I am seeing a lot of whining this and whining that about customer service was unfair this and they were unfair that, and I see staff posting here and there about we cannot discuss this and cannot discuss that.
I started playing gemstone back in 1994 because both the summoning and islands of kesmai were hideously slow on genie, and because I didnt have prodigy, I had no access to neverwinter nights. Here is my timeline of gemstone.
During the time of genie, there was far more interaction with gms and merchants, and it was a much nicer place, albeit a harsh environment with a 2400 baud modem. Many highlights of the day were nothing other than meta's rants against staff, and strom's stories in the town square (to this day, I have yet to see anyone role-play getting killed on rescue better). But there were far less people back then, and simutronics was not the profit making machine it is today, (props to them for becoming so big in a graphics based world)
Then came AOL. Population in the lands more than tripled to sometimes as many as 100 people at once. (I admit that during the stretch of about 4 months before genie ended and until six months before AOL went unlimited I was not here due to my involvement in another game on compuserve).
My involvement in these times I found to be the golden years. Lag was not as bad, there was still plenty of GM involvements in player matters, and even though the game still crashed a bit, it was still a role-playing experience.
Then came the great dark ages when AOL went unlimited. This is where I feel, all the problems from the role-playing aspect of gemstone today takes root. From 100 at most to 2000 during peak hours in the stretch of 3 months. More annoyingly, constant lag, crashes and people who did not have enough mentoring and interaction with people or staff to make it a role playing experience, and gemstone began the crawl into large scale ordinary MUD-dome. Also, this began the inception of the large scale cash sale, the largest problem that the game really has ever had. A very famed GEMstone MERCHant, dropped his prices from 300 per million to around 50, although today he is hardly the only one, as many many people have turned to ebay or other lists to sell their gemstone code for cash. All of a sudden, a new breed of player was born. He who had money, joined the game, and spent half of his paycheck from McD or the gas station on gemstone items to show off everything in gemstone what he didnt have in reality. this trend continued all the way until the web, as the role-playing aspects of the lands dropped, and the merchanting for RL anything went up.
To me, the web was a positive move, but one that may have came too late, and without enough policy changes. Many of the older players had literally been driven out of the game and into other games, or into creating other games, mostly because of their despise for what cash sales had done. One of my saddest days in the lands was reading the public letter giacomo put up for everyone to read, as I considered him to be one of the nicest and most able developers around, and one who anyone could always talk to about things, and while I will not discuss it out of respect for him, I blame Fawn for his departure and I hold a grudge to this day for the means by which he was "eased" out of his ability to make things work. I also watched with sadness as Aephir, another brilliant mind, left, under less than ideal circumstances, although, from what I have heard, the matter was as much his own fault as anyone elses, but it was sad to see a simple misunderstanding cause a good mind to go, while a fellow like Panashe can offer to sell kodos's workshop for months, for cash, without any action being taken.
The move to the web and the recent attempt by simutronics to create an actual events group to me is the most positive move they have made in a long time. To me, I feel that suggests that perhaps they are moving gemstone, which is albeit slowly receding in population, back to a role-playing game. When I hear people complaining about there arent any merchants and they arent enough this and that, I have to say this. A few months ago, after the failed banaltra quest, there have been many little events here and there, and despite some unfinished storylines (the baron, unfinished vvrael invasion from god knows how long ago, Sheru saying he would return and never doing so in the first and only time I ever saw an arkati in town), I will say this. Merchants come to town more often than they did during genie times, albeit to much larger crowds, and far more often than during AOL times, when we saw them less frequently then seeing Ophion show emotion. There are more subplots and little things here and there to do. There is a large expansion occuring, and more changes and attempts to inrease game integrity at high levels. I see a whole lot of positive in the future, even though I feel that simutronics is not moving in the necessarily right direction with all their efforts. As long as we all know they are trying, it is hard to criticizre gms as lazy this lazy that and mean-spirited. I will conclude with I guess a list of the top 10 things I feel still need to be fixed/are wrong with the game today.
10) The product manager should hold a forum with the PLAYERS once a month for at least a couple hours to get a feel from their point of view what is going on.
9) Premium Service. Platinum service is ok, because they are in a seperated community and do not interact with prime. Seperation of people within a class system creates hostility and a rift between players. Just create a basic 19.95 package or something.
8) Breakage, Old styles of breakage mechanics will not work in today's game. It's like having two communities, one who lived all their lives putting butter on the bottom side of the bread, and then attempting to change another who grew up buttering the top side all of a sudden change to the bottom. This once started a war you know.
7) The cash economy. I am not saying all GMs are corrupt, or even some, but I will say, on the record for fact, that a few have. Eliminate non payroll GM abilities to create items as they please or we will someday get Aldrek all over again, and thats a promise. Allow only those people who are paid in dollars to create items, as it creates a conflict of interest in self-wealth creation for others. ("Gee I can make items and then sell") This HAS happened before.
6) Eliminate the pay for attendance quests which are nothing but merchants. Create full scale pay for quests or something instead that does not turn everything into a dhu gillywack, in which people pay 69.95 basically for in game wealth only.
5) Allow more players into positions of player authority without powers, like mentors, or allow people to have new alterable titles based on certain characteristics. (i.e someone who owns a tower can be called a "Noble Lord" instead of a "Lord". Let there be more distinguishing lines amongst players based on in game things only.
4) Set aside a few GMs and hosts to do nothing but create new storylines and quests, and discourage people from thinking this game is nothing but a large scale MUD (two friends I tried to get to start this game left thinking that because of the lack of quests)
3) Level cap. Rather than impose a level cap, impose a restraint on how many times a person, within a fixed time period, can train. This beats any level cap hands down, and forces the community to do something other than hunt.
2) Houses. Gosh where to even start. For 99% of the population, its just a larger locker, and they are supposed to be houses with a purpose and a reason. Secondly, an events liasion or something should be willing to create a house for ANYONE who comes up with the proper silvers to build one. From an RP point of view, those town-builders are idle way too long. Maybe increase the price as demand goes up, but someone who wishes a fine mansion with a workshop and a forge should be able to build one, even for private use, with the proper silvers. Saying "sorry, we're taking their 200M over yours and your 200M because they have a better house motto" doesnt sit. after finishing one, start on the other. As we all know with House Cashsales.. I mean Jakarta, just because they write a nice essay on house motto doesnt mean they will follow it or even use the house for any reason other than personal profit.
1) the biggest reason for mechanics breakdowns at higher levels IMHO occured the moment they allowed pure casters to train in more than 1 spell per level. Even with the current system set up to discourage tripling, the doubling still creates a critter ripple effect that just breaks down all casting/physical combat mechanics at the higher levels, and even with all the recent attempts to fix it, I remain under the statement that no 160'th level ANYTHING should be allowed to be killed in one blow by anything other than a god. At the same time, no 160th level critter should go down easy either, but it should not be a question of which one strikes and insta-kills the other first. reg