9/10 - 8th Ring War Folly

[Droog007]

A brief synopsis

On the evening of 9/10, Many Ring 8 hopefuls assemble in Eastern Wastes at the dwarf camp ahead of Gloridain's known spawn time and agree to /random for quest rights at a prescribed time. Aggrosaurus wins the random and gains the support of present guildmembers and others alike, and is encouraged to enter Gloridain's hut and claim his quest. Azeth appears in the hut just as Gloridain is about to spawn and positions himself for a "RageTrade" contest. Aggrosaurus asks him to move off, as he had won the /random contest. Azeth insists on being included in the /random contest even though it was announced that the window had been closed. He rolls high and declares himself the rightful winner. Gloridain spawns and Azeth turns in his Marching Orders using sneak, and is immediately attacked - apparently KOS to the Coldain. Azeth takes his train of dwarves to Iceclad Ocean and zones out.

Aggrosaurus and his supporters then make a hasty decision to claim the encounter as their own, owing to 2 factors: 1) Azeth has been forced to leave the zone because of his faction handicap. It is not unreasonable to presume that this handicap would make it very difficult to obtain a highly contested encounter. 2) Azeth had no obvious support in his endeavor, and it was feared that a lone rogue would merely waste his own quest items and everyone else's time if he was allowed to make a solo attempt after spending considerable time dumping his aggro and making his way back to the fort.

Was this OK?

In hindsight, I think this decision was the wrong one. Azeth should have been allowed to make his attempt. He broke no server rules by jumping ahead of Aggrosaurus - only a community good-faith agreement. After all, it is only a 24 hour setback for the more civilized members of the community. It has also been put forth that there is some pseudo-official rule in this good-faith agreement stating that all rolls prior to Gloridain's spawning should be honored. I cannot find any documentation to that effect, and I can tell you that this was not the way it was agreed upon for the specific event in question. Nevertheless - it was Azeth's Marching Orders that initiated the script.

What do we do about it now?

Chances are that the GMs will rule harshly against Aggrosaurus. He may receive a temporary account suspension and/or have his entire quest progress removed and bestowed upon Azeth - or worse. All for acting in accordance with our community good-faith agreement, and with the encouragement of members of several prominent guilds that were present. I believe that the correct thing to do here is to enact another community good-faith agreement to make this right. We should work together to obtain another set of Marching Orders, and suspend the /random contest for 8th ring quest rights at Azeth's earliest convenience. We would then turn the item in on his behalf - and then he's on his own again. To make things simpler and faster, Azure Guard is willing to purchase a 7th ring MQ from established Coldain Ring MQ services. I believe that doing this is important to salvage the integrity of our community agreement to /random 8th ring quest rights and thereby continue to do our best to give everyone a fair shake at completing the quest without creating workload in the petition queue via "RageTrade" fumbles.

With 7th ring in hand, Marching Orders are simple to obtain. We would just need the cooperation of the other Ring 8 hopefuls currently stuck in the bottleneck to temporarily suspend the /random contest to allow Azeth his chance to regain his quest.

The next task at hand is to further refine and clearly document the community good-faith agreement. e.g. Establish a cut-off time for /random entries, and establish a maximum length of time allowed for the script initiator to engage the Chief (the 20 minute precedent may be too long for this encounter).

Thanks for your consideration and understanding.

Sincerely,
Grizluk, Azure Guard officer

P.S. I am in no way being compensated by established Coldain Ring MQ services