Virtual Sociopolitics and Choice

Egypt had their first set of Events this weekend: Run For The Hills and Run Back From The Hills.

As in all things ATITD, they make ample fodder for discussion and analysis.

When they first popped up on my calendar of events, I took a cursory glance through at it, went "meh" at the prizes on offer, and decided I wasn't going to haul ass for hours across the better part of the continent in an effort to compete with the veterans.

See, the named prizes are nice, but with the exception of the first glorious microphone part, not great. Canvas and linen are nice, since it is tedious and wasteful to make them at this stage with student looms that break and consume prodigous amounts of twine (aka flax moar). Stones are always nice prizes since they require a massive group dig or sufficiently advanced tecnology and rich soloist willing to pay for 3-4 accounts. Garlic is nice for people who haven't found their personal garlic growing spot - and for the first damn time in a Telling, I actually found one of my character's spots and can grow 9 at a go. So "meh."

I was not the only player to think that way. The other rich and slightly know-it-all dual boxer in the neighborhood (that has made it this Telling's goal to make a well stocked public works) was also advising new players of this, echoing my thinking without me having to say a word. I figured, well, there's probably no way I can get to a phoenix stadium (the goalpost) in 30 minutes in time to tag it anyway, and there will be hordes of people competing, so unless it was opportunistically in the neighborhood, I wouldn't move a muscle.

Enter the interesting bits of ATITD. See, there are a couple crucial differences between the other dual-boxer and myself. He appeared to be more veteran, more power-gamer and achievement oriented than I. He can do things effortlessly with macros that would probably tax me. But at the same time, he happened to be more focused and less well-connected than I. If I recall correctly, he has his own private guild of himself and his alt and a public guild for the public works.

Me, I like to work my way into as many chat channels as possible, this is how I learn, and knowledge is power. It so happens that I am in the region's research guild (headed by a somewhat snooty pair or three that tends to disregard most people but the channel is a good mix of new and old players of the region with a passing interest in contributing to research - I fear an implosion of drama soon here, honestly, we are the fourth most advanced region and most people's interest is likely to wane as we play catch up, and the snooty three are slightly over-zealous).

And more importantly, I somehow made friends with an oldtimer that was playing on Bastet, and he let me into their chat channel of old guildmates on this server.

The Event started. A stadium opened in literally the northeast most nowhere of the map. People got to commenting on its absolute unreachable-ness in 30 minutes and nonobvious bombshell 1 was dropped by the wise oldtimer from prior event experience. It turns out that the assumption that the previous stadium would be invalid when the next one was announced was simply that, an assumption. More than one stadium could be active at one time. The key was whether 10 people had tagged it. Oh ho, so in fact, the more remote the area, the better chance someone far away couldn't be arsed to run there.

A few people in the channel were playing the Event for the heck of it and kept us updated as to their distance from the stadium. Finally, the first tag of our group happened. OMG, went the announcement, I got a pepper seed!

Pepper seeds are prized commodities, by the way. They are given out as event prizes and grilled peppers are a cheap way to double carrying capacity in the early game from 500 to 1000. Turns out that careful rereading of the event text hinted at a "special prize" given to those 10 who tagged. I skimmed it, mea culpa, and so did hundreds of others, no doubt.

Enter excited discussion whether the others on the way in time to get more pepper seeds. In one sense, I was relieved. Worse case scenario, I was sure the oldtimer would be nice enough to either loan me access to the seeds to grow or trade me the final product. On the other hand, I like to beholden to no one. I enjoy contributing from my own position of power and unneediness. Dammit, I was going to tag at least one stadium and score one pepper seed of my own in the next 24 hours!

(The nice thing about ATITD, you can't say they're not fair. With 12 hour events back to back, that covers every timezone with a decent amount of fairness. They also promote hardcore wide-awakeness at godawful hours, but you can't have everything without some sacrifice.)

I had one advantage. This was the first stadium. I knew about the pepper seeds and most of Egypt did not. No global chat yet, barely any time for the news to filter its way through the networks of vets, and no chariots to speed up getting from place to place.

I put aside what I was doing, tidied up, parked my alt near a nearby stadium in the off chance it would be called while I was online, and stocked up on grilled cabbage (+2 speed) to go road running to... wherever.

The second stadium was called. This time in the far Northwest of nowhere. About 4000-5000 coordinates separated the first and second stadium, and the same amount of distance from my home compound to the vincinity. Good news, there were more or less a set of roads I could run along to meander my way up there. Even better news, I was in the second most northern region, so with the exception of people in the topmost region which might have hared off to the northeast, all the people in the central and south Egypt (the two main tech producers River Plains and Seven Lakes) were much further away than I.

(As a bonus, I hadn't collected my seeds from the university of that region yet, which meant I had to go there sooner or later. I was intending later, after chariots were up, but well, I was going there NOW.)

Couldn't get any better than that. So off I went. I'll spare you the 45 minutes of running time, but suffice to say I saw a bunch of scenery change, some of it more interesting than others, overheard about 3-4 people on the region chat huffing and puffing there, calculated there were maybe another 3-4 people staying silent like me also on the way there, kept my fingers crossed, and tagged the stadium as possibly the 5th-7th person. Which meant I got a shiny pepper seed.

HURRAH! Success, goal achieved. I could have teleported back home that instant, but I decided, what the heck, there was 5 minutes more to the next stadium announcement, and I had passed an uncalled stadium on the way to the target. So I hoofed it back to the stadium, hoping that I might strike it lucky. After all, I could zap back after the announcement.

As luck would have it, that stadium was not called. But a stadium in the same region WAS. It was about 200-300 coordinates northeast of my position. (And 5000-7000 coordinates away for anyone else not running towards this region for stadiums) Those were good odds. More jogging later, I waltzed away cheerfully with a second pepper seed.

Goal, match and set. I could go home happy now. Except that I had crossed this lush grass oasis in the middle of the desert on my way to the stadium, and it was full of plants and flowers and most probably herbs that no one had even touched this Telling yet. So I spent the remnants of that half hour circling round and round this giant oasis, telling myself I had to come here again, this was a fantastic discovery, no wonder the Bastet powergamer pair settled here in Tale 5, foraging a hundred debens of herbs, watching them respawn as I ran around its perimeter.

Bing, went the next stadium announcement, and there it was again, a stadium about 2000 coords east of where I was. Chances weren't that great this time, as it was a lot closer to the northern most region of Old Egypt, so it was likely people would run there. Sure enough, after crossing a bunch of scenery that suggested the designer got really bored in the area (and might be good for a Test in the future), it turned out there was a group living practically on top of the stadium and all the seeds had been swiped.

Oh well. So I teleported back home, having gotten myself nearer to it in pursuit of the next taggable stadium. Which I got back just in time to hear the know-it-all advising people again not to bother with the Event because the prizes weren't worth it. To myself, I chuckled.

Information is truly power.

To cap it off, I somehow managed to fortuitously log in when the second Event was running and the one and only stadium in our region was called naught but 4 minutes ago. This was at the deserted Oceanic/Aussie time - when 3/4 of the people on your friends list and in the region show as offline because they are busy sleeping, and the others are probably Aussies. Two furious multi-boxing and running minutes later, I scored perhaps the 6th and 7th tag on the stadium and walked away with two more shiny pepper seeds. (Others in the region had also opportunistically grabbed them with great cheer.)

Three hours later, when know-it-all logged in and did his regular checks on his compound and public works, you could hear the double-take in his chat when he asked in regional, "How the heck did peppers get into my public works donations chest? Who got pepper seeds?!"

Others let him know of the hidden prize, and I like to imagine a certain amount of chagrin and swallowed pride in the "Ah" he gave in response. Maybe that's just me projecting, though. Cos I get such a kick out of knowing secrets and mysteries and such trivia. So MUD-ish.

Here's the log of the events discussion:

2011-12-11 12:57:11 Telanoc: Good morning Egypt! The winners from the Run to the Hills Phoenix Race are as follows: For "Kinds" Bobowatu won with all 7 different kinds of Phoenix Model. For "Total" we had a tie with 7 total each between Bobowatu and lil. The prize went to lil.

2011-12-12 01:12:47 Telanoc: Hello Egypt! Welcome to a quick wrap up of our first event of Tale VI

2011-12-12 01:13:52 Telanoc: First, the administrative stuff... For the event "Run Back from The Hills" Pheros won both microphone parts. Good show there!

2011-12-12 01:15:06 Telanoc: Now, to the longer part of the show. I am interested in people's feedback about this event, it being our first. What did you like? What didn't you like? That sort of thing

2011-12-12 01:15:34 Nchanter: Dear Developer Telanoc: Please fix whaever but caused the staduims to get sent to System instead of Events for future versions of this event. It got spammy. Thanks!

2011-12-12 01:16:12 Telanoc: Already fixed, I had forgotten to tickle a bit before the event and didn't want to change it will they were running

2011-12-12 01:16:22 Feyth: how many parts are there to make a microphone?

2011-12-12 01:16:30 Telanoc: Three, hence the reason we gave four

2011-12-12 01:16:39 LehmanHotep: I would have liked the travel time limit communicated better. I used up most of mine on chores without realizing it.

2011-12-12 01:17:35 Telanoc: Ok, that ia valid. No problem we have is that having done many of these things so often we forget what isn't "common knowledge"

2011-12-12 01:18:30 Kanixihk: was the fact that you could still get a seed after 30min intended?

2011-12-12 01:19:26 Telanoc: Yes, and no. If you look at the text of the event it said the first 10 tags get a seed, but the stadiums were announced thirty minutes apart. It is spliting hairs, but the wording was intentional

2011-12-12 01:20:59 Jaby: It was fun: Got some seeds! It's rather different without chariouts.

2011-12-12 01:22:17 Telanoc: Well, the lack of the chariots was the main reason I wanted to do this event. It should have required a little thinking about how to win rather than just blind running to get there. If people did that or not, well that I can't say

2011-12-12 01:23:28 Xofia: When hosting multiple events for different timezones has it ever been considered limiting entries to just one event per person

2011-12-12 01:24:01 Telanoc: No, if you want to spend all day every day in game, we aren't going to discourage you :)

2011-12-12 01:24:06 oDiS: I'm sure if people knew it was going to have pepper seeds handed out, or if it was planned a little further in advance, we would havee planned our acro lines and digs around the event instead of conflicting. Anythign that makes early tale life a little easier is much appreciated.

2011-12-12 01:24:41 Telanoc: But that is the heart of the game most of the time oDis, choice.

2011-12-12 01:25:15 Eugie: Number one complaint I heard was that the seed wasn't mention as a reward for tagging a stadium (first 10).

2011-12-12 01:26:09 Telanoc: We had started a telling or two ago telling all the prize events. Before that we did not, and I honest found those better, a surprise. Plus I think it decreases people gaming the event to win the "good" prizes

2011-12-12 01:26:33 Pauven: It's unfortunate that if you're not in the stadium's region, it's pretty much 100% sure that you're not getting any seeds. 7L got no love today.

2011-12-12 01:27:46 Telanoc: Which stadiums are picked are random by the system, we have no control over that. That being said, the system should pick the same stadium twice, so the more stadiums picked the more spread out they would be

2011-12-12 01:28:15 Axhakumu: According to the Calendar, the event had about 20 minutes remaining when the ending announcement appeared. I was wondering why that was?

2011-12-12 01:29:09 Telanoc: Well, that is a little quirk of the events system. The event controller works in real time, so if I say it should last 12 hours in the controller, it will send the announcemnt out 12 hours later.

2011-12-12 01:29:54 Telanoc: But the actual 30 min timer between stadiums is in Teppy time, which is longer than 30 mins. I have to guess about how long to let the event run for to cover for that, sometimes I guess poorly

2011-12-12 01:30:06 Shikari: yeah I enjoyed it, not much I can say besides the travel time issue someone already adressed

2011-12-12 01:30:26 ellorin: more such events would be fun

2011-12-12 01:30:32 Sobe: I enjoyed the events.. I only hope we see events Often..and that it doesnt die off..

2011-12-12 01:30:38 Blueshift: I thought this was an unusual first event. Since chariots are not open and it takes longer than 30 minutes to run to a distant stadium, it's really just a luck game more than anything

2011-12-12 01:32:07 Telanoc: It is figured an average person can cover about 2000 coords of the map in 30 mins, more or less. So it should have been possible for people to run for it. I was hoping that early in the telling all the areas would be so full it would be worth the try

2011-12-12 01:32:22 Boudikka: It seemed that those of us with a southerly exp point were at a disadvantage. Is this just something I shoudl plan for in future?

2011-12-12 01:32:34 Telanoc: It is random, so there is nothing to plan for

2011-12-12 01:32:43 Nchanter: Given the fact that regions aren't evenly destributed throughout egypt, it felt, even if it wasn't, like the event was biased towards people living in teh northern regions that are smaller and closer together, vs the southern more spread out bigger regions.

2011-12-12 01:33:30 Telanoc: Hmmm, we might have to adjust the placement of stadiums. Not just for the event, but for the test if that comes to pass as well

2011-12-12 01:33:54 Kalixta: It would have been nice to get some sort of smaller prize just for tagging to encourage people to do it. After running for two and being too late, I decided my time was better spent elsewhere, but I know that is my choice.

2011-12-12 01:34:19 Telanoc: That isn't a bad idea, though I am not sure we can do it.

2011-12-12 01:35:04 Hirokache: The wording seemed to imply that the next stadium would only be announced after 10 tags, or was I the only one to read it that way?

2011-12-12 01:35:24 Telanoc: I thought the wording was clear, but then again I wrote it.

2011-12-12 01:35:29 ellorin: I liked it it was a good way to start the tale off before the chariots are up

2011-12-12 01:35:30 Azunar: I think that the reward did not worth the time consuming event like this one ^^ But it's only my 2cent

2011-12-12 01:36:12 Azunar: It seems that regions don't have the same number of Stadiums no ?

2011-12-12 01:36:24 Telanoc: There should be 4 stadiums per region, 42 total

2011-12-12 01:36:51 LehmanHotep: How many of the lower tier prizes ended up being awarded, after ties came in to play?

2011-12-12 01:37:31 Telanoc: I don't know off the top of my head, other than "not enough". This would have been a good place to use Proportion instead of "Top X"

2011-12-12 01:38:31 Telanoc: Hmmm, as people pointed out, I can't do math tonight. There are 42 stadiums in Egypt, of that I am sure

2011-12-12 01:39:30 Catote: 26/37 stadiums were far down (below -4,000) or far hight (above +4,000). People living in the middle of Egypt didnt have much chance.

2011-12-12 01:40:38 Telanoc: Again, the system is supposed to pick them at random. Assuming an equal distribution of people and stadiums it should be moot. Of course the "middle of Egypt" tends to be more crowded, but these are parts of the trade off

2011-12-12 01:42:03 Leghk: and not one announced stadium was labelled "seven lakes" if i'm not mistaken - unless i missed noticing a early one yesterday

2011-12-12 01:42:31 Telanoc: Seven Lakes got one. As I said, it is random, and since it is two events there are two pools

2011-12-12 01:43:26 Telanoc: Ok, I am going to close this portion of the chat and move on after one final thought

2011-12-12 01:44:15 Telanoc: The winners of all the Microphone Parts were nominally new players. Some one asked the other day about events being veteran friendly. I think that shows that even the new players can win.

2011-12-12 01:47:37 Telanoc: Now to the next part...

2011-12-12 01:47:41 Nchanter: I want a heptathalon next!

2011-12-12 01:47:45 Feyth: When will the next event be?

2011-12-12 01:48:27 Telanoc: Will we probably do this one next, it is very early telling friendly. Though I don't really like this event as much. It really give an advantage to veteran power gamers

2011-12-12 01:49:03 ellorin: Please can we have some more role playing events this tale too

2011-12-12 01:50:00 Telanoc: We will, some will be obvious, some hopefully not so much. One of the things that I believe makes a given telling the most interesting is the interpersonal conflicts that drive Egypt forward.

2011-12-12 01:51:04 Telanoc: For those of you that remember the auction for the first microphone in T4, the players ended up spending absurd amounts of flax to win the mic. Mostly because the two main bidders didn't want the other one to have it.

2011-12-12 01:51:16 Nchanter: >.>

2011-12-12 01:51:20 Philadelphia: i agree with Elly

2011-12-12 01:51:26 Shikari: herbing evnets are nice

2011-12-12 01:51:52 Telanoc: Herbing events would be nice, since you all don't know all the methods yet.

2011-12-12 01:53:01 Avanya: (the winner of the microphone parts today is not new. He played a lot on Bastet. A LOT. :) )

2011-12-12 01:53:08 Telanoc: Well, there you go

2011-12-12 01:53:45 Telanoc: Some one mentioned about the first microphone being important to Egypt, and it is, but the winners will have to choose what they will do with it.

2011-12-12 01:55:35 Telanoc: All right, to finish up. I am generally happy with the way this event ran. Considering some of the cock ups the first events have been in previous tellings, this one was near perfect. I hope you all had fun and if not, well others of different kinds are coming.

2011-12-12 01:55:38 sarah: u are all making me curious now....who won teh mic?

2011-12-12 01:55:56 Telanoc: Bobowa-something, lil, and pheros

2011-12-12 01:55:58 Feyth: Id like to see alot more events that dont rquire general knowledge of the game, some events like the herbing event new players dont know as well where to look for the rare herbs

2011-12-12 01:57:04 Telanoc: Hence the reason I think a herbing event before all the harvest methods are know would be more fun. It lessens that advantage. Otherwise, point taken

2011-12-12 01:57:23 Telanoc: Ok kids, I am going to close this down for now and go hopefully fix a chariot

2011-12-12 01:57:36 Telanoc: Be well Egypt where ever you are!

 As much as I enjoy the reference to the T4 microphone contest (since I do remember it, though without knowing who the people were at the time), I'd like to bold the statement I find most interesting here:

Telanoc: But that is the heart of the game most of the time..., choice.

Choice and conflict. The things ATITD does best. What will you choose to do with your time in game?