Players Telling Me What I Can or Cannot Do

I can't believe this actually has to be said... Eternal Lands is a game. You play as you choose to play, the only limitations being those in the official game rules.

There are actually people out there who don't believe this.


The absolute worst cases have been those who are high on getting the global quest done every time.


I wrote back in January 2013 about why I gave up on the global. (See: My Lack of Interest in the Global Quest) That post is still relevant, though may be dated a little in what's required for the global. Even still I've seen no changes to that which would change my views about it.

But I posted several problems I had with it. Broken down there was:

1. The Rewards weren't useful enough for my game play.
2. The Requirements were just wrong for something that's supposedly for "everyone" to do.
3.  The "Do It or Lose It" syndrome, that these days is being pushed on players by other players.

Details for why I've had problems with those three reasons are on the link above, so I won't go into them here.

What I'm writing about now, though, is that latter trend of certain players expecting or even demanding that others participate. Some getting all huffy and whiny about others who don't or won't.


Yeah, last I checked, participating in global wasn't obligatory, and just as I wrote in the above-linked post, I won't respond any better to those who try and force me into doing it than I do to the "use it or lose it" threat that tends to loom over every new thing that gets added.

I do not feel the global is worth bothering with in its current state.

1. The requirements need to be drastically reformed. As I explain in the above link.
2. The worms... that part needs changing as well as those few who have become privy to a private list of them show some serious snideness when talking about them with those who aren't. (BTW, snide ones, I actually managed to get your list from someone many months ago. I've actually considered posting it just to force that to be changed solely to knock you off your high horses. I'm still considering it. I've never posted secrets here but I will if you keep that snooty shit up.)
3. Only 1 of the 4 rewards is even kinda useful to me, and weighted against the other 3, I can live without it.
4. Certain players trying to force it into being an obligation make me want to do it even less.

I won't name names. Those who do that know who they are.


It's become more apparent of late, though. As I posted recently, I'm hitting goals and in the midst of changing my gods in a major way. One of those changes was taking the summoning god, as it and crafting have been ignored for far too long and I want to work on goals for those skills.

Working on summoning when already at level 62 by default means a lot of time on Arius Gypsum Mountain.

Oh yeah, the global ones end up there a lot as well, since gypsum was deemed the only harvestable that was worth being over-required in the global, both by itself and for potion mixing.

So since I started working on my summoning levels sitting up there mixing, I've come across more than a few asking if I'm harving for the global, if I wanna work with them to carry it to storage, and so on.

My answers:

1. No, I'm not working on the global. I have my own goals to work on.
2. No, I'm not helping with the hauling or harving of gypsum just because you are doing it.
3. No, your attempts to push me to do it after I have said no will not influence me to help.
4. Oops, I accidentally added you to my ignore list on purpose.

No player has the right to tell another player what to do. If I wanted such game play, I'd be in a guild.

 I definitely don't take kindly to such people. Zero tolerance for them, even. I don't play a game to be forced to do things. I do nothing that's not what *I* want to do. It's a game, not a job.

I have no qualms in ignoring and bot-banning players who do insist on this, though.Asking me is one thing, trying to force me to work on it is another. Once I've said no, that's my final answer.




My current goal for Summoning could require up to 2.2 million gypsum to harvest. Less of course depending on Summon days and access to other ings. Regardless, just like those 100+ summoners who sat there before me, I'll be up on the Arius mountain a lot in the coming months, so I expect to end up having more people end up on my ignore list. No, with my current goal in place I won't be harving for a global quest that I don't find worth doing. Pester your guildies, that's what guilds are for. I'm not in your guild.


You don't nor won't see me saying the global should be removed. As I posted before, I'm not the kind of person who asks for the removal of something just because I don't personally do it. I've stated my opinions on why I personally feel it's not worth it for my own game play, and those reasons aren't necessarily applicable to others.

But in the same way that I don't demand it be removed, I expect not to be demanded to participate. Just because it's important to you doesn't mean it is to others.

Messing With Heads

It can be very easy to mess with people who deserve it.

The "Before"

Amber has become a "hot" commodity of late. Several people using it for leveling Engineering (high level), use for invances, and as well the every-10-days global request requiring 1200 of this not so easily gotten commodity.

All three are valid uses, of course. For a while, there were a few people, myself included, looking to buy and stock it for Engineering. In the end, one player ended up dominating that thanks to bought gc, and well, I regularly took myself off the market during periods before globals and such when there was a major lack of it for it and the invancers. I wasn't trying as hard as I could have to get it bought.

The "Moment"

For the last global, amber was one of the big reasons it wasn't getting done. Of course, the blame went to those evil power-leveling engineers who were using amber themselves for a perfectly valid different reason.

That didn't stop a small group from jumping on their high horses though. High horses are things I like to knock people off of... because it's funny.

Now, there were only 2 engineers at that particular moment who had been recently buying up amber. Myself of course, though as I said I'd been off the market a lot, and was even off of it prior to the global getting done, waiting until it was done to get back to buying.

Meanwhile, the gc buyer who had been buying up all the amber with serious overpricing was even bragging on the forums about the 7k of it he had in storage.

He "just happened" to stop buying the day before. But he wasn't offering up any of that stash for the global either. Not one of the people I messed with complained about him.

I actually had no amber at that time, as I'd used up my last stash several days before, and as I said was off the market until the global was done. I have No Personal Interest in the global, but I stayed off the market to help allow for others to get it done.

Now, I know the complainers had been reading the forum threads, and saw this person had enough for almost 7 globals just by himself, but never did anyone say a peep about him.

I found that fascinating.

The "Messing With of Heads"

When the global was over, I went back to purchasing on my bot, always offering a few gc more than the highest offer on any other bot. This is because my bot's a longer walk from storage than the others, and I have to offer a little extra for people to be willing to haul it to me. If I same-price, there's 3-4 other bots just steps from storage that I wouldn't be able to compete with. My bot is much better at buying things like bones and FEs in its location.

I got villainized for that. "Oh, he's buying amber, and it's not for the global!!!" as if that is the only reason anyone should be allowed to. I already stop buying before the global, now I'm apparently supposed to stop completely, never buy any again, because a handful of holier-than-thou dimwits think "only the global" is a valid use for it?

Yeah, bite me, kids. I'm not putting an end to my valid use of it just because you want it for your own purposes. And I do mean your own purposes, as again I have No Personal Interest in the global since I get very little if anything out of it.

Anyway, I didn't respond to their whining and crying. I just went back to what I do, buying amber on my bot, offering a few extra gc for the extra travel, as I always do.

Still, noone saying anything about the person with 7k hoarded, even after this situation led to these people re-reading the forum thread where he brags about it. Just me, and how evil I am for daring to buy amber.

But hey, wanna fuck with me, I'll screw you over. PK isn't the only means to mess with people.

The Phony Price War

Two of them started upping their buy price. Not by a few gc, but 50 and 100gc at a time. I met their offer, with the standard extra couple gc to again compensate for the distance from storage of my bot.

That led to them hiking the price another 50 to 100gc. And so on. When they hit 500gc each, I'd fuck with them in a different way... I took myself off the market.

They'd eventually catch this, and drop their prices back down to the 310gc or so level it originally was.

And I'd be right back on market at that, again a couple gc higher than them.

That went on ad nauseum for hours. I was just harv stocking and watching a movie and such at the time, so I had the time to mess with them.

Finally, I tried something different. I wanted to see just how stupid they were. I wasn't even caring about buying amber at this point, as I had an alternate plan (get into later), but it was too much of a laugh watching them get all whiny over a couple gc and how someone wasn't respecting their High Horse Mentalities.

So yeah, let's see how stupid they were.

Instead of adding a couple gc with the next price war wave, I took a different tactic.

I added 0.01 gc to their high price. 1/100th of a gc.

Nobody in their right mind would have walked all the way to my bot to sell for just 1/100 of a gc more than those bots a few steps from storage.

But wow, the High Horse Mentality continued on overdrive. You could watch in 6 (where I remained silent) how "OMG, I JUST HAD TO INCREASE THE PRICE AGAIN!!!!"

Their price: 310.00 gc
My price 310.01 gc

Yes, the High Horses had to raise the price over that. Not a few gc. But 50gc. 100gc at time.
Over 0.01gc.

Truly stupid. But I was laughing my ass off at just how whiny they were getting over it.

But I let that continue a while, as that day I had nothing else to really do.

The End of the High Horses

Apparently they finally gave up, High Horses knocked out from under them. I kept a modestly higher price up for a while, but eventually took that off as my actual goal (alternate plan) for this project was accomplished.

They went through all that bitching and whining and drama, for no reason. I egged it on just because, simply put, people on high horses deserve it.

The Alternate Plan

You see, the amber market was pretty dry at that point. One having a hoard of it (that noone once demanded he help with the global with, too busy whining that I was daring to buy it for my own valid use), and others having donated it or have it stocked for invance use.

I bought very little. A couple hundred. But I was never expecting to buy much.

After all, my alternate plan turned out to be much simpler than I'd expected.

That being, get ings for Action Point potions for all the amber I needed.

The ings?
1- Pears - I'm one of the top pear hunters. Not a problem.
2- Oranges - Easily enough bought.
3- Grapes - Much harder to buy, though I did buy a couple in the 2 days my bot was offering the highest price for them.

I did something others forget to do... I got off my back end and hunted them myself. In 2 days of occasional critter kicking, I found 4 grapes.

Now I'm back off the market for amber and grapes as I need neither for the time being.

As a hunter, I easily obtained the pears and grapes, the hardest parts of action point pots.

As a high-level mixer, I can easily mix the potions myself.

As a high-level harvester, I can easily harvest the amber myself.

That didn't stop me from trying to buy it before, simply because I could, and it was simpler for a while.

But the price raisers were just getting so dumb-dumb-stupid that I wouldn't actually keep my price that high.

You see, the cost of all the potion ings at current market value would leave an amber price of 375gc each. And these dimwits were going up to 500gc. I only put mine up that high when I was fucking with the High Horse Patrol.

Add to that I find the most expensive ingredient myself (pear), meaning a big savings there. And I got off my rear and kicked animal for periods over two days and found almost all the grapes I needed.

Again, massive savings. The amber I harvest myself because of this will probably cost me about 100gc each.

And yes, it's all gonna get used for Engineering.

I should insert a picture of that "Ha Ha!" kid on the Simpsons here, really. All that time they were High Horse messing with me, they actually weren't. I had other plans the whole time.

Other Things They Did Wrong

1- "One power leveler is trying to grab all the amber for himself instead of letting people give it to us for the global, even though he benefits from it too!" - stated on 6 by a High Horser

A: No, I benefit essentially not at all from the global.

And with this sudden new mentality of collecting it all day, every day, you were essentially saying noone and nothing else mattered other than this thing that I have no use for. I was supposedly supposed to just "stop" ever working on my Engineering leveling just because of that.

Yeah, fuck that. And the High Horse it was ridden in on.

High Horsers do not dictate how others can and cannot play.

2- A link to an incredibly old post I made in a thread discussing why oranges were becoming a global problem way-back-then, when I actually was willing to participate in the global, was posted in 6 as if it were of any relevance to the current amber situation.

A: No, it wasn't relevant. I was encouraging the removal of oranges from daily because new uses had been implemented and they were incredibly rare on the market at that time, with those that were costing over 20kgc each.

Instead of asking for the removal of amber from the global, as any half-intelligent person would do, you got on your High Horses instead and whined like little babies that people were daring to use amber instead for other perfectly valid reasons.

For the oranges, I thought of the game. For the amber, you wanted to play "high and mighty".

  Yeah, that's exactly why I fucked with you, kids.



A Small Bit of Irony to End On

While the High Horsers were busy thinking they were outpricing me on amber I never expected to buy, a pear hunt ended in the most ironic of places... I found it in the EVTR amber. The timing was just beautiful.

(And oh yeah, you can see a grape I found randomly kicking a skeleton in there along the way.)

The Latest Round of Price Whining

Seems to be a new wave of complaints about more recent price changes.

Focus: 1) Instance drop item prices dropping. 2) General use fighter items such as HEs and SRs costing more. 3) Nexus Removal stone price hikes.


I'll look at each of those individually...

1) Instance drop items - With the load of people farming instances, this is just simply "No shit, Sherlock".

Start flooding the market for an item that is only an occasional buy at best, there's too many, people have to lower their price to be more attractive for a sale compared to others.

The people complaining about this primarily are of course the instance farmers, since they're the ones losing money with each trip they make.

With any luck, instances will hit the point of unprofitably soon enough and the farmers will actually have to do something in the game instead.


2) Basic items (HEs/SRs/EnEs/MatEs/etc) prices going up.

I warned you people about this last year, but only few paid attention. The rest were too driven by greed to care. Now they're paying for it, and whining about what they did to themselves.

How were you warned? The boneheads that caused the sudden hike of silver prices from 2 to 2.5 are the reason for this.

I started a campaign to boycott these people. I along with others continued to sell silver at 2gc in an attempt to keep this from happening, as we understood what it would mean to the economics of the game to have such a hike on a base item.

But in the end, there were too many greedy boneheads. I have since had to accept the price hike as it became the standard.

You greedy boneheads who helped increase the cost of this one base item are at fault for all essie/bar price hikes. Even stuff not including silver.

And as such, you have no right to complain about price hikes of mixed stuff.

Silver increase directly caused price increases for HEs, LEs, and EnEs. And of course, silver bars.

Because silver became more profitable to harv than things like diamonds and iron, those things got harved less, until their prices also got hiked making them more profitable.

Which in turn increased the price of AEs as well as iron/steel bars, which in turn increased the price of S2Es, which in turn increased the price of hydro bars.

That one silver ore price hike caused price hikes around the board.


Add to this: The primary used essies such as HEs and EnEs give no chance of a rare item. This alone makes them less made than some other lesser-used essies. Fighters pushing to get these essies at lower prices get pissed when they can't, but don't grasp that they caused the hike selling silver for a higher price before, and there's not so many people providing these essies in the first place.

Matter Essies alone have seen a drastic hike due to both iron price increase and lack of quartz ings available forcing them all to be harved. (Anyone using the "well, there's places you can harv all 4 ings together" line to excuse wanting a cheaper price on these needs to be shot. The time it takes to make these is from the harving, not their location.)


So for things like HEs... the boneheads who increased the silver price, the lack of players massively making these, and the overwhelming need for them for fighters has all combined to increase the cost of them.

Similar combos of reasons can be found for other items as well.

Next time you wanna whine about the increased cost of essies/bars and such, figure out what you were doing when some of us were trying to keep this from happening by boycotting the 2.5gc silver sellers.



3) Nexus Removal Stone price drastically increasing.

I've read it all... there's people actually claiming it's the "greedy harvers" who find them that have caused this hike.

The truth: It's the buyers.

Many moons ago, I decided that Human 10 wasn't worth the cape and removed 3 to get Human 7 instead. At that time, I paid 350kgc each for the Human Removal Stones.

350kgc. This was less than 2 years ago.

Along came a bunch of gc buyers and such, buying up all these stones. Setting their bots to buy at the (at the time) outragous price of 700kgc, keeping that increasing as others battled to buy them as well.

Those price hikes? Certainly not the harvers. Those who find a nexus stone sell it at what they can best get for it. And it was the buyers offering to buy them at these prices, without the finder even having to set a price.

Those prices being offered to buy them just kept going up. Add to that, some other greedy types who'd buy them at the current high price on their bot, and sell them on the bot for yet another 100k. Again, not the person who found the stone's doing but greedy in-betweens.

A couple months ago I found a nexus stone. My very first and only in 2.5 years of harvesting with over 9.5million items harvested.

It sold for 950kgc. I set that as a buy-it-now price, but offered it in auction at 700kgc start. People hiked their bids directly up to 850kgc without trying lower first, until eventually the stone sold at the 950kgc after only a few hours available.

My fault as the person who found it? Hardly. Auctions allow those who are buying to determine the price. If it gets sold at an outrageous price, it's the player who bought it at that price to "blame", not me.

And these same players complaining about the nexus stone cost also tend to be instance-farmers, where we're starting to regularly see nexus stones come into the game. Funny, the price isn't going down because of them.

Mixing and Feros Pummeling

Got all the ings for my batch of S2Es, got the FEs mixed, mixing the bars now.

Last two mornings included a couple hours each of kicking feros. Gotten a few million OA experience from that. About 1 more feros session away from attack, defense, and overall leveling.



Zero Tolerance for Sword in Feros Cave

Pretty sick of this, and not tolerating it anymore. Boneheads coming in with swords and speed-killing every feros in sight, even ones others are in the middle of training on, myself included.

Not tolerating them any more. You pull that stupid shit while I'm in there, and I'll take the time to pull out my Halberd (on me at all times in C2 for Lenny fun), and I'll ensure that bonehead's time in there is of absolutely no profit to them.

Cemil of Turk found that out this morning, using the lame excuse that he has the Attack god as a reason for killing every feros in sight with a sword, even hitting one I'd already started training on.

I gave him two chances to put the sword away on his own. I accept no excuses. I have the Attack god too, so that excuse was laughed at. There's no excuse for attacking a spawn someone's in the middle of training on. I don't disrupt others, and I demand the same respect.

I also learned from speaking to other trainers there that he does this regularly, and others have even been forced out of there because they can't get any training done when he's around.

Cemil will be facing my halberd anytime I see him in the feros cave using a sword or in any other way disrupting others. I'm in no rush to train, so I got all the time in the world to make boneheads' lives miserable.

Plain and simple, don't show up near me in there with a sword. If my training is disrupted by you, I'll ensure you get absolutely nothing out of being in there. If you need a sword, you should be back on the rabbits. No excuse will be accepted for using one in that cave.