[bloodrock]

Maybe we could start making a certain time every week or certain day every week there can be a monster quest or an event.

[Cacuo]

Maybe we could start making a certain time every week or certain day every week there can be a monster quest or an event.

Agreed +1

[kyleus3]

i am doing saturdays drop parties...

[Nasir]

Good suggestion ...I believe the staff could even set up an XML Spawner to do it automatically, right?

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So I just deleted a bunch of posts... lets not resume turning the thread into yet another negative conversation. We have other threads already running for that

[bloodrock]

well i was just thinking of that because everyone has a busy time schedule and if the gm's could get together and set up certain days or times... right now i havent seen an event in a long time. I know you have a lot of afk people online also. So if people knew there was a event coming up at a certain point they might not be afk.

[Loki]

I don't think this is very likely, for the simple reason that events take hours of time in preparing, running and then clearing up afterwards and dealing with things like complaints or problems that arose during the event. This means for a GM to pre-schedule a specific time for an event they need to commit a specific block of 2-3 hours to UO, I don't see that as particularly feasible on a regular basis.

I log on UO when I have time that I'm not with friends/family/working/doing chores/at the gym/etc. if I were to organise an event for some evening and then later be asked if I want to go out irl I would find it pretty annoying to have to say no because of UO. I'd also suggest that that sort of thing isn't a healthy way to behave and reminds me of raiding schedules in WoW, which were retarded.

At the moment I log in, I stay invis if I'm short on time but if I have time (e.g. such as yesterday) then I make myself visible so people can see I'm around, I help as many people with their pages/problems as I can, and if there's time I try to do something entertaining for whatever players seem to be around.

I still feel really strongly that people need to be able to find their own fun, the server is full of dungeons, quests (a few are glitchy but most work) and most importantly other players. If you expect the staff to spoon feed the fun to you then it isn't going to work long term because we don't have the time.

For me the fun has always been from other players, so it does kinda suck the player base is so low, but playerbase attracts playerbase, when I joined (or rejoined) IN it was because there were lots of other players, it wasn't because I expected the staff to entertain me like my personal cyber nanny/jester/prostitute.

edit: I should say that if I was online and saw enough people I would do an event, I'm not against doing events, but I am against staff-organised scheduled fun times, because that's making it way too much like a real job for the staff.

[Galehaut]

For me the fun has always been from other players, so it does kinda suck the player base is so low, but playerbase attracts playerbase, when I joined (or rejoined) IN it was because there were lots of other players, it wasn't because I expected the staff to entertain me like my personal cyber nanny/jester/prostitute.

Oh look , another thread about a gm taking 15 minute of his time to write about that time he doesnt apparently have.

[Loki]

Time to write post: 2-3 minutes

Time to organise event, run event and then clear up all the problems and pages afterwards: 2-3 hours

If you prefer I just won't reply at all in future.

[Cossi]

Better to see your reply!

[kyleus3]

I can host an event in less than an hour.. depending on how big the event is... We arent asking for a HUGE event, even small ones, 5-10 minute ones are nice.

[bloodrock]

It dont have to be anything big, i remember on in1 when i played once in a while they would have a couple trasure hunts. There would be some kind of item in the world in a certain area come find it. Or minoc is being attacked by monsters come help defend it from all the monsters. Things like that. I wouldnt think they would take a long time but i could be wrong. Run uo might be harder to use then sphere.

[Loki]

You log in, decide to do a quest/event, make the announcement. Takes anything up to 20 minutes before enough players to warrant starting will mass up.

Then you have to explain the rules of the event to all of them and answer the usual 3-5 questions (usually about things you've already answered). This probably takes another 10 minutes.

The event starts, it has to last at least 30-40minutes to be worth bothering with and can be fairly intensive as players tend to page and ask questions during the event when you're trying to add monsters/pair up players/res people/refresh people/ move people around and enforce the rules if necessary.

Then afterwards you need to give out some sort of a reward to all of the players, this usually takes 5-10mins together with the obligatory "well done everyone" etc.

Then afterwards there is the clean up, dealing with players accusing each other of cheating, dealing with players who are complaining/accusing staff of cheating (there are always some), clearing away monsters/resetting the arena/whatever. This again can be anything from 5minutes up to half an hour if you get a particularly stubborn person complaining about something.

So we have a conservative total of well over an hour, if not closer to 2. That is if there are no other massive time wasting problems e.g. a player manages to loot someone, someone finds some way to abuse the event and has to be jailed, people paging because a PK killed them after the event, the event gates not working properly etc. etc. any of these can take a lot of time to deal with. I know because they've all happened before.

I've run a lot of events and when I do it I know I have to say to myself "Okay Loki, here goes your next 2-3 hours". Even dealing with pages can take up hours of time if people want sufficiently complicated things. Having to jail someone, which does also happen, can take hours if they choose to argue and not accept being jailed (since we try to actually make people understand why they are being jailed instead of just going all heavy-handed).

Now with the playerbase being low events may be a bit quicker, but the problem is that the few times recently that I've been able to find UO time there haven't been many players around. There may be events from time to time but the fact is that there can be no guarantee that there will be a regimented timetable of events, it's too demanding on staff time and ignores the fact that the staff are regular people with lives which they can't shape around a timetable set by UO, that isn't reasonable.