Dragon Lair Update: November 13, 2005

[David Bowman]

Lairs have been added to the following Guild communities (on Genesis):

Saritova: 2
Back Bay: 3
Aki: 3
Harmony: 2
Padraig: 1
Tirzah: 2
Imago: 1
Sil: 1
Haven: 1
Mundi: 1
Ambato: 2
Sem: 2
Crucita: 2
Calm Waters: 1
Yewn: 4
Clearport: 2
Yumi: 1
Miyuki: 1

Total: 32

These changes will go to Blight with our next update. Due to the fantastic help of many players, we've discovered many issues with Lairs that we've been working on correcting over the weekend. We will do an assessment at the end of the day on Monday to decide if there are any serious issues that we have not yet corrected. If there are, we will hold off the update to Live.

We would like to begin the bidding portion of the auction on Tuesday depending on Monday's results. We will run the bidding for one week (unless we receive feedback that two weeks is needed by players before we begin the bidding). During the auction period, we would appreciate further stressing of the Lairs on Blight. We will continue to improve the interface and address any issues that arise.

I am personally very excited about how Lairs have turned out. They truly bring a new dimension to Istaria.

David Bowman

[Tzaphnil]

Yay! and [Censored] It!
I'm glaad to see that lairs should be going to live if there are no Major Issues, I can put up with some minor bugs. It is never possible to get them all out. I just wish that My week off of work was next week now, instead of this week.

[Valornyx]

Woot - super news..

One thing though - as I have never actually been involved in an auction (in HZ that is) my understanding is that it is a blind auction - can we get some kind of description of exactly how the process works .. Also, will all the lairs go to auction at the same time - or in stages?

[Vlisson]

great news

i look forward to buy my lair

maybe i use the 1 1/2 year existing exploit and buy 5 lairs with my account [:#]

[Cobal]

Vlisson has a good point.

David, can please instruct Luca how to solve the multiple plots per account issue on Unity?

Oh and I wouldnt mind about a week warning in advance when it goes live :)
Gives me a chance to take time of from work for it [:$]

[Pharcellus]

Yes, two weeks for observation/bidding is definitely needed. Also gives people on Blight more time to test what you change today. Major issues being fixed the day before release probably isn't the best idea, either. It sounds like rushing when there really is no reason to rush at this point.

[Tantalyr]

We would like to begin the bidding portion of the auction on Tuesday depending on Monday's results. We will run the bidding for one week (unless we receive feedback that two weeks is needed by players before we begin the bidding). During the auction period, we would appreciate further stressing of the Lairs on Blight. We will continue to improve the interface and address any issues that arise.

I am a tad confused here. Do you mean that you would like to begin the auction bidding process solely on Blight on Tuesday, or on the live servers assuming all lairs go live on Tuesday? If the latter, I must express some serious reservations about the wisdom of this notion.

First, it is apparent that lairs are still in need of tweaking to some degree as indicated by the terrain interference problems for Levels 0 and 1 that do not show up on the planning screen. Unless and until either the interface is corrected or terrain no longer interferes with planning and building on those levels, I can easily foresee a great deal of angry posts from dragons who run into that problem, not to mention any other bugs that might not yet have been discovered from Blight testing. I would certainly hate to see something as eagerly anticipated, and indeed as unique and awe-inspiring, as lairs turn into fodder for bitter complaints.

Second, beginning the auction bidding on the same day as the lairs go live is, in my view, more than a bit unfair to Horizons' casual players. I daresay that only around 10% of the player base actively view and/or post to these boards. And I would venture that about the same number have characters copied to Blight--the only place at present to scout all lair locations, not to mention their newly adjusted sizes and prices. As a result, there are doubtless many players who even today do not know the location of the vast majority of the incoming lairs, and have no idea what sizes and prices will be attached to whatever lairs they may have seen on the live servers. Indeed, you all have added a large number of guild lairs in just the past week which, of course, must be weighed against bidding on non-guild lairs.

So, should you begin the bidding process on the very day lairs go live--particularly with a view toward completing the auctions within a week's time--you will be giving the casual player precious little time, indeed no time at all, to both locate desirable lairs and form a bidding strategy. And that plainly does not make for a happy situation.

My humble suggestion, then, would be to start the bidding process one week after lairs go live, with the auctions to start one week after. That would give all players at least a week to scout lair locations, sizes and prices. Moreover, testing the lairs for further bugs would not necessarily go by the wayside during that two-week period since (aside from continued Blight testing) those purchasing guild lairs (which are not subject to auction) will undoubtedly begin lair construction immediately, and those awaiting the outcome of the auctions will likely be building and stockpiling lair construction materials to get a jump on building their lairs once the auctions are complete.

What say you?

[Death-knell]

I would like to voice my displeasure at so quick an auction. I've been working on blight testing and reporting glitches and there still are too many bugs. In addition you can't even complete the lairshaping/crystalshaping quest yet.


Lairs that magically rotate for some unknown reason and cause you to reboot and redesign once again. Rooms not appearing on room lists, rooms that kick you out of the lair when you enter them. lots of bugs. Please get things a little more right before release

[Dragoniade]

Biped had at least 1 week when the server merged to look and explore 'existing' plots.

Why wouldn't dragon have the same rights?
Or do dragons are really getting the lower end of 'EVERYTHING'?

[imported_kylara]

Will the other guild plots be getting lairs eventually?

[Kitimandiri]

Lairs have been live that long haven't they?

[Deth]

Lairs have been live that long haven't they?

Yes but not with the final size on them no. So yes you could look for location but not true size.

[imported_Frith-Rae]

Kit -

Not all lairs on Blight are on Live right now - at least 30 (and all the ones placed in existing guild communities are only on Blight, not on live) - as David puts it - they are scheduled to be going live the SAME DAY the Auctions start

No lair on Live has correct dimensions that we know of...

No lair on live has correct prices that we know of...

To put that all on in the same day, as well as a huge patch otherwise, and start the bidding immediately after that - just isn't fair.

No way you twist it, its not fair to dragons. Certainly not fair to those dragons aren't on the board and aren't on the "up and up" :).

We get three days notice the auctions are starting, and BAM - go! Oh, and we dont even know the available sizes of any lairs we may have scoped out (we as in the population in general)nor the schedule of when lair regions will be stop auctioning to know what order we need to bid on depending on who gets what where :)).

But the big issue Kit - is that no, all lairs aren't on live - and those that are are not labeled correctly.

"Competition free" perusal of options and a planning strategy has ALWAYS been in place before auctions started before. But apparently for Dragons, we don't get that option...

So yea...it really looks rushed out the door.

[Kitimandiri]

Hehe thanks for setting me straight, I didn't realize so many lairs wern't right or the right size. Over half the ones I saw were 96x96 or 120x120.

[Frost]

As far as browsing goes, the auction is lasting for over a week. That alone is enough to visit every single lair there is and peek at it if you wanted. From the lairs on live, you should have a dozen or so you like by location, and from there can scout. I'm happy the lairs are finally going to be on the block. Get that all behind us so we can start living in them. Heck, even if I have to spend the next month reporting bugs afterwards, I'd still be happy. Only thing I don't like is that while I'm trying to test, in the back of my mind I'm worried about screwing up my auction, so soon as Auctions go live, I have to sell and stop testing for the durations since it's stated auctions arn't valid if you already own a plot. Unless I'm mistaken, Blight counts.

[dorrin]

Heck, even if I have to spend the next month reporting bugs afterwards, I'd still be happy.

not if you can't build anything at all...

frost, it is _not_ that simple.. i currently have a bug that prevents me from constructing more than the first item in my lair. once i click "build" everything else i entered into my lair plan clears out and i can't add anything else to it. completing that structure didn't help any. besides that, the plot window blanked out and i can only access it from the character window. unfortunately all that really does to help is allows me to sell my plot back to the community, buy it back and start over. it also meant that i couldn't help build anything that i didn't own, because double-clicking on something just brought up an empty plot information window -- all the tabs were blanked out.

LAIRS ARE NOT READY.

hopefully the blight patch tomorrow will fix some of these problems, but i don't know. the lairshaping quest i would expect to be fixed, but not all of the actual lair problems.


besides that.. as has been said.. for a casual player, 1 week isn't fair.

[Valornyx]

I'm not quite sure where this idea of "one week" comes from .. personally I have been looking at lairs on Blight and on Chaos for weeks now.. I accept that we have not known the depths of lairs without going to blight recently .. but the x and y dimensionshave been there for a while.

Not ALL lairs have been in - but over 300 have been - that is the vast majority.

There has been a map with all of the lairs (at that time I think 330) available for weeks.

The imperial cost has not been known until recently - but as it is going to auction - the imperial cost is irrelevant really - people will pay what theyare preparedto for them.

Guild lairs are not going to auction with the others.

There are now 2 days until the auctions start and 11 days in which to nominate an amount.

Most of the dragons I know have been around looking at possible lairs that interest them for weeks.

Th auctions are blind which means that you can bid an amount at any time in those 11 days and have as good a chance of winning as someone who plays every one of those days. The only possible advantage that you have by playing more regularly in that time, as far as I can see, is that you get to see if more players are bidding and adjust your bid if you wish - but you have no way of knowing what the highest bid is.

All previous auctions (for plots) that I'm aware of have lasted a week - whether casual players wanted them to last longer or not. Previous plots up for auction have been announced prior - but we have known that ALL lairs were up for auction (except the guild ones) and where the majority of those plots are - and a good idea of how big they are.

I do not know of ANY dragon - with the possible exception of brand new players that has not known that lairs were coming and that they would go up for auction. Even the most casual player has been aware of that.

Even if players have been deaf as to lairs coming and not done any work until right now, they have 13 days until the auctions close to get around - decide what they want to bid on - and put in a bid.

I have been looking at lairs for weeks- where do you get"one week" from?

[dorrin]

so all you heard is the last line of what i wrote?
fine, you're right, it is more than a week, but not everyone has taken the time to look over the lair plots because there's been no sense of time running out before they have to really start looking. and some of them don't show _any_ dimensions.

that doesn't change the fact that there are some showstoppers in the code still.

[Tantalyr]

Val, the one week (which has now been changed to 11 days) comes from David's original post in which he proposed to start the bidding the same day (today) that lairs go live and end it one week later.

As I mentioned in my prior post, only a small minority of players have their characters copied to Blight, so they are completely unaware of at least the depth dimensions of live lairs. And in my view, there's a heckuva lot of difference between a 120x120x120 lair and a 120x120x240 lair. The latter has a full five cubes greater volume than the former.

Knowing the location of a lair is only half the equation. Knowing its size is the other half. For all those folks who have been scouting the lair placeholders on live servers but not on Blight, their dream lair "mansion" may turn out to be only a "cottage." And that may--and likely will--change the way the majority of dragons bid on lairs.

Personally, with all the potential for bitter complaints from dragons who feel they didn't have enough time to evolve a bidding strategy, who run into bugs already mentioned by Blight testers, who wind up with a cottage instead of a mansion, I just don't see the need for this rush to auction off all the lairs. An extra week or two of delay in auctions, I daresay, won't get the dragon population up in arms. Nasty bugs and the feeling that we're being rushed into bidding will.

[JorgNep]

Honestly, I was initially excited about a one week auction since I wanted to get running (well, technically flying[;)]) over the holiday weekend!

Ah well.

Does anyone know if they are planning on releasing a list of all lairs with location, size, and when the auction for each specific lair ends? This was VERY helpful waaaaayyyyy back when we did the initial auctions for plots during the shard consolidation and I'm sure they have this info available.

Edit - DUH! Nevermind - the announcement says a list will be on the Community site Thursday. I hope it has sizes too..

-Jorg