Sirken Live! Ventrilo Interview on stream 6:30 EST

[fuark]

Originally Posted by Tiggles [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

casual trash

Been waiting for this thread to turn into something worth reading...

Btw why do all the GMs seem to be in love with this guy? I've never seen him be anything but offensive as hell on the forums and freak the fuck out in tells with people.

[Splorf22]

Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting? Or are you not aware of the rumors surrounding Tiggles and certain previous GMs?

[fuark]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting? Or are you not aware of the rumors surrounding Tiggles and certain previous GMs?

Nope wasn't suggesting anything. Genuinely curious. Was gone from Project 1999 for quite a while (year and a half?) and only recently returned.

[Briscoe]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Or are you not aware of the rumors surrounding Tiggles and certain previous GMs?

[Nlaar]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting? Or are you not aware of the rumors surrounding Tiggles and certain previous GMs?

The more things change the more they remain the same.

When is the TMO & GM Staff summer BBQ again? I think I lost my invite. I swear we'll avoid the Trichinosis outbreak this time around.

[Ruenaros]

1 hour 23 minutes? oi. where's the TL;DW?

[Tiddlywinks]

Originally Posted by fuark [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nope wasn't suggesting anything. Genuinely curious. Was gone from Project 1999 for quite a while (year and a half?) and only recently returned.

Here's a quick briefing:

In-game Tiggles is known as "quickfingers". He kept this as a secret to all but a few for as long as possible.

The character, "quickfingers" was provided to him by former-GM "Uthgaard" in return for Tiggles "spying" on the guild "Dark Ascension" a band of the largest hackers/cheaters/exploiters to have ever graced the server.

After his covert-ops affairs he re-joined TMO, whom he had disbanded to join DA for "spying". Shortly after and a couple of re-births later most of the core from Dark Ascension merged with TMO.

Uthgaard was removed as a lead GM, and a lot of dirty things came to light such as the spying scandal, his connections to quickfingers, quickfingers having epic items before they had been implemented etc etc.

Amelinda took Uthgaards place as lead-GM, and was literally Tiggles e-girlfriend. Tiggles and TMO courted her favor to do whatever they wanted on the server. Amelinda was eventually found out to be accepting bribes to look the other way on RMT done by the guild IB as they left the server as well as TMO. This is when it was revealed that Tiggles had been e-dating Amelinda for sometime.

After this period Tiggles took a bit of a break, only to come back to the server ~6months ago. He had lost his job (he claims he is a certified PI that had a state job I believe) and has been working at a games and hobby shop for the last few months, selling kids magics cards and dealing with obese nerds for near minimum wage.

He is very fat, poor, and believes him-self some sort of P99 e-celebrity. He is now courting Sirkens favor.

Sirken, if Tiggles has proven anything other than the fact that he somehow has not been banned from all of this shit, it is that he has ended many a lead-GM career. Proceed with EXTREME caution.

[falkun]

Note all "quotes" are paraphrased, but I attempted to capture the essence of what was said that I wish to comment on.

~9m45s: Sirken: "Players need to dictate the raid scene"
Players can only be forced to follow the bare minimum rules. This is why you see Knix asking questions about FTE shout changing the mechanics of FTE. This is why we have the shitty raid scene we have (a certain guild cannot be held to follow any rules above those dictated by CSR).

FTE shout is fantastic for self-moderation, I'm glad its getting implemented and I hope it saves you many hours, Sirken & CSR co.

But players are horrible at dictating the raid scene. This is why the server is as shitty as it is, this is why other MMOs have gone to non-interference instances.

How can the majority of the server dictate the raid scene when the barrier to entry is absolutely insane:
1) Variance encourages absolutely insane guild sizes.
2) Old accounts seldom leave the game, they just get new owners.
3) Droppable/MQable BIS means farming raid spawns never becomes a waste of time.
4) Server rules infractions receive slaps on the wrist. With the extended variance (using 200 hours into window VS spawn), a two week raid ban could cause a guild to miss only a SINGLE spawn and that guild would come off raid-ban before the mob even went into window again. That's a single mob out of the ~50 that will spawn in the year.
5) A single person can steal legitimate kills from other guilds with "the fastest jav in the West".
6) "Respectable raid sizes" for P99 are 40-50, all L60 with near BIS gear. Everquest: Kunark was originally tuned for 18-30 (3-5 groups) with an average L54-57 with lesser gear. Even classic Velious wasn't tuned for the "respectable raids" we see here on P99.

~12m15s: Tiggles: "Minimums should be set for all current raid mobs for FTE."
Sirken: "What if a guild has bigger balls and wants to attempt with less?"
Thanks Sirken. Last BDA/Rapture/Divinity Talendor was 22 persons. TMO's Talendor yesterday had 35+. Now we know who has the balls.

~16m45s: Tiggles: "Variance in Velious?"
Are you going to variance Vindi, who's an 8-hr spawn but a small raid mob?

~17m20s: Sirken: "Variance is good for the server"
Variance benefits one type of guild, the super large guild. Nilbog posts the question, "Why so large raid guilds?" and then permits additional variance...What's the disconnect? Can you elaborate on why Variance is better when CSR uses FTE to solve everything anyways? If everyone showed up when things spawned, FTE shout will take care of who gets loot anyways. You, Sirken, said earlier that you want players to dictate the raid scene, yet we are limited in policing ourselves because Variance dictates when the policing can happen (players' greatest recourse in dictating the raid scene is denying other players spawns).

~19m0s: Sirken: "If variance didn't exist, TMO would push mobs into off-hours"
1) That's why you have server resets, to move mobs back into normal windows.
2) Even if its off-hours, if people know when something is going to spawn, they can plan ahead. You can't plan ahead for Variance other than pre-camping and playing an alt.
3) "Any single guild can show up and get Trakanon." Pre-camping sucks. Most spawns are inherently off-hours ANYWAY because "on-hour" is a short window in US evenings (~4-11PM PST, give or take). So now the off-hour spawns are TMO's, and the on-hour ones are TMO's because no-one else bothers to pre-camp and TMO does. Without Variance at least people might consider showing up to the on-hour ones and TMO would still have the off-hour ones uncontested.

~20m15s: Sirken: "Or a guild can poopsock a mob and hope you guys [TMO] aren't there for it."
If its a mob TMO wants, they'll just come join the sock. Poopsocking just forces more people to poop in their sock, its a sick cycle.

~20m30s: Sirken: "Without variance guilds could only kill mobs TMO allowed them because TMO could push mobs to off-hours."
Most spawns already are off-hours, without TMO going through the effort of pushing them there, thanks server devs for making TMO's job easier. Guilds could plan ahead if they knew when things were going to spawn, even off-hours. I'm sure the 14 BDA, 7 Divinity, and 5 Rapture that are usually on at 3AM could work something out where they split loot at the Sev that's going to spawn at 3:15 if they had a few days to make those arrangements. 1 loot per guild is better than no loot, or worse, having TMO sell you that loot the next day. Also, with even monthly server resets (still fewer than classic), mob spawns wouldn't get pushed by more than 2 hours (figure half hour to kill a mob for 4 weeks (and that's being generous if everyone knew when the spawn time was going to be)).

~22m00s: Sirken: "Nihilum keeps mobs on lockdown by pushing mob spawn times."
1) Nihilum can do that because no other guild(s) bother to kill the target. I doubt any target would stay up for more than 12 hours even if TMO didn't kill a single mob, even with current variance. There is more competition on Blue, people will come if they know the mob is up. Evidence: the last time TMO was suspended, the only targets to stay up days were Naggy and Vox because BDA said they'd leave them up indefinitely. BDA eventually led an open raid on Naggy and Vox. All other targets were killed within 3-4 hours of spawning, even with variance.
2) Nihilum can do that because nothing resets spawn times. Everyone championing "no variance" is ALSO championing "server resets." You can't push a spawn time way out if it comes back to some known value once per {some defined interval}.

~26m30s: Sirken: "No-CSR limits in ST/ToV have not been discussed yet."
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...85&postcount=2
Non-CSR does not mean 'anarchy reigns' as it currently does in VP.

~29m00s: Sirken: "Server repops have been greenlit by staff."
Fantastic to hear. And that would help keep respawns in line without variance.

~31m20s: Sirken: "Some of staff are advocating for a piecemeal release of Velious (Withhold ToV, PoG, for later)."
This is already going to happen. There's a single flashpoint in Velious that all content will get locked behind because each player needs to gather materials to pass past that point. If you thought Chancellor was bad, wait until you release Velious. Also, Kunark is two years old and people are yearning for something different. Velious does a wonderful job of splitting up the raid scene by offering different tiers due to factioning and difficulty. Since the raid scene is an admitted shithole, why would you want to artificially prevent allowing the tiered raiding to do its intended job? Please explain the advantages of piecemeal release, the only possible advantage I could see at this point is that X is complete, but there is still some work to do on Y and Z, so those will get released later.

{edit}Ambrotos believes piecemeal Kunark (VP's later release date) damaged the raid scene: http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...00&postcount=2. Piecemeal is not the way to release Velious.{/edit}

~38m30s: Sirken: "Piecemeal release of Velious would allow it to last longer."
Fair enough.
As you quote Nilbog though, its not Classic. And it defeats the tiered purpose of the raid difficulties and factions.

~41m00s: Sirken: "Guilds that do not want Sleeper woken will have to prevent that. Assuming ST is non-CSR (which Sirken is leaning towards), you can train people."
Taking Zeelot's word for ST (I've never personally seen ST), that won't matter much. The latter half of ST, where the warders are, has little trash, so training is difficult. Also, TMO are already very proficient at counter-training in VP, if they wanted to wake the Sleeper, I don't think its difficult to draw the conclusion they'll be able to counter train in ST to accomplish their goal. While I understand waking the Sleeper has benefits (different items), its also going to be whatever outgoing guild's "Fuck you" to the server. "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

~42m30s: Sirken: "We've taken over 2 billion plat from Platlord."
Ephi, the Seventh Hammer. Good to hear P99 staff, thanks for the effort in that!

~46min: Sirken: "Uthgaard was really good at GM events."
Is that stuff super hard to code? How much of it was coded ahead of time and how much was on-the-spot GM command "#spawnmobnow" type deal? You also said Rogean is the only person with that kind of access these days and I've read elsewhere that access has become more divided so people cannot game the server/system (as much). Is there a method by which a person could become "GM event"-only GM, should a person want to do that? Or since Uthgaard's departure that would not be possible due to the divided dev/GM/etc. powers? What would be the best route to pursue that course of server-support if a person wanted to?

~51m: Sirken: "How we caught Platlord."
I don't know if I feel you said too much or if you did a good job at scaring would-be RMTers.

~53m10s: Sirken: "Account trading would be fine if people didn't screw each other over so often."
Account trading is horrible for the server. It keeps old items in the economy longer, it allows players to more swiftly mobilize than porting and running when they can just have a character camped at all the raid encounters. The latter point may be less of an issue in Velious when there's more encounters, but that just means more strategy in deploying accounts.

~57m30s: Sirken: "Stuff beyond classic, all AA code has been ripped out, no Luclin, select PoP zones 'may' be released well beyond Velious."
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=11879

~58m20s: Sirken: "World-changing events. Possibly having lightsaber weapons."
Rogean. But what advantages do lightsabers have, would they be ranged? What type of world-changing events? Like Freeport2.0 (or whatever damn version they're on now)?

~01h00m00s: Sirken: "Stabbyjoe was the one who came clean and provided information about Platlord to CSR."
Just thought it'd be worth putting into my "minutes" of the chat.

~01h02m00s: Sirken: "We don't reveal bans to allow those players a fresh start (3 strikes), we don't want the karma to come back to us (dick pictures on the forums), and Sirken sometimes makes mistakes that you can bring up to him in a civil manner. Some people who get banned send in info that aids staff in better securing the server."
Just thought it'd be worth putting into my "minutes" of the chat.

~01h03m30s: Tiggles: "Perma-bans aren't permanent."
Sirken: "We'll give you a second chance if we feel you won't do it again. Kinsawt is still banned, Sirken denied Kinsawt's appeal, but they can still roll new accounts/characters."
I bet IB would do it again in a heartbeat. I also know there are damaging in-game offenses committed by some players who just keep receiving limp-wristed suspensions. At what point do repeat offenders of non-bannable but suspendable offenses get a player banned? IE: I personally feel Sericx is much more toxic for the server than Kinsawt.

~01h09m00s: Sirken: "I love Gukta frogloks. I never learned U/L-Guk."

~01h12m00s: Sirken: "We are not EQEmu. P99 are a different staff from EQEmu. P99 is the wrong forum to post login server account issues."

~01h19m30s: Sirken: "Only Rogean can undo some bans & why."

End of Interview.


Thank you both for doing the interview. I've added my questions/comments near the appropriate comments above.

[Tiddlywinks]

~17m20s: Sirken: "Variance is good for the server"



LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

[Skope]

Originally Posted by arsenalpow [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

so if ST and ToV are going to be "No CSR zones" (which has been the same for VP, which means legalized training) what is the incentive for a guild to continue playing this game into velious knowing that the high end zones will turn into a train war? It's absofuckinglutely retarded policy.

Why do you expect anything less from a couple of retards? They're pushing patch notes for zergs and poopsockers and you seem surprised that dumb shit like this rears its head?

Expect it. Expect it and don't respect them, because other than keeping the server afloat they don't know what the hell they're doing anymore