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Been reading the forums on maintenance day for a couple weeks now and during this mornings outage. There is a ton of negativity present which some what makes sense because people probably don't come here for much more then to complain when things are down. So I thought I'd start a thread to say thanks for everything the admin team & staff does. I understand it's your job and all but I appreciate you guys doing it & providing us a place to play. I was a beta tester waaaay back in the day & I'm amazed after all these years it's still going. Here we are a decade+ later and I just started playing this again with my family. Over the last few months it's been a wonderful trip down nostalgia lane.
When I originally played there wasn't transcendent classes & the grind was REAL. I remember in my university days blazing a huge spliff with my mates then we'd all login and grind till our eyes bled. The renewal experience has been really fresh, we're all lv.99 first time through & working on our merchants now before we rebirth. It really hasn't felt nearly as grindy as my memory serves up. As much as people complain about pay to win items, low server population, and bots I've really not had a bad time at all since picking the game back up again. For the first we're not high level enough for pay to win to matter I guess, seriously came back with nothing and we're all geared out hard now. (well as to our current understanding and level) I'm sure at the high end late game it's all different but we've been logging serious hours and it's not even been an issue. The game is free to play anyways, I'm not sporting the family bill for a handful of subscriptions anymore like past games we've tried so that's actually pretty nice. I don't know how the shop model actually matches up compared to most modern mobile gaming cash stores but it certainly can't be worse. Loot box'n might be finally slowing down but it's the age of gaming we've been stuck in for a while now, it's really not out of place.
Second this is a twenty'ish year old game? Have you tried to play any other considerably dated titles lately? It's not the big number days of the past but it's not dead, we've had no problem bumping into people to chat to or even play with. It's been a PLEASANT experience to not have every map over filled with people all fighting for the same mob hoping to be the one that hits it first. Do you remember those days? It was absolutely brutal to start a new character because every map was loaded down until you broke into the later levels. Really don't miss that, the low(er) population has it's upsides too! Lastly as for the bots, well, they must have gotten better or they're just not present in the low levels? We've not bumped into but like one or two and honestly the biggest annoyance we've seen is just monks / ?? whatever class ?? standing in one spot for days on end using some sort of automated skill to grind.
I'm still not familiar enough with all the new skills and classes to tell you guys how or what they're doing but they'll just be parked in one spot for days on end, no moving, no looting, just letting aggro monsters slowly come to them. That's kinda annoying and almost worse then the bots use to be (in my memory anyways). We tried out the orc dungeon a couple times and it was literally just full of people standing in the major spawn areas, not chatting, not playing, just standing. If you wanted to be a dick you could take the mobs off them but it just felt wrong to be stealing mobs. That was the very first WHAM wall in your face this is stupid AF experience we had and really the only time we saw it again was stepping outside Juno. The same stand here for three days straight peeps where there too. The thing is, I don't really know if that's a bot or if that's just how the game is suppose to work for those skills? I'd need to read the wiki for a while to find out. Point in hand, outside of this one odd behaivor we've not really experienced the problem. Hell compared to the days past, there isn't a bot problem. What bots? It use to be waves of bots everywhere doing really dumb stuff. Nope not anymore so cheers to that.
The only other complaint I've really read is that the client is really dated & harsh to use in the modern age. Well yeah that's a solid statement, it is pretty rough compared to modern just designed and built titles. Though compared to the beta days it's gotten muuuuuuuch better. There's maps, npc lists, quest logs, hell it puts arrows on the screen for you to follow if you're lost. Have you tried explaining to a five year old how to find a blacksmith? This feature is great!! The UI actually brings back some of those nostalgic feelings I have for the game. Could they do better? Sure, but it's not dwarf fortress! It's not unplayable or anything it's just dated. That's about all I had to say, it's grown into some what of a wall of text so I apologize for that.
TLDR: thanks for still hosting the servers, dealing with people, and keeping things rolling. I've really enjoyed the recent come back to the game & my family has too. 
