Astera News

Here our good friend and college Dans cruf will post his random thoughts, rants and comments about that great game we all love called Tibia. Take it away Dans.

26/5/08

Whats happening to the beauty of tibia?

This game used to be awesome. It was fun to pla y. It was hard to play. Even as little as a year ago it was awesome. It had it’s flaws. A large portion of the community speaks little to no english. And a lot of them are disrespectful. The connection to the servers has never been perfect either. And botters have ran rampant for years. All these flaws still exist. But the game itself was great. This all changed with the summer update. And ever since then things have gotten worse and worse. Knights got the power they were craving. 6 months later they lost there healing ability. And with this the ultimate healing rune became virtually useless. The reason for changing the healing according to cip, “knights are not meant to be magic users” Well thanks to your brilliant “balancing” knights are now using mana potions and exura to heal cause your brillaint health potions are so expensive. Removing uh has to be the worst decision ever made for this game. You ruined 3 vocations by doing that. Knights and pallies lost there main source of healing. Druids lost their main source of money. And it didn’t change the fact that knights are still using magic. They just went from runes to mana potions. But not every knight does that. Some knights played casually for fun. Who would make uh runes on druids and talk to friends. Then hunt with the free uh they made. Now they are forced to use health potions which are very expensive. Those casual players are slowly retiring from the game. And they are being replaced by more and more botters. And botting is at an all time high. With nothing being done about it. They virtually put the main tools of botting into the game itself. Hotkeys. Ambient light. Targeting from the battle window. The only things they havn’t added are auto killing and auto looting. And the reason for implementing these things? “We don’t want to have to ban these players. After all they pay to play”. They pay to PLAY not to bot. And has it stopped ANY of them from botting? Don’t think so. Good job. Pretty soon there’ll be more botters than players. But I guess cip don’t mind. After all they pay to play. So it’s all good as long as the money keeps coming in.

4/5/08

Double Addon Week

Double Addon week. Who wasn’t excited when they first heard about this? A chance to get all those addons you need for those annoying outfits (100 ape fur anyone?) or a chance to make a lot of money (gs isle). But slowly cip crushed everyones hopes for this event. For staters they got the name wrong. Double means 2 times an amount. They made it 5 times the normal amount. I wonder if they thought about the impact on the economy of worlds this would have. I’ve seen people looting 50+ fish fins in single hunts. I know somebody who looted 100 ape fur with just 4 hours of softboots. There are going to be 1000’s of addon items looted before this ends. But there are only so many that are needed for every person. Once everyone has all the addons they need, what do you do with the leftovers. And trust me, theres going to be MANY left overs. So the simple solution. People lower prices in a desperate attempt to convince people to buy the addons. Possibly for seconday chars. Prices are going to plummet soon. And they won’t be going back up untill every single addon has been sold and they are back to normal drop rates. Way to ruin the profitability of hunts from addon items.
And another flaw. This has been limited to premium only creatures such as quara or pirates. Which is great if your after certain addons. But 2 problems arise. With the addon increase rate limited to so few creatures, every single spawn is crowded. For most, they are killing so few of the creature they’re hunting that they don’t get much more than they normally would. And all respect goes out the window as people get greedy. It’s double exp week all over again except with addons. And the second flaw? Your limited to certain addons only. I can think of 3 outfits right from the top of my head which need 100 giant spider silk. The mage outfit, the summoner outfit and the barbarian outfit. 3 of the hardest to get outfits in the entire game. I bet people looking to complete these outfits were extremly disapointed when they found out giant spiders weren’t dropping more silks than normal.
Another flaw comes to mind. Why limit this to premiums? I seriously doubt anyone would buy premium just to get addons quicker for a limited outfit. And free accounts could benefit as well if they were included. They may not be able to get addons, but they could have made a lot of money selling addons to people. From simple addons such as wolf paws and bear paws (bear paws are uber rare to begin with) to holy orchirds, red dragon scales and the most sought after item giant spider silk. But I guess cip is happy with ruining the prices of certain addons, ruining popular spawns for people and giving free accounts nothing yet again. Good Job.

Peace out.

25/05/08

What Happened To Freedom Of Speech?

As some of you may know, I’m currently a tutor and have been for 2 months now. It took me a gruelling 2 years of failure to pass the test. And now I need to ask myself. Do I Regret it?

Sure I get to help people who need it. I get a fancy orange text in help channel. I get access to private tutor forums and could possibly have access to private test servers designed to test updates for playability and bugs. But every single one of those has a flaw. I helped people before I was a tutor. The orange text means that people value my opinion over non tutors who have spoken. Who’s answer is just as good if not better than mine. The test servers are uber crowded by other tutors. Most of whom took the tutor test just for access to them. And then you have to fill out reports of everything you do. Seek out bugs. Etc. It’s hard work

And now I’ll get started on the forums. Recently I had a “discussion” with another tutor who I won’t name. But he isn’t exactly well liked. A tutor who has a history of abusing his positon. Using it to get others banned. Criticising other tutors work in private. Admitting to looking at lists of players who are online just so he can namelock them. If he has a problem with someone he will go out of his way to get banned. He reported several posts of another player on the forums. All of which were perfectly fine. So then he statement reported the person. At first the player was banned over it. He complained customer support looked at the ban and decided it was ridiculous. And unbanned him. But while he was banned a new account was made ~not by the player~ which had a similar name to the person im talking about. He also had a second char called “seellacc”. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is “sell acc” which is illegal. However this character hadn’t logged on. It’s normal procedure for a tutor to message the player if they are level 1 and suggest they delete the character. But this tutor who has a personal vendetta with this player reported it right away. I need to point out now. This account was 30 minutes old. So I questioned the tutor about why he reported it. He himself earlier said he would message a level 1 to warn them. But when I asked him about this particular character, he told me he was asked to report it. He was asked to report a 30 minute old account, report a character that had never been logged on before and who had a level 1 online. Then he said he reported it for being offensive. Which makes no sense what so ever. How is it offensive? I asked him that. He yammered on for a bit. Then said he reported it for being an illegal sentence. So he went from being asked to report it to reporting it for being offensive to reporting it for being illegal. When before all of this he’d said himself how he’d normally pm the level 1 to suggest they delete illegal named chars. Especially ones that had never been logged on before.

So after I was done asking him questions I logged for the night. Got on the next day early in the afternoon. Checked the forums. And saw an unusual post on the tutor forums. “@ stedriesus shadones and misty case” ~That being the char i was online with during the conversation.~ And i opened it up. We had been giving a public warning about how to treat other tutors with respect and to get along with them as a team. I have no idea why misty was mentioned either. She made 1 comment. So anyway. I made a post. I simply stated how this tutor has a dark past. And how if you’d seen the earlier parts of the conversation you would have seen his comments. I got a reply saying that my honesty and insight was appreciated but she didn’t have all the conversation and if we have problems with other tutors then we need to talk to her. So… she didn’t have access to all the conversation. Simply put. The tutor statement reported me. I guess I hurt his feelings. However a public warning is completely out of order. Normal procedure is to warn the tutor in private about their conduct. Now personally I didn’t care about the thread. I made my post. Made myself look good. But at the end of the day I couldn’t care less what people think about me. However it was totally unfair against misty to be put into the public spotlight over something she had no involvement with.

After reading the thread another tutor ~lana thorin~ posted in defense of myself and misty. Stating how we were both made to look like crap and how only the very end of the conversation was posted. He was replied to with “this is none of your business and doesn’t involve you”. So lana replied again in defense of himself this time. I posted as well requesting the thread be closed or renamed. Closed because the point was made. Or renamed because it was completly unfair on misty. Well BOTH of our posts were deleted. The thread was closed after this. Lana emailed cip simply asking why posts were deleted. He got a swift response again telling him that this had nothing to do with him, Then he was dismissed as a tutor

This is totally ridiculous. First a public warning which has NEVER been done before. And then posts get deleted. And then tutorship was lost.

And all of this started over me having an opinion of another tutor

Well heres my opinion of this tutor where it won’t be deleted or censored.

Your a worthless piece of scum who adds nothing as a tutor but hate and injustice. ~wow i sound like a nerd~

Heres some quotes from what he said in tutor channel. ~from the top of my head~

I’ve reported loads of my friends. I have no shame in doing so. They broke the rules. I reported them. It’s my job as a tutor. I didn’t tell them though.

Your such an awesome person. Criticising other tutors in private. Taking personal vendettas to the extreme. Openly admitting to caring more about tutorship than friendship. And when you can’t handle it when others criticise you, you run off to a cm.

And you wonder why people dislike you?

Well thats my rant at him over with.

A quote from misty case

but id like to point out the sheer hypocrisy of iscen, she said it was none of lanas business, if that was true, why make a public thread , to me that makes it every tutors business, she looks like a masochistic control freak who likes to humiliate others,

Cip is totally out of order with that they’ve done. A public warning was extreme, but dismissing lana for questioning it? Thats way too far. This game is turning into a dictatorship. If your going to delete posts that don’t violate rules then why not just remove the forums. You removed tutorship from an honest hard working genuinely nice person over the most ridiculous of situations. Bravo

Peace out

23/04/08

So.. he’s started a blog.

You ever come across a certain topic that just stops and make you think? Something you mention to all your friends. Something that turns into a huge discussion which lasts for ages with so many points of view to talk about. Well I plan on using this blog to talk about any of those possible situations I might come across. I’ve found with the power of the keyboard and internet that once I start typing about something on my mind I end up typing and typing and typing. And I plan on converting that to tibia related things.

So.. enough rambling.

Welcome to Dan’s Corner. Wait that sounds creepy. Like I’m sitting here in my own special corner inviting people to join me ._.

Ignore that. Hope you enjoy reading some of my ramblings.

P.S

A message from Claire Sassenach

I am super smexi and I am single and looking for a sugar daddy to buy me things

And in case your wondering…no I didn’t meet her in my corner

Peace out