PAXLAIR - July 25, 1999 - Author Unknown
I hear about it all the time, but have never been able to experience it for
myself. Actually, I have seen it once, but that was only the aftermath, and I
didn't get to stay for a long period of time. You're obviously wondering what
the hell I'm talking about. Decaying houses, that's what I'm referring to,
houses that are about to collapse. For some reason this sort of thing always
stirs up a lot of attention when it's noticed. Perhaps it's the lust for
house-placeable land, or perhaps it's the greed for whatever will be up for
grabs when the house decays, and perhaps it's a combination or both of those
things. Whatever the reason, a house which is about to collapse, and is
noticed for that, only means three things: crowds, death, and boredom.
Crowds, and plenty of them. For example, person A in guild A notices a
house about to collapse. Person A informs the rest of guild A, so now guild A
is waiting by the house for it to fall down. Then person B in guild A informs
person C in guild B (still with me? good), person C is now telling the entire
population at bank A about the house. So, everyone at the bank now knows about
the house, and proceed to wait along with guild A. If you have absolutely no
idea what I just said, think of it this way. One person or persons find the
house, they tell their friends, their friends tell their friends' friends,
their friends' friends tell their friends' friends' friends, and so on and so
forth. This all comes down to one basic idea, sooner or later a whole lot of
people are going to know about the house, and everyone will join in the
celebration when it falls.
Death, sometimes it's real bad, other times there isn't any. This usually
happens when large groups of people have conflicting opinions of who gets
what, or what house will be placed there afterwards. Other times, it can just
happen because two rival guilds end up finding out about the same collapsing
house. At any rate, we all know the story of a UO fray. As soon as the first
body falls, that person's friends will end up coming on down to avenge their
death. When the second body falls, the second person's friends will come on
down to avenge their death. One thing leads to another, and you got a full
scale war on your hands. At times like these I hide, wait for them to kill
eath other, and then see what trouble I can get into. >: )
Boredom, for some reason this seems to come frequently to UO players. It's
no surprise to most of us, that standing around doing nothing is boring.
That's just what you have to do with a collapsing house. You just have to
stand there, for hours, or even days, waiting for the STUPID HOUSE to fall.
Minds start wandering, then they get lost, and finally they get bored. At this
point at time, most people usually leave, they stop caring about the house,
and just hope for the best when they return.
So, you're wondering about that house I had the chance to see collapse, eh?
Oh, your not wondering that huh, well it's not like I care. Anyways, the house
was right on the edge of PaxLair. The house was discovered just as the servers
went upon July 24th, or the night of July 23rd. In either case, it had been on
"about to collapse" for some time already. Nightstorm, of the Ladies of the
Lair, was the lucky soul who found it. As explained three paragraphs up,
keeping it "hush hush" didn't apparently work. As I would have expected, a
large crowd started to gather, then they all got bored and left. This went on
for some time, a large crowd would gather, then people would get bored and
leave, each sporadically occurring all through the day. Death wasn't a big
factor in this case. Most of the people who knew about the house were PaxLair
commoners, who happen to be rather nice people.
I arrive in the middle of the day and there is a good amount of
people wandering about. Most of them I already knew, but I also saw some new
faces.
Using my one-of-a-kind detective skills, I surmise that the house
belonged to a guild called Souls of Virtue.
I was able to find out that the Souls of Virtue are 'now' based on the
Drachenfels shard. It appears they were based on Chesapeake but moved to
Drachenfels. This would explain why the house hasn't been refreshed in the
first place.
The crowd slowly starts to become bored. The mages end up casting
many a daemon for us to practice.
Looking for other means of entertainment, magic walls for running
into are created.
Success! We finally step over the line into boredom Ville. By the way, isn't
this picture really pretty? :)
Searching for options to make the house fall down, counselors are bribed. They
weren't very much help, as all they did was say the house may not fall down
for several days. Ha, man's best friend indeed.
After a while I decided it was time for me to leave. Around 2 hours later I
return, only to find the house fell down! Only more amazing, it only fell down
a few seconds before I came back. I had arrived at almost the exact period it
fell.
Dude, look at all this loot! Heh, well something like that. The guy in the
picture to the left was a player named Cobalt. If you think I was lucky to
have gotten to the house right as it fell, Cobalt's house was RIGHT NEXT DOOR!
Not only that, but he had logged in right as it fell down, and he never even
knew it was about to collapse (I.E. he wasn't one of the people who had been
waiting for it to decay all day long).
Cobalt and I were probably the ones who got the most loot from the house.
All Cobalt had to do was move the boxes a few steps into his house, and they
were his. Since it was that simple for him, of course he had no trouble taking
5 boxes, each of a minimum 300 stones.
Remember how I said most of the people were PaxLair commoners, and were
nice people? Here's proof; Cobalt was so generous, he actually gave out free
loot to those who wanted it. Anyone who arrived at his house would be called
in one by one to receive their share of the loot. As you saw in the above
picture, there was plenty to go around. I for one salute Cobalt, he in no way
had to share a dime of his newfound fortune. He knew this, but shared freely
anyways. |