Hey all. My last character was Zekasiq who I deleted a few months ago. Although I've been playing CF since the first few weeks it was up, I am (somehow) able to control my addiction and actually not play when it is not condusive to my life at the time. Once there is a glimmer of hope that I can play more than a few hours a week, the first thing I look for is CF. So I came to this website, clicked on Classes and rubbed my chin. What class do I want to play? Since I personally know them all pretty well, either through first-hand experience or interaction, rarely do I click on one of them to actually compare the skill sets and make a determining factor. (More on this down below.) So then I go over to the races, and as most of you know I'm obsessed with dark-elves so that's where my eyes usually settle.

Get to the point, Zepachu.

Okay. There are other websites out there that have forums and item searching associated with CF. (We all know the main one I'm talking about. ) I never visited any of these types of sites up until I had Zepachu a few years back. I never had OOC contact until then, either. The amount of information exchanged on those others sites disheartens me because it takes what was once sacred and turns it into a mockery. What took me some time to figure out, people can know literally with a few well-typed keywords. (Quests, item locations, and of course poison darts ) I feel these sites do a great disservice to the game, but they will ALWAYS be around. For the most part, they are beneficial, and I do hope that anyone who frequents them is not insulted.

Whom I do intend to insult are those that show "cheating" behavior in many ways, not only through forum posts. It makes me sick the amount of times I am asked on AIM (however they find my name) to "rank up with me" or people offering me a character of theirs that they don't want anymore. I make it a rule to not play more than one character at any given time, and I can count on three fingers the amount of people that even know my character name... one of which being my girlfriend that doesn't play CF.

I think it's a moral decision to cheat or not. You either accept the character offered to you, the permagroup offer, or the quest/item information. As far as I'm concerned, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING should be done IN CHARACTER.

</rant>

Productive portion of post:

I commend the web development people for this CarrionFields.com website. That is, whoever decided on its content. I like that when you look at the Assassin class you know that they get more kicks than wheelkick, but you don't know when or how many. I like that every Invoker spell isn't laid out for you. These are things learned through experimentation and experience... why should it be spoonfed to you?

Still though, as I mentioned before there will always be sites that divulge everything. The point of this post is to discuss ways to keep people on THIS site, where the content released is Immortal-specified and controlled by the ImmStaff.

I think there should be more updates made to the site, and I wholeheartedly offer my services as a fully-qualified web designer, PhotoShop guru, conceptual engineer and all around hard working guy.

New Sections:

FAQs: Perhaps there could be questions in here that often come up on the newbie channel in-game or forums on this site. Things like, "What is roleplaying?" "How do I get a tattoo?" or "Why do I laugh so hard when Zulghinlour, Nepenthe & Co. so gracefully chew people out but cry and whine for many hours (or posts) when it happens to me?"

Tutorials: This could include more lengthy sections like advice on how to gear, write an effective role or get empowered.

How-to's: Again, this would be for more lengthy issues. Perhaps in the FAQ section the answer to "What is roleplaying?" could be a few short lines, with a link to the more elaborate and verbose "How to roleplay" section.

In some way these three mentioned sections are very similar and almost the same thing, but keeping them separate would allow some expandability.

Updating the site and doing some housekeeping wouldn't hurt, either. I think "Support Us" sounds better than Donations, but that is a personal preference. Instead of ONLY having a link to Amazon.com because you're an affiliate site, why not add ones to other popular places, like BN.com (Barnes & Noble). It would take minutes to sign up and add this to the "Support Us" page, and so forth. What if someone found the book at BN.com and not at Amazon.com? They couldn't buy it through the affiliate program. I'm not sure, nor do I care to know, how much money you make from the Amazon.com site, but I suggest a facelift because doing so will allow for more possible exposure of such support items. Having visited this site so much I barely even notice the "amazon.com buy books here!" link to the west...er...left. You could do quite a few things to spruce up the site and allow it to become more appealing. You could use a server-side include, or other form of script, to make certain things random on the site, like the image/link to amazon.com for example.

Also, the races/classes and so forth all need updating... along with the help topics. Sometimes it takes awhile for these things to enter into the rotation. If I want to play someone who follows, say, Khasotholas, and I want to read his helpfile (which I'm 100% certain I read way back when in-game) I would need to make a character and read it, along with others that might not be accessible from this website. Having this information on-site would eliminate the need for this type of throw-away character.

Anyway, I have other ideas but I think I've done enough jabbering. If you read this whole post, or even most of it, I truly extend my appreciation. I believe updating this website, and adding more information that the Immortals can screen, would be time well spent. It would raise the overall quality of the playerbase, their readiness to play the game, lessen the amount of people that are "put off" by CF's complexity, allow players to make informed decisions about a possible character they might want to try, and most of all may dissuade them from looking elsewhere for some information which would in-turn cause them to stumble upon some non-Immortal-screened snippets that could be considered in poor taste... but by natural human greed would be irresistible.

I'd like to reiterate that it is the player's choice if they go to another site and try to find out "secret" type information, exchange characters via AIM, ICQ, e-mail, smoke signal, or in some other way use OOC information, or connections, to effect their CHARACTER IN-GAME. It is the duty of every CF player to act responsibly within the confines of the game. If these "cheating" people actually stopped and thought about how hard an Immortal worked on an area, or how much effort was put into designing a certain system, maybe they would realize that taking a couple of hours (sometimes less, sometimes more) and exploring a certain place or figuring out how a certain system works instead of just being spoonfed it, is the least they could do.

In conclusion, it is also to the benefit of the entire ImmStaff to release as much information as they possibly can on this website. If that means just a few people will have NO desire to seek out other sites, or would be completed satisfied with this one and not even think to seek out other sites, isn't it worth it to update the site?

Zeparamblinglittlebastard.