I never fail to marvel at how adroitly ATITD can get under peoples' skins. Before you know it, emotions are flying high, insults, whines, name-calling as well as long intellectual and philosophical debates are flying across the chat channels, and people are indulging in socio-politcal PvP in words and actions.
And no, I'm not talking about the obelisk queue. We'll get to that in due time. Suffice to say, the usual debates came up. The usual debates continued to be unresolved.
No, I'll like to tell the story of how little ol' calm, patient, unruffled me was nearly emotionally undone via a hot button I didn't know I had.
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The story starts with Mining. Or rather, the research of the technology to be unlocked.
Each region has universities, in which this 'research' takes place. The minigame here is simply to be the first to unlock it via dumping in huge quantities of resources according to the laundry list it requires of you.
Why would you want to be the first? Region pride is one. That your region was hardworking and grindy enough to come together to unlock the tech speaks well of your region's general game prowess, organizational capacity and penchant for cooperation. Simple convenience is another: ATITD's traveling time is no small matter, and if you're visiting universities to learn tech, it may as well be in the region you live in so that you have a shorter run. Everyone else has to come and visit YOU.
This adds up to long term attraction of newbies and a bigger population because all roads eventually lead to the region that leads in technology research.
So yes, the region I'm staying in this round, Shabbat Ab, has a thriving research guild. Almost fanatical.
Yet I'm not 100% comfortable with the guild. For one thing, it's located in too small a space to expand over time, and nearly on top of a copper vein to boot. I have my sincere doubts over its long term lebensraum, with 45/50 members crowding the woodwork. No one really lives at the research guild, unlike my previous home guild which was both industrial-sized and home to its GM. There are practically no stored resources available because it's either all chucked into the universities for one research or other, temporarily locked away by the guild elders for that purpose, or open to ANY member of the guild to be taken or used as they so desire. There is no selection criteria either for joining the guild. Some of its guild elders have no prior experience with Telling 4, they left during T2 or T3, and so are dependent on wiki reading and listening to people they trust about T4 to make certain decisions. Or not.
So I would be quite a fool to trustingly place my own long term future in ATITD in the hands of this guild, no?
Besides, my goal this round is to play part-time industrial. I have a mule alt. I was uber-impressed with my compatriots from the previous server: both the GM with a fabulous industrial compound set up by 5+ people building their own individual compounds and then adroitly subsumed into the conglomerate, and a deaf dual-alt'er who absolutely destroyed on Tests, with his main even on ones that required hearing as a clue-in, and followed up with his alt not far behind (though I helped his alt do the hearing thang for one Test).
So yes, I build my own mini-guild uber-compound-wannabe, and along with this, I set up my sheep pens. I managed to run SEVEN sheep pens the last time, on my lonesome, and voluntarily supported the hardcore guild's OTHER 7-8+ sheep pens with an onion supply. Admittedly, that ate about 2-3 hours each day in onion growing. This time, I had my eye on four.
(Maybe five, or six, I dunno, still thinking about it.)
Enter a steady workstream of 1200 bricks each sheep pen, and scads of onion-growing and long cross-country runs for wild sheep to haul back to my pen, and I was the proud owner of 3x4 pairs of breeding sheep.
In fact, although one of the nicer, more mellow Elders of the research guild, my across-the-river neighbor, pointed out one spawn of sheep to me - of which I took one male, the other distinctly research-obsessed Elder came around begging for sheep to form breeding pairs for the research guild.
I gave him two males that had just reproduced. He came and grabbed them both, despite another guildie bringing yet another male, because one of the sheep in the research pens just bred, producing a female with no mate... so he said, and so I shrugged and said, ok, go nuts.
They did go nuts, because they built a fabulous sheeparray. The Blood Fields, we called it. A 5 x 5 grid of sheep pens. Each can hold 3 pairs for maximum breeding efficiency.
Ok. All good. All cool. This is a joint region research thang after all. They're doing it for all of us, so that we can unlock Mining. There is a horrible 480 leather bottleneck, after all. (One sheep = 2 leather. One camel = 6 leather.)
The camels, by the way, have been swiped up by an uber-powerplayer in our region. Her megalopolis-sized compound is the stuff of legend. It gives my previous hardcore guild a run for their money, and dwarfs anything I could ever dream up. It's built on the backs of THREE mule alts, who spend all day macro'ing grass for camel straw. In addition to those three mules, there are two mains who may or may not be the same player - I'm not 100% sure. They're either related via RL family, or the same person. Anyhow, they have about 5-6 camel pens going in their compound, with about 15k straw in each pen, so they pretty much have all the camels bar a few.
The uber powerplayer is interesting, because she's really not all that bad. Just -very- very focused on Tests, grinding and being one of the first, and somewhat egoistic and VERY attention-craving (as can be expected of a personality willing to pay $14x5 to dominate a game). One main has a more naive yet prideful schtick, bringing to mind a younger kid's ego. The other is a quieter, more focused adult powerplayer who will leave you in the dust without you ever knowing, but if you don't bother her, she doesn't bother you.
It's hilarious to see the hate of the region for her. Mostly the newbies and those focused on 'fairness' find her exceedingly offensive. Me, I leave her alone. She doesn't bother me. The research Elder I respect the most can talk with her very well - heck, he talks well with me too, he's got masterful charisma and political skill. In fact, he somehow persuaded her into donating oodles of leather for Mining. About 85 pieces, if I recall correctly, a veritable fortune in these leather-scarce days.
Leather-scarcity and region pride. A hotbed for future emotional downfall. Our neighbor region is Stillwater, whose researchers have been continually thumbed up the nose by our researchers down here and beaten to the punch on practically every technology there is. It's quite an amazing feat, because the guys up in Stillwater are mostly existing vets from T4 servers, and the better money was on them to dominate.
All we are in Shabbat Ab are a couple of T4 vets, many of which have quit a year past, returning T2 and T3 players, a bunch of enthusiastic but clueless newbies, a couple of hermits and industrials, etc. A very colorful mixed variety.
The Stillwater folk are NOT happy with us, of course, and in the manner of all rationalization have drawn certain lines in the sand between us, including giving Shabbat Ab the somewhat derisive name of "Shelbyville." Frankly, I didn't know what the heck the reference was until I googled. I guess I'm not a Simpsons fan.
Some of the more emotionally-driven members of our region's population, about 75% of our research guild included, have risen to the bait and taken on the challenge of grinding them into the dirt with the fires of industry and what not.
The Elder I still respect talks with the Stillwater researchers, but welp, the small cogs in our guild revel in the schadenfreude and other petty related emotions.
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So, enough back history, on with the incident(s). Turns out Stillwater has had enough of uppity Shabbat Ab, and raced madly to get Mining unlocked before our region did. They went pell-mell on leather collection and trading, and jumped to about 300/480 Leather, while we were still sitting at 0/480 - with a count of maybe 170ish leather if we slaughtered our sheep and jeopardized our future leather growth.
The research-obsessed Elder (oh hell, let's just use names, Beak) took to logging on every 3-4 hours and BEGGING for leather over the region channel. Announcement after announcement about how far Stillwater was ahead of us, and asking for leather donations, etc.
If not for the somewhat selfish reason of needing to plonk down 5 mines on top of the iron vein that is right in my compound's front and backyard before my irritating neighbor creates a territorial faux pas drama incident, I would probably have given him my leather stock, or a good half of it, and contented myself to wait a little longer for sheep rebreeding for more complex metal mines.
And there was something a little subconsciously fishy, I felt, about all this. The guild was sitting on 25 sheep pens. 25! Surely SOME sheep were breeding. But we never got a fixed leather count. Beak went on and on about 69/75 breeding pairs that the guild needed for the pens and so on, he was literally 'borrowing' poor little newbies 1-3 breeding pairs ('to be returned once mining is opened'), unsoweiter.
Coupled into this was a slight self-guilt trip over me sitting pretty on 12 breeding pairs. I had also been wandering far cross-country on TWO chars to grab sheep and drag them back to my pens for slaughter. The regional begging got me to slaughter the sheep instead of making a new 5th pen that I was considering (if only out of fear that someone would walk by and point out the mini-leather cottage industry I had going on), and I counted my leather and it totaled 45, breeding pairs not included.
This is far from the 100 I need to plonk my mines down, so I sat pretty and quiet and didn't reveal that I had any leather open for donation, even though there were strong exhortations to, flying everywhere to everyone.
Instead, since I am not immune to region pride, I thought I would go wild sheep hunting instead. I mean, the breeding pairs I own are from hard work cross-countrying and spending offline navigation travel time to haul the sheep back, with two chars. But I could certainly donate any new wild sheep I find, since they hadn't crossed the personal mental border into 'my' property/territory yet.
I scoured every grass patch within 2-3 regions of Shabbat Ab, and since we're a central region, that pretty much means I ran far to the north and south and even to the east until the end of the world a couple times.
Naturally, as I'm out doing this, the sheep decide to spawn at my compound. My neighbor across the river (a friend of the guy I respect) calls out to the guild that there's a sheep spawn by my place. "OOOOH" Beak goes. "Come on everyone, let's run there and grab them!" With nary a by your leave as to whether I minded.
Ok, fair enough, sheep spawns are anyone's game. Even if they are by someone's compound. Even if they are home, which I patently wasn't (since I had gone out looking for sheep for the guild.) But I was mildly rubbed the wrong way by the lack of courtesy, not a single person addressed me directly and said, "hey, we're taking these sheep for the guild, all right?" I just got the sense of this massive jovial glee to swipe it out from this rich landowner's nose - perhaps I'm imagining things, but whatever.
It doesn't help that though I come down and do stuff for the guild, I picked wood, I picked slate, I spun jugs and what not, all I get is a very offhand 'thanks' from this guy Beak, and my guild rank stays happily at the very first level of trust. There are clueless newbies who are ranked higher in trust level. If not for the Elder I respect, tehm, from whom I get do get acceptable levels of courtesy and acknowledgement... Well. Pfft.
Whatever. I continue sheep hunting. I find sheep. I make the offer in guild chat. There's sheep at this loc. Want to run up and get them?
"OH GEEZ" Beak goes. "That's too far to run. lol"
Hmph. Alrighty then. Suit yourself. I grab a sheep for myself, and I try and slaughter the sheep in the wild, which results in most of them running off. Bye-bye potential leather.
Some time later, I hear tehm doing the same thing in the guild chat channel, and he's just lamenting the fact that he's only scored hits on 3/20 sheep. That's 40 could-have-been leather!
But Beak is content to sit happy in this one region and WHINE continuously for leather donations, in some attempt to guilt-trip people into donating.
Another member, some middle-of-the-trust-level guy who does like tons of bricks and grindy work, sidles up to Beak's side and complains about oh, our research guild does all the work and no one helps us. No one will give us any leather. Those selfish bastards. We are doing this for them too. Yadda yadda.
Hello, I want to tell him. We ALREADY gave at the office. We have no leather to donate to you now because Beak took all our sheep LONG AGO. All 5x5 sheep pens worth. Why are you still eyeing our remaining 1-4 pathetic sheep pen remnants with greedy lust?
Anyhow, I stay quiet. I don't want to start drama in a guild channel. What's the point? Just creates ill feeling, wot?
Finally, I get tired of sheep hunting and decide to do some personal stuff. I notice I'm trailing behind on levels, so I get out my limestone digging apparatus and my trusty macro and start jogging to the limestone patch to the tune of Beak's continual regional pleading for leather donations.
I run into sheep. Right by a guild member's compound (he's in), a little ways south, but still in the same region. But if I turn around, grab all the sheep and sit around waiting for someone to run to me, it would be a waste of my limestone picking time. I could also run my alt over to ferry them, but if I go through all that effort, I'm keeping the bloody sheep and I have no pens to put them in.
So I pick up all the sheep and drop them (to keep them from despawning for two hours, supposedly). Think better of my philantrophy and pick up one for myself. Then I announce over guild chat that are four sheep available, if anyone wants to run them over to their pens.
I get absolutely ZERO interest from the channel. Beak must think it's too far or something. Again.
I shrug, and continue on my merry limestone picking way, a sheep of my own around my neck.
---
All this time, we've had crazy updates from the Stillwater side, who are in mad leather procuring frenzy. They creep closer and closer, 300/480 leather done, 350, 400, etc. They globally announce that they want leather donations too, just 70 left! And so on.
Beak is fretting over the guild channel. On and on.
Well, of course you don't have as much leather than them, you aren't hunting very hard for it. You're just asking over and over whether your Blood Field sheeparray is breeding or not. And for people to give you more leather.
Whatever.
Beak logs off. Some hours later, late into the wee morning hours, while I am still out looking for sheep for the hell of it, if only to salvage the 2 leather per sheep for myself, I hit my -calm-almost-breaking- incident.
Since I live right along the Stillwater/Shabbat Ab border, I have the fun ability to jump between regional chat channels by hiking a screen's distance or so. I hear the massive celebration in Stillwater of a guy named Humbuk who is spotting wild sheep, and the joint efforts of Stillwater folk who mass RUN over there to pick them up, and put them back in pens to slaughter. Hoorah! 10 leather more! 20 leather more!
This sticks in my craw somewhat because I just tried the same strategy and it got pointedly rejected by Mr It's-Too-Far before it even got to the cooperative group phase.
The guild is asking about how much leather we have. Some random member. And going, wow, wonder how Stillwater is getting so much leather that fast. Oh noes, we are going to lose to them. *whine*
Well, I snap in polite clipped text over the channel, "here's what Stillwater is doing. They are running down wild sheep to put leather in the pot. Since we seem content to wait until our sheeparray breeds, we ARE indeed going to lose to them at this pace. Too bad, it won't be long until the sheeparray does breed, and then we just be a few minutes or few hours behind. Big effing deal." (I said it a teensy more politely, but not really.)
"Now wait a minute," one of the ATITD GMs (yes, they do play the game too, just at a slower pace as they are not supposed to compete with players in Tests) go, "we DO so run down sheep."
"Yeah, only when it's nearby," I tell her. "I made the offer for sheep further off, and no one wanted to get any." The implication being that Humbuk and his Stillwater gang are indeed scouring every region they can find of sheep.
Anyway, I catch myself losing it and flying off the handle, and continue, "well, I'm tired, and caught up in Beak's enthusiasm."
(Pissed off by Beak's whining for leather donations but lack of action, rather, but I can't come out and say that over the guild channel, can I?)
"Nevermind, I will go back to being my patient self and watching the sheep breed. :)" ==> smiley face is important! Smile even when you don't feel like it!
In fact, I take some time to really catch myself and psychoanalyze my outburst. For whatever curious reason, I am in fact quite emotionally roiled. Not to the point of outright anger, but I'm certainly not in a Zen meditative state. Obviously, I have some kind of unresolved hot button with this state of affairs.
I'm not sure what it is, but I think it has something to do with incongruency of words and actions. That I was somehow annoyed at this guy begging for leather donations, and hitting good-hearted newbies who are giving him their life savings, even, instead of the big powerplayers that he's probably hoping to guilt trip or annoy long enough to shut him up.
---
I went back to semi-meditative in the next hour. ATITD is just extremely good at creating this sort of conflict between public good and private interest, and when I start getting too uptight about this sort of thing, I remember some previous server's incidents with a guild guy called Atheus (newbie, came in same time as me) who would explode with incoherent rage over the chat channel over other peoples' perceived lack of generosity/selfishness and how our guild GM Wampak and other members just sorta talked him down / ignored him as appropriate and basically said in a very Zen manner that everyone has to find their own balance between how much they want to give and how much they want to keep for themselves.
At which point, he decided he was going to hoard a lot more to himself because apparently the selflessness he was outputting was not yielding the emotional payoff he had been desiring/craving.
And you know what, despite how selfish that sounds, that's okay. It's okay to be self-centred. Despite a general morass of hoi polloi who are vocally demanding that you be a communist and share everything or give away everything on your back to the greater good (or to them, the worst ones will tell you.)
I calmed down growing tons of onions for MY sheep. Mwahaha. Then I made tons of bricks for MYself. And I tinkered around, made the two charcoal hearths that I had fallen behind putting up, relived the experience of making charcoal and was indeed relieved that I still had the knack, and settled down to some flaxing in preparation for mines, remembered I hadn't picked up glassblowing yet either, ran to get it, set up MY glazier's bench and made plans for fitting extras into the glass compound...
About this time, the general alert sprung up that Stillwater was about 40 leather away from unlocking Mining. And were getting impending donations that would very soon hit close to the mark.
Like a bad penny, Beak showed up. Goodness knows if he was lurking around on an alt, if he had friends who gave him a RL ring, if he was just indeed obsessed enough to keep spying on ATITD's status before he headed to work, but he caught wind of the general alert.
Asked a couple of questions. General guild members were in distress. Me, I kept my head down. Had enough.
Then he goes, "Ah, screw it."
For a second, I wonder if he's lost it and is about to quit. Then he goes, "I'm gonna turn it all in now."
General perplexity over guild chat. Sutenhotep, one of the guild Elders who has been quite quiet thus far, starts explaining.
Turns out, they've HAD the leather to unlock Mining since morning. They've just been stalling to allow more time for the massive sheeparray to breed leather for mines.
The begging for leather donations had been a secret, elaborate ploy to let them keep more sheep alive in the sheeparray, again for future mine leather and future research.
Obviously, none of us hoi polloi guild members are in the know about any of this.
It turns into a massive race to the university with the ton of leather needed to dump in and start the unlock clock ticking. "Yay" the guild members have shifted about-face. "Go Beak-man!" "You the man" "Rock on!" "Whee, we beat them!" Yadda yadda.
Despite an admitted surge of region pride, I can't help but feel slightly betrayed by all this goings-on. What they've demonstrated is that they are perfectly willing to lie in order to cover something up. They've damaged their trust factor. I will certainly think twice and analyze whatever these guys say several times before I put any stock into what they're saying.
And definitely, I'm following first principles: only give away to others what you're willing to lose totally from the get go. Never sacrifice what you cannot afford for someone else, they might just stab you in the back and leave you with less than nothing.
In retrospect, I realize that Beak has been very evasive about exactly what the leather count was - I even chatted him once directly about this because I was trying to figure out if I could spare anything - and was nearly prepared to give away about half my sheep wealth, except I told him the sheep were breeding and if we disrupted them, they might stop breeding. At which point, he said, keep them there and donate the leather from their offspring.
I went OK, and started slaughtering offspring, though my natural hoarding tendencies won through and I sat on my leather pile instead, waiting to see if there would come an emergency point where they were sitting at the university with 460/480 leather and Stillwater about to beat them...
Fortunately, that didn't happen and I still have about 2 mines' worth of leather, plus all my breeding pairs intact. So I scooted past the leather deception with nary any economic damage, but only a certain amount of disgust and distrust.
Phew. Yay for people being people.
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