Harrow Port is a laid back town in the Forgotten Realms that arose some time after the Time of Troubles. It is a town who's primary goddess is Selûne as the town was founded by travelers, wanders and sea going merchants. With a bit of a wild west feel this is considered a frontier town. Far from settled with a lot of room for an ambitious man or woman to carve out their own slice of destiny.
Posted by Brygun at 2012-07-13 14:23:09 Voted 7.00 on 07/13/12
At the request of one of the staff I had come back to give them another try. Overall the management still struggles with keeping the game as a game. They continue to believe that players with characters whose time is spent insulting people is normal. Likewise there was one, pokechop, who tried to use real life alcholic behaviour justify mistreating people. The staff consider him a buddy buddy to be given extra reward points for being abusive. Hardly a responsible action.
It ended up giving a feeling that we must all remember that anyone can open a server. Folks with no real life leadership skills can run these.
Code wise the troubled server section wasn't advanced. Development continued on the already working areas.
The web community shows long standing plotlines abandoned and in one case rerun ignoring earlier game play. In some cases the plots involved large groups of which some left for the abuses listed above. Others though are still there but the work droopped.
Basically, play here for a short fix but expect IC and OOC rudeness, even from real life drunks, to be going on. Plots can be run for a while then abandoned.
Decided to change my rating downward. Particularily for rewarding angry drunks and encouraging abusive IC play. _________________________ Pen and Paper Book Author
Gaming since 1982
(longer than many of you may have been alive)
NWN: Head DM/DM/Builder/Key PC/General PC (depending on server, time and RL)
Preferred Styles: Collaborative RPG
Dislikes: Excessive PvP, Greifers, Cheaters.
Posted by Brygun at 2011-10-01 15:52:56 Voted 7.00 on 07/13/12
Ive been gaming for nearly 30 years and NWNing since it came out. In NWN I have held positions as a DM on several servers and was for a time a Head DM.
Here I played out a characters story for 2 months before being put into an unplayable situation. During those 2 months it was enjoyable with the occassional disruptions one finds with "anything goes" servers. (Sooner or later someone will come along to grief you).
Code wise they are running a merger of two servers. Or rather at this date attempting to. One set has its spawn scripts messed up by the merger. The terrain, cities, and shops are there but no critters. Effectively 50% of the server only works if a DM is running events there to manually do the spawning. That should one day be improved (in which I would raise the server rating some). Im dropping a point or so off the score for that current situation.
They are successful in use PRC and Q project. While there are a few bugs given the huge amount of code in those its not to disruptive.
Plotwise I was initially thrilled to be invited by one then a second DM into long term plots. That worked well until the test of loyalty from DM A found that DM B was a traitor. Now I should the DM characters because the DM are running the towns via there characters. One of them took it very personal and refused to provide information or to confirm information given to me. Namely because these situations make his DM-PC look bad. Though we would RP out these situations he deliberately and repeatedly withheld the information from myself. (Other staff had been asking so he was also being disrespectful to fellow staff).
In other words... you are not allowed to play out things that make a DMPC look bad. Even if the DMPC is acting contrary to the wishes of other DMPC. As a player I felt this to be pointless situation not worthy of good gaming, hence another point off the score.
There was some other unnecessary aggravation over having a new uniform given to us. At the time it was given that DM asked for our input. We tried discussing things. For instance I felt the female version was*bleep*ty (both to my real life and IC standards). The male version was issued to a PC who was using one of the custom subraces who had the alternate animal legs. That is his character had such legs but the uniform erred in having normal human legs. One would think this would have been simple to discuss. However, one then a second (her real life boyfriend) kept barking at us that absolutely no changes could be made. The DM temporarily fired every PC guard (even those not present) over us trying to talk to him. This is the same one who was refusing (and continued) to inform/confirm/deny the other matter. On NWN games I have spent over a year wearing an online uniform and wear one in real life. The DMs response was attacks to me, the player, not being able to wear a uniform. (Even though said DM had been a co-player when I wore the uniform on the other server)
So I do have mixed feeling over the DM team. There was opportunities provided to play a complex story. However, you are constrained to only work within the results desired by the DMPCs. Regular adventure and short term quests where well handled. Frequency was decent given the number of people involved. There was a couple of times one of the more caring DMs held online round table discussions.
While they do have a level of application for some character concepts they are very open on alignment. That does, and did, lead to the typical problem of �stupid evil� PCs who come online to bully, insult and mess around with people. Though the server claims to have consequence of actions the above withholding by one DM made the actual action being quite lacking in this regard. In fact that one DM had ordered me to arrest an evil PC for conspiracy (a crime possibly punished by permadeath.) However since that DM, myself and evil-PC often where not logged on at the same time it would take another DM to carry it out. I had hoped to get a confirmation to play out the �consequences of actions� but asking was not tolerated. (Seriously� the initial polite question was even deleted from the forums). Actual result: No consequence for the obvious evil who brags about leading an evil horde, publicly speaks of disrupting the town�s good-based religion, got arrested at least once and of course bullies low level PCs (ie new players reading this).
One nice feature was in the login area the presence of free outfit appearance changers. It made it very nice to outfit your character with their fashion. It is a good feature that many servers use and any that don�t should include. I�ll add another half point back for that.
Overall: The server is mostly positive. It has some growing pains: Huge chunk of no spawns (-1), DM-PC ethics (-1) and open-evil PCs (-1). The open clothing changer was positive for RPing (+0.5). The limited areas make it one to consider playing with a few months then return once the other server areas open up.
_________________________ Pen and Paper Book Author
Gaming since 1982
(longer than many of you may have been alive)
NWN: Head DM/DM/Builder/Key PC/General PC (depending on server, time and RL)
Preferred Styles: Collaborative RPG
Dislikes: Excessive PvP, Greifers, Cheaters.
It looks like this is persistent world, not a module:) Ask IGN staff to delete this one and post it in persistent world section. _________________________ Thanks Rolo:)
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