I think that what most people here are missing is:

- the test is supposed to evaluate characters in an RP world, not main characters in novels. A world where everyone has a personal history that is worth an epic novel is simply not believable. In the LoR universe there's only one Frodo, one Ring. It wouldn't be the same with a million frodos, and a million rings destroyed. That makes hundreds of rings destroyed every day, with hundreds of frodos (and gollums, and aragorns, and saurons) all queueing up waiting for their turn;

- the test is supposed to apply to the character background, that is, what happened before your RPing story starts. Are you sure that Frodo, or Luke Skywalker, would score high, at the beginning of their own stories? Frodo was just a hobbit (and stays so, btw). The nice thing about the hobbit characters is that none of them is 'special' in any way. Skywalker was a farmer (IIRC). He didn't know a thing about who he was.

The latter is the key point.

Just to stay in the LoR universe, compare Frodo with Aragorn. Now he's so interesting a guy (and knows it, from the start) that everything he does is quite boring in comparison (given who he is, we wouldn't expect less from him). That makes him a very bad choice for a character to RP (everything is already written for him, so to say). Given any situation, there's hardly any choice for his action. Would you expect the heir of Isildur to run from danger? Is he (or the player behind him) really given a choice about it? (Again, compare with Frodo.)

I think the point of the test is: if you want to really enjoy your char, reserve the amazing adventures for the time after your RPing experience starts, and not before. Also, let it surprise you: don't make it too similar to something you already know (eg. what you are or what you'd like to be).

Start with a common guy, and have him live the adventures of a hero. There's little point being an hero from the start (or an evil lord, or king, or mage (Gandalf-like) or whatever): it only means that your character lived the most interesting part of its life already. The most interesting part should be the one you (the player and the char) live together, instead.

I think that's the test suggestion. IMHO it was never meant to be a blueprint for all characters. And again, there's plenty of room for heros or kings or major villains in a RP world, just it's much better if they became so after the char creation, not before.

BTW, my old PS char scored 2. There are lots of interesting adventures for him, somewhere out there. Maybe he'll become a king some day. But I (the player) don't know now.

Well i made about 15... the last ones were attempts (more or less successful) to make them low... then some math and some happy stacking provided me with 10 300/301 daggers. that's no cheating on current quality and about 0.3% "cheating" on max quality (will anyone ever try to repair them up to 301/301? most likely he'll get a 300/300 dagger, if not worse).

I'll put them for sale, after i spent soooo much time trying to keep quality low

BTW, getting the y right in x/y is much harder. You need to make at least one of quality y/y (exactly). Then you can play with stacks. The x, being the average, is somehow easier to trim.

But i still have some 345/301 daggers in my inv, waiting for a 255/255 dagger to be made in the (near?) future. And i'm not a dagger user (skill = 0) so I hope they don't get mistaken as if they were for my use.

Is it confirmed that quality 300+ weapons are forbidden? I know it was so in the old crafting system, because they were made due to bug-abusing i think.

But in the new system, quality of stock is completely different from before (i was barely able to make quality 10 stock before, now i can make quality 200 stock at the first attempt).

Today I made 3 daggers, quality 114/114, quality 203/203, quality 731/731. I don't think I abused of any bug. Anyway, what should I do now? Is there a way to decrease quality? I tried stacking them but it doesn't seem to work. Or should I just sell the better one to NPCs?

Quality varies a lot during the crafing process, it's close to impossible to hit 300/300. One may start with low quality steel (i'd have to remelt some stock in order to lower the quality, or hope for some very low quality to appear so i can stack them), but quality increases during the process in unpredictable ways.

Metallurgy wont train. Several of my guildmates said so aswell and I tried and wouldnt work either





sorry if this is already posted somewhere and i didnt look hard enoguh

Ehm, please provide some details... I really doubt anyone can help you otherwise.
Are you referring to pratical traning? What are you trying to do to get training? Do you get any message in the system window?

Well I think that anything with / > 6 should be rare, that is you get one in a week, if you keep trying to and do nothing else.
A /10 weapon should be generated once in a week, globally.

It is also something that is supposed to be totaly IC... All the time. That is the way we are asked to play the game. That is what makes the game what it is.

Too bad it's not true. There are messeges that are completely unrelated to your IC position in the world. Like seeing someone change stance when it's outside your line of sight (already pointed out), maybe outside the room you are in. Face it, the Main chat windows is far from pure IC. And no other chat tab is IC either, unless you're using /tell to someone next to you to "implement" IC whispers. The system tab is cluttered with OOC info, too.

If you don't think they're nessesary go and try to RP in one of the internet games where people don't have to.

Now say where I've ever written such a thing. Have I ever complained about enforcing RP? (well I've played a MUD where RP is not enforced, and there's more RP there than on PS for sure... there's no kill stealing either, even if nothing prevents it - i take MUDders are different beasts from MMORPGers.)

I'm fine with the RP requirement. I have troubles with your unexplainable (to me) horror for OCC chat (not speaking of random OOC chat, here, but of course of RP related OCC chat, such as explaining OCCly the reasons for some IC action). My reasoning:

1) RPers of all the world for decades have been playing RPGs by mixing IC and OOC w/o any trouble or need to use []; I think that (real time) OOC info greatly improves RP; this has nothing to do with RP or not. To me, by definition, RPing is mixing IC and OOC (game related, of course). Not to me only, I think any D&D player would agree.

2) this game already mixes OOC info in (for exaclty the reason stated in 1)): considering the whole screen, OCC info dominates and also in the Main chat tab OCC is present anyway, from the game itself. Is it IC that I see that Mr. X killed a Trepor while I'm fighting a Gladiator inside the Arena? Of course not. Is it IC that I see the name of characters talking to me, even if I've never met them before? of course not... the list goes on.
The point being that you don't realize that's OOC because your brain already filters that out. Recently someone introduced himself to me (char vs char) after a short conversation. That kind of surprised me, since there are two different ways to handle that OOC info (I already knew his name of course): one is to ignore it and pretend not to know the name, like he did, or think of an implicit introduction when you start chatting the first time, like I did. That's because I come from a game where you have to introduce yourself, before knowing each others' name. W/o formal introduction, all you see is a '<short description> elf/human/...', even when they talk to you. When my brains sees the name, it does this OOC->IC translation "since i know his name, we've already introduced ourselves". His brain simple deletes it. Both are correct, IC-wise. No matter how you treat it to make it compatible with your IC experience, that OOC info is present, right in the Main chat window.

3) useless, unrelated OOC chat ruins the RP experience, no doubt, but it does anyway, with or without []'s. Related OOC improves it. Sometimes a brief OOC note makes a good shortcut for lenghty, boring, overall useless IC explanation (maybe on some almost irrelevant point), speeding up the pace of RP a lot. Sure, I can use [] for that, and I do, but 99.9% of the times I realize that any decent RPer would easily recognize it as OOC and integrate it in his RP experience with no effort.

4) I'm not saying []'s should be banned, or avoided, or that they are always useless... no, sometimes when I mistype something (or type in the wrong window) I type [sorry], just to make it clear it's not part of the IC dialog. Spelling corrections sometimes are needed, and I tend to use [] for that, too. I may have problems with spelling or typing, but my char should not look drunk.

In summary, I think that:
- OOC random chat should be banned, as it is now;
- OOC RP related chat should be allowed, as it is now;
- []'s make OOC random chat no more acceptable... the rule is "don't", and not "do, but use []'s";
- there's little point in enforcing []'s for RP related OOC, as any decent RPer is able to recognize it;
- when ambiguity really arises, use []'s to make it clear it's OCC. In a table RPG this is seldom necessary. In  text conversation it's easier to misunderstand, that's why brackets sometime are useful.
- sometimes != everytime

Now this post is long enogh... I'd really like to explain by example, with some RPG action. Maybe next time.

Besides this isn't a table top RP. This is the internet. It is filled with fools and if they were not shunned for it they would not speak IC at all. I'd prefer to... wait... What is your problem with brackets anyway? Are you too lazy to type them?

I hate quoting myself...

I have no problems in using [] for my OOC.

I don't see the need of a 'Master' in your character's day to day life. In events OOC just mixed in would ruin the immersievness(sp?)

I hope you see my point.

No I don't, because [] are keys on a keyboard. People have been playing RPG for 30 years w/o keyboards. And never felt they lacked []'s. A table RPG session is a continuos mix of IC and OOC. One may argue that that what's RPing is. Only when you want to stress on the acting part, and for example write scripts and wear costumes (which overall is uncommon, it's a special version of RPG), you ban or reduce OOC chat.  Usually, there's a mix of different levels... strict IC, OOC description of an IC action ("I swing my sword" is OOC, in the sense that the player communicates to the Master what his char is doing or trying to do, yet it's IC action, of course), OOC game mechanisms operation (rolling dice for one), OOC description ("Master, I'm looking north from the top of the tower, what do I see?" "A forest" - note that one should really say "Master, I'm making my character look north, what does he see?" but no one would be picky enough not to use the short form), OOC direction (Master: "no, that band of mercenaries is not going to help you because you simply don't look rich enough for them to bother listening to you").

You think in PS things are different? Really? What about a group info window? Is that IC or OOC? I tell you, it's half and half. Knowing the HPs of your party makes sense, you may be able to see if one is lightly or badly wounded. But knowing the mana level is much harder to find any IC rationale for. And the bars work for someone who is at the opposite site of the Arena, too, and that's purely OOC.

How can you say that some words in the Main Chat window ruin the immersiveness (?) when your screen is already cluttered with a mix of OOC and IC inputs, including flashing guild and group tabs (whose content is OCC), bars of all kinds floating around, messages about someone who has just killed a MOB way outside your line of sight (in the default configuration you see all, including stance changes), and so on?

I'm sure your brain is already  very good in filtering anything that would ruin your "feeling IC". And it's also very good at classifying the various pieces of information "this is IC, this is OOC related to IC, this is completely OOC". Among the tons of info you receive every second by looking at the monitor, I fail to understand in what a few OOC words appearing in the Main window are so peculiar.

That said, I've always used [] when saying something OOCly in public. But I saw that those who don't know what they are, don't understand why i'm using then, and those who know what they are for, would recognize the OOC speech anyway...