A Cancelled Event

"Auzura came back to life around 11:30 PM PDT with brand new hardware and a fresh outlook on life. The server required a rollback to early Sunday morning", was the report from product manager Xuse2005 in the forums this morning. Thank goodness that [GM]AwesomeSauce was on duty yesterday, after the men had been flapping around like headless chickens for days, finally something positive had been done. There was no talk of the insultingly-minor "double experience and skill exp" compensation, this time they are actually stopping to think about things, rather than rushing straight in. I just hope that whatever we get includes some extra pet experience.

So, it wasn't long after Auzura restarted, if that was 7:30 this morning, UK time, that RedRackham logged back in and went back to Maargadum Jail. Some of those hours he put in yesterday had vanished again, of course, but he keeps on trying, and one day with any luck he'll get his drake back to level 44. His counterpart on Cariae-4 did some work on his drake too, which continues to move on through level 45.

When SirGalahad logged in, I found that he hadn't lost any progress, to my surprise, so the rollback can't have been to before noon yesterday, UK time; 4:00am PDT, that is. So, he was able to go out to Prokion Temple and add another 128 skill points to the 35 he had already gained yesterday, and then spend all but 2 of them back in Randol, before getting killed 34 more times in Ebony Mine. A similarly low-level rogue using a crossbow was bringing in some extra degraded golien commanders, getting them really close to the respawning area, so the deaths didn't take long at all.

Since his rollback had been minor, by the end of the lunch break RedRackham's Auzura drake was within an hour or so of level 43. However, it was time for Kaerella and RedRydeR to log in, and head for the Tomb.

Tuffsen had appeared in the shoutbox, and when I contacted her BadFairy specialist sorcerer character, she was indeed in the usual part of the Tomb of Theos, though she cautioned me that some people were making full use of the main room. They were indeed - a couple of people were helping a friend to power-level. So, Kaerella and RedRydeR were banished to the corridor; not the end bit, where BadFairy was busy, but around the corner, so that as well as ancient grey mummies, some ancient screaming zombies had to be included in the mix, and an infected grey mummy, which RedRydeR generally fought. As she had a quest to kill fifty of them, she was actually able to complete that.

Finally the power levellers' hour was over, and there was space in the main room at last, so we were able to spread out. As usual BadFairy took quite a bit of afk-type time off; NaOmi arrived eventually, but was using a pssp, so kept to her own solo party while it lasted... she joined Kae and Red's combat party afterwards.

The cramped conditions had stopped Kaerella from doing a "power hour" from two to three o'clock, but for the next dungeon time, from five until six, after the food break, there were plenty of ancient grey mummies. Kaerella used 44 experience boosters, thanks to a level three ignition taking care of seven mummies, and went up by 23.56%, 14 skill points and 1060 pet points.

Kaerella had to log out as soon as the hour was over, as the first of the evening's "Merac Run" events was due to start at six on Auzura-5. So, Kae logged out, and my Auzura rogue Rage logged in, and took the teleporter to Merac village, where a few people were waiting. I rode out down the usual route a little, but there were no giant soldier-statues visible... and when I checked in the forum shoutbox, I was told the event had been cancelled, news I passed on to the other people waiting. Refreshing the website page did show news of a change to a "happy hour" with double experience and skill exp from six to eight, but it would have been nice if there had been some in-game announcements about the cancellation - there were no GM announcements about anything other than the latest BOGO offer all evening.

Luckily, NaOmi was able to use her Recall to get Kaerella back into the Cariae-4 Tomb, so the evening's slog continued, helped along by the happy hour bonus. [GM]AwesomeSauce did turn up in the shoutbox, and explained that the GMs were too busy dealing with the aftermath of the rollback to host the scheduled events. I did take the opportunity to ask her to make sure that extra pet experience would be included in the special events promised for the Auzura server as compensation for its recent problems. It looks as if people on Auzura who got their heaven stones, etc, from the two quizzes, only to lose them in the rollback, won't get any compensation, so I'm glad I was wary enough to go to the quiz elsewhere.

By the end of the evening, Kaerella had got up to 70% of the way through level 98, while RedRydeR was 96% of the way through 96 - so not long to go before she will start to get Ignition from the ancient grey mummies! The infected grey mummies she'd killed earlier, plus a few ancient screaming zombies, did get her just enough Ignition for a level one run, which was a start. Kaerella added in all 30.671%, 118 skill points, and 7506 pet points, with her polar bear moving on into level 12; RedRydeR earned 18.90%, 119 skill points, and 8476 pet points, which got her drake into level 46.