I think Shurley's casino is a great idea. It gives people a chance to make money, lose money, and overall have some fun outside of the regular raid/grind. How many times have you been close (like 1k) away from an item you really wanted, but didnt feel like going out to farm. You could just bet 1k (assuming the item is significantly more than 1k) and in that instant you could be able to go get whatever you wanted right then. And if you lost... well you were going to have to go farm anyways. And to be honest, the odds that Shurley was doing arent bad at all. I was in Snewport last night and I'd say roughly 75% of the people were winning. I talked to Shurley and he was actually down like 5k, so its not like no matter what you will lose your money to gambling. This is my response to casinos being bad as a whole.
In regards to the "massive OMG spam" that is generated by casinos (namely, Shurley, at the moment): isnt /auc used for selling ones goods/services/etc serverwide? And doesnt this casino bit fall into that category? Why is it so much spam and a nuisance for one player to have a few lines of text advertising his casino every 5 minutes, when 10+ other players are advertising a few lines of item links / ports / etc every 5 minutes or less? How, in any way, are these two scenarios different? Someone explain to me because at the moment, I see nothing distinguising casino's as any more disruptive than the other /auc chatter. As for the constant /rand spam, I agree that this would be annoying even in a zone like SNewport. However, I think Shurley has the right idea with limiting the bets to a minimum of 400 pp. Most of the spam generated last night was caused by a lower level character that was betting 20pp and kept "letting it ride", they got a ton of rolls because their bets were simply trivial. I think Shurley just wanted to give others a little peice of fun or was bored or whatever reason to let a bet under 400 slide, but I'm sure if it was a big enough deal he'd stick to this rule a little more. With such a (relatively) high minimum bet, you're not going to have people constantly rolling: most likely its going to be a one or two time deal with a higher stake, thus in my opinion just applying this rule would be a suitable solution to /rand spam.
If you do decide to oppose my post (which is very much welcomed and appreciated, seriously), please do so in a manner in which you have a point and clearly show how that point is relevant to this discussion. Stuff like "no thats wrong" or unmerited "evidence" gets us nowhere and in general just gives me a headache. Thanks for your concern.
Regards,
Aeran
since the only paid entrant returned and inquiried as to the result. I don't recall having any unfavorable comments from players since I did my ooc over periods of 1hr or more. Having GM okaying it and to present at the drawing are pluses too.