers, one where there is PVE and one, PVP so we can then not have to blame the people are just good at PVP for PKilling in a Mud that is suppose to be a PK MUD. You have to rebrand because this is clearly not a PK Mud this is more of a if you PK you get abyssed or deleted mud or Killed by IMMs if imms are BFFs with the mortal you killed even tho you thought you were BFFs with. You would think after botting with a guy and spending hours in bloodshoal with a dood and 3 manning 10 man bot groups to cyan that he wouldn't stab you in the back and kill you with a immortal and become something worse than Hoss.

[oom]

I would also like to say I personally feel like this situation is rather ironic because one of the major reasons I am RISE now is because I was tired of not being able to fight back when CORE bullied MYTH and killed one of us over freaking goblin power gauntlets a couple wipes ago.

[Jorquin]

All three active effective level 37 immortals (Flook, Loflika and myself) agreed among ourselves that RISE bullying and killing people who have no chance to fight back was a problem, and we wanted to send a message. We didn't want to delete anyone, nor did we want to cause lasting damage. So we decided to give RISE a taste of their own medicine - being killed by an opponent which they cannot hope to fight back against. So we did exactly that. We created three mage characters and attacked RISE clan. We killed four players, we did not loot any of their equipment. Some other players showed up and tried to take their equipment, which we stopped. The equipment I believe was eventually collected by some RISE affiliates.

The reality is that RISE have systematically alienated groups of players to the point where they no longer enjoy Arctic, then stop playing. This first happened with WILD clan. Once they disappeared, RISE shifted their focus onto "Ilya Crew". With them primarily gone, you started to turn your attention to our Danish players. The staff decided that enough is enough. We cannot allow 15 odd people to drive away our player base, simply because they get sadistic pleasure from ruining the fun of others.

Pkilling is legal, this is true. What RISE do is not pkilling - it's systematic extermination and alienation of entire groups of players. Why does RISE behave like this? I'm not entirely sure. Part of it is caused by your "We're the big dogs - this is our game" mentality. Part of it is caused by the fact that you have too many people in your playing group. Part of it is caused the fact that you continue to use bots even though you have larger numbers of player than any other group. Part of it is that your players seem to have way more time than most of our other players with familiar obligations. Maybe you're just dicks, I don't know.

In the end the staff of Arctic have to make decisions that achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Obviously giving RISE a taste of their own medicine (seeing what its like to get stomped by someone you can't hope to fight back against) did not work as planned. Perhaps we should just set the entire game NOPK, although I really don't want to. RISE have an opportunity to self-regulate their "Im a big-dick player who likes to wail on children" attitudes, though I'm not optimistic.

I have to say - I find it ironic that you sit in voice chat talking about how much you love Arctic MUD. You are the single biggest contributors to its extinction.

[newbie123321]

I just want to direct this to whoever plays Jaina..... You cried soo hard to Jorquin that you had to have him cheat, to kill us, because there was no way, that you were ever going to.... because that is how much you suck at this game. They felt so bad for you they wanted to make someone else quit a dying game so you can have some dignity. You are soo damn bad you should just uninstall.

[oom]

All three active effective level 37 immortals (Flook, Loflika and myself) agreed among ourselves that RISE bullying and killing people who have no chance to fight back was a problem, and we wanted to send a message. We didn't want to delete anyone, nor did we want to cause lasting damage. So we decided to give RISE a taste of their own medicine - being killed by an opponent which they cannot hope to fight back against. So we did exactly that. We created three mage characters and attacked RISE clan. We killed four players, we did not loot any of their equipment. Some other players showed up and tried to take their equipment, which we stopped. The equipment I believe was eventually collected by some RISE affiliates.

The reality is that RISE have systematically alienated groups of players to the point where they no longer enjoy Arctic, then stop playing. This first happened with WILD clan. Once they disappeared, RISE shifted their focus onto "Ilya Crew". With them primarily gone, you started to turn your attention to our Danish players. The staff decided that enough is enough. We cannot allow 15 odd people to drive away our player base, simply because they get sadistic pleasure from ruining the fun of others.

Pkilling is legal, this is true. What RISE do is not pkilling - it's systematic extermination and alienation of entire groups of players. Why does RISE behave like this? I'm not entirely sure. Part of it is caused by your "We're the big dogs - this is our game" mentality. Part of it is caused by the fact that you have too many people in your playing group. Part of it is caused the fact that you continue to use bots even though you have larger numbers of player than any other group. Part of it is that your players seem to have way more time than most of our other players with familiar obligations. Maybe you're just dicks, I don't know.

In the end the staff of Arctic have to make decisions that achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Obviously giving RISE a taste of their own medicine (seeing what its like to get stomped by someone you can't hope to fight back against) did not work as planned. Perhaps we should just set the entire game NOPK, although I really don't want to. RISE have an opportunity to self-regulate their "Im a big-dick player who likes to wail on children" attitudes, though I'm not optimistic.

I have to say - I find it ironic that you sit in voice chat talking about how much you love Arctic MUD. You are the single biggest contributors to its extinction.

Like I said, I'm not defending any RISE actions but what reason is there for PK to be allowed on this MUD?

And honestly, I didn't really have a problem with sending a message, and it's super unfortunate we had a self deletion before we were told the eq was still there.

Maybe implement a system where pk deaths result in only one or two items dropping on the corpse and the rest being kept or something if you want to keep PK in the game but not make it so hard to bounce back from.

I mean, in it's current state how is PK supposed to occur and be fair or whatever? I'm honestly not trying to rant or anything I just feel like pk maybe doesn't have a place anymore and we just need to straight up admit it instead of kinda pretending arctic is still open pvp.

And as far as I know any eq we looted ended up getting left behind anyway because we didn't want to log real characters without knowing what was happening and the people who died never came back.

RISE even did our good deed for the week helping that DK guy who was shouting for help with his dragon quest.

And calling us the single biggest contributors to the extinction of a text based game might be a little off base, but I guess I could very well be wrong on that too.

[Rednax]

My opinion probably holds little weight, but I figured I'd chime in regardless.

I figure I should start by telling you who I am. I'm an infrequent poster on this forum and I'm only 18 years old. I'm currently clanned Myth. I'm quite young to be playing this game and yet even I've seen my fair share of drama.

The first wipe I played in I clanned AFKK when it was run by Sebastian (Gulca) and was actually a noob-friendly clan. The next wipe I clanned VA when I by chance grouped with Atreyu (Brandon/Btown) and yet could not even walk from Kalaman to Balifor. The main clan that wipe was OXEN. We were jumped a few times while grouped by some "overpowered" characters (Chupacabra, Isabella.) We had some organized fights, but of course there was not really any hope of winning (I was a warrior, not punching or bashing anything, missing all my hits, while OXEN had some 20+ heals cleric, limdam paladin, and much more.) I had tried to find AFKK, which was apparently still going, but by then all its players had disappeared and the clan just became a hidden refuge for OXEN alts (Rythmatic).

One or two wipes later Brandon reformed VA but under a new name KING. Then a few days into the wipe we were jumped by RISE and I was accused of being a spy because somehow RISE knew we were in Temple of Takhisis. I don't know if any logs of the fight remain, but I can tell you the fight was already over before I even knew what happened. The text scrolled by at the most insane rate I'd ever seen and in less than a few seconds my entire group was dead from tentacles and nightmares. Surprisingly I was NPP for some reason and several rounds after everyone else was dead and RISE mages had stopped casting, I slipped away from tentacles for the third time and recalled. Brandon 'quit' shortly thereafter and my interest that wipe waned. Perhaps it WAS Rise that chased Brandon away that wipe, but that was YEARS ago, and to my knowledge he eventually came back and reformed under the clan Apoc. People have a hard time quitting for good, it seems!

A few wipes later feeling bored and soloing around, I happen to group with Locki one day who invites me to Myth (which I would soon find out was much like the old AFKK - new-player friendly!) Following Gram and company around in high zones is actually very fun for me. I get to visit areas of the game I would never hope to visit solo. I even got to visit cyan once - and I'm sure many of you are laughing at that - especially RISE players, for whom cyan is probably a walk in the park! Additionally, because I still know so little about high zones, most of my solo time is spent exploring death traps and low questish zones. Mapping them out and solving all the puzzles is actually quite refreshing, however on the flipside it's actually quite hard to learn high zones without being thrown a set of notes just due to the fact that walking in alone is certain death.

I'd also like to note that this 'botting' fiasco has not once crossed my mind either. I would never do it. Even if that's preventing me from learning the high end content I can still have fun with what I *can* do. I've been led through ToT hundreds of times but I still wouldn't trust myself to lead it even with a guide. I know so many low zones like the back of my hand but know so little about high level ones. My lack of endgame knowledge is what'll stop me from applying for immortal, if that day ever comes.

But back to the topic at hand. In all my time with Myth (over two years now) RISE has only ever been a friend to Myth. There's some drama I still don't fully understand but I'm sure I'm not exaggerating when I say that Myth doesn't even remotely stand a chance against RISE. We had a 1v8 fight last wipe (Hank vs 8 KA) and we lost. Additionally, after that one wipe with KING I've never seen RISE chase solo players off the mud. The closest thing I've seen to that would be RISE vs CORE last wipe - however from what I gather CORE *did* actually have a chance to fight back. And CORE even won some fights... unlike KING clan.

I feel like there's too much bad blood lingering from the wipe when the randoming and killing players was rampant (or so I hear.) Once upon a time RISE killing randoms just because they felt like it may have been a thing, but even if it was, that would have been years ago.

[zodiak21]

Remove pk. Create arena where u can pk and bet gear. If someone issues a challenge for gear and said player declines. They are flagged pkable but only said item is lootable seems the best alternative

[xellos]

Lets see here.
2017-06-20 05:54:41 Kushner killed Leon.
2017-06-20 05:54:53 Manafort killed Oozi.
--these guys pkilled bryton whom we sometimes love.

2017-06-26 06:30:33 Phobos killed Malice.
2017-06-26 06:31:27 Kushner killed Singol.
--clan trucker was killed for attacking our untaggeds

2017-07-02 22:27:50 Matthis killed Trinity.
2017-07-02 23:18:50 Mondo killed Kardoma.
--locki died for recalling kardoma, kardoma fought a 1v1 - issue solved

2017-07-08 05:09:27 Brocef killed Ari.
--now this was a bad highlight, but ari said hey its so and so. gear returned

2017-07-08 23:03:43 Brocef killed Ellanah.
2017-07-08 23:03:48 Hodo killed Jaina.
--got killed for helping the "MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN GROUP" load onyx shield. Woulda got his gear back but tried to lie about it.

So what is the real issue here.
"SUPER MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN GROUP" logs on, we instantly start looking for them?
If you are gonna "OUT-NERD" RISE and beat us on a pwipe rush to hct orb, onyx shield, huma shield, and get extremely "LUCKY" first run popping that shit.  you had better be prepared to defend those items.
Or maybe we will give them a grace period where they will sneak in trash mages and bapt up zone items/keywords where we are without retribution.
Or maybe "SUPER MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN GROUP" rush wipe strategy was to pop a few key items and deep rent until RISE quits and we are just chasing a dream.

Its all he said she said,  but RISE knows the real reason why they got hosed down. But hey thanks, you made 1 of us delete/quit already. Im sure more soon to follow.
But do me a favor and let me know before you delete me and jack so I can offload my gear.  Would suck for our boys who arent ready to quit to repop my gear twice this week since the mudd likes to foom right after i die.

[kanu]

I don't know much about the drama this wipe, but I do know that, as a member of WILD, almost all WILD players quit because of RISE.

1. We'd zone hard at the beginning of the wipe.
2. We'd eventually get gear that RISE wanted.
3. RISE would eventually attack us for said gear. One wipe we tried to preemptively attack as I recall.
4. RISE would now keep us locked out of the game with our known characters by relentlessly logging superior numbers (most of the time we could get 5-7 people at most on) so forced us into playing our unknown characters.
5. Eventually RISE would break some rule and get kicked off the site and we could play or they would get bored and quit. At this point we could either start zoning again or most of us had already quit.

This happened at least 6 wipes in a row if not more.

There was a wipe where we teamed up, I think it was with NOW clan, and fought back. We mass-ripped RISE three times in a row only to have some sort of mysterious bug that rebooted the mud immediately after the battle occur.

I also thought it was funny that WILD was accused of cheating. "WILD you used your imms to solve Sleet zone! Cheaters!!" No, actually Yankton, Allan, and I think Geo spent hundreds of hours working on solving that zone legit.

I had friends in WILD that I never get to chat with anymore. It's disappointing to me. There is still lots we'd like to figure out, especially now that there are some new zones in the game.

[Jorquin]

See the news. We made a change to try and resolve the issue a different way.