User:Honorable Sarah/Rantful



State of the Universe
i'm fairly bored with the universe. not this one, the Guild Wars universe. this universe was never very interesting to begin with.

anyways, i find myself logging into guild wars a lot less then i used to. i've done The Deep, tried my hand at Urgoz's Warren, farmed The Underworld, done Fissure of Woe including more then my fair share of Eternal Forgemaster trips, gotten a few greens from Ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings.

i dislike farming, repetitive actions are for work, not play. i'm not interested in going and finding randoms, because they tend to act, well, random. so i find myself logging in, seeing no one in my guild, and getting right back off. i played one mission all weekend.

i did however, spend about 12 hours editting wiki articles this weekend. which is strange, because that's about 12 times the time i spent on guildwars. maybe it's because i have a steady stream of accomplishments, a list of friends who are almost always available.

this is why we need a Xunlai Post. Eve Pendragon hasn't played in months. i miss her, i wish she'd come back so we could play again. if i could leave her a message, she might log in for 3 seconds one day and see it, even if i'm not around. i could give her my email (which i really regret not doing before) and we could get back together.

i got my first minipet the other day, ember my temple guardian. since my first character was still with me, that means i've played for a year. i can count on one hand the number of people who are still playing from my first guild, and i don't even need to use any fingers. i don't even remember the name.

i miss playing with real people, i hate hencies, i dislike randoms, and i'm running out of fun things to do.

Admin
big storm over at User_talk:Gravewit. i've stayed conspicuously quite on RFAs and the whole adminship discussion, largely because i don't feel it has a lot to do with the day to day running of the site, but partially because i don't feel it's my place. well this is my place, so i get to rant, and you get to be good boys and girls and listen quietly to auntie sarah.

lots of people are focusing on the numbers of new admins, why there should or shouldn't be. that's not our choice. Gravewit runs the site, and gets to choose admins. he's polite enough to allow us to put up candidates for him to choose from, but if he so wanted to make some user who registered yesterday a sysop, he could. it's his sandbox, and we all play here because 1)he's a nice guy and lets us 2)it's a big sandbox with lots of cool places to make castles or race tracks or split level asylums.

ok, so lets put that aside for a second. what does adminship mean? from a strictly technical standpoint, they gain nothing but a small set of tools (rollback, delete, ban, etc). but we all know GW is more then just a technical site. there's a community here. so what does granting admin do to the community around them? are users more likely to defer or grant the opinions of an admin more weight? not really, lots of people argue with skuld, and he's known to have both a temper and a quick trigger finger.

ok, so let's look at the tools.
 * Rollback: most useful in reverting vandals, does not totally erase a submit, history is preserved (i think).
 * Delete: rm a page, wipes history. shows pretty prominently in recent changes.
 * Ban: block a user, anywhere from a few hours to a few decades, even infinite

the only one with any real abuse potential is Ban. sure you could delete a discussion, but it'll just start up somewhere else with another admin asking questions about why the first was deleted. ban has a similar restriction, but people are less likely to see a ban on a single user then pulling a discussion out from under several active contributors.

which leads me around to my next point. the whole point of a wiki is community. the community drives discussion and pushes policy. if a single admin went rogue, they would have a hard time enforcing their will against 10 or 15 users making changes, and eventually some other admin is going to see the ban frenzy and do something. the community, not the admins, drives the wiki.

so what is all this thunder and lightning about? i honestly don't know, and i'm having a really hard time understanding why people are making a huge deal out of something that is both out of our hands and non-destructive. maybe i'm missing something?

Noob vs Newbie
common game terms, but subtle differences. let's compare: Exclusion is like thermonuclear war; once everyone does it the world is over.

well, it's offical
I'm old. proof Positive. time to get the crochet needles out and start knitting sweaters for homeless cats. this is a truely sad day. here lies sarah, she was old at 25.

Yesi Doubtsarah
everyone say hello to yesi from my guild [Trtl], who doubted my wiki-ness-ness. ;p

GW:AGF and you
Caution: soapbox

lots of people seem to be ignoring the rules lately, and no, i'm not talking about a certain pair of revert warriors. i'm talking about all the other people who go about plastering slander on talk pages, calling for bans, etc.

yes, those two people got into a revert war, and yes, it was not good of either of them to do that. AGF, and a little bit of empathetic understanding, shows us that they both had GOOD FAITH reasons for doing what they did. i'm sure they both understand all this, and will attempt to not do that again, because they are acting in good faith when posting to the wiki.

however, several people have been filling talk pages with hate. ok, you don't like person A, thats fine, you're allowed that. however when you start calling for bans without understanding the persons point of view your not following AGF. which is the worse transgression, 1RV or AGF?

here's a hint, AGF is the key to the entire wiki project. without AGF we have a draconian database maintained by a few "trusted", but dreadfully overwhelmed, admins. edits and changes would take weeks to vet and approve, because no one can be allowed to post anything without 7 approval stamps and oversight by 2 other users, who are, each in turn, supervised by 2 more.

if you think you can particpate here without following AGF, you're wrong. no argument no discussion no "prove it". you are wrong if you ignore AGF.

"but sarah", you say, "look at Special:Log/Block all those people did bad things to the wiki. we should toss AGF and block anonymous/user/unapproved edits". well guess what, find even one instance of vandalism out of the last 500 edits, and you'll get a cookie from me. that's because most of the people who go to the trouble of writing something and posting it are woking in good faith. everyone else gets put on the ban log as they prove themselves out of AGF.

"but sarah", you say, "user X hates us all and is evil and should be blocked". ok, burden of proof falls on the procecution.

soapbox over.

The Old Rant -OR- What Anet Should Do

 * Rebalance MM:
 * Split Verata's Sacrifice into two skills:
 * Verata's Burden:5[[image:energy.png]] 1[[image:activation.png]] 5[[image:recharge.png]] Spell. draw all conditions from minions you control. sacrifice 3% of your maximum health for each condition drawn.
 * notes: consider an army of 10 that walks over a dust trap and a flame trap. two conditions times 10 minions = 60% sacrifice, pretty signifigant benefit at a healthy cost.
 * Verata's Sacrifice:15%[[image:sacrifice.png]] 10[[image:energy.png]] 2[[image:activation.png]] 30[[image:recharge.png]] Enchantment. for {8...18} seconds all your minions are enchanted with verata's gift, gain +10 regeneration, but cannot be the target of necromancer enchantments.
 * notes: note the old style recharge and duration. also note it's now an enchantment on each minon. mesmers, start your engines. "cannot be the target" puts a dent in renewal MM's since it now MUST end before being recast, or else no effect.
 * Change the Minion Limit=2+(Death Magic/2) rule to Minion Limit=Death Magic. remove the limit all together, find some other way to counter MM armies. extend the durration of Judge's Insight, or better yet, make a new skill Order of Judgement 25 energy, for 5 seconds, all party members deal holy damage, and attacks set animated creatures on fire.
 * Make all minions succeptable to all conditions (esp disease), despite being "not fleshy".
 * Change the models for Celestial Horror and Bone Minion to match their nature. celestial horrors should use the celestial skins from the bosses in Nahpui Quarter, and minions should use the "Crawler" model with the bone horror skin.
 * Make up their mind on celestial horrors. they should either not be "controlled" (not count on minion total, no BotM, VS, etc), or follow the master like normal minions.
 * add a spirit counter like the minion counter. in fact add two, one for spirits "in the area" for those skills that count that, and another for spirits you control.
 * Finish the Realms of the gods:
 * The Eternal Jungle: two layer map(canopy and jungle floor). diseased flesh creatures (trolls, crawlers, etc). quests to protect forest sites, assisting druids, etc. Amber and Jade drops.
 * Akasha Monastery: Himalayan theme, mountain peaks connected by cloud bridges. dwyana combating a powerful cult. lots of escort, "must survive" and "defend location" quests. new rare material Aether, similar to Obsidian Shards, and new armor type "Aethereal armor" made from ectos and aether, should look like forged clouds, with fellblade-like animations layered on top.
 * Mirror Realms: this one would be hard, as the landscape would have to change as you complete quests. assist facets of lyssa. lots of conflicting, unclear objectives, like the same facet tells you to undo something you just did. ruby and saphire drops.
 * Increase the drop rate of rare and "perfect" items kudos on that with factions
 * Xunlai Auction house, similar to material traders.
 * items depositied with house, seller gets unique ticket. seller specifies auction end date, "buyout" price, or both.
 * buyers talk to a auctioneer to browse and bid on items.
 * ticket can be traded in for 80% of the sold price, or the original item if it has not sold.
 * Weapon mod trader. this should be common sense. I don't need a "perfect" upgrade, +26 or 17% is fine, and everyone throws those away.
 * finish the Dragon Sword sets:
 * Shocking Dragon Sword: orange dragon head, remove "jet" and "glob" effects, add dancing lightning similar to Everlasting Aura.
 * Ebon Dragon Sword: brown dragon head, remove "jet" and "glob" effects, blade is colored and skinned like a fellblade
 * Holy Dragon Sword: (Light Damage) white dragon head, white blade and effects. double damage to undead.
 * Shadow Dragon Sword: (Dark Damage) Charcoal grey dragon head, black blade and effects.
 * Entropic Dragon sword: (Chaos damage) purple dragon head, deep purple blade and effects.