I

 agree with Omni and Beavis and others unheralded.  There has been a buzz/hint/rumor that something was going to happen.  The vigor with which the last "mystery spot" 

was

 promoted for clearing suggested an insider knowledge of something special.

As an alternative, we, the dupes, may have been placed in 

a

 round room and told to stand in the corner.

Fool me once - shame on you.

Fool me twice - shame on me.

Try to 

fool

 me again - the echoes of my laughter may annoy those trying to nap.

Obviously we can have extra fun by cooperating and creating a game within the game.  Expecting the inside game to have any meaning to the larger game is apparently a poor wager.

To our electron bespeckled masters - communication costs you nothing unless it would merely confirm that there is nothing to communicate

.

As for us dupes, I would say that the clearing of this last spot was damned impressive and only wish it could have had some larger meaning.

Subprime

Well put, guys. And I hate to say, but 'I told you so'.

I wasn't going to respond, because I guess I come across too harsh or something. I don't know. But when I can't even get an answer or even a hint about level 100 equipment for over 4 months, yeah I'm a little disgruntled. In fact, I don't know if I'll ever be 'gruntled' again. ;)

Does anyone know if the Hung version had squares of 500K or more? Also, were the large numbers of monsters on these squares there from day one? or were they recently added to slow progress and give false hope? I am not asking for everything to be spelled out. What fun would that be? I am not asking for the 'what's' or 'where's', just let us know is there is something more.

The communication has been decreasing for quite some time and appears to be one-way now. Please! I am asking nicely. Will someone please let us know what is going on?

:)  :)  :)
There. Smileys! I am asking nicely.

-B

If you ask me they're put there to slow us down so they don't have to create more content anytime soon.

Let's just create a land bridge and get out of there.

as for me, i'm going to put my efforts on clearing to north block on the land bridge as it has the fewer monsters.  As was mentioned the north city is still needs clearing.

  Secretary

According to the Larkinor Quest News, this text was published on 14 June 2005:
"Most part of the island [TA] is covered by rain forests, well hiding many ancient relics. ... The great Magicans' War 8000 years ago had a big impact on the terrain. Both the desert Thara-Flamm and lake Thanuin are results of harsh fights. ... The lake is the trace of waterwizards' magic."

So even back then there was a hint that 

something

 was hidden in the wilderness parts of the island. From our (non-insider) point of view, it is irrelevant whether the 300k or 500k was in reality added at a later time. It is there now, and again we don't know what is (or will be) further on, if anything, until it is cleared.

There was, perhaps understandingly, a great rush to clear the square, however, we really did know that there were no guarantees for something to uncover. So good impatient fellow players should not be that disappointed. There is still work to do!

I am not saying that I understand the FoD policy to ignore the pleads for some hints, feelers and explanations, as discussed many times on the forum. However, it 

has

 been said clearly that our game is different from the Hungarian version. So any information obtained from there is completely unreliable in my opinion.

So the question is what now? Perhaps it is time to ponder the moment and not rush again (as I tried to convey to some people in chat regarding the "mystery square"). Tomorrow we will meet again in our favorite game and it will still be there. Maybe some people would like to continue with the 1m thugs on the two new squares. Others may wish to determine the definite shape of the lake and if there is anything left of that magic around it. The land bridge is a good idea, the teleport gate notwithstanding. The north city squares may contain some more buildings after all. Why not clear the western shore of the island: it would not affect the diggers and when was the last time someone was the first to repopulate a monster on a square? And lastly, why not go back to the mother island for a while and do some damage among the unsuspecting citizens?

My advice is not to define any immediate goals or deadlines for the moment, just sit back and have fun with whatever you choose to do next and enjoy in shorter term and character development goals. Perhaps some new goals could be set for the new year; it will, as always, come sooner than you think.

In the meantime, the inevitable question is: in which direction the game is generally going. But do we really want to know the answer sooner than later?

Tx, EG.

Got your subliminal message, Subprime!

Callum's going to be slugging away at the northern 500k block.  He can clear it by himself in only 7 years.

Sandy

first... my disclaimer.  anything i say in this post has no guarantee to it, and has not necessarily been heard from any reliable, or in-control-of-the-game source.  it is solely based on heresay, guesswork, and observation.

i will be fighting north to the new 500k block as well, for the following reasons.

there's not much left in the north city to clear.  and even if there is a building hiding, we have no indication if/where it might be (admitedly, our last building was unexpected, based on comparisons to the hung game).

i don't think monstalogy is a valid reason to open up new squares.  i remember the days back when only 2 or 3 squares were available to populate.  we made a conscious effort to try and populate every possibly monster on them.  now, i would prefer to do the same to every block (with the exception of the 4 or so 'preserved' squares), before we open more.

the land bridge is a potential can of worms.  i remember hearing (again, based on memory... so this may not be all that correct) that when the north and south were connected in the hung game, the game was introduced to "trolls".  it might seem like a welcome upgrade, IF we were to get it, but from what i remember, it was described as quite a pain, and a hinderance to things people were trying to accomplish on TA (i would compare it to the time we opened the north port block, and dropped items from TA monsters switched from only non-marketable items to marketable only... which was a good and a bad thing at the same time).

also, i highly doubth FOD would put us on this wild goose chase without there being something hidden.  i do guess they've probably added extra monsters to prolong the time til we get there, which is unfortunate.  but it seems, with squares getting "fuller" of monsters, there could be something important behind the walls of monsters.  for all i know, it might be the beginning of "trolls" (mentioned above), or it could be some new, important building(s)... possibly the altar and table rumoured to be in the hung game which could potentially be very useful, but which were not in our game, on the same square as they were in the hungarian game.  anyway, if there are "large" buildings to build, i would rather we open them up asap, so that we stop wasting nubs by selling them.  clearing 3 or 5 other blocks before we push through this 500k would mean a ton more sold nubs, no longer available to build any large building which might be back here.

and last of all, with two squares (not even beside each other), at 500k, there's likely an even larger square touching those two we can't see yet (600k?  1000000?) which would be the eventual target square.  at the rate we cleared 300k, the next square will take at least 3 months, and a 1 mil square would take 6 months.  and those are probably bare minimums.  so the longer we delay getting to these squares, the longer til we find what's behind them.

and so... i fight north into 500000 monsters!

--jason

I plan to go north into the 500k ... until I'm completely overcome with ennui.

I think/hope we will find something interesting in 1.5 million monsters.

I figure we can do that in about a year...

I really hope we get level 100 equipment earlier though, otherwise, for me at least, the game is almost finished.

Well in retrospect this might just be put there to deter our progress into TA as to give OP an extended vacation.

I hate to put it to terms like this but it doesn't seem logical to do this.

to be honest I'm going to be splating toward the... whatever it is under the half a million monsters for the simple reason that its the easyest place to get to.

How about the North City square west of the tiki huts. There *might* be another city square there, and there *might* be something interesting on it (hint hint FOD). We can clear it in a month. I decided to go there for now. 

As a side benefit to some players... it opens up a monstalogy square, even if monstalogy is a rather silly endeavor. ;)

Oh yeah?  So's yer old man!

Subprime*
Monster Droppers Local 68

* To whom monster dropping correspondence should be addressed