Mesanna's Halloween Event

[Elenni]

Another paycheck?

Is that you, son???

 

[Smoot]

Recently I wondered what any of us might consider getting the Devs for the holidays this year...it was a novel thought.

ill continue paying their salaries through my subscriptions costs. i hope they appreciate it. in all seriousness, the "gifts" the devs "give" us are paid for game content. its not a gift at all, its bought and paid for by the players.

i liked your story about your kids, but the same principle cant really apply when its a professional setting where we pay $$ for an expected product at some standard level of quality. If you want to get into it, lately that quality has gone way way down. the amount of mistakes, scheduling issues, flat out blunders, lack of basic creativity and spelling, has been on the rise especially this past month for a good number of EMs.

I would have preferred Mesanna had more time to oversee / prevent these problems (doing her job) rather than these so called "gift" appearances.

i apologize if that sounds harsh or cold-hearted, but it had to be said. theres basic expectations that a Rotten Pumpkin just doesnt, and shouldnt, make up for.

 

[Lady Storm]

I know the gift the Whole Dev would like......Not just Mesanna needing to know we are apreciate them no matter if there is a gift or not.
A super BIG Thank You..... to the Dev from my kids and I.

And a big hug to the Dark Lady for being there when we need her...... she does so much and asks so little....


.

 

[Lady Storm]

Smoot ..... no where in the games discription from day one is there a sentence that "gifts" are a part of the given game.
Your subscription pays for the basic game...period.
For 30 days.
Now mind you i dare you to show me where in there it says gifts to be expected as normal game play.....

Yes you were rude and crass.
I say what i see and read sugar, i dont candy coat it.

The Events were contrived to bring a bit more commnity back to the game where it was sorely missing after the past devs mess ups.
We have people who beleave their entitled to these things... dream on

Standard level of quality....... hummmm lets see you signed on when?? I was Beta jr.
We didnt have squat in the ways we do now as a beginner...
100 gold oh yea a newbie dagger scissors and cloths that did nothing to stop the monsters... and said monsters didnt have the amounts of gold todays critters have...
gifts?? omg that first christmas that was a surprise... and again we didnt have every seasonal gift giving there is covered as we do now....

pancake as you might that they owe it to you.... Bull horse pucky they do! yes i am swearing under my breath as i type

Grow up and smell the stench of pampered people who whine at every thought of a slight when they dont get their way.

And if the shoe fits wear it buddy...


.

 

[Merlin]

If this is the reaction the developers are going to get, I would suggest they not even do those types of events anymore. Just have one of the PECs or shard EMs do them. No more rare items with Messanna's name in them.

 

[Elenni]

ill continue paying their salaries through my subscriptions costs. i hope they appreciate it. in all seriousness, the "gifts" the devs "give" us are paid for game content. its not a gift at all, its bought and paid for by the players.

i liked your story about your kids, but the same principle cant really apply when its a professional setting where we pay $$ for an expected product at some standard level of quality. If you want to get into it, lately that quality has gone way way down. the amount of mistakes, scheduling issues, flat out blunders, lack of basic creativity and spelling, has been on the rise especially this past month for a good number of EMs.

I would have preferred Mesanna had more time to oversee / prevent these problems (doing her job) rather than these so called "gift" appearances.

i apologize if that sounds harsh or cold-hearted, but it had to be said. theres basic expectations that a Rotten Pumpkin just doesnt, and shouldnt, make up for.

Maybe I was too subtle, but that is my point: we pay for game development and maintenance with our subscription fees, which is the professional arrangement we have with them. We get an entertaining game to play, we pay a fee to support that service.

The gifts are just that -- extras, and gifts. They are not contracted for, they do not owe it to us...it's just a little something extra they thought to do in between releasing an expansion and all their regular tasks -- some of them personally delivered by a developer or Mesanna in their off hours or whatever time they can spare. It's cool they think to do it, and if I might not personally care for that reindeer sweater I'm certainly not going to tell them it sucks and that if they want a paycheck next month they'd better go back and think of something I'll like better next time.

 

[Tina Small]

Maybe I was too subtle, but that is my point: we pay for game development and maintenance with our subscription fees, which is the professional arrangement we have with them. We get an entertaining game to play, we pay a fee to support that service.

The gifts are just that -- extras, and gifts. They are not contracted for, they do not owe it to us...it's just a little something extra they thought to do in between releasing an expansion and all their regular tasks -- some of them personally delivered by a developer or Mesanna in their off hours or whatever time they can spare. It's cool they think to do it, and if I might not personally care for that reindeer sweater I'm certainly not going to tell them it sucks and that if they want a paycheck next month they'd better go back and think of something I'll like better next time.

Unfortunately, I believe that for many folks these random visits have all the appearance of Mesanna deliberately just gifting yet another "rare" item to a small fraction of the players, i.e., those few people who happen to be logged on and in chat when she shows up on a shard or who might have known about it via other channels ahead of time.

She's done this for years now and I've yet to see anything that convinces me that her intent has ever been to use these events to provide "gifts" to as many UO players as possible.

To Mesanna, these events are probably nothing more than a tool she uses to have nice, positive interactions with loyal and enthusiastic players in semi-controlled situations, i.e., she gets to choose the time and place and to a certain extent who she is going to interact with by seeing who is already logged on before she visits a shard.

I would never call these events an attempt by the dev team to give gifts to as many random players as possible. Giving a gift to a small number of people? Yes, I'd agree you could say that. But giving gifts to "the players of UO" in general? No, not at all. They clearly are NOT designed for that purpose and it's a bit silly to expect people to view them in that way, especially after seeing this style of "event" having gone on for quite a few years now.

 

[mellifluant]

Why not just make event items account bound? Cuts out the overwhelming xsharders, and would only attract participants that are truly interested in the event for fun's sake.

I mean, I don't personally have a problem with xsharding... But since that is the official reason (from Messana's mouth.. er, fingers) for not announcing events... Seems like a logical solution.

 

[Lord Nabin]

I always feel fortunate when ever I happen to run into one of the Devs. It does not happen often.

I feel Mesanna should never announce ahead of time. It would spoil the whole thing.

What would be real cool though is if Mesanna just popped in to some player events or in game player meetings, if only for a few moments. That would be really cool.

I will never forget the time when what's his name (*winks*) showed up at my Iantown pub for some meeting we were having. It was over a decade ago and also the first time I saw a character jump off a roof.

There are lots of things that make up my day. UO is just one of the things I do, and I typically do not schedule game time anymore. I just appreciate it when I can.

*raises a glass of good old Moonglow Red in salute*

Well said my friend

 

[kelmo]

 

[MaryForUo]

Mesanna, Mesanna .... i miss every Mesanna fast event! i find this event ridiculous , how it was handled and the gifts!
You'd do them without special gifts...personally i think the pp that get them are Always the same!

I PAY for this game, is not free and i dont want to see these events anymore! I like the EM Events because are announced and they are fun to play, also without gifts or special items.

you can say anything , but remember that people PAY for this game and that has a "real life" than this game!
It had better not start all over again to play this game....

 

[Uvtha]

Recently I wondered what any of us might consider getting the Devs for the holidays this year...it was a novel thought.

Well, we could continue to renew our subscriptions.

 

[MaryForUo]

Well, we could continue to renew our subscriptions.

Or we could quit

 

[Uvtha]

Or we could quit

Well I'm sure they might see some of us quitting as a gift.

 

[THP]

two words to solve or ar least make the problem a hell of a lot better....''shard bound'' ....puts tin hat on as usual

 

[Merlin]

Or we could quit

If you're going to quit over missing an unannounced visit by a developer, then you are bound to quit at some other point for a different minor inconvenience.

 

[MaryForUo]

If you're going to quit over missing an unannounced visit by a developer, then you are bound to quit at some other point for a different minor inconvenience.

I never say i'm quitting for this, but from when i come back i see this, and this, and this....i make a total, and i dont like it! Simple. Name change, expansion change, but i see and found the same problems of 6/7 years ago...dupers, duped items, ridiculuous handled events, the rich players are billionare now and are always the same. Same bad rules of the game.

If you are a veteran you know what i'm talking about...

I want more for a game that a pay to play, and the fee are high for what i receive and for this game,
So yes, maybe i'll quit again

 

[THP]

again....simple fix or better fix for most people ...deffo this surprise visit and maybe even all events @Mesanna...''shard bound''

 

[Cyrah]

again....simple fix or better fix for most people ...deffo this surprise visit and maybe even all events @Mesanna...''shard bound''

Just curious, has there ever been a reason given for not making all EM, global and Mesanna event items shard bound?

 

[old gypsy]

Just curious, has there ever been a reason given for not making all EM, global and Mesanna event items shard bound?

My guess: With UO's current population, it might not be the time to upset folks that do a lot of cross-shard trading and selling? Many of those items end up on other shards.

 

[Cyrah]

My guess: With UO's current population, it might not be the time to upset folks that do a lot of cross-shard trading and selling?

Oh really? How many are there? Do most players do this?

If it is a large percent then it makes sense.

If only a few it is favoritism.

 

[old gypsy]

Oh really? How many are there? Do most players do this?

If it is a large percent then it makes sense.

If only a few it is favoritism.

I have no idea how many there are. But I suspect it may be a significant number.

 

[Deaol]

Why would they make EM event items shard bound? Defeats the purpose of having transfer tokens & shard shields. The new stealable items & primers make sense being shard bound, as they promote local economy, but everyone knows that the EM events are 75% xsharders and 25% local population. (on most shards, atl being the exception of course) And I am one for keeping em items on the home shard BUT we all know that is not realistic with the current player base.

 

[MalagAste]

Used to be you would see folk 24/7 script mining or scripting lumberjacking..... Why? Because that was where the money was... accounts with fully trained characters on Ebay....

You couldn't script the Powerscrolls... but you could dupe them and dupe them they did or they controlled PvP and used trickle down economics to fund keeping the scrolls to themselves and controlling prices of them... because that was where the money was ....... and I"m not talking about Gold.... I'm talking about RL money.

Owning a house in Luna, Castles, Keeps etc... on heavily populated shards.

Now all the "money" is in rares trading. Because certain rares collectors will pay top DOLLAR for them...

So now they have found ways to make a RL buck and that is why you see bunches of people at the events and that's why people have found ways to exploit getting the drops like multiboxing.

So.... Why are all these people there... it's income.

Stop the senselessness and make the crap shard bound already and make them look somewhere else to earn their dollars... preferably ruining some other game.

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

The majority of the people opposed to shard bound EM drops are the ones that carry them back to Atlantic to sell. I certainly favor making them shard bound. The offsharders can sell the items on the home shard and carry the gold back to Atlantic to sell for r/l money.

There are far more 'regular' players than 'rares' dealers. Watch the rares forum for a while and you'll get a good sense of who is who.

 

[Deaol]

The majority of the people opposed to shard bound EM drops are the ones that carry them back to Atlantic to sell. I certainly favor making them shard bound. The offsharders can sell the items on the home shard and carry the gold back to Atlantic to sell for r/l money.There are far more 'regular' players than 'rares' dealers. Watch the rares forum for a while and you'll get a good sense of who is who.

Where did you pull that stat from lol. My main is sonoma, keep all my sonoma items on sonoma and even buy sonoma em items else where and bring them back. You make rares collectors sound like a bunch of money greedy horrible people lol.

 

[Lord Frodo]

While it may be great for a lot of players to make more and more things Shard Bound it makes very little sense to do this from a business point of view, how much money do you think EA is willing to lose in Xfer sales to do this? Yes I hate that the Dark Lady makes more and more rares and that it really feels that the same people get them all the time but EA is not going to lose money because we (yes me too) get butt hurt over it. Sorry EA is here to make money not lose it. REALITY SUCKS THE BIG ONE.

 

[old gypsy]

While it may be great for a lot of players to make more and more things Shard Bound it makes very little sense to do this from a business point of view, how much money do you think EA is willing to lose in Xfer sales to do this? Yes I hate that the Dark Lady makes more and more rares and that it really feels that the same people get them all the time but EA is not going to lose money because we (yes me too) get butt hurt over it. Sorry EA is here to make money not lose it. REALITY SUCKS THE BIG ONE.

Personally, I tend to agree in principle with those who would like to see more items made shard-bound. However, if doing that were to result in losing any more players/subscriptions, I would definitely not want to see that happen.

 

[THP]

TO START WITH my arguement was intially aimed at the mesanna 'secret' shard drops..were she just turns up and the few that are online get the booty...they should be shard bound as to be honest...if she did turn up then the only players online on that shard really 95% would be that shard players so shard bound would mean nothing to them as the item would 95% stay on shard

AND plz dont start threateening the olde..ill quit if they make it shard bound crap...players would not leave if items were made shard bound
if they did...they would have a lot a lotta items to sell b4 they left...and if thats how they felt then so be it.

BECAUSE shard bound would still allow them to do events on every shard like they do now....But then only sell for gold on that bound shard...just they would get a lot less as the home players would then dictate how much they wanted to pay rather than the xsharders insisting how much they should pay..

lovely thoughts to ponder though.....

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

While it may be great for a lot of players to make more and more things Shard Bound it makes very little sense to do this from a business point of view, how much money do you think EA is willing to lose in Xfer sales to do this? Yes I hate that the Dark Lady makes more and more rares and that it really feels that the same people get them all the time but EA is not going to lose money because we (yes me too) get butt hurt over it. Sorry EA is here to make money not lose it. REALITY SUCKS THE BIG ONE.

Based on my observations of the trade boards, I'd venture to say EA is making little to no money from Transfer token sales to the x-sharders. Most of the x-sharders use shard shields to get around. If they don't have a shard shield, they "catch a ride" from someone else.

 

[Pandora Spocks]

Equality would be nice .... If everyone can't participate, why do it at all. .....

 

[Lord Frodo]

Equality would be nice .... If everyone can't participate, why do it at all. .....

BOOM!!!

 

[Smoot]

Oh really? How many are there? Do most players do this?

If it is a large percent then it makes sense.

If only a few it is favoritism.

from my experience trading in EM items, about 30 to 40 percent of total players at least dabble in them. (a few deco items at house, or wearables for a banksitter) the ones that would be effected the most, rares collectors and "eventers" are a much lower number, but generally have higher account numbers than average. this core group of who it would effect may only be 80 - 150 people (just guessing) but account numbers are probably around 1000.

 

[Elenni]

Strange how a gift thread turned into a discussion about cross-sharding, but I suppose it was a bit inevitable.

The true collector will want to display a favored item on whatever shard is their home, which I totally get...but I will say that it also seems a bit silly to have to go create a starter toon to buy a collectible or deco item on ATL and then pay or ask someone to ship it back to its original home shard

So yeah...maybe with UO's diminished population the time has come to spread the cross-sharding love around a bit, even if it's a limited grant for accounts that are less than 14 (consecutive) years old. $40 for each round-trip is way too much when it might benefit the entire player-base for us all to be less shard-bound.

 

[Tina Small]

from my experience trading in EM items, about 30 to 40 percent of total players at least dabble in them. (a few deco items at house, or wearables for a banksitter) the ones that would be effected the most, rares collectors and "eventers" are a much lower number, but generally have higher account numbers than average. this core group of who it would effect may only be 80 - 150 people (just guessing) but account numbers are probably around 1000.

Do you think Broadsword has ever tried to figure out the number of UO accounts there are per IP address/household and then tried to determine which of those IP addresses are most often logged in on specific shards during EM events? In other words, do you think they've ever tried to figure out how many households/IP addresses regularly participate in EM events vs. how many households/IP addresses don't participate in such events in order to determine if the EM program is an effective "live events" mechanism for UO today? Is it actually serving as meaningful entertainment for a significant portion of the game's current subscriber base or just a small portion of it?

 

[Smoot]

@Tina Small Im guessing most likely not. i dont think they do much with IPs at all. Dont IP ban cheaters anymore (at least thats one of the excuses used for not IP banning repeat cheaters)

it would be interesting to know the numbers but doubt that would be something made public even if it were known. i can really only guess at any numbers from what i see, and who i know. after attending many events, you get to know which players are running 2-5 accounts each, and which players are most likely home-sharders.

that being said, overall i think its a pretty significant number. home-sharders can be anywhere from 0 (on dead shards like arirang) to 80ish (atlantic, and the most active japanese shards) average id say is around 20 per shard. So maybe over 200 casual players who only play 1 to 3 shards, then the regular eventers (like myself) total another 30-40ish. but what you have to keep in mind is that its not just the actual people attending the events, its also the people who dont attend events at all, but enjoy buying the items. the biggest buyers are pumping billions into the UO economy every week, making it possible for that home shard player to get a drop, sell it, and make more gold than they probably could have made in 6 months of daily playing. Just that fact is reason enough to consider people who dont attend events, but who buy the items as being valued players / accounts to the overall EM program. "Eventing" is so casual now (as designed by mesanna) that someone can come back to the game after 10 years, log into an event with no gear upgrades (or no gear / skills at all) and have a decent chance at getting something worth alot of gold. This also cuts down on the need for returning players to buy gold, which i think is a good thing.

anyway just my thoughts. basically, i think the EM program involves so many people in one aspect or another that the cost (which i assume is relatively nominal) should be "worth it"

 

[MissEcho]

Just as a matter of interest, what shards has this 'mesanna' event happened on?

My beef with them is it seems to be very selective, so am just intereted in where they happen.

 

[Dot_Warner]

Great Lake's was on October 10th, directly after (though, tangentially a part of, story wise) an EM event involving the juvenile Platinum and Crimson dragons that live in Yew.

 

[Larisa]

Unfortunately I missed the Origin event AGAIN! kicks real life stuff


BUT my guildmates said that she popped in, was very nice, announced she was putting a gate up and left it up for 10 minutes...which is plenty of time for the people ONLINE at the time to get there.

No time to call in friends/x-sharders etc. which I like!

Okay this new format thing is irritating....

Anyway...I think the events she does are nice, special and should remain as they are....even though I've missed every single one I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you @Mesanna for taking the time out of your extremely busy schedule to do things like this for your playerbase.

 

[Cyrah]

Unfortunately I missed the Origin event AGAIN! kicks real life stuff


BUT my guildmates said that she popped in, was very nice, announced she was putting a gate up and left it up for 10 minutes...which is plenty of time for the people ONLINE at the time to get there.

No time to call in friends/x-sharders etc. which I like!

Okay this new format thing is irritating....

Anyway...I think the events she does are nice, special and should remain as they are....even though I've missed every single one I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thank you @Mesanna for taking the time out of your extremely busy schedule to do things like this for your playerbase.

I am sorry you missed it. Ten minutes is plenty of time for the network. Plenty.

 

[Slayvite]

From what I can gather we didn't even get one on Europa.......So it's gonna cost over 100million to get a purple pumpkin there :/

 

[Cyrah]

Fate
Waited all month and tonight she showed on my adopted shard and on my born on shard she did yesterday. Missed both.

O ' well. I had a chance to buy a black, did not as like a blue dragon more. It is a very nice pumpkin though. Congrats to all who made the gate.

 

[axegum]

wait so the event consisted of mesanna only opening the gate for 10 minutes, if you were too late too bad so sad the gate closed, and then you stand in a line waiting for her to give you a pumpkin? Wow what a great event to allow people who were on in a 10 minute time frame to get an item where they can sell for millions. Why did she close the gate after 10 minutes? does she want the item to be some uber rare where you can sell for miillions because you stood in line?? I just don't get it ,pretty disgusting behavior by mesanna.

 

[MalagAste]

wait so the event consisted of mesanna only opening the gate for 10 minutes, if you were too late too bad so sad the gate closed, and then you stand in a line waiting for her to give you a pumpkin? Wow what a great event to allow people who were on in a 10 minute time frame to get an item where they can sell for millions. Why did she close the gate after 10 minutes? does she want the item to be some uber rare where you can sell for miillions because you stood in line?? I just don't get it ,pretty disgusting behavior by mesanna.

The gate is up in 10 min because if she left it open every greedy SoB from every shard would be there in such a frenzy she'd never be "done". I understand the reasoning.... but honestly I think having one clicky that gave a rare chance at getting the "good" reward left up for a 7 day period would be more endearing and cause less discontent amongst the masses... While I do understand she enjoys interacting with folk in something fun instead of the Meet and Greets where she hears nothing but I want, I want, and blame and such... I almost wonder if it does her more harm than good. She might be better off giving the winners a temporary Title rather than a physical object and leave the items to clickies. Maybe she might consider a different reward for winning like temporarily changing your appearance. Turning the loosers into Zombies for a week and giving the winners a choice of what to look like. Then it would be easy to see who played.... who won and who lost... and there would be nothing to "sell" and fuel the greed and discontent.

 

[Slayvite]

Or just make them 1 item per Char per Account like other stuff they have ingame.

Why should only a few have a chance at a pretty reward and others that aren't shard tourists (id call them something else nasty but were a Teen rated game now...) I really think that shard transfers have killed the last moral fibre of UO.

 

[Flutter]

wait so the event consisted of mesanna only opening the gate for 10 minutes, if you were too late too bad so sad the gate closed, and then you stand in a line waiting for her to give you a pumpkin? Wow what a great event to allow people who were on in a 10 minute time frame to get an item where they can sell for millions. Why did she close the gate after 10 minutes? does she want the item to be some uber rare where you can sell for miillions because you stood in line?? I just don't get it ,pretty disgusting behavior by mesanna.

Uh you know she's doing this on every single shard right? lol
It's going to be far from rare.

 

[MaryForUo]

wait so the event consisted of mesanna only opening the gate for 10 minutes, if you were too late too bad so sad the gate closed, and then you stand in a line waiting for her to give you a pumpkin? Wow what a great event to allow people who were on in a 10 minute time frame to get an item where they can sell for millions. Why did she close the gate after 10 minutes? does she want the item to be some uber rare where you can sell for miillions because you stood in line?? I just don't get it ,pretty disgusting behavior by mesanna.

you know....Mesanna have THE POWER!!
she can do everything she like and when she like...
....and we, the players, have to accept all she do without complain...!

At last i have only 2 months left, before quitting again and deleting chars forever.
I come back, but if i have to be honest, before was better then now
i'm disgusted, cant say more!

bye and stay with uo until the end collecting your pixels

 

[petemage]

Mesanna favoring a small group of players. Please tell me something new. How hard can it be to give everyone a fair chance?

 

[axegum]

Uh you know she's doing this on every single shard right? lol
It's going to be far from rare.

If you actually believe that it isn't going to be a rare explain to me why she only gave 10 minutes for you to go in a gate and get the item? Everyone else is saying so shard hoppers don't get it, well guess what that makes it more rare.

 

[Angel of Sonoma]

Uh you know she's doing this on every single shard right? lol
It's going to be far from rare.

i guess that's why they are selling for 175 mil on the rares forum.