The Winch -- What are they thinking?

[Jeraphon]

Mornox, you're getting mighty close to spoilers...I'd be a little more careful.

[Teraree]

I'm not really obsessed by getting winch access ,i only wanted to know if there's something that can help.
I can deal with the idea of never getting there,and i'm still having fun anyway,PS is great and i like it much  

Congrats to all who are workin to keep PS alive and still evolving !  

Thanks Again Xillix for your answer !

[Kezol]

After much struggle and frustration,  i finally managed to access the Winch.  I must say that the difficulty involved only increases the reward.  Thank you to everyone for your help on this matter and good luck to everyone who has not yet managed to get into the (in)famous Winch.  Of course, once I managed to get in, the server went down for an update.  I guess I'll just have to wait a while longer before exploring the Winch.

[War In Silence]

I'd like to ask, what is going on with The Winch? Here's the situation: The only way to get to a new map, called "The Winch," is to do what I hesitantly call a "quest." This quest requires talking to a certain NPC. Unfortunately someone decided that the NPC should only give the quest every 15 minutes or so... So there is constantly a crowd around this certain NPC. A few minutes ago, there were a dozen people standing around, typing "Can I help you?" to the same NPC over and over and over again. I spent an hour last night, when there were only 3 of us, and never got the "quest." Today, with a dozen people doing the same thing, I started asking around. One guy said he spent 3 solid hours yesterday, and he's back today, and still hasn't gotten "The Quest."

Now, I hate to whine about a "free pre-alpha" game, but this just baffles me. This NPC is so stupid, he doesn't even understand you when you say "Hello" to him! I've been playing for over a year, and even the day I started, you could at least say "Hello" and get a response better than "Please use a correct phrase." The idea of standing in front of an NPC and asking the same question 10,000 times in a row is just ridiculous, and reminds me yet again why I hadn't done a "quest" in months. I begin to wonder if it would be possible to make a game less interesting.

-Roahn

Once again. If it's not interesting.. Don't Play.

[Jeraphon]

That post you quoted was three months old, War In Silence. Those problems have since been fixed.

[JohnB]

Anyone having good experiences with the winch these last few weeks?

Yes, me too.
I recently started playing Planeshift again after a break of 5 months or so and I've now got two characters into the winch area by two different routes (though it must be said with quite a few hints from someone who had already got in, so thank to them, and thanks to Xillix).  Then again perhaps I was lucky since because of the break I didn't have any trouble with dropped once-only quests, and because of the possible problems with conflicting quests I was trying them all out with an alt. char. first.

I think the newer quests are generally much better in terms of giving you an idea of who you need to talk to and what you need to say, rather than the annoying 'guess the key phrase' type of thing (though there's still a bit of that) so I'd say things have definitely improved.

[Edit - and of course thanks to Jeraphon too]

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

don't forget jeraphon, who actually wrote the quests johnb. I do other unseen stuff and direct traffic