I want to make everybody aware of a tough decision that I just made so that people do not whisper and rumor monger etc. There has been a whole lot of discussion on this topic in the GM forum so we have indeed discussed it at great length and for a long time.
About a year ago the ECDQ request system was broken due to not enough GM’s being able to do the quests and due to a lot of RL issues that came up all at one time. Sadly we did not become aware of this until about May or June and that is when it came crashing down on the team and we worked out a way to make the system better and more reliable. The system is now working much better and far more efficiently and the problem of waiting is not quite as bad as it was before. At least now if there is a delay the players know that going in as they see a list of people and everybody that has requested things to be run by that GM. Now it is in the players hand to decide if they are willing to wait for the GM or if they should choose a new GM. As well we have more GM’s that can run ECDQ’s than we did back at the beginning of this problem.
A year ago it was not that way as there were far fewer GM’s running ECDQ’s and for a while we did not have a waiting list showing who was doing what. Right at the very beginning of the system being broken (and the team not being aware of it for several months later) two players submitted for ECDQ’s. One was just completed, after nearly a year of waiting time and the other will be run somewhat soon if the player is still around.
Normally we do not allow an ECDQ character to have more than level 21.5 at the completion of the first ECDQ. In these two cases Kobal and Hargranar will be allowed to be set at level 23 and then be given their ECDQ xp at that point. This means that they will have nearly two levels more than others that have completed their ECDQ but they will still lose 2-3 levels due to the year long wait that they have endured. They had to endure this time frame while the team fixed the problem and should not be ‘punished’ for it. Keep in mind that they will still be losing millions of XP, just like many ECDQ participants do but it will be about the ‘average’ amount of lost XP that characters lose and not double or triple the ‘average’ amount.
I just wanted to state that this is a one time thing and it is a decision that I have not made easily as it can show ‘favoritism’. It is not that at all, it is me trying to be fair and do the right thing for players. The team had a problem that we had to work through and fix and that is now done, but the players should not be forced to endure the hardship for that problem. Due to the time frame of submission and the time it took for the team to find the problem and work through the process to solve it these two are the only ones affected in this decision.
Other players on the waiting list were submitted near the end of the time frame I am talking about and around the time that things were being fixed—not at the beginning of the problem when we were not even aware of it.
Thank you for your understanding, this was a tough decision but I feel the right one.
