Ive now spent a week in Next Island. No, this is not going to be one of those posts that quibbles about things. I dont want to contribute to the negative atmosphere surrounding this particular platform. Let others do that! So some cool things: Found a bunch of new teleporters Got to explore some new terrain Have enough bacon to last me a while! Came home with a few sacks of pirate gold and a skeleton Had my societies annual winter festival at Club Neverdie Discovered some new items Had some decent hunt runs For you TL;DR folks, go ahead and stop there. The rest of you can read on, if you choose! Teleporters Yep, we know theres alot of them. I was one of the ones out there when the game released, walking around the main continent and pressing T every few minutes to see where it brought me. Not the most efficient approach, but its effective! The rules have been subsequently changed, areas modified, etc so that revive terminals are fewer and further between than teleporters, so this isnt as effective as it once was, but hey thats how it works in EU. Its Dynamic! Im looking forward to content at the various areas being added. In particular please add some turrets, guards, magic wands, foul smelling force fields, whatever works to keep people from being tortured by mobs at the revive, or keep people from exploiting these mobs for evasion gains. Im sure this will be done, so Im not going to go any further. Im also looking forward to content being removed from some towns, which are now overrun with wild pigs. New Terrain The Next Island terrain is detailed in a different way from Calypso. The vistas are more jagged, theres more detail in the rock, and the oceans actually have waves that carry you up and down (at least on my computer it seems that way!). Thats way cool. Physics dont work yet, and the graphics seem to lag many systems more on Next Island than Calypso. Im assuming this is because the graphics are still in debug mode. Theres also this odd line across the middle of the continent. Yes as a player I know its a server line, but what do our characters think of this strange feature? Has it been left by ancient people? Extra Terrestrials? Is it a sign of an impending apocalypse? Should we all start wearing tinfoil hats? So many questions! Lots of Bacon My ancestors brought pigs with them when they voyaged throughout the Pacific, before landing in New Zealand. The pig was a very important little beastie. It seems we finally found where they came up with so many pigs ready for transport. My people came from Next Island! This place has more pigs than a donut shop on a Sunday Morning. Sacks One day I grabbed my sack and went to face some pirate baddies. After getting slapped across the face for 230 points through plated Martial armor by a Pirate Skeleton Quartermaster, I found some pirates I could visit payback upon. I ended up with a few sacks of pirate treasure, and a complete set of skeleton parts. Woo! Now I can open that anatomy lab I always dreamed of. :D Annual Winter Festival Laudanum had its annual winter festival in the middle of Club NEVERDIE. We figured we may as well have it there, since we needed random judges to review our poor fashion choices and hastily constructed artworks. 1000 PED was at stake! In the middle of the 4 hour event NEVERDIE was kind enough to give us a mention on his broadcast. Was he paid to do it? Not by us! Those of us who werent broke before the festival were broke afterwards, our money having been used for prizes the rest of the society greedily snapped up! Whoever paid him to talk about us, Thanks! It was funny hearing the word Laudanum as said through a thick and uncertain British accent. For reference, its said like this! http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?laudan01.wav=laudanum Im just kidding. Thanks for the mention! It was cool. Im not sure anyone else heard it, the responses to the event being part of the game music were mixed. Ever thought about running a video feed and broadcast inside the clubs themselves? Like a football party? Those outside could opt into the broadcast, but otherwise it would be a reason to have people congregate inside buildings and listen. Help bring that entire Club idea to life, ya know? New Items They're cold. They're sharp. They're not your mother in laws comments on your income. They're ice daggers! I discovered 2 while fishing in shark infested waters. I didn't catch any fish, though. I suppose its better than an old shoe! Decent Loot Yeah, the loot is decent! At least sometimes. Which is better than the loot on Calypso. That loot hasnt been decent for a long time. Decent loot is needed in order to power an economy. This isnt Reaganomics. That stuff doesnt work. This is the opposite. Keep your low level population happy enough to keep paying and the money will migrate its way to the higher level players producing the high quality goods. Its a tough balance though, between capitalism and communism. Somewhere in that gray area though we should find that thing called common sense that everyone is looking for. Its rather elusive, but for now I am encouraged. Somewhat. Dont mind that hand behind my back. It's not doing anything important. Well, that will be all. I'm wearing a red xmas sweater with a kitten on it. Its quite ugly. I love it. You would too if you had a sense of humor.
