Fooled once, fooled twice, fooled three times, awarded!

To explain the title a little bit...

Fooled once: Acclaim's ending. We all knew how it was, so no further comments.

Fooled twice: GamersFirst 's statement: "We will get the database back" As a side note, the latest news is they actually don't know if there is a database.

Fooled three times: Latest Hyperion ideea, of voting:

Which option below is the best for the 9Dragons community?

Option 1 - Events only [ 57 ] [18.94%]
Option 2 - Template Characters only [ 14 ] [4.65%]
Option 3 - Cross fingers and wait for the database [ 43 ] [14.29%]
Option 4 - Combine Option 1+2 [ 187 ] [62.13%]

Wich is taking me to the next question: why we even bothered to play again? If they will keep it as the votes are going, we will have templates chars, based on lvls. How in the world they can give us at least a part of what we have, God knows.

To see the thread, use this link: http://forums.gamersfirst.com/index.php?showtopic=89110

Enjoy! If there is something to enjoy...

A Little Bed Time Story

Just because nothing can ever be done to please a gaming community that looks like it's mostly made up of people who had little to no real life working experience.

So here's a little Nasreddin Hodja tale.

One day Nasreddin Hodja and his young son were on their way to the market. The Hodja was riding his donkey and his son was walking beside him. As they travelled such, they heard a couple of villagers who happened to be passing by, speak disapprovingly about them.

`Look at our Hodja Effendi,' one said to the other, `he is comfortably riding on his donkey and letting his little boy walk along. Shame on the Hodja for making the boy suffer like that!' When Nasreddin Hodja heard this, he wanted to rectify what was perceived as his selfishness. He put his son on the donkey and he started to walk beside. Shortly after, they met another couple of villagers.

`Look at the Hodja and his son!' they said, `These are the times we are living in. A young boy is riding on the donkey and his poor old father is sweating to keep the pace. Today's children have no respect for their parents.' Nasreddin Hodja found some reason in this comment and thought of another remedy. They both got off of the donkey and started to walk beside it. A little while later, a group of villagers, also going to the market, approached the procession of the Hodja, the son and the donkey, all walking one after the other.

`This Hodja Effendi and his son have no minds, whatsoever.' they whispered amongst themselves, `They are both beating on their feet and the donkey is strolling along. Don't these people know what a donkey is for?' Hodja heard this and thought they had a point. The solution was clear. Both he and his son sat on the donkey. As they continued their trip this way, thinking that they have finally complied with all the opinions of their fellow villagers, they met another of their acquaintances. He was not very happy to see both the Hodja and the boy on a scrawny donkey.

`Hodja Effendi,' he yelled, `don't you know no mercy? How is this poor little animal supposed to carry two people? The donkey is also Allah's creation, have some pity.' Nasreddin Hodja agreed with this last remark as well. What were they to do? He shouldered the front body of the donkey and his son took on the back part, and they carried the donkey to the market place.

G1 skill xp and macro-ing

As you might and might not have known, the skill xp on the Acclaim servers, low as it might have seemed, was actually tweaked to a 4xp. If you remember, after server restarts, skill xp was nutty slow - THAT was the actual skill xp of the server. With G1 taking over, skill xp is back to it's original state, that is 4 times as low as Acclaim players are used to having it.

That being said, I can fully understand that people are not very inclined to play buffers. What I have absolutely no understanding for is using macros to get around it - having some bot "press keys" for you while you go about your business otherwheres and coming back to leveled skills. As far as things go, that is called cheating. Cheating is "fooling the system" because you're not willing and able to play by the rules and loser enough not to be able to take the blow to your self esteem - that is admitting you can't make it the straight way.

So just a little antisocial word of caution here: by all means, if admitting you're a failure at playing the game as it is set up to be played would seriously damage your psyche - by all means, go ahead and macro. However, keep yourself away from Squeak-ers. There are few types of people I despise more than cheaters.

Still Restless

Well, the rodents are back and squeaking.

I have refrained posting for a long while. I didn't want to rant about the ranters and all they hysterical people who want their chars back, this minute and a 100xp compensation and free BE for all forever. I got used to the idea that we most likely won't get our old chars back and if we do, it will take ages. It's only in Ally McBeal that legal battles last the 30 minutes of an episode.

With that in mind, the rodents grinded the weekend away. So, on the 20th of September, shortly after midnight, Restless was reborn. Some of us changed names, some changed roles, some changed clans. Some kept everything, some changed everything. But we're all still restless. And squeaking.

9D is returning

Today's update contained some long-awaited news and some expected news.

The long-awaited news are that 9d will be back up tomorrow at the estimated time of 1am GMT.

You can read Hyperion's post here.

The expected news are that they don't have the DB yet, and it seems that it will be a long time before even we can hope for them. Hyperion pointed out that the DB issue is now indy21's problem, and it seems that indy will need to take legal action against Disney in order to get our info. I somehow would place my bet on the big fish, but hope dies last.

We'll see how smoothly and bug-free the servers will start (small chances there). Maybe some of us should stay up just in order to re-create our characters and at least get the names reserved.
For Restless members, refer to our facebook group and talk to the people who will stay up and make their chars. Maybe we can work something out, and after a couple of hours we'll be able to recreate the league.

More news about the league here and on the FB group. We'll keep you posted.

Claim your character !

Easy. Go here: https://www.gamersfirst.com/welcome/9Dragons/9d_characters.php and claim your fill the forms with your character data. 

That doesn't mean we will have the chars when the game will be up.

Letters - part 3

New one, from CFO of Indy21

Dear Fellow Dragons,

I am Yongnam, Partner and CFO at Indy21.

I believe that this is the first time that I, on behalf of Indy21, am talking to the community directly. First off, thank you all very much for having been the biggest supporters of 9Dragons. You have always been with us through our ups and downs.

Although there have been many times that I wanted to communicate with you directly, especially to show my gratitude, we chose to let our previous publisher take care of the direct contact with you, due to a contractual obligations.

However, the series of events that happened recently has made me want to step up and initiate this communication to provide you all with our perspectives and thoughts on the current situation.

On August 26, I was shocked and disappointed by the way business was conducted by reputable companies like Playdom and Disney. We are operating in the business in which, I believe, if there are any disputes, we try to resolve the issues in congenial terms between companies by putting our customers interests first, not by holding our loyal community members hostage.

I believe, whether you are Western-based or Eastern-based, that is just a simple rule of thumb in the industry that we are in.

We had known that 9Dragons was to be transitioned to our new friends at GamersFirst and were promised by our former publisher that they would support a smooth and friendly transition of all player accounts. We had already inked our agreement with GamersFirst and had started working together to begin this transition, cooperating fully with Acclaim and taking them for their word. However, when the plug was pulled, we, along with the rest of you, were left completely in shock. We were not given the promised notice; the game database, which we required to recreate your characters and accounts for the upcoming re-launch of the game, was not transferred. What is most hurtful and saddening was that even in the last few hours of service, you were not informed of what was going on with the game.

SO, where do we stand now? We have a steep challenge ahead of us and here are our immediate priorities:

1. Restart 9Dragons immediately! We are working tirelessly with our friends at GamersFirst to re-launch 9Dragons as soon as humanly possible.

With little or no sleep in the last week both our teams are working around the clock to re-launch the game. In our estimate we are about less than ten days away from restarting service.


2. Recreate ALL player characters and accounts: It is my promise along with the rest of my team that we will move mountains to make this happen. We are consulting legal counsel and negotiating with stakeholders at Disney to find an amicable solution. We are also working with GamersFirst and trying to come up with some innovative solutions to resolve this problem. We don't have a definitive timeline for this but, again, it is my promise that WE WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN. GamersFirst and Indy21 will do manual account updates if it becomes absolutely necessary athough we don't think it will come to that!

3. Design and Develop exciting new content updates and communicate the release schedule with you all. The abandonment of our community has fired up each one of our developers here in Korea and they are on a mission to make the 9Dragons community the greatest gaming community out there via providing you with enriched content updates.

With our combined efforts, we will all be playing 9Dragons again very very soon and we look forward to this new chapter in our journey as a stronger community and close friends.



Yongnam

Partner and Chief Financial Officer

Indy21 Co., Ltd.

In fact, nothing new. We work on 9D, we work on database... etc etc etc. Just another name who said that, that's all.  And the funny part is "10 days". Every little kid is thinking they will be able to play in 10 days. I don't wanna be in their shoes in the 11th day...