All right. I still do not have a tool, per se, but I do now have access, and enough confidence, to be able to update some aspects of dwellings.

What I have done so far:
• I have identified empty plots that no longer have owners. Some of them have already been deleted. The rest will be gone soon. (This was the easy part.)

• I have identified one-room dwellings that no longer have owners. These now belong to the game. They will be demolished -- unless they are so positioned that their value to other players as they are, exceeds the value of the land freed up for redevelopment. (This probably-rare exception applies mainly to locations around the edge of the map, where titan-hunters appreciate a bit of overnight shelter.) If you want to suggest an ownerless ORD that should be kept, you can distract me, contact me on gchat, or mention it in this thread.

What's next on the list:
• I am going to work with Buddleia, our widely-acclaimed real estate expert, to decide the fate of the rest of the dwellings on her 'Abandoned and unloved' list.

• I am going to try to fix the 'BORKED' ones. No promises there, I still have some learning to do and I am going to proceed cautiously, but I may be able to recover some or all of them. There are real gems amongst them that I would be very sorry to lose.

• If people can make a reasonable case for the transfer of ownership of a given dwelling from one player to another, it will happen. Both Z and I are able do this. (We will keep notes, and if the original owner shows up and asks for the dwelling back, they'll get it.)

• If anyone wishes to turn in an empty plot or an undeveloped ORD they've come to realize they're not going to do anything with, I will refund their 100 cigs. (Sorry, no refunds for toolkit rentals.)

• If a player asks to have their more elaborate dwelling demolished -- I will ask why. It won't be automatic. (If it's beautiful or clever or funny, I may try to talk them out of it.)

• My criterion for deletion will be, "Will the game be better or worse with this gone?"

This thread is for talking about places that need looking at. Have at it!

An improbable event that occasionally lands you at The Abandoned Waystation (name?) Is something I'd like to see renovated.

I've no idea of the history of this place but I do feel it needs some attention and would be willing to bear the costs of breathing some life into it - with suggestions from the community as to what it should be like.

Just a thought.

---

It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.

---

If it cant be done, should I stop doing it?

No, don't worry! I'm going by what's actually in the database. If the owner of a building still exists as an account, that building is not on my list. In fact, here are the locations I'm looking at:

hid - loc
167 - 10,4,1- Not just an ORD after all. Has been adopted.
377 - 10,5,1
254 - 13,9,1
39 - 14,9,1
214 - 14,9,1
277 - 16,9,1
402 - 17,9,1
269 - 8,10,1
78 - 14,10,1
292 - 14,10,1
198 - 12,11,1
232 - 13,12,1
411 - 11,14,1
181 - 20,18,1
596 - 8,19,1
83 - 10,21,1
203 - 16,22,1
216 - 22,29,1
228 - 8,32,1

There are three more, along the east coast, that I've expropriated and plan to renovate myself. (Nothing fancy, just spruce them up and maybe put in some beds.) Unless someone else wants to take them on and do more...

Where does this leave ORD's with an owner with a permanent account? There's one in particular I'm thinking of, on the same square as AH. A quick search of the contestant's list shows that the owner hasn't been on for a fortnight over a year, and that is prime, prime real estate he's sitting on. Another complaint I have up thataways is the locked dwelling, though that's for more selfish reasons... I just want there to be a dwelling with beds on the same square as every outpost. AH's square, communitywise, is three quarters useless, though. A locked dwelling, a ORD belonging to an inactive player, and a borked dwelling sit alongside the train station.

Since the borked dwelling already has a use, why not fill it with beds?

---

For rent: one skull, in serious need of dusting.

um, what use does a borked dwelling serve?

You are talking about the nameless dwelling that gives you a card for a rail pass, yes?

---

For rent: one skull, in serious need of dusting.

Ah, I get all my cards from DunB, didn't know there was one there. I don't think you can put beds in it while borked, though.

Yes. There are so many ORDs and EPs that have been as such since before I even started playing, just sitting on prime real estate and taking up space like some fat, slug-like growth on the landscape.

I dunno. I say, the owners should be contacted, and if they don't care enough to log on and say yes, those plots should be nixed.

edit: Yes, I'm sorry for my harsh wording, but I am slightly bitter about this. It just doesn't seem very fair for plots that could be put to such great use to just kind of rot. I remember trying to pick a spot for a dwelling and being very frustrated at all the EPs and ORDs that have been there forever taking up every damn space.

I had emailed You Sessine, about a dwelling... I have not received a Reply...

Was this a dumb suggestion treated with the contempt it deserves or does nobody really care about it?

*wanders off muttering*

---

It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.

The Abandoned Waystation was pretty much the first amazingly detailed dwelling that went down. It was amazing, and it'd be great to be renovated. I just have no idea if the creator is still present (I assumed it was Sessine at first) or if the text is somehow saved.

EDIT:

While I'd love for each Outpost to be 1) atop a train station and 2) atop a large bedded dwelling for the public, I don't like the idea that we can impose that over people who decided to buy that property first to use it for their own purposes. Freeing up the prime real estate from deleted player accounts is fine, because their choice no longer matters to them, but otherwise, I don't want us getting into the idea that all outposts must have a train station and a community rest area. It's cool that it happens to be this way mostly, but players might also consciously choose to vary up the world and provide a little struggle and a little hardship to make the world a bit more interesting of a place. They might intentionally buy out the desirable plots because otherwise, dwellings aren't as inventive as they could be otherwise.

If you look at Kittania, 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 4 of them are just community sleep dwellings. They're individually detailed differently but conceptually the same type of building. This isn't entirely our fault, though--it's a natural result of sleep spaces being the only power that players can effect onto the gameplay environment via Dwellings. It's up to Sessine and the other mods to hook Dwellings into being a Card House or a Train Destination, and beyond that, the only other module that works on Dwellings is CMJ's Wizard trials, which isn't up anymore. We don't have our Memento Shops yet, but once that happens, we'll be a step closer towards making a more diverse and interesting Island.

I guess I went off on a tangent. Coming back to the other paragraph, I find that AceHigh's square is perfectly valid the way it is MINUS the borked dwelling with the free card. That should go away not because it doesn't contribute to the community, but that it doesn't contribute to the community and the owner is not there to say otherwise. And if it gets deleted and the plot is for purchase again, it's fair for someone to come grab that plot first, make a locked dwelling for his or her self, and make AceHigh a less than welcoming Outpost.

Nope, neither. The Abandoned Waystation is very high on my list of borked places I want to try to repair. I do have the text, more or less. Not promising success, as I said. But I am promising I'll try.

Oh good, I'm happy! I didn't see it on your list, but then I realised you may not be listing borked dwellings.

Let me/us know if we can help in anyway.

Thanks.

---

It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.

So i've been reading some of these, and really i can't have much of a say as I don't really know much to be honest.

HOWEVER, It occurs to me... that i have NO idea what Borked means... and i cannot fathom a meaning for that word.

Borked means broken. There's a very good reason it says not to use a word processor on dwellings. See Acehigh's square for an example... there's a dwelling with no name, no exterior description, and no rooms.

So you'd rather have ORD belonging to Errant Knight Articblaze sit on top of Ace High and do nothing forever? I looked him up just now; he was last on 373 days ago. He's obviously quit the game a long time ago, and he's just got a permanent account. So, yes, the player still exists, but I think the circumstances warrant taking away the plot and maybe refunding the cigs, though I doubt he'd ever come back to even use them. As for the ORD on top of Cyber City, the owner hasn't logged in for 54 days. I think it's safe to say that both plots have been long since abandoned.

I'd rather take the side of the community's rights to use that plot for something actually worthwhile than the individual's rights to being selfish when the investment of cigs probably doesn't even matter to them anymore anyway. Were I in the decision-making chair, I'd take the plot away even if those two players in question were still playing, simply because of where it is and the fact that nothing has been done with them for forever and ever. Maybe that's why I'm not in that chair, admittedly, but I still strongly say that simply leaving those plots there to fester is the Wrong Move.

I'd like to point out that useful doesn't have to mean dozens of beds, that's just me being selfish. With the exception of the train station, every plot on Acehigh is not only useless for sleeping, but rp-dead as well. There is absolutely nothing there, other than the card, and that could easily be put into a new dwelling on the same square.

If you mean that towards me, then yes, I didn't mean to imply that. There's lots of beautiful dwellings with no sleeping spots that I consider very worthwhile, it's just that "You see a single-room dwelling belonging to Knight Errant Articblaze" and "You're standing in a small, undecorated room." isn't so much.