Byakushin's Journal
This journal is an experiment at reporting contemporary events at The Mana World. If I get totally hooked on writing again, maybe there'll be a Tulimshar Times at some point (let me know if you'd be interested in being a reporter and e.g. do interviews / read the forums for social news). For now, it's just the adventures of Byakushin, fighter-mage of level 61ish level whose nemesis is the mountain snake.
24th June 2010
Dear diary,
Today, I got my black cowboy hat at last, and celebrated my newfound freedom from snake skin hunting!
This lasted for all of five minutes, after which I found out I need some 12 more for another project. Foiled again.
I have killed at least 20 mountain snakes but am yet to receive a single tongue or skin from them. It seems that my best strategy remains to kill everything else in the world and then go see if Ishi's lottery brings me luck, skins and snake tongues.
21th June 2010
Dear diary,
I was just discussing the birds and the bees with Sagatha when the news came in: the climate change had caused a huge flood that washed away the land bridge between Tulimshar and Hurnscald. The horror!
Being my aptly delegative supervisor at any complex things related to nature, Sagatha promptly sent me off to organize rescue parties for the poor slime population that would surely be badly struck by this event. As I got to the shores, I was amazed by something else than the extent of environmental disaster: a building had been revealed by the flood! It was still quite moist inside, so it's no wonder no one was living in it despite the splendid view to sea. If the student apartment prices keep going up, I'm definitely going to go squat in there.
In other news, Sagatha keeps complaining that I'm way too distracted these days. I can just go "oooh, butterflies!" in the middle of her no doubt important lecture on the sleeping habits of mouboos.
PS. Went to the mines tonight to study whether the red slimes show any signs of growing tentacles like the sea slimes; Sagatha suspects its a sign of environmental stress. Man, were the spiders always this creepy?
By the way, TMW is raising funds for more RAM for the server, see the related forum thread: [1]
20th June 2010
Oh TMW, how I love you! Let me count the ways:
- Free-as-in-freedomness. If I had done my contributing years on here rather than my home MUD, the work wouldn't have gone to waste when the single server no longer attracts players. Not to mention upkeep's a lot saner when the code repository is designed for open source.
- Equipment and location saving plus the lack of death penalty on eAthena is the central reason why I can play in the first place, given that I can be interrupted at any given time.
- Stacking bonus and experience from player healing. The two greatest social playing innovations that got me to interact with people.
- Competing clients. The total awesomeness of being able to choose between stable vanilla and a hackish munchkin version (not to mention others). I haven't even bothered trying the competing servers yet.
- IRC, wiki, bugtracker and forums. This game has a definite presence beyond the one server instance where the actual game is. Not to mention that I hardly see any politics in the gameworld itself; people work them on the forums mostly. And did I already mention there's an actual bugtracker?
- Transparency. You can actually go read the walkthroughs and monster item drops if you want to be spoilered silly - the gameplay cannot be dependent on hiding things when anyone can go read the code.
