By - The Reporter
On - 01 MAY 2017
FEATURE ARTICLE
Since 2003, shops and guilds have proven both useful and vexing for local citizens. The ability to purchase useful items and obtain certain abilities came with the caveat of nomadic shop owners and guild masters who refused to stay in the same place for very long. Aside from the Peacekeepers, guilds were discovered to move location every few days while shopkeepers, appearing slightly more paranoid, switched it up every 12 hours. Aside from the occasional stroke of luck or chatty bartender, readily accessing these locations quickly became a city-wide challenge.
Towards the end of 2005, the infamous A View In The Dark (AVID) database went public and created a forum where individuals could freely post locations they had discovered or information given to them by humans and bartenders. Shops, guilds, hunters, and random item sightings could all be posted and viewed by the masses, making it easier for fledges to power and for more seasoned folks to stock up. For the most part, sightings have been viewed as a community effort and over the years several groups have taken it upon themselves to keep up with the demands of these ever-paranoid institution heads. The Sisterhood of Booze, LLCB, The Ferrymen, and more recent groups a la The Resistance, Last Call, and de Bouillon have all made their mark.
Historically, groups like The Sisterhood of Booze - SobZ as they were known colloquially - operated outside of clan and lineage lines, comprising such disparate vampires as Boomerangele, CoKaInE, Gallagher, Kila, Leprechaun, and nitenurse. They worked in times of peace and in times of war, operating with the belief that the right to knowledge should be afforded all who call our city home. As with most things here, the act of accumulating fresh sightings quickly became a form of competition - one that didn’t necessarily involve bloodshed. In theory, such activity among groups would equate to regularly updated locations and the mutual acknowledgement of the time and effort required to do so. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case.
Every now and again over the years, times within the parameters for shop and guild movement have changed, creating a gap between the time they actually move and the reset of the AVID database. The most recent alteration resulted in a reset that occurred after movement, requiring contributors to post locations as they were found and then again once AVID’s listing had cleared. The obvious annoyance of this technical glitch aside, it also opened an avenue for competing parties to assume credit for the work of others.
Top: Guild locations reported by The Resistance on May 14th, 2016. Bottom: On May 16th, 2016, .::Ferrymen::. overwrite guild locations reported by The Resistance and then repost them with their own attribution. Guilds had not moved.
“I had posted the location of Discount Magic, after the AVITD reset had taken place,” said Gallagher, “and within two minutes The Ferrymen had posted over the location, which means that they must have--with premeditation--posted an inaccurate location first to repost the location I'd found with their signature.”
Top: Discount Magic found and reported by Gallagher on March 22nd, 2017. Bottom: Moments after Gallagher posted DM, .::Ferrymen::. cleared and resubmitted the same location under their own name.
What is it about coming in second that inspires the woeful and constant flouting of a community practice in fairness? As the clan continues to lose long-time members, it's quickly becoming a simple process of elimination to determine the sighters behind the questionable reporting practices that occur to this day. No doubt, there is a competitive aspect to shop and guild hunting with diverse groups trying to post the same locations as quickly as possible. Yet, there is no real advantage to reporting a shop/guild other than the satisfaction of a job well done. In that regard, there may be no real advantage to calling them out on it either, save perhaps a utilitarian perspective that doesn’t realize the usefulness of deincentivizing a general populace.
As of last week, AVID clears before shops move. Perhaps this shift in time will serve to prevent future misappropriation of shop locations by certain individuals. The un-synced timing for guilds remains, much like a defining city attribute readily acknowledged well before and after their inception: an unwinnable game has no victors.
*Note that the term dissatisfaction is not limited to city conflicts. As a fun experiment, observe the presence of.::Ferrymen::. postings in the days following this publication.