scafativ

There's a good answer for this. Gossip's new features require up-to-date knowledge of what guild people are in. She moves around from C1 to C2 to pick everyone up periodically. She'll never be in one place for very long.

My test SMS came through in about 10 minutes. I would be unlikely to use the service, though, because I wouldn't by motivated to log in just because of a special day, unless I was already on a computer, and in that case, gossip's email notification is sufficeint. Speaking of which- only a couple of hundred players are taking advantage of that gossip service. If you do want to get email notification at the start of a special day, at least until EL's SMS feature is available, type the following commands in game: /gossip myemail youremail@whatever.com then.. /gossip subscribe special if you want special day notifications, or... /gossip subscribe all if you want her to email you your in-game gossip messages from other players too. scaf

I'm working on a new project, and it would be very helpful if all of you donated an el-oriented joke or two. If you do send me an EL joke, or a joke that is adapted to an EL theme, it will get used in a new and unique way in the EL community in the next several weeks. You can email me at: scafativ @ gmail.com Hoping for your help... Thanks! scaf

Ok.. That WAS funny... but if you post the jokes here, I can't use them for my project... sooooo... Can we get this thread locked please? scaf

I'm confused by how a client session ends. I can't help but notice that when the client has been closed down, the characters sticks around in the game for awhile, usually, but not always. I originally noticed this when my wife was playing on another machine in our office. I did some timing experiments with Ghrae, and we timed out the lingering to be more than 40 seconds, sometimes, but other times, none. I observed no difference between Alt/X and #quit. So- what's the deal? Is there no "quit" protocol with the server? Does the server consider a player to be gone only when a ping is not responded to? Does a player have to leave by Grue? Is there a bug in the client? I'd love to have a better understanding of what goes on exactly, when the client shuts down. I searched the forums for a thread on this, but no luck. If one exists, kindly direct me to it. Thanks, scafativ

EaglePrice, Apologies accepted, and no hard feelings. I think that we will have to decide, as a guild, if CEL members are exempt from our own contests. CEL members are particularly generous in sponsoring community -wide contests so, personally, I think that it would kinda suck if they had to sit them all out, but that's a decision for the group. Scaf

Valid argument. However, I am not suggesting there was any attempt at foul play... I respect CEL far too much for that. But...if I was hosting such a contest, and multiple members of my guild said that the place looked familiar, I would have considered relocating the bag or excluding my members. It would be much easier to appease my guildies than to convince the doubters! Having said that, I appreciate that the hunt had already been announced at that point... It had been already announced, you're right. Nobody, other than Ghrae (who donated the prizes, obviously he was disqualified) and Anabella (who helped pick out the spot) knew anything about the contest before it was announced. You're complaining because I didn't cancel the contest after it was announced? Why am I sure you would have been the first to complain if I had canceled it after people were searching? Leah won, fair and square, and I'm glad she did, particularly because she is a very generous hoster/sponsor of contests in this game. I can't believe how much she gives away. So- it's a damned if I do, damned if I don't. So I did. scaf

Thank you LabRat. This is the 7th contest that Gossip has held, and the first one that has been won by a CELmate. Moreover, I have personally held contests that were exclusively for CEL members. What would be the point of rigging? If I wanted a CEL member to win, I could have just held a guild-only contest. If I had wanted Leah to win, I could have... given her the stuff. To those that are bitching about this: How many contests have you organized, and how many prizes have you given away? I thought so. What I find most unbelievable is how quickly players are solving these picture contests. The one on DP was solved in about 15 minutes, and the one on Idaloran was solved in about 4 minutes! I intended this one to last a few days at least; Acelon even thought that there should be hints, yet Leah solved it in 30 minutes w/o any guidance. The problem seems to be finding sufficiently difficult places to take screenies. scaf

There's a big challenge with this, though: you can become a productive worker very quickly in this game, but it takes a long long time to become an effective pker. By creating a division, I think that most new players will be discouraged to go into fightnig. scaf

Some online games may enhance sociability Wed Sep 6, 12:16 PM ET Video games involving multiple players serve as informal gathering places akin to old-time pubs and coffee shops, and can thereby boost the players' social connections, researchers argue in a new study. In their report, Constance Steinkuehler of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dmitri Williams of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign question the perception that kids who play computer games are isolating themselves, at least when they are playing so-called massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). "By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new 'third space' for informal sociability," Steinkuehler and Williams write. While such sociability won't offer "deep emotional support," they add, it has the benefit of exposing players to a wide range of viewpoints and a more diverse social environment. The effects of the Internet on society are still being debated, the researchers note in an article in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Some claim the Web allows people to build connections and communities, while others say such virtual links are just a poor substitute for the real thing. The researchers sought to investigate the role of MMOs, in which players inhabit "avatars" or on-screen representations of characters within virtual worlds and chat with other players by text or voice, in players' social lives. They studied whether one game, "Asheron's Call I and II," built players' "social capital" by dividing 750 people into game-playing and non-playing groups. They also conducted a two-year study of the activities and perceptions of a group of people playing the MMO "Lineage." Steinkuehler and Williams conclude that the games helped players gather a type of social capital known as "bridging," which involves making informal connections with others, while they didn't generally help people build stronger social bonds. Such "weaker" social links are important, the researchers say, because they offer players the opportunity to be exposed to diverse worldviews that they may not encounter in the real world. Players who did become more deeply involved in the games did run the risk of having virtual relationships replace real-life ones, however, the researchers note. However, to see these online communities as an entirely bad thing is short-sighted, they say. "To argue that MMO game play is isolated and passive media consumption in place of informal social engagement is to ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer screen," they state. "In the case of MMOs, game play is more akin to playing five-person poker in a neighborhood tavern that is accessible from your own living room." SOURCE: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, August 2006. Uh oh... the academics are watching.... scaf

Labrat- this is great for the logs... but i think it's kind of moot, and I'll explain why- You, and others, have forgotten something basic- gossip *needs* to be able to decrypt every message, in order to deliver it later! If it were just a matter of logs- your idea is a great one. But an MD5ed log does not a delivery make. :S Gossip has over 700 queued messages at the moment. What I'm going to do is a ROT13 on all TELLS and ADMIRES. That way I would have to write a special piece of code to read messages, either in the log or in the queues. And I'm going to delete the message / admire content after 7 days, which now complies with Ent's relaxed logging requirement. Does this require trust that I won't write special queries that decode queued messages? Yup. But no matter what- a degree of trust is required here- it's the nature of the beast. Logs previous to August 31 have now had message and admire content deleted. scaf

Another excellent suggestion, and the implementation is trivial. Without going into gossip's architecture too much- there's two message queues for each player- the push queue and the pull queue. The push is delivered as soon as a player logs on (this is used for TELLs), and the pull is delivered ONLY when the player contacts gossip (there are special cases where this is needed- mainly broadcasts). I will leave a pull message for every player when they are 'created', and that message will state policy. The first time they use gossip- they'll get a policy statement. Great idea. The list is getting long. scaf

I've still been unable to read this entire thing- but it is evident that I've been given permission by Ent to destroy logs that are older than 7 days. It is my intent, just to be clear, to keep the tells / admires in the logs, but to destroy the content of them. I want to preserve the fact that the command got used for statistical purposes... how many 'tells' in August, etc. Rumors are attributed to the teller, so there's nothing private about them, and I intend to keep them forever. The historical data will be destroyed before I go to bed tonight. I'm glad I've been given permission to do this. I'll not have time to code an auto-purge until this weekend. I also intend to start storing the messages with ROT13 encoding. That will make them unreadable, so that when I'm dealing with a database problem / maintenance, I won't be able to see any readable message, ever. Lastly- Gossip's intent was never to create a secure messaging system, for Pete's sake. It was meant as a convenience. If you're gossiping passwords, or hyperspace bags, or terrorist plots, cut it out! I mean really.... And TooMass- You think you can cut them down faster than I can make them? I wonder....maybe.... scaf

Ok- I'm at work, and I don't have time atm, to read this not-exactly brief thread. Here's a couple of points, until I get the chance to read up and answer properly. The only reason I have the comands stored in the database is, that was a condition of Ent's of getting the bot approved in the first place. There was a concern about abuse, and I was told I had to keep complete logs. I agree that in three cases, privacy is a valid concern. They are 1) TELL commands (messages), 2) ADMIRE commands (because they are "anonymous"), and 3) MATCHMEs. Once a match is made, I do not currently save the information, because my interpretation of Ent's constraints suggested that I don't need to. TooMass' stats were lingering, because he hadn't been matched. I guess that he was too busy Cutlassing naked players, then threatening their guilds, to get matched up. That leaves ADMIRE and TELL. Presuming that I can get permission from Ent, I will immediately desist from logging ADMIREs. That's easy to do, and the right thing, and not a problem, because admires happen immediately, regardless of whether the admired is online or not. The TELL is a bit trickier- They have to be stored until they are delivered. That's the whole point of offline messaging, right? Again, with Ent's permission, I will immediately stop logging them, and, as things are now, once they're delivered, they're destroyed. Not having given it too much thought, I don't see how encryption can help w/o a client process- gossip needs to be able to deliver an unencripted message right? I want to again apologize to the 3000+ gossip users for my poor judgement yesterday- I did try to extort TooMass, but only after he tried to extort me by threatening to hunt my entire guild down- a non-PK guild. No gossip data has ever been shared with anyone (except, in TooMass' case, with himself), nor will it ever be. The data is in a database, and I don't have a convenient way to even get at it. Gossip's been used over 70,000 times without an issue before now. LabRat- again, I haven't had the chance to read this thread, but if you have a thought on how to encrypt messages, I'm more than open to them. It is my preference to not have access to the mesasges. Oh, and TooMass- I hope I run into you on a pk map sometime when I have a pocket full of ELEs. I'd like to see how many chim you can handle. scaf

Zerth- I didn't reveal anything- and he never said I did. I made a stupid threat, and he decided to tell the world. He pked me, and threatened to pk my whole guild, so I threatened to strike back in the only way that I could. You know, TooMass, if everyone that got pked for no reason posted a boo-hoo on here like you did, Radu'd have to buy a bigger server for the forums. scaf

Well, again- I didn't. I won't. I was responding to a threat, in a foolish way, to put my guild on a pk list. I reserve the right to prevent people who pk my guildmates from using gossip, though. Anyone who wants to intellectually challange that- I'd be interested in hearing your arguments. How do people read your stats if you have privacy on, BleedingSoul? scaf

For what? Threatening someone who pked me? You guys make me laugh! I didn't do anything. Some of the pkers are such whiners in this game.... And apparently I already was on the pk list. :S No sense... scaf

Toomass, I only related one of your messages back to you when you denied that I had any control over Gossip. I can only read messages by doing a query, and I did so to prove to you that you have, indeed, used gossip in the past. I have not, nor would I ever, reveal any messages or stats from gossip (although I'm guilty here of threatening to, trying to protect my guild). If I did that even once, I might as well turn her off, because nobody would ever use her. She's taken over 70,000 pieces of information and none of it has been revealed to anyone. Threatening to reveal Toomass' stats was foolish of me- I wouldn't have done it, in the end, because ppl would stop using the bot. I was merely trying to leverage him in his threat to pk all of my guild members. CEL provides services to the EL community, like gossip and el-cel.com. Most players respect that. If you're saying that you're going to hunt me down, Toomass, rather than my whole guild- bring it on. I have no problem with that. I would have thought that someone of your level would make a better use of time than pking unarmed/armored players with a cutlass.

Everyone is waiting for the winner.....

That can be done. Current special day information is available at the bottom of el-cel.com. Just ask Ghrae where he's getting that info. scafativ

Sure she does, The_Knight. If you look at the log exerpt, his character name is "footiemad", not footie. I'm wondering why his character was mad right from the point of creation... scafativ

PvP Matchup Service: Gossip (the bot) has a new pvp matchup service that will help you find that well matched partner that you've been looking for. She verifies everyone's stats, so scammers that are just looking to pk people won't get too far, and the formula has been perfected to find an ideal partner for you. To use it, just type: /gossip matchme pvp and you'll hear back from her when she finds an ideal partner for you. When you do the matchme command, your statistics privacy has to be off for a minute, but understand this: Gossip will never reveal your stats when she gets them from a matchme command! They are kept separate from the “about†stats that she provides. She won't even reveal your exact stats to your partner, although your partner will have a pretty good idea of your stats just because they'll be close to their own.. Email message and special day feature: For those that don't know, Gossip also lets you leave messages for other players that aren't online, and then delivers them automatically when they log in. You can also have your in-game messages delivered to your email account, and even get an email notification when a special days starts! To leave someone a message, type: /gossip tell player message Where “player†is the full player name, and “message†is whatever you want to say. To sign up for email, just type: /gossip myemail whotheheck@wherever.com then: /gossip subscribe messages and/or: /gossip subscribe specialday or, easier yet: /gossip subscribe all If you have any questions post them here, or send me a gossip message. Enjoy, and good luck finding that perfect PvP partner. scafativ

Update: Magic level is now taken into account- restorable players are only matched up with similar players, per Terena's suggestion. 268 players have been matched up so far- so make sure you keep requesting matches with: /gossip matcme pvp The more that make requests- the better the matches will be. scafativ

I'll try to clarify how the matching process works. First, the matching happens every 48 hours. Four parameters are looked at- a/d/p/c, and the stats are updated if possible, and players that have privacy on, but who's stats are more than 14 days old, are discarded (and they're informed). There's a formula to determine which partners are within a minimum threshold as possible partners- it's linear, so the allowed number of points apart increases as the levels get higher. Then, of the possibilities, the best partner matches are made- best defined as the lowest number of points of difference in a/d/p/c. Both partners are then notified. A couple of improvements are in the works. First, folks w/o restore will only be matched w/ similar folks. Second, duplicate matchups will be eliminated, as has been suggested here. That's not quite a trivial change, though, because *someday*, perhaps in a month or two, it seems prudent to re-report the match if it is the optimal one again. I appreciate the feedback- it's helping me optimize the process. Gossip is also in the middle of a database migration, and there's a big new feature coming, so she's pretty busy right now. scafativ

Mr. Lee, you are an admirin' fool. I admire that! I will implement your admiration cooldown countdown suggestion at my first opportunity.