<<You have to create a story line, give it a beginning, middle then end it with a resolution maybe.>>
<<This.>>
Ahhh, I do want to chime in here on this one. Ostensibly, this is exactly what we try to do, but...and this is a huge but (I cannot lie)...it's very easy for players to jump the tracks and go directions we never intended (and/or don't really want). This is why we have situations where we have to steer things in a certain direction, especially when it comes to events with a shorter lifespan. Longterm-storylines can sometimes be adjusted to account for unexpected changes in direction, because we have enough time to maneuver and react. If we're doing something short-term, however, we have to do what we can, gently (or with a very large hammer), to nudge things back toward our intended goal.
It's a Catch 22 to be sure. We want more than anything to come up with events and storylines where we can start the ball rolling and let you guys take it where you want, but if we have a specific goal that needs to happen or the event is tied into something much bigger like an area release or a system release, we can't let it get too far away from the gameplan.
What if we were running an event to release something absolutely huge, but absolutely required specific things to happen or a specific outcome to be reached or it just wouldn't make sense or couldn't be justified no matter how we tried to spin it? For example (and this isn't the best one, but still), imagine if we we running the lead-in events for the Night of the Murder Dolls Hollow Eve and no one wanted to buy any of the dolls. What if everyone thought they were dumb and even as cheap as they were AND with the merchant altering them, how could we have possibly been able to change that entire event without the dolls, without selling enough of them to cause the amount of havoc they created, and having to do things like change the already-completed-and-waiting-to-go-live artwork for the front page, all at the last second? It would have been impossible. Luckily, you guys bought it hook, line, and sinker (and let me just say LOLOL on that...I still laugh about it to this day), but that's an excellent example of a time when we would have had to force things to go the way we wanted (or needed, in this case) them to go.
I just wanted to try to explain that from our side of the curtain. I hope it made sense and folks understand where we're coming from.
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