Alright, I looked through the post, so I will try to avoid repeating things that have already been said. In a sense, a bit of repetition would be healthy, to show that more people share the opinion that Xillix is helping people. In another, repetition is unhealthy due to the fact that circular arguments can occur. But I digress...
Many complain that the shouts are spam and clutter the logs. How many, though, have considered what it COULD be like without these shouts from the vespers? My personal opinion derived from observation is that it could quite possibly be worse. I have often heard shouts such as "Where do I sell rat parts?" or "how do I make money?" or other noobity questions (hehe... noobity). My opinion is that these shouts by the vespers curb the amount of shouts by new players, who constantly pour in. Without a single shout from the vespers once every few minutes, or whatever the interval currently is, you may have to deal with shouts from a larger number of people shouting at a far greater rate than one shout per X minutes. In this way, the occasional shout from the Vespers theoretically could vastly decrease the clutter in your logs.
Now for another issue I feel deserves attention. Before some here complain of the overuse of Shouts by the Vespers, consider the misuse of shouts by some of the more experienced players. I have personally seen where shouts are used to communicate across town instead of using tells, and I can say it is a bit frustrating, but I put up with it.
The point that shortcuts used by the Vespers makes them seem more like NPCs does have some truth, but I feel it cannot be helped. Put yourselves in their shoes for a moment, and let’s go on a journey. A new player comes to you, and asks for your help. The new player cannot understand what is going on, and seeks assistance, yet has no clue as to what he or she needs. Would you: A) give a personalized conversation lasting perhaps half an hour or more to describe the story of the game, how things work in the game, and what the player should do first; B) ignore them; C) give them a pre-saved message explaining something or possibly leading them to a site which would answer many questions they had or would soon have.
Now, imagine you have, let’s make it light, 20 players each day all coming to you with the same flabbergasted story, seeking help. B is the course I would imagine most would take. A would be inefficient, and could be quite frustrating as one answer you give only leads to several more questions. This frustration could also be compounded by a gutting of English grammar or possibly L33T. C would save the cramps in the experienced players’ hands by not having to type out the same answers again and again. C would also free up the experienced players to play the game themselves instead of taking all their time to answer the same questions over and over in answers personalized to each new player.
I tried to only write about new topics, so I apologize if I repeated too much from previous posts.
I also apologize for the long post. The consequences of its length undoubtedly will be that few will read it.
