Time Out

So, tomorrow is my birthday. And the anniversary of the day I stopped an alien invasion with only five pickles and a hairbrush. And the day when Steam holds a 150% off sale on all games. Not to mention that Walmart will stock their stores with items that were actually made in America (well, if anything like that still exists). Oh, and I'm planning to shave my head bald, too.

Alright, alright, I admit - it was actually seven pickles. But the rest of it is completely true! Yeah...

I'll admit, I'm wondering what Karl will pull, or if he'll just ignore it and do nothing. Quite honestly, I expect some lame rickroll or something. I mean, Google rickrolled the entire world a few years back; hard to top that and all. Speaking of Google Topeka, I'm wondering what they'll pull this year. They never cease to have something up their sleeve...

Is it just me, or has there been massive lag on W-H lately? Even when not that many people are on, there seem to be huge bursts where nothing will load. I'd say Karl updating things might cause it, but he's not typically on whenever it happens, not to mention I doubt we'll see any updates until 1.2. Whenever that is. It does sound like he may be making progress, according to his Twitter, but it's hard to tell.

It's probably a bad sign for W-H's future that 4 out of the 5 players on the top 5 are no longer playing, whether banned or just having quit. Of course, Kara does have a tendency to be a massive drama queen and pull stunts like this where she pretends to quit for a while and then comes back. But still, my point remains.

As you all know, Spleafnet is shit and has been down for months, with occasional brief periods of uptime. This, of course, means that my guide is inaccessible half the time or so. Which, inevitably, leads to somebody asking me 'why don't you move your guide?' several times every day. And, honestly, I'm getting tired of answering that, so from now on I'm just going to direct people to this entry.

I don't see any motivation on my part to move my guide. What do I get out of it? Not that I'm trying to sound selfish, but think for a moment here - I wrote and coded my guide in my spare time, for absolutely no gain whatsoever. No cash, no points, heck, I didn't even get any DP out of it. Zero gain for the effort; after all, I already knew the info. I did it because there was a need for a guide, because some players needed help. I would pull a line about the goodness of my heart, but I think we all know I don't have a heart.

I don't think there's any argument that my guide is useful; even Karl has admitted that. It is handy to have a list of levels, or gear, or quests at your fingertips, even if some of the other information isn't accessed as widely. And it used to be a great place to direct all those noobs in chat asking 'what do I do' back when it was actually up most of the time.

And yet, for all of that, Karl himself is openly hostile to the entire thing. Did you know that any staff member of W-H who links to my guide will immediately lose their position? I'm serious. He's done everything short of banning links to it altogether, though I'm sure he'll get around to that eventually. The 'official' argument is that guides like mine ruin the fun of the game. Yeah. Actual tutorials on how to play ruin the fun of running around as a clueless noob because there's no instructions on the site itself. Except, of course, the FAQ, which was entirely ripped from my guide by Karl, and he refused to give me credit for it, as well. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

Look at things from my perspective here: cheating seems to be fine with Karl, but educating people how to play the game? Bad. Yes, that seems ridiculously counter-productive concerning the interests of W-H as a whole - and it is - but that's still what's going on. Of course, I'm sure he's got some persuasive speech that'll make it look like everything I've said here is completely wrong. Or maybe he'll just ignore it. I don't really care.

So, when you're asking me to continue with my guide, you're actually asking me to put up with all this. If you've ever been around the internet, you'll have realized that most guides that admins are hostile to don't last very long. It's both difficult and discouraging to run a guide to a site where the staff openly oppose you. I mean, guides basically help the site, and, as I said before, no profit on my part. So sorry if I don't subscribe to 'love thy enemy' crap or something like that.

Also, you don't really need me to move it. You've got the quest/gear/level info here, which was the most important stuff. Since Karl hasn't added any new content since 1.1 (wasn't that like, over half a year ago?), there's hardly anything extra for me to write about. And most of the things can be figured out by common sense anyway.

What about the newbies? I'll be blunt. If Karl doesn't want me to educate them, then he may deal with them himself. I don't care enough anymore. It's hard to have faith in W-H after all of this, you know? Most of the time I'm just amazed the site hasn't fallen apart yet.

So, you want me to move my guide? Too bad. It's not happening. Go pray that Spleafnet comes back up or something, because I'm done. I refuse to expend more effort and time writing a guide to a site that is opposing me. Call me selfish if you want, but I'm not doing any more without some kind of motivation on my part.

If you want to discuss this, go ahead, but my decision isn't changing; I haven't even listed half the issues I've got with W-H. Otherwise, please shut up and stop complaining. I already did enough for you with no gain. I am not your personal slave; I don't have to do any of this. Be grateful for what you have.

Loyalty: Your Most Valuable Asset

You know, I spend more time thinking of random content to put in the first few paragraphs of an entry than I do actually writing the main body. This is probably due to the fact that I actually have to do research on any commentary I make on current events, whereas the majority of my topics are fairly ambiguous and I can be lazy and spout whatever nonsense I want and most of you would never even know the difference. Why must you people make me work so hard?!

As I'm writing this, Shimmer appears to have become invisible (yet another sign of how much my buffer fails). What exactly happened, and what's going on... I don't know. Frankly, it doesn't seem that harmful, as they still have all their XP and members (well, as far as I can tell. The memberlist is invisible and all...).

On another front, Coren appears to have stopped leveling, with his XP resting at around 75 million. That's about a 50 million jump in under a week or so (Tip: he's worth over 2 million in pure cash if you beat him). I don't think I really need to comment on how suspicious that seems.

Also, Coren and Sunset have been removed from their respective packs, both without any of the alphas kicking them, and no log of them leaving. In other words, Karl removed them. While Coren might be justifiable, Sunset isn't. However, that's not the point of this entry, so I'll leave discussion of that to a later date.


On non-W-H-related topics (talk about overusing hyphens), I believe I have a law to propose that everyone could agree on. Aside from insane sadists, and nobody cares about them (I mean, sheesh. Omnicidal maniac is a way better type of villain to be). Specifically, I propose that all saltwater taffy must be contained in edible wrappers. Seriously. Do you have any idea how freaking hard it is to unwrap that stuff if it's not 500 degrees below 0?! You would think the Citadel Geneva convention would have done something about the wrappers...

On a final note before going onto the main body of this entry, Jhaxx and Dalfang have apparently decided 'Loveland' wasn't lame enough and made a new pack instead. Ever wondered why we have 300+ pack IDs used and about 10 active packs? People like those two.

So, this entry is going to concern loyalty. Some of the topics I've done before have touched on it, but I'm planning to go more in-depth here.

As a pack leader (seems like all my entries are aimed at pack leaders), loyalty is your most valuable asset. Not your members, not your pack's total XP, not the five thousand points you've stolen from your pack and are hiding on your side account (well, OK, maybe the points are more valuable).

Loyalty cannot be bought, only given. You can earn it, but it's not easy. You can lose it in the blink of an eye. And there's no formula that will enable you to get the loyalty of everyone, or even most of your members. Aside from brainwashing, of course.

The reason loyalty is so valuable is because, let's face it: there's really no point in packs for high leveled players. We don't need them. In fact, we only deal with packs out of boredom, self-interest, or loyalty. And since high levels don't need your pack, there's really no reason for them not to go and join a different pack if the fancy strikes them, or if they get offered a few points, or something like that.

Loyalty is your defense against that. Your 50 million XP member isn't good for you if she might leave at any time, or if you have to constantly pay her to stay. Any time you start having to expend effort to keep a member, that member is a liability, and has also demonstrated that they aren't loyal. Quite frankly, you're probably better off getting rid of them.

Quite frankly, a 10 million XP member who is loyal to you is a far better asset than a 25 million one who is not. When it all comes down to it, the strength of your pack is measured more in who is willing to stick by you come hell or high water, and who's willing to jump ship at the first sign of trouble.

Of course, you typically can't recruit anyone and expect immediate loyalty, or anything of the sort. It just doesn't work that way. If you provide for your members, are a level-headed leader, and provide a fun/friendly environment in your pack, it'll go a long way towards helping you win a member's loyalty, but ultimately, you can't guarantee it. Some people just aren't right for your pack, as I'm sure you know.

The real problem with this is that some people don't show it until you run into trouble, and then they leave. Better if they had left far sooner, so you could have replaced them and all. Of course, there's no real way to tell how loyal someone is, either, aside from experience.

Ideally, your members should be loyal to both your pack as a whole, and you yourself. That way, there's a double bond securing them to the pack and keeping them from leaving. It also helps if they either don't care about points, already have a ton of points themselves, or are usual contest winners in your pack, so that bribery doesn't dislodge them. Remember, though, that everyone has a price. It's just your job to make sure that price is so high nobody will offer to pay it.

There are three types of loyalty you want to aspire for. The first is that of powerful players who still care about the game, level regularly, and want to be the first to jump into any new content (if we ever get any). Those people will stick with your pack, as long as you can maintain a position of some power, and, as they're likely still leveling, they'll increase said power. The downside is that these people may leave if you fall from power - the upside being that people like this will be a good portion of XP, so it'll be hard to fall from power without them leaving, rendering it all pointless. Unfortunately, players like this are exceedingly rare, possibly because, oh, I don't know... because nobody plays the game anymore, perhaps?

The second type is casual players, who once got a lot of XP but quite frankly don't really care anymore. They come for the community or whatever. They might level if you pay them to, they might occasionally line up for boss fights, and they'll probably have an active presence in the forums and chatbox... but if you want them to actually care about the game anymore, you're out of luck. These types of players are more secure than the first, because they just don't care enough to leave. If somebody offers to bribe them, they probably won't care. After all, if they don't play anymore, why do they need the points? The majority of higher levels fall into this category today, sadly. The downside being that they don't really increase in XP much.

The third type is the loyalty of the grave (cue the ominous music!). No, this doesn't mean dead players, although that technically is a possibility. Heck, if you killed all your players, you could get this, even from disloyal players. No? Well, not my fault if you want to let opportunity pass you by...

What I mean in this case is inactive players. Not people who don't level - people who don't come on, period. They quit, or were banned, or died in a convenient accident. It's impossible to recruit this type of player, obviously. The only way you can obtain them is if they leave while a member of your pack, and if you ever remove them, you can't get them back.

These players are actually the most loyal you'll ever get. They won't leave, ever, because they can't. They're not players, they're just chunks of XP. You don't have to worry about them at all. On the downside, though, they won't ever participate in anything, help with boss fights, or ever increase in XP at all. So, ideally, you'd want 10 million XP+ members of this variety.

Of course, it's probably impossible to get a completely loyal pack, and definitely impossible to get one composed of all one type of loyalty, so you have to mix and match. Whatever works for a member and all. However, remember what I said before: if you're expending effort (or worse, points) just to keep a member from leaving, that member is a liability, no matter how much XP they have.

You'd never want to replace a loyal member, no matter how much more XP someone else has. However, it's also best not to bet everything on one person's loyalty. As I said, everyone has their price.

Just remember that next time you're recruiting, or considering accepting some new applicants. The deciding factor on the value of a member is just how willing they are to stick with you, not how much XP they have. Although a combination of the two is always good. If not, well, you can always just assassinate people, like I said...

Pack Alignments: Apparently Evil ≠ Cool

You know how your parents constantly disapprove of almost everything you do? Or, at least, they did back when you lived with them? They could disapprove of anything and everything. Unfortunately, your parents aren't always there to disapprove of you. Fortunately, there's an easy way for you to get all the disapproval you need - Disapproving Rabbits, where it's all disapproval, all the time. Because everyone needs a healthy dose of disapproval in their life.

In other news, Coren seems to have conquered the top 5, going from #3 to #1 in about 3 days. Considering that this is around 30 million XP, some people seem suspicious. Of course, the general population of W-H is suspicious about just about everything these days.

On a completely unrelated note, you know how the TOS used to forbid bot and macro programs? Somewhere along the way it lost that part. Whether this is simple oversight or direct approval of cheating is for you to decide. Although whether or not it's cheating if the rules don't forbid it is also debatable.

On another topic, I finished Terry Goodkind's Confessor lately. I'd give it a 10/10 rating as far as fantasy books go. If you're into adult fantasy material, you definitely should read the series; go find the first book, Wizard's First Rule, at your library or something.

Anyway, on to the main entry... I'm thinking maybe roasted duck. Oh, wait, wrong type of entry. Oops...

So, I'm here to discuss pack alignments, and what role they play in reality W-H. I've been around a while, and I've found some interesting patterns...

First off, we all know the alignments. Good, neutral, and evil. They've been around basically forever, and haven't had any changes. There have been a few suggestions to change them to the more well-known D&D alignment system (you know, lawful/neutral/chaotic variants), but they've never really gone anywhere. The entire thing is rather neglected.

Now, there's no gameplay reason to choose one or the other. So it all comes down to what the leader wants, and what really fits the theme of their pack. Packs existing for RP (yeah, there are a few... somewhere) will choose based on story, for example.

Of course, this is discounting noob packs. Noob packs are just irrelevant - either the creator was too lazy to change the alignment from neutral, they think evil is really cool, or they want to be the good, perfect savior of reality. As I said, irrelevant. I'm concerning myself with major packs.

Since alignment can change at any time, packs are hardly restricted to one, but the majority of packs tend to stick with one most of the time. And of the choices, neutral is the most popular, probably because there are a few people who would object to having their evil character in a good pack, and vice versa.

So, as I said, most major packs end up neutral. In fact, all of the top 5 packs are neutral, or have been for the majority of their time up there, although they probably didn't start as neutral (BM was originally good, for example).

Of course, there is occasionally a significant good pack or two, although they don't last long and/or convert to neutral. But evil packs... powerful evil packs really don't exist. In fact, the only consistently evil pack to make it onto the top 5 and hold the position for a while was Malice; unfortunately the hack and Phoe conveniently disappearing basically destroyed them. Still, it was a nice accomplishment.

But for the rest of the evil packs, they don't really go anywhere. Why this is, I'm not sure. After all, in my expectation, I'd kinda think people would want to join the evil packs, thinking evil is badass or something. That just hasn't been the case, though. Nobody seems to have a justifiable reason to not join evil packs - they just don't do it.

Of course, the entire alignment system is kinda pointless. I mean, aside from RP packs, it hardly makes a difference. And nobody cares about RP packs. So why even have it at all?

For example, what if the alignment system was removed and instead packs were allowed to put up a short message/motto/whatever of their own? I think most packs would agree to that, and it'd certainly be more convenient than the bypasses I had to use to change BM's alignment to Chaotic Awesome.

The system is outdated and irrelevant - we should just replace it. In the mean time, though, I personally advise you to use a neutral alignment. Whether or not we can find any reason to justify it, the fact remains neutral packs have consistently outperformed good and evil packs. Heck, there's never been anything but a neutral pack at #1 at any point in W-H's history.

But, for those of you who are evil, heartless bastards, don't worry - there's still hope for you. All you have to do is stalk all the good and neutral pack leaders until you find their addresses, then go to their houses and kill them in a gruesome fashion after torturing their passwords out of them. Then just disband their packs, and you'll be #1! No hassles at all...

Promises of Power: Loyalty, They Do Not Give

It's rather remarkable how I can manage to continually write blog entries, but haven't been able to find my muse for a paper on settler-Indian conflicts in the northwest for weeks. I wonder if there's any way I can just stick with the blog entries and get credit... Hm... W-H should totally be an elective in school.

As I write this, it appears that Kara has lost her second-place spot to Coren. Whether or not Sunset's in danger... well, by the time you read this, that'll probably have been answered. Disadvantages to a several day delay between what I write and what you read and all that. Honestly, though... From the looks of it, Coren was on all night to pass Kara. Something about it just seems a bit... off.

Eh, well, not too important. If you haven't seen it already, you should definitely check out Kyprus' profile generator. It's a nice bit of coding that'll get you as close to an HTML layout as you're going to get without actually being able to use HTML. Maybe Karl will bring back HTML for 1.2?

You've probably already seen it, but Karl has another youtube vid on the message system. It looks like we're finally getting the changes we've been asking for since like... forever. The anti-page stretch is also sweet; I hope the message feature isn't the only place it's implemented. Although I don't entirely see the point of quote tags. Honestly, I've never seen the point anywhere. Quotation marks exist for a reason, after all.

Also, we've picked up a new affiliate. Not that it makes a difference, since all the affiliate links are, oh, I don't know, completely broken? Another site we'll never get any benefit from. Not to mention that, if reports are correct, it's a freaking Warriors RP. Just having the button on the site is as much of a guarantee of failure as, say, Band joining a pack...

Anyway, on to the main topic of this entry. Today, I'm going to cover recruiting practices. However, I'm going to go a bit deeper than that, and focus on the practices of recruiting alphas and/or getting people to join by giving them ranks/power.

This isn't exceptionally common; it's done more so in the noob packs that will never actually affect reality anyway. However, it still does occur in the realm of packs with leaders who actually know what they're doing, which I tend to think of as the only 'real' packs. The rest of the packs are just target practice.

I think the obvious precursor to discussing recruiting alphas is the question of just how many alphas are needed in a pack. The answer is... 42 it depends. One alpha is entirely feasible, but it's best to have someone to help out. I would say two active alphas is optimal. Three alphas can work, but you typically wouldn't need a third one unless the others have a skill deficiency (say, coding), or they have an absurdly convenient tendency to go on vacation at the exact same time. Four alphas is just overkill.

Note that I'm referring to active alphas, at least in their position. For example, if an inactive player is pack owner, or one alpha is just a figurehead, those don't 'count' as alphas in this case.

Anyway, if you're lucky, when you made your pack you had an obvious choice for an assistant, and you don't ever need to worry about recruiting another. Otherwise, you might find yourself short.

This is where people make the mistake of advertising for an alpha. Allow me to state that this is a bad idea. Seriously. You're just going to pick someone from a list of applicants and then give them power over your pack? What's the guarantee you can trust them? I mean, pack damages don't seem to be getting fixed by staff - look at Alphyn. And what about the rest of your members? Heck, you probably don't even know any of the people very well - and you're going to give them power over your pack?

Honestly, you should never advertise for an alpha. You could ask people in other packs/packless that you know and trust, sure. But don't open it up to the public. Besides, you have pack members for a reason. Choose an alpha from them. Taking a random stranger makes a statement that you don't trust your members. That's not a good impression, and, honestly, if you can't trust any of your members enough to make them an alpha, your pack is probably screwed anyway.

Then there's offering people positions of power. Now, the majority of packs have ranks based on XP, excluding Alpha, and maybe some joke ranks, such as the Japanese Cake Boss rank in BM (don't ask). In those cases, the general expectation is that anyone who joins will automatically get whatever rank they have the XP for, so the only rank you can offer is Alpha.

However, there are also some packs with sub-Alpha 'advisor' positions or whatever. Now, honestly, that entire idea is completely pointless, but that's a subject for another time. In those cases, you could offer one of those positions, but that's hardly an extremely attractive offer. So, realistically, the only rank you can offer a player to get them to join your pack is an Alpha rank.

Again, this is another bad idea. You generally don't want to give random people power, even if they have tons of XP. Kas has 10 million XP, and I wouldn't make her alpha if my life depended on it (probably because I get the feeling I wouldn't live very long if she was an alpha). It also cheapens the leadership positions - they should be earned.

Quite honestly, though, the biggest reason is this simple question: do you really want a pack member who was willing to abandon her previous pack for the promise of power? And even if you do, do you want them as an alpha?

I don't know about you, but those are obvious questions to me. Loyalty is more valuable than XP, in most cases. Case in point:

Back when SN originally passed BM (due to Aiden screwing around, as usual), Kara left SN and tried to get me to pay her points to join BM. When I didn't accept her offer, she asked for an invite anyway. I refused to let her join, simply because I didn't want a disloyal member. After all, she had ditched SN the moment they passed BM, apparently aiming to earn some points by getting me to pay her. If I had accepted her offer, BM would be on top still. But I didn't. I'd rather be stuck in second place (for however long; I don't intend to stay there) than end up with disloyal members.

Maybe I'll cover loyalty in more detail in another entry... Regardless, the fact remains that you should use better methods than promising power and random selection to choose your alphas. And that includes evil packs - just because you're evil doesn't mean you should be stupid. Stupid Evil is not exactly the best alignment and all that, y'know?

Anyway, I need to find some food. There's no pizza in this house, and I threw all my bacon at Fang again...

Kill It With Fire: Playful/Archive RP Boards

So, did you watch Karl's video on the new attack system yet? It's over on youtube, if you didn't pay attention to Karl's twitter account. I must admit, it definitely looks like an improvement over the current system (not saying much).

I'm a bit skeptical about it, but I'll refrain from really examining it until we have more info. Although I do wonder if anything will be done with PvA and all. It'd be interesting to do so, but Pokemon-style battles don't really feel like W-H...

I'll admit, though, that I like the idea of regular updates on 1.2 progress. The lack of information previously was rather... discouraging. Although I thought Karl previously mentioned that there would be no new content/features in 1.2; just refining coding. I guess he changed his mind?

In other news, Band is still an asshole. Like that's any surprise. I hadn't heard much from her or her hats recently, so it's good to see that she's not up to anything aside from pissing everyone off.

Also, I looked over at my old TC side recently. Apparently, with mate requests no longer being restricted by gender, it is now mates... with itself. Don't think about it too hard. As for if it means it can help itself in fights... no idea. I'm too lazy to level such a weak account.

Anyway, short-ish entry today. This one concerns the Roleplay forum sections; specifically, the archives.

I'll admit, I don't spend much time in the RP sections. Nothing in it is really my level. No offense intended to advanced people. Much offense intend to noobs, as they all need to die.

Having said that, I think it's insanely obvious that the Archives board needs to go. There are 2 topics there. And one of them was some noob starting one in that board (heck, it should have been impossible to create topics in there in the first place!).

There are some possible uses, of course. If mods actually started archiving things, for example. Say, anything 2+ weeks old. Or just automatic coding to do that. But, honestly, I don't expect that to happen. It's not that the staff are incapable or lazy, it's just that it's a bit immense. There are hundreds of topics they'd have to deal with, and no one seems to have the motivation.

And since this has been the situation since I joined, I don't see this changing any time soon. So we might as well just delete the board. Clear up the clutter and all.

Heck, the entire RP section is kinda on loose footing. The Advanced forum has had 39 topics in over half a year... total. Really amazing there. And the Bios section... honestly, it's probably unnecessary since 1.1. Very few people actually have in-depth characters that they regularly RP with. And for those who do... use a Webs site or something. It actually makes you look more professional.

And the Playful board is just a disgrace to humanity. Yes, there are occasional RPs just for fun by mature players. I remember one from way back when concerning smurfs. Bonus points to you if you were actually around to see that.

The rest of them, however, don't deserve to exist. One sentence long replies are just utterly pointless. And if you look at the boards, plenty of them aren't even W-H related anymore. I mean, freaking Warriors? You've gotta be kidding me. And vampires? Give me a break... and a shotgun, so I can shoot those idiots.

Really, the entire thing is utterly pointless, and makes W-H look terrible. It's like, almost as bad as Neopets or something. We should just remove it entirely; it's not like there's any benefit to it.

Besides, if you want to RP... 100 words. That's not hard. Just a paragraph or two. If you don't want to take the effort to do that, you really shouldn't be RPing in the first place.

So, for the love of bacon... those two boards need to die. One due to disuse, the other due to being a blight on existence.

Custom Auctions: Common Sense Not Included

So, I'm writing this on St. Patrick's Day... yes, I don't have much of a buffer here. I blame reality. It keeps causing problems.

Anyway, as I was saying, I haven't the slightest idea what St. Patrick's Day is about, aside from an excuse to get drunk (like we need an excuse). I don't really want to find out, either. Heck, I don't even understand why we care about saints. I mean, Alexander the Grape (Grate? Slate? Grapist? Something like that) conquered most of the known world, and we don't have a holiday for him... Then again, that's history, and I don't like history.

Pack-wise, Alphyn seems to have disappeared from the top five almost overnight. Rather disappointing, really; they'd been up there for the longest time. I guess their pack being disbanded just caused a bit too much trouble; something really should have been done about that. I'd expect there to be backups of pack info, after all... Regardless, they're not dead yet, so there's always a chance they recover. I wouldn't be too surprised to see it happen; most of the packs who've been on the top five at some point tend to be rather resilient.

But that's not really the point of this entry. I'm here to discuss custom auctions. Of course, I know nobody will listen, but at least I can laugh at everyone's stupidity and say 'I told you so'. Because the purpose of life is to make other people look like idiots. Or something like that.

The idea of selling a custom design isn't new at all; it's been around for a while. However, typically it was the person who wanted the custom who would run things - set up a contest or something, and have multiple choices, in contrast to a custom auction, where people are all bidding on the same design.

The custom auctions didn't really take off until lately; I think the biggest factor was this thread, which is probably the highest amount ever paid for any service on the W-H to date. I'm just guessing on that, but it seems a safe assumption. After all, 453 points is an absurd amount to pay for anything.

Not that I object to it. Anyone who can get someone to pay that much for a custom design clearly needs some recognition. CallyKat's very, very lucky, it seems. Or maybe she put mind control messages into the posts forcing people to bid that high. Both seem possible.

Naturally, people being greedy bastards people, there are now tons of custom auctions going on. Of course, a good portion of those people seem to have neglected the fact that people are usually more willing to pay for good art...

I don't really have any issue with the idea of custom auctions. If somebody wants to sell a design that way, fine by me. However, I think people need to think about this for a second:

First off, if you buy a custom design, you still have to buy a custom yourself. You get 75 points from donating for the custom; as long as you stay under 75 points in paying for a design, technically you don't have to pay any more in real money. However, the moment you exceed 75 points, you are paying real cash for it. I don't think people fully grasp how points are real money; they seem to spend them a lot easier. (Yes, some points come from quests, but the majority come from donations).

If you don't believe me, try selling something for real money (same, through paypal) versus something for points. There's a dramatic difference. Having said that, real money is definitely a better deal, since you can always turn it into cash later, and there's no rule against asking for it. Any artists reading this might want to consider charging for real cash instead...

Anyway, there's also the fact that you get your custom designed by artists for free when you donate. Yes, it would be art theft to take a design on the forums and then try to get someone to put it on your custom for you. But... do you really have to have the custom you saw exactly that way? Because, honestly, you can just take what you like from the design, and then change the rest to whatever you want. It shouldn't be an exact copy, but it can have a resemblance; nothing against that. For example, I can't claim everyone with wings on their character is 'stealing' my custom's design, can I? (Especially since I was technically second with wings).

As for line art edits... Allow me to direct your attention to the TOS. The moment someone submits an edited custom for uploading, the art becomes the property of W-H. That means that the original artist has absolutely no claim to the lineart. While it might not seem sporting, there is no hard rule that says you can't use the lineart from someone else's custom. If you like a lineart edit, you can wait until someone uploads it, and then ask for it. Staff could potentially deny it, but usually it's not done. Easier if it's not a direct copy, of course.

And then, consider the cost. For example, for 453 points... you could have got 6 customs. Yes, I know the majority of people wouldn't pay that much, but still - if it's more than the price of two customs, isn't it a better use to just get multiple customs, or use the points on stats, or just save money and not donate in the first place? I mean, you could always donate just enough for your custom, and then use the leftover money if you ever want to change it. The majority of designs just aren't worth that much. There's always another design; you'll always find something you like more.

Plus, you have to put it all in perspective. Rounding a bit, a custom is $10. If you're paying more than $20... you could go buy a video game instead. Not a new one, but still, a video game would likely give you 50+ hours of entertainment... versus one specific design for a custom. That hardly sounds equal. And anything over that is just even more absurd. You could, like, save the money to snag Skyward Sword when it comes out this year. Or some other new game coming out soon. There's plenty of choices, and, really, just about all of them are probably better choices than a custom.

Quite honestly, there's no justifiable reason to pay much for a custom design when you can get it free after donating. Spending points on a whim because you 'need' to have that one design is just as bad a habit as randomly splurging money in real life (if you happen to play it). Don't get in the habit on W-H, or anywhere else.

Unless, of course, you happen to be paying me...

Totally Not A Filler Entry

Totally. >.>

However, if this was a filler entry, it might be because I have five papers due this week (which may or may not be due to me putting them off for months), as well as HSPE testing. Not to mention I managed to send my parents out of the country, so I'm probably playing video games while you're reading this (and probably have been for the last... 40-60 hours).

But, of course, this isn't a filler entry, so that's all pointless.

Anyway... if my profile on W-H is to be believed, I have no gender in real life. This is entirely possible, as I never even bothered to create a character in real life; I don't play it. Still, it's somewhat odd.

I'm also beginning to believe that Spleafnet will never be fixed. The site is shit. I'm unable to update anything, and I dunno if I ever will be. At least the info is accessible, and no major changes on W-H have happened.

And on a final note, I've finally settled on an update schedule for the blog here. I'll try to stick to it as much as possible, but no guarantees.

Anyway, I think that's all for now. If you happen to die dramatically, at least be sure to record it so I can watch later, k?

Boss Fights: The Worthless N00b Advantage

Noobs are the bane of existence. They irritate people, they cannot be educated, they occupy server space, they breathe air, their corpses pollute the earth after they die (because everyone knows noobs are like plastic - you can't get rid of them, even after they're dead).

Having said that, there is actually one use for them, though. Specifically, boss fights.

I know what you're thinking - how could a worthless noob that will die in the first hit and never do any real damage help in boss fights? And you're right - or you should be. There is no logical reason why a noob who hits for 5 points and dies immediately will help in a boss fight.

However, W-H does not operate on logic.

The reason noobs are useful is due to how the boss fight mechanics work. When a boss makes an attack, the damage is split semi-randomly between all of the wolves in an attack. The second attack is calculated the exact same way as the first.

Why is this important? Well, it's not... if all members survive. However, if multiple members are knocked out, logic says that the damage should be spread over the surviving members, right?

It doesn't work that way, though. The damage is still split between all members of the attack - even the dead ones. Even though that noob died immediately, they are still absorbing damage in the place of your other members.

This makes the noob actually helpful. And the more noobs you have, the better it gets. In theory, with enough noobs, one player could virtually solo a boss! I haven't tested this, but it certainly would be interesting to find out. If you do manage to do it, I'd love to see a screen shot.

Whether or not this is intentional is debatable, but it has been around since the start of the boss fight feature, and nothing's ever been done. I did actually report this during my time as a bug finder, but I received no reply. But either way, it's a win-win scenario: if it's intentional, there's no harm in me telling you. If it's not intentional, Karl will immediately fix it once he sees this. You would not believe how many bugs go unfixed until I start using them.

As you can see, noobs do have a use... as meat shields. And, quite honestly, they deserve it anyway, even if their bodies are going to be polluting our world for centuries.

Tips & Tricks: Pack Ranks

Just a short entry today, but one that's actually useful (yes, I do occasionally post useful content)...

Specifically, this is on pack profiles. People seem to enjoy customizing them endlessly; some packs have additional banners, some change layouts every two days (or so it seems), some use marquees and other HTML tricks to spruce up the profile. And some are just chaotic awesome.

If you've looked around, you may have spotted one or two packs with colored rank names, or ranks in italics, or blinking ranks which annoy the hell out of you. You may have wondered 'how did they do that?' I'm going to explain it to you.

It's done through the language of black magic, also known as HTML. As a warning here, if you don't know how to use HTML, don't even try. You'll just fuck everything up, possibly requiring admin intervention. And nobody wants to waste their time because you couldn't figure out how to close a tag and destroyed your pack control panel (yes, that is possible).

Anyway... Adding formatting to rank names is actually very simple. Just go to Edit Ranks, and put in the desired HTML in the rank name box. Of course, the character limit is going to prevent you from having rainbow colored ranks, but most less complicated things work fairly well.


IMPORTANT: Remember to close your tags! If you leave a tag open, it can and will (well, worst-case scenario) require admin intervention to fix... not to mention make you look like a complete idiot.

Also, it's worth noting that you don't need to put in ending tags - you can only stick in an opening font tag, and it won't change the rest of the text on the page. This saves a bit of space.

As for what exactly you can do... well, be creative. Anything you can fit in the space will work. Just don't overuse blink codes. Everybody hates them.

Also, do not, ever, under any circumstances, name a rank <!--. Just seriously, don't do it. And when you do it anyway, specifically because I told you not to, don't come crying to me. I did tell you not to, after all.

Have fun customizing!

Affiliation/Advertising Examination

So, today I'm going to look at W-H's affiliates, the Advertising board, and our advertising policies in general. Perhaps a tall order, but I'm still stuck at my grandparents and have nothing better to do. Not like I'd actually do homework or anything...

To start off with, our affiliates. Right now, we don't have very many, since they were cleaned up who knows when. Of those affiliates we do have, the majority are RP forums.

Now, there's nothing wrong with RP forums. I've had an enjoyable time on several of them. But, RP forums usually have either so many affiliates nobody will ever see us (and, let's face it, the button for W-H doesn't really have the same attention-catching properties most affiliate buttons do), or the site doesn't have very many members. RP forums don't usually have a high population increase.

So, basically, it benefits us nothing. So why even bother? I mean, we're linking them at the bottom of every page... and not getting anything out of it. Why not use that space for ads? We're already experimenting with them, although Karl seems to be trying to keep rather quiet about it.

After all, ads would actually be making us some money. More money equals... actually, I have no idea. Does anybody know where all the money the site makes goes to? I certainly don't see it around... Anyway, making us money is still a good thing. Besides, we've tried ads in the past... although we got them removed because Karl cheated and had tons of people click them.

Even if we didn't do ads, we still should be getting something out of that space. We could add a monument to my godhood, for example. Or perhaps we could actually affiliate with other game sites that we might actually get members from. There's a novel idea... We're already affiliated with Vis Servo, yes, but that's really just a start. If we're going to have two rows of affiliate icons down there, we should at least fill them up, y'know?

As for the Advertising board... according to the rules, we aren't allowed to advertise any site not affiliated with W-H. So, the only sites we can advertise are the ones we're linking to at the bottom of every single page. Give me a break. Linking to them on every page is about as much advertisement as we can give to anything. We definitely don't need to have an extra forum post about it. What more will that do?

So, the basic premise of the board, advertising our affiliates, is pointless.

Then we've got the more recent use of the board... advertising other threads on W-H. Art sales, RP forums, random stupid noob posts (hey, I just managed to insult every single player who posted on that board, because you'll never be sure exactly who I was referring to!)... Basically junk, junk, and more junk.

We need to stop that now. For art, we've got the art forum. You bump your threads there to get more sales (assuming you're selling something). We do NOT want people all creating advertising threads as well, which means you would then have to bump your art thread AND your advertising thread. Is it just me, or does that strike you as fucking pointless? Seriously - you do not need a thread to advertise another thread when you could just bump the thread in the first place.

The same goes for just about anything else you could theoretically advertise on the board. And don't even get me started on RP... Your RP may stay in the RP sections. I don't want to see it anywhere else. I already have a hard time not stabbing all those idiots looking for a 'family' on the Off Topic board.

That should demonstrate that the other purpose of the board is pointless. If you could even say it is a purpose, since it obviously wasn't designed for that.

The obvious solution: KILL IT WITH FIRE! That, or adjust our advertising policy.

Speaking of our advertising policy... it's just plain absurd. What, exactly, is the point of not being able to advertise any site aside from our affiliates? Yes, I wouldn't want a rival site to come here and steal all the players, but... W-H is unique here. We don't HAVE any competition.

If Karl doesn't want advertisements for, say, other MMOs, or other wolf-related games, or anything that claims the LWT actually does exist (I still get messages from complete idiots telling me it does), that's fine. But in general, there's no real reason for our current harsh policy.

Yes, I know that the forum being spammed is a possible concern, but it's just one board nobody looks at anyway. Not a huge issue. Besides, what's the harm in allowing, say, RP forums to advertise? It's not like they're going to steal members - they're not another game or anything. Heck, we might end up with more members because of it, due to the advertising rules on most other sites.

Those rules are usually that you can't advertise a site if said site doesn't allow a link-back advertisement or something of the sort, which W-H does not. This means that W-H cannot be legally advertised on the majority of sites, though a lot of our members give the site a bad name and advertise there anyway.

Besides, ever since we've been removed from the toplist (though god knows we deserved it), we have no method of advertising aside from word of mouth and those few players actually posting ads. Honestly, we need the additional locations to advertise...

Pack Recruitment

I figured I should take the time to cover pack recruitment, like I've mentioned I would do once or twice in the past. If you're a pack leader right now, you probably know how tough recruitment has been lately. Heck, it's been very tough since the hack itself. Apparently we're not recovering too well.

As it is currently, there are very, very, very few people leveling. Of those, people actually gaining significant amounts of experience (read: over 1 million within a reasonable amount of time) are practically non-existent. With Sunset gone (word is that she's been IP banned now), they might be entirely non-existent. Although whether or not she was human, and thus a person, is open to debate. I'll expand on this briefly:

1: Only humans classify as people.

2: Humans are stupid.

3: Logically, anyone who is NOT stupid is therefore not human.

4: Since they are not human, they are not a person.

So, as I said, Sunset's personhood is questionable. And if that's not a word, I declare it one now.

...But that's not really the subject of this entry anyway. More of entertainment value for myself when she tries to figure out if I'm insulting her or complimenting her. Anyway...

As I was saying, recruitment is hard. This is primarily caused by several facts. I will attempt to show the relationships between them.

1: People not leveling, as I already said. This means that the three main classes of players (noobs, people who failed math class, mid levels, and high levels) are not being distributed equally. While this is normal, in that there will always be more noobs than high levels (unfortunately), currently the replacement value is almost non-existent. There are almost no players going from mid levels to high levels. Thus, there is only a certain number of high level players available for recruitment, and it is not increasing.

2: High levels are being REMOVED from the recruitment pool due to those people quitting/leaving. In addition, those players who insist on creating their own packs NOW, even though it is one of the worst times possible to create packs in the history of W-H, further remove themselves from the recruitment pool. It's even worse if they know a good number of other people on W-H and drag those members into their pack with them, draining the recruitment pool even further.

3: Players are, of course, also removed from the recruitment pool when somebody actually recruits them. Due to there not being many reasons to swap packs (more on that later), almost any player in a large pack is effectively removed from recruitment possibilities until that pack fails (if it does). Those fanatically loyal or who insist on being loners further deplete possibilities.

4: Current number of high level players up for recruitment - #2 repeating endlessly = near 0.

See the problem? This is one of the after-effects of 10x XP - it made people stop leveling. Yes, it gave us a higher number of high levels than before the hack, but that doesn't help, due to more packs around and people leaving. Not to mention the higher levels who are still freaking idiots noobs, who nobody wants.

The biggest problem with recruitment, though, is a lack of pack incentives. If you asked me, right now, why BM is better than SN in terms of gameplay, I could not give you any true answer. Let's look closer at things packs promise:

Unlimited DP/DP for gear: DP is worthless. Yes, it may be good for someone leveling... but no one is. In addition, it's incredibly easy to obtain the amounts required for gear these days anyway.

Points for leveling: No one is leveling. In addition, a lot of packs have conditions on this. Some award points for set amounts of XP. Personally, I have BM only award points per million XP past max level. Amounts also differ between packs. Either way, though, people aren't leveling, so it's not helpful.

Daily Boss Fights: I think I already made my views clear on this.

Friendly community and/or anything of that variety: While this may be true, it's typically only true for the current members - like any social group, being accepted immediately just doesn't happen. Plus, it doesn't really provide any benefit; you don't need to be in the same pack as someone to be on good terms with them. I mean, I tend to stay on good terms with most pack leaders, even if I try and steal Fang's bacon at times.

Pack roleplay: Let's face facts. If any of you are hardcore RPers like me, you will know that RP on W-H is in a sad state. I don't even bother trying. Even in a pack, it doesn't change that. W-H is not a place for serious RP. You want that, go join a Proboards forum or something. Besides, W-H doesn't even have a setting - we've never even established if we're on Earth, or whether the laws of physics even apply.

Contests: There are essentially only a few contest types:

The first is the XP contest. 99% of the time this will be won by only one person, who will be the pack's main leveler (assuming people still leveled). The only time they won't win is when they aren't able to be on. In this way, it's not even a contest - they win by default.

The second is the art contest. The majority of players on W-H are not good artists (myself included). There are, however, several exceptional artists onsite. Usually, there will be one or two of these per pack who will blow the competition away completely, again making them win by default. In addition, there's not really much of a point in doing an art contest as a pack - you'll get more (and possibly better) entries on the competition board.

The third is the 'contest for a contest idea'. Trust me, THIS NEVER WORKS. Never.

And the fourth is the random contest/raffle, where the winner is decided almost completely by chance. This is basically just a giveaway, because the pack itself isn't likely to get anything out of it. And since it's luck, there's not much you can do, aside from bribing and/or intimidating the person running the raffle to rig it for you.

In just about all of these cases, it isn't much benefit to an average player you're trying to recruit, unless they happen to be one of the best artists on site or the biggest XP whores. It doesn't actually help the player. Not a reason to join.

Aside from that, nothing else significant is usually offered. Typically there's an attempt to offer something 'unique' as well, though it's usually ultimately useless. In BM's case, this would be Aer's massmails. They offer no gameplay value, but they are amusing... to the point where several packs have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate them. Not trying to say how awesome BM is, just that nobody is quite as... 'special' as Aer when it comes to massmails. That should be ambiguous enough that I can claim it was a compliment.

So, the point is: nothing packs are offering in recruitment offers are actually even reasons worth considering. Normally, I would say that this means we need to change our recruitment offers, except that if we took all of those out, it'd probably end up as 'plz join my pack itz cool'. This is because, honestly, we don't have any good reasons for people to join us.

Some packs work through this by Bribing Their Way To Victory. Now, technically, there is nothing in the rules against bribing people to join your pack, or buying members for specified point amounts on contracts. However, there is also nothing in the rules that requires people to abide by the terms of these contracts. All in all, it's a risky situation, and it's better to avoid it. Anyway...

The logical solution here would be to lie outrageously add in actual reasons to join packs. A benefit to being a pack member, basically. For example, would it be that unreasonable to offer powerful packs a 5% XP gain boost to members? There would be many ways to do it; base a pack's 'level' on total XP, or on XP earned by members of the pack while they were members, etc. Personally, I think the best way to go about it would be to use the second method to unlock a feature, but then require packs to purchase it... for DP. Absurdly high amounts of DP.

Why? This would make DP valuable again by providing a DP sink. DP is gainable by everyone, so it's not like we'd be discriminating against those who can't donate. It'd cure our inflation issues, make PvP/Pack Wars worthwhile again, AND provide good recruitment options for packs.

Other possibilities would include a percentage increase to DP gain for members, OR automatically collecting a small amount of DP from members' kills to the pack bank. No need for donating for that. Also things like increased territory yield, although this would require territories to start giving DP again (which would then be worthwhile, since DP would no longer be worthless).

There's also the pack territory editing possibility; Karl has briefly mentioned in the past that it was under consideration to allow packs to do this (as in either changing tiles and/or adding enemies). This would allow some fluidity into what the best areas for hunting are.

Any of these things being implemented would add more reasons for people to join the better packs. At the same time, they wouldn't be an insurmountable barrier that makes it hard for newer packs - as I said, DP isn't hard to gain, and it would actually provide a benefit for people in the pack. Heck, in theory, it would be possible for a brand new pack to do better recruiting than a larger one, simply by offering more available benefits to members.

I don't really expect anything to be implemented, but hey - we can hope, right?

On an off note, I managed to cover recruitment problems, debate Sunset's humanity, demonstrate the decline of recruitable players, and suggest several different new features for packs, all in one entry. That's got to be a record.

Random Plotting

(For those of you who have not noticed, Spleafnet is back up. However, something's still not right, in that the admin panel is still completely inaccessible. So I can't actually update any info.)

So, I'm writing this while down in Oregon, without an internet connection, because my grandparents live in the freaking stone age. Heck, they even have a telephone from a time they claim was 'before the internet existed'. I'm not sure if I believe them. Did we have telephones in the Dark Ages? It's historical facts like that that I just can't be bothered to remember...

Anyway... I was watching tonight's episode of Jeopardy out of boredom. I don't normally watch the show (hell, I don't normally watch anything), but since there's not much to do around my grandparents' aside from watch stuff on their huge flatscreen HD TV (this from a couple who believes computers are the work of the devil)... As I was saying, the final question on Jeopardy revealed that in the 1900s, radium was the most valuable substance or something like that, and valued at $3 million per ounce.

So, that got me thinking. I don't remember if Rad ever told me how much she weighs, but unless she's absurdly underweight, we could make a ton of money here. Here's my evil plan...

1: Kidnap Radium. Probably the most complicated part. I'm thinking we trace her IP to find wherever she lives (because asking people who know her is like, totally not evil enough), then take an assault team into her ISP and extract her exact address by gunpoint. Then we have another assault team storm her house and kidnap her, while a pair of helicopters lays down supressing fire. Then we airlift her out in one of the choppers, and blame the entire incident on PETA by claiming that Rad's existence was potentially a threat to some animal or other at some moment or other in her lifespan. That should be ambiguous enough for people to buy it.

2: Fatten Rad up with large amounts of donuts and ice cream.

3: Debunk Eistein. Easy part.

4: Build a time machine.

5: Fight off our future selves who attack us as we complete the time machine.

6: Travel back to the 1900s.

7: ???

8: Profit

...

219: Discover that somehow we've altered the time stream and go back in time to try and stop ourselves from building the time machine, despite the fact that we already know that our past selves defeat our future selves and alter the time stream anyway.

Sound good? We'll all be filthy rich by the time we're done, and we'll only create a time parodox and possibly destroy the entire universe in the process! I mean, it's not like we're dividing by 0 or anything...

Changes, Challenges, Cthul- wait...

Allow me to apologize for not having any new entries for over a week. I do have a valid reason, though - I caught a bad cold, and it's kept me off the computer for a goodly amount of time. Heck, I'm not even fully recovered yet...

...That, and I was busy finishing up the completely awesome Mask of The Betrayer expansion pack to Neverwinter Nights 2. I got one of the sub-optimal endings... and got turned into a freaking immortal demigod. How exactly that's suboptimal, I don't know. But I won't spoil anything else... I highly recommend it to all RPG fans - even better for Forgotten Realms geeks, although Dragonlance is closer to my territory. Steam has it, I believe.

Another of the lesser reasons for not updating has been deciding why exactly I want to destroy the Earth... and the unstability of things on W-H. What with the 'hack' panic (*coughnoyouwerenothackedyouidiotgofindoutwhathackingactuallyiscough*), Sunset quitting, Top 5 turmoil (although that's beginning to become normal), and Karl adjusting things.

Oh, and the rollback with the recent update, even if only for a few days. Is it just me, or does it strike you as completely unnecessary to roll the entire site back in order to update the layout? I mean, seriously... we've never required rollbacks for updates before.

On another note, the night before the rollback someone appeared to have destroyed Ambrose, AL, and a few other packs. It seems to me that the rollback was intended to restore that more than anything else... really too bad that it wasn't done back when Alphyn was hit.

At least it has, for the moment, left Sunset's XP untouched. I'm not entirely sure whether or not it'll be removed again. I suppose that entire issue could take another entry, but I think I'll stay out of it... for the time being.

And then we've got the layout changes. Ultimately, I like them; much easier to navigate. Plus, apparently the drop-down menus don't work for Internet Explorer, and IE incompatibility is always a good thing, because it means more people use Firefox/Safari/Chrome/etc. Forcing people to stop using IE is doing them a favor.

On an off note, the staff list appears to have disappeared from navigation (still accessible via url). Whether this is by oversight or is an evil scheme by a certain communist hat remains to be seen. If it was intentional, it begs the question: why remove the staff list and leave the Credits page that has been inaccurate since around the time I joined?

And then we've got the primary issue in this entry... the removal of Challenges.

I'm not arguing against it. Hell, I agree with it; they were never used. But I'm still going to miss them, you know? They were a part of W-H since before I was on, and I have some fond memories of playing with them back when the site was young...

To be honest, I've never been entirely sure why they never took off. Yes, DP is worthless now, but there was a time when it was actually valuable, and we didn't even do challenges then. They've always just been idle competition.

I suppose part of it might be how you were never able to see the results. Karl's argument against showing them back in the day was if people could see them, they'd give up and never do one again... which would be a valid point, except people were never doing them in the first place.

On the other hand, maybe the community just wasn't ready for them when they were introduced. There was never much interest back then, but what if he had introduced the feature now instead of way back when? There would probably be a lot more interest. Well, at least at first. Past that... Eh, who knows?

Enough playing 'what if?', though. They're gone now, though there's always a chance they'll be back. Heck, I'm privately hoping they come back better than ever, but that's probably slim. Still, they were fun while they lasted.

I suppose it also means that there will be no more challenge tournaments, which means the SN/BM one is the only one in the history of the site. Maybe we need veteran badges for participants...

Plus, now you can talk about them to newbies and pretend to be ancient and experienced.

Oh, right, I almost forgot... Since they're gone now, I'm free to reveal some more pointless 'firsts' regarding them:

I am the first person to win a challenge for the maximum possible amount of $9,999,999 DP.
I'm also the first person to completely bypass that maximum, allowing an infinite amount to be wagered. I believe I won around $20 million.
I'm the first (and only) person to challenge myself for negative infinity. Seriously.
I'm the only person who ever was able to challenge other people for negative time (which actually resulted in winning the challenge before it started. I was also able to successfully complete a challenge before W-H even existed).

As I've mentioned before, I really hate firsts. So, if you're not going to stop blabbing about them... at least shut up if you can't top these.