Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Thanks for attending everyone. I will read off the post from the forum for those that may not have read it ..." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Characters who wish to attend are summoned to a dark room where they can't see who is there. Characters with infravision are provided with blind folds." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - A staff member will list out the agenda items that will be discussed during the meeting." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - The staff will work down through the agenda items offering their take on the items." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - All the characters are sitting and they stand and wait if they want to comment on something that has been said. An Admin will send them a tell when it is their turn to speak. When a character is finished speaking they sit down." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - An admin will periodically let the speaker know how many people are waiting to speak behind them to prompt them to take a seat if they have voiced their point to their satisfaction. Players are welcome to stand up again after they sit if they want to comment on the same topic again." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - No emoting during the meeting. No talking unless it is your turn to speak. If we follow the above guidelines the meeting should move along with little chaos." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I'll begin the meeting with reading of the work done this previous month for the game by the staff." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Character generation issues resolved." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Stat c displays some more information for the admins about the player of the character from their account." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Found that skill timers were set to a default of 1 min for skill gain rather than its calculation. Suspect this had been set to 1 for testing and not set back, so skill timers will work properly now for skill gain." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Pmote and say commands no longer interrupt a foraging attempt." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - You can drink from a held drink container now." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - You can now castout characters from the clans you are a leader of." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - NPC's will flee when they are badly injured, rather than fighting to the death." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - AFK indicator added to Set command." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Various building requests answered." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Typo requests resolved." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Numerous petitions responded to." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - A gazzillion applications reviewed, just ask Shye." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Good month all in all for the staff. I'll open the meeting with the first agenda item." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Why are there almost no dogs in Harshlands?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I think Revus wants to answer this one." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - So I will take this one." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - Answer, there are VNPC dogs all over HL. If people want more pet type dogs and do not mind if they are the sort to flee in combat, I can make those as available as other animals. For guard and attack type dogs we limit those to those who are responsible enough for clan leadership like enforcer clan leaders or those of similiarly proven responsiblity. So, guard or attack type animals and mercenaries are not on the agenda to make available to just anyone who can afford them, but I am happy to make pet type dogs that anyone can buy, to add to the already assumed vnpc population." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - For guard type dogs, and as with fighting men and other animals, by request and approval only." Someone says, out of character, "Well, I'm not sure pets are historically-accurate as a use for dogs in the early medieval period (though I'm not really sure, and don't know Harn canon). I'd rather they be harder to get as pets, and -easier- as guards! But my question is, does this mean that once a player is approved as responsible enough to own a dog, they can basically continually get new ones? Because guard dogs shouldn't be -too- rare, I think." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - Mercenaries should not be rare either, but we need to limit them for alas we as admins are not around to play these npc's in order to provide balance. So, we limit attacking animals for this same reason. But no being responsible enough to be able to hire one mercenary does not mean unlimited mercenaries for that person, and the same with dogs, both for game balance reasons." Someone says, out of character, "Revus - With mercenaries anyhow theres a practical limit on those because the government in an area is not going to allow someone to hire a merc army." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - And as for guard dogs, if we just let anyone buy them from a shop then it would not be too long before someone sent a half dozen dogs to attack Varrius in mangai square and really .. we don't want that." Someone says, out of character, "Reb - For my part I never wanted a dog that "attacked" and I've never been looking to cheat out of my share of combat by OOC means. I wanted a dog for nothing but the IC reasons of having a dog to bark while we're camping on the road -- which we don't actually do, so it's clearly not a mechanics thing; to herd sheep, which also doesn't happen in mechanics, just explains me carrying around three sheep into town; and to bark at the cottage when I'm away and my wife isn't. That doesn't sound like "a pet type dog", so what should those of us who aren't "responsible" enough to handle a combatant-dog be asking for if we want a period-appropriate working dog who isn't a combatant's crutch but just a roleplay tool? I figured the ones in the dog-breeding crafts, which I assume exist for a reason, would serve, but I've been repeatedly denied access to those." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - Just the only dogs built now are ones that will not flee and I had not gotten any requests for work dogs, that I was aware. I am happy to build some though and make them widely available. That would work well for the product of those dog breeding crafts too." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - Requests I have gotten for dogs are of the variety of "I want a dog" or "I want a guard dog", so I did not want to mislead anyone by giving them a dog that would flee in a fight. So your specific request for a dog that would not help in a fight was misunderstood, so sorry about that. I will take as an agenda item to make work, non-combat dogs available." Someone says, out of character, "Revus - Good question, in the past the main annoyance with dogs or pets of any kind is that you need a clan for everyone who wants one, and the dog has to be a member of that clan, which means a new dog prototype for almost every dog. And thats a has." Someone says, out of character, "Hassle. there, not sure if that got off before the crash." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - And this is not longer the case with the ability to buy NPC's and be its owner." Someone says, out of character, "Revus - I got a question, when is someone gonna do something about all the crashes?! Huh admins?" Someone chuckles. Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I believe Revus has that action item." Someone says, out of character, "Ooh my turn! I just wanted to say that I could seen ot wanting people to build and army. I was just thinking if you lose one mercenary who dies protecting you, it makes sense to hire another one. Same with dogs, one dies, get another to replace it." Someone says, out of character, "Err see no, not seen ot." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Yes, that does make sense." Someone asks in Harnic, in deep base tones with a notable Corani accent, "Going back to what BH brought up in the beginning about the skill time being set to a default setting... Would this have accounted for skills to appear to raise much slower that they had in the past and that your characters skills that you may have been diligently training are lower than they should be?" Someone says, out of character, "Revus - Huh?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - No, in fact the opposite. Characters with low skill were gaining at rapid proportions, so much so that Shye felt players were cheating." Someone says in Harnic, in deep base tones with a notable Corani accent, "Oh.. Good enough. I'll sit now." Someone says, out of character, "Revus - Was just a commented out bit of code anyhow messing up the timer right? Unless I misunderstood the post on the code forum." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - Yes a code bug that was fixed, people were indeed going up too fast making it look like 'twinknig' but it was not. But I think that is not the agenda item we are on just yet." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Okay, on to the next topic then?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Revisit weapon/shield breakage." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - This has come up before, pretty much it's a code issue and we have not seen a reason to implement breakage while so many other things are broken in the game already." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - If a coder is interested in taking up this task we will support it from the staff view point, but nobody has shown an interest in it yet." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Nobody is standing to comment on this one so I will move on to the next topic." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - The rule of three, and where it should be applied, specifically rummaging, foraging, and other 'victimless' (to steal Millie's term) code actions." Someone says, out of character, "I've always tried to play but the 'rules' including this one, though i've had to be reminded a time or two when I'm not paying enough attention. However.. I have some things I'd like to bring up." Someone says, out of character, "When I forage, or rummage, I'm always looking for a specific item to be used either by myself or someone else in another craft, and I do 99 percent of my rummaging/foraging within four rooms that only two of us use." Someone says, out of character, "I'm the only one that rumamges in there, and it's a bit frustrating when i need to find something, and can only try twelve times during times my playtimes are curtailed. I truly don't forage or rummage ad naseum to try and build up my skills, I simply need to accomplish a specific task." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Our old code had certain items that could be found in specific room types, but the new code just uses a single list. We have it on our to-do list to reimplement the room type foraging/gathering again." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - People have suggested being able to forage/gather a specific thing at a negative rather than getting something they don't want. I like this idea. Just requires coding of course." Someone says, out of character, "Oh, that is a nice idea, and perhaps making certain widely used food items like mushrooms more readily available to buy on peddlers?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - We encourage the use of the building forum if you feel certain NPC's should be selling something they are not. :)." Someone says, out of character, "On rummaging, I think that the current hard coded limit of three herbs per room is plenty strict enough, and I'm not sure I see a problem with rummaging until you get all three then moving on. For foraging, I like the idea of foraging until you fail in a room, then moving on. I think for both of these skills, people are usually looking for a specific thing and... like someone else just said. I'm not sure what other things might fall under this "victimless" thing. Being able to forage/rummage for a specific item would be great for me since there's only two things I forage/rummage for. (You can buy mushrooms in Tashal in Haldan square)." Someone says, out of character, "Millie - For foraging and rummaging, now that our skill timers are fixed, I do not see a problem with foraging and rummaging as much as you want (taking into account weather conditions for rp reasons)." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Nobody else standing on this topic so I will move to the next." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Discipline for twinking and what admins think of twinking and its repercussions." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - My thoughts on this are that the staff are not councilors or psychiatrists and we are just here to pass on the standards to those we see stepping away from them. The standards are there to protect the game environment and flavor of the world. We are not inflexible but we try to be very clear what has been set as acceptable and not acceptable and treat everyone as a responsible adult." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I know some games ban people for set periods of time to 'school' them on the error of their ways. Ultimately I am not interested in playing "I'm right, you're wrong." If a player is not interested in playing by the rules and continues to break them they will face IC repercussions that make sense. Not some OOC parenting." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - The floor is open for opinions on this topic." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Okay, next topic." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Or not. :)." Someone says, out of character, "My only concern with continually refusing to ban a repeated twinker is that it ends up forcing some unfair IC repercussions on the other players who are sticking by the rules." Someone says, out of character, "Though I can totally understand not wanting to get into that big ooc furball." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - A player who affects the game that adversely will have their character removed from the game world. If we saw the same sort of behavior with consecutive characters from that player then they would be banned permanently." Someone says, out of character, "Ooh cool, ok." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - We like to keep a tolerant staff and have only asked one player in our history of staffing to not come back to the game." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - On to the next topic." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Delay for sneak skill before NPC's notice a person who is sneaking into a room?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I think the player who posted this is not aware of how the Hide and Sneak skill are used hand in hand to be affective." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I have added a bit to the Help Sneak file so it is a bit clearer hopefully." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Any questions on this topic?" Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - That would be the end of our agenda items. I would like to announce at this time that Shye, a very hard working staff member, has retired from the staff. He has emailed some players speaking of his disappointment with the game and how it is run currently. He feels the staff are not strict enough with what he feels are 'twinks'. I thought those attending the meeting should hear about it here first. The floor is open for discussion on this and other topics. No need to stand and wait your turn." Someone says, out of character, "Thanks for telling us what the primary issue seems to be. :)." Someone says, out of character, "Thanks for the information, I'm sorry to hear of his retirement." Someone says, out of character, "A good staffer leaving is always a sad thing. I don't know how much twinking is going on as my point of view is rather narrow, but I guess he had his reasons. A staffer sees more than a player." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - I can only speak on what I have seen so far. If Shye had other reasons for leaving I have not heard them yet, though I am sorry he felt so pressured to leave." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - It can be a very jading experience to be a staff member and takes a special sort of patience to not become bothered and take things personally. We all love the game and if we feel it is being hurt it will hurt us too, of course." Someone says, out of character, "Blackhorde - Thank you all for attending and for adding to the Harshlands world. Feel free to return to play. Good day to you all."