The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

The Dragon’s Neck NWN server.

Before I get into this review, I need to say a few things about both my experience there and the way that this particular server works. This server is very different both technically and by the way it is run than any other server I have either reviewed or played on. So, this review is going to be really long and will include some data I normally do not put in a review. I want to make some points before I start.

The first point is this is not a public server. It’s a private one that has a player’s password you need to get in. That in itself changes the criteria I need to use to do a full review on the server. The rules to which I make any judgements are greatly changed. I need to give more latitude to certain areas like Administrators and Dms and the way the community has developed. For instance, I often rail against Dm’s that only serve their preferred cliques or friends on public servers. Here I cannot do that. The server is a private server for a reason and those of you that want to play on a private server should know the rules of the game.

Think of a private server like the Freemasons or the Skull and Bones. When you come onto a private server think of yourself as a pledge where you have to prove yourself worthy of anyone’s attention. That is what you should expect of a private server.

The second point I want to make is that I took some time to read and or skim The Dragon’s Neck Wiki for a few weeks before I got on their discord channel and got the password to the server. I was on discord for a total of 10 minutes just getting a feel for it when someone came on and made me as Winterhawk99, Hall of Fame Tileset maker, and Reviewer of NWN persistent worlds.

That didn’t put a big fat, red neon crosshair on my forehead at all. I knew right then that dm’s and staff would generally either completely try to ignore me or only show me what I wanted. So, I had to develop some sources incognito to help me. One a former investigative reporter. Yea, I got very lucky with that one. I did get some good information from (My Deep Throats,) And some other information was pretty useless other than for tutorial purposes. I will be putting bits and pieces in from their prospectives time to time in this review. (I think Nixon just rolled over in his grave. Anyone remember him? I do. Yea, I know. I’m old as dirt.)

Third point I want to make is This review will probably be the longest I have ever made. As I said, much of this server is very different from anything you will experience on other servers. It’s almost like this PW was an outside project for profit that didn’t work out and was given to someone to create a PW with. I almost sure that even the DLL’s may have been edited to accomplish some of the technicalities that they have in the world. I also got some lucky breaks on glitches in their system to help me with things like modeling and area making which I will explain in the review.

Last point I want to make before I even get into it is about the staff of The Dragon’s Neck itself. They get a lot of things right, but they also get a lot of things wrong too, especially about the people part of running a PW. All throughout my experience I detected no malicious intent except for a single one of their Dms. I will explain all of that later. Generally, the staff has done rather well putting up with my various admin tests. Not so much with my sources’ tests. I will explain all that later.

The point is The Dragon’s Neck staff mistakes are generally honest mistakes except for a few problems I have found and noted. I think they are honestly trying to make the best experience for players that they can. So, when I point out things, remember these few paragraphs. Perhaps when they read the full review they will change some of these problems to make their world better.

So, I will be posting sporadically over the next month or even two months on this thread updating the review as I go. There is a whole lot to cover with this one and I want to make sure I get everything right. This may take quite some time, Have patience, Grasshopper.

Thank you.
Winter.

[Winterhawk99]

Terrian and General area builds:

The terrain and General area builds on The Dragon’s Neck is simply remarkable. It blows everything out of the water that I have ever seen. That’s just how good it is. Now I caught some minor and moderate problems that I will discuss in a bit but overall. It even beats Harvest Moon my own old 1.69 server, and I have never said that before though all the reviews I have done. It’s both inspirational to me and it kind of hurts that someone came up of a way to outdo my own building. This does in a general overall way. Harvest Moon still has The Dragon’s Neck beat in a few minor things but the overall visual effect as you move from area to area, cannot be compared too.

When I first came on the server I was awestruck and a bit jealous in fact. So, a most excellent job by The Dragon’s neck builders on what they created. It will be a long time before someone tops what you have built as a world. Harvest Moon had a lot more Pittsburgh effect transitions that matched perfectly with other areas but that is still not enough to counter the love and the details the builders put into The Dragon’s Neck.

The colors of textures combined with the lighting tend to make the server a bit more cartoonish than most other servers. Most tileset makers and world builders look to make things as realistic as they possibly can. In Dragon’s Neck they used lighting and textures in many places as I would describe it cartoonish. That is not a detraction at all. It makes the server more unique and special in its own way. By deciding to make it like that the world has its own unique charm to it. I think an excellent decision on the staff’s part. There are also plenty of areas that are more realistic like most builders try to do but the general vibrancy of color, texture, and placements is I think a big bonus to people wanting to play on the world.

Inside areas that I have seen are neither too cluttered with placeables like chairs and tables nor are they too far away from each other. They are all well placed. A few chairs are too close to tables from time to time, but I did manage to get in all chairs I tried to sit in. Overall placeable placement is also the best I have ever seen on a server.

At first, I had thought that these were all new tilesets. Especially the Wealdath forest but I was mistaken. The Dragon’s Neck did a very large update in the middle of the night on a Friday on June 14th, I think. I was on. When they did the update; everything broke, and I mean everything. There were several times they brought down the server and brought it back up. During one of those times, I got on and it just so happened I glitched.

I found myself in the enclave (The home of the Elves and Conclave) An there were no placeables at all. Just the bare bones tiles. The tiles looked like summer worms seasonal or relatively close tileset to that. There were only a few trees other than the tiles that had doors to them. Obviously tileset trees. So, they made that whole wonderful area just like I did on Harvest Moon with a hell of a lot of placeables.

The other thing I noticed about that glitch is others went to the circle. They could not see me nor I them, but we could talk to each other. Never saw that before. I digress. The point is when I glitched I saw how they made the area and my builders/Tileset mind went into high gear assessing what I was seeing.

Now that I have told you about how wonderful the terrain and area builds are. Let’s go over some of the bad points I found about it. Most are very minor, some are moderate.

The most minor were some river/ stream textures. I looked into one river and there was this grey/green ugliness about it. At a glance I said to myself, ‘What moron chose that texture?’ It is pretty bad.

There are some missing mini maps here and there on areas. That’s just laziness. Hey Dragon’s Neck Staff. I happen to have a tutorial on that. USE IT! Mini Map tutorial: https://www.harvestmoonconsortium.com/f ... =59&t=1900

Walk pathways are all twisted up in many places because of placeables. This is a minor problem that sometimes comes up in all persistent worlds. I’m not really sure what you can do about it but it can get pretty bad with the number of placeables per area The Dragon’s Neck world has.

Many of the trees, especially in the forest, do not have .WOKs attached to them. Again, this is mostly just laziness on a modeler’s part. What that means is you can walk right through the trees. Even hide in them and listen to others. Now that’s a hide skill and a half. The tree placeables need an overriding .wok file all on their own to stop a player character from working through them. There is a bonus for me personally. My own character is a shamaness that speaks to tree spirits and comes from a long line of elves descended from a Dryad. So, at a certain level she’s going to leverage that heritage a bit and begin going in and out of the trees. But not until she makes at least 11th level.

The last thing is the overall Topography of the world. There are some places where you’re at the edge of an area and see a hill or stream cross the area and it doesn’t continue. And in a few cases, you leave an area heading in one direction and when you go to the new area, you’re facing another. It’s not that bad that it’s prevalent but it is noticeable from time to time. But there is a bit more too this.

When things are not topographically right it wears on your subconscious, and it becomes hard to navigate a world without clear map points. If everything was topographically correct most people will have no problem learning the ins and outs of going somewhere but on The Dragon’s Neck it is particularly hard because you are saying this is this way and that is that way and subconscious mind is saying, “What the fuck. This isn’t right.”

Once I realized what was going on, my thinking head took over and now, I have no problem navigating the world. But it took the realization that things are not always right geographically on the world. That’s one of the things Harvest Moon has over the Dragon’s Neck over building because I build my world straight off a 10-meter grid square topographical map and even added elevation lines as I went. So, every area was perfectly both geographically and topographically correct. Streams formed rivers, rivers ran into deltas and swamps which dumped into the oceans. Mountains went down into foothills, foothills to plateaus and plains and on into savannah. Even underground areas had to line up perfectly which drove my builders insane, but we accomplished it.

I don’t expect any Pw to be that exacting but I did note that you might find a few flaws in the world here and there, and why the world might be hard to navigate for you.

Overall, Dragon’s Neck with its sheer beauty in the way it was built still far outstrips even my own old server. It’s worth it to build a character just to go through areas and see just how well the creators of the world did.

[Winterhawk99]

Modeling:

The modeling of both creatures, equipment and people seems to have gotten quite the enhancement in The Dragon’s Neck. They seem to be more complex, have better animations, and cleaner textures. The badgers walk more like badgers and the jaguars and boar move much better. I found another glitch that showed me much more on my own character.

I play a shamaness in the world who uses the spell Ghostly Visage in the world as a standard supplement to her armor. When I use it, the spell turns the texture on my PC translucent to the point where I can see and count the polygons and vertices that make up her model.

For those that don’t know every model in the game is made up of polygons plates that you can shape to make the models. They are connected by points called Vertice or (Verts). I carefully studied both my character’s form, her armor, dresses, and cloaks and found I could see all of the polygons that make up all of them too. I could even see the little whit golf balls that make up her eyes.

All of her equipment and her model were made up of many, many more polygons than I was used to working with in NWN back in 2007-2011. That’s really cool. A big kudos to the model builders of The Dragon’s Neck.

However, in regard to player characters this benefit comes with one of the worse technical issues The Dragon’s Neck has. That being the character editor.

When I fist came on the world at the end of creating my character when I got to the customization part of it, I did not get a panel to change my pc’s head, hair, skin color and the like. A message came on that said I would be able to customize my character in the next section. The entrance to their world.

So, I hit enter and waited. I found myself in a library-like area with a hallway and lots of books to read. I read the books, walked around looking for a place to edit my pc and found nothing. Literally no instructions, no books on it, there was nothing. I walked around for it must have seemed a ½ hour and finally entered the exit into the main world.

Once there I quickly started to ask players about editing my model they told me to type: (!tailor) so I did. And found a board to change my clothing and a button to get another panel to edit my pc. Wonderful I’m on my way now.

Sadly, it was not to be. The character editor turned out to be a broken piece of shit. It had all of the buttons but only a few even worked. I could not change my head model, my eye color or skin color, I could not resize my model (there is a button for that) All I could change on the model I got was my hair model and color, and my lip color.

The fact that the world forces you to try to use this broken travesty of an editor is in fact an insult to a player’s intelligence. I wanted to wring someone’s neck. So, I carefully studied the editor, and I believe it’s even less versatile than the original NWN editor from 2001 without any expansions. Which is really a huge let down.

So, you have such an advanced world with one of the worst pc editors I have ever seen in my life, and they force you to use it. I even kept checking it though updates and there is no change whatsoever it is still the same POS as when I first came in.

The staff at The Dragon’s Neck need to take a look at this and soon. Such wonderful models and such a drawback of having this monstrosity you have to deal with trying to customize your own pc.

I do have a suggestion about this though. I’m not going to leave the moron who created this peace of shit hanging.

The two best editors I have ever seen are from two other PWs.

In Second place: Cormyr and the Dalelands: They have an OOC room where you can completely change your Toon. In fact, if you use their height tool you can change your pc by feet and inches within the bounds of race. If you are a human and pug in, you want to be 6ft 1in your model grows to exactly 6 ft 1 in if you want to be 4 ft 11 it shrinks your model to exactly 4 ft 11. Cormyr and the Dalelands is far from my favorite server but by giving the players to edit their own toons they do an Ace job at it. They do it right, but that pales in comparison to another world. That world is The Island of Thain.

The Island of Thain has such an advanced character editor you can bring up anytime in the game that you can permanently add flowers and accessories in your hair, give yourself scars on your model. Add accessories, even change your skin color in game anytime you want. Not only that, but you can also add make-up to your face and so many other things. The character editor on the Island of Thain just can't be beat. You PC goes to the beach for a few days on vacation, you can come back with a tan or even sunburn. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

On that server I played a female samurai. The color of her skin was normally sort of peachy in color but when she went to official functions, I could turn her face white, put blue, green or red make up on. Those colors are very specific in Japanese lore. She would add accessories to her hair and off to the function she would go.

Compared to the Island of Thain the Dragon’s Neck editor looks like a third grader created it. And it doesn’t even work. So, I would highly suggest that The Dragon’s Neck scripters and custom content makers look at these two worlds and their editors, get your shit together and create something that people can actually use.

[Winterhawk99]

Scripting:

Ok, Let’s go over The Dragon’s Neck scripting. Now it’s a bit harder to perceive the scripting of any Persistent World. First you have to know a bit about scripting. Then check that right side board for errors that I talk a lot about in my reviews and last look for glitches and problems within the systems that are heavily scripted things like the Ai, Language system, quests, crafting, spells and other things.

So, let’s first take the Dragon’s Neck scripting generally as in does it work well. Being that that Dragon’s Neck world is so unique there are generally few errors that I have found. I did find a few errors here and there during my playing time since March but really nothing major. Now there are two phases in this particular world in the scripting environment. Let’s take a look at those two phases. I started playing at about March 12th – March 15th.

Pre-Update: March 15th- June 14th

During this period the highest level you could get too was 8th level. There were no quests, Prestige classes or crafting system.

Post-Update: June 15th- August 3rd (today)

During this period the highest level you can achieve is 11th level. There are still no quests, Prestige classes or crafting system in the game.

Now, you see the comments are pretty much the same. Why did I differentiate between the two phases. The reason is what happened during the update and why it happened. Just before the update the player community participation took a steep nose dive and I believe the staff of Dragon’s Neck panicked and put the update prematurely and untested. And the reason why I say that is that when we went in after the update everything broke.

I sat in the circle and just watched the right side of my board that chucks out server errors. Now, most of the other players probably didn’t know what all of that meant but I did. For me it was like watching a movie unfold. I should have made popcorn.

There were constant TMI’s (broken loops), Ai script malfunctions, SQL (ACP) script malfunctions, The server could not find the OBDC database malfunctions, and it was constant. It was chucking out errors faster than an error a second. They finally shut it down for the night and it was back up the next morning running fairly smoothly.

There had to be a good team of scripters working overtime to fix all that, but you know what. They did. They handled it and handled it rather well. It would have taken Me, Mermut and RDJparadis a week to get Harvest Moon back up after so many errors. It is a tribute to how good the Dragon’s Neck scripters are. They were fast in fixing everything even with such a customization of the scripts they use. So, I’m saying Kudo’s on that front.

That being said there are a few problems with the server now script wise. I’ll go over three of them here. One is more technical/ human and the other two more a human problem.

The first is the world clock. This problem is first technical and runs into a human problem. Let’s go through the technical part and I will add a little history.

Back in the 1.69 days, the time I owned a server. There was a known glitch that pw owners learned pretty quickly. That glitch was once your persistent world ran over 400 areas (ball park) The world clock would randomly stop. Just stop until the next reset. Every world at the time had this problem so you would not recover spells, resting times would go cattywampus. Everything that relied on time would break. What we did was put a semi-beat script in to check the world clock every 10 minutes and if it stopped the script would restart it where it was. That fixed the problem for us.

Now we come too today and EE servers. The Dragon’s Neck being so unique most likely puts a lot of strain on the engine. Post Update someone decided to change the time on the server to match the real world. In other words, an hour in game time = an hour in the real world.

A problem has come up out of this. Either the update strained the engine to mess with the world clock or the change in the world clock itself caused the problem. The problem is as the world resets the clock starts but also starts to separate from the world’s day/night cycle.

What does that mean? It means that as time goes on you might look at the world clock and it says 1:00 pm then you look around the world and its night. Meanwhile the outside world encounters are still following the world clock, so you are often getting daylight encounters at night and nighttime encounters during the day. As the server goes on the separation gets worse and worse until the next reset.

So, that’s a problem the day/night cycle not being consistent with the clock. When the clock says its midnight, you may walk out of the circle in broad daylight thinking you have light encounters and get hit with a colossal spider and a couple of ankhegs (night encounter). It’s something the scripters in the world need to figure out how to fix.

The second part of the problem is the human problem. With a 1:1 ratio on game time and the real world many people never see daylight or nighttime on the server. The server is set to eastern standard time. That means people that want to play say in some Asian and European times only see the server at night. That’s not good. This is a customer relations thing. I would not want to play on the server where I can only get on when the server is in night mode. Shops might be closed; encounters are much tougher. That kind of thing. And it just gets depressing when you are always playing at night.

I understand what the staff is trying to do. Be more realistic in their approach to their vision of what a server should be. But then you have to realize, there is the ‘Vision’ you want and the practically of running a Persistent world. One of my sources commented on this very thing that will be a theme throughout this review.

They said, “’Labor of love’ does not always mean laboring with love for those who will find themselves using the product. Without an available relationship with users and consumers, a team is bound to focus on what they want to do over what their players want to do.”

If this 1:1 time continues it may eventually alienate European and Asian users to the point that they leave the server for another where they can experience both daylight and nighttime hours in the game.

I will continue scripting in the next post.

[Winterhawk99]

Scripting part 2:

The next little quirk technically is very minor and involves languages. Pre-update when you made your character you would get Common, your racial language (I am playing and elf) perhaps the regional language from where you come from if you are human (A Mulhorandi should be able to speak Mulhorandi). At least that would make sense to me. You get one free-bee language extra. After that your intelligence modifier determines how many more languages you get. Except for the free-bee Dragons Neck gives which is pretty cool.

Things pre-updater were pretty standard as per all Persistent worlds.

Post update things changed. Now you get common, your racial or regional language (I have to assume regional language. I don’t play a human). Now after that Your extra languages you only know 75% of……... How’s that work? Let me explain.

My character is an elf that grew up in a very reclusive place as a member of a small tribe of elves. Humans don’t go into the forest at all. And most adventurers just seem to disappear. Very dangerous forest. So even with an intelligence of 12 I did not take any extra languages except the Free bee. That being sign.

So, she has:
Common
Elven (racial language)
Sign language (freebee)

The only other language she would realistically know might be Sylvan. I chose not to ask the dms on high for that.

Her sign language is at 75% In the game when she uses it. It sounds like gibberish 25% of the time. and the more she listens to it the more that percentage goes up. It goes up by 0.1 percent at a time. So not long after the update I took vacation just to play The Dragon’s Neck and dig as deep as I can to figure out the server.

I tried to use sign language as much as I could and at the end of that time my knowledge of sign was at 75.2% Now sign isn’t the most often used language, but it is one of the most often used extra languages (nonracial, regional) so 21 days 0.2%. At that rate it would take me more than 7 years of playing every day to fully learn sign language at 100%. That's completely unrealistic.

Moreover, there is a minor scripting flaw in the whole system. I went to work for 10 days, came back, got into the game and looked at my languages. My sign language knowledge was back to 75.0 % I completely lost all that I had gained. That is the scripting failure The language system seems not persistent at all.

The idea is again I understand the thought behind it and it’s not really a bad idea. It’s just completely impractical for a game. Especially if you pick a language and playing every day, you won’t fully know it until somewhere around 7 years. That is the ‘people problem’ with this idea. It’s simply impractical and it’s better off not even taking languages at all.

They built an elaborate and innovative system around their languages, however, the way it is set up and with the scripting glitch; players (customers) will eventually become frustrated with the whole thing and all that work will really lead to nothing. If I myself were to build another character. I would not pick any extra languages. It’s just too much. Once again it comes down to practically over ‘Team Vision’

addendum: I was going to write a 3rd thing on scripting about a creature called a Wisp, but I have decided to put that in another section. It would have been the third scripting item I wanted to go over. However, I decided to put it in another section.

[Winterhawk99]

Quests:

As far as quests go. There are no scripted quests in The Dragon’s Nest. So, for those of you that go to servers to experience the quests. You are out of luck. The world isn’t really set up for scripted quests because very few can be set up to be truly persistent. I think that’s why there are not any quests in the world. My best guess. Now you can go through dungeons and take your ‘bounties’ to a local Warmaster for some coin but there’s really no real quests in the game. I also saw no big puzzles in dungeons or anything like that.

There is a counterpoint to this. The world does have great hack and slash dungeons. Very good in fact. The dungeons are set up, so you need a team usually to go through them. Not only a team the right combination of talents. So, you could possibly find a dungeon with the wrong kind of team and the creatures in there will decimate you.

So, with Hack and Slash players it’s the perfect world for you to go through dungeons with others to challenge your tactics and strategies. For each one you will need to think about who the best people are to take and how is the best way to go through it. The dungeons give you enough variation that you can have a whopping good time striking down your enemies while they challenge you every step of the way.

So, hack and slash players check it out. Put your best thinking cap on. Make yourself ready and go exploring.

[Winterhawk99]

Leveling and XP:

Experience points for such a heavy roleplaying server is generally in line with most other worlds of its kind. There are no quests, so no experience points for that. You do not get experience points for slaying monsters. What you do get points for is roleplaying: that is talking and engaging with others. You also get experience points for exploring the world.

The Dragon’s Neck does have one thing about it that I’ve not seen on any other server. Players do not get to see their experience, so it is hard to gauge how close or when they are at the next level. Instead, every 20% you make to the next level the server will send you a message. Something like this:

20% Hey, you have new found powers and beginning to understand them
40% Hey, you’re looking good throwing those new spells
60% Hey, My, oh my are those new dudes. You look so comfortable in your knowledge, and it shows.
80% Hey, almost there

Then somewhere at near 90% a troglodyte kills you and you tumble back down the scale.

Server, “Oh dear! You screwed up! But you can relearn everything you lost. IN DUE TIME! Mahahaha! (Voice of Darth Vader)”

Sometime after 80% the little leveling ring will scare the shit out of you. Look on your player panel and you can see you can level up.

So how do I know you get experience from exploring. Well, there is a common tell. You go into a new area, and the server says. “You have discovered “The Plains of Dooomm! (Caspinar’s voice for those that know.” Any time a server says. “You have discovered.” That’s the tell that you are getting experience points for exploration.

How do I feel and think about this system? Yea I can dig it. It is a heavy roleplaying server. It follows pretty standard rules for how to get experience on one. It has a quirky twist, so players are not salivating all the time on their experience points to get to the next level. Once less statistic for a player to slobber all over every day they are in the game. I think it’s a good thing and a good insight from The Dragon’s Neck team in that players can relax more without thinking so much about the next level.

[Winterhawk99]

Economy:

I’m going to split the economy up into pre-update and post-update. So, let’s talk about the Dragon age pre-update economy. That would be from March 15th to June 14th.

The pre-update economy of The Dragon’s Neck is one of the worst I have ever seen on a server, and there are a lot of bad economies out there. Before I really get into it, I need to take a server called Narfell as an example which was a really bad economy like the one of the Dragon’s Neck.

The problem with Narfell was you struggled, and struggled, and struggled to pinch two copper pieces between your fingers until 12th level. After 12th level you started to have money but then you realized there was simply nothing of interest in the stores to buy at all except for the necessary expendable supplies like healing kits. That’s because what you could find was better than anything in the stores and the stores only gave out equipment gauged at 8th or 9th level tops.

So, after 12th level you slowly got rich but there was just simply nothing to buy. That’s the same situation with The Dragon’s neck.

With Dragon’s Neck the same situation exists. And it was really bad pre-update. It got a bit better post-updated but not by much.

First off on Dragon’s Neck magic is so rare that for the first 2-21/2 months I was not really sure there was even magic items on the server.

On April 6th I wrote this in my notes, “at 6th level I still have not seen a magic item in game thus far. and I’m still wearing the original shoddy leather armor I bought as soon as I came in game. Now I know that there are magic items in game here and there, but it seems that they are so rare it’s impractical to think you'll be the one in 50 or so that gets one.

There are no permanent magic items in stores. You get two types of armor. The stuff that does not last that long shoddy leather armor or dull metal armor. A shoddy oak bow or just a plain oak bow. And there are some stores with healing kits, accessories (like hand fans and backpacks non magical of course) and a store with cure light and moderate wounds.

If you want better armor or weapons you have to find them. So, what are the money sinks after you get your armor and weapons? Maintaining your armor and weapon. They break down as you adventure and if their hit points go to 0 you have to by new. But you can get them repaired and restore their hit points for 25 silver a piece. There’s healing kits. And if you die, whether you are raised or respawn, it costs you 45 silver per level to get that taken care of because you carry what is called a Grave or Grim Wound.

That’s it. Those are your money sinks, it sounds great and that you can get a bunch of money fast but pre-update I could only bring together up to 400 silver at a time. I struggled to get a bank account which cost 150 silver.

Silver on this server is like gold pieces on others. It was depressing and when you finally got money to spend after outfitting yourself there really was nothing to spend any silver on because what is in the stores are rated low level.

I have a couple of quotes from sources pre-update.

One said, “if I wanted to play struggling in debt simulator with a side of racism... I can just make a friend who lives that life probably do the world some good by gifting them some garden veggies.”

Another said, “In TDN's economic system, being a law-abiding, good person is cripplingly expensive and being wild and destructive has economic and mechanical incentive.”

Another said, “What good is the coin if you cannot buy interesting things. There is nothing that interests me to spend money on the server other than healing kits and repairs. Honestly the only things I go to for merchants now days are those things. I don’t even look at inventory anymore.”

Another who played a human and has to pay taxes every three months game time for multiple licenses because humans have to on this world. They were irritated and said this:

“People play games to escape. They will only tolerate so many real-life things within a game they play. Taxes is one of the worse ideas I have ever seen on a server. The other thing is you need to make a player at least somewhat self-sufficient. Here you cannot possibly do that. Anything my character barters for, for instance, they only get 1 or 2 sp for. you can't be self-sufficient doing that. They end up waiting around for days with a full inventory just to get someone to sell for them. It's really bad for a pw to do things like that.”

On this world if you do not have any Barter skill points, they really screw you on the up/down prices (selling and buying). So that player was screwed twice over by having to pay takes and having a lousy barter skill.

By 7th level there was nothing in the stores to buy but healing kits, repairs and possibly potions. Everything else was below standard equipment for the level and yet you could hardly squeeze two silver together after repairs and other things because what you got in reward for venturing was so thin after repairs and restock god help you if you get a grim wound you would either have to pay the high druid or cleric or spend a few days doing nothing to let it heal on it’s own. You can do that.

Post-update.

Post-update changed things on one side of this equation. After going out and clearing a dungeon and resupplying you may have an extra 100-200 silver all said and done. The staff fixed that part which is good. Player characters do not feel impoverished any more. But………. There’s the other side of the equation too. There is still nothing to buy other than a resupply of what you already have.

Post-update I have been able to save a little over 10,000 silver now in my bank account keep 500 silver on my person for emergencies and resupply. I still have nothing to spend that 10,000 silver on. All the stores have items of maybe 6th level items and below. My character is now 10th level.

The summation of all of this is that The Dragon’s Neck has the same exact problem as the Persistent world Narfell but at an even lower level in fact at ½ the level. Which makes it so much worse than Narfell at this point.

There may be a brighter light in the future though. The Dragon’s Neck has not put in crafts yet. Perhaps that will be what they need to get the economy going from the dismal place that it is now. Let us hope.

[Winterhawk99]

Magic:

Let’s talk about magic on the server. I’ll split this into two sections. The first part will be about magic items and the second about spell casters. That way you get a well-rounded idea about both items and magic in general for the server.

Part I: Items

As I have said before, magic items are really hard to find in this world. If you remember I started my journey on The Dragon’s Neck around March 15th. Here is what I wrote in my notes on April 26th:

At 6th level I still have not seen a magic item in game thus far. I’m still wearing the original shoddy leather armor I bought as soon as I came into the game. Now I know that there are magic items in game, here and there but it seems that they are so rare it’s impractical to think you'll be the one in 50 or so that gets one.

So, a bit over a month and still no magic items. Soon after that I got regular leather armor, and I found out at 7th level that was not so good. I was getting hammered when I went dungeon crawling. A friend gave me a set of dull chain mail that was magical. Hey! It had a +1 to diplomacy on it. I was so happy and thankful.

On May 12th I could not participate because of great grand children but did see the end of the first dm event I ever saw. The party was given a bunch of magic items mostly that had +1 to a skill or two skills so I knew at least there was some magic in the game.

Just before the big update I did find a necklace that had a +1-sense motive to it. So now, I had two magic items. The reset came and I was basically forced to join the conclave. They had me sign up for the conclave sub-server on discord. So, I did sign up for the conclave in game. After I was in for a little while the conclave automatically rewarded me with another necklace +1 to nature and a belt that had +1 to animal empathy.

Someone gifted me a long bow that is +1 to attack.

Now after the update I did find a few +1 things that were skill adds. And on one outing we found a necklace that had +1 to will saves that was in July. That was the first item I saw with a +1 to a save.

I Still have not seen a +1 ac suit of armor in the game at all. Nor have I seen a +1 enchantment on the weapon. I am not sure they exist. Well, I actually do know they exist because I saw some people talking about them on the elven discord.

By the items they said they had they must have been in a controlling elven clique run by a dm who runs the enclave. I was sort of surprised but after thinking about it I really should not have been. Here is what I wrote:

Some players on discord were discussing their magic items on TDN. and some have a whole lot of magic items. Now they seem to be in line with the server as a whole +1 to skills but one mentioned equipment with combined +6 to wisdom and a whole lot more.

You have to remember this is a private server. Dms and their friends get first choice of dm events, items and all sorts of things. If you are not in the group, you are shit out of luck. Other players are simply wallpaper to them, people to fill in the scenery as extras. So, after thinking about it I’m not so surprised. And that’s ok. When you get a player password, you have to know that’s what you signed up for.

The major problem you will face on the server is as you go up in level the dungeons you will want to go to will get harder and harder. Eventually your equipment will not be enough to protect you. Even now after about 7th level you will need to bring a spellcaster with you to throw stoneskin or other buffs on you and magic weapon, greater magic weapon and or an elemental enchant weapon like Frost or flame blade.

So, if you go to servers for magic and loot. Not the server to go to. You would be very disappointed.

Spellcasters:

Spellcasters including Mages, Sorcerers, Clerics are Shamans are much the same as spell casters in other worlds with one exception. Once you start getting 3rd level spells they start having cooldown times. So you can only throw one spell per/ x minutes.

At 3rd level you can throw a spell every 6 minutes
At 4th level every 8 minutes
At 5th level every 10 minutes.

Because I play a shamaness I figured out a basic strategy of stagnating my spells as I go to the dungeon. My pc has stoneskin as a spell. Say she goes to a dungeon with three other people. She will throw the first on the tank (The fighter that stands in front) The second the person with the weakest armor. The third on the last one. And as she goes into that dungeon, she will throw ghostly visage on herself.

So, you have to stagnate your spells at 3rd level and above and manage them.

What do I think about that. It’s a bit of a hassle but it’s also a low magic/heavy RP world so I really have no problem with it.

This concludes the Tech part of my review. The next parts will be on the people of the server, Administrators, Dms, Player population, a sort of miscellaneous section and for this review a conclusion of where I think the server is ultimately going which is unusual.

The reason I’m doing this is because one of my sources is a game theorist and found the world quite interesting. They said something about something called ‘The Prisoner’s Dilemma.’ Not sure what that means but this person is very smart and has helped me a lot in the review.

[Winterhawk99]

The Past:

As I was reviewing the server I started to get information from sources about the development of the world itself. There must have been many, many talented developers that added their talent to The Dragon’s neck. However, we also found a lot of information about its development that would make you question certain individuals on the team past and the team present.

What we found out almost reads like a bad Mexican soap opera. I usually don’t put anything about a server’s past that I find out about it but here it sets a precedent for what I found out about the current Administrators and DMs.

Did you ever feel when you were associating with people that are new to you that something was off with them or some of them? Did you ever take a step back and ask yourself are the people I’m hanging with good people bad people because I keep getting this feeling? I myself kept getting that feeling with a few of the staff of The Dragon’s Neck. I kept feeling that I was missing something or perhaps these were not the best sorts of people.

So, I and some of my sources dug into the server’s past and came up with a few things that are hauntingly shady. We collected our information. Just before I wrote this very section I tried to reach out to The Dragon’s Neck. I wanted to hear their side of what happened during the development of TND. I wanted to be fair to them. There may have been good explanations for the information we have found.

I wrote this to them:

“I'm working on the people part of my review on TDN. I've got a lot of general info along with other info that has been collected about the server. However, As I look at all this on my desk here at work. I feel I'm only getting one side of certain things. Therefore, I am asking if anyone knows three individuals and would like to talk about them anonymously, if you know or work with them in the past. If you would wish to talk to me and know them personally hit me on discord.

The first is an individual by the name of Danuvis. The info I have on him is very interesting. Another interesting individual is Khaine. Again, a very interesting individual. And the last is an individual that goes by the name of Father Salt. Thank you ”

They immediately banned me from the Y’tellarien. Their elven discord server.

So, what is so interesting about these individuals. Well, there is no definitive proof that I have yet of what went on; however, I did find sources to help me with this.

Let us take Danuvis first: Allegedly Danuvis conned the original Dev team to give him a bunch of money to buy a new computer then he took the money and ran. He immediately cut all ties with the team and left. One of my sources commented that this Danuvis was a good friend of the owner Aschent and charged that Aschent actually collaborated with Danuvis to steal the money from the other developers.

Do I believe this Danuvis stole the money. Yes, I do. Do I believe Aschent collaborated with him. Based on what I have. I do not believe so. I believe my source had a personal vendetta with Aschent therefore I don’t believe that source on that instance.

In regard to Danuvis another source that knew him said this of him: “But Danuvis has always been a liar, stalker of women, and banned from popular servers for being a toxic individual. Aschent, however, stood by him always, so I assume they are good friends. If they did take the money and run, likely that could have been the final straw.”

Khaine is another interesting figure in the development of the server. Khaine is an individual it seems that got kicked off the team early then was let back in after 9 designers quit the team. That is a lot of designers. Perhaps over what Danuvis had allegedly done to them. It seems when he was first kicked out, he was trying to get the developers to revolt against Aschent while at the same time constantly insulting the work being done. He was eventually kicked out again.

Father Salt is a developer on the team that watched all this happen and eventually left in frustration. I tried to get in contact with him; however, he has declined all my invitations on Discord. It seems he became so frustrated with the situation at the end of 2023 he left and wishes not to talk about it.

Why am I saying all this. It is because it sets a precedence for what I am about to tell you about me and my sources’ six months on the server. I believe there are some great DMs and administrators there however I am pretty sure there are some really, really bad apples among them too. The next section will go over administrators.