Interestingly, at least in official responses to the administration, Krellan himself has disagreed with this assertion. One wonders which of Krellan's stories is the lie, the one he tells the admins or the one he tells Xenthos (or for that matter the one Xenthos tells us). Not that it matters. This is an irrelevant detail on top of an irrelevant detail on top of an irrelevant detail. But that's how these threads always go. Last few times it was all about whether it favors one side. This time it's all about whether one time out of fifty, one time that by sheer coincidence (Xenthos would have you believe) happens to be during this conversation, it gets used for its allegedly intended purpose. These are equally irrelevant, and serve equally well to ensure any discussion about the real concern is drowned out and forgotten. Next time we should argue about whether Norchatine's clothing is fashionable this year; it would be just as important as whether Krellan is in it for the gold.

Essentially: "I know I can no longer defend my point, so I'm going to just argue about nothing and hope it sounds good". :/

Your base point has been pointed out as being flawed. I really don't know why you're continuing to defend it and protest that there is some amazing, massive conspiracy coming from Glomdoring's players who aren't even taking advantage of using the thing and are, in fact, discussing a deal to stop using it completely.

I just think you are using emotion to try to force people to do what you want. I am pointing out the flaws in this approach. You have much, much better arguments to be using. You also could have actually destroyed the thing earlier this morning instead of spending 4 hours ranting about it here with me. This argument of yours reeks of "victim," and I do think you're better than that.

I have to agree with Xenthos. Even if Glomdoring doesn't gather a single solitary bard or scholar while the TBC is up, the fact that they raise it prevents everyone else from being able to get the bards or scholars and thereby gaining a lead in culture.

I hate the damned thing to. But every time it is raised, it is raised for this purpose: to annoy everyone else, and to keep them from getting bards and scholars. Whether or not those that raise it gather the bards and scholars, they have succeeded in these two goals.

I'm not even a fairly established or well-known member of Glomdoring. But a vast majority of the accusations pointed by Lendren are just untrue. I've toyed around in Celest, Serenwilde(My first char on this mud), and Magnagora as well. And Magna in the past and Glomdoring now are easily the most obviously focused on using these things in proper ways to benefit themselves.

There is a near constant push and drive for us as commune members to bring in scholars/bards and Fae to Mother Night etc etc. So you can throw around accusation about Glom people simply trying to grief and cause issues with this quest. But as we all know the admin can and do know full well what is going on, and it's pretty apparent that wether or not the benefit is gained nearly everything Glomdoring does is for the right reasons in these regards. Wether or not a specific person is doing this quest to cause annoyance is up for argument, but the org as a whole is -always- so singularly focused and driven on furthering it's own standing in these manners that a lot of Lendren said just sounded humourous to me. And I assume Xenthos found it humorous as well.

Do I think this quest is poorly designed in some manners? Certainly. Basically the end result of this quest harms the most Novice players and new/younger characters that are the ones most often relying on Scholars/Bards for exp/gold/karma etc. Whilst the quest itself is only accomplished by established higher level characters.

As an incoming new player, that would send the wretchedly wrong idea to me. In fact, that's just a horrible idea to begin with. But accusing players for Admins lack of foresight is as naive as the nature of this quest as a whole. So, the quest in theory sounds really cool. It can and is used to further culture conflict etc.

But push comes to shove: Person A, long term player completes quest. Persons B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P ... etc are newer players that often resort to leading scholars/bards/pilgrims for leveling purposes are now hampered and thoroughly annoyed by a single already established player.

The idea sounds good, but in practice that scenario is just not fundamentally sound. It provides an almost Admin enforced elitism sort of atmosphere towards newcomers. Which I -know- is not the intention.

I'm thinking the main argument for this would really be for the newbies rather than it not being used for culture, and hence I would propose the following:

P1: Pilgrims do NOT contribute to culture.
P2: Pilgrims are ONLY interested in getting to Avechna's Peak.
P3: Pilgrims DO NOT care about the rest of the basin as long as they get to the peak.

C1: Pilgrims shouldn't care about the TBC's Aetherwave and hence should not be affected.

This is of course opposed to the IG History where Pilgrims were the first to be noticably afflicted with 'bad tempers' and refusing to follow, but this is a reasonable remedy to ease the burden on the newbies needing Pilgrims to level. It is (at least) a 66% decrease in the amount of experience and karma they can gain, and a 100% decrease in the amount of power they can generate without doing their long-winded org power quest (which usually becomes inaccessible as senior Nihilists and Celestines flood Spectre Isle and the Isle of Light when Demon Lords and Supernals Fall). It's a partial remedy which I think does not actually affect the TBC's use as a Culture Weapon.

If we really still want an effect on pilgrims, maybe what we can do is that instead of saying the generic "Avechna's Peak", you have to lead them to certain fulcrux? A bit extra work but nevertheless feasible.

It's true that I can't defend my point, as it has yet to be attacked. However, the crap you keep claiming I said, like the "no one ever uses TBC for Culture Center" bit of bunk, that stuff is entire indefensible, and I've no more desire to defend it than I ever had to claim it in the first place. I'll stand by what I actually said, and if you ever see fit to address it, then we'll talk. Or actually not, as I think I'll offer you the last cookie I plan to waste my time offering.

Call that victory if you must. Feel free to misquote this post as me conceding, in fact. It'd be as on-point and accurate as any other reinterpretation of my words you've offered thus far. More sadly, it'll probably fool just about as many people, too.

While I understand you have to mask your departure from the topic in other words so as to protect your pride, you really can't claim you haven't stated this. That the quest "has no purpose," that it is "used only to annoy," when it's right in the first post that started getting me involved in this discussion.

If you no longer believe this, then fine! My arguments have accomplished what I intended.

No! The point isn't that it has no purpose/is only used to annoy, the point is that it IS annoying, and as somebody mentioned before, somebody (say, Krellan, since he keeps doing it) raising the TBC can very negatively affect new players at a very influential point in their experience, do-they-keep-playing-the-game-wise. Does it help with cultural center a lot? Yes. Does it have this purpose? Yes. Is it worth the cost to the incoming playerbase? No. Can a new solution be found that keeps the cultural aspect while not really hurting novices? Sure.

So, my solution that I just thought up:
Instead of TBC preventing you from leading them, it prevents them from actually visiting the other org's libraries, leaving the World Library and the person who raised the TBC's library as the places they can go. Does it hurt the novices? No. Does it give that org a cultural edge? Yes.

Problems solved, right?

Conflict quest you can do any damn time you want instead of once a year; completely impractical to do the counterquest; only really available for 2/4 orgs; Avechna is on the griefer's side for both halves: 1/10 do not recommend.

Sorry, Krellan does not raise the TBC to annoy you. He raises it because there is a tangible benefit for him personally and the recent surge of bards and scholars is probably because he realised the org benefits and is pushing newbies/doing it himself. I doubt he even read further posts here after dropping in the first day (confirmed).

These are, in fact, more along the lines of the "better arguments" that I was saying could (and should) be discussed, instead of trying to obscure the issue by saying that the quest itself has no purpose when it obviously does. It does not have "no redeeming qualities". It has a very distinct and unique effect in Lusternia, it is just the method that causes problems.

However, the last time I checked, scholars taken to the world library actually didn't pay anything-- they had to be taken to an org library. Has that changed?

The issues with your suggestion that come to mind, that would have to be checked, are:
1) Someone collects all the bards / scholars, and wants to turn them in. They are enemied to, say, Glomdoring and can't bring them to Glomdoring's library. What do they do?
2) Someone collects all the bards / scholars and just sits with them. How long does it take them to reset?

The current method avoids that whole mess, but it is annoying to novices from other orgs who want to do the quests and are denied. The real issue is still, though (to me), that it can be kept up for so long. An hour or two here and there aren't really going to affect novices that much, but 19 hours is a pretty large chunk of time.

By the way, I have the point-by-point writeup I did about this a couple of weeks ago if anyone wants to see it, but I won't post it here due to the level of discourse. Ask me in PM if you want to see it, provided you're the kind of person who knows who gets cookies and why. (Otherwise, don't bother, I won't respond.)

Krellan, and his intentions/state of mind, are entirely irrelevant to the conversation, and just serves as a draw away from debating concerns directly related to the quest. If he is doing it entirely out of support for Glomdoring, or if he is doing it entirely out of self gain, or if he is doing it purely out of spite- the result is exactly the same in all cases.

A noble or ignoble effort that produces an identical ends is irrelevant to, and unnecessarily complicates a discussion purely about those ends.



This. For a quest that one person can easily do in a short amount of time, the quest has a very disproportionate impact. In a short amount of time, one person can set a state where another org(s) have to react in an easily counterable way. This isn't the soulforge we're talking about here. This is something extremely easy to do once you can solo a queen gravedigger or so. The fallout should last an hour or two or three tops, and keep the cooldown that has been implemented. This would allow for a savvy org to take advantage of the quest by doing it during peak times without allowing one person to have a meaningful impact for a disproportionate amount of time.

Taking Scholars to the world library does something..? Last time I tried they just silently followed me to all the rooms, then back out and to the Glom library.

Right, but that'd be the change- they're so brainwashed, they agree to go there, or something like that. No other org would be able to get the culture, but the novices from anywhere could still get the personal benefits (but not the org ones).