did you slay the beast?
did you die doing so?
did you defend the realm from the evil?
Yes
No, but lots of others that I resurrected there did, as did my Greater Dragon whilst I was healing the others fighting.
Yes, and only my realm, I didn't cross shard to others.
And did I get a scroll?
No. Nor did more than half of the regulars who were there either. And you believe you're making an argument
for the way the scrolls were handled?
So here's the thing; you can often tell the worth of an argument by the kind of people who are making it. In this case you've got selfish people insulting others, then outright lying and saying someone else started with the attitude; you've got people claiming purchasing an item in a virtual game is "Manning Up", as if we're supposed to convert our play experience into shoring up your sad and insecure role-played lives here and make you feel like a man for pressing your "Vendor Buy" macro; you've got badly made, or just outright amateur-hour political philosophy based arguments which both make no sense and don't even address the in game experience as it actually was...
And on the other hand, you've got people who just want everyone to have the ability to achieve something they'd like. You know, in this little corner of the world where they come to have fun, and which the game's survival is based upon them having...
We can also go one step further and actually prove the point they are making, at least to those who aren't arguing only to try and justify themselves. Let's address the issues directly, shall we?
Firstly, as it currently stands, it violates the previous Rules which covered EM events that they not include any gameplay changing mechanics. This previously went as far as unique coloured pets... I discussed with the EMs on my own shard how they could use a renamed chicken as a spawn, and the rules were they could do that because pets can always be renamed again, so anyone could have a "Hooby Jooby" bird by renaming their own chicken; and they could do get the exact same stats on a normal sword as an EM sword, so any practical use was also replicable. And decoration has no practical use.
Now, Petra may be correct in that the +5
stat bonus itself may not be unique; if there are alternative ways to achieve it, then what happens is that the scroll itself moves back into the realm of a simple EM decorative rare; either eaten or not, because it doesn't provide any greater utility once the wider mechanic becomes available. With the way the rules always have been in the past, and with a 15 year anniversary coming up, I suspect this may have been the actual plan. What the Dev Team simply missed the community reaction to the bonus being available in limited runs in the short term, because they thought the community would be more intelligent than that.
Now me, I'm at heart a cynical realist. I would have put the Scroll as the clickable reward at the end rather than the Blackthorn Book. Because I would not only expect people to be disappointed they didn't get the far more personal reward, but I also would expect the usual idiocy of people who merely won a lottery, from a ticket they didn't even have to purchase to think it proves something special about them, as narcissists always do; whilst those who genuinely valued the lore to get reamed by bad luck as good people always do. And because it's a new gaming mechanic, I'd want as many people to be guinea pigs for the new changes... whilst getting a dyed black book changes nothing, so leave that as the decorative rare again.
So I'd have planned for the
worst. But the game play experience would probably have been better for it overall if they had done so too.
Now as I've already shown, the event failed on the level of actually rewarding those who played for in game role-play reasons; and if you actually believed that argument, you'd have argued for a dispenser for all those who were
actually there too. The reason you don't, like most people who have to take their self worth from creating an artificially separated ladder, is because you actually want to argue for that unfairness, now you think you're at a higher rung on said ladder. And attempts to poison the well with comments like "crying" and calling people babies just shows how lacking in integrity you are.
So too does comparing apples to oranges; only the Dread Mare is close to being a good like for like comparison, but I notice you didn't include the Bane Dragon in that argument,
which was specifically an attempt to reintroduce a pet with identical stats to allow people the chance to get that gaming equivalent again. Yes, it has a slightly different attack. And yes, that no longer spawns. But it was an attempt to address the very issue you claim is a constant; that the Devs constantly put in things which remain elitist. And you are objectively, provably wrong, even there. They even announced on the boards here that they were leaving the Bane up this time until they thought anyone who wanted one had had the time to tame one. If you PvP you can have a Dread Mare equivalent now, if you wanted one.
And as one of the few people on my shard who bothered to tame a really good Bane (the public strangely took against them, despite them being the best rideable in game now) and who also had the at first very rare recipe to cook their food, you can search my posts here and see
I argued that they should remain available for everyone. And the recipe WAS patched back in, remember? I used to make a fortune off Bane food. I don't now. And it's good that I don't. You see, the hilarious thing is, the very people who talk about "self sufficiency" and "self reliance" usually NEED other people to not be able to look after themselves so they can feel smug about themselves... me? I worked to make myself self sufficient, and then argued that other people should have that right too.
Where I would criticize the Devs again is that they ever took the Dragon itself out. And again, they were thinking positively... "Oh, people positively act, so if they wanted one, they'd go and get one! No one is taming them now, so everyone who wanted one has one!" Where as I'd say "People are largely herd animals, and they all agreed for some reason that Bane were bad, even though the stats are right there to look at; and no one wants to be seen on what is seen as a bad pet. But then again, 'designer wellies' are currently fashionable, and before that, Ugg Boots, so there's no accounting for taste at all. Leave the Bane up and when decent people see past the trend, or fashions come around again to be occasionally realistic, people have the option to change their mind."
Are +5 Stats as irrelevant as 'designer wellies' though? If they were, would you have spent 200m on them, and be so determined to try and prevent any one else having them now? Really? You honestly don't think anyone can see through that? Of course it's a positive improvement. However small is not the issue; in a world where aggressive ("muddy funsters" - Ed.) take advantage of every tiny little advantage possible, people instinctively know they can't really leave any small advantages on the table... they don't particularly want to be constantly policing the fairness of the game, or anything else, but the ("pushing and shoving is the purpose of Barge Poles" - Ed) constantly prove that without a policeman of some kind, life rapidly ends up as hell on earth for most decent people. Just like Ultima Online proved when it was first released... and why 15 years later you've still got the same exhausting attempts to re-write this game's history and claim it was a libertarian utopia, rather than Somalia Online as it really was for most. And the result? We got Trammel. It's why there
had to be Trammel.
And hopefully, if the Devs still have sense, there's a +5 stat boost for all coming down the pipe for everyone. Because struggle against it as you selfishly do, ultimately it
has to be.
