Greetings und salutations.

I have returned. It feels good to be back. Out of interest, what have I missed, in the realms of politics, cooking, and people being awesome?

Not much, actually.

I've been waiting for this. You see, every time I pass a certain bar in the town I moved to, I think of you.

It's called The Purple Duck.

Politics gained two new orgs, three new villages, and a new set of alliances. Cooking got twice as expensive. My awesomeness cannot be quantified, and some other people did some things that were kinda ok too.

Welcome back. Come to Halli.

Hallifax is terrible. It's got illegible maps, disjointed design, and skills on par with Runes for Mages or Starhymn.

I'm head of the time KGB.

Illegible for the masses, maybe! /elitist

Hallifax's design is actually really stunning if you take the time to go through, read it all, and think about the layout. Seriously. Props for that, despite how confusing it can be at first.

I don't think that's a very fair assessment! Its maps are perfectly fine, if only localized, its design so simple anyone can learn it, if they think three-dimensionally. Hallifax is probably my favourite layout, easiest to remember. And while I don't believe there's anything wrong with Aeromancy/Aeonics, that's what envoys are for.

I know you had a hand in the maps, so I'll let that go, but the design is...well, it's bad. You might call it a failure of zoning. There's no flow. You don't go anywhere to do any collection of tasks. I think the distance between Gaudi's council rooms and comm shop is bad enough, but to do something as simple as shop in Hallifax, you have to tour the whole city. There's no reason to deal with the city for something like that. It makes a ton more sense to just shop the Aetherplex. That's a real disservice to the city and citizenry.

Before, you could see a whole 'layer' on the map. Now you can see only about a fourth of it. Now that is not saying its not a simple map still, it was just simpler before.

YAY! Oh man, so many awesome Mags are coming back. Ongaku will cling to your leg!

Clearly you haven't been back recently. There're bridges connecting all of the spires with shops now so that they're all conveniently close.

...not that that cuts out any more than maybe two-three moves per spires. You just have to go N;N;N instead of NW;U;N;D;NE to get from one spire to another.

Seriously, though, if you spend any amount of time actually in Hallifax it falls into place. I can navigate without using the map now, mostly, and the city's got a handful of good navigation help files. It's organized quite logically, but you have to think about it for a bit to get it.

Just doing as I was asked! The maps are on the website as well (there's an auto-generator from the IG mapping system), so I'm not deeply concerned. I mean, in -my- day, we didn't even have maps! We had to imagine it...

And Hallifax has had bridges installed connecting all of the Company Towers that have shops - making shopping pretty easy. Which it wasn't that difficult before, either.

Shopping from the Aetherplex has become better than shopping in any other location, given that one can search the wares of every aethershop available with a single command for a given item, if my memory serves.

And I disagree that there's no 'flow' - the city's very predictable, easy to remember. Like I said, however - one needs to think in three dimensions.

Well, Jigan, one thing you have not missed is the record-breaking derailment of this thread, though that's hardly unexpected and probably constitutes self-perpetuating entertainment in any case. That's the best kind!

Of politics and cooking, I know nothing. People being awesome... hm. I'll get back to you on that in month or two.

Oh! Everyone has a magical Dust Buster now.

Someone once told me that they were so happy to see me that they wanted to hump my leg. Thank you for reminding me.

Anytime. I might do that to Jigan now. Blame Casilu for putting ideas in my head!

Not everyone. I traded mine in for a Fate Deck and some Tonic.

I still need to do the quests for mine. ><

Welcome back. Get Reiha into Magnagora.