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H'okay. GRUNNY INVASION. The good, the bad, the ugly, and my damn long-winded topic on it. The faint of heart should probably up and out of here right now: there's no point in responding to something you're not going to bother to read. domokun

So, where to start? Well, first expectations and a quick account of my experience, of course. Before the Mansion even opened, or Bucho even had an avatar, I had mixed feelings on the event. Firstly, given the previous two manga updates, I was intriguing to see if there'd be actual action this year. After all, last year had a constant stream of updates in the form of LabTech journals every day. This year, the manga updates were spread a couple of weeks apart (which is fair enough, considering just how long it takes to draw those things). Secondly, I was worried about the servers. Last year, despite server problems, I managed to, "complete," the zombie event, but the crashes and laggings made actual conversation very difficult. I hold that, during an event, it'd be nice if you can either converse and/or play the game at the same time. I like to chat, to game, and sometimes, mix both (which happened at last year's event whee ).

So, anyway, Bucho tells us the Mansion will soon open, and the manga updates begin. All is well: there's very little lag, about 32k users, and we get a nice taste of the event state: 123 is a real dolt, huh? And damn, but LabTechX is massive (and truly cool). The storyline in the manga leaves little to be desired and is lovely, and so the Mansion is opened at last.

At which point I go to bed. It was about 1:30am here in Britain, and I like to get a decent night's sleep. After all, if the event is going on all weekend, so I've got a while to play whatever game the Admins and Devs set in front of me. Why include this information in this topic? It's relevent later; you'll see. wink

Anyway, morning arrives, and I return to the PC, and Gaia awaits. Apparently, overnight, there was something of a serverdeath, and people weren't too pleased, but got underway. The game is presented: collect Grunnies. 15, and 35 are the only two officially known levels, and the max count is in the 150s. I hook up into a thread with those I normally hang out with, and post for a while, very quickly getting the Grunnies required for slippers and a shirt. All is good. Discussion quickly turns to when level 3 will arrive... no one knows.

Eventually, someone hits 176, and reports that nothing is put in your inventory and nothing happens to your avatar, but the beaker indicates level 3. Ah well, I think, noticing that Status Changes are the listed benefit. After all, it's only a minor glitch: the Admins will return when it's not night-time where they are, and so the people will get their status changes.

And lo, it happened, later on, people turned into the first stage and then, despite still being level 3, then second stage. Oops, another glitch. This was remedied soon after. However, the discussion had turned to just how hard it would be to get level 5. If the fastest anyone could reach a certain level was effectively 5 posts (to get 1 Grunny, if you're at the top end), which each take 1 minute (courtesy the spam-limiters), then the fastest anyone could get to 1000 (our then predicted level 5) would be 5000 minutes, i.e. 83 hours... that couldn't be right.

By the end of the day, I'd done two things. Firstly, I'd transferred all my Grunnies to a mule in a personal topic, because I recognised one thing: the goal was a status change. A status change, if anything like the zombies of last year, would go away when I changed my avatar. And I wanted to be able to change my avatar. So, the simple solution was to Grunny-bait on a mule so that I wouldn't ever have to Save Changes on the avatar, and could keep the status for as long as possible (i.e. until the Admins are forced to perform another full reset by another bunch of people who selfishly refuse to let go of a glitch, and so cause those with legitimate avatar saves (i.e. sootface and zombie) to lose those saves rolleyes ).

Secondly, I'd switched to leeching. I did not feel this was ethically correct: there is nothing wrong with asking for a certain requirement of a user to enter a topic inside a forum which is designed for the game to be played in, in my opinion. Asking for only 200+ers is entirely fair, because we're allowed to put some forms of rules in our own topics. If people don't like those rules, they should normally simply find another topic.

It's like roleplaying. If someone asks you not to play a Sonic: The Hedgehog based character in their Forgotten Realms roleplay, doing so even so is not fair to them.

Why, therefore, did I leech? Two reasons: personal greed, and a feeling that, if I wanted to reach level 5, I would have to do so, because posting the 5 posts would require extreme amounts of dedication, and a lot of time: time I did not wish to invest, because it would be unhealthy to me.

I am not proud of leeching, but I feel I am vindicated by the difficult nature of the game. Indeed, I think the difficult nature was, to me, the best bit. It presented a real challenge, and reaching the top level was obviously going to require a lot of work.

So, anyway, switching between chatting on my main account, and posting in topics of those 10 above me (I tried to maintain some courtesy: if I posted in those above but near me, I'd only interfere for a small amount of time. On the other hand, posting in a 400+ thread with 30 posts would require me to leech for a long time to reach their level). By the end of the day, I'd just hit 175 Grunnies, and it was time for bed, once again at around 1:30am.

The next day was basically make or break. During the early hours, I quite easily made the 350 mark: it took about three hours of solid leeching, same standards as before, and by 12pm, I was a disgusting and adorable little Grunny-foetus. Well, if 175 more Grunnies had taken me only 3 hours, I should be done immediately, right? Wrong. You see, at lower levels, there are hundreds of people to leech from. And so, for the rest of the day, I basically worked on two premises: slight leeching (but very slight, so as not to get ignored, because being ignored mattered a lot more at these levels were others with your dedication were few and far between), and actual legitimate participation in threads of similar height.

Eventually, however, I foresaw that at the rate I was going, I might just make it, but things would get problematic. At which point - I was around 400-410 now, and it was 5pm - I found a small group of 470s who were closing the gap quickly with the aid of a 500.

At this point, I must make a minor announcement: those of you who were 500s and helped? You are some of the best people there are. wink heart A particular callout of my own goes to Sarteck, Seth Darkheart, Lachesia, Gzifa, darth_, and several others, who were these 500+ers. (if you think this is name-dropping... well, in a way it is, but it's just to actually try and thank them, since it was hard to do so in the event - Sarteck particularly, as he personally bumped me and another Gaian).

Anyway, I asked one group straight out if, since they were all at 477, with no method other than the 5post=1Grunny to get more Grunnies available to them, whether I could leech, and then drop the gained Grunnies off at another group, to which they said, "no, wait until we're 500." I said cool. And, being nice people, they didn't ignore me, and being a respectful person with a lot to gain, I abided by their rules.

And this worked. When they hit 500, several of them stuck around, and bumped me to about 470, and I then dropped these off at a 440 thread I had been participating in earlier. Then, most of us congregated at Airez' thread, and made the last few posts to 500 (with the servers dying on us as we did - you can imagine, of course, just how worried we all were at serverdeath on 497 wink ).

And so, with a lot of dedication, and a totally normal sleep schedule (1:30am till 9:30am - a good 8 hours sleep whee ), I did indeed manage to make 500. After that, I dropped back into the hangout thread with a few friends, made a few jokes about Grunnies, helped a few more 490s reach 500, and went to bed, just after hearing that the event would have to be shorted for ToTing, and that ToTing would be extended till Thursday.

Which puts things in perspective for the readers for the next part. Step by step, what did I think of the actual GRUNNY INVASION:

The concept
The idea of collecting Grunnies is excellent. Grunny is a loveable creature, and users were desperate to see him (or her ninja ) again. It made for good inspiration, and the item aspects were designed to be easy to obtain. If you keep up with Admin-journals, you will also see that VO and others hoped for people to basically be in chat threads, with their numbers in general going up, but without needing to put excess effort into it.

This is where things start to go downhill.

Firstly, certain Mods and many others have expressed doubts at involving posting as the mechanic for an event. It means people want to spam, and people who want to spam will invade chat-threads and spam in them for bumps. THIS IS NO GOOD THING. It is much preferable, to me and others, to seperate the game and chat aspects in such a way as to allow those with chat-threads to have no fear that people will join them and mess them about to gain more game fame. I think the Admins simply didn't expect this to happen, and I'm not blaming them for it, but it's something I think they must take account of when planning for future events.

Secondly, the game mechanic. Post after someone with a higher Grunny count. This made strategic threads (i.e. enforcement, and/or organised decremental posting) the only real way to achieve victory in Grunny combat. Just as there are Gaians with huge postcounts, but they are few and far between compared to Gaians with low postcounters, there were Gaians with high Grunny counts, and many more with lower Grunny counts.

Making the thread operate on this basis meant that a) high game players didn't want to be near low game players, and b) low game players stalked and harassed high game players to get more Grunnies.

A friend of mine presented one moderation to the mechanic that I think would've worked really well.

"Posting below a person with a higher Grunny count that you gives you a Grunny, and them a Grunny."

This way, you still have to find people with higher Grunny counts than you (good, it makes it difficult), but when you leech, you give them payment for their service. In other words, there'd be no reason to fear the leeches. Obviously, this would have made the game much easier to complete with the 500s: perhaps 750 or 1000 would have been a more suitable target with this mechanic, as you would also no longer have to rely on 5 posts = 1 Grunny.

On a coding note: some people might suggest that this would have lagged the servers out. However, given the present mechanic, posts were already referencing user details of the post above. It would have just required a change from,
if(theirGrunnyCount > myGrunnyCount){
myGrunnyCount++;}
to,
if(theirGrunnyCount > myGrunnyCount){
myGrunnyCount++, theirGrunnyCount++;}
And a switch of theirGrunnyCount from read only to writeable. It's a very small change in code: yes, it would make a load increase, but equally, with less people needing to bump hard as possible to reach the 500 goal because of a difficult system, there would've been less strain on the servers in general (hopefully).

Which brings us to the next bit of the concept: how the users reacted.

I saw several users do a selection of remarkable things.

Enforcing: I think this is fair, and strategic, and a good idea. I was sorry to have to break someone else's wishes in their thread for my own personal gain, and in a perfect world, with a different and easier system, I would most certainly have not done so.

Ignoring: VO and others considered this to be hateful. I don't personally think it was. A lot of people IgnoreListed others just to remove the leeching. I doubt they didn't feel sympathy for the desperation of those leechers (assuming the leechers weren't obnoxious about their position). They were just more concered with their own counts. And equally, many people removed their IgnoreLists after the event.

Attempting to prevent Ignoring and Enforcing by claiming the Gaia ToS said it wasn't allowable: wow, this was really retarded. These people deliberately misinterpretted the ToS, to try and get others to stop playing a game strategically.

They quoted that:

3, they said, was being infringed by people claiming they would ban others. However, ban was just another word for using the IgnoreList to prevent them from posting. No one was claiming to be a Mod when they weren't. rolleyes
There were also calls of, "infringing my freedom of speech." If those making these claims would kindly look up exactly what freedom of speech is, and also have a look at freedom to respond, and several other related clauses, they'll notice why this claim is foolish.
13, they said, referred to the threat of banning. However, this is entirely misinterpretation. Making a threat refers not to giving a warning in itself, but rather to proposing violence in some form or another to someone should they not comply. IgnoreListing isn't violence.

That particular strain of argument was tiresome. Almost as tiresome as the next bit:

ELITISTS: ah yes, elitists. A often used, and often incorrect term. Elitism generally refers to people who, for no good reason refuse to allow people to join a group or gathering or location. People who have a reason are known as having standards.

So, between these last two sections, users who post in GCD once again sorely disappointed me with basic errors of argument, and unnecessary and unjustified vehemence against other Gaians who were simply trying to play a difficult game without having others ruin it for them. sad

At this point, some of you will be thinking, "hypocrite. Why are you defending them when you leeched off them yourself. You're no better."

I'd like to point out a simply difference. I bore them no ill will for their enforcements, or their ignorelistings. If I'd been in their shoes, I'd have done it as well. But I wasn't, mostly because I slept, and so instead, I had to leech if I wanted to get to 500, which I did. On the other hand, other users thought that enforcers and ignorers were utter bastards and ruining everyone else's experience. A hatred, that, I feel, was rather blind.

Next up:

The servers.

Well, I felt they held up quite well actually. Certainly better than last year. wink There were crashes, yes, and there was lag, yes. But hey, unless you want Gaia to be pay2play, I think you have to get used to the idea of getting what you pay for. And, I strongly suggest you read VO's journal before continuing. Apparently, the admins were under the impression the servers could hold up to 60k users, which unfortunately didn't occur, partly because of the servers, and partly because the ISP doesn't take Gaia seriously enough (which is a real shame, actually).

Some people have said that the admins were not thinking well enough because the servers dropped again. I disagree. Given the admins position, they were fully expecting no problems this time, and had made a serious effort to make sure there were no problems. And things ganged up against them, which sucked, both for us, and far moreso for them. We had expectations broken, but they had effort wasted, as well as a lot of worry about their reputation and Gaia's, and I know which hurts more.

Anyway, Trick or Treating is now halfway up, and although there are a few glitches as usual with it, it seems like good fun. It's ambitious, and there's a lot of time to get candy and Jack, and I get the feeling the Admins are doing their best to make it as easy as possible to get items here as a form of, "sorry," for what happened with the Grunny Invasion.

Personally, I felt the Grunny Invasion could've been better. That said, I also felt it did well enough if at least a few hundred Gaians made 500, and that, from a chat-thread hangout perspective, along with rabid bumping, leeching and so forth, it was a good few days.

I had enough strength of feeling about my position in the game and my aims that I enjoyed myself. There were some nasty bits, but there were some great bits as well (as, I'm sure, many 500ers can tell you of at least one great moment whee ), and whilst it may not have lived up to the admins' hopes, I still think it was a good effort, and went down well enough, seeing as many Gaians did have fun.

Wow. -claps- Awesomely put.

A few things I've got to add, though.

I can't stress enough how well the servers held up this year! Last year the forums went down so often, and then when trick or treating started, the stores were all disabled half the time. And that wasn't the thing that pissed me off the most, either- it was when the admins decided to extend the Trick Or Treating last year because the East Coasters got screwed over, and then the community shot back with "That's not fair! Now the event prices will go down because more people will get more of them!"

East Coasters really do get screwed over when it comes to Gaia Standard time. 1 - 4 is when it is GST night. That's 1am to 4am in the morning, and 1pm to 4pm at night. Right smack dab in the middle of the morning totally screwing up your sleep schedule, and right smack dab at the end of the day, so you almost always miss it if you have school or work.
That said, I'm glad you can trick or treat all day long, now. I do my fair share of exchange whoring- hell I brought out all four mules for the grunny invasion- but I also like participating just to participate.

Anyway, that was last year.

This year, every time "the forums are temporarily disabled" they came back up within thirty minutes to an hour. While it sucked during that time, Towns and shops and the marketplace still worked, so it gave you something to do(instead of total deadtime). This was a vast improvement from last year's halloween, when the entire site went down at least twice and the shops went down 2 - 5 hours at a time during trick or treating.

As for the grunny invasion itself, I can't believe how well-thought out it is. The refurbished sheets gave a way to soak up the extra gold you got from bumping so much(in an effort to keep the economy just atad bit more stable) and you couldn't go back in stages, meaning you could only get one pair of grunny items per account. Those who don't have mules get their own stuff and none to sell, those who whore but don't have a mule get tough luck, and superficial selfish bastards with mules like myself get all they want if they think ahead ^_^.

Grunny count cold not go down, no matter what, and that was ingenious, in my opinion. Last year, the vials sucked up the gold and you could get a multitude of halloween items, simply by starting over(I did this and got 3 zombie labcoats. This probably affected the economy more than the admins wanted, plus, they did say they were going to solve the problem of obscenely expensive items this year at their panels).

These were the wonderfully thought-out parts of the grunny event. The bad things were:
Obviously, the segregation, the basement had no grunny count action going on, there were two "The Attic" forums, and finally, those who wanted to actually have a conversation could not because their thread was not being bumped by 100 people simultaneously and thus was pushed to the farther pages in the forum, which nobody ever looks at(most of the time).

One thing I'd like to point out, which is entirely the users' fault, are the higher numbers referring to lower numbers as annoying noobies. "I hate these noobs," "they all need to be banned," etc.

The way the event was set up, as you pointed out, was that it was unrealistic to get a grunny without you leeching off someone else. People trying to get a zombie status were annoyed because a) there wasn't a lot of sleep happening in their lives, b) they shut themselves out of real life for this event and c) the accumulation of grunnies was a slow process, and not getting a grunny every time you posted made it even slower, thus annoying people even more.

And people relate annooyances to noobs. I even fell victim to this feeling, and I was leeching big time. I was a leecher cursing at other, lower leechers than me. Looking back on it, it was rather stupid, but not a lot of sleep can drive you insane.


I tried to do it fairly for a while. 30+ thread, I was 30, I went in, but by the time I got to 32, I wasn't going anywhere. In fact, I had to go to threads at least FIFTY levels above mine, because all of the leechers were making it hard to leech! X|
But like I said, that was mostly the users' fault.

Now for the Trick or Treating.

Last year every shop had candies and there was no Aekea or towns. However, you only needed three candies to call Jack, and depending on the combination of the candies, that determined what grab bag(this year they're boxes) you got. I liked this idea.
I don't know who figures out what the combinations are, as I've never done it(I always use a guide because I'm a dumbass at these things) but it took less time to call jack(or it felt like it did) and it actually took some thought.

This year, my mind already numbed by pointless postings of ":>", "<3", and "..." to get grunnies for roughly 20 hours, I am now faced with an even more pointless, mindnumbing task.

Instead of three candies in a combination, I am now having to get nine candies, 3 - 5 minutes waiting in between each, and going to Jack, getting his numbered bag, and starting all over again.
While normally this would seem like an okay idea(more time on Gaia = more rewards), it frankly, to me, sucks.

Instead of last year's "Okay, what store do I go too next?! I should check the guide, write down what I did.." it is now, "Barton down, Isle de Gambino, Durem, Bass'ken, Aekea, Jack, Barton Town, Isle de Gambino, Durem.." You get the idea.
It is needless repetition on top of more needless repetition.

Towns is being a jackass for me, it will almost never load since the new release, however it is probably less boring as it is for the regular map version, since you get to talk to people while you're doing it (and getting stuck and facing lag and catching bugs, collecting trash, digging up plants, etc.)

So my bigass post pretty much is summarized to this:

Despite how truley this event was planned out, and how greatly beautiful it is in theory, it was entirely lacking in fun.
I am now in the event simply just to do it and have the items to sell later; no longer am I participating in it because I sincerely want to.

Dear christ. Some Jackass sits in front of a light for a full cycle, and makes me late for work. And what am I greeted with when I get on gaia? Why, it's an inbox full of angry Pm's! <snipped>

Things I wish I could tell the whole of Gaia:

#1: Shut up, right this ******** second.
#2: I don't care if he posted in your 100 grunnie only thread, blow me.
#3: It's a free event, stop bitching.
#4: Why are you pming me this crap? Do you think about this s**t before you send it? Do you have thumbs? Show me your thumbs! The best part of you dried up on mommy's thigh!
#5: No, seriously. Shut the ******** up.

<snipped>