π•ƒπ”Έπ”»π•€π”Όπ•Š 𝔸ℕ𝔻 𝔾𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕃𝔼𝕄𝔸ℕ ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 π•€π•Š π•π•†π•Œβ„ ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕀𝕋𝔸𝔾𝔼

NSMachin

NSMachin

Super Star
Aug 7, 2003
79,915
2,154
Calgary
I do, actually. I think someone sent me some of the photos. Ill have to dig through some old hard drives now.
 
Dark_EternalFF

Dark_EternalFF

BFG Division
β˜… MOD
Feb 18, 2003
154,180
64,016
A Party
Magnus_Set said:
Wish that had a search function. Would love to see if cursed ninja's write up of Turbine's meeting was still in there someplace.
Click to expand...
You mean this?

It was payday at Turbine and all the developers of Asheron's Call were happy. As always, Wally the mailboy made his rounds at 10:00 AM sharp, delivering paychecks to all the good little developers.

"What the hell?" shouted Orion and srand in unison as they looked at their paystubs.

"Oh that, I should have mentioned it to you guys earlier, " explained Ibn "We're in the middle of rebalancing salaries. We want to make sure everyone has a reason to open every paycheck they get".

"HELL YEAH!" screamed Wally the mailboy in pure excitment, "7 dollars and 25 f'ing cents an hour!"

"See?" said Ibn, "its all part of the rebalancing, its important to remember this is just phase 1. We had to alter it at the high end for some cool new stuff we want to do in the future"

"But we have to pay our rent NOW, not sometime in the future" muttered Orion.

"Ibn, don't forget to mention the increased parking fee's in the employee lot that take effect next month" added Jessica.

"But, don't worry, starting sometime in the near future, any paycheck may include a special random reward!" Ibn explained.

"We're going home now" said Orion and srand.

Orion and srand arrive in the employee parking lot and noticed their cars were no longer in their spaces. In their place was a note and a bus pass. "We felt cars were unsightly and detracted from the fun and exploration of the city. Instead, we're providing you with bus passes, so you can still go to where you want, but now you have to make a special effort to buy and carry around another item to let you do it! Regards, Ibn" read the note.

"I'm feeling very ill Orion, hold me" begged srand.

"Now now, try some of this multi-symptom cold and flu medicine, it will make you feel better" said Orion, attempting to avoid contact with a human female.

Srand took the flu medicine and read the label "Cures a random number of the following symptons: headache, sore throat, nasal congestion, and personal dryness".

"A random number?! Didn't it use to cure ALL my symptoms?" asked srand.

*Poof*, Ibn appeared next to them in the parking lot with a helpful answer "Yes, it did, but we decided it was too powerful. Instead, here is an herbal remedy book, which you can use to craft your own medicine to remove your various ailments"

"I need a quick hit of caffeine to keep me from collapsing under the stress of these strange, unrequested, changes," said srand, as she reached into her purse for a Pepsi.

"We also revised that," explained Ibn, "we didn't feel it was right that such a cheap and fast pick-me-up like caffeine was being used by everyone, at the expense of more powerful stimulants like speed or cocaine. So, henceforth caffeine will only provide you a short burst of energy, for more longlasting effects, try a more powerful stimulant" replied Ibn.

"Oooga booga" chanted Orion as he cast a spell on Ibn's shirt.

"Ooof" uttered Ibn in some degree of agony as srand stabbed him in the chest with a weeping dagger (weeping from the tears she shed over the ill considered changes to her life".
 
Dark_EternalFF

Dark_EternalFF

BFG Division
β˜… MOD
Feb 18, 2003
154,180
64,016
A Party
Magnus_Set said:
Wish that had a search function. Would love to see if cursed ninja's write up of Turbine's meeting was still in there someplace.
Click to expand...

Or maybe this one?

Jessica checked her watch and quickened her pace down the spiraling stiarcase to the caverns under Turbine's offices. She was late for the patch day meeting. The large oaken door swung open and Jessica entered the dimly lit main hall. If one was perfectly silent, they could hear the distant screams of the quality assurance testers.

Jessica ascended the steps and took her position behind the stone alter and all the development team seated below looked up in anticipation. Jessica picked up the jewel encrusted skull on the altar, raised it high in the air as everyone in attendance bowed their heads. She brought it down hard on the table and the sound reverberated against the rock walls.

"The June patch meeting is hereby called to order" Jessica announced. "We will begin with the traditional blood sacrifice to appease the dark lord. Bring the adorable puppies!" she yelled as she drew the sacrificial broadsword (daggers are for gimps) from under her robe.

"Jessica" inturrupted Ibn. The contempt registered in her eyes immediately and Ibn realized his mistake and continued "Mistress J, we now longer contract with Microsoft, the dark lord requires no blood sacrifice anymore".

"We can still kill the puppies though" said Jessica.

"The cleaning people would really prefer that we don't" said srand.

Jessica looked dejected for a moment, but then perked up when she realized she could still kick the puppies and tease them by pretending to throw sticks for them to retrieve.

"Ibn, please provide us a wrapup report on the February patch and the player response to the upcoming changes we announced in March".

Ibn arose and addressed the development staff, "Mistress, I am pleased to report the February patch generated the most complaints in recent memory. That loot nerf, err rebalancing, royally cheesed off our players and thanks to our allegiance XP nerf, err adjustment, no trade skills character will ever max out their tinker skills again! We capitalized on that success by realizing we could further torment our players by annoucing our evil intentions to them
ahead of time, and dangling the carrot that perhaps there was still hope our vile machinations might be averted. Our March letter was a stunning success, we once again managed to get half of Darktide to threaten to quit while still irritating all our white server players too."

"And the low levels, what of them?" questioned Jessica.

Ibn continue, "As always, we have made the low levels more fun, so as to lure as many players as possible into our web and then exploit their love of the game with a neverending series of nerfs and rebalances to game systems they thought they understood and loved".

The chamber erupted into evil cackling and fist pounding on the wooden tables.

"And the March patch is going well I presume" said Jessica.

"Yes Mistress, while we didn't need to rollback, we did have a quest bug serious enough to hotfix" replied Ibn.

"Excellent" said Jessica, "schedule network maintenance for Friday then, we'll toy with them a bit before we allow them to feel the full force of our nerfs! Next on the agenda?"

"As part of our ongoing community relations efforts, we have allowed Darktide to nominate two of their finest to plead their case before us under the guise of taking their suggestions into consideration. They were kind enough to skip school to be here, so please give a warm Turbine welcome to "Ub4rd00d" a level 183 swordfighter and "1337m4g3" a level 165 warmage. The assembled development team arose and directed their attention to the door. It swung open and two
gangly teens walked in and were seated on either side of the altar.

Ibn continued "ub4rd00d is lobbying on behalf of all melee's PK's who claim that level 60 mages can two hit him, even though he has 14 times the experience they do. 1337m4g3 is arguing that sword characters crit him for 153 points on a half power swing through his AL 460 armor."

"Remember, since you are both white and from the suburbs, if either of you speak in ghetto slang you will be put down by our snipers" said Jessica, as she motioned towards the balcony where two archers stood, their laser sights shining on the two darktide players, further re-inforcing the point.

"Damn biatch, you one crazy mof" began ub4rd00d as the archers left fly with their arrows, striking him dead. Jessica looked at 1337m4g3 hopefully.

"I, uh, I'm fine, thanks for a great game!" stammered 1337m4g3.

Jessica looked the boy in the yes and spoke, "Kiss my ring then, and from henceforth whenever anyone questions us on acvault you will defend us and tell them to quit if they don't like it! Now leave this place and forget everything you saw" her eyes turned to spinning vortexes of fire and l337m4g3 was transformed into a mindless fanboy.

"It is time for the dice of destiny that will affect our players during the June patch. Orion, it is your turn with the dice!" continued Jessica. Orion arose and approached the alter. He retrieved a pair of six sided bone dice and began to shake them.

The assembled developers began chanting "Call their fate, call their fate".

"Burn rates!" shouted Orion and he flung the dice onto the alter. They came up 2 and 6.

"The sum is 8" said Jessica, "Burn rates of all components will increase 8 percent in June".

"What shall I tell the players if they notice?" asked ibn.

"You will tell them nothing, blame it on observer error as always" commanded jessica.

"Can I roll again Mistress?" asked Orion.

"Again?! It is highly unusual, but I will allow it!" said jessica as the chanting began again.

"CRAFTING" screamed Orion as he released the dice. This time they landed 2 and 4.

"The sum is 6, all crafting attempts will have their chance of success reduced by a random number between 0 and 6" commanded Jessica.

"Now, we are opening the patch meeting up for suggestions. We'll start with anyone who has actually played AC in the last year" said Jessica as she began scanning the room, which had fallen strangely silent. A lone hand raised in the dark room, as John the intern arose to address the development team.

"I think" began John, but tradgically he was cut short by an arrow piercing his throat. Jessica shook her head.

"We now open the floor up for any half-assed ideas from people completely out of touch with what the players want" continued Jessica. You could feel the energy in the room as everyone present, who was still alive, had half-assed ideas they wanted to suggest.

"Oh oh, me me" shouted Ibn excitedly as he lept to his feet. He continued "I'm concerned players are using salvage as a way of keeping usable pack space for items they need to carry. It also allows them to reduce burden as well, so mages and archers and dagger fighters don't have to waste points into strength. And they can hunt longer because of it, without the burden or pack space problems they don't recall to town every 15 minutes! I propose that we nerf the
value of salvaged items to be 10% of the value of the original item! And its hardly realistic that salvage weighs 100 BU regardless of how many units of salvage are in it. I propse every unit of salvage weighs 10 burden units, but the minimum a bag can weigh is the current 100!"

The assembled developers nodded their approval.

"Very well, the nerf is cast!" said Jessica.

Srand arose to offer her suggestion. "Our data mining efforts have been very successful. We have identified the most popular and least popular monsters in Dereth. We have run an analysis to determine what aspects determine how desireable a monster is for a player. So, I would like to propose we either spawn more of the trash monsters the players hate, or we adjust the monsters they like the be more like the monsters they don't. In addition, we know the exact distribution of every weapon skill in game, so I'd like to propose we modify the lootamatic to produce more of the items related to the least used skill and the fewest items for the most used skill. Also, any armor with a base AL more than 220 should always have a craft of at least 8."

Orion smiled, he knew his side business of selling items he spawned for himself on ebay would continue to boom thanks to these changes.

"Would it be possible to have the lootamatic system analyize the player who is going to open the corpse and produce only items that are absolutely worthless to them?" asked jessica.

"We don't have the technology to support that" said the developer responsible for supporting technology and all the rest of the dev team in unison, as they began laughing.

"Well, we're out of time for this meeting. I assume whoever writes the story lines and quests will throw something together for June. Make sure the quest item is another necklace or gauntlets, I want players to make hard choices if they intend to use it!" ordered Jessica, as the two developers who actually make quests and write stories, instead of just nerfing existing systems, took note of her orders.

"Recite the closing prayer and be off!" said Jessica.

The group rose and spoke in unison "Exploit early, exploit often, then nerf nerf nerf!"
 
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