Hail Siege!
Today I finished the last page of my current Siege Perilous journal. For most of my life I have maintained various journals and UO has been no different. I kept journals documenting the number and colors of Cu Sidhes tamed in my quest to get a blaze, journals documenting number of ships scuttled and type and quantity of loot obtained, etc. etc.
When [B^A] dissolved several years ago Talia and I were still playing together with occasional drop-ins from Vinny and Igg. She and I and Vinny decided to start a new guild with a focus on collecting old items and stories from the shard's colorful past. This became the Siege Perilous Historical Society [SPHS], and to commemorate the new start I naturally began a new Siege journal. Closing it out this morning, I read through it again and thought a few of you might be interested in the numbers:
Date Started: January 24, 2017
Date Ended: April 25, 2019
154 total entries (I tended to summarize a weekend's worth of activity into one entry)
Peerless encounters recorded:
Shimmering Effusion = 22 (actually did several more than this but stopped recording them, took me ten tries to get the Crystalline Ring)
Lady Mel = 14
Travesty = 3
Navery = 13
Medusa = 28 (got my second Sliver, Talia and I really streamlined this encounter and kick ass here)
Monstrous Interred Grizzle = 6
Exodus = 3
Harrower = 2 (once with Eschelle, Max, Parium and myself successfully fighting off Virem, once uncontested with the Orcs and UWSP)
Zippy = 2 (once with just Talia, but we finally got there)
Myrmidex Queen = 1 (failed to defeat her, the quest is still open on my toon)
Shadowguard Roof = 5
Champ Spawns recorded:
The Piper = 8
Neira = 3
Dragon Turtle = 2
Rikktor = 1
Tuolo = 1
Corgul = 3
Other statistics:
* Farmed 36 smugglers lanterns with the Smuggler's Edge
* Farmed 300 minax artifacts
* Participated in 5 IDOCs
* Interviewed 11 players for the Peerage of Siege Perilous series
* Murdered uncountable Solen Queens (was a low stress activity I could do when on medical leave)
* Attended Tanager and Magichand's wedding
* Participated in 2 Orc Fort defenses (Awesome fun!)
Also during this time I recorded the following non-arena deaths:
1. PK'ed by Baal once (attempting to help him with a Piper champ the day our guilds joined an alliance)
2. PK'ed by Siege Perilous twice (once when I attacked him in Blackthorn's [so not really a PK I guess], once when he killed me after I helped him kill one of the Demon Berserkers at the Moonglow event)
3. PK'ed by Bo twice (caught me finishing a spawn in the Lost Lands, found my hidden toon in Khaldun camp while I was in the bathroom)
4. PK'ed by Astyanax during the annual Halloween dungeon event
5. PK'ed by Hey Arnold during a Town Invasion (I tried to help Bo while they were fighting)
I was surprised to see no PKs by Max because I ran into him way more than any of the others combined, but either I didn't mark it down or I stayed slippery enough to escape. I remember him chasing me about a zillion times in Khaldun but he was always good natured about it. Really none of the PKs stand out as bad encounters with the exception of Siege waiting until we finished the Berserker to get me. Come on bro, we had a moment there, don't ruin it!
Those statistics are all conservative. There are weeks-long periods where I didn't record my activities at all, but continued to play.
Other notable encounters:
1. On at least three different occasions Cherokee caught me flat footed and could have easily killed me, but instead told me it wasn't safe there (others were around) and to be careful. On a fourth occasion I was still trying to dodge the VICE folks enough to get a Demon Scythe off the Berserkers at Moonglow and was having zero luck (and losing a suit to SP, noted above). Mentioned it to a UWSP player in the vicinity of Cherokee, who then left and brought one back for me to have. I have a lot of respect for him after seeing his interactions with a lot of players.
2. [NOOB] came and went, and [NEW] returned. Tanager may have been the single player I interacted the most with aside from Talia over the past two years, if only because she always seemed to be in chat when I was online.
3. I farmed a lot of Blackthorn's Dungeon. When my mother-in-law was battling brain cancer I have several entries of me just mindlessly farming while sitting in the room with her and my wife. When I started farming the Captains I only ever encountered Max or Cherokee (both rarely). I think for a few weeks Max was farming the Captains in the morning and I would log on at night and pick up where he left off.
4. The period this journal covers encompasses EM Kincaid's time on the shard. I was so salty about this at first, but looking back through the journal at some of the events he created I think that he has turned out to be a great EM. The Moonglow Invasion is still my favorite EM event ever, because he left it up for two weeks and folks could get Planeswords and Planeshields to their hearts' content.
5. The journal also covers the period of the initial formation of VICE, the emergence of UWSP as a major guild, the withdrawal of GIL from public interaction as the shard's lead guild, and the return of (if only temporarily) the Orcs to Siege. Several journal entries highlight the personality conflicts in the initial consolidation of VICE and the fracturing of that alliance into a smaller and more hardcore group of players. Of particular sadness to me were the entries where Vinny and Bo couldn't stop infighting with each other, resulting in Vinny leaving the shard, and soon after Talia and I leaving VICE. That whole episode sucked.
6. I started, and then stopped a few months later, writing up monthly summaries of activity on Siege for posting on Stratics. I like to think these were responsible for bringing several players to the shard. At least for a while I assumed Freja's role as the Siege Cheerleader on those forums.
7. Garth, Talia, and I hosted a fishing tourney when [SPHS] first formed with the intent to do annual ones for both fishing and hunting and keep shard records for each. When EM Kincaid started doing his own fishing tourny I became discouraged. I felt like he could support a different kind of event, one that players could not do unaided, and there was no need to fill a gap on the fishing contests since we had it covered. So in my journal the tourny is recorded as being initially fun but ending in disappointment. As Kincaid's version wound down over the months I will give Creeger credit, he picked up the slack and has at least tried to maintain a shard record over time. Good for you man!
8. General Chat became the Siege Perilous (SO KAWAII!) Color Commentary channel. The whole dynamic of GC changed over these two years. I miss the lively and lighthearted banter in GC between everyone (even Hoffs from time to time). While the player Siege Perilous is controversial, I admit I laugh at least once a day to something he says in GC, so it isn't like there is a complete silence now. But overall the shard seems to have lost that collective chatter of amiability. Fewer folks participate (guilty myself) and those that do have fewer instances of ** friendly ** picking at 'the other side'. Bo was a lot easier to stomach with his 3rd person machismo when there would be 10 or 15 people all cracking at each other, but when there are two others it becomes a bit much, quick. Now that I write that I think I may have blocked the Bo a few months back...which would have been crazy for me to do when the journal started two+ years ago.
So I will shelve this journal with the others. Not sure what direction to go with the next one. In all honesty the last few months on Siege have not been super fun for me (with the exception of practicing PvP with Igg prior to going to Iceland, that was a blast). I stay out of General Chat for the most part, and realized earlier this week that two of my toons had not been logged in in a few weeks. I have lost all interest in pursuing the Peerage interviews. I only have about 100,000 doubloons on Siege, but I've collected 4x that amount on prodo. So we'll see. Hope everyone is doing well, safe travels all!
Today I finished the last page of my current Siege Perilous journal. For most of my life I have maintained various journals and UO has been no different. I kept journals documenting the number and colors of Cu Sidhes tamed in my quest to get a blaze, journals documenting number of ships scuttled and type and quantity of loot obtained, etc. etc.
When [B^A] dissolved several years ago Talia and I were still playing together with occasional drop-ins from Vinny and Igg. She and I and Vinny decided to start a new guild with a focus on collecting old items and stories from the shard's colorful past. This became the Siege Perilous Historical Society [SPHS], and to commemorate the new start I naturally began a new Siege journal. Closing it out this morning, I read through it again and thought a few of you might be interested in the numbers:
Date Started: January 24, 2017
Date Ended: April 25, 2019
154 total entries (I tended to summarize a weekend's worth of activity into one entry)
Peerless encounters recorded:
Shimmering Effusion = 22 (actually did several more than this but stopped recording them, took me ten tries to get the Crystalline Ring)
Lady Mel = 14
Travesty = 3
Navery = 13
Medusa = 28 (got my second Sliver, Talia and I really streamlined this encounter and kick ass here)
Monstrous Interred Grizzle = 6
Exodus = 3
Harrower = 2 (once with Eschelle, Max, Parium and myself successfully fighting off Virem, once uncontested with the Orcs and UWSP)
Zippy = 2 (once with just Talia, but we finally got there)
Myrmidex Queen = 1 (failed to defeat her, the quest is still open on my toon)
Shadowguard Roof = 5
Champ Spawns recorded:
The Piper = 8
Neira = 3
Dragon Turtle = 2
Rikktor = 1
Tuolo = 1
Corgul = 3
Other statistics:
* Farmed 36 smugglers lanterns with the Smuggler's Edge
* Farmed 300 minax artifacts
* Participated in 5 IDOCs
* Interviewed 11 players for the Peerage of Siege Perilous series
* Murdered uncountable Solen Queens (was a low stress activity I could do when on medical leave)
* Attended Tanager and Magichand's wedding
* Participated in 2 Orc Fort defenses (Awesome fun!)
Also during this time I recorded the following non-arena deaths:
1. PK'ed by Baal once (attempting to help him with a Piper champ the day our guilds joined an alliance)
2. PK'ed by Siege Perilous twice (once when I attacked him in Blackthorn's [so not really a PK I guess], once when he killed me after I helped him kill one of the Demon Berserkers at the Moonglow event)
3. PK'ed by Bo twice (caught me finishing a spawn in the Lost Lands, found my hidden toon in Khaldun camp while I was in the bathroom)
4. PK'ed by Astyanax during the annual Halloween dungeon event
5. PK'ed by Hey Arnold during a Town Invasion (I tried to help Bo while they were fighting)
I was surprised to see no PKs by Max because I ran into him way more than any of the others combined, but either I didn't mark it down or I stayed slippery enough to escape. I remember him chasing me about a zillion times in Khaldun but he was always good natured about it. Really none of the PKs stand out as bad encounters with the exception of Siege waiting until we finished the Berserker to get me. Come on bro, we had a moment there, don't ruin it!
Those statistics are all conservative. There are weeks-long periods where I didn't record my activities at all, but continued to play.
Other notable encounters:
1. On at least three different occasions Cherokee caught me flat footed and could have easily killed me, but instead told me it wasn't safe there (others were around) and to be careful. On a fourth occasion I was still trying to dodge the VICE folks enough to get a Demon Scythe off the Berserkers at Moonglow and was having zero luck (and losing a suit to SP, noted above). Mentioned it to a UWSP player in the vicinity of Cherokee, who then left and brought one back for me to have. I have a lot of respect for him after seeing his interactions with a lot of players.
2. [NOOB] came and went, and [NEW] returned. Tanager may have been the single player I interacted the most with aside from Talia over the past two years, if only because she always seemed to be in chat when I was online.
3. I farmed a lot of Blackthorn's Dungeon. When my mother-in-law was battling brain cancer I have several entries of me just mindlessly farming while sitting in the room with her and my wife. When I started farming the Captains I only ever encountered Max or Cherokee (both rarely). I think for a few weeks Max was farming the Captains in the morning and I would log on at night and pick up where he left off.
4. The period this journal covers encompasses EM Kincaid's time on the shard. I was so salty about this at first, but looking back through the journal at some of the events he created I think that he has turned out to be a great EM. The Moonglow Invasion is still my favorite EM event ever, because he left it up for two weeks and folks could get Planeswords and Planeshields to their hearts' content.
5. The journal also covers the period of the initial formation of VICE, the emergence of UWSP as a major guild, the withdrawal of GIL from public interaction as the shard's lead guild, and the return of (if only temporarily) the Orcs to Siege. Several journal entries highlight the personality conflicts in the initial consolidation of VICE and the fracturing of that alliance into a smaller and more hardcore group of players. Of particular sadness to me were the entries where Vinny and Bo couldn't stop infighting with each other, resulting in Vinny leaving the shard, and soon after Talia and I leaving VICE. That whole episode sucked.
6. I started, and then stopped a few months later, writing up monthly summaries of activity on Siege for posting on Stratics. I like to think these were responsible for bringing several players to the shard. At least for a while I assumed Freja's role as the Siege Cheerleader on those forums.
7. Garth, Talia, and I hosted a fishing tourney when [SPHS] first formed with the intent to do annual ones for both fishing and hunting and keep shard records for each. When EM Kincaid started doing his own fishing tourny I became discouraged. I felt like he could support a different kind of event, one that players could not do unaided, and there was no need to fill a gap on the fishing contests since we had it covered. So in my journal the tourny is recorded as being initially fun but ending in disappointment. As Kincaid's version wound down over the months I will give Creeger credit, he picked up the slack and has at least tried to maintain a shard record over time. Good for you man!
8. General Chat became the Siege Perilous (SO KAWAII!) Color Commentary channel. The whole dynamic of GC changed over these two years. I miss the lively and lighthearted banter in GC between everyone (even Hoffs from time to time). While the player Siege Perilous is controversial, I admit I laugh at least once a day to something he says in GC, so it isn't like there is a complete silence now. But overall the shard seems to have lost that collective chatter of amiability. Fewer folks participate (guilty myself) and those that do have fewer instances of ** friendly ** picking at 'the other side'. Bo was a lot easier to stomach with his 3rd person machismo when there would be 10 or 15 people all cracking at each other, but when there are two others it becomes a bit much, quick. Now that I write that I think I may have blocked the Bo a few months back...which would have been crazy for me to do when the journal started two+ years ago.
So I will shelve this journal with the others. Not sure what direction to go with the next one. In all honesty the last few months on Siege have not been super fun for me (with the exception of practicing PvP with Igg prior to going to Iceland, that was a blast). I stay out of General Chat for the most part, and realized earlier this week that two of my toons had not been logged in in a few weeks. I have lost all interest in pursuing the Peerage interviews. I only have about 100,000 doubloons on Siege, but I've collected 4x that amount on prodo. So we'll see. Hope everyone is doing well, safe travels all!
