Even if Trillian's a pain to set up, you should only have to do it once.

I must do something wrong every time then.

www.ircatwork.net

I hated Trillian and I won't pay for mIRC for as little as I use it.

That site's not very helpful, unless, you know what you're doing/looking for, I suppose. Ah well. I'll just muddle through with Trillian whenever I feel the urge. Otherwise, if anyone wants to chat with me, I've got AIM.

I often use trillian irc chat to talk to flash developers.

As long as you go into "manage my connections" and make a new profile/login for that specific IRC room, it should be really easy to keep reconnecting.

It's an interesting point, and because I've got some minutes free I'm going to respond to it a little and throw this thread totally off topic.

There are three issues here, I think.
- The first is what the playerbase actually pays. Let's dodge that issue for the time being and call it X.
- The second, from a subjective demand perspective, is whether or not Lusternia is worth X to play.
- The third, from a more objective supply perspective, is whether or not X is good value. How much does Lusternia cost to supply compared to how much it might and how does that compare to X?

The second and third issues may look like they're similar, but they aren't. If Damien Hirst offers me half a pickled cow in a display case for £50, that is extraordinarily good value in terms of how much it cost him to make, but from my perspective totally not worth £50 - I really don't want half a pickled cow on my mantlepiece or hung above my bed. Or even in my shed.

(Starting at point 2:)

If the value of the enjoyment you're gaining from Lusternia is less than X (the amount you're paying), then why are you here! If the enjoyment you're gaining from Lusternia is equal to X, then you're in Shamarah's camp. If the enjoyment you're gaining from Lusternia is greater than the amount you're paying then, by Shamarah's reasoning above, you're in the Rainydays camp and you're grateful to the admin for their work. These are the premises set by Rainydays and Shamarah's posts.

And basically I'd agree with them. Subject to the dictates of common curtesy and good manners, I'm less likely to be enthusiastic and grateful to the vendor who provides me with a good at an ordinary price than the one who throws in an extra can of coke gratis.

The trouble is, this is an inherently personal and subjective test (which doesn't make it wrong or invalid). Suppose I go to the same shop every day and the vendor throws in an extra can of coke. Suppose that all the shops on the street start handing out free cans as well. Am I not, in this little theoretical example, liable to become used to the free can, and to start regarding it as the norm? Will I still be grateful for it after the novelty has worn off and it has become an everyday occurence? Probably not.

Now, you can stop this argument here. You are the consumer. You're the one who gets to choose where you put your money. If you don't think what you're paying is particularly good value, then why the hell should you be grateful?

But in this particular case, I'm not the consumer, so I'm going to move us on to point 3 and ask you to consider 'good value' from a different perspective. What the administration provides you with is incredibly cheap. I have to admit that I don't have a clue how much the three Lusternian producers get paid, but I'll wager that if you add that up with the nothing the rest of us get and take a mean, the average Lusternian admin would earn more per hour in a sweat-shop. In other words, what you're getting should be costing you a vastly bigger X than it actually does (or it would if Lusty's payment system worked according to that model), and Lusty's costs are hugely lessened by the slave labour offered by volunteers who, at least in part, do it for your gratitude.

You're perfectly entitled to shrug your shoulders and take the Shamarah attitude: "it's my money, this is how much I think it's worth, and I regard the benefit of my purchase as roughly equivalent to its cost". But there's another side to that coin, which is that if there weren't people working for nothing, you wouldn't have the opportunity to make that purchase in the first place, or the relative value of that purchase would be far less because there would be less areas, less RP events, less coding and less options. Given the latter option, would you refuse to pay X? Or, on the principle of the free coke can, would you pay it anyway because you didn't know any better? If you would anyway, then are you undervaluing X?

And how much is X anyway?

Well, theoretically, nothing at all. You can be a Zarquan and amass thousands of credits worth of stuff without paying a penny through the website. Or, you might end up paying thousands of dollars a year. If your personal X is more than the minimum, does that mean you stand in a different position with regards gratitude theoretically owed? Is there a continuum of entitlement to gratitude, depending on your own X value? I can see an argument there, but I don't think it works practically. I'm actually not sure any of this argument works practically, because on an individual basis Lusternia continues to run irrespective of your credit buying, and there are other sides to the utility you're buying (or not), such as the participation of other players. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that while I appreciate the "I'm paying for a service therefore I should get it; you get my money, not my gratitude" view, it's not a particularly generous one, and it ignores all sorts of other factors in play.

And even this is ignoring other factors in play, such as the following (I will use your example of "a Zarquan"). First, a Zarquan spends a fair amount of his own time working on the game. He volunteers, just the same as an administrator, to do things. He is paid in credits, which are bought from the game by a Someone, if not necessarily him. To purchase his goods, someone needs to do something to get the credits in the first place (pay Lusternia, generally). A Zarquan is not paid anything other than Lusternian currency for his time and effort. If nobody buys credits from Lusternia, a Zarquan is unable to amass any credits at all. Further, a Zarquan is an enabler. His product helps sell Lusternia for other people. If they can buy an okay system for a decent number of credits ($15 or so to Lusternia), why not? It helps them get more involved in a game where a large aspect of it IS combat (see: Most of the skills). A Zarquan's mere existance actually helps Lusternia earn more money, though he himself doesn't pay anything but time.

Arn't there people who bash for days on end and have thus gained thousands of credits, with doing nothing but playing the game?

I think I paid Esty a small used car. We could have races!

And just because Fain is already offtopic:
How do you apply to become a coder? Same way as Ephermal?

Every single one of which was paid for by someone, either with an art/bardic submission (improving Lusternia's outward appeal by saying, "Look how talented we are"), winning a contest (being involved in promoting Lusternia's growth), guiding (same as the last), building (same as the last), coding (same as the last), or... buying them.

Credits don't magically appear. You have to do something for Lusternia to get them in order to sell them. The most common method is buying them.

Hmm. Back on topic. Trillain fails for me. The entire program seems to have no mention of IRC anywhere (I get nothing when I search for 'IRC'), and the instructions their website gives to use it don't work. Meanwhile, mIRC only worked the first time I tried it, and now doesn't do anything anymore; I can't even get a window to come up. Plus you have to pay for it. So, are there any other alternatives to these ridiculously useless ones?

You don't actually have to pay for mIRC. It says you do, but when your trial time is up, when you open it it says something like "Your trial time is up, click here to register, or click here to continue" and then you continue and don't pay them any money.

And neither trillian or mIRC are "ridiculously useless". I have no trouble getting either to work, so it must be you

Somewhere, in Zarquan's underground lair, a red phone has started flashing.

To those looking for a free IRC client, XChat is very good.

Windows version here: http://www.silverex.org/
And various other platform versions here: http://www.xchat.org/

If you're interested in becoming a mortal coder, you should email a resumé to Roark. It's also possible to be an Ephemeral with a coding rather than a building focus, in which case you apply in the usual fashion.

What languages are needed to become a mortal coder?

AND>>>

I recommend BitchX for IRC clients, it is awesome.

Would imagine not too many, seeing as the code is probably in Rapture (which is not publically available to learn?) and maybe some SQL stuff.

@Fain: Thanks, will keep it in mind!

It is me.

Oh, I definitely do appreciate the efforts of the volunteer gods, they aren't who I was talking about. You do have to admit, though, that Lusternia costs an exorbitant amount of money to play in comparison to most games of its kind - I've spent very little on it in comparison to most fighters yet the amount I spent over the years could probably buy 3 games for the Wii or some such.

The money I've spent here could probably buy me a Wii, and maybe a game or two