Virus critique!

[Annabelle]

EDITED BY ANNABELLE ON JANUARY 13rd, 2012

I know the "virus" is part of your storyline but I'm getting sick of it because I don't know what is happening in my case, let me explain...

I was online saturday when I met Max and S'ni Day in COD. S'ni Day and Max told me I was infected by a virus. S'ni Day told me to enter a word and I was in stage 1 of the virus state.

I began to see words appears with numbers and my name changed for strange names. S'ni Day told me to keep track of them and enter the strange names in chat to receive codes. I've done that.

Tonight I spend the night in COD but also in public Ae'gura chatting with a buddy and I was frustrated with the chat behaviour!!!!


I had these 3 things happening:

1) shout

2) miss all the voyels - not funny at all when you wrote a whole sentences of 2 miles long to rewrite it!

3) scrambled name

...and tonight no sign of any strange names or numbers with words. The virus is more than annoying.

I don't know if I have to redo the whole process?

[RockArdemar]

Hmm.. maybe the Storyline events should be accessible only to those who want -and decide- to follow it?

I like participating in quests and solving puzzles and mysteries*, so I am more than happy to keenly take part in the Ancient Book of Fate adventure. But I can understand not everyone has the same motivation, and that other explorers may come to TOC for other reasons too. For them, like Annabelle points out, the messed-up KI can be annoying, along with the words and messages they don't really care about.

Could there be a way by which explorers would be able to opt in or out of the ABF Game?

____________________________________________________
*that's actually the reason I started playing the Myst series in the first place, in the mid-nineties -and am still hooked on it

[Mystler]

The virus is an essential part of our storyline and we think it would destroy the puzzle if we gave an option to disable it. We thought about a switch but decided to not implement one YET. What is a virus with no one getting it? If in real URU everyone got a virus, you cannot just say "Sim Sala Bim" and it will be gone. You'd have to live with it and wait until someone solves the riddle.

And, as for every virus, there is also an "antivirus" but no one solved it yet, although some players are not far away from doing so. That means, the end of the virus depends more or less on the explorers.

Furthermore you might have noticed that the virus is ONLY modifying chat messages and ONLY if you are not alone in your age. The changes you specified are ONLY part of level 1 of the virus. The percentage is quite low (of course it "grows" with more players in the age) and nearly every message is still understandable. I also think those message modifications are often rather funny than annoying. If you solve level 1 and 2 there are no more modifications at all. So, I think you can live with a story virus some time.

Please stop acting as if this is ruining your whole TOC experience... However, we will restart our discussion on the topic and see if we can find a good solution.

*CLOSED*

[Opa]

Only one more note by me. As Mystler said, we do not implement this switch yet, but I will implement it as soon as the explorers solved the last level of the virus. I think this would take 1-3 Weeks. After this time everybody can decide if they want to solve the virus or not. Until this you can help the other people to reach the next levels of the virus, like S'ni Day helped you.

Opa

PS: That's my 100th post *yay*

[Annabelle]

There was nothing to keep here

[Alien]

Annabelle,

I sympathise with how you feel about the virus. My being ill means I've missed taking part in all this and tbh I am glad. I won't be coming to TOC either if it means automatically catching this virus.

Having said this, please don't let your past ruin what happens now. Let bygones be bygones. Please.

[Ehren]

It annoyed me a few times too when I lost the vowels of a long message, (the caps lock and username scramble part of the virus not being anywhere near as destructive to your message as the losing vowels).

But anyway, since this isn't really a real virus, I don't think you have to worry about logging on giving you the virus anymore than if you didn't log on at all. I assume when this part of the story of the event is over, they know how to shut off the 'virus' for everyone, no matter what stage their virus was at.

I can definitely understand why this makes some people annoyed/confused. Even if it is supposed to be a storyline thing, the word virus makes people nervous about what will happen and for how long. And then when you are trying to talk with someone and it suddenly looks like you are yelling. But seeing what they have managed to do on the Open Cavern server, I trust they made sure there would be no permanent damage to anyone.

[RockArdemar]

I am really sorry to see how a game that can be such fun for some of us can at the same time become so annoying for others, to the point of causing a conflict.

We all have similar but different approaches and motivations to playing Myst and Uru. Some of us like solving quests and puzzles, others like jumping and getting to high places, others just hang around and chat, etc. Or a combination of all of these - I primarily like to take a part in an adventure, but while at it I interact with people and make friends so I also like to meet them and chat with them. Finally, I need to be good in combos in order to get to higher spots where I might find some clue or insight.

As Alien, I sympathise with you Annabelle, and you know that personally I like you a lot and am one of your many followers and apprentices, so your contempt towards our game saddens me a bit. All the ways of playing Myst/Uru and its derivatives are equally respectable, neither of them is better or worse.

And, as Ehren points out, this is not a real virus. It is just a temporary KI behaviour. Temporary, because as Opa said, in a few weeks it will be possible to have an option to switch it off "as soon as the explorers solved the last level". So, with a little bit of patience everything will be soon in its right place. And as an explorer on that quest, I assure you that I am working on solving it asap

[Opa]

I deleted your wrong post Ehren

It's a little bit said, that there are some people who don't like our current story line. I hope you will like the next chapter. We thought an ancient "virus" which gives hint for something really big would be a good idea. Noone of you MUST play on this server. If you want you can play on one of the other servers until the virus is solved.

And once again: if you need help regarding the story you can take a look in the "Story Discussion thread" or in the Guild-of-Sleepers-Forum. You can also ask Mr. Rosenqvist for help if he is online (mostly around 11-13 KI time). He has a cyan name in the online list, so you can easily see if he is online.

Opa

[Mystler]

I see, a clarification is needed:

The reason why I closed your thread was because of the way you expressed yourself. Your post felt very aggressive and a more friendly "I think the virus is very annoying. Could you e.g. implement a switch..." would have been much more effective. Constructive criticism is more honorable than aggressive criticism, and much more welcome in these forums.
So, I'm sorry if I insulted you by closing the thread.

I remember her from another server and she had insulted me back then after 2 mins conversation!

I don't know when I had ever insulted you before, so if you have any problems with me you could maybe send me a PM and talk about it.
Btw, I'm male.

Because this new thread is quite inappropriate in the TOC-MOUL/General-Discussion forum, I would like to either merge it with the old one and unlock it or move it to Off-Topic. But this time I ask you here because I fear I'm much more "untrustworthy" and "mendacious" if I do so without asking you.