Man, I love this game. This game is the best waste of time that I have ever found. I wish I could get a detailed list of time logged into the game, and effort spent on this game and community. Boy, I love the friends that I've gotten over the years from this community, and the sparklingly intelligent conversations I've had with players (about who griefed whom, and whose mule was entering which cartouche round, and who put up that row of unsightly flax that is ruining your front lawn). I loved the awesome awesome GMs (none of whom used their abilities for anything but helping players) a lot too. I also loved the players who asked me to tear down chests that were owned by me, in camps that I inherited and they had salvaged, and to hand over the contents of those chests. These people were exemplars of friendliness and community You can't fault them at all for not wanting players that did not adhere to their rules gone, at all! Richter WAS a crazy nut that needed to be driven away. Hear hear!
There's one thing that I love above all others, and that is DPPRA and T3 decay. It was great when DPPRA was FINALLY passed in Tale 3, and the day that it was put in game, all compounds that were to become salvagable in 7-14 days were immediately salvagable. Screw those people that weren't paying attention! The law will be coded when it is coded, and not one bit sooner! You tell them! ATITD was a candyland for salvagers; the game IS only about salvaging. I couldn't wait for the day when decay finally started working (because it wasn't working for most of the telling, and I just *knew* something was wrong with my compounds, just sitting there all alone, one shiny one being indistinguishable from the neighboring decrepit compounds).
My favorite thing of all are cornerstones. They're meant to make you organize your camp and prioritize how many buildings you have (just as long as you don't make them big and keep them nice, tidy and small). Paid for 3 months? Sure, here's your two cornerstones! Paid for 2 years? Are you enjoying your 2 cornerstones? Oops, I mean 3. Hopefully you were logged in in time to get your Holiday cornerstone. Sorry if you missed out. Enjoy your two compounds! I loved how I could finagle extra cornerstones from friends that didn't need them and add them to my cornerstone list. I somehow ended up with 6 cornerstones after DPPR, er, I mean being gifted with three extra cornerstones from friends. I loved how I could place them into compounds that were decaying, due to guild members having quit and the guild having expanded too much too fast, and even though we were 2k coordinates from anyone else we definitely expanded too much for what a camp should be!
Best of all, I loved how I paid since the start of the tale, had 5 or 6 (maybe 5, I believe 6) cornerstones placed into the crucial buildings in camp and the trusty cornerstones protected my camp! I placed two cornerstones into the two big metalworks compounds, with dozens of most buildings in it, 16 dual upgraded forges, 8 stocked glass benches, 64 smelting pots, blah blah. Sorry, I don't mean to brag, I just LOVE it so much. I loved how one of my other cornerstones (the very first cornerstone I placed) protected a tiny central building, with 40+ huge chests in it, and ~10k gems, 20k+ herbs, flower and flax hybrids, tons of fireworks materials, a fully upgraded acoustics lab and chem lab, and everything my entire guild owned (short of the thousands upon thousands of ores and metal in the metal compound) in it pretty much. Probably more than a million debens of stuff. Those trusty cornerstones! They kept it all safe, until today. I guess the cornerstones didn't like me anymore and despite being paid (although oddly, my billing showed paid until 10/28/07), I logged in (and out and in and out, so I was paid and showed paid) and found only 3/6 of my cornerstones protecting my buildings, and metalworks, fireworks, massive chest storage all gone. Damn you cornerstones!
I STILL LOVE YOU CORNERSTONES DON'T WORRY. It's not a bug! Nope, not a bug that was reported previously. There is NO bug at ALL with billing/renewals, paid accounts' cornerstones not working, decay being fubared, and DPPRA working instantly once the cornerstone fails. I guess I'm supposed to love standing around for a few days with an active dev call, or am supposed to love mentioning the cornerstone and DPPRA bugs on irc. Someone suggested that I'd LOVE calling Teppy's cell phone to get my camp restored, but I wonder: would Teppy love this just as much? Would Teppy know which chest had what, and what millions of debens of stuff to put back where? Would be know which hybrids were in which chest and how many bulbs and essence I had? I've love to know this. I think I'll just love getting an extra $15 a month to spend on myself from now on.
MAN I LOVE YOU ATITD!! </sarcasm>