TonyV

People say this, but there has never been a predicted mass exodus from the game. People would still run the Incarnate trials, and yes, a few people might even ragequit over it. I'm not going to argue the merits or lack thereof of the idea, but no matter how many times people predict DOOOOM!!!, all it's done is damage those people's credibility, not actually come to pass.

Yeah, but there aren't "Australian" servers. It's more like one big global Nike store that has to pick some time to be closed to take care of some basic stuff like inventory.

Actually, no, it's more like a large red wagon, running through a flower bed. Except the flowers are like three feet tall, and the wagon has spikes coming up through its bottom. And there's a rabbit inside, a rabbit that would love to eat some of those flowers, but instead, she has to dodge the spikes to keep from getting hurt. Oh, and it looks cloudy, like it's going to rain. There's a caonpy over the wagon that, under normal circumstances, would protect the rabbit from the rain, but with all of the flowers the wagon is plowing through, it's getting tattered.

Yeah, maybe I'm not so good at analogies. Still, it's not like daily maintenance is the norm. There's obviously a lot of stuff going on that is unfortunately affecting a lot of people's ability to play when they want. Give it a little time, and I'm sure things will return to normal. Better than normal, in fact, because a bunch of problems will be fixed.

For a month, yes. After that, no, they only get access to the Tier 1 channels, which are things like local and help. You have to be at least Tier 2 to get access to private /tells, and at least Tier 3 to get everything else opened up.

I feel your pain and sympathize. For what it's worth, I'm glad you joined the community, and I'm optimistic that several years from now, you won't even remember it for all the fun you've had!

Can I come?

I never insinuated that the OP should tell us. We have absolutely zero power to do anything about anyone who is bothering him.

However, the OP has to understand that his idea of "harassing," my idea of "harassing," and a GM's idea of "harassing" are undoubtedly three different standards. Thus...

...is not necessarily true. There's a chance that the harasser won't be punished at all. Also, he needs to understand that the GMs have logs of everything that went on during and around an incident. I have no reason to believe this is the case, but as a contrived example, if his wife were doing something provocative that might lead someone to believe that such type of harassment was not minded, there's a chance that nothing will be done at all, or in an extreme case in which she was openly soliciting such a reaction, action could be taken against her as well as the harasser.

Of course, that's an extreme case, and I have no reason to think that would happen. If the OP is accurately representing what a normal person would feel rises to the level of "harassing," then like everyone else has mentioned, punitive action up to possible banhammerage of the harasser could take place.

My main point is that people need to be aware of their own biases and how thick their own skin is. I have my own bias, for example, against farmers. If I had my way, I'd /petition the whole lot of people who spam the channels and, if I could, get the most egregious violators banned. Practically speaking, though, I know that most of the time, nothing would come of it and it would be wasting the GMs' time. Meanwhile, people, for example, throwing around the f-bomb don't bother me. If they're doing it particularly viciously, I suppose there are some rare situations in which I would /petition them, but even though technically it could get them in trouble, I don't bother.

I'm not saying don't /petition the person or people who are harassing the OP's wife. I'm just saying use some common sense, and err at least a little bit on the side of letting it go. If the OP still feels it warrants it, go for it. If you saw two strangers having the exchange, would you still /petition it even though you weren't directly involved? (A situation I've actually been in before and /petitioned.) Is the person or people still harassing your wife? That would also be a biggie towards /petitioning someone. Is the person going out of their way to get through an /ignore, such as getting other people to tell her things, shouting out in broadcast, or other such antics? Are there extenuating circumstances, such as a mission or a battle that went badly or something, that is making the OP more inclined to interpret things worse than they actually were? These are rhetorical questions meant to help the OP determine whether a /petition is warranted or not, I neither want nor need answers to them posted here.

/ignore, however, is always a good option, no matter how serious or silly the reason. It's your last, best defense against unwanted interference from other people. Obviously, almost any /petition should warrant an /ignore, lest like I said, you start engaging the harasser in needless unproductive dialogue that can only hurt your case. I can almost guarantee you that if you start arguing with the person, most GMs will see it as a case of two people arguing, not one person harassing another.

It might not be graphics at all. How fast is your Internet connection, and what type do you have? You might want to try the following command:

/netgraph 1

It will show a network graphic at the bottom right of your screen. If you're seeing lots of red or spikes, you could have a network issue.

You're not by any chance running something like a P2P software while you're playing, are you? If so, shut it down. Also, if you have browser windows open to "chatty" sites such as Gmail, close those windows.

Ruling out graphics, usually the next things to check into are disk I/O, memory, or CPU utilization. Almost always, those things boil down to having something running in the background that is resource-intensive.

Believe it or not, I've read about psychological studies that suggest that most people believe this, but are still susceptible to advertising. I'm not saying that if you're not in the market for a new car you're suddenly going to go out and buy a new Honda because you saw one of their commercials. However, there's little doubt that advertising does work, even on people who think it doesn't. Quick disclaimer: I can't cite these studies because I don't feel like looking them up, so feel free to look into it yourself, or bear in mind that it's third-hand information and put as much faith in it as you're willing to.

If they make advertising optional; for example, if you could turn on whether you want a drink machine to be labeled with a generic "Cola" label or a Coca-Cola™ label, I don't care so much. Those who don't like it can turn it off, and those who don't care can help earn Paragon Studios some more cash. For products that I support (such, as it turns out, as Coca-Cola, since I live in Atlanta and they're a huge employer here), I might even leave them on.

But if I start seeing a bunch of heroes running around with Swords of Omens, yeah, I think that would be going too far and I would not like it much. And I don't see such a thing being optional, like, "watch a video to earn a Sword of Omens that only some people would see, and others would see as just a generic sword."

I'm going to take a bit of a different tack here.

The problem I have with it isn't so much having to watch one commercial to get a shiny, it's the nature of the shiny--which is itself an advertisement.

Using an example cited towards the beginning of the thread, I don't want to see a bunch of characters running around with Swords of Omens, sporting Target t-shirts, drinking Coca-Cola, with their pet Sony robot following them, etc.

We are constantly bombarded with ads 24x7. I like that Paragon City is a reprieve away from it. I don't mind so much ads for their own products, or even a logo or two on the home screen, but the last thing I want is to be reminded of everyone trying to sell everything while actually in the game.

And yes, I'm aware of the in-game advertising that they toyed around with a while back. It wasn't so bad because it was always optional.

Ooh! Cookout and boat rides at Ura Hero's?

So even if it's not literally at Dragon*Con (since it's probably way too late to get anything officially sanctioned by the convention), I was thinking more along the lines of maybe just having a meet-and-greet at a restaurant in or around Atlanta Saturday night or something during Dragon*Con weekend? Or a picnic at Stone Mountain? A World of Coca-Cola/Georgia Aquarium tour? A romp through CNN Center? I'm not a big fan of Buckhead or the club scene.

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I strongly suspect that this will happen. I'd think that we will be seeing "bundles" of items at a discount so that if you want to buy several things that roughly equaled a "booster pack" in the past, it won't be more expensive.

Yes, they would undoubtedly lose *some* money, that's not the point. The point is that they would make more money in the long run than they lose.

It's not terribly complicated. For consumables, they simply suck it up if they're already used. My secondary point is that that isn't "lost" money, it's likely money that never would have been spent in the first place. And since there are no production costs involved in "making" respecs, inspirations, or whatever, it's really not that big a deal--certainly not worth holding up allowing income from gifting items to people.

Would it be a "customer relations nightmare?" I really don't see it that way. Yes, there will be a few people who yell and scream because of the nerve of having stolen goods taken away from them. Frankly, the only response should be, "We're sorry, but the item has been determined to be initially acquired in a fraudulent manner. We cannot provide any additional details, but if you want, you can re-purchase the item in the Paragon Market." Given that whoever's complaining would not be someone who purchased the item originally (or even more ballsy, someone who bought the item on a stolen credit card), I don't have much sympathy, and to be blunt, anyone who can't understand that really should.