Announce post #3143: Cursed Event

Autoposter · November 2020

11/25/2020 at 0:54
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Cursed Event

The Cursed Event will come to a close around Howling tomorrow. That is to say, roughly 00:00 GMT the 26th. 23ish hours from this post.

Unfortunately, due to a large volume of complaints sent in to both myself, and corporate IRE, we have been told we need to wrap up the event ASAP. During tomorrow's events (sometime in 12 hours or so, to start), all Cursed will find they now have access to a CURSE DELIVER command which will transfer your accumulated curse power to the boss, and decide how powerful he will be upon being raised. This will be a one time fight, so I apologize to those that cannot make it. Themed rewards will be given to everyone who has logged in during the event, based upon whether cursed, avoided, delivered, or cured.

Our original intent was to give a nuanced, battle of Cursed v Non-Cursed on the raising of the villain, with an instance and prizes via a currency generated by trying/failing/succeeding. The damage done with each person working on this boss would be tallied and decide the outcome of the event, like a Raid boss, so that the villain's death would not be pre-scripted. It involved a few new mechanics, some rewriting of the old Thrim AI system, etc. This has all been scrapped. If you were waiting on the excavation of the tomb, this too is scrapped.

To those who were enjoying the buildup, I apologize especially. Building this event was wonderful fun for everyone involved, and it was personally a delight to change my plans based on what was most fun. Your decisions made the Tomb a curse hotspot, the Midnight curse was based on player interactions, etc.

We will have a thread on the forum afterwards to discuss our favorite parts of the events. Every emote has been logged, and we'd really like to share with you how clever and awesome this has been to watch. If you would prefer we not share your emotes, please message me and I'll take you off the Greatest Hits list. I may, if time allows, provide a timeline with how the Curse jumped, and who was tricksy as all get-out.

-T

PS We do intend to recycle the work done on this for some future content instead. 1300 lines + 600 for the boss makes this event bigger than some old school classes!

Penned by my hand on Gosday, the 14th of Slyphian, in the year 491 MA.

Czcienn · November 2020

Just want to say that while I'll be the first to admit that I have a few major problems with how the event was run I do think the concept had a lot of potential and hope the complaints don't discourage you from innovating for future events.

Nisavi · November 2020

I echo @Czcibor's sentiments, but at the same time want to say:

> Players complain that events aren't happening and there's a lack of stuff going on.
> Players complain when an event happens for a myriad of reasons, some legitimate criticisms but others because "BAD THINGS" happened to their characters.

Real talk, this is where I get really irritated as a player because this is the first event we've gotten in awhile and people ranted to IRE corporate about it, and now it's flat out being cancelled. This is also the first event I've seen that allowed people to opt out if it wasn't their cup of tea and they wanted to do something else, so I really don't know how the Pools can win here.

Don't get me wrong, I have some legitimate gripes about how it was run. I got tired of people intentionally trolling on Curse chat because they could hide behind anonymity like with the nicknames that were flat out pointless to people, as well as the OOC chat which should've been kept to a minimum unless admins needed to give direction. People were acting overly silly and that kind of takes away from the event. Curse chat should've been used for coordination and communication and that should've been hard enforced, rather than repeated shouting about "TOUCHING PEOPLE WITH THEIR SANDY APPENDAGE" or "WHO HAS TOUCHED THE MUFFIN MAN YET? ANYONE?". Seriously, it got annoying really fast.

In any event, if y'all want events, you're going to have to take some punches every now and again. Events generally correspond with bad things happening to your character. It's just the way of the world. Also, if there is a shared channel for "impacted folks" during a similar event in the future, please do not troll and try to take it with some semblance of seriousness.

Tetchta · November 2020

That's an uncharitable and reductive take, Nisa, and you're essentially falling for the "the complainers ruined your fun" narrative that was baked into this post when it didn't have to be.

Nisavi · November 2020

Tetchta said:
That's an uncharitable and reductive take, Nisa, and you're essentially falling for the "the complainers ruined your fun" narrative that was baked into this post when it didn't have to be.

It's not, because it's generally true across IRE but exceptionally true in Aetolia and that is me being as objective as I can regarding this whole affair. My participation in this event was bashing and tapping maybe two people with the curse when asked. I came in really late on it otherwise and really just wanted to spend my time bashing and RP'ing as it happened. I had some minor gripes as to how my character got cursed because one of the cursemotes was not stellar, but it was a minor complaint overall as I would've likely gotten cursed in the long run.

My complaint is that, with any global event, there seems to always be a loud subset of individuals who will rant and complain to the Pools and IRE leadership if it doesn't meet with their expectations or disturbs their "bubble" (or how they see their character). Frankly, I don't know how they can hold them without irritating or bothering people. Yes, there were legitimate things to complain about with the event being run and certain things being enforced, but did any of it really meet the need to directly contact Jeromy? I don't possibly see how, and that is perhaps anecdotal, but I really don't. Not to mention, it collectively got it shut down for everyone, including those that were enjoying it and partaking in it. Opting out was literally an option for people, so I'm open to ideas on what the Pools could've done to help people that didn't want to participate.

Bulrok · November 2020

@Tetchta If you compare how long Tiur has been in power to how long Aetolians have griped about literally anything I think you'd be - honestly why do I even have to mention that comparison? We can rightfully harp about Tiur all day long, or we could call this what it is. Aetolians being Aetolians. This forum is filled with one group or another complaining about every event or every thing that has ever existed, and it gets worse every event. I don't like Tiur either, but if I had to bet money on whose fault this is, I'd bet the farm on the players.

Nisavi · November 2020

I'm going to state that the Aalen Bloom event, which was similar in nature, had some similar issues -- but while it was a pretty catastrophic event in terms of impact on Sapience, it was also one of the absolute most memorable for me due to the Bloom's significance to my old character, but also some of the quarantine RP I had with people. It's worth noting that the large impact events are the ones that people tend to remember, especially when there are actual consequences. It was the same with the old war system. Sure, it was a hassle and a 1-2 week long commitment of hellish proportions, but I also had some amazing RP in war downtime and it really galvanized organizations. People seem afraid of or angry with events that have any long-term consequences or threaten to shatter their bubble. I get the semblance of wanting to be in control of what happens to your character, but sometimes the best events come when control is momentarily wrested from you.

Tetchta · November 2020

There were plenty of problems with this event that may not have impacted you or me (I generally liked the event), but that doesn't make them petty or unimportant. And without trying to be flippant or dramatic, emailing Jeremy is a better idea than emailing Tiur. Tiur is infamously slow to respond to literally any email. He even ousted someone from an OOC meeting for raising concerns about the RP of the event...at an OOC meeting meant to talk about concerns with the event.

I get feeling like that just because something wasn't problematic to you, your gut reaction is to go "screw those nitpickers!" But I really think our community as a whole needs to stop going at each other's throats so much and assuming the worst of each other all the time. You don't have to understand something for it to be valid, and it's time we start looking past our individual grievances with other players and consider, if there's so much acrimony, if there's so few events, and so little content, who is in charge of all of that?

I honestly think it was grossly irresponsible to throw people sending complaints to T and Corporate under the bus like this and making them the villains of the statement.

Sarita · November 2020

I only got involved in the last two or three days, so I'd be really interested in seeing that possible timeline. I'm also not sure how many of the mechanics you want to share/discuss if the system might be reused, but if we can get an overall breakdown of how the deliver/cure things would have worked, I'd love to see that too.

Saidenn · November 2020

Tetchta said:
That's an uncharitable and reductive take, Nisa, and you're essentially falling for the "the complainers ruined your fun" narrative that was backed into this post when it didn't have to be.

Saidenn was one of the first people cursed, outside those who were at the tomb-opening event, and have listened and watched how people reacted to this event. @Nisavi perspective is not wrong, especially given the length and breadth of complaints that were voiced, especially if some of them decided to go to corporate about the event and how it ended up being.

There were several things that could have been handled better, I agree completely. Cursed chat was often a mess, true, and some people took the trolling far too far. I don't honestly believe removing anonymity would have helped due to the nature of the event, but I do think it may have possibly lead to some different RP or opportunities for PK interaction depending on the nature of the discussion.

Here is the thing, though, and I'll second what was said above. Events are going to have different flavors and not all of them will be everyone's favorite. This is the first and only IC world event that allowed players a choice to opt-out. Yes, you may have missed out on a reward, but if you chose not to participate, why should you also be rewarded for not participating at all? I appreciate @Tiur stating that those who avoided the Curse would also receive a reward, but I assumed that everyone who -attempted- to play along in some form would, but I do agree it may have been spelled out more plainly somewhere. Not sure how, but it could have been.

And as listed above, this is being cut short likely due to a Corporate big-boss directive. T already had a meeting with those who had complaints and spoke to them about improvements, but it seems those complaints were escalated above his head when he didn't stop the event or make the changes some people wanted right away. The Pools were attempting to give us an event that was serious (minus curse chat), suspenseful, filled with intrigue, mystery, and had dark elements with being a curse/plague that was spread through RP interaction. Isn't that what we were complaining about having the ability to handle removed from our hands by T due to complaints he received? Then he holds such an event and corporate is dragged into the mix with complaints?

Let me reiterate: Not 100% of all events will work in the way people want them. Things that are intended one way go another, and the Pools (hopefully) learn and correct for the next or, if too egregious, in the moment. This event was clearly not for everyone. Some had issues with the misdirection and dishonesty. Some took issue to the godmod-esque flavor of the cursemote forcing a touch. Those are valid critiques and something to be taken into account for the future should an event like this take place again. But here is the thing. Just as it is with large companies it is with smaller companies. Corporate complaints take power out of T's hands to fix things or shape things, and we're left with what we have now: The event just abruptly ending in a less than spectacular way.

So What do we want? Do we want more events? Do we want more engagement? Do we want our volunteers and admin feel able to take risks without getting blasted and have players go over their head?

@Tiur, @Keroc, @Razmael and all of the Celani. Thank you for attempting to bring some fun into the game for Halloween. Thank you for taking a risk. Not all of it panned out as hoped, and there are areas to improve, but thank you for trying something new. Hopefully this will not be the last time you decide to take a risk, and hopefully the next one will be better received.

Nisavi · November 2020

Tetchta said:
There were plenty of problems with this event that may not have impacted you or me (I generally liked the event), but that doesn't make them petty or unimportant. And without trying to be flippant or dramatic, emailing Jeromy is a better idea than emailing Tiur. Tiur is infamously slow to respond to literally any email. He even ousted someone from an OOC meeting for raising concerns about the RP of the event...at an OOC meeting meant to talk about concerns with the event.

I get feeling like that just because something wasn't problematic to you, your gut reaction is to go "screw those nitpickers!" But I really think our community as a whole needs to stop going at each other's throats so much and assuming the worst of each other all the time. You don't have to understand something for it to be valid, and it's time we start looking past our individual grievances with other players and consider, if there's so much acrimony, if there's so few events, and so little content, who is in charge of all of that?

I honestly think it was grossly irresponsible to throw people sending complaints to T and Corporate under the bus like this and making them the villains of the statement.

People got removed from the event for dropping literal f-bombs on curse chat and generally being disruptive. If I was Tiur, I would've gone a step further with the people who were being overly silly or have had some kind of IC action from whoever was in the tomb to thwap them into behaving a bit more. You had people literally pleading with others to stop using the pointless nicknames that no one could understand, and people STILL kept using them because they were trolling behind a mask of anonymity. Any efforts to coordinate and take it seriously were generally met with silly responses and people using Curse chat as Web chat.

I'm not excusing the admin's response on things or lack thereof. I think there's criticism there, to be sure, but I have grown exceptionally weary as a whole with players that have literally complained about every single event when we've had one. I'm fairly sure if I asked Jeromy the last time that Aetolia had an event where he wasn't getting a complaint e-mail, he'd have to go back a few years. Seriously. It's excessive at this point.

Bulrok · November 2020

@Tetchta I think it's grossly irresponsible for you to make me defend him, but hey whatever. There is 15+ years of proof that players did this, and speculation and hate towards Tiur saying he did it. Honestly, I'm willing to go as far as saying it was a mixture of both, but defending and enabling this communities piss poor attitude towards not always getting their way is going to do more damage than telling them, however aggressively or politely, to suck it up a little.

Sibatti · November 2020

@Nisavi I totally agree with you about the bloom, but this event kept being touted as "you're going to forget everything! there's zero impact!" so I don't think it quite lands the same.

Tetchta · November 2020

I don't hate Tiur, @Bulrok, I'm giving my perspective on things. Take like a dozen chill pills.

Bulrok · November 2020

@Tetchta I'm not going to nit pick words or perceived feelings. Ignoring /15/ years of players (myself included, in case anyone thinks I'm trying to take the high road) complaining about /everything/ and saying they're not just as responsible as whoever ran this event is absolutely mind blowing.

Tetchta · November 2020

Man I dunno, I work in the content creation field and complaints from viewers and audiences are just a fact of life. Sometimes they're petty, sometimes they're things you don't understand, and sometimes you end up, through sheer volume, having your perspective changed. Complaints are a fact of life in this business, and if player complaints are so stressful that it leads to us not getting events in the future, that's a problem with leadership, not the playerbase. Feedback is kind of vital in storytelling and gaming, and I'm never going to get behind the idea that we should be discouraging people from voicing their good faith opinions, and I'm DEFINITELY opposed to giving the current administration more greenlights to dismiss and stonewall players. This has nothing to do with hatred for Tiur, which I have none. This announcement was phrased poorly, and you guys getting rabid about it and angry at the community was pretty much the only reason to include the lines about complaints.

Xarian · November 2020

People emailed corporate about an event you could opt out of/gag the channel? Y'all are a bunch of Karens.

These events take a lot of work, even if you hate it just opt out, say something constructive about what you didn't like, and move on. The channel was kinda problematic, but I would never try to get people fired just because one part of an event didn't work great, wow.

Tetchta · November 2020

Xarian said:
I would never try to get people fired just because one part of an event didn't work great, wow.

Who tried to get whom fired?

Zeheia · November 2020

I am going to repeat my words from another thread and tweak them a little here as a reminder.

We are all human beings behind the keyboards. Please dial down the aggression, be kind to each other. The world is an exceptionally stressful place right now, and there are already people upset about other events in-character.

Again, not commenting on the actual topic here and how I may or may not feel about it. I am simply reminding you to be good to each other. You're better than that.

Saidenn · November 2020

A question was asked about how to provide feedback to the Pools about stuff like this, an answer was given:

Insofar, given a Q&A was held just on Friday and either before or after corporate was emailed with complaints to the point that it felt it had to step in, seems like a fair amount of these suggestions were blatantly ignored. Not saying this to any one specific person.

As for the person being removed during the Q&A, this was a person who was already removed from the event for deciding to ignore some of the directives given for the event and possibly ruining for others who had yet to become involved then being pedantic and adversarial in their questions that were being answered.

Brax · November 2020

I'm fully aware that I might catch some flak for this, but I feel like it's important to add another perspective here that wouldn't otherwise be seen. I'm going to.. try and pull this in as much as I can so that I don't get in trouble myself, but we do a lot of self-censoring and taking these kinds of things on the chin with no real ability to make our feelings known, and this one is hitting me hard for some reason. Here's a volunteer perspective that's not in any way officially echoed or condoned by the rest of the team:

This is a bummer.

I was having so much fun watching this event from the very beginning. We have logs of everything curse-related recorded, and I found myself logging in while working to read the logs and see what sneaky ways players were using to curse their friends and enemies.

I was watching Tiur in real time code in new ways to make this event more fun for players when it became clear that certain elements were being enjoyed. Every time one of us would pitch a new idea that could add some intrigue (extra powers, new directions, etc.) Tiur would gleefully hop in and start adding in the next bits to add some twists and turns. Volunteers wanted a way to send a message to all the cursed people on a whim? Tiur added it in right away. This was a daily pattern.

I was watching players that normally wouldn't interact with each other outside of their usual bubbles plotting and scheming together on curse chat, and it was glorious.

I got a message on Discord when I wasn't logged into Aetolia and let out a genuine audible, "NOOOOOOOO" when I heard somebody had the nerve to cursemote Didi - with a HUG no less. Treachery!

Esteems started popping in as more and more people started getting pulled into the event. Considering all players would see is a seemingly innocuous, normal-looking emote, there'd be no way to tell an event was even happening unless you got pulled in, or somebody talked about it. I got to watch as the curse list continued to grow, and it was exciting and fun to see happening.

Then we got a few complaints along the lines that this was too close to COVID, and that this was the worst event in the history of Aetolia.

Just a few weeks ago we had a thread on the forums where Tiur was lambasted for saying that he'd wanted to be careful with certain subjects, just in case. Replies and upvotes seemed to rally around the idea of "How dare you insinuate that we can't separate between real life and what happens in the game." So, we go ahead and do an event.

That same thread (and Discord) was full of requests for events and activities. We try to do exactly that.

..And then this happened.

I appreciate that there are some things that could have been done differently, I really do. It wasn't by any means a perfect implementation, and we've learned a lot from it. But I'm really bummed that this was the result. If people issued themselves with concerns they had, we'd have happily worked with them. There was care to add an opt out option for those that didn't want to participate. The rewards were going to be little flavor-y things that'd only even be relevant to those that participated anyway, so you weren't truly missing out on much if you opted out.

But all of these precautions and considerations still weren't enough.

This is yet another case where it feels like no matter what it is we try to do, we just can't win.

Haven · November 2020

Some of those complaints had an agenda and were stretches of the truth in my opinion. That said I feel the overwhelming majority of players handled the content reasonably well.

Iesid · November 2020

There were problems with this event, but it had a fascinating concept and the volunteers/admin involved in any part of it deserve credit. The actual gameplay you designed was real fun; there were just some issues with what I'd describe as your "insurance policy" (the assurance that this event 'doesn't have any consequences, unless you want them' - see the point made by @Sibatti ) and the roleplay script just having a bit of a grey area that made people feel like they needed clarity about Curse RP... 'what if' or 'what's ok' were questions I was asking and being asked regularly.

I also accidentally opted out on Saturday and, for a few days, legit had no clue what to do about it aside from hang tight. I wish the opt out syntax had a confirm button; I'm told that bad actors who are abusing the button are why there was/is a difficult decision to be made about re-opting me in, which is a pity, but I understand it. I didn't miss Curse chat the past few days, I'll tell you that much. The problem here is at least in part sourced from the players. The one frustrating part about my accident was that it meant that certain conversations between my character and others just suddenly stopped existing or were put on indefinite hold - what do I do about that? What were we going to do about it in the first place? Navigating this aspect of the event has been unpleasant because some of us just make it more complicated for themselves and one another for no reason, usually without even meaning to.

Overall: sweet gameplay, awesome idea - the event just got too big too fast, perhaps. Some of the finer details just needed some tuning up so some of us did not feel so beholden to asking about how to interpret this roleplay prompt we were given. While I was doing the Curse stuff, I was having fun - I had considered opting out at first because of how meme-ridden Curse chat was and how I assessed the final leg of 'infection' would go, but decided to give it a shot anyways because I knew I wouldn't be getting any RP for the next week or so otherwise. I am very glad that I did.

My final piece of feedback: a lot of player-to-player, in room interaction shut down in Spirit tether after a certain point; the infected couldn't mingle around one another because it would draw suspicion to those playing the long con, and the survivors shacked up within impenetrable player housing in a bid to remain uncursed. That meant that late comers didn't have as much of an exciting time being Cursed - and the most effective way to avoid being Cursed was to pretty much not leave your home or shop stockroom for any reason whatsoever. The event eventually shifted gears from RP to not-so-RP over in our neck of the woods - we were passively roleplay via quarantine... with the care that twas put into responding during this event, I suspect some blame falls on us: we could have tried to seek out a method of cure rather than hunker down... I'm sure you guys would have rolled with that.

Czcienn · November 2020

So I stand by my original post, but I think people do need to realise that there were some big problems with the event even if you could opt out. Aetolia is an escape for many people, and the fact that there was a way to opt out of the big event that they felt uncomfortable in taking part in doesn't make the parallels to what was going on any easier to ignore, even if we do accept that they were not intentional. Maybe because this was the one big event we've had in a while, most people bought into it in varying degrees, which meant that those who chose to opt out essentially opted out of the game entirely.

So yeah, while I'm not one to complain to corporate about things like this, I do hope people show some understanding for the difficult circumstances that some people found themselves in.

Almol · November 2020

Personally, I enjoyed the event. Thank you for trying, I’m sad to not see it play out fully.

My literal only complaint was sometimes the curse channel was annoying.

Sibatti · November 2020

Iesid said:
My final piece of feedback: a lot of player-to-player, in room interaction shut down in Spirit tether after a certain point; the infected couldn't mingle around one another because it would draw suspicion to those playing the long con, and the survivors shacked up within impenetrable player housing in a bid to remain uncursed. That meant that late comers didn't have as much of an exciting time being Cursed - and the most effective way to avoid being Cursed was to pretty much not leave your home or shop stockroom for any reason whatsoever. The event eventually shifted gears from RP to not-so-RP over in our neck of the woods - we were passively roleplay via quarantine... with the care that twas put into responding during this event, I suspect some blame falls on us: we could have tried to seek out a method of cure rather than hunker down... I'm sure you guys would have rolled with that.

This is where I'm at in terms of my feelings on the event. For someone working hard to avoid the curse, going completely stealth mode was literally my only experience with this event, outside of reading updates on the news and long distance tell-RP with other people who were trying to figure things out (most notably Akary, Stine).

There were a few random mysterious voices exclaiming on CT who didn't really respond when pressed, so that - while a nice ambience - didn't provide any clues for how to engage further.

There were rumors of a tomb in the Mhojave, but it was surrounded constantly by known cursed people, so that wasn't on the table for Sib either.

The thing was, there wasn't really much else for me to do. If all of the cursed people were known to act erratically/untrustworthy, what good would it have done to engage with them, knowing that they're obviously unreliable?

I suppose I could have emoted into the void while I was standing around by myself?? I don't know.

I didn't have to be around anyone that I didn't want to be around for the entire duration, and I didn't even try that hard to be honest. Sib spent almost half of her time online in the Shaman guildhall working on guild stuff. It was still a very productive week for me, just very lonely and dull.

Nisavi · November 2020

Brax said:

This is yet another case where it feels like no matter what it is we try to do, we just can't win.

I'm so sorry that you feel this way and I know it can be depressing. I hope the overwhelmingly positive likes that you've got en masse demonstrate that the bulk majority of us appreciated and liked it, aside in my case from a few minor nit-picky things with curse channel.

It was enjoyable, it was creative, and I hope you guys do more like it in the future. I've had relatives and close friends get COVID, and while this is anecdotal, I didn't really see the correlation between this event and COVID. I hope you realize that those opinions were likely loud and in the minority. Please don't lose that creative spark and drive and know that I, and many others I'm sure, appreciate you and the work you did.

To everyone else: please remember that the Celani do this as volunteers. View them as dungeon masters trying to come up with an enjoyable playing experience for us player characters. Not all "tables" will be up to everyone's satisfaction or personal taste, but that doesn't mean you flip the table over to end the game for everyone. Rather, you had the opportunity to opt out in this event, and walk away from the table to do something else. Moving forward, please employ this option. Otherwise, it sets a bad tone for us as players and it makes us look ungrateful.

Sryaen · November 2020

I am super bummed that this event is getting the axe prematurely due to negative feedback.

Just going to go out and say this from an uncursed person's perspective - it really sucks not being able to go out and do milestones for fear that someone may be lurking in phase or come wandering by to clap Sryaen on the shoulder and say, "Hey, long time no see!" while passing on the curse. It's anxiety-inducing. The paranoia is real and it's maddening that I can really only rely on my own intel I've gathered on y'all and to keep an accurate headcount of who is showing symptoms and who is suspected. But you know what? I'm having an absolute blast with this event. I love that I was able to provide some thrill of the hunt for some of y'all that were chasing down Sryaen (mad props at @Fezzix who got me with a touch but the curse didn't take).

So while the majority of the playerbase has this 'curse' and they're able to be out and about, bashing, doing PVP, literally being out in the open; I, on the other hand, have taken a vastly different approach in that Sryaen really hasn't left his house for longer than 5-10 min the past almost real-life week. There is a way to opt out of this event, but why would I? These volunteers and staff members create events for us, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna be along for the ENTIRE ride. I'm not saying things are perfect - I have some of my own gripes and issues with certain things not being addressed, but this post is specifically about the curse event and my feedback on it.

Pros:

- Love the way this event has made me work on my spying tactics more. There's way more relics and means of detection nowadays than there ever used to be, so I had to be VERY careful sometimes in the early days of this curse.
- The sheer unknowns were great. I shadowed Valeria for over an hour before she showed a symptom tick, so it really ramped up the internal question of: "Do I wait a little longer to make sure they're clear or should I just call it?" Had I left 10 min earlier like I'd planned to, she would've had at least another 1-2 RL days before Sryaen caught wind of her actually being cursed.
- The level of organization the cursed people came to display was really fantastic. I applaud you guys. Some of the traps y'all set for Valorie were just downright diabolical - trapping her in the mines? Oof. After I heard about that, I was determined that if I ever got caught while doing my mine daily, I'd necrosis in there before I ever let y'all get a touch off on me.
- The level of hush-hush displayed in the early and middle days of this curse event. Y'all really remembered the first rule of Fight Club and I am so proud to say I have never seen such secrecy in all the years I've been playing Aetolia, especially when it came to both tethers coming together for a common goal.
- Gonna give a big shoutout here to @Saltz for really sticking with this curse RP, because I know he is still going through the growing pains of finding his feet as a city leader but he's poured himself into the role of a Vanguard who got got early on. He made some unpopular decisions and we'll see where the fallout from that lands, but I just want to say I appreciate you sticking with it and I have absolutely no hard feelings towards you from one player to another.
- This has really solidified some friendships ICly in some ways. I can only speak from the perspective of an uncursed person, but those few of us that are still healthy have really been leaning heavily on one another to keep us sane while staying locked inside.

Cons:

- I wish CURSEWHO was not a thing because I would have loved the challenge of being able to masquerade and lie my way to survival by trying to fool the cursed people into thinking I was with them.
- From the beginning this seemed like the narrative was to get as many people as cursed as possible. Like, obviously, now we know that's the case because of this announce post was meant to directly influence the mob strength. However, the uncursed people were left with very little to do except just.. avoid being touched. So that's why I decided to start keeping a list of people who had started to show the symptoms - and this list was admittedly TINY at first. Maybe 5-8 people. At one point near the end (I haven't updated this list in days because there's really no point now), the number of names on my list went from 39 confirmed/suspected to 62 practically overnight. So, glad that I was able to give myself something to do during this because I seemed to be getting dead-ended with trying to talk to Shahina or Lord Sammonward.
- This has been mentioned before, but I disliked the idea of cursemotes being unavoidable and they seemed to promote godmodding. Literally, someone could walk in and go "cursemote runs up and drags his/her hands all over $Sryaen's face and then runs away before $Sryaen_he has a chance to react." like.. bro, really? That's just really scummy and I'm glad that the cursemotes went to the pools for review, but this event really should have never boiled down to some of the crappier tactics I heard about some people using.
- The idea that killing people was meant to remove curse levels. While this might be good in theory because the XP loss from player deaths was completely nixed, it became an impossible task because since the curse has a chance to be spread via PVP, why would the healthy even risk it if being cured wasn't a guaranteed thing? Also, near the middle and end of this event, the amount of cursed people vastly outnumbered the healthy so even if we put together a Cure Goon Squad to go around the realm icing people left and right, I doubt we'd get far before the Cursed wisened up and got organized to retaliate. Which also begs the other question - since people aren't supposed to be booted from orgs for stuff they do, how would say.. Sryaen justify himself to the city for walking in and murdering the Vanguard in cold blood? Since the Cursed are supposed to deny the existence of the curse, wouldn't they just assume that Sry had gone totally psycho and kick him out/enemy him to the city? Again, in theory it was a good idea and if I had enough time and interest from other parties, I would have loved the idea of assembling a group of resistance fighters who planned to pick off the Cursed one by one, maybe do some torture/interrogation RP. There was just so much potential here and I'm sad to see it cut short.

BUT let me end this huge post with the following: I loved what part I was able to be involved in this and I hope this doesn't deter the volunteers from trying to run events in the future. You'll never be able to please your fans or playerbase 100%, but I appreciated the effort put into this so, so much. Thank you for taking the time out of your lives to brighten ours, you magnificent kings and queens.

Savas · November 2020

This sucks. Please don't get discouraged from running future events.

Magni · November 2020

Everyone seemed to voice my thoughts especially @Nisavi I would have loved to see this curse thing go on for a bit more. To those who complained I understand certain things but there was a way out of being cursed without going corporate or complaining to @Tiur is was curse opt-out so it was a simple fix, easy one too. This event was another branch to get us socializing with each other in a way. What is done is done though no need to gripe more about it. It's just too bad it had to go down like this.

Kjell · November 2020

Hello every one!

I have had many mixed feelings about this event! So I give you my observations and I hope they are helpful in the future! I know this was a lot of work and I am very excited that things are being tried!

The documentation was very confusing and seemed to contradict itself about consequences! I think it would be better to be more organized and straight forward about what players can expect and not so playful and vague because it creates some anxiety about how to participate!
It did not seem very equitable to Spirit tether! I was very concerned about upsetting my fellow players and this being Another Event of Bad Things Happening to Enorian. Even if it wanted to get into Enorian, Tiur did reassure that no real Bad Thing was intended.
The Role Play was also confusing about what we should be doing! Helping a dead spirit is very against what the Spirit tether is about so it was a barrier of bigger concern than in Shadow. Even if I do not remember what happened, every one else will and that can be a big consequence also. I was also concerned that if I participated, if allies would try to seek punishment for playing along! I recognize that some of my discomfort came from the community in the past and not the event on its own, only that it was an opportunity for some problems on our end!
The touching was concerning with newbies! I understand some new people were very turned off from the game by people putting their fun above considering their boundaries and that is not a good introduction to this community. I think this moves to two conversations! I do not feel like level 31 and the Academy should be such a hard line for if some one is new. I did not feel like I had my bearings until I was around level 60 and had spent some time experiencing the mechanics. I know not all are the same but this would have overwhelmed me if this was going on when I started! I think to help this there should be a soft invitation for up to around that level. This would give a hint that there is an event going on and they may experience some strange things! It does not have to spoil the fun but it should give a little context so it is not as alarming.
The Curse chat needed more moderation. It was very uncomfortable in a lot of directions. Out of character or very sharp with each other, confusing, or very loud. I know that people are excited and it is good! But some times excitement can be too loud to hear your own self. I also could not tell if an Administrator was speaking on it or not because every one was a Splinter so in the future it would be good if they were a different colour or had a different term!
I have questions about secrecy in events. Until I was cursed, I would not have known any thing was going on if I had not been told OOC! There also did not seem to be a way to participate except as some one that was cursed. I do not want to hide in my apartment and the other uncomfortable feelings had me opting out. May be there were ways that were already found but I do not think players should be depended on to convey important information. We are unreliable witnesses, we keep things to our selves, and it is not a good feeling when the person may be does not even know that it is their responsibility.

I think these are all very solvable issues! I have enjoyed every one's excitement. I am eager to see how this is re-used because the possibilities are very engaging! I know hearing a lot of complaints and problems about some thing you have poured so much of your time and energy into is very heavy. It is like a punch to the stomach and that is not good. I hope you all do some nice things for your selves and that the feeling does not stay for very long.

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Announce post #3143: Cursed Event

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