A Land Far Away

Hello to folks both new and old (although it seems more old than new)!

It's your friendly neighborhood Magile, returned from the dead yet again, to see how things are going. I'm trying to catch up on a lot of posts, but given the time of my disappearance (and I noticed the player retention never sent me an e-mail, sad face) and return, it seems a lot has happened. Would anyone mind answering a few questions so I can catch up quickly?

1) How is ALFA's activity lately? Catching up has shown a lot of people mentioning folks leaking through the cracks and, generally, not a whole lot to do without a DM. I've seen posts suggesting removing lots of towns/cities, removing a server entirely and all forms of ways to force people to be closer; however, a lot of those posts are old... and there are few recent posts.

2) Taking activity into account, what is the game like lately? Is it truly just treating it like a regular D&D session and not idling/playing with folks when the DMs aren't available? I see threads blaming higher level PCs, but... given that you've allowed a second PC shortly before I went on hiatus, I cannot see this as being an actual issue to this question.

3) What is ALFA3? Did another quake happen, or is this an eventual project when another game resurfaces? I believe I first saw it mentioned in the brainstorming forum; however, it was something that wasn't wholly discussed in the thread I had glanced over.

4) Anything else worth pointing out so I can catch up with the times? I saw that there was a temporary NWN1 revival (and Maxcell mentioned it to me in another thread), which is pretty neat. IRC seems all but dead, bu it may just be because it's Thanksgiving Weekend for you Americans. I'd sift through posts if I had the time, but sadly this week and next has been pretty test-heavy for me.

Thanks in advance,

Mags

Hey Magile. Good to see you about!

1) Arri is reliably active on MS, and has a group there. shad0wfax has a weekly campaign on BG, though that's far less reliable. You're right in that there hasn't been much activity outside of DM events.

2) People always be hatin' on the higher level PCs. It's of course not the actual issue, people are just bitches. I think it has to do with critical mass and inactive DMs. So, most time I see people on is for a few friends getting together or for the few DMs we have.

3) There was some hope for Shards Online. But they can't get their shit together by the sounds of it. There's no "quake" AFAIK but some active NWN2 people have been playing on other servers or playing on Roll20 when not on ALFA.

4) The temporary NWN1 revival never got enough user base I think? Or maybe no one was willing to host the servers? I don't recall, beyond knowing that it hasn't gone anywhere. IRC is also pretty quiet as you notice, outside of #alfa-tech.

Good luck with your tests!

Activity has been low of late to be honest

various groups of people [often the same players with different PCs on different servers]log into play with or without a DM at set times/days. I DM on Fridays on MS, Shad0fax on Saturdays on BG , Heegz may be trying to get back to DMing on TSM, Adanu was trying for awhile to get a game going on Sunday nights on WHL but did not have enough takers

alot of new static content has been added to BG, MS and TSM in the last year for those that like to just log in and play.

There will always be those that don't care for PCs over X level, the particular value of X varies from person to person , but there is also a few that prefer people over X level , so I doubt that level is a big factor except when PCs in one range are feeling like their thunder [and XP]is being stolen when playing with PCs more then 3 levels higher then they are.

ALFA is continually looking for the next game platform, but nothing has seemed super promising as of yet.

When I came back to ALFA Castano had a vision of putting NWN1 servers up online for campaign purposes only
I had the Old Waterdeep mod from ages past when I was its Keeper and ADM there. We tried to get it up and running but it caused horrible lag on MS . They were being hosted on the same box, so that idea was scrapped unfortunately.

Hi Magile,

Good to see youre back.

Heero

PS Just FYI, Ive been chosen as First Player Among Players. Can you believe it? Me, the Lord of All Who Play (tm).

1) How is ALFA's activity lately?

Low. I'm on alone... a lot. I log in and get a script saying "There are [1] players on [4] servers."


Arri DMs on MS and Shadowfax on BG. Bot overall it's "a few players with even fewer DMs"

2) Taking activity into account, what is the game like lately?

To be honest, it's pretty grindy. Not a lot of people around and not a lot of DMs makes the place essentially a pretty and vast single player game most times.

3) What is ALFA3?

I keep hoping that something comes along. But nothing on the horizon as of yet.

4) Anything else worth pointing out so I can catch up with the times?

You can have 2 PCs now. I have dorf on TSM and an elf ranger on MS. It allows for a bit of flexibility and getting together with others.

At least the resurgence of Magile gives hope to our moderator team, who are paid on a per-moderation basis. While many of them have bottled flames still to last them through the winter, it's been ages since they got a pay-check with ALFA's diminished activity, and thus, loss of friction.

What? He's reformed now? Drats. I blame Ben Carson.

Also: Hi, Mags!

Veilan wrote:At least the resurgence of Magile gives hope to our moderator team, who are paid on a per-moderation basis. While many of them have bottled flames still to last them through the winter, it's been ages since they got a pay-check with ALFA's diminished activity, and thus, loss of friction.

What? He's reformed now? Drats. I blame Ben Carson.

Also: Hi, Mags!

Haha. I've learned after too many mishaps that being the asshole gets you nowhere, unless you're 65, retired and at least humorous while being said-asshole.

I'm a bit sad to see some of the replies. Not that I'm sad to see old names -- I'm glad to see folks are around and alright. Just the loneliness that some people have in their answers... I'll be honest, the RP bug has hit me pretty hard recently (blame Matt Mercer and his jolly crew of voice actors, among other things), and I was considering seeing if I wasn't too rusty to play again. I was hoping that there would be a bit more light flickering at the end of the tunnel when I searched for ALFA again, but it truly seems like the best bet would be maybe a once a week session at best is possible. Might be hard to get integrated into things like that.

I'll wait until after my exams finish this term and probably give it a go. If Layali is still around, I'm sure I'll just start over since it'd be hard to get back into the high-heels of that misfit of a character.

Welcome back Magile. I hope to see Layali on BG again.

Magile wrote:(blame Matt Mercer and his jolly crew of voice actors, among other things)

Somewhat ironically, discovering this inspired me to tabletop more and ALFA less.


But unfortunately, yes. The numbers are pretty low-- the hypothetical ideal of just being able to log in whenever and find a compatible game are long gone (really, they've been gone for years, but the trend has continued). I suspect that a non-trivial number of the non-playing forum lurkers are hoping for news of a platform that ALFA can actually migrate to; our discussions about how viable various platforms are certainly get more people reading them than the number of people who log in with NWN2.

Still, stuff in the Friday-Sunday range in several timezones. Should be able to find some game, even if it's not arbitrarily-timed game.

Magile wrote:

Veilan wrote:At least the resurgence of Magile gives hope to our moderator team, who are paid on a per-moderation basis. While many of them have bottled flames still to last them through the winter, it's been ages since they got a pay-check with ALFA's diminished activity, and thus, loss of friction.

What? He's reformed now? Drats. I blame Ben Carson.

Also: Hi, Mags!

Haha. I've learned after too many mishaps that being the asshole gets you nowhere, unless you're 65, retired and at least humorous while being said-asshole.

I am disappoint son.