As Harold Macmillan rightly proclaimed, nothing can send a government (or guild) off course like an unexpected event. Even one that was foretold in the patch notes.
I am hurt.
A plague o’ both your houses! I am sped.
Is he gone, and hath nothing?
Mercutio, on the other hand, was just rather annoyed about getting a rapier stuck in his chest. He had every right to be upset. Yet very soon he cursed no more, for the sword is an efficient killer.
Which is more than can be said for the Septicemic Blight that is sweeping Norrath at this time. It causes greenness of both flesh and clothing, some unsociable coughing, and, well, that’s about it. And therein lies the problem, for it leaves its victims alive to complain.
The plague has spread to every corner of Norrath. Priests can only heal themselves and those willing to group with them, and countless Typhoid Marys have carried plague to every instance of every dungeon. Even the undead and the inanimate have fallen prey to this most insidious pestilence.
With such a vast reservoir of germs, untouchable by player healers, there is nothing I or any other priest can do to stem the tide. We can only hope that the tales of an alchemical cure are more than mere rumour.
In the time I’ve spent writing this far I have been infected with the blight 12 times. I have, to my shame, given up offering to cure anyone. I fear we are all doomed. But perhaps, should any survive, their descendants will find the following suggestions helpful:
1) Events are a good idea. They tend to be shortlived, and as such need to have a real game-changing reach in order for everyone to notice. The plague has certainly done that!
2) No matter how innocuous you make the event, someone will complain that it is affecting their gameplay adversely. The lack of adverse effects from being infected is exactly why so many people are running about spreading disease. Pay no heed to those who consider turning green to be a reason to quit.
3) Try to make it fit in better with the existing world. I was horrified, upon visiting the temple of Rodcet Nife, god of healing, that not only did they have nothing to say about the disease, but they were all infected! By having NPCs (and tents and statues) be infectable, infectious, yet not curable, you have removed any possibility for the players to control the epidemic.
4) Of course, the disease won’t be defeated until someone’s completed some fancy quest somewhere. So far the only static one I’m aware of is for Alchemists, in Nektulos. Which is of course fine, but there probably aren’t all that many tier 3 alchemists out there. Don’t you think that it’s a tad specialised?
5) The other quests I’m aware of are initiated by GMs playing NPCs. I love that idea, but what proportion of the population is likely to encounter such wonderful sounding content? Any information vital to the storyline needs to somehow be available to anyone of sufficient level without needing to be playing in the right timezone at the right spot.
Anyhows, it’s daftly designed, but I’m still glad our first Event has come. Though let us hope that brave adventurers are rising to the challenge of curing the land, or this Event could outstay it’s welcome.
Well, here I am, slinking in, hoping no-one notices I’ve not posted for over a year. How have things been? Not so great with me, I’m afraid.
Currently coming to terms with my own mortality. Both my parents are suffering from serious conditions, and I worry about them a lot. My own health has taken a serious down turn. The main issues are with my liver pumping out toxins, but as the stone in the gall bladder are soaking up all the ultrasound, there isn’t a lot they can do until thats been dealt with. Lot of pain, feeling wretched, and all that sort of thing.
So, at some unspecified point in the next few months I shall be going into hospital for a gall bladder removal and liver biopsy. With any luck, things will start to look up for me after that.
On the upside, it appears I’m now one of the richest players on BlogShares. Before my absence I had just started buying ideas, and the only ones I could find happened to be Northern Ireland ones. I suspect I’m only going to get richer over the coming months!
Anyhows, with all that said and done, I’m itching to get back to fiddling around with this little blog. We have a national election on May 5th, and I’ll likely have quite a bit to say about it.
Nothing much to report. Plenty of dreadful things happening in the world, but you’ll already know that from your regular news channels. Just a quick round-up, so’s folks don’t go thinking I’m dead, again.
Reagan was, according to a movie script at any rate, concerned that he might be the anti-christ. California burns. Theres a huge plague of locusts sweeping Sudan. And I think I just saw four horsemen fly past my window.
According to Pravda, the crew of the Ukrainian plane which crashed carrying 62 Spanish peacekeepers were drunk.
“I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages” : Richard Perle, former Defense Policy Board chairman, Whitehouse insider, and all-round balanced guy.
Here’s hoping something amusing happens damn soon.
Yarrrrr!
I just thought I’d best be mentionin’ that fine game of skillful buccanneers, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. I only discovered it a few days ago, but it be a most nifty way o’ spendin’ some time.
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is an online game in which you play a Pirate character in an ocean world. Hundreds of your fellow player Pirates swarm these Isles and Sea-lanes. For Pirates who love acronyms, Puzzle Pirates is an massively multi-player online roleplaying game, or mmoarrrrpg.
When your Pirate sails, or swordfights, or navigates, the appropriate Puzzle game is launched. Good Puzzling thereby brings victories and accrues great fortunes to you and your fellow Pirates.
A wondrous twist on the old gamin’ schema it be. Garrrrr! And it be free to beta-test, so’s ye can be savin’ yer pieces o’ eight too.
Everyone’s a critic.
The BBC reports that the actor Jim Caviezel, playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion Of Christ”, has been struck by lightning for a second time. Grief man, take a hint!
Describing the second lightning strike, McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: “I’m about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel’s ears.”
Sadly only literal pretend messiahs get thunderbolted. Which neatly links us to Oz as:
The Great KerfuffleTM continues!
George W Bush has addressed the Australian Federal Parliament. His speech, once it got past the Howard love-in, and George showing his aptitude for foreign languages, “You might remember that I called him a man of steel. That’s Texan for fair dinkum.”, was a standard-issue denunciation of Saddam, and all evil-doers.
During the speech, Ahmed Habib, the son of one of the two Australians being held at Guantanamo, was in the public gallery as a guest of Green MP Bob Brown.
“What about my father’s rights?” he called out before security guards escorted him from Parliament, making him the only person removed during the address.
The complete speech, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, is watchable on the web. Worth it for the rare occasion of Bush being heckled. (Actually, it looks like the only part of the speech cut is the heckling. Garrr! They cunningly split it into three parts, with the heckling in the bits between the parts.)
Luckily the BBC has a little film story about the event, and even shows some protestors. Heavens forbid!
Brown interjected on the President: “Mr Bush, this is Australia. Respect our nation’s laws. Return our Australian citizens from Guantanamo Bay. If you respect the world’s laws the world will respect you.”
The Speaker ordered him from the chamber, but he did not move. Shortly afterwards Kerry Nettle also piped up, was likewise ordered out, and stayed put. Now they will be barred from the address today by Chinese President Hu, where they planned to protest about human rights violations.
But they managed to draw the one unscripted line in Bush’s address. “I love freedom of speech,” he said after Nettle’s outburst.
Anyhows, Bush stayed less than 24 hours in Oz, and by now should be safe and sound back in the land of the free and the hope of the brave. So that is the end of W’s Oriental Adventure.
Grieve not, adventure lovers! George will be coming to England soon, and we’re getting a real nice welcome ready for him.
The Sydney Morning Herald published an open letter from 41 of Australia’s ALP party MPs to George Bush.
A great kerfuffle has erupted over the US demand that Bush’s address to Parliament be covered only by a handpicked group of four US journalists. Australia has since overturned it, and demanded that at least two Ozzie journalists be allowed in.
George Bush’s word is apparently beyond question. At least, by the Australian press.
The US President has declined a customary joint press conference after his address to the Federal Parliament tomorrow.
The media event, which normally allows two or three questions from Australian media and an equal number from the visiting press, would have been the only official opportunity for Australian journalists to quiz Mr Bush on the Iraq war and its aftermath.
It would also be the only opportunity to ask the US President about the two Australian citizens being detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay.
Australian journalists have also been denied any place in a so-called “close-up media pool” that will follow Mr Bush on all his official stops on the day. All positions in the four-member pool have been allocated to members of the White House press corps.
The US Secret Service rejected an application from the Canberra press gallery for equal access, on the basis that the journalists did not have the required US security clearances. The Secret Service then declined to allow the journalists to apply for those clearances; no reason was given.
A marquee has been set up in the grounds of The Lodge to allow the American journalists to file their stories. No Australian media will be allowed on the grounds.
A member of the team put together by Mr Howard’s department to make press arrangements for the visit conceded yesterday that Australian media will learn of events at Government House and The Lodge from news reports filed in the US.
Asked why there would be no joint press conference with Mr Bush and Mr Howard, the spokesman said: “Because it isn’t on the itinerary.”
Mr Bush and Mr Howard had joint media conferences both times the Prime Minister visited the US this year.
The Chinese President, Hu Jintao, has agreed to participate in a joint press conference, with two questions from the Australian media and two from the travelling Chinese press, after he addresses Parliament on Thursday.
Protestors have been banned from using loudspeakers, and the protests themselves have been moved so far away that Bush has no chance of actually even being aware of their presence. Well, unless he breaks the habit, and reads a newspaper.
And that’s it for now from Australia.
Finally! News in from Thailand!
US President George W Bush had no problems sleeping on his first night in Thailand amid tight security, National Police Chief General Sant Sarutanond said yesterday.
Hurrah! Though I guess that means the curse on his soul didn’t work. “Ha, the jokes on you, ya pesky witches. I sold my soul years ago!”
Meanwhile, both uniformed and plainclothes police officers were on duty at all skytrain stations. Lt-Colonel Boonrit Lohsuwan, a deputy superintendent at Metropolitan Police Division 9, said police were instructed to pay particular attention to Middle-Eastern-looking people.
Although the only sinister arab arrested so far turns out to be part of the Afghan royal family, and entirely innocent.
Ji Ungphakorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, said:
�Prime Minister Thaksin [Shinawatra] wanted Thai people to behave like smiling children who are retarded and welcome those who pose danger to the world.�
And that’s it, from the early morning Thailand Adventure Roundup!
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