I always (except the time I was given a guided tour) have trouble getting past the initial bridge.

When you work long enough and hard enough, the wear on your body chemistry affects your mental/emotional state. You start making mistakes, not because you become less able to swing the pickaxe, but because your attentiveness decreases. Doing real, physical work, like mining or construction, does have a mental wear to it. And there is more to mining than simply swinging a pickaxe. As you tire, your perception is altered, your judgement is impaired, and your thinking is slowed.

By midafternoon, with the hundred-degree sun beating down on you, and everything covered in dirt and dust, every breath becomes a heated effort. You stumble along with your mind numbed, relying on the years of practice and reflex to keep your body going to the end of the day, repetitive motion becomes the rhythm of your life, and your thoughts contract to within the circle of your own stumbling steps. This is when mistakes happen; this is when people get hurt or killed. Not because they collapse (although that does happen), but because the mind no longer works as it should.

What's wrong with Mary Sue?
 

Not exactly volunteerism, but I thought you might appreciate this one, XilliX...

The Conundrum of the Workshops
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the
mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his
mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew --
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons -- and that was a glorious
gain
When the Devil chuckled "Is it Art?" in the ear of the branded Cain.
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks "It's striking, but is it Art?"
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick
swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien
tongue.
They fought and they talked in the North and the South, they talked
and they fought in the West,
Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had
rest --
Had rest til the dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was
preened to start,
And the Devil bubbled below the keel: "It's human, but is it Art?"
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree -- and new as the new-cut tooth --
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and
Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying
heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art?"
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-
peg
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled
egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the
cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it
Art?"
When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green
and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the
mould --
They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink
and the anguish start,
For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
Now if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers,
flow,
And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry
through,
By the favour of God we might know as much as out father Adam knew.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

Waitaminit.... I thought this MMORPG was different! I thought you were gonna pay ME to play!

After all, I'm so special and my pooh don't stink neither!


Sarcasm aside, an open source project is bound precisely to the amount of customer service cited in the license agreement. To my knowledge, there's no difference between the people who create the game and the people who play it, in this regard, because the people who play can do what the people who create it did, and download the sourcecode.

On a website today, I saw a young gal talk about how "some third party" should take the fruits of each person's efforts and redistribute it "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs"... and then proclaimed *that* "freedom".

As XilliX said, if a person invests his irreplaceable time, if he invests the one thing that is truly his, his effort, and contributes his unique creative abilities to produce something, whether it be a desk or a symphony... should anyone else demand a right to the fruits of that labor for whatever reason, they are demanding a right to enslave that person, nothing less!

If that person willingly shares those fruits, as I believe most people would, then it should be on his terms.

No one is required to play PS; they should play PS because it's fun. At this stage, PS is incomplete, and faces challenges and limitations commercial efforts with lots of money (tens of millions of dollars) thrown behind them don't face. Some of the team are doing it for the fun of creating/running an online multiplayer world. Others are doing it in hopes of learning things. Still others hope to pad their portfolio so they can get a job doing what they love to do. Most I imagine are doing it for all these reasons and more besides.

Nobody should have to kiss their backsides for doing this. But nobody should expect the developers/GMS to kiss their backsides, either.

This thread is for complaints about having nothing much to complain about. 


and dragons...

I joined Planeshift a long time ago, maybe a couple years. I took my character down into the sewers, and either got very beat up or died, I believe, and left the game.

I just decided to give it another try, and my character still existed. I logged him in, and he's naked, of course, and was at very low health.

The interesting thing was that the tutorial was running as if he were a new character somewhere else, and not in the sewers.

Will I have to recreate this character? I've gotten him upstairs to town, but he has no equipment and no weapons, so it's unlikely he can accomplish anything.

I just thought it was a curious thing that the game would think him in the tutorial when he wasn't. I'm guessing it's the result of client/server changes since I created him.

Anyway, any information would be appreciated. The game has great graphics now, better movement than I remember. I just have to get used to the new interface.

Hirom Stonewright - a dwarf something or other.