October 2000

Zap's Signs you've been Playing NWN Too Much
Posted Friday, October 27, 2000 by
PanzerMagi

Just for fun, I thought I'd include some truly ancient material - the Zap's Signs that I originally wrote many moons ago with my first character, Zapthief. They eventually took on a life of their own, and I even saw them posted by various folks as having come from *other* people - but truth is, it was that pesky long-eared Jester of COR that started the trend. Some are better than others, so I'll just include all the ones I could still find.

Here they are, Zap's signs that you've been playing Neverwinter too much.

1** You start muttering about people that don't know how to done/guard when the line at the grocery store moves slowly.

2** You start bumping the wall in the hallway at work when someone you hate walks past, so you can trig a fight on top of them.

3** You leave behind the pile of $20.00 bills you find on the sidewalk because you don't want to be encumbered..

4** When your spouse hands you the broom so you can help tidy up, you drop it on the floor and say, "Wrong class. Can't ready it."

5** You start hitting F7 while you play Doom at work, to see if the boss is nearby.

6** Impatient with how slow your progress is, you come close to starting a fight with some thugs in the subway station so they'll gate you home.

7** You start carrying around various family heirlooms at work, asking everyone if they have gaunts to trade.

8** You put a 15 by 15 grid on all of your street maps because, "They obviously forgot to."

9** You start asking your friends, "Can we mem here?"

10** When you get stuck in traffic, you yell out the window at the car in front of you, "Need help?"

11** Even worse, when you get no response, you try to sneak...

12** At Christmas, you tell everyone you need to QTS after you open your presents.

13** When someone is talking, and you miss what they said, you try to hit shift-F4 to hear it again...

14** You tell your spouse, "AFK, BRB" every time you go to the bathroom or the fridge.

15** A cop pulls you over for speeding, and you try to view/unfollow them...

16** You can't go to church anymore because every time anyone starts praying, you get scared that they're about to trig a battle...

17** You try to ID your wedding ring at the gun store...

18** You start taking shots at your neighbors with a pellet gun, to see what your Thaco is...

19** You stop the car every time you speak while driving.

20** You tell your companions to prep every time you're about to open a door... because you can't remember if there's a set fight or not...

21** You show up at work naked, wrapped in aluminum foil, wearing your son's Superman cape around your neck, with a garbage can lid clutched in one hand, and waving a spatula in the other, shouting, "-10 AC! Let's see one of you hit me now!"

22** You challenge your niece to a ladder fight.

23** Your idea of spending quality time with your daughter is exploring caves at the national park, hoping to find a drac fight so she can get some exp...

24** You begin opening all of your interoffice memorandums with "OOC..."

25** You begin sending interoffice memorandums that are IC...

26** When you come down with the flu, you stop at the nearest church and ask how much a cure disease is...

27** You start adding "of COR" below your signature every time you sign your name.

28** You try to recruit strangers into the guild.

29**You consider re-rolling.

30**You start telling people that you were born in Phlan, rather than New York.

31**You divide your house into PvP and non-PvP zones, and put up brass placards announcing to visitors when they enter a room what type of region the room is.

32** You threaten to TOS your children after you catch them fighting in the living room ---- a non-PvP region.

33**You start calling your basement "Living Room Under"...

34**You start mapping every time you enter a building you've never mapped before.

35**When the clerk asks you if you need any help, you say, "NT, fleeing. :)"....

36**Or, you say, "Actually, I need some help getting Exp, if you have some time..."

37**You ask your priest if he can bless you before you take your finals, so you'll get better hp...

38**You consider dualing so you can become a maxxed clerical worker/mail man...

39**When someone tells you that they're a displaced homemaker, you say, "Wow. Cool. So, what's that make your A.C.?"

40**You start answering the phone by saying, "Hail, and well met."

41**When someone tells you a good joke, you say, "Rofl!"

42**When you're tired after a long day at work, you say, "Colon Colon Yawns, exhausted Colon Colon"

43**You ask your boss if the Spring Bash will be a holiday for the office.

44**You drop a note saying, "Allow melee in PvP" in the employee suggestion box at work.

45**You start complaining that the boss never gives Pearls.

46**You convert all your cash into jewels, so it'll be easier to carry around.

47**You wander around your backyard, looking for newbies to help.

48**You put a bumpersticker on your car that says, "PvP'ers do it in the hillls."

49**On election day, you stand outside a voting site, waving a sign that says, "Lightsedge for GM"

50**You tell your children, "Don't take gifts from strangers. They might be hackers."

51**You start spending hours coming up with jokes that nobody other than a die-hard NWN player would get...

52**You start asking strangers if they're in a guild.

53**When a friend asks if you want to join the office car pool, you say, "No thanks... I prefer to invis and flee the fights... It's faster than traveling in a group."

54**Before you leave a hotel, you ask if anyone can spare an invis...

55**When your uncle passes away, you send a condolence letter to your Aunt that starts with, "I was truly saddened to hear that Bob gated..."

56**You offer to take your nephew's scout troop out to get the Kraken badge...

57**You try to get excused from jury duty because you have a ladder fight that's in conflict with it, and don't understand why the judge says, "You want to be excused from jury duty so you can play a computer game? Roflmfao!"

58**You have your name legally changed to your screen name.

59**When friends ask you what classes you're in, you say, "Right now I'm a Clam, but I was thinking of re-rolling to a Ram..."

60**How do you know you've been PvP'ing too much for one evening? When ya try to cast a stinker between you and the wife so she gets stuck melee'ing the children while you invis and flee the battle....

61** When you get invited to a big dance on Friday night, you tell your friends, "Nah... I prefer to just hang back with my fine long bow, and pick the Holders off..."

62**Or, even worse... You show up with your fine long bow, to demonstrate how it's done...

63** When a stranger tells you he's a Hell's Angel, you ask him if it's a sanctioned guild...

64** You try to make conversation with your doctor by asking him how many feebs he sees in a week...

65** You tell the person at the front desk of the hotel what denomination you belong to, so they can send you to the correct temple if you get poisoned...

66** You ask the woman at the earing booth in the mall how many pearls you get if you make your save...

67** When your spouse announces that they need to run to the store, you say, "Esp me when you get back, so I'll know you're in..."

68** You write a story about commuting to work and send it in to your local paper.

69** You go to confession, and say, "Resist fire me, father, for it lasts much longer than bless..."

70** When you're about to run into a Mac Truck head-on, you yell, "Everybody CAD, quick!"

71** When you get nervous while driving through the wrong part of town at night, you make the family get out of the car and tell them, "Stay encamped. I'll scout ahead. BRB"

Rumors, Half-Truths, and Damned Lies - The Pearl Plan
Posted Thursday, October 26, 2000 by
PanzerMagi

Pearl items always had a mysterious, mystical awe to them. For many players, they were the ultimate goal. We saved for them, we obsessed over them, we cherished them. Pearl items were truly prized possessions, and all of us were jealous of those who had more than we did.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that a class of items so highly coveted would breed some misconceptions. Everyone had there own notions of how useful various Pearl plan items were, much of it based purely on rumor or speculation. The only subject given to more flights of fancy in the realm were saving throws, and Pearl items even popped up there from time to time.
The first myth I always like to debunk is the value of boots of speed. This one always bothered me, because even some staffers didn't understand how they worked. Accordingly, they made it so you couldn't buy boots - you had to win them. Or, have them lent to you, as I did.
The basis of this rule was that staff thought (as most players also mistakenly believed), that boots made you immune to all varieties of the slow spell. In other words, no matter what was cast upon you, you needed only unready/ready your boots to regain your 24 movement per round.
In fact, boots were absolutely identical to a haste spell with two exceptions: First, they didn't wear off. Second, they couldn't be dispelled.
Er, let's make that three exceptions. Boots didn't make you age like the haste spell did.
That's it. A slow spell would still slow you down to 12 movement, no matter how many times you unready/readied your boots. If I recall correctly, NPC slows (like that cast by stone golems) *could* be countered by unready/readying the boots, but that was about it.
The thing I loved most about the boots was that I could flee fights while traveling through places like the woods in a single round, frequently locking up the computer of whoever had tried to bushwhack me.
E-cloaks were the most commonly seen Pearl items, so most players were a bit more familiar with them. I found an e-cloak to be more of an advantage than boots, since it allowed a spell effect that couldn't be achieved any other way - invisibility while protected by a minor globe of invulnerability.
By unready/readying an e-cloak, a player could ensure that he was truly invisible each round of combat. By done/delaying before attacking or casting, he could ensure that no NPCs would be in a position to attack during the short period each round that he was visible. An e-cloak gave an enormous advantage in positioning, as NPCs would very rarely attack you.
One rumor I heard was that all high end Pearl items gave a benefit to saves, and that was partially why they were Pearl items. I don't know if it was true, but it might explain why some were so expensive - like rings of cold resistance.
One item which definitely did help saves was the plus 3 ring of protection. Contrary to popular belief, cloaks of protection were glitched and did not help saves, and this made rings of protection all the more effective for PvP. A +3 ring was also needed for the infamous -11 armor class, which could only be achieved with the combination of AC2 bracers, a +3 ring, +3 shield, 18 dexterity, and a cloak of displacement.
With both the bracers and the ring being Pearl items, sporting a -11 was a good way to let the world know you had some heavy Pearlage. It was also a good way to make most of them assume you were a staffer.
Girdles of cloud giant strength were another way of getting something you couldn't have any other way - 23 strength. The enlarge spell could get you to 22, but only a girdle could reach higher. Like all items, having that strength even without prep spells was also mighty handy. For the lazy player, such as myself, every Pearl item meant one more prep spell I didn't have to remember to cast.
For most of my time in Neverwinter, I only had two Pearl items - my e-cloak and my boots. Both were provided by Sir Redrum, and they didn't make me invulnerable. Neither could help me to count rounds to know when my enemies were unglobed, or force me to pay attention to who had moved where in the battle.
But I sure did love them. One of the greatest uses for such items was, of course, killing critters. Clams like myself sometimes forgot that there was such a thing as a battle that didn't involve PvP, but they did exist. When you look at the Pearl plan from a non-PvP standpoint, the prices and availability of items quickly makes sense.
Fact was, most staffers preferred adventuring over PvP, and there were far more Pearl items for adventuring than for PvP. Items like the Frost Brand, the +3 fine long bow, or the +3 mirrored shield were primarily useful for battling NPCs. They were items you got purely for love of the game, and I'll kind of miss that purity when melee PvP is included with the Forgotten World.
Then again, I'll probably just be so happy to have something worth playing again that I won't miss a thing.

That's a lot of Exp for a Clam
Posted Thursday, October 19, 2000 by
PanzerMagi

One recurring theme of Panzermagi's earlier days in Neverwinter were accusations that he was a hacker. These came from two directions, items and experience.
First, he had an e-cloak and boots of speed. E-cloaks may not have been all that suspicious, but boots definitely were. After all, there were at most a few dozen legitimate pairs, and most of those were held by cranky old-timers who never played. Fact is, both items came from a spectacular COR old timer by the name of Sir Redrum. The boots were a loan from him, the e-cloak a gift. I owe a lot to Reddy, and I won't ever forget that debt. It isn't every day you run into a friend who'll loan you boots of speed - trust me.
Then there was the exp. No hacking was involved, although I'm sad to admit that the Vilnask Dracs were. Quite a few of them, in fact.
I can't recall for certain how much exp I had when Neverwinter closed down, but I know it was somewhere over 100,000,000. Not all of it came from the dracs, but I'd say a solid 50 million or so did. Here's how it worked.
First, I'd travel to that famed spot in Vilnask where the dracbashers could be found at all hours of the night and day. I'd wait my chance for a spot, and then wait until there was a line formed waiting to get in. At that point, I'd leave the game and return.
As some of you may know, there's an interesting phenomenon when you enter the game onto a full square. You get bumped to a strange netherworld where you're all alone. Even more interesting, you can get into combat that way.
What's also interesting to note is that this region is shared with people in the character generator. Which is why sometimes when you were rolling your character, you'd hear newbies hollering for help nearby. They were dracbashers who had left the game from the dracs, and found themselves all alone in the full-square alternate reality. Typically, they found themselves soon digested by the hungry undead beasts, and learned a lesson of respect for those dread creatures.
Myself, on the other hand, was doing this quite on purpose. Since I had an e-cloak, and dracs were unable to see invisible players (even though they're supposed to be able to), I could solo them with relative ease.
Having gotten to the square all alone, I would then use the clock-change trick to both "set" and trigger the fight. It's been a while since we've played, so let me review how the Vilnask dracs worked.
In game, there was a "time" associated with the world. It didn't matter much except for determining whether it was "day" or "night" in Neverwinter. To make it so that the Vilnask dracs would re-appear for new parties of adventurers periodically, they were set up so that players with an even in-game hour could "set" the dracs, and a player with an odd in-game hour could "trigger" them.
Actually, I may have those reversed, but it doesn't matter. Point is, if the little in-game clock had an even hour, you'd walk into the wall there at the drac spot, and a little pause would tell you that the dracs were now "set". Then, if a player whose clock had an odd hour bumped into the wall, a fight with the dracs would start.
There were two varieties of in-game time, both about 48 minutes apart. Which one you got was determined by what your computer's clock said. Times seemed to be determined by whether you were west coast or east coast time, and the need for a player with a different time scheme for the dracs to work was one way that players sometimes managed to squeeze themselves a spot on the fight.
Luckily, if you knew how in-game time was determined, you realized that you could change which clock you were on. By alt-tab'ing out of the game, and changing your computer's clock from west coast to east coast time and vice versa, you could alternate your in-game time scheme.
Which meant that all by yourself you could both set and trigger the dracs. Combine this with an e-cloak, and you have an ability to solo the dracs two or three times a minute. I actually can't recall offhand anymore how much exp you got for each trig, but it was a pretty respectable amount.
Now, the other interesting tidbit of trivia about all of this is that other players weren't the only people suspicious of my high exp total. Staff were a bit puzzled, too. Which is why one day, NW Snowie and NW Thorn ended up fighting dracs with the dracbashers of Vilnask.
For those of you who didn't know, staffers really hated dracbashers. They saw the process as being the antithesis of adventuring and roleplay, and only visited the dracbashers when it was absolutely necessary.
While demonstrating to Snowie how it all worked, we found ourselves short-handed a few players - there weren't enough there to fill up the square when I tried to exit the game and return. Which is why Snowie and Thorn ended up sitting on the actual square for a few trigs - and that's something you *definitely* didn't see every day.
With the game dead for several years now, I figure it's probably safe to relay my sordid affair with the dracbashers. I am happy to report that they didn't, in the long run, account for even half of my total exp. Most of my exp came, in fact, from checking my saves. When they were bad, I used the roll-to-the-next-million-exp approach to try to improve them. My method for rolling my exp over was a giant fight in Westbridge.
When triggered, the giants all lined up next to each other in a chorus line. With an e- cloak, there'd be nothing for them to see to attract them to move. With boots, I could run down and get in position to LB them all in a single movement. Two LBs in a row would usually polish them all off, and the speed with which I could do the fight meant that I could usually do it easily 5 or 6 times a minute. Exp was, I believe, somewhere around 50 to 100 thousand per fight, so it all added up fairly fast.
I hope that clears up any questions folks might have had about Panzer's unusual nature. Next column, I'll clear up common myths and misconceptions about a few of the Pearl items I was lucky enough to play with.

Forgotten World Timeline
Posted Thursday, October 12, 2000 by
PanzerMagi

Everyone wants to know when the Forgotten World will be ready for prime time. They want to know dates. They want to know times. They want to go *play*.

Sadly, all they hear from the powers-that-be is, "We're working on it."

Well, that's just not enough. Thankfully, I have discovered a secret method that accurately tracks the development of the Forgotten World, and which therefore might just be the timetable we need. That secret method is Quinn. She's also my daughter.

Allow me to explain.
When Neverwinter shut down, the wife and I had a bit more spare time on our hands. Three months later, she was pregnant. Predictably enough, somewhere around 10 months later, Quinn Elizabeth Kendall was born. I tried to convince the missus to name her Quinnmagi, but no dice.

Anyhow, as you can see, Quinn was born about the same time that things were getting properly heated up with the Forgotten World. It was August of 1998, and that was all back when things like the Forgotten World Chronicles were getting into full swing.

About the time Quinn started talking, the game got to the point in Alpha to where we could all go in and at least chat with each other. Coincidence? I think not. Clearly, there are forces greater than man at work here. Mysterious forces that we aren't meant to understand. Ours is not to question, and we must give humble thanks to the gods (and our obstetrician), for delivering unto us this remarkable talisman.

So, here is the timeline for Forgotten World, which will show not only where we've been, but what the future holds. And when.

July 18th, 1997 - Neverwinter dies. Both the Forgotten World and Quinn are little more than a twinkle in the eyes of their respective parents.

October~November, 1997 - Quinn is conceived. The Forgotten World is, probably, too.

July 22, 1998 - Forgottenworld.com is registered. Seems like a good birthdate to me.

August 28, 1998 - Quinn is born. Also a good birthdate. The Forgotten World beats her, but not by much.

1998-2002 - Stuff happens, people wait impatiently for the Forgotten World to make it out of Alpha.

September, 2002 - Quinn reaches four, the age most kids start to have proper brawls. Combat is finally working correctly in the Forgotten World, and the alpha moves into Beta.

February, 2005 - Quinn is getting pretty good at PvP. The game remains in Beta, but is going to be ready to move out of Beta "any day now".

June, 2008 - Forgotten World moves out of Beta. Quinn stages a bloody coup and deposes Panzermagi as Guildmaster of COR. Her followers are heard to chant, "Expiation... Expiation..." during the coup. Panzer flees to neutral territory - the GKoTB.

Now, I know this timeline is not complete. I gloss over or leave out entirely all sorts of information. Like dates from the Forgotten World's past - how the heck should I remember exactly when we all started talking about the game? Heck, I'm lucky I can remember Quinn's birthday, let alone when the Forgotten World first showed up.
Thank goodness for WHOIS lookups.

Some of you may doubt the power of Quinn, but she has a proven track record. As grows Quinn, so shall the game - you'll see. You'll all see.

And I suppose that about wraps it up for this installment of my column for the Bastille Gazette. No telling when or if there'll be another one, seeing as I've about exhausted my knowledge relating to the Forgotten World.