I Doubt The Thread Will Last...

I love that someone from the US understands what 'twat' means.

I had to try and explain that to a German engineer once....while keeping a straight face (or trying to - I don't think I succeeded very well).

 

I posted in his apology thread with a link on how to avoid a flame war. I know he read it and liked it, but im sure he wont take the hint that he was the one flaming. He was so flaming I could have cooked my soup over him!

 

I know I have said it before, but the following is what I find amusing and annoying.

Benito isn't unique, he is in a long line of trolls/flamers who seem to pop up on the forums whenever genuinely concerned players have a grievance, then proceed to try and shut down those players and after doing that, they magically disappear.

Do these type of players help the game at all? If so, then lets look at the present state of the game. Is the game improving? Do we have increased player numbers? No, no, and no.

I really resent these people because they don't give input because they love the game or their fellow players. Heck most of them probably don't even play any more or very little. They do this because flaming is their chosen game.

Heckling genuinely concerned players with the intention of getting their posts removed and/or getting them banned is more fun to them than playing the game.

Among the many reasons DBG is doing so poorly is that they seem to give more credence to the bubbles and flamers than the rest of their paying customers. SMH.

 

I'm down to once a week now post-raiding. Honestly FO76, digital dumpster fire that it is, has held my interest far more of late, maybe because it's more along the lines of what I would like in a game.

We don't need an emulation of "classic EQ2". It was never really about the mechanics.

 

Benito is that special troll breed of bubble gnome.

And really, those are the most fun, because not only are they dishonest, disingenious, and ill-informed, but they have an insatiable need to be the center of attention.

If you want to debate, what you want is an environment that enables the freedom to make your arguments and criticisms without moderation or punishment, providing the debate doesn't devolve into personal attacks.

I was hoping he'd come here, not because I saw our conversation as a debate. I sort of had this feeling he just aced his Marketing 3xx: Consumer Behavior finale and now reckons he's an expert.

I've studied decision theory and consumer behavior as a career for 30 years, and as a practicing business economist, I love opportunities to talk about stuff like this because it might help someone make a welfare enhancing decision and avoid the alternatives.

Sadly though, I've learned over the years that coaching welfare enhancing judgment is largely a waste of time. In the end people tend to do what they feel like doing, and so there needs to be harmony with that. This is exactly why I do my homework, and never take clients like DBG.

Please note that people like me aren't immune to poor judgment. I've got a long list of massive failures. And in his book "Misbehaving", Richard Thaler seems to take perverse pleasure in providing examples of how even highly accomplished economists can't seem to follow their own rules of rational economic decision making (This book is a great read. There is a chapter toward the end where a round of new office assigments for the University of Chicago Dept of Economics completely blows up any notions that academic game theory models actually work. This is one of the funniest stories I've ever read....)

Anywhoo, I too have feel like my decision is a good one: for me, for the client, and for their customers and stakeholders.

When I go to the OF, I admit, I'm often trolling DBG and their business practices. I'm also interested in correcting or drawing attention to misleading or dishonest information, and when I see someone like Tkia approaching things in a good way, I like to acknowledge and encourage them.

Perhaps Benito will take me up on my offer and show up here some day. I hope so, because I like discussing this stuff, and, I usually learn something as well.

Edit:
Checking the of, it appears that I too was let off the hook

 

For me personally, and why we've been building out our PVP server for a while now, is that nothing else has really ever held my interest like EQ2 has. There are other games with PVP, more modern games that run better, have more population, or whatever else, but nothing has really done the trick.

Rumors of DBG working on another PVP server have been mentioned since like January, but I don't have any trust that DBG (if they do follow through with it) will give it the love it deserves. Naturally I'll give it a try, but I've lost most of my optimism a long time ago.

There are tools (although closed source, but the open source origins can be found on the interwebs) that are able to decipher the encrypted packets between the EQ2 client and server. Aside from the encryption, the basic protocol is the same (afaik) between all EQ, EQ2, VG, etc.

From that, you can re-populate the zones, and that's basically what you start with on EQ2Emulator. There was a mass population dump of data obtained over the years, and it was converted from packets and into database records. There is a ton of data (as we all know) available in Census. Basically, that leaves you with a database of items, spells, and other things from Census, as well as a ton of spawns from the collection process.

But aside from that, you're right. There's a ton of stuff that has to be re-made by hand.

The spells you start with from the starting database/scripts is largely incomplete. A few work, but most do not. We've completed our classes at this point (up to 25, our current cap, because this stuff takes time and there's only three of us, two of which write code).

With the mass population dump, you basically get a bunch of dumb mobs. They don't path, they don't drop loot, they don't cast spells, they're super weak, and so on. Some of this is easy/quick to fix, like doing a pass to buff up all the mobs, or adding generic loot. Other things take more time, like writing out specific pathing scripts (if it's not just random).

We can get lots of data about things from Census, but we still have to write the quest script itself (in Lua, btw), which takes time. Most time consuming of all, and perhaps this process can be improved (lots can, probably), but collecting the NPC conversations around quests. That information isn't available anywhere, so to get that, it's hail the mob and click through every single option with logs turned on.

We've got a database of items, but any with effects would need to be scripted out as well. With our initial level range of 1-25, this is somewhat limited at least.

The starting database from EQ2Emu isn't bad, but leaves a ton of work for anyone seriously wanting to start their own server at this point. On top of that, I've made a ton of changes to the world source which have not all made it back upstream. Base EQ2Emu itself is full of stuff that more or less works, but there's things that were implemented incorrectly or otherwise need/needed improvement.

P.S. Where my reverse engineers at? Client crashes are the bane of my existence and I would love help figuring them out pls

 

Something that seems to have been a problem with the EQ2 forums over the last few years is people using lots of sock puppet accounts. It's been bad enough at times where I think I've become overly suspicious. Perhaps it's because of my broken brain or all of the time I've spent running games over the years, but I tend to notice things like how people habitually punctuate or use certain words and phrases. Maybe it's because I've been stalked online in the past so I'm a tad paranoid. I've caught several posters on the OF using different accounts and even caught them out on other platforms. I've had one admit that a couple of people were following me around just to mess with me (on reddit of all places, what a waste of time...).

Anyways, when a new annoyance crops up with a name I barely recognize it makes me suspicious. When they start acting like the usual suspects and going after the usual targets I can go a bit beyond suspicious. I try to keep in mind that this might be a new voice but I can't not keep in mind that it also could be an old voice being deceptive. Benito might not be one of these people. Maybe they just got fired up and misjudged while looking to throw down, I don't know. But is it just a coincidence that dumbyeah decided to speak up around the same time? Maybe, maybe a bad coincidence for Benito if so. Even more so than the blatantly closed minded or willfully ignorant posters there, this sort of garbage makes dealing with the OF very frustrating to me.

 

He was telling people to make alt accounts to discuss or contest their ban/suspension even before the note telling people specifically not to do this had been removed. That note was made when Freeport was still a stand alone server because people were abusing the f2p system, but then I guess DBG decided it was cheaper to have people make a new account than pay for customer service. No one bothered to update the info until it was called out.

 

dumbyeah. I claims it! -slaps at (tm) on it-

dumbyeah(tm)

 

Aw, shucks, Fuli, I can't help myself. I just have to try and inject some common sense into the madness now and then, however futile it is likely to be ...

 

You went into much more detail debunking SigDerp than I did! Good job!


Edit: I'm sure she, and a few of her followers are feverishly pressing the report button this very minute.

 

Yep, bans likely incoming.

I also imagine that thread is gonna get vaporized soon.

Nice to see others starting to call Siggy out for being dishonest.

Edit:
She must have the ancient bubble recipie. No facts, no matter how obvious, can pierce it!

Also, I wonder if I'm going to get a ban for "excessively liking unconstructive posts"?

 

Thread is gone lol.

 

So you get banned yet? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

Color me surprised. SigDerp is one of the thinnest skinned and most report happy of the Bubble Gnomes(tm).

I didn't get a warning or anything.

 

If you can't silence the speaker or suppress the speech without causing more problems, just make it all go away and pretend it never existed.

 

The one thing they can't make go away is the obvious overall lack of player enthusiasm and rapidly dropping player numbers. The newly released expansion has only been out a month and the server populations are pretty weak considering.

I have seen either new or returning players comment on the official forums that the game feels dead or on the verge of dying. We all know its the truth ourselves. I really do expect them to announce a sunset sooner rather than later.