Pretty sure it's the Soulless Estarra can't remove, not the Taint - she just doesn't care about the latter and has better things to do.

It doesn't matter whether it can be done or not. It was an "if" thing.

Someone up in the havens totally just screamed "bring it!"

That one? Best quest ever! Though not a lot of people have done it and likely won't, I think it's more hassle than it's worth with the champions and all for something you could get by doing the Catacombs quest without the ego blessing or do Tosha which is better than them both?

Leave it to Aison to Forums RP against a quest that's perfectly fine, but they refuse to do. Honestly, Celestians can be so dumb in that they refuse to do something because it's "Tainted". In RL, a TON of religious zealots use things they despise against the people that revere them. Celest can do the same. Silly rigid RP. Get over yourselves and just do it. You guys who haven't played since the beginning have it SO easy, it's not even funny. You'd never survive open beta Lusternia

As for the Aestra quest, I'd be all over it every day if getting to Haja's temple wasn't such a huge pain in the neck. It's a great quest

It may be that I just haven't seen the quest very often, but I was really of the mind that the quest didn't spread the Taint persay, but rather just spread that the Broadcasting Centre and Globglob were the best things to benifit the orgs, and that it would be better to follow those two than their own orgs.

Also, keep in mind I'm usually in Glomdoring when the quest has been done and only heard things along the lines of 'Night keeps stuff away from you, we'd be better for you' and 'we work so great with with the great spirits of Glomdoring'.

Am I wrong? I do admit in the beginning I haven't seen much of it.

Lemme tell a lil story bout a mountaineer named Jeb, whose poor mountaineer ass was with Ithaqua instead. This old fart was an anti-magick fool, his less than faithful son defected to demoners like a tool. *Banjo solo* Now one day Jeb fought Jed, and Jed lopped off that mountaineers head. He moved with speed, strength, and a grace all his own, except he got it by quenching anti-magick weapons made of boooooooone. In souls that is, black magick, Stavennite tea. *Hyper ultra banjo solo* Now then the Stavennites did say, if you want to be this strong you should just l2play. Stack them deffies, and use all the buffs, don't be purist anti-magick be opportunist scruff. Ol' Jeb he came back on a boat rowed by Charon, and said "Hey Dranor, how bout some affinity for yon?" The great big dude, up in the big sky, didst now realize that buff stacking was lame-pie. It just goes to show, that purists can exist, and if you play opportunist you're about to get dissed. By balance, that is.

How long did that take to write?

The issue with the quest is not the propaganda-spewage because, as others have mentioned, doing the quest does not advance taint, it only advances Globglob's ego.

The issue is that it screws with a major income for newbies, but requires a group of midbies to handle. Either make the mobs weaker and allow another method of transportation to the Centre to give newbies a chance at destroying Globglob, or replace the scholar/bard/pilgrim effect with something less detrimental to newbies (ie. essence is worth 1 less for other organizations.)

Make it so everyone can still college bards/scholars/whatever but the city that has the broadcast station active gets more... something.
Or make the bards and scholars slowly (very, very slowly) walk towards the city that has it up, but still everyone can college them.
Or make the bards and scholars worth more culture (I think they contribute...) to the city that has the broadcast station up...

I don't actually know how this quest works, just throwing out random ideas that will get shot down

Those ideas aren't bad either. Maybe turn scholars into COWS and have them bump your movement while you try to drag them back to your city, teehee.

And I've only been at work for 25 minutes Shiri so about 5 minutes. Rhyming one word at the end of each sentence isn't too hard. I admit though, it did come together quite nicely.

Or maybe, going with the idea to make them come to the org that someone did the quest from, everyone can still bring them around normally but if you bring them instead to the nexus, the org gains an added benifit (power/culture/whatever) and a small line showing worshippers around the nexus in the roomdesc.



edit: They would poof once the counter is done, realizing that they've been brainwashed or something.

Every time "the Tainted Broadcasting Center quest is badly designed and bad for Lusternia" gets mistaken for "the Tainted Broadcasting Center is unfairly biased for one organization", all the straw-men in the world start crying.

If a quest is bad, and hurts the wrong people, and serves only to annoy, "you should do it too" is precisely the opposite of a useful answer.

As for a useful solution, I think the best thing would be to use this catastrophe as an opportunity, and develop a new event or quest or both that would fix it. Let me think a bit about what that might look like.

I'm going to say this but once:

I am not Celestian in real life.

Celest's religion has nothing to do with anything OOCly. Just because we play zealots in a game doesn't mean we are bible worshipers outside of it. Beta has nothing to do with this. Ego has nothing to do with this. To assume that we would break our roleplay is, put plainly, narrow-minded and immature. The quest goes against everything Celest teaches and Celest shouldn't have to break their roleplay just to get some benefits.

Positive feedback is welcome. Your retarded little speeches are not. 'k?

edit: also, if the Aestra quest were altered to kick Mag in the nuts, I think you guys would raise your eyebrows and ask some questions, and possibly whine quite a bit.

I think what Rika means for the Aestra quest is the part that gets you this line:


I mean, there's a benefit to you for doing it that way. You get Aestra as a loyal for a long, long time. She's a free legendary mount just for you. In a Mag's eyes, you could be seeing it as tricking Aestra and subjugating her to your will if you wanted some justification for it.

Anyways, the TBC quest is quite annoying and I groan IRL every time I hear him at the nexus because I know it'll be annoying to take him down again, get nothing but some karma for it, and know that in an hour's time once Norchatine is alive again that it can be done again if someone wants to. The drivel at the nexus is annoying enough, it's more bothersome to hear on newbie and CT when a novice asks "Why won't the pilgrim/bard/scholar follow me?". So, to keep something good for lowbies open to all lowbies, you do it again even if you don't really want to.

A good solution or two have been listed, I think the buffing of power for scholars/bards and maybe pilgrims will give more gold to the members of the org that completes it is great. It could be something like Globglob has controlled their mind enough to find that org superior so they pay more to go there and become more of a benefit, but will still reluctantly go with the other people.

Maybe GlobGlob could pick the ascendant for them too.


ba-zing

-performance on-
-perform aison-

How is the Aestra quest a "kick in the nuts" to Celest? Could someone explain that? I think the fact that you can reverse all the work I did to please Morgfyre and get a free legendary mount so easily is such hors..pegasus .

-performance off-

The ability of Lolly and Globglob to transmit their aetherbroadcasts across the whole of many planes at one time, to many people, was not something done by just some Planar skill and a bit of equipment in a floating Broadcast Center. There was more to it: aethertechnicians working away in obscurity at a number of aetherwave relay retransmitters, which could boost, combine, and retransmit signals. The technical requirements of getting the job done involved isolation in remote places, so the people who worked in these rebroadcast centers tended to be two kinds: people who had to, because of their career, studies, duties, etc.; and the inveterate technical engineer geek-type who liked to hang out in a remote place with a bunch of other techies fiddling with equipment during their off-hours. ((Think of the kind of people who play with ham radios. If you've read any of George O. Smith's Venus Equilateral series, those are the guys I'm thinking of. In fact, that's the place I'm imagining. Recommended read, though remember that it was written a long long time ago.))

One day while they were working on the most important rebroadcast job ever, the coverage of Project Cosmic Hope, they started hearing terrible, frightening, disturbing things coming in on the aetherwaves. As matters got worse, and Globglob's mindless broadcasts started to repeat, one particular relay station became convinced the whole Basin was going to fall, so they started setting up some equipment that some of them had been tinkering with. Things to shield them from being seen or heard from outside, but which would still let them hear in case of any especially strong transmissions. Things to completely isolate and thus protect them from the danger.

Several generations have passed since then, and now a quite curious little civilization has grown up in this isolated station. Stories of why they closed themselves off have been passed on from mother to daughter, but distorted a little every time, so that the modern inhabitants tell of some very strange stories which only the astute can recognize as being distorted versions of the times of the Taint Wars. A society formed from a bunch of inveterate tinker engineers, who've grown up in an isolated location, with all the machinery and tools in the world to play with... I wonder what they'd be like!

So things went until one day the Broadcast Center started transmitting again, and they detected the familiar subcarrier, all their equipment started beeping and blinking. What to do, what to do? Stories of what this meant were jumbled and there was much dispute. Stay in hiding? Come out? Did they even still remember how to take down the shield? Years went by while they considered, and then finally, someone took the shield down.

Now the inhabitants, unprepared to meet the world again, are divided about whether they should have come out, and what to do next. Factions are developing. If you help one faction or another, perhaps they'll help you. For a very simple quest (maybe just begging), one of them might give you a blocker-transmitter device which, until the crystal-battery runs out in a few days, blanks out the Broadcast Center's transmissions in a short range (allowing you to still get the wanderers to follow you -- there's enough of these that novices can get them). For a larger service, one of them can attach something to your nexus for you which will prevent it from retransmitting the propoganda of the Broadcast Center for a few years (until its battery runs out). Maybe one of them can provide a device which scrambles the signals that send the gravedigger scouts out, or some method of making the young child a little tougher, or a little more focused, so a single hit from a random player doesn't stop the entire counterquest for a few hours. There might be a quest which could turn the signal back and temporarily take over the Broadcast Center, replacing the propoganda with other propoganda beamed at a particular target you choose, and stopping the mind control effect entirely.

And who knows what other interesting things might be found or learned in this area, what other rivalries and factions there could be, what other opportunities might be presented.

((Okay, I just came up with this in the last ten minutes, so it's not fully though through, but it's a starting point.))

@Vathael: I used the Aestra quest as an example. Say Rika did the quest, and when she completed it, Mag suddenly became a bright, golden beacon of light. Because of this, any essence placed in the Megalith was rejected because of the golden shimmer around it, it prevented you from doing the power quest with the necromantate, and it could also prevent one from caressing the Megalith to get to the Nexus world. All the while, some angelic being is spitting out 5 lines of text every few minutes that is nothing but a childish antic to convert you? How do you think that would make you feel? Would you feel this was balanced?

This isn't a thread about 'Oh jesus this quest is annoying because I'm Celestian.' It annoys 3/4 of the orgs in the Basin. It could annoy all 4 if it weren't blatantly tuned towards one org. Look at facts and stop looking at who's making the thread.

The easiest fix would be to allow Celest (and friends) an event to permanently cleanse the Taint from the broadcast center. This would only be a pure rp/style change, the mechanics of the quest could remain identical. This would not cause any direct harm to any other org, and would be a one time event.

Then all orgs could annoy all other orgs in the same manner. This would maintain the spirit of the original quest (is it worth it to your org to be an annoying jerk for some gain?) without breaking anyone's long standing RP. I think such a change would be far more likely than anything that would make the quest less annoying, as the main point of the quest seems to be to force that tradeoff.

That said Lendren that was a really cool idea for something you just came up with off the top of your head. I guess I really will have to check out your plays in game now