Looks Like the PS4 Made a Difference (2 Million+ Registered)Follow

A long time ago the Allakhazam boards had a good name. Back in the Everquest days, and early FFXI, we used to share information on mobs, tactics, drops, etc in conjunction with Ilia and it was very rare to see a Default rating let alone a Sub-Default. Sadly, the years haven't been too kind and after the original owners sold the board on the place went downhill fast which is when most of the contributing members worth a damn moved on to pastures new. The forums are some select little clique now where any view that opposes the prevailing mob mood is rated down in short order in some pathetic attempt at censorship. Even sadder is the figurehead of this mood all too often appears to be an admin who seems of the opinion he is always correct and literally spams the everliving crap out of every thread I seem to view. The general result being any views counter to his own are continually rebuked until his cronies rate the replies down to Sub-Default. He'll presumably claim he's a player who just happens to mod the forums but I personally feel he's doing a pretty bad job of it by dominating threads and turning a blind eye to mob rule.

Briefly, the more posts you have to your name the harder it is to rate you down, so you'll find that the most prolific spammers of these threads are protected pretty much from ever dipping below decent but, as you found out yourself, people less inclined to post every 5 seconds are far more easily silenced. Admins, also, are locked at Excellent, which means regardless of what he posts Thayos's opinions will always remain visible.

So, in short, welcome to the forums but don't build your hopes up of finding any real discussions here that may happen to involve any real criticism of S-E.

Wow, really?

Posts like this are why I end up posting so often... because, seriously, it's totally wrong.

Read more than one thread, and you'll see how wrong this is.

Also, the way this site's karma system is set up, it's nearly impossible for the "prevailing mob mood" to be rated down and censored. The only way for a post to be hidden from view is for more people to rate it down than rate it up. If the prevailing mob mood were as negative as you think it is, these posts wouldn't get hidden.

I don't believe I'm always right, but I do believe it's my job to correct misinformation. Hence this post, and many other posts I've made.



EXACTLY. Notice I haven't posted in that thread at all... because regardless of whether that customer service rep was doing his or her job properly, it's very well known that SE's customer service infrastructure really falls short in NA.

Edited, Apr 21st 2014 7:26am by Thayos

"When it didn't affect me it was good, but now that it has it's awful!"

Sadboys, you're totally right about that post not being bad or offensive.

However, this post was written by one of our forum members who seems to be negative about pretty much everything, and he's also been known to be somewhat confrontational toward other members in his posts. That, more than his negative tone, is probably why so many people rate down more benign posts like this (also, keep in mind that Filth actually has quite a bit of respect among much of the crowd that you're accusing of censorship, myself included).

That said, I'm not going to defend this site's karma system... it was here long before I was (and I've been an admin for a very long time now)... but the karma system is the law of the land here.

Seriously, if you don't like the community or the infrastructure of these boards, then I'm kind of surprised that you're here.


Edited, Apr 21st 2014 7:39am by Thayos

To the contrary, this system works just fine. People rate up what they want to see more of, and they rate down what they want to see less of. It's not a bad analogue of real life. You can't just say whatever is one your mind all the time because there are typically immediate social repercussions. And if you're the kind of person who has no filter or just ignores the reactions of others, the people around you simply start to tune you out and avoid you.

My cat pulled twintania the other night!

No for reals man... I was standing a bit too close and he jumped on my kb and I took a couple steps forward... then face pulled the whole mess...

I'm getting too old for this.

Your opinion doesn't get stapled shut here either. Anyone can expand a sub-default post or thread and see what's in it. The only thing that completely disappears is when a post gets completely unrated, and that's very rare.

1) The posts that have been hidden are usually written by blatantly obtuse people (see: preludes) who only serve to stir up **** while contributing nothing to the thread topic. Stick around and find out. The fact that they're hidden means a majority of the playerbase on ZAM does not agree with them and/or finds their posting style to be caustic.

2) Your first post was probably hidden because you are following the trends found in #1.


You're welcome to visit the OF. They have some really detailed, intelligent discussions over there (or so I'm told).

I actually did search for those discussions you referenced, but the only convos I found were the ones with the SE reps and a few others hypothesizing on whether these FATEs are part of FATE chains (feedback on those was divided).

I don't really frequent reddit or the official forums (I usually look at the OF just to check out the dev tracker), and I've had no reason to study those specific FATEs yet, because I haven't hit that roadblock. Rather than get angry, I'd actually love it if you'd just post some links to the convos you're referencing... I'm probably not the only one who'd really like to see them.

There's so much chatter about this stuff on different sites, finding specific convos can be like finding a needle in a haystack relying only on satellite imagery.

Edited, Apr 21st 2014 10:18am by Thayos

I thought of you yesterday Nash... and I felt really bad.

I was in Coerthas beating on the cyclops and everyone died. So I homeported and went back and thought to myself, well, I need to do a leve here for my book, so I'll do that, oh and look it's right by the spawn point for that FATE I need too in my book. I was halfway through the leve when Seps popped. Me and a DRG were the only 2 people there and we killed it.

I zoned into Eastern LaNocsea and the waterblob was already up. I killed him 2/3 of the way with a few other people, maybe 4 or 5 tops, job done there.

I ported to east shroud, and since that FATE is actually a 2 parter, I had my map open and kept my eyes peeled. I ran around the lowbie area crushing fates as my MNK for about 15 minutes or so and then the little NPC to start the FATE popped on my map. I choco'd over to sylph land, spammed holy til my MP ran out, and my book FATEs were done. There were about 10 or 12 at that one.

Total time spen on them... maybe 45 minutes...

I don't know what the 'secret' is, but it did seem that new FATEs didn't show until other FATEs were either completed or ran out. Maybe the next book won't be so bad...idk... but now maybe that everyone isn't on the same step it won't be so bad.

Seriously, I don't disbelieve you. I really just want to see the convos where players talk about their testing of how these FATEs work. Your earlier posts already inspired me to learn more about the issue; until then, I had no idea that different "normal" FATES actually operated on different timers or RNGs... so you helped me!

This isn't about me "wanting the last word." Quite the opposite. I enjoy learning about this game.