Interview with : 

Merry

Name, level, server, message board name :
Merry, 100, Wintersebb, Merry or Merry11.

Favorite message board :
I tend to use the vault message boards.

How long have you been playing AC?
Since beta. I have not been playing that much lately however.

How much do/did you play every week?
I used to play 2-6 hours a day, pretty much every day.

What template of mage do you currently Play?
Specialized life/war, trained creature, item, mana conversion, healing.

Is AC your first MMORPG? If not what others have you played and did you play a mage?
I played a mage type character in Ultima Online. I ran the Chesepeak Mage Tower for a while. I also use to play a lot of Muds, I cant remember the names off hand, it was a long time ago.

What was your first mage character? Do you still play it?
It was the same template I am currently playing. I started on Frostfell. I came from Ultima Onnline, which had some form of collision detection between players I had a real hard time playing AC. I would get so upset when people would basically run all over me at the mage shop. I used to say, "Excuse me I am standing here" a lot. I would have stayed on Frostfell but I had a real hard time with this aspect of the game. So I moved to Darktide. Now people had to kill me to walk through me, I could handle that. In the begining it was nice there. I really did not like pvp and was able to stay out of it. Most people where rather nice to me, and I made a lot of friends. I spent most of my time chatting with people at the mage shop or handing out items I did not need in town. However over time things changed and I found myself talking to more and more rude players. When wintersebb open I decided to move there to spend my remaining days, almost like my retirement home.

How do you play AC? Are you in it to power-level, Dungeon Dwelling, adventuring, friends, etc.
I was mainly a solo adventuring player. I spent most of my time running around exploring things, doing odd quests etc. I also spent a large part of my time at the mage shops talking with people. Well in the beginning I did at least, as the game grew I noticed less and less people wanted to hang around and chat.

What gear do you normally hunt in?
I wear a robe mostly. I do have some armor I wear sometimes, but mainly its  a robe.

What do you feel was the best thing to happen to mages in the game?
I think events that gave mages a sense of community where the best things that happened. I mean if you do not feel like you are a part of the mage community why bother playing a mage right? There where a few things that did this on a large scale, both things I think also hurt mages as much as it helped them.

The first one would be the first round of new spells that where added to the game. The spells themselves I did not think where so great, in fact I was a little upset they used two scarabs. However the thing I though was really great was a large portion of the mage community worked together to try and figure out how to cast the new spells. I really liked how it pulled the whole mage community together. A lot of people felt like they where part of something. Of course we all know that we never figured it out, and some information was leaked to someone who then spread it around. Which then eventually prompted them to come up with a scroll based mechanism, which is nice but we lost that sense of mage community.

The second thing, which actually happened before the new spells, was when everyone was trying to figure out how the taper system worked.  I mention this after the new spells because although it had the same effect as the new spells, it involved less people. It was more of a small group of people working together trying to figure out how the system worked. This was the first time I really felt like part of some larger mage community. Splitpea was actually the result of those peoples work. Some people thought splitpea was created first, however it was created using all of the data that original group deciphered. I always considered splitpea like an arcane tome of knowledge based on the findings of a group of mages. You could use this tome to help you figure out the magic system. We all know what happened with this, they created the scroll based system which in turn made the need to figure out taper systems obsolete.

What do you think is the worst thing that affects mages?
There are actually a lot of things on this list, the two above items would fit here also.
Level VII spells. Do not get me wrong I loved the level VII spells, the spell duration was a great boost, the way you had to get keys and then get scrolls created a nice little economy. However, I never felt like I was part of anything when doing my level VII spells. I never felt like I had to do anything magical to get them. Kill some creatures get some keys, go open some chests, get spells. Nothing about them made you think you where a mage.

Spiltbeans and arcane knowledge, this was really the downfall of the game for me. When I did splitpea I really wanted to create a tool that would help guide people in thier spell research and understanding of the spell system. I never did get the user interface the way I really wanted it to be. I really wanted a tool that would guide you through the spell research process. A tool that would teach you how the spell components related to one another, and how the taper system actually worked. I think I ended up with something that worked almost good enough. You still had to do research and splitpea helped you learn the system. The one thing that was not done good enough was showing how the spell system worked. What the components where, how they related to the tapers, etc. I really liked the spell system, I liked how everything was related to one another, why you needed a scarab first, or a talisman last. Which was one of the reason I got upset with the double scarab spells. I think spiltbeans and arcane knowledge really just did away with all this spell system lore. They did nothing to help give people access to the lore, they actually ended up hiding all of the lore.

One last thing I would mention is buying spell components. I think this was the thing that finally drove me from playing less and less. Spell components where suppose to be a mechanism to balance a mages power. So they added a way to limit a mages time actually playing the game by adding a certian amount of time they had to spend buying components. This really promoted the time conscious mage. Knowing they only have so much time fighting, they go to a spot where they can maximize their experience point gains. It limited the group friendly exploration type of play. I think there could have been better ways to limit a mages power and also promoted group friendly exploration type play.

Are mages overpowered?
Power is so relative. Did I ever feel powerful? Sure. Did I feel I was more powerful then a fighter type? Sometimes I did sometimes I didn't.

What are your thoughts on Drain Health I?
I think they should have capped the amount of health you could drain. The spell was meant to be a heal spell that also did some damage. Not a way to kill off monsters. If they had capped the amount of health each level of drain could do, it would have kept it as a heal type spell. you could have say made level 1 drain 10% health with a cap of 20% total health. So each time you cast it it would drain 10% of the monsters current health and only drain up to 20% total of the monsters health. After the 20% is reach drain spells no longer drain any health.

What template do you advocate for a starting mages?
Although its a tough template I always liked life/war mages. I played one from beta on and never had a problem with it.

What do you feel turbine needs to do with mages, if anything?
I really do not have anything to say here. I would say anything that would give a mage the sense of belonging to a community. What that would be I am fresh out of ideas.

After the primary skills have been obtained what skill do you think a mage should take? Arcane, Healing, Lockpicking, or MeleeD?
I always liked healing. It made you a little more efficient. After that I would go lockpick, and then lore. I never liked melee defense on a mage. Not because it wasn't useful just because I felt like I was a mage not a fighter.

Care to reminisce? What has been the best patch or moment or epiphany that you have had in AC.

I really liked the patch that added the rare item drops on monsters. I spent so much time running around finding the monsters to kill and making banners. It was a lot of fun. I could write a book on all of the best moments I had in AC. The people I met, the first time I saw certain areas etc. I think the best times I had was from meeting and talking with people though. I am currently playing another mmorpg with two people I met the first day I was on DarkTide. I still get a chuckle out of the time I was running around in the desert and met this one guy that followed me all over the place asking if I wrote splitpea, what did I write it in, how long did it take me. Guess you had to be there but it was pretty funny at the time. It reminded me of that paper kid in the movie Better off dead, "I want my $5.00". The other time I thought was real funny was when I was in the mage shop with around 8 other people. I was buying components and talking with people there. When a group of people came in and killed everyone there except me. On their way out one of them said, "Hey thanks for splitpea.". "You welcome", I replied as I looked around at all the corpses and finished my component shopping.

That's about it, thanks for asking me to fill out your questionnaire.

Matthew (Merry)