>1) From the helpfile: "There are places in Thera, however,
>from (or to) which no means of magical trans-location is
>possible, including teleport."
>
>- Q's: A) Does this still hold true?

Absolutely. Most of the places you couldn't teleport into yesterday you still couldn't.

Basically, the way things have been for a while is that if a room was no-recall, it was really ALL transportation magic fails, including recall, teleport, gate, etc. Now, that's somewhat decoupled -- you can teleport from some places you can't recall from, you can recall from some places you can't teleport from, etc.

For the vast majority of Thera, you still can either do both or neither.

>I'm assuming it still
>holds true for explore areas. B) Are ALL places now opened to
>teleport into, even if they're flagged as no_teleport
> Underdark comes to mind), or are there selected areas only?

Selected!

>2) Kasty, you said, "Reason: Over the years, there have been a
>lot more teleport-friendly rooms added to the MUD then
>teleport-unfriendly rooms, thus significantly reducing the
>danger that should be inherent to the spell. I routinely use
> and have seen others use) teleport as a lazy means of
>transportation rather than a last ditch means of escape, which
>was one of the intents of the spell."
>
>- This seems like some thin reasoning to me. Just to make life
>harder for teleporters? But WHY make life harder for
>teleporters? Something like, making life better for
>non-teleporters (villagers, this would be a great thing for
>them!), or...? Still lost on the why.

The teleport spell was originally concieved of and balanced upon having a certain amount of risk.

As the world's gotten bigger, basically, that risk has been constantly decreasing.

If the risk more or less goes away, the dynamics of teleporting change a lot, and in turn the dynamics of the game in general change a lot. This is more true for higher end players than midrange players.

For example, as things stood, I basically would not ever walk out of my guild or cabal as a class with teleport. Why open myself to that kind of snare/assassination/quicksand/etc. risk? I also pretty much would never walk anywhere that was more than 1-2 ticks away as a class with teleport -- I'd teleport until I was someplace within 1-2 ticks walk and roll from there. For a long time this really has been, in most cases, the smart behavior and it really warps a lot of the dynamics of the game.

If I wanted to find someone to PK? Why check areas and develop any kind of hunting method when I can just teleport until I see someone in my PK range and bash them down? (The answer in that case is: for when I play a character that doesn't have teleport, but the point remains.)

Along similar lines, a lot of more conservative players, if fighting a shaman, will flee and quaff teleport literally upon the very first malediction landed upon them if they aren't already massively winning. And again, if you wanted to play conservatively, that really was the smart choice.

Teleport was never meant to be a poor man's gate or a substitute for walking, but over time it became that and we've decided to take steps to correct it. This de-powers teleport characters in some ways but overall we think it's good for the dynamics of the game.

If you need to get away from a gang of people, if you're slept and messed up, if you're pretty sure there's an assassin waiting outside your cabal, if you're pretty sure a bunch of Outlanders are waiting for you two rooms away chameleoned -- these are all still great reasons to teleport, and I'm sure it will still be well worth any risk in these cases. What probably isn't worth it is convienience teleporting in most cases.

When I first started playing CF, recalling/teleporting/etc. into and out of a room weren't necessarily coupled. That change was made sometime between when I started playing and when I immed. Over time we've reviewed it and decided that it either wasn't a good idea in the first place or it just doesn't suit the needs of the game anymore, and so here we are.

I will say I do have some great, fun memories out of that old era that relate to teleport working the way it did. Maybe we can sucker Vlad into telling his story of teleporting into the Mausoleum.