SoulTear

I think the 'being' that give you the cube at the beginning is Jack Willow who is trying to save you from the Shades from the House of Liquid Dust that surround you. He has become 'part' of those shades I think but still is able to maintain his own identity to some degree and perhaps sees you as someone that could potentially save Marind. The cube that he gives you is actually the wooden cube where you meet Marind and after you take it you get absorbed into it before coming out of it eventually in Chapter 2. Note that as in the story each of us still has the wooden cube in our possession, at least all the story choices I made ended up with me picking up the wooden cube and putting it in my pocket.

Anyway thats how I interpreted the story when I went through it.

I was thinking about what Manu said about appearances and while I'm not sure if he was referring to my post it may be that Akasha did not turn into the Shade Sentinel but rather that her act of writing the Book of Principles caused the Shade Sentinel to form in Necrovion as a reflection or manifestation of that book (perhaps as a corruption of the real one?). Consider that Khalzadad instigated contact with the shades shortly after Akasha was writing her book(after which we did not hear from her anymore) starting The Shade Balance saga before Alche's quest for The Book was even complete. The whole act of Akasha deciding to write her own version of The Book of Principles may have started the chain of events that led to The Shade Balance as much as Wodin's creation did.

Also Manu said that the Book of Principles was never found but didn't Alche turn into The Book when he touched the flame and evolved to a higher form? Cause I was under the impression that that is what happened though I guess I was wrong and the real book (a physical thing?) is still hidden somewhere.

Another thought: the same player that plays Akasha may be the one the plays the Shade Sentinel too since as I said in my pervious post we stopped seeing Akasha around the time we started seeing the Shade Sentinel.

This is just speculation mind you but has anyone considered that Akasha turned into the Shade Sentinel after she left Golemus Golemicarium since no one has ever heard from her since. After all they are both female, Akasha became more 'dark' after making her own version of the Book from the 6 pages and the Shade Sentinel somehow got the page to throw into the fire.

As for the pyramids I believe there are 9 in total, 7 on land and the 2 floating ones. If each pyramid corresponds to a principle then the 10th is probably invisible or hidden somewhere.

Well after some time away Yami emailed me recently about this War between Golmeus and Loreroot (as some of you may remember when I left I gave Yami my Aqune account so she could still make weather when needed for roleplay etc.). That piqued my curiosity so I decided to check out the forum to see what was the cause of all this. Well other then finding this very interesting thread I didn’t like what I found or how things turned out for Loreroot and while I won’t comment any further to prevent more heated arguments on the forum suffice it to say the Self-Righteous Golemus Bullies were very lucky I wasn’t playing when they declared their war and have neither the time nor the inclination to do so now (no I’m not coming back yet) since I would make them sorry for what they did (and yes I know all about they’re misguided paternalism to save LR from itself, must be nice for you to be so all wise and benevolent isn’t it guys?). Anyway I’m still shocked by all this but that’s not why I posted here, back to the topic at hand.

While I think Manu’s ideas about how to maintain a game world indefinitely are fascinating (but will it work?) though as usual the exploit toadies (oops I mean ‘bug finders’ ) feel their worth is threatened by any change in game’s paradigm (if there is some truth too what he says it could defiantly be worth something to the software industry, adaptive AI without Neural Nets? Are you using Genetic Algorithms?) I think a full reset would be good for the game and would be unavoidable in a ‘normal’ game. Of course I don’t mean now but eventually when critical improvements to the game engine need to be made (which will take time) and would in any case necessitate a full reset and advancement to an MD 2.0. As far as the inevitable losses in the MD community is concerned MD already lost nearly all of its really old players (who started 2006-2007) the ‘old’ players now are those that started mostly in early and middle 2008 and personally I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the currently ‘old’ players leave never too return if I ever get back. There will always be new players that come in as long as enough advertising is done and a new and yes maybe even better community will develop.

This is the alpha after all and we all knew it would end eventually so we should not be shocked when it does. After all do you play this game for fun or just to show off? I think it would be a lot more fun if some serious changes were made to the way the game works (especially now that its creator knows how people react to some things). If you just play to show off something you have worked hard for (‘grinding’) then I would suggest you save that sort of desire for real life where there are plenty of opportunities for it in making a career for yourself.

I suppose given the last post I made on story integration my opinion on this topic is not exactly unexpected but I just want to say one more thing. Remember sometimes its better to cut your losses when something has become too unwieldy rather attempt to save something that really isn’t worth saving anymore otherwise you end up obsessively working on the same thing forever.

One final suggestion I have that ties in to what was said about how hidden algorithms are being built behind the combat system displayed by the combat log and that is to eliminate the combat log entirely leaving only the animated creature fight. For those that remember the combat log was originally put there when the combat system was being tested so that players could judge from it whether it was fair and balanced and operated correctly and report it back to Manu (this was back when he read all pms, yes it was a very long time ago) which they could not really do from the animated screen alone. It was not supposed to be accessible by the players indefinably only the animated creature fight was (at least that is the impression I got) but like many temporary features it became all too permanent, now it is central to combat and the animation hardly anyone bothers with at all. Of course the animation doesn’t show statistics as well so it prevents the kind of number crunching the combat log allows which is what we want The idea being that that the character only observes their creatures actions and learns from that rather then from analyzing the values in the output screen.

Well since its going to be on for the whole day I will probably be able to show up if only for a little while. I usually stay at Maple Road anyway when I'm not at Willow's Shop that is. If I have some extra heat I will even try to create some nice weather.

I think the 'being' that give you the cube at the beginning is Jack Willow who is trying to save you from the Shades from the House of Liquid Dust that surround you. He has become 'part' of those shades I think but still is able to maintain his own identity to some degree and perhaps sees you as someone that could potentially save Marind. The cube that he gives you is actually the wooden cube where you meet Marind and after you take it you get absorbed into it before coming out of it eventually in Chapter 2. Note that as in the story each of us still has the wooden cube in our possession, at least all the story choices I made ended up with me picking up the wooden cube and putting it in my pocket.

Anyway thats how I interpreted the story when I went through it.

I was thinking about what Manu said about appearances and while I'm not sure if he was referring to my post it may be that Akasha did not turn into the Shade Sentinel but rather that her act of writing the Book of Principles caused the Shade Sentinel to form in Necrovion as a reflection or manifestation of that book (perhaps as a corruption of the real one?). Consider that Khalzadad instigated contact with the shades shortly after Akasha was writing her book(after which we did not hear from her anymore) starting The Shade Balance saga before Alche's quest for The Book was even complete. The whole act of Akasha deciding to write her own version of The Book of Principles may have started the chain of events that led to The Shade Balance as much as Wodin's creation did.

Also Manu said that the Book of Principles was never found but didn't Alche turn into The Book when he touched the flame and evolved to a higher form? Cause I was under the impression that that is what happened though I guess I was wrong and the real book (a physical thing?) is still hidden somewhere.

Another thought: the same player that plays Akasha may be the one the plays the Shade Sentinel too since as I said in my pervious post we stopped seeing Akasha around the time we started seeing the Shade Sentinel.

This is just speculation mind you but has anyone considered that Akasha turned into the Shade Sentinel after she left Golemus Golemicarium since no one has ever heard from her since. After all they are both female, Akasha became more 'dark' after making her own version of the Book from the 6 pages and the Shade Sentinel somehow got the page to throw into the fire.

As for the pyramids I believe there are 9 in total, 7 on land and the 2 floating ones. If each pyramid corresponds to a principle then the 10th is probably invisible or hidden somewhere.