Rothgar Blogs about User Written Books [Archive]

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 02:51 PM

<cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>One of the upcoming features for GU52 is a new system that will allow players to write and distribute their own books in the world of Norrath. These books look and act just like the current books in the game. You can hold them in your inventory or place them in your house or guild hall for other players to read. <a href="http://eq2dev.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/leave-your-permanent-mark-on-the-world-of-norrath/">Read More!</a></blockquote>Oh, more than plagerism and copyright concerns come to mind when I read the description.Am I right when reading the description to this and understanding that it is unmoderated and effectively instant? So, I could put ANYTHING in that book I decide to sell on the broker?</blockquote>Book text is run through the profanity filter the same as chat text if you have the filter enabled. For highly inappropriate text or copywritten material, a book can be reported and CS will take a look at it. If a player continues to cause problems with books, his ability to create/edit can be taken away similar to biography and naming priviledges.

Arianah

04-22-2009, 02:51 PM

Will there be a way to tell the difference between player-written books and books that... not sure how to word this, that are real lore of the game? I collect 'canon' books... I don't really want to add fan-fictions to my collection...

kelesia

04-22-2009, 02:52 PM

And what is to stop people from writing 'bad' things and putting them in game? Plagiarism included. And yes, will they count against item limit ? (Please say no!)But I'm adoring this from a roleplayer standpoint!

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 02:58 PM

<cite>Transen wrote:</cite><blockquote>My questions are:1. Will they count towards a players item total when placed in homes?2. Can we choose our own book covers from current ingame graphics or will they be the standard brown cover?3. What is the exact number of letters that can be entered in per book?4. Will we be able to change the font used?5. Which crafter or crafters will be able to make these empty books?</blockquote>2. You will not be able to change what the book looks like but I beleive we will have several options available with different appearances.3. There is not an exact character limit. The text is stored compressed and the limit is based on the size of the compressed text. This was done to give you the maximum amount of space possible. If we had put a limit on the uncompressed size, we would have had to pick the smallest number possible in order to account for inefficient compression.4. Not at the moment. We considered more formatting options such as text justification and font sizes/colors. But we would have basically needed to build an entire word processor into the game and create our own markup language for storing that information. It would add a lot of time to the feature so for now you can only format the text by inserting spaces. Maybe in the future we will consider other formatting options.Domino would need to answer your other questions. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 03:00 PM

<cite>Krunck@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this is a very nice idea and look forward to some fun. I am curious how people will be able to find these books on the broker though. Also once a book is done, can it be changed? And if you cahnge the master copy of the book does it change all the copies of the book?</blockquote>We will probably need to make some modifications so that broker searches would include the title of the book or perhaps the author. I'll add this to my to-do list.A book can be changed by the author at any time if its in his possession. Book text is not linked though. Making a copy makes an entire independant copy of the book. We talked about linking book text together, but this would have made it very difficult for players to transfer between worlds and take books with them.

circusgirl

04-22-2009, 03:01 PM

I believe that copying existing works into the game is actually legal under fair-use laws provided you do not sell them for real world money. Just as there are no laws to prevent me from writing the first page of Harry Potter on a napkin and posting it on my refrigerator, there are no laws against doing such in game.And SoE would be crazy if they thought they owned the copyright. A website that hosts fanfics doesn't lay claim to the works posted there.This is an incredible new feature though, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Krystara

04-22-2009, 03:02 PM

This is very exciting. I can not wait to see these implemented and play with them myself. What a very cool idea.

ArivenGemini

04-22-2009, 03:07 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>One of the upcoming features for GU52 is a new system that will allow players to write and distribute their own books in the world of Norrath. These books look and act just like the current books in the game. You can hold them in your inventory or place them in your house or guild hall for other players to read. <a href="http://eq2dev.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/leave-your-permanent-mark-on-the-world-of-norrath/">Read More!</a></blockquote>Oh, more than plagerism and copyright concerns come to mind when I read the description.Am I right when reading the description to this and understanding that it is unmoderated and effectively instant? So, I could put ANYTHING in that book I decide to sell on the broker?</blockquote>Book text is run through the profanity filter the same as chat text if you have the filter enabled. For highly inappropriate text or copywritten material, a book can be reported and CS will take a look at it. If a player continues to cause problems with books, his ability to create/edit can be taken away similar to biography and naming priviledges.</blockquote>Ok, so furry amputee [Removed for Content] is prolly not going to be a big issue in the long run. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />What about gold spam? Or other website advertising? I mean I can see a fan site putting articles in and linking back to their site for the rest.. thats good.. but what about advertising for non-related or gold selling sites?I can see some fun things I could do with these, including making it easier to get some tutorials in game for guildies who haven't mastered forums yet.. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> but still, I worry about anything thats unmoderated and in game rapidly.. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Bahann

04-22-2009, 03:18 PM

Ok we get books... great I really like the idea..... but one thing it'd be nice to get an answer on (because I can't find any official answer from SoE about this anywhere) why they never implemented musical instruments to "play" music on in the game.

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 03:22 PM

<cite>Kairah@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will there be a way to tell the difference between player-written books and books that... not sure how to word this, that are real lore of the game? I collect 'canon' books... I don't really want to add fan-fictions to my collection...</blockquote>The names of the user-written books do not change. So if the T6 user-written book is called "a leather-bound tome", they will all have that same name. The author and title is visible in the tooltip of the item, but the name of the item remains the same. So when you hover over the icon, the tooltip will look something like this:A Leather-Bound TomeTitle: Death of a DragonAuthor: RothgarIt should be pretty easy to tell the difference between a normal book and user-written book.

Domino

04-22-2009, 03:31 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Transen wrote:</cite><blockquote>My questions are:1. Will they count towards a players item total when placed in homes?2. Can we choose our own book covers from current ingame graphics or will they be the standard brown cover?3. What is the exact number of letters that can be entered in per book?4. Will we be able to change the font used?5. Which crafter or crafters will be able to make these empty books?</blockquote>2. You will not be able to change what the book looks like but I beleive we will have several options available with different appearances.3. There is not an exact character limit. The text is stored compressed and the limit is based on the size of the compressed text. This was done to give you the maximum amount of space possible. If we had put a limit on the uncompressed size, we would have had to pick the smallest number possible in order to account for inefficient compression.4. Not at the moment. We considered more formatting options such as text justification and font sizes/colors. But we would have basically needed to build an entire word processor into the game and create our own markup language for storing that information. It would add a lot of time to the feature so for now you can only format the text by inserting spaces. Maybe in the future we will consider other formatting options.Domino would need to answer your other questions. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>1. No.2. There are currently 16 different appearance/colour combinations available, all different from any currently existing in-game lore tome.5. The current plan is for sages level 50+ to be able to quest for recipes to make these books.

KerowynnKaotic

04-22-2009, 03:33 PM

Edit: ignore .. Rothgar answered while I was typing apparently. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" />

Arianah

04-22-2009, 03:43 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kairah@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will there be a way to tell the difference between player-written books and books that... not sure how to word this, that are real lore of the game? I collect 'canon' books... I don't really want to add fan-fictions to my collection...</blockquote>The names of the user-written books do not change. So if the T6 user-written book is called "a leather-bound tome", they will all have that same name. The author and title is visible in the tooltip of the item, but the name of the item remains the same. So when you hover over the icon, the tooltip will look something like this:A Leather-Bound TomeTitle: Death of a DragonAuthor: RothgarIt should be pretty easy to tell the difference between a normal book and user-written book.</blockquote>Thanks <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 03:48 PM

Very interesting addition to the game! I can see there being all sorts of great uses for the books -- greeting books in houses/guild halls, personalized gifts, books with quests/stories to facilitate RP events. Its too bad that the books won't be linked, but I can see purchasers potentially miffed if the story they purchased changed at a later date to plat seller spammage or some such <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. Perhaps there could be an option where book text could be locked/frozen when someone chooses or transfers.

Brook

04-22-2009, 03:56 PM

Maybe add a feature to lock editing once a copy is made.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 04:02 PM

Yes, Rothgar did say that copies would be locked once made. I was just thinking how it could be useful to be able to update a book periodically - say if an author released chapters of a book every few weeks, or an RP guild might want to offer a new quest or RP event that could appear in a book. But then, they could just issue a new book each time, which is probably better from the book crafters standpoint, plus people may want to keep old versions anyways.

Ventisly

04-22-2009, 04:05 PM

<cite>Eveningsong wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes, Rothgar did say that copies would be locked once made. I was just thinking how it could be useful to be able to update a book periodically - say if an author released chapters of a book every few weeks, or an RP guild might want to offer a new quest or RP event that could appear in a book. But then, they could just issue a new book each time, which is probably better from the book crafters standpoint, plus people may want to keep old versions anyways.</blockquote>Not entirely true, he said the text could be changed by the author if it was in his possesion so modifying books in houses or halls would be possible.

Ventisly

04-22-2009, 04:23 PM

Some features to consider after the initial release:- Books that look like signs/posters when placed in a house/hall!- Books that would open the in-game browser to a specific URL (similar to how the Ale-stained Cloak of the Gathering works). This would allow direct linking to pages within a guild website for things like recruitment, raid setups, rules, strats and whatever. Sure, this could be abused with links to inappropriate material, but it won't be too hard to put inappropriate material in the books either. Community reporting and banning abusers will be the best method.- Ability to restrict who view certain books to friends/trustees. Difficult to implement perhaps on a per item level but would be nice to restrict certain books to guildies only. The ability to link to a webpage feature above would be a better solution to this.

Goaldan

04-22-2009, 04:23 PM

Couple questions are coming to mind:1) Is there going to be a limit on the number of books you can make? If so, will be tied per character or per account?2) If I make a 'copy' of a book for a guildmate, but then decide later "Wow, this story really stinks" and delete the original book, what will happen to my guildmate's copy?

Zorastiz

04-22-2009, 04:31 PM

My question is simpleWHY??This makes no sense to me.

ArivenGemini

04-22-2009, 04:42 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>My question is simpleWHY??This makes no sense to me.</blockquote>Because, as shown by people here, some people would like it? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> plus its nice to be able to contribue something lasting to the gaming world? Because people want to publish their norrathian fan fiction in game?Lots of reasons.. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Rashaak

04-22-2009, 04:48 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>My question is simpleWHY??This makes no sense to me.</blockquote>This I know has been something people have been wanting to see. Especially from the RP community. There are some benefits to it for guilds as well. You wouldn't need to go to a guild website just to read their Guild Rules, Guild Charters, etc. A Player interested in joining a particular guild can just find their guild hall or book on the broker and be able to find the info they need.My only concern is regarding plagiarism and such...but seems those questions are answered.

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 04:56 PM

<cite>Goaldan@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Couple questions are coming to mind:1) Is there going to be a limit on the number of books you can make? If so, will be tied per character or per account?2) If I make a 'copy' of a book for a guildmate, but then decide later "Wow, this story really stinks" and delete the original book, what will happen to my guildmate's copy?</blockquote>There is no limit to the number of books you can create or own. However, since the books are their own unique objects with their own copies of text, they cannot be stackable. They could potentially take up a lot of inventory space if you wanted to carry them around with you. Our thinking is that most people will place them in their house or guild hall for long-term storage.If you copy the book and give it away, you have no way of recalling that book or changing it later. If the author still had control over it once they gave it away, this would make it difficult to sell the books if the buyer didnt trust the author.

Rijacki

04-22-2009, 04:58 PM

WOW! Something I never thought I would see in EQ2! Something I never thought I would see in any game other than possibly Second Life.But in EQ2 where, for the first four years, were were constantly being told about the limitations of the database being why new house items couldn't be added and why multiple other things couldn't be added or changed in any way.WOW. Simply wow.So many players have been asking for player written books since the start of the game, it's really nice to see them being added in now <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I'm really glad the dev team has been working to stretch the base code of the game to encompass more enhancements and innovative effects.(I'm also glad it's tied to crafting and not to SC, but that's another thing entirely.)

Firnbarion

04-22-2009, 05:07 PM

HiGreat addition! Thank you - one point less on my wish list. Finally I will be able to keep track of the Lifes of my Chars in a book. I am really looking forward to it! Thank you again. One point though I would like to add: Keep it simple. Do not allow links to www. If players use their writing creativity things like that won't be needed.F.

Sheira

04-22-2009, 05:13 PM

This is a feature in Ultima Online as well and I've always liked it.

einar4

04-22-2009, 05:13 PM

This sounds like a pretty neat idea. I can imagine a 250 volume version of "The Hitchhikers' Guide to Norrath" being distributed around, but a pity that none of the tome styles will be able to display "Don't Panic" in nice friendly letters on the cover. Aside from the joke and the sub-reference... Since there will be title and author in the tooltip, a nice addition would be a short blurb, say 32 characters or so, added to the tooltip also.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 05:21 PM

Aye, a short synopsis of the book in the tooltip would be nice. I can't recall if you can read books through the examine window if you are looking at them on the broker. If you can't, I'd say a tooltip synopsis would be almost a requirement, otherwise no one would easily be able to judge whether they wanted to own it or not, beyond just the graphic.Another thought -- although only the author can edit a written book, could a purchaser of a book decide to just erase a book they bought and use it to create their own?

Sedenten

04-22-2009, 05:29 PM

As a long-time Sage, thank you for putting something like this into our hands! I just hope stuff like this keeps getting added and expanded on in the future, as even "fluff" features like this really help make the game more enjoyable.

Tiak

04-22-2009, 05:46 PM

I can't help but wonder what is there to prevent other people from copying our work? I could see someone buying a copy of a book that is selling well, retyping it up in their own volume, and reselling it, undercutting the author.

Zarador

04-22-2009, 05:48 PM

So who else thought about writing a "Dummies" Series?

Isisalthea

04-22-2009, 05:51 PM

I look forward to reading some of our great authors of Norrath. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 05:53 PM

<cite>Tiak wrote:</cite><blockquote>I can't help but wonder what is there to prevent other people from copying our work? I could see someone buying a copy of a book that is selling well, retyping it up in their own volume, and reselling it, undercutting the author. </blockquote>There really isnt unfortunately. And Customer Service is not going to be able to act as Norrathian Copyright Enforcement either. So you will need to keep this in mind when trying to write books for profit. The primary goal of this feature is for people to be creative and to distribute their creativity. If some people find a way to make money from it, thats great. But we aren't going to be able to do anything to protect someone's investment should something like this happen.

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 05:55 PM

<cite>Zarador wrote:</cite><blockquote>So who else thought about writing a "Dummies" Series?</blockquote>"Crafting for Ogres""Raiding for Ogres"BTW, my character is an ogre. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Seffrid

04-22-2009, 06:10 PM

I think this is a great idea, and a real boon to those of us who like the sense of immersion and distinctiveness we derive from this game more than most others, at a time when those qualities are seen as being under threat in other directions. Kudos to the devs for coming up with this.Guilds will especially be able to make good use of this, with a guild guide setting out the guild's charter and general information for new members as well, I would suggest, as initial recruitment quests for those who believe in offering prospective recruits more than just "/tell Seffrid lol wanna join my guild m8?".Of course, the cynics among us might ask whether, now that the database is clearly established as having room for an unlimited number of books with limitless characters in them, it might also be found to have enough room for a couple of additional character slots <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />?

DreadPirate

04-22-2009, 06:14 PM

What about pictures?There are some book in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 06:17 PM

<cite>Seffrid wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this is a great idea, and a real boon to those of us who like the sense of immersion and distinctiveness we derive from this game more than most others, at a time when those qualities are seen as being under threat in other directions. Kudos to the devs for coming up with this.Guilds will especially be able to make good use of this, with a guild guide setting out the guild's charter and general information for new members as well, I would suggest, as initial recruitment quests for those who believe in offering prospective recruits more than just "/tell Seffrid lol wanna join my guild m8?".Of course, the cynics among us might ask whether, now that the database is clearly established as having room for an unlimited number of books with limitless characters in them, it might also be found to have enough room for a couple of additional character slots <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />?</blockquote>No one ever said limitless characters in books. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> There most certainly is a limit. The jury is still out as far as how many books someone will try to put into a house or guild hall. Every book that you add will be a little more memory that the house will have to consume. A large quantity of books could certainly impact performance. We'll just have to watch and see how it goes and tweak from there.

Mikai

04-22-2009, 06:17 PM

I have to say I love this idea. I already have ideas. /evil laughAlong the lines of "User Written", would there be possibility in the near future of, say, wall-mounted bulliten boards?I'm also really curious about the appearances of these books. Are they all going to be like the upright books one might put on a bookshelf or would there be some that might have an appearance like the Kobold Lore and Legend (Open book)?(I know.......detail-oriented might be an understatement for me...lol)

GorgukGrimmfist

04-22-2009, 06:48 PM

Slightly off topic but, would it be against the EULA to make a ingame publishing company using strictly in game currency? It really isn't different than someone buying a pattern in channel for plat, both ideas basically offer an ingame service in exchange for plat....

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 06:49 PM

<cite>Imkai@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have to say I love this idea. I already have ideas. /evil laughAlong the lines of "User Written", would there be possibility in the near future of, say, wall-mounted bulliten boards?I'm also really curious about the appearances of these books. Are they all going to be like the upright books one might put on a bookshelf or would there be some that might have an appearance like the Kobold Lore and Legend (Open book)?(I know.......detail-oriented might be an understatement for me...lol)</blockquote>Domino has created a variety of book recipes that will create different looking books. They will all behave the same, but have different appearances whether you want a book that goes in a shelf or sits flat on a table, etc.I love the idea of a user book that looks like a bulletin-board. I'm not sure if that would confuse people into thinking it was a market board, but I'll mention it to Domino.

Xalmat

04-22-2009, 06:51 PM

This is all fine and dandy, but what good is putting out a book on a single server if no one else on any other server can read it? I want a way to distribute my books on other servers (and for me to read books on other servers) without creating a character and tracking them down.In that case I'm not concerned about making a profit, I just want people to read my work.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 06:59 PM

There is always the Traveller's Tales forum. In fact, it would probably be appropriate for someone to have a thread chronicling their in-game books.

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 06:59 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is all fine and dandy, but what good is putting out a book on a single server if no one else on any other server can read it? I want a way to distribute my books on other servers (and for me to read books on other servers) without creating a character and tracking them down.In that case I'm not concerned about making a profit, I just want people to read my work.</blockquote>Cross-world books are probably not going to happen unless they move with a player's inventory. I would never suggest to J.K Rowling that Norrath be the distribution medium for her next Harry Potter book. In the same respect it sounds like you are serious enough about publishing your work that you would do better to use a website or some other method outside of the game.Maybe someone will decide to build a website to compile books from all the worlds and allow people to search them and read them online. Might be cool to even have a rating system for books and authors allowing users to leave comments. This type of thing is well beyond the scope of what we would build in-game, but certainly sounds like a neat idea for someone to explore with a fan-site.

Fendaria

04-22-2009, 06:59 PM

Can books be specified as being written in a specific in game language the author knows? What about adding in a guild specific secret code language so only your guildmembers can read the book?Fendaria

ArivenGemini

04-22-2009, 07:01 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Imkai@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have to say I love this idea. I already have ideas. /evil laughAlong the lines of "User Written", would there be possibility in the near future of, say, wall-mounted bulliten boards?I'm also really curious about the appearances of these books. Are they all going to be like the upright books one might put on a bookshelf or would there be some that might have an appearance like the Kobold Lore and Legend (Open book)?(I know.......detail-oriented might be an understatement for me...lol)</blockquote>Domino has created a variety of book recipes that will create different looking books. They will all behave the same, but have different appearances whether you want a book that goes in a shelf or sits flat on a table, etc.I love the idea of a user book that looks like a bulletin-board. I'm not sure if that would confuse people into thinking it was a market board, but I'll mention it to Domino.</blockquote>Maybe a couple variants? like one with a big poster on it that says "INFO", one with "RULES" or "Important"Plus, even if they DID think it was a market board at first, I am sure that they would figure it out when the book opened. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

GorgukGrimmfist

04-22-2009, 07:02 PM

Xalmat

04-22-2009, 07:09 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is all fine and dandy, but what good is putting out a book on a single server if no one else on any other server can read it? I want a way to distribute my books on other servers (and for me to read books on other servers) without creating a character and tracking them down.In that case I'm not concerned about making a profit, I just want people to read my work.</blockquote>Cross-world books are probably not going to happen unless they move with a player's inventory. I would never suggest to J.K Rowling that Norrath be the distribution medium for her next Harry Potter book. In the same respect it sounds like you are serious enough about publishing your work that you would do better to use a website or some other method outside of the game.Maybe someone will decide to build a website to compile books from all the worlds and allow people to search them and read them online. Might be cool to even have a rating system for books and authors allowing users to leave comments. This type of thing is well beyond the scope of what we would build in-game, but certainly sounds like a neat idea for someone to explore with a fan-site.</blockquote>Here's an idea to fix this obvious flaw then! Because not being able to distribute books across servers is a flaw in design.You write a book, bring it to a book publisher in-game (an NPC), and that book is permanently added to that NPC's inventory (to sell for a nominal fee, perhaps 1 gold) on all servers.Then when you want to purchase that book, you talk to his distributor (another NPC), and a broker-style window opens up to allow you to search for player-written books, and only player-written books. All fees collected from this would go to the NPC, much like the broker charges a commission.In this way, you can write to your hearts content, and spread your work across the entire player base, not just a single server.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 07:10 PM

<cite>GorgukGrimmfist wrote:</cite><blockquote>Slightly off topic but, would it be against the EULA to make a ingame publishing company using strictly in game currency? It really isn't different than someone buying a pattern in channel for plat, both ideas basically offer an ingame service in exchange for plat....</blockquote>Isn't that basically what sages will be doing when they craft the blank books? It sounds like all you will need to do is type the text into the blank book once, then copies can be automatically made by the author (I'm curious exactly how this will work, will it require blank books as components?), rather than each book being "published" (i.e., typed) individually. Other than as a purely roleplaying aspect, I can't see any real market for an in-game publisher. If an author has to type in the book text once anyways, it may as well be directly into the blank book, rather than pay someone to re-type it all. Also, I imagine that the author will be automatically filled in as the character name that types the text, so authors would have to do it themselves anyways. Hmm, I wonder how long until they hit Test so we can play <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 07:11 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is all fine and dandy, but what good is putting out a book on a single server if no one else on any other server can read it? I want a way to distribute my books on other servers (and for me to read books on other servers) without creating a character and tracking them down.In that case I'm not concerned about making a profit, I just want people to read my work.</blockquote>Cross-world books are probably not going to happen unless they move with a player's inventory. I would never suggest to J.K Rowling that Norrath be the distribution medium for her next Harry Potter book. In the same respect it sounds like you are serious enough about publishing your work that you would do better to use a website or some other method outside of the game.Maybe someone will decide to build a website to compile books from all the worlds and allow people to search them and read them online. Might be cool to even have a rating system for books and authors allowing users to leave comments. This type of thing is well beyond the scope of what we would build in-game, but certainly sounds like a neat idea for someone to explore with a fan-site.</blockquote>Here's an idea to fix this obvious flaw then! Because not being able to distribute books across servers is a flaw in design.You write a book, bring it to a book publisher in-game (an NPC), and that book is permanently added to that NPC's inventory (to sell for a nominal fee, perhaps 1 gold) on all servers.Then when you want to purchase that book, you talk to his distributor (another NPC), and a broker-style window opens up to allow you to search for player-written books, and only player-written books. All fees collected from this would go to the NPC, much like the broker charges a commission.In this way, you can write to your hearts content, and spread your work across the entire player base, not just a single server.</blockquote>That's an interesting idea. The only thing is that it does take away much of the book crafting market from sages if people only need a blank book once to create the original, and not to make additional copies.

GorgukGrimmfist

04-22-2009, 07:13 PM

Can make a proxy toon on each server to be the "author" for that server, with the title page giving credit to the author.

GrunEQ

04-22-2009, 07:23 PM

Love this idea! It's nice to get excited about an in game addition. I can't wait to see the choices we get to choose. I am also interested if these books can be made in racial languages?

Xalmat

04-22-2009, 07:25 PM

<cite>GrunEQ wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am also interested if these books can be made in racial languages?</blockquote>Now that would be interesting. Racial languages are sorely underutilized <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Deson

04-22-2009, 07:25 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>No one ever said limitless characters in books. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> There most certainly is a limit. The jury is still out as far as how many books someone will try to put into a house or guild hall. Every book that you add will be a little more memory that the house will have to consume. A large quantity of books could certainly impact performance. We'll just have to watch and see how it goes and tweak from there.</blockquote>This a good time to suggest that bookcases become containers that only load the content when that particular case is selected?

Zarador

04-22-2009, 07:42 PM

At the risk of being flamed....What if you were to write a book, then submit it to the "Librarian" in a "Grand Library" at which point the book would, after "review" become a part of the "Libraries of Norrath".They could be read there for a small fee or purchased at the writers suggested fee. Perhaps a "Book Broker" that only deals in player written books could trade these rare finds... Maybe the writer receives a percentage on the books read that they authored. Imagine getting a "royalty" payment when you check the library.There could be interesting aspects to this system as perhaps a "Best Seller" or "Most Read" list could be on hand based on books read and purchased. Maybe even contests where the "Most read/purchased" book that month becomes a part of the "All Server" section of the Library noting the Author/Server submitting the book.Imagine even further if we were to have a "Librarian Guide" (surely there are many out there that would be happy and willing to take on that role) that would put the books in some sort of catagory making the task of finding a book of interest far more simple. They review the book, place it in the proper catagory and you wind up with a functional building where people may actually congregate!

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 07:45 PM

<cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is all fine and dandy, but what good is putting out a book on a single server if no one else on any other server can read it? I want a way to distribute my books on other servers (and for me to read books on other servers) without creating a character and tracking them down.In that case I'm not concerned about making a profit, I just want people to read my work.</blockquote>Cross-world books are probably not going to happen unless they move with a player's inventory. I would never suggest to J.K Rowling that Norrath be the distribution medium for her next Harry Potter book. In the same respect it sounds like you are serious enough about publishing your work that you would do better to use a website or some other method outside of the game.Maybe someone will decide to build a website to compile books from all the worlds and allow people to search them and read them online. Might be cool to even have a rating system for books and authors allowing users to leave comments. This type of thing is well beyond the scope of what we would build in-game, but certainly sounds like a neat idea for someone to explore with a fan-site.</blockquote>Here's an idea to fix this obvious flaw then! Because not being able to distribute books across servers is a flaw in design.You write a book, bring it to a book publisher in-game (an NPC), and that book is permanently added to that NPC's inventory (to sell for a nominal fee, perhaps 1 gold) on all servers.Then when you want to purchase that book, you talk to his distributor (another NPC), and a broker-style window opens up to allow you to search for player-written books, and only player-written books. All fees collected from this would go to the NPC, much like the broker charges a commission.In this way, you can write to your hearts content, and spread your work across the entire player base, not just a single server.</blockquote>I guess we will have to agree to disagree that this is a design flaw. There is currently nothing else in the game that persists across multiple worlds. Our worlds talk to completely different databases and often are located in different data centers. Its not impossible to do something like this because we have to transfer data between worlds when players do server transfers. But this requires an external system that is another point of failure and something that the game team does not have control over. We'll keep this idea in mind, but no promises.

Eveningsong

04-22-2009, 07:56 PM

<blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>No one ever said limitless characters in books. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> There most certainly is a limit. The jury is still out as far as how many books someone will try to put into a house or guild hall. Every book that you add will be a little more memory that the house will have to consume. A large quantity of books could certainly impact performance. We'll just have to watch and see how it goes and tweak from there.</blockquote></blockquote>Actually, when we were testing guild halls, more than one person reported hitting a finite limit at 1,000 books (this was on top of the standard hall item limit) ... I can only imagine the lag lol.

Rothgar

04-22-2009, 08:01 PM

Just to hit on some of the other questions...Copying booksYou will be required to have a blank book in order to make a copy of an existing book. You right-click the existing book and choose "Copy". This will turn your cursor into a blue arrow just like transmuting or adorning an item. Then you click a blank book to turn it into a copy. The copy process will not allow you to click on a non-blank book. This is to keep you from accidentally overwriting a book since they might all look similar.Other LanguagesCurrently all books are written in "common" so that all players will be able to read your book. We could potentially add the ability for you to specify a certain language that you already know and then require the reader to have that language. But I'm not sure if this is something we could do before the feature launches. However, I'll add it to my list of ideas.Author NameThe author name is automatically tied to the person that wrote in the book. There is not a way to make it look like another author. We specifically did it this way because we didn't want people to be able to distribute books under another player's name.Bookcases / LibrariansThis is something we definitely want to do, but will probably be a future addition. I'd love to see a librarian hireling for your guild hall that will allow you to search all the books that are currently placed in the hall and even allow you to read them without running to the physical book and clicking it. I also think some storage mechanism for books that cuts down on the item count is a good idea but also something else we'll need to look at in the future.

Oakum

04-22-2009, 08:27 PM

What I havent seen or missed is can we copy and paste unformated text to it from notepad or word, whatever.I like this idea. Now the guilidies will be able to read the guild charter or maybe be able to copy and paste choice dev statements, updates notes, both live and test.Not to mention helpful books like others have mentioned.Lost Heroes charter by Oakum.Basic EQ2 shortcuts.Posions, potions, totems and temporary adornments by Fairheart.Adornments by Fairheart.It will be a great addition of the new "must read" area of the guild hall, lol.

ProperPiper

04-22-2009, 08:31 PM

I have many ideas what I can do with these. I'm looking forward to seeing them in game.There is a similar feature in Ultima Online and though there are those who will abuse anything put in game, overall they were very useful and a nice addition to the circulating lore of the game. I myself owned copies of books that had been written by players that were considered rare finds. Some of the books were also later "published" and available at npc vendors. My guild used them for everything from charters and rulebooks to guides for various things. I kept a journal for a long time chronicling my adventures. In that game, you could go in and edit and others could until you used an item to "lock" it. Then all that could be done other than reading was copying.

Valsehna

04-22-2009, 08:35 PM

I, and my guild for that matter, have always had great interest in writing our lore stories, histories, biographies, family tales, poetry, and the like.To be able to get all these into the game in this way is, therefore exciting and a great addition to the game world.Our guild hall library will now have a wonderful collection of literature beyond the currently available.Even better, we will have different looks available.So, bravo!There is just one additional tweak that would be pretty nice. I know we cannot sit on chairs, but it would be really nice to have an animation in which while we are reading our book, we are shown to be reading a book.Standing reading a book...or sitting cross legged on the floor, or even lounging in a pile of specifically created "reading pillows" leaning on an elbow and reading.

Galldora

04-22-2009, 08:39 PM

Oh wow! I love the idea of this feature! This is fantastic, can't wait to use it!Edited to say - also love the suggestion of a book-reading animation. We need more animations like that; they're so nice for role-playing. (For instance, I'd like to see the drinking-from-stein animation whenever we consume an alcoholic beverage.)

Xalmat

04-22-2009, 08:40 PM

<cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote>What I havent seen or missed is can we copy and paste unformated text to it from notepad or word, whatever.</blockquote>That functionality already exists in EQ2. Ctrl + C to copy, Ctrl + V to paste, both into and out of EQ2.

Zehl_Ice-Fire

04-22-2009, 09:08 PM

Will I get banned if I write adult themed stories?I bet this was asked but I don't have time to look for it, in saying they are just like game books, if I edit it, does it auto edit all the books copied from that one?

Deson

04-22-2009, 09:08 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just to hit on some of the other questions...Bookcases / LibrariansThis is something we definitely want to do, but will probably be a future addition. I'd love to see a librarian hireling for your guild hall that will allow you to search all the books that are currently placed in the hall and even allow you to read them without running to the physical book and clicking it. I also think some storage mechanism for books that cuts down on the item count is a good idea but also something else we'll need to look at in the future.</blockquote>*Scratches it off his suggestions to repeat*Thanks!

Nakaru-Nitepaw

04-22-2009, 09:53 PM

I love this feature. My question though is can i write a book in Ratongan? XD

Noaani

04-22-2009, 10:25 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>My question is simpleWHY??This makes no sense to me.</blockquote>I have never RP'd in this game, and never plan to. Yet, looking at the content in the game, there are very few RP tools avalible to those who do. RP content is lacking even moer than raid content is (though I have no idea how many RP'ers are in the game).This addition is basically the equivlent of fiction literature in Norrath, with the in game books being (mostly) the non fiction. It gives players a chance to write down and share their stories in game, mostly for roleplaying purposes.

Noaani

04-22-2009, 10:30 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Other LanguagesCurrently all books are written in "common" so that all players will be able to read your book. We could potentially add the ability for you to specify a certain language that you already know and then require the reader to have that language. But I'm not sure if this is something we could do before the feature launches. However, I'll add it to my list of ideas.</blockquote>Since other languages are simply different fonts, would it be possible at all to leave a book written in a different language in the particular font that language uses?This is to provide for different appearances in book when being read, as with no font or format options' books will all look visually similar.For a player that doesn't understand the language it is written in, simply display it as written, in the appropriate font. For a player that does understand the language, display it in the same font, but with a "translation" underneath it that is a regular font.

stavery

04-22-2009, 10:53 PM

and with this update Norrath erotica is born

Aneova

04-23-2009, 12:38 AM

I have only one question: When can we start testing it?!?!

SilkenKidden

04-23-2009, 12:51 AM

Will we be able to place the books in our houses? I just saw the answer to my question is yes. Wow. (Oooops. Sorry. That just slipped out.)This could be used as the basis of a bb system between trustees of a house or a guild. Please, give us the right to open our books up for editing by the public so we can place one by the door for a guest log. After reading other notes here, I just realized this is also the beginning of the personal journal I always wanted in the game. Notes to self: Make level 79 spells for Duskie and Alessi. So and So hangs out at the such and such (for when you finish the zzz quest). . Hope we can carry multpiles of our self written books around, because I'm sure to run out of space.

caffe1n3

04-23-2009, 01:28 AM

<cite>Silken@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>Please, give us the right to open our books up for editing by the public so we can place one by the door for a guest log.After reading other notes here, I just realized this is also the beginning of the personal journal I always wanted in the game. Notes to self: Make level 79 spells for Duskie and Alessi. So and So hangs out at the such and such (for when you finish the zzz quest). . Hope we can carry multpiles of our self written books around, because I'm sure to run out of space. </blockquote>I love both of these ideas. A guest log would be awesome. Perhaps a podium to place the book on?A personal journal would be awesome too. I lose track of what I'm doing so often!

SilkenKidden

04-23-2009, 01:33 AM

<cite>Deson wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>No one ever said limitless characters in books. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> There most certainly is a limit. The jury is still out as far as how many books someone will try to put into a house or guild hall. Every book that you add will be a little more memory that the house will have to consume. A large quantity of books could certainly impact performance. We'll just have to watch and see how it goes and tweak from there.</blockquote>This a good time to suggest that bookcases become containers that only load the content when that particular case is selected?</blockquote>That is an excellet idea. Prior to clicking, the bookcase would just be a graphic. Very good idea.

Domino

04-23-2009, 02:41 AM

<cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Domino has created a variety of book recipes that will create different looking books. They will all behave the same, but have different appearances whether you want a book that goes in a shelf or sits flat on a table, etc.I love the idea of a user book that looks like a bulletin-board. I'm not sure if that would confuse people into thinking it was a market board, but I'll mention it to Domino.</blockquote>Maybe a couple variants? like one with a big poster on it that says "INFO", one with "RULES" or "Important"Plus, even if they DID think it was a market board at first, I am sure that they would figure it out when the book opened. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Different appearances are certainly something that we can look into adding at a later date. We have so far tried to avoid using existing appearances for these, since that could be confusing (e.g. if a user-writeable bulletin board looked like a market board), so new types of object would require a little additional work from the art department, therefore not something we can add immediately, but should be doable if it seems like a feature many people would like. I'm sure that once we see how everyone is reacting to the new books and how they are being used in-game, we'll get lots more ideas for future improvements that we can plan. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Barq Bandit

04-23-2009, 02:43 AM

This is bloody fantastic.This is the reason I've stuck with EQ2 for so long. You keep trying to think of ways to provide players with the means to entertain themselves that don't necessarily have anything to do with DPS or weapon delays. Excellent, excellent addition. Big-time kudos to everyone who worked on any aspect of this new feature. The mind reels with the possibilities!I, too, would definitely like some sort of wall-hanging sign or noticeboard that I could, for example, place over sales containers so that players could mouse over each and get a title, or a more detailed summary by actually clicking on them using this system. I could also see using this to display guild charters up on the wall in guild halls, or my Provisioner's specials of the day in her eatery. That'd be grand!Setting languages for the books would be a great feature, as well! Excellent roleplay detail. There's no reason why an Erudite mage with many secrets would write his knowledge in Common. He'd choose some very obscure language of course!Another feature I can think of for this is Frostfell cards. It would be SO NEAT to be able to create a card with this system, choosing from one of several frostfell images (perhaps a built in feature of the various recipes for them) and write in our own greetings and well wishings. They'd have to be made with Frostfell stuff, though, and none of the hard to find items, as I'm sure folks would want to send out a number of them to various friends in the game. I would also like to see a cheaply, made (common handcrafted) opened letter version of this, like a loose page of parchment or an unrolled scroll, that I can send through the mail, and the recipient can place in their home as part of the ambient detail: a love letter, or perhaps a letter from a friend or loved one that is on a journey. To be able to put such detail in a home would be unbelieveably cool.Book containers that look like filled bookcases would be spectacular! Ideally, for each model, we'd want to have three or four variations on the shelved books (take a look at Ebony Wizard's and Ebony Warlock's Bookcases for a good example of what I mean) so that a library seems more natural and not just the same filled bookcase over and over and over.I heartily thank the involved dev team members for working on this. This blows my mind, and convinces me (yet again) that you guys really, really love this game you all work so hard on.

Moltove

04-23-2009, 03:23 AM

As for distributing cross server, the best they can do is give you a maybe. Giving them suggestions on what they could have done is good, and helps for future projects, but often times when they announce a project like this, something of that magnitude is just something that can't be completed on launch.A substitute method would be going on each server and making new chars with the same name. Name already taken? Guess your name wasn't that original, but you can always put on the title bar "Originally written by: ... Translated and rewritten by: ..." and have that character be a Bard that tells of your character's accomplishments or some such. that's the best I could come up with. but hopefully within a year or two there can be something neat implemented to fix this.I'm in full agreement for the wall-hanging books. Even more so, I'd LOVE note/pages that are editable, even if they can't hold as much text/characters. Nothing says I love you like a note tacked to a pillow that says "I love you, come downstairs and make me some breakfast, wench". This isn't so lovely or subtle when the person waking up has to read a book =PViewing restrictions seem like a fun addition, too.Writing in the various languages would be the frosting on this delicious cake (of which was not a lie, I hope). Seeing as on my computer the seperate languages are just a seperate font (and I think there's a lot of in game signs and quest notes that are written in different languages), I just can't wait to see this part as well. Unfortunately, when going through the fonts, I could have sworn some of the fonts were repeats of each other.Furthermore, I'd love to see editable tool tips. This would help give a short description and help you decide if you'd like to buy the book (since you can't read it from the broker)

ashen1973

04-23-2009, 05:36 AM

This is a great idea, an idea that seems so simple initially but has such great scope to improve the game experience of many people.I dont role-play, but can see the huge benefit to those that do.I do enjoy fantasy fiction , so i will be reading soem of the works others publish ingame.I look forward to copying the guides and walkthroughs I write for my guild website to a library avaiable ingame.Many thanks for this addition, I cant wait to start using it

madha

04-23-2009, 07:50 AM

How about a book store in the major cities that sell user made books and pass the profits via mail to the writers of the books.

Brook

04-23-2009, 08:06 AM

With this being one of the "better" ideas being added in quite a while, I have to wonder what the price we will pay is truly going to be.You guys don't have a reputation for giving good things without something equally as suk around the corner to balance things out... or it would seem.Oh and you guys really need to fix the forums, it ate another post of mine concerning Smed bucks and there was no warning, ban, or message that it was removed for a reason, just gone. Look into that for me would ya.

Reapicheap

04-23-2009, 08:07 AM

<cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I believe that copying existing works into the game is actually legal under fair-use laws provided you do not sell them for real world money. Just as there are no laws to prevent me from writing the first page of Harry Potter on a napkin and posting it on my refrigerator, there are no laws against doing such in game.</blockquote>While you re technically correct (the best kind of correct to be), the fact that, no matter how much it is against the rules, gold selling does go on in EQ2 and therefore, a case could be made against SOE and the player posting the item that they were selling it for real money by an overzealous author and her rabid lawyers who sue young fans for copyright infringement because they put up a wiki about her works... Yes, you know who I'm talking about. In fact, I just made their argument for them, and the argument for every lawyer who represents anyone whose artisitic work anyone might be thinking of posting in game. SOE will have to verify that every single time a copy of that book is sold, it isn't bought by someone who buys gold and/or sold by a gold seller as a method of gold transferrence. This sounds like a lot of headache, and SOE would be better off just making a ban on published works being transposed into in-game books right now before they get started. Original works only should be the rule.I know I can't wait to start working on my original series "A Fae and his Minion: The Adventures of Keileitheilei the Conjurer". It's very much a buggy story... err... buddy story.

Terron

04-23-2009, 09:10 AM

This is a very interesting idea. I would be tempted to have my troll alt Tuknuk write a series of cookbooks - Halfling Cooking, Gnome Cooking, Froglok Cooking etc.. But finding the time will be difficult.

feldon30

04-23-2009, 09:31 AM

I would just really like to request that it be possible for at least some of these books to be "text linked" to the original. I realize this would mean that if you do a server transfer, that the book would point to a nonexistent record. Perhaps a right-click option on each book would be 'Save a Copy' which would make another non-linked copy. You would have these two tags:This is a magical book which will be updated any time the author changes the original.This is your personal edition of a book written by %A. It is no longer magically linked to the original. Being able to write and maintain a Journal, Guild Rules book, Raid Progress book, or Guild Epic Weapon Progress type book or some other document that anyone in the game can read and see the latest, updated version would be fantastic.And if someone is going to do a server transfer, then they would be asked to 'Save a Copy' of each of their player-written books. Or this could be part of the server transfer script.

Minoko

04-23-2009, 10:14 AM

Big big thank you. This is a great idea and I can see many cool uses for this. Can't wait!

Reapicheap

04-23-2009, 10:16 AM

<cite>Terron@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is a very interesting idea. I would be tempted to have my troll alt Tuknuk write a series of cookbooks - Halfling Cooking, Gnome Cooking, Froglok Cooking etc.. But finding the time will be difficult.</blockquote>You can't go wrong with classic names like "How to serve ..." for a cookbook. The irony value is just too good.

Rijacki

04-23-2009, 10:23 AM

<cite>madhatr wrote:</cite><blockquote>How about a book store in the major cities that sell user made books and pass the profits via mail to the writers of the books.</blockquote>That would be a wonderful thing for a player to set up as their business.

Silerua

04-23-2009, 10:34 AM

I absolutely loved this feature back in Ultima Online, not for any purpose, but for fun. I believe that a lot of EQ2ers will have a lot of fun with this and for that, I'm glad. I will not collect 'non-canon' books for my in-game library, but that doesn't mean I don't love the idea and won't find ways to utilize them. d:However, I agree that if you want people to read without you actively seeking them out and handing them a copy (anyone else having images of players standing on docks throwing books at random passerbys?), as someone suggested, the Traveller's Forum is good for that. Server-wide, or even game-wide distribution seems risky and not entirely necessary. Plus, I selfishly don't want it. d:<I, personally, will be using at least one book as a "card catalog" (except a "book catalog" or something like that) for my library. I am really looking forward to that considering I've organized mine by subject matter and not title, and hope that there will be a tome style that will be an open-book style that I can set on the Librarian's desk. It'd be wicked if it even had a little platform to tilt it (like how dictionaries or encyclopedias in libraries have their own little special platform) so it's not just sitting flat but looks distinct and 'important,' but that's wishful thinking. (: I have some other ideas for how I might use one, but I'm not entirely settled on them yet.I am both happy and sad that these tome appearances will be different from real books. On one hand, it sets them apart and keeps them distinct, which makes me happy. On the other hand, and this makes me sad (if you couldn't guess), there are so many books that have the "stack o' books" or that same ol', same ol' greyish boring book appearance... it would be lovely to have more variety (And not more of that weird ghostly Phylactery book - it looks so funny sitting between regular books! *lol*). But perhaps there are just only a few printing companies in Norrath, and they don't like to branch out their book styles. (;Thank you for listening to everyone's concerns and answering questions and not just bombshelling this on us and quietly sitting back. It is really appreciated when devs are involved in the community. (: Good luck with it and trying to balance all the demands and requests of everyone about this new feature.

feldon30

04-23-2009, 10:34 AM

<cite>Fendaria wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about adding in a guild specific secret code language so only your guildmembers can read the book?</blockquote>Whoa, that would be AWESOME. Add a guild flag. They must be a member of that guild to read the book.

Loxus

04-23-2009, 10:34 AM

Will you be able to read them before you buy them? And what will be the process for reporting inapropriate material?I can easily see "Selling Raid strats for Palace - 400 PP Pst... oh it contains random_Exploit_01 for X named." Or on the flip side....nothing at all.

Bratface

04-23-2009, 10:40 AM

While I am not a writer I really like this new idea, I might even get my daughter to write something for me to make books out of =)Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.

Zhadowsee

04-23-2009, 11:27 AM

I have not read through the multitude of posts and pages, but how will these books be monitored should players wish to type something not appropriate for younger audiences? I'm sure some players may place a disclaimer, but others may just be vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. Or they may make a book slandering another player. (Or is it libel? I forget.)Will there be an option to report something that's inappropriate? I'm assuming the petition command is the answer.Another question I have, and again I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before, will there be an option to upload a screen shot? I envision a page of the book discussing the raid against the Epic creature. The next page shows a screen shot of the battle. Will this be available?

Donilla

04-23-2009, 11:35 AM

This whole idea is exciting, I can't wait. I already keep a log for my characters and try to post them on my blog (I'm not much of a blogger so there isnt a lot, most are still in my head) and I've had the hardest time editing my profile to fit. I'm already thinking of what will go in my first books. Deliawyn's Elven Cookbook, Donilla's Greatest Adventures, Daladriel's Visit to the Assylum..... endless <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Dracythis

04-23-2009, 11:46 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>One of the upcoming features for GU52 is a new system that will allow players to write and distribute their own books in the world of Norrath. These books look and act just like the current books in the game. You can hold them in your inventory or place them in your house or guild hall for other players to read. <a href="http://eq2dev.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/leave-your-permanent-mark-on-the-world-of-norrath/">Read More!</a></blockquote>One very important question I have..... Will there be an option to import a Word document to "create" your book? The reason I ask is because I would hate the idea of sitting in-game typing my story into a small confined window.

feldon30

04-23-2009, 11:56 AM

I'm sure just like in-game e-mail, biography, etc. you will be able to Paste unformatted text. You may have to paste a page at a time though. I would use Wordpad so you don't get Word's gobbledygook formatting tags.

VTOReality

04-23-2009, 12:20 PM

Great idea with tons of possibilities. Looking forward to seeing this available in world. In a blog post I was just writing, it occurred to me that it might open up the possibility for a new tradeskill someday: the author, printer and publisher.

Reapicheap

04-23-2009, 12:39 PM

Jushara

04-23-2009, 01:03 PM

YAY! ^_^ loving the idea of this feature! and can't wait for it to go live. i do have a few suggestions, and questions though <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> And of course now i want a Reading animation and want sitting in chairs even more!1.Please implement racial languages. it would be fun <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />2.Are there any small, like single page. Notes? like maybe a low level version of books with say a 300 character limit? that are place able on walls and tables?3.Will it be allowed for us to translate the old style books into the new style? i would really like a real copy of The history of the kerra <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> rather than the old style one i have now.4. Could we have a feature to (for an in game fee) turn mail into hard copys? and turn books into mail?5. Is there a chance we could see some special properties on books? like making readable writable books that can be held in the off hand?6. And just a crazy idea, is there any chance of us seeing an option to put our guild crest on the front page? or better yet, the cover?I know, putting it on the cover would be almost possible. since it would just be something like making the cover respond like a cloak. i know, its probably more complicated than that, but i dont know how your engine works :p just how most 3D software works. i would love to see your engine heh, out of curiosity7. and elaborating on the previous idea. and this is a wild one. will we have a chance to see rare. master crafter, like level 80 books, perhaps requiring a special rare, that allow us to create a cover from scratch? using the cloak creator?8. And finally will we see any rare versions of the books. with special covers, or maybe even special printing? like glowing ink,or the book of the dead effect, for example?i know the last few are crazy, but. i had to ask <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Oh btw, i had an idea. for a relitivly easy way to impliment sitting in chairs. and maybe sitting anywhere. like on a balcony out in qeynos. simply add a sit command, that opens a context window. choose a pose. and then place one's self like a peice of furnature. within a certin range <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> makes it a little easier on devs than implementing special code to detect chairs. like vanguards glitchy system. being able to sit on the wall of the bridge in qeynos harbor would be a wonderful adition to RP! and not to mention the massive improvement to taverns. To be honest, we dont mind if our feet clip through the ground a bit! we cant really sit down at all now ^_^ just an idea! and it seems more doable than a coded sitting system. and more versitle. less work on devs, more on players is fine

DreadPirate

04-23-2009, 01:24 PM

Reapicheap

04-23-2009, 01:31 PM

Peter Parker: That's slanderous, Mr. Jameson.J. Jonah Jameson: No, it isn't! *pause* When it's in print it's called 'Libel'.I love that quote.

Rexx Everythi

04-23-2009, 01:32 PM

<cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?It is a valid question... not everyone is an Erudite.... some just want to look at the pictures.</blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre> <pre> </pre>

Noaani

04-23-2009, 01:43 PM

<cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>The problem with adding pictures is the fact that when we take screenshots, they are stored on our hard drive. There are definatly players out there that would find a way to upload pornographic pictures in to books avalible to all players in this game, which would obviously cause issues with ratings and such.In order to make pictures work, they would need to add in a specific function for screenshots to be stored serverside without having been stored on the client computer at all. This in itself is a large undertaking, and that is without taking in to account the extra storage that would need to be made avalible for all these pics.It would take a lot of work, and cost a decient amount of overhead once it is implemented so I don't see it happening any time soon (they would do it if a serious competitor did it, but not otherwise). Its a shame though, as that is a feature I would love to see.

Rothgar

04-23-2009, 01:59 PM

<cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will you be able to read them before you buy them? And what will be the process for reporting inapropriate material?I can easily see "Selling Raid strats for Palace - 400 PP Pst... oh it contains random_Exploit_01 for X named." Or on the flip side....nothing at all.</blockquote>If we allowed you to read the book on the broker, it would discourage a lot of people from wanting to sell them since you could just read it without buying it. If we displayed the first few lines, there's nothing keeping someone from making the first few lines look good, but the rest contain garbage.If you buy a book on the broker, you're buying it at your own risk. I would only purchase books that were cheap, or written by an author with a good reputation.

Rothgar

04-23-2009, 02:01 PM

<cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.</blockquote>This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item. It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.

Rothgar

04-23-2009, 02:13 PM

<cite>Dracythis wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>One of the upcoming features for GU52 is a new system that will allow players to write and distribute their own books in the world of Norrath. These books look and act just like the current books in the game. You can hold them in your inventory or place them in your house or guild hall for other players to read. <a href="http://eq2dev.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/leave-your-permanent-mark-on-the-world-of-norrath/">Read More!</a></blockquote>One very important question I have..... Will there be an option to import a Word document to "create" your book? The reason I ask is because I would hate the idea of sitting in-game typing my story into a small confined window.</blockquote>Yes, you can copy/paste text into the book from any other program.I would actually recommend writing in a full word-processor and pasting the text in at a later time if you are serious about writing a long story. We put as much work as we could into making our input textboxes work well for this task, but it still much easier in my opinion to type and use the features of Wordpad or MS Word.You won't have to paste a page at a time. You could paste a large block of text and it'll automatically span across pages.

Tibis_Heartseeker

04-23-2009, 02:19 PM

With people talking about creating rules posters / notices for guild halls, it makes me think that a handy future addition would be an option to 'Author for guild', along with a guild role of 'Author / Edit Guild Books'; the idea would be to allow guild members with the role set to be able to author and edit books on behalf of the guild.I do like the idea. How long until GU52?!

Rheem

04-23-2009, 02:22 PM

Will the books be common only or will be able to set a launguage?

circusgirl

04-23-2009, 02:32 PM

oooo...I like the idea of being able to set a language.

Silerua

04-23-2009, 02:40 PM

Hmmm... okay, I do have a question after much thought.Will you developers and SOE staff plan on writing books? I would be DEFINITELY interested in reading books written by devs and staff. I don't know how the word could be gotten out that you all were writing something. Perhaps post stories on the forums, and we players can, if we want them, scribe them to books to keep for ourselves?Thanks (: I want to have that Death of a Dragon book, as well, Rothgar![EDIT] Though it would be totally wicked to have a book in my house that says By: (dev name) *drool* They'd go nicely with my other red-name collected items. I wish Kirstie's Babbling Bauble and Jindrack's Lucan D'Lere Action Figure were house items... *sigh* They'd be sooo cute!

Loolee

04-23-2009, 02:59 PM

<cite>Brook wrote:</cite><blockquote>With this being one of the "better" ideas being added in quite a while, I have to wonder what the price we will pay is truly going to be.You guys don't have a reputation for giving good things without something equally as suk around the corner to balance things out... or it would seem.</blockquote>Aren't you just a happy little ray of sunshine! <img src="http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h276/DianneOnly/wink3.gif" width="20" height="24" />

SilkenKidden

04-23-2009, 03:06 PM

<cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>oooo...I like the idea of being able to set a language.</blockquote>How would that work? I might be able to speak elvish in the game, but it doesn't come across written in elvish. As a matter of fact, I see the words in my native language and I can understand what I'm seeing. Do you really want to see a book full of strange symbols and words?

Aganon

04-23-2009, 03:11 PM

Rothgar,First let me say that this is a great idea! I have several suggestions and as a developer, I know some may not be feasible or at the very least may take time. I apologise in advance if any of these have been suggested or addressed.1. Add Book TypesAdd a book type drop-down option to each book so that it will make searching for books easier. For example, books could be types like Story, Guide, Song, etc. Of course you could go deeper and offer extended options like Raid Guide, Class Guide, Zone Guide, etc. but that may be a slippery slope with neverending requests for additional book types.2. Add a Content Rating SystemSince some roleplaying story lines are adult related, perhaps it would be a good idea to rate each book in some way such as Everyone or Adult. You could also simply add a checkbox labeled, "This book contains adult content."3. Show Content Size on ExamineWhen players examine the book, show the number of characters contained in the content area of the book. 4. Show Date and Time Book Was CreatedWhen players examine the book, show the date and time that the book was created. Add a date range option to the broker search to make it easier to find newer or older books.5. Make Content Space Based on Book SizeMake the size of the content space based on the size of the book. That would make each book size more relevant. While this could be manipulated, most serious writers of guides, stories, etc. could let their readers know how much content is in the book.6. Track Number of Book CopiesTrack the number of copies of each book that are owned by different players. Not just created, but actually possessed by unique players.7. Add a Book or Author Rating systemI realise this may be hard to implement but it would seem that you could store the rating along with the author, title and contents since I would assume this information will be stored in a master database. If a book-by-book rating system would be too hard to implement, consider adding an author rating system.8. Create a Best Seller ListIt would be nice to see which books are selling best over the last week or month. Even better would be offering a best sellers list by book type as mentioned above. Something like this could be static and updated daily or weekly.9. Parental Block OptionI could see the need for parents to be able to block the ability for an account or character to read any player created books even if it is just a setting in the options panel.-Aganon

Snapdragyn

04-23-2009, 03:33 PM

What exactly is 'inappropriate'? I see troubled times ahead here.What if a romance describes holding hands, perhaps even a kiss? What if the characters described are both of the same gender? Now we're into territory where someone somewhere would probably file a /petition if they came across a copy, yet I, as a [Removed for Content] man IRL, will object very strongly to the censorship of having an otherwise unobjectionable story removed simply because the characters were [Removed for Content].

GrunEQ

04-23-2009, 03:34 PM

I love the suggestion for a reading animation and would like to suggest another.. a writing amination, for when you are composing or copying a book.I also like the suggestion of using different fonts for the various languages to add more flavor, for when or if we can publish in languages.

Baegia

04-23-2009, 04:24 PM

I have stories to put in books !!!!! yea -- ty ty ty <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />The neatest thing SoE has done in a long time -- congratz !I've told my guild already --- not much time to play anymore --- must write !

Ssliasil1

04-23-2009, 04:39 PM

O.O I dont mean to Toot my own horn but...i soooo thought up this Idea a few months back on the Lucan D'lere Server!I brought it up in 1-9 chat a while back and we had a 2 hour Conversation about it lol. I do remember someone saying, that sounds like a good idea i may have to tell that to a Dev friend i know blah blah blah...O.ODude...Thats...awesome.Though its probably a huge cooincidence.

DreadPirate

04-23-2009, 05:01 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>The problem with adding pictures is the fact that when we take screenshots, they are stored on our hard drive. There are definatly players out there that would find a way to upload pornographic pictures in to books avalible to all players in this game, which would obviously cause issues with ratings and such.In order to make pictures work, they would need to add in a specific function for screenshots to be stored serverside without having been stored on the client computer at all. This in itself is a large undertaking, and that is without taking in to account the extra storage that would need to be made avalible for all these pics.It would take a lot of work, and cost a decient amount of overhead once it is implemented so I don't see it happening any time soon (they would do it if a serious competitor did it, but not otherwise). Its a shame though, as that is a feature I would love to see.</blockquote>While I appreciate the reply, and I kinda figure you're right, I was hoping for an answer from someone more official, like Rothgar. He seems to want to answer all the other questions, just not mine. A simple "No" would suffice. Passing over it not once, but twice is kinda rude.No matter, while I do like to write, I doubt I'll make use of this. Seems like just alot of fluff to me. There are so many other things that would be much more worthwhile... like Beast.Lords... heck, put them on the SC, I'd buy one.<cite>Rexx Everything wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?It is a valid question... not everyone is an Erudite.... some just want to look at the pictures.</blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre><pre> </pre></blockquote><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /> That's awesome!

Yimway

04-23-2009, 05:01 PM

So, I can publish my Atan's guide to plat farming and sell it for an arbitrary price?Do they bind on purchace? Ie, can player to player trading be disabled after the initial transfer from author to player?Also, I'm thinking I will publish a series of zone guides. Lets say for staters, Atan's guide to WoE.Will I be able to edit the source version for updates and all purchased version will update? Or is the content completely locked and I have to have Atan's Guide to WoE and Atan's Guide to WoE 2nd Edition, etc?The only other thing that comes to mind is, I'd really like to sell books world wide, I don't like the idea of someone copying my content on Unrest and selling it on another server without my permision. Chances are I would likely go unaware of said activity for a long time before I got wind of it.What if my content is negative against other players, Can I publish the list of 50 players to never group with cause they suck book?

Seffrid

04-23-2009, 05:25 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.</blockquote>This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item. It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.</blockquote>Ah, you mean a Station Cash type of item...

Seffrid

04-23-2009, 05:31 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Seffrid wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this is a great idea, and a real boon to those of us who like the sense of immersion and distinctiveness we derive from this game more than most others, at a time when those qualities are seen as being under threat in other directions. Kudos to the devs for coming up with this.Guilds will especially be able to make good use of this, with a guild guide setting out the guild's charter and general information for new members as well, I would suggest, as initial recruitment quests for those who believe in offering prospective recruits more than just "/tell Seffrid lol wanna join my guild m8?".Of course, the cynics among us might ask whether, now that the database is clearly established as having room for an unlimited number of books with limitless characters in them, it might also be found to have enough room for a couple of additional character slots <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />?</blockquote>No one ever said limitless characters in books. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> There most certainly is a limit. The jury is still out as far as how many books someone will try to put into a house or guild hall. Every book that you add will be a little more memory that the house will have to consume. A large quantity of books could certainly impact performance. We'll just have to watch and see how it goes and tweak from there.</blockquote>Actually, you did <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" />! Specifically, you said "There is not an exact character limit."In fairness, however, you went on to say "The text is stored compressed and the limit is based on the size of the compressed text."So in a sense I guess we're both right <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />!

Rothgar

04-23-2009, 06:13 PM

<cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>The problem with adding pictures is the fact that when we take screenshots, they are stored on our hard drive. There are definatly players out there that would find a way to upload pornographic pictures in to books avalible to all players in this game, which would obviously cause issues with ratings and such.In order to make pictures work, they would need to add in a specific function for screenshots to be stored serverside without having been stored on the client computer at all. This in itself is a large undertaking, and that is without taking in to account the extra storage that would need to be made avalible for all these pics.It would take a lot of work, and cost a decient amount of overhead once it is implemented so I don't see it happening any time soon (they would do it if a serious competitor did it, but not otherwise). Its a shame though, as that is a feature I would love to see.</blockquote>While I appreciate the reply, and I kinda figure you're right, I was hoping for an answer from someone more official, like Rothgar. He seems to want to answer all the other questions, just not mine. A simple "No" would suffice. Passing over it not once, but twice is kinda rude.No matter, while I do like to write, I doubt I'll make use of this. Seems like just alot of fluff to me. There are so many other things that would be much more worthwhile... like Beast.Lords... heck, put them on the SC, I'd buy one.<cite>Rexx Everything wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>DreadPirate wrote:</cite><blockquote>What about pictures?There are some books in the world of Norrath that have pictures. The Frostfell books come to mind.Will we be able to add images to pages, perhaps screenshots, along with the text?</blockquote>Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?It is a valid question... not everyone is an Erudite.... some just want to look at the pictures.</blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre><pre> </pre></blockquote><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /> That's awesome!</blockquote>I'm sorry you felt as if I was being rude. I'm in the midst of working on multiple bugs and multiple new features and only pop into the forums when my code is compiling or I'm waiting on a server to come up. This isn't the first time I might miss someone's question and certainly won't be the last.Will we allow you to upload screenshots and place pictures in books?The short answer is no. The reasoning is very similar to what Noaani pointed out. Allowing people to upload custom pictures would be very resource intensive and would need a human eye to verify that each picture was acceptible. We talked about the possibility of allowing you to insert pictures from a pre-defined list, but our list of pictures that would make sense is pretty small and we don't have the art bandwidth to create a bunch of new ones. Not to mention it would get old pretty quickly seeing the same pictures in everyone's books.Now for the good news...I've just made a change so you can now specify the language for your user book. It will of course have to be a language that your character knows. If the reader understands that language, it will be displayed in their normal font. If they do not understand the language, it'll be displayed in the appropriate font for that language.

Jushara

04-23-2009, 06:18 PM

Yay! ^_^ love you rothgar, thank you! we get to set the language <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Sty Frost

04-23-2009, 06:23 PM

Cool now we have books to dedicate tothe death of the venekor server

Sty Frost

04-23-2009, 06:25 PM

our toons can write book to fill the void of pvp

Jesdyr

04-23-2009, 06:33 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will I be able to edit the source version for updates and all purchased version will update? Or is the content completely locked and I have to have Atan's Guide to WoE and Atan's Guide to WoE 2nd Edition, etc?What if my content is negative against other players, Can I publish the list of 50 players to never group with cause they suck book?</blockquote>1st part is they are not linked.2nd part is .. that was the 2nd thing I thought of .. I expect <what> will have a book in their hall with the flames list <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Yimway

04-23-2009, 06:39 PM

<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will I be able to edit the source version for updates and all purchased version will update? Or is the content completely locked and I have to have Atan's Guide to WoE and Atan's Guide to WoE 2nd Edition, etc?What if my content is negative against other players, Can I publish the list of 50 players to never group with cause they suck book?</blockquote>1st part is they are not linked.2nd part is .. that was the 2nd thing I thought of .. I expect will have a book in their hall with the flames list <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>It's just my nature to push the boundries on new ideas. I can see where books that contain content that is negative towards specific players / guilds will exist, the question I have is that in violation?I'm really curious if the books lock to no trade after reading them, I like the idea of player created content, but I don't like the idea of my knowledge book to be traded between multiple players after reading. I like the idea of creating in game guides, marketable game data, etc and providing that to others for a small fee, but if it can just be traded ad nausiem, then there is no incentive to create these volumes.

SilkenKidden

04-23-2009, 06:50 PM

<cite>Rexx Everything wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre><pre> </pre></blockquote>Hey! ASCII artwork. That is great.

Rheem

04-23-2009, 06:56 PM

Oh, one more thing. You said you may make various kinds of books (Different color covers). Can we also have something like a wall mounted page so we can make a sort of notice board? Would be kind of cool for guilds to be able to post news bits on a board, etc.

Katz

04-23-2009, 07:19 PM

This is a great idea, thanks!

Akira

04-23-2009, 08:43 PM

What about the ability to sit in chairs?

Rothgar

04-23-2009, 08:51 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will I be able to edit the source version for updates and all purchased version will update? Or is the content completely locked and I have to have Atan's Guide to WoE and Atan's Guide to WoE 2nd Edition, etc?What if my content is negative against other players, Can I publish the list of 50 players to never group with cause they suck book?</blockquote>1st part is they are not linked.2nd part is .. that was the 2nd thing I thought of .. I expect will have a book in their hall with the flames list <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>It's just my nature to push the boundries on new ideas. I can see where books that contain content that is negative towards specific players / guilds will exist, the question I have is that in violation?I'm really curious if the books lock to no trade after reading them, I like the idea of player created content, but I don't like the idea of my knowledge book to be traded between multiple players after reading. I like the idea of creating in game guides, marketable game data, etc and providing that to others for a small fee, but if it can just be traded ad nausiem, then there is no incentive to create these volumes.</blockquote>Sounds to me like you're asking for some form of DRM! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Books will always be tradable, even after being read. There is really no way to secure written text. Someone could always create a new book with your content after reading it, post it to a website, repeat it in a chat channel, etc. This is the problem with trying to assign value to knowledge. Once you give that knowledge to someone else, regardless of the method, you risk losing it.Keep this in mind when pricing your books. You don't want to price them so high that you are encouraging someone else to steal your work.

xeyda

04-23-2009, 09:07 PM

<cite>Ssliasil1 wrote:</cite><blockquote> O.O I dont mean to Toot my own horn but...i soooo thought up this Idea a few months back on the Lucan D'lere Server!I brought it up in 1-9 chat a while back and we had a 2 hour Conversation about it lol. I do remember someone saying, that sounds like a good idea i may have to tell that to a Dev friend i know blah blah blah...O.ODude...Thats...awesome.Though its probably a huge cooincidence.</blockquote>This has been in UO for years. I'm glad to see it come to EQII, but I hope SOE has a better way of handling the TOS violations than EA (I was an online CSR for EA several years ago).For example, make the books non-editable after the first writing, or have some way to know who wrote what part in the book, or you will end up with a stack of books with bad content and no way to know who to smack.

Rijacki

04-23-2009, 09:11 PM

<cite>Silken@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rexx Everything wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre><pre> </pre></blockquote>Hey! ASCII artwork. That is great. </blockquote>Takes me back to my BBS days... I wonder if any of the converters (picture to ASCII) are still around.. hmmmm...

SilkenKidden

04-23-2009, 10:35 PM

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>Takes me back to my BBS days... I wonder if any of the converters (picture to ASCII) are still around.. hmmmm...</blockquote></blockquote>Is that called UUENCODE? It is mentioned at this site. <a href="http://chris.com/ascii/">http://chris.com/ascii/</a>This is a source of good information if you want to put some ASCII art in your EQ2 books. Explains the need of using fixed fonts, etc. Glad to see it can be posted on these boards, but of course anyone missing the fixed font or forcing the browser to use their own fonts won't see the picture. Kind of like us setting the lighting in our carefully decorated EQ houses to the perfect selection to complement the color scheme and then being visited by someone in raid formation with all their lights dimmed<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Detor

04-23-2009, 11:36 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sounds to me like you're asking for some form of DRM! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Keep this in mind when pricing your books. You don't want to price them so high that you are encouraging someone else to steal your work.</blockquote>Funny how fast the idea of DRM comes up when the individual is thinking of creating content rather than just consuming it. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" />

SaraBH

04-24-2009, 01:17 AM

im hoping i just missed it in all the posts but these books are going to crafter made but are they going to be made from rares? The recipy wont make any difference to me (unless it drops off some wierd mob or something witch i dought), but the supplys to make the book?I was so happy to find out we were getting manekins (sp?) way back, but wene it came out it took a rare to make, ill tell you my heart sank. All the ideas i had for them seems to just fade away when i looked at the cost to make the darn things. I love the book idea, even if it is from a rare ill be doing some books no dought but it will be very limited. please dont make this an option foronly those who can shill out the play for rares. If they are rares can you make them rares that arnt really used for anything, like tier 1s?

Rijacki

04-24-2009, 03:17 AM

<cite>Silken@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>Takes me back to my BBS days... I wonder if any of the converters (picture to ASCII) are still around.. hmmmm...</blockquote></blockquote>Is that called UUENCODE? It is mentioned at this site. <a href="http://chris.com/ascii/">http://chris.com/ascii/</a>This is a source of good information if you want to put some ASCII art in your EQ2 books. Explains the need of using fixed fonts, etc. Glad to see it can be posted on these boards, but of course anyone missing the fixed font or forcing the browser to use their own fonts won't see the picture. Kind of like us setting the lighting in our carefully decorated EQ houses to the perfect selection to complement the color scheme and then being visited by someone in raid formation with all their lights dimmed<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Could be... I only remember there was an app. Used it in my IRC days, too *laugh*. Gads... I tried to count how many years ago that was... and figured I'd rather not. There was, though, some absolutely amazing ASCII and ANSI art that could be found.For the books, I'd love an option for colours of text and/or background. Font would be icing on the cake.

Powers

04-24-2009, 09:08 AM

<cite>xeyda wrote:</cite><blockquote>For example, make the books non-editable after the first writing, or have some way to know who wrote what part in the book, or you will end up with a stack of books with bad content and no way to know who to smack.</blockquote>From what Rothgar has posted, there is only one author per book -- once someone writes in an empty book (including copying one book to another), the book's content can only be edited by that person, no matter to whom the book is traded.The name on the book is the person responsible for the content, period. They may have stolen that content from somewhere else, but they're the ones who set virtual pen to virtual paper.(I'm presuming that if Party A writes a book, gives it to Party B, and Party B makes a copy to give to Party C, that the copy will maintain Party A's author attribution.)Powers &8^]

Terron

04-24-2009, 09:12 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Bookcases / LibrariansThis is something we definitely want to do, but will probably be a future addition. I'd love to see a librarian hireling for your guild hall that will allow you to search all the books that are currently placed in the hall and even allow you to read them without running to the physical book and clicking it. I also think some storage mechanism for books that cuts down on the item count is a good idea but also something else we'll need to look at in the future.</blockquote>Things that work like sales crates but get placed in you house vault would be very nice, and not just for books.

Silerua

04-24-2009, 10:53 AM

Although the storage mechanism "bookcase" idea sounds good for those that are interested, I hope that that doesn't mean there won't be anyone going back and finishing the job of making books not count against item count. I have about 70 right now, give or take, with more take because I have a couple books (Tome of Knowledge, Book of Hate, etc.) that I don't think will get special non-item-count privilege, that are eating away at my item count. That said, I hope the librarian/bookcase idea won't be a band-aid for that, since I like to have iron-fisted tyrannical control over the look of my library.And d'awww... I want a librarian hireling for my house. *sniff*[EDIT: silly incomplete sentence error.]

Yimway

04-24-2009, 11:22 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>e these volumes.</blockquote>Sounds to me like you're asking for some form of DRM! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Books will always be tradable, even after being read. There is really no way to secure written text. Someone could always create a new book with your content after reading it, post it to a website, repeat it in a chat channel, etc. This is the problem with trying to assign value to knowledge. Once you give that knowledge to someone else, regardless of the method, you risk losing it.Keep this in mind when pricing your books. You don't want to price them so high that you are encouraging someone else to steal your work.</blockquote>Yeah, I was alluding to a form of DRM. I can see the value in knowledge tomes to help players out. I wasn't too worried about someone creating a new book with my content so much as I'm concerned about the book not binding to the player on read.I can police my books and if someone were to plagiarize the content, there are forums I can flame them into tiny bits for doing so. But player 2 player trading of it is really the downfall, as once the knowledge is gained from reading it, the player is likely to just resell the asset along.Given that model, there is no incentive for potential content contributors like myself to make the effort to publish the books. Leaving the new game mechanic as a fluff RP content item rather than a ingame publishing / distribution system.I'm sure there are many players that like the RP aspects of this, but people like me were looking at this as an in game publishing system.I saw value in creating class guids, zone guides, raiding guides, raid mob encounter guides, crafting for profit guides, etc, etc, etc. Books that contain knowledge that has value to players, something I could make a few gold off of each sale rather than making a little coin on selling 20 of them that will be re-sold / traded to 2000 people.In my opinion, just as crafted gear needed an attune function, knowledge tomes should be able to be created as attune on read, maybe make those a 'rare' recipe version and the other books that don't attune as a 'common' recipe version?2cp.

MsBoss01

04-24-2009, 12:58 PM

Just a quick thought, after reading the 10 pages of posts....any chance of a spell checker? <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

CoLD MeTaL

04-24-2009, 01:19 PM

I am not reading all the posts from the first one, but seriously you are spending dev time on this?!?!?!?!?Judging by level chat most people can't spell, and do not have any idea what the word 'grammar' means. Why on earth would I want to read a story they produce when I have access tot he public library.Please do real dev things with the money I am sending you.

Rothgar

04-24-2009, 01:36 PM

Reapicheap

04-24-2009, 01:41 PM

<cite>MsBoss01 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just a quick thought, after reading the 10 pages of posts....any chance of a spell checker? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>No, but cut and paste from a full word processor is an option.To address CoLD MeTaL, who complains about spelling and gramatical ability with a name like that, I'm certain that once these have been out for a while, decent authors will become known, and those who want to flood the market with crap will be wasting their plat. I'm also certain that formal genres will emerge, complete with their own naming convensions.

Rothgar

04-24-2009, 01:44 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>e these volumes.</blockquote>Sounds to me like you're asking for some form of DRM! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Books will always be tradable, even after being read. There is really no way to secure written text. Someone could always create a new book with your content after reading it, post it to a website, repeat it in a chat channel, etc. This is the problem with trying to assign value to knowledge. Once you give that knowledge to someone else, regardless of the method, you risk losing it.Keep this in mind when pricing your books. You don't want to price them so high that you are encouraging someone else to steal your work.</blockquote>Yeah, I was alluding to a form of DRM. I can see the value in knowledge tomes to help players out. I wasn't too worried about someone creating a new book with my content so much as I'm concerned about the book not binding to the player on read.I can police my books and if someone were to plagiarize the content, there are forums I can flame them into tiny bits for doing so. But player 2 player trading of it is really the downfall, as once the knowledge is gained from reading it, the player is likely to just resell the asset along.Given that model, there is no incentive for potential content contributors like myself to make the effort to publish the books. Leaving the new game mechanic as a fluff RP content item rather than a ingame publishing / distribution system.I'm sure there are many players that like the RP aspects of this, but people like me were looking at this as an in game publishing system.I saw value in creating class guids, zone guides, raiding guides, raid mob encounter guides, crafting for profit guides, etc, etc, etc. Books that contain knowledge that has value to players, something I could make a few gold off of each sale rather than making a little coin on selling 20 of them that will be re-sold / traded to 2000 people.In my opinion, just as crafted gear needed an attune function, knowledge tomes should be able to be created as attune on read, maybe make those a 'rare' recipe version and the other books that don't attune as a 'common' recipe version?2cp.</blockquote>I don't think you will have to worry about people selling your guides after they use them affecting your overall business if this is what you want to do. If your books are only going to sell for a few gold, people would have to undercut you on the market and I'd be willing to bet that that just like in real life, once someone buys your guide, they would put it on a bookshelf and hang onto it. Whats the advantage of reselling it for a few gold if they found use for the knowledge in the first place? Don't let your fear of this keep you from doing something you'd enjoy. After all, books work like this in real life. But authors still sell LOTS and LOTS of new books, even with a thriving used book market.Establish yourself as a well known author who writes good content and people will always seek you out directly.

Aneova

04-24-2009, 01:46 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Powers wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>xeyda wrote:</cite><blockquote>For example, make the books non-editable after the first writing, or have some way to know who wrote what part in the book, or you will end up with a stack of books with bad content and no way to know who to smack.</blockquote>From what Rothgar has posted, there is only one author per book -- once someone writes in an empty book (including copying one book to another), the book's content can only be edited by that person, no matter to whom the book is traded.The name on the book is the person responsible for the content, period. They may have stolen that content from somewhere else, but they're the ones who set virtual pen to virtual paper.(I'm presuming that if Party A writes a book, gives it to Party B, and Party B makes a copy to give to Party C, that the copy will maintain Party A's author attribution.)Powers &8^]</blockquote>This is correct, only one author per book. However, in your example of Party A making a book and giving it to Party B, Party B would not be able to make a copy of that book. Only the author can make copies.</blockquote>Sweet, so then folks who do decide to write the tomes wouldn't need worry about random copies appearing only folks trading the current copies. Which would let those folks (who've posted a concern about this above) need not worry about 200+ copies of a guide suddenly appearing unless someone went through the trouble of actually retyping the book.

Yimway

04-24-2009, 01:55 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't think you will have to worry about people selling your guides after they use them affecting your overall business if this is what you want to do. If your books are only going to sell for a few gold, people would have to undercut you on the market and I'd be willing to bet that that just like in real life, once someone buys your guide, they would put it on a bookshelf and hang onto it. Whats the advantage of reselling it for a few gold if they found use for the knowledge in the first place? Don't let your fear of this keep you from doing something you'd enjoy. After all, books work like this in real life. But authors still sell LOTS and LOTS of new books, even with a thriving used book market.Establish yourself as a well known author who writes good content and people will always seek you out directly.</blockquote>Maybe, I dunno...I mean, I know I personally would resell it unless I thought I needed to refference it after I read it, last thing I need is yet another object cluttering my bank/house/guild hall. If i thought it would sell on my broker, I'd do that before deleting it.I also invisioned strats to say raid mobs, or other difficult items worth more than a few gold, but not worth more than a few plat.I just know I'd be happier with an attune on examine book, even if it required a rare root to make it.

Mikai

04-24-2009, 02:27 PM

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Silken@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rexx Everything wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sure we can add pictures! Below is an image of Lady Vox from my soon to be published coffee table book. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><pre> //` ` _,-"% // /``` ~^~ >__^ |% // / } `` ) )%// / } } }`` / (%/'/._/_/_/`/ ( ' `-._` , ( _`-.__.-;%> /_` ` ." `-..-'` ```/_/`"-=-'`/_/ ``` ```</pre><pre> </pre></blockquote>Hey! ASCII artwork. That is great. </blockquote>Takes me back to my BBS days... I wonder if any of the converters (picture to ASCII) are still around.. hmmmm...</blockquote>Google search for "ascii image generator" yielded a list. Take your pick. This one's pretty easy to use:<a href="http://www.text-image.com/convert/ascii.html" target="_blank">http://www.text-image.com/convert/ascii.html</a>

GrunEQ

04-24-2009, 04:41 PM

Would it ease Atan's mind if the books were Heritage? I could go with that.

Yimway

04-24-2009, 04:43 PM

<cite>GrunEQ wrote:</cite><blockquote>Would it ease Atan's mind if the books were Heritage? I could go with that.</blockquote>Hierloom I think you mean, certainly.

GrunEQ

04-24-2009, 04:46 PM

I am very excited about being able to use languages for the books. I was wondering if when we know the language, what kind of font would we be reading? I hope that there would be different fonts that would still have the flavor of the language it was written in, and not be just a straight default one.

GrunEQ

04-24-2009, 04:47 PM

Heirloom, yes.

Bratface

04-24-2009, 05:05 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Whats the advantage of reselling it for a few gold if they found use for the knowledge in the first place? Don't let your fear of this keep you from doing something you'd enjoy. After all, books work like this in real life. But authors still sell LOTS and LOTS of new books, even with a thriving used book market.Establish yourself as a well known author who writes good content and people will always seek you out directly.</blockquote>I have tons of books, most of which I keep in a bank/vault box becaue they are just plain ugly, for a book to make it to my library it needs to have a cover that is interesting, not that drab grey L&L cover.Oh and it's the cover and the binding that matter, what's up with the books with the edge cut into? can't see it when it's on a shelf unless you have teh book backwards, so please no more of that style please. I have already asked my Daughter to write a few things for me to make book out of, I just hope I can put some spiffy bindings on them because if not this will get old for me real fast. I don't care about making money, I care about the art.

Bratface

04-24-2009, 05:20 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't think you will have to worry about people selling your guides after they use them affecting your overall business if this is what you want to do. If your books are only going to sell for a few gold, people would have to undercut you on the market and I'd be willing to bet that that just like in real life, once someone buys your guide, they would put it on a bookshelf and hang onto it. Whats the advantage of reselling it for a few gold if they found use for the knowledge in the first place? Don't let your fear of this keep you from doing something you'd enjoy. After all, books work like this in real life. But authors still sell LOTS and LOTS of new books, even with a thriving used book market.Establish yourself as a well known author who writes good content and people will always seek you out directly.</blockquote>Maybe, I dunno...I mean, I know I personally would resell it unless I thought I needed to refference it after I read it, last thing I need is yet another object cluttering my bank/house/guild hall. If i thought it would sell on my broker, I'd do that before deleting it.I also invisioned strats to say raid mobs, or other difficult items worth more than a few gold, but not worth more than a few plat.I just know I'd be happier with an attune on examine book, even if it required a rare root to make it.</blockquote>I gotta say that I thought the estimate of a few gold was kinda low, add to it that you can resell them and there won't be much incentive to make more than a couple books that the whole server can pass around.I am not planning on selling mine, I might or might not but if I did I'd like them to be attunable for just that reason, so once bought it can't be resold to another player.If had to be attuned before reading then it would solve a lot of concerns.I am sure sure I am onboard with the used bookstore analogy, i can pick up a $20.00 used book for $5.00 which no matter how you look at it takes away from the author, used bookstores make the most money on out-of-print and first editions which do not take away from the author at all since there is no other way to obtain them. I am also wondering what happens if I sell a book with a typo or something in it, can the owner give it back to me to edit, or does editing the original edit all copies? Because I make a LOT of typos =pAnd please, if it uses a rare let it be a pelt, most old books were bound in leather and quite beautiful. But I'd of course prefer no rare be involved, but of all rares I have an abundance of pelts. Hey Atan, can I get a franchise to sell your guides on my server? =)

Eveningsong

04-24-2009, 05:24 PM

There's no way you could bind a book upon reading unless they majorly change how books work, and I suspect it would affect quest items that require being read. Right now, if you place a book in your house (whether it is no-trade or not) anyone can read it, regardless of whether they are trustee or visitor. I just tested it and I was quite able to read several books included the quested Frostfell books in a complete stranger's house. So if you are going to publish something in a book in EQ2, it doesn't matter if it binds to the purchaser, anyone will still be able to read it/screenshot it/copy it, whatever. Exactly the same way that someone could do it if you post original fiction on a website, in a magazine, publish in a paper book, wherever. My advice is if you are a serious writer who is that concerned about your work being copied, don't publish anything where it is easily copied. But truthfully, I suspect most books will sell based on the graphic, not the content. Especially since folks won't be able to flip through and scan to see if they want to read it prior to purchase.

Rijacki

04-24-2009, 05:34 PM

Yimway

04-24-2009, 05:34 PM

<cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hey Atan, can I get a franchise to sell your guides on my server? =)</blockquote>Trust me, I was already thinking about this <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Yimway

04-24-2009, 05:42 PM

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ya know, the folks at RIAA and whatever the book publishing association is called would love for your concept to exist in real life.Rothgar is right, there are still thousands of books (and CDs and DvDs, etc) sold constantly even though they're not "attune on examine" or whatnot.Yes, Norrath is a smaller world than the real one, but the same concept holds. The reason people buy and hang on to something is because they feel it has lasting value.If you want to make stuff that is a single use, never going to need it again, then the things you make will just be passed on rather than anyone wanting to buy new. But, if you make your reference works have enough depth that they're still useful after reading them the first time, many of the buyers will hold on to them and use them later.</blockquote>Respectuflly, its not the same thing.Real world, the author's book is on a retail bookshelf and their customers find it there. If the person reads it and wants to resell it, the used value of the book is a fraction of the orriginal, and the consumer can not place that book back on the retail shelf and compete against the orriginal author. The consumer gets the option of selling it to a vendor who then tries to resell the used asset.Since in game, the Author, and the consumer selling the used book compete on the exact same marketplace, and the assets are all digital, there is absolutely no difference in what a buyer gets from buying my orriginal work or someone that is reselling it. You do not get to place your used book on the shelf at barnes and noble next to the author's orriginal book to resell it. If you want to apply it to the game, you would need to have a vendor who bought it back at 10% of its sale price and someone could buy from that vendor at 50% of its orriginal sale price.Show me where you can digital download a song and legally sell it when your done with it... These items only have a lasting tangible value when well, they are tangible items.And if I'm considering authoring a book with an avatar strat in it, I wager the value of the book would be moderate, and I wouldn't want it to be resold at will.

Silerua

04-24-2009, 06:37 PM

Interesting "serious business!" discussion going on. *ahem*Anyway, I was curious: are we going to get a sneak preview at some of the covers and tome styles that will be available? Or will all be revealed all at once?

Azzad

04-25-2009, 12:50 PM

Azzad

04-25-2009, 01:23 PM

1) How much info about a book will we see while it's on the broker? I'm concerned that I will be tricked into buying "Ninja Monkeys vs. Feline Pirates" because the title is so awsome only to find out the pages are all blank.2) I end up deleting most books because it's frustrating trying to place them on bookcases. Is it just me or are books hard to place for everyone? Will this be fixed?3) Can you please make the original copy a Heirloom item?

Azzad

04-25-2009, 01:28 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will you be able to read them before you buy them? And what will be the process for reporting inapropriate material?I can easily see "Selling Raid strats for Palace - 400 PP Pst... oh it contains random_Exploit_01 for X named." Or on the flip side....nothing at all.</blockquote>If we allowed you to read the book on the broker, it would discourage a lot of people from wanting to sell them since you could just read it without buying it. If we displayed the first few lines, there's nothing keeping someone from making the first few lines look good, but the rest contain garbage.If you buy a book on the broker, you're buying it at your own risk. I would only purchase books that were cheap, or written by an author with a good reputation.</blockquote>Can't we see a letter count at least?

Rothgar

04-25-2009, 03:03 PM

<cite>Azzad wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will you be able to read them before you buy them? And what will be the process for reporting inapropriate material?I can easily see "Selling Raid strats for Palace - 400 PP Pst... oh it contains random_Exploit_01 for X named." Or on the flip side....nothing at all.</blockquote>If we allowed you to read the book on the broker, it would discourage a lot of people from wanting to sell them since you could just read it without buying it. If we displayed the first few lines, there's nothing keeping someone from making the first few lines look good, but the rest contain garbage.If you buy a book on the broker, you're buying it at your own risk. I would only purchase books that were cheap, or written by an author with a good reputation.</blockquote>Can't we see a letter count at least?</blockquote>Is a letter count really that helpful when someone can just paste Lorem ipsum into the book or type a lot of garbage?

Azzad

04-25-2009, 03:13 PM

This is a great idea and I hope it works out.But I forsee a lot of scams, plat farmers, flame wars, etc, etc. It's going to be hard to find the type of content this was designed for.

Bratface

04-25-2009, 04:31 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hey Atan, can I get a franchise to sell your guides on my server? =)</blockquote>Trust me, I was already thinking about this <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Dibs!!

1ARACE

04-26-2009, 12:41 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Krunck@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think this is a very nice idea and look forward to some fun. I am curious how people will be able to find these books on the broker though. Also once a book is done, can it be changed? And if you cahnge the master copy of the book does it change all the copies of the book?</blockquote>We will probably need to make some modifications so that broker searches would include the title of the book or perhaps the author. I'll add this to my to-do list.A book can be changed by the author at any time if its in his possession. Book text is not linked though. Making a copy makes an entire independant copy of the book. We talked about linking book text together, but this would have made it very difficult for players to transfer between worlds and take books with them.</blockquote>I would like to make a suggestion. Besides just a title and author...how about adding a classification to search by? Ie. drama, fiction, non-fiction, romance, comedy, etc..., or something to that effect so you can quickly find the type of book you would like to read.

GorgukGrimmfist

04-26-2009, 02:52 PM

<cite>Powers wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>xeyda wrote:</cite><blockquote>For example, make the books non-editable after the first writing, or have some way to know who wrote what part in the book, or you will end up with a stack of books with bad content and no way to know who to smack.</blockquote>From what Rothgar has posted, there is only one author per book -- once someone writes in an empty book (including copying one book to another), the book's content can only be edited by that person, no matter to whom the book is traded.The name on the book is the person responsible for the content, period. They may have stolen that content from somewhere else, but they're the ones who set virtual pen to virtual paper.(I'm presuming that if Party A writes a book, gives it to Party B, and Party B makes a copy to give to Party C, that the copy will maintain Party A's author attribution.)Powers &8^]</blockquote>I am pretty sure that copies can only be made from the original. If not that would be a good way to maintain IP. Sure there may be a small amount of books changing hands after an initial puchase, but all NEW books would enter the market via the owner of the original. That still doesn't fix the problem of transcribing another book. A simple date stamp on the book would saolve that problem. If an author believes that one of their books has been copied they can peition and have date stamps on both books as proof.BTW I am still looking for the answer to my question. Would a publishing company using only ingame currency be a violation of the EULA? Players could fill the void of WW server sales for authors.

Boyar

04-26-2009, 03:44 PM

If it would be at all possible, it would be awesome to have a short "blurb" field that could be searchable, say using the "effects" field already in the market search. That way authors could provide a bit of tooltip information and include keywords without having to clutter the title. Very cool feature!

Zechariah

04-26-2009, 06:14 PM

I'm sorry if someone's already said this (didn't have time to read all the posts), but would it be possible to add a timestamp along with the name of the toon that wrote it? This would deter the copying of another authors work or ideas. It should also probably be displayed in Norrathian time as well. This would still be a valid timestamp and would not take away from immersion for the RPers.

Nayawk

04-26-2009, 06:30 PM

<cite>1ARACE wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>I would like to make a suggestion. Besides just a title and author...how about adding a classification to search by? Ie. drama, fiction, non-fiction, romance, comedy, etc..., or something to that effect so you can quickly find the type of book you would like to read.</blockquote></blockquote>I definately second this.I'm sure all those looking for strats or guides don't want to buy romance and all those after some juicy elf on troll fiction don't want to waste time with facts.

Kendricke

04-27-2009, 12:17 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Azzad wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will you be able to read them before you buy them? And what will be the process for reporting inapropriate material?I can easily see "Selling Raid strats for Palace - 400 PP Pst... oh it contains random_Exploit_01 for X named." Or on the flip side....nothing at all.</blockquote>If we allowed you to read the book on the broker, it would discourage a lot of people from wanting to sell them since you could just read it without buying it. If we displayed the first few lines, there's nothing keeping someone from making the first few lines look good, but the rest contain garbage.If you buy a book on the broker, you're buying it at your own risk. I would only purchase books that were cheap, or written by an author with a good reputation.</blockquote>Can't we see a letter count at least?</blockquote>Is a letter count really that helpful when someone can just paste Lorem ipsum into the book or type a lot of garbage?</blockquote>It won't be as helpful in telling you when a book is filled with garbage...but it will go a great way toward preventing purchase of a "guide" which has a total word count of 27 words.

Rothgar

04-27-2009, 12:40 AM

I'll consider some sort of classification field if there's time to implement it. As far as a timestamp, how would you see that working if someone changes the book text? Should it update everytime an author edits it? If not, I could see someone taking blank books and typing one word in them to "lock in" a timetamp. They could store lots of these in their bank, and if they wanted to copy someone's book, they could easily use a book that had an old timestap on it, making it look like theirs was written first. On the other hand, if you update the timestamp every time an author changes something, it would hurt them if they edit a book for a spelling error because it would reset the date. I just really don't see this as being a good solution for determining anything about the original author.

KerowynnKaotic

04-27-2009, 05:03 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'll consider some sort of classification field if there's time to implement it. As far as a timestamp, how would you see that working if someone changes the book text? Should it update everytime an author edits it? If not, I could see someone taking blank books and typing one word in them to "lock in" a timetamp. They could store lots of these in their bank, and if they wanted to copy someone's book, they could easily use a book that had an old timestap on it, making it look like theirs was written first. On the other hand, if you update the timestamp every time an author changes something, it would hurt them if they edit a book for a spelling error because it would reset the date. I just really don't see this as being a good solution for determining anything about the original author.</blockquote>Change it so that we can have a Preview Page in the Broker Screen. Preview Page randomly chooses a page out of the book (hopefully with words on it) that we can view it to see if we really want to waste good plat on that FanFic or Guide. I'd say an extra right click option that only highlights on books (of any type) on the broker/merchant and link. Have an extended Examine Screen that shows "Original Date" & then "Most Recent Edit Date", # of Characters & Genre and of 'course Authors Name, maybe even a short synaposis, limit of 15 words?. You guys already need to re-vamp the Broker screen so when you do you can make a "genre" & "Author" sort that goes along with the "Book" sort later on. I'm assuming, you already have some sort of "Report" feature built into the book system? If not, you seriously do need it. Not for reporting of plagiarism but for actual ban-able reasons. ie: plat selling, black listing, racial oriented propaganda, "how to get high off of car exhaust pipes" manuals .. etc ... Along, with that feature, if you could also have a "Recommend" feature (that ignores the author's account), use that as a tabulation system to choose book(s) per year to actually incorporate into the Norrath EQ2 Canon Lore Library (finalized & possibly edited by the Devs, of course) and introduce a New NPC in game somewhere "The Lore Librarian" that sells across servers those books that were accepted in this fashion, if you could also add in a special title and special book appearance that'd be great. And, use that new Welcome Screen to notify us that that "soandso of whateverServer new book TITLE, has just been approved by the Norrathian History Council for Mass Publish, See your local Lore Librarian for more details!"---Bet you wish you had just worked on re-doing the Recipe book about now ... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" />... Please work on the Recpie Book next ... !!!!

Rothgar

04-27-2009, 05:21 PM

Just a heads up on a small change to the user books. Since I already stated this earlier in the thread and its now changing, I wanted to make you aware.We're going to make it so that the title of your book and the author's name become the name of the book item. So instead of all the user books having the same name, the actual name of the item will follow the pattern: <Book Title> by <Author Name>.By including the author name, it should keep people from naming books in a way that would confuse them with other books or items in the world. This will also make the books searchable by title and author on the broker without any addition work or performance overhead.

Barq Bandit

04-27-2009, 08:46 PM

That's a fantastic change, Rothgar. Well done. You're really working hard to make this feature everything it can be within reason. To bring up all the books to browse through, all we'd have to do is search for " by " (with spaces). Can't think of any other items that would match that search string.I'm really, really excited about this new feature!

Kitsune

04-27-2009, 09:28 PM

The Huge problem I see with selling them by author name, despite filters, is finding only them on the broker. I have a bad enough time getting Charms to come up and then it is more than half full of poisons that don't need to be in a Charm slot anyway!So suggestion here, a Book Broker? Keeps them all in one easly found place all on their own. Maybe even some can be resold here, though I see no real reason for reselling them if they are cheap enough to buy.Have you lot heard of the Espresso Book Machine? $50,000 worth of machine that prints and binds a book on demand at shelf price in say B & N. Wel this is going on trial in Blackwell book shops in England. Link - <a href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/25/215218 " target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl...25/215218 </a> Interesting times coming.As to the OP worries about his/her Intellectual Property rights for these books, I was under the impression they would be quite small in content, about the same as they are now for Quests. Sure, it is important, but they won't exactly hold a lot of info or text, so is not the same as trying to publish a full fan novel set in Norrath, is it? As for non fiction stuff, well that is only accumulating and refining information freely out there about the game, with the addition of some personal experiences, I assume.As a Pro author myself, all I can say is, if you are that worried about your Intellectual Property rights, don't publish it in a game, go talk to someone like Prima or one of the other Game Guide folks. It would be a crying shame to tie up a fan based wonderful idea in so much red tape it is unworkable for those fans it is intended for, because a few folk are worried about their rights as authors. Besides, Sony owns the first rights to it all anyway, as far as I can see, as it is their product.

Rothgar

04-27-2009, 10:40 PM

As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.

Kitsune

04-27-2009, 10:46 PM

Item type only please. I end up with enough junk in some searches as it is.

Rothgar

04-27-2009, 10:52 PM

I received a PM about books that contained a good question, and rather than answer it in private, I wanted to answer it here.Authors can change text only. Curious to know since the text is not linked - if I have a book written by Joe in my house and Joe visits my house, can he change the text in the book on the shelf?I've made it so that books can only be edited while they are in your inventory and not when placed in a house. So, in the example above, if Joe is a trustee to your house, he could pick up the book, edit it and place it back down. If he is not a trustee, he would have no way of editing the text.

Freliant

04-27-2009, 11:37 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I received a PM about books that contained a good question, and rather than answer it in private, I wanted to answer it here.Authors can change text only. Curious to know since the text is not linked - if I have a book written by Joe in my house and Joe visits my house, can he change the text in the book on the shelf?I've made it so that books can only be edited while they are in your inventory and not when placed in a house. So, in the example above, if Joe is a trustee to your house, he could pick up the book, edit it and place it back down. If he is not a trustee, he would have no way of editing the text.</blockquote>Rothgar, if someone goes into your house, after you have purchased one of his books and placed it in your house... with the upcoming changes to house item permissions, he will be able to go in, and pick up his book leave and sell it again.Can books be the exception to this please. If I put a book in my house authored by someone else.. I want to keep it that way.

Armawk

04-28-2009, 12:05 AM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Rothgar, if someone goes into your house, after you have purchased one of his books and placed it in your house... with the upcoming changes to house item permissions, he will be able to go in, and pick up his book leave and sell it again.</blockquote>Erm.. that doesnt seem very likely, are you sure you have interpreted this correctly? The person who made it will not be the owner so how would he be able to do such a thing to ANY item in your house if he is not a trustee?

Noaani

04-28-2009, 02:11 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Will we allow you to upload screenshots and place pictures in books?The short answer is no. The reasoning is very similar to what Noaani pointed out. Allowing people to upload custom pictures would be very resource intensive and would need a human eye to verify that each picture was acceptible. We talked about the possibility of allowing you to insert pictures from a pre-defined list, but our list of pictures that would make sense is pretty small and we don't have the art bandwidth to create a bunch of new ones. Not to mention it would get old pretty quickly seeing the same pictures in everyone's books</blockquote>/daydream...What about if a new function were added to the game, that sent a snapshot of what we are looking at straight to the server.Make it so the picture has the UI removed, set to a fairly low resolution (though still using the graphic settings that the player is using), and allow us the ability to perform basic editing to it (limited to croping and/or deleting the picture). The image would only show what we see in game, so the chances of capturing anything objectionable are negligable (and nothing that any other player of the game can't see reguardless).It is obviously reasonably labour intensive, so even if you were to say its the bestest idea eva, and you will get straight on it (the response I expect, since I am daydreaming), it won't likely make GU#52. However, what it does is allow for pictures to be added to books in a safe manner, and also sets up the possibility of one other feature I would love to see: player generated paintings for houses. It also opens the way for players up to become in game *professional* photographers, selling their pictures to be used in books or framed as paintings.Other than the time required to implement this, the major issue with it (that I can immediatly identify) is serverside storage space. I can imagine players snapping many hundreds of pics if left to it, so placing a limit on the number of pics a character/account is able to keep on the server would be warrented.Edit: another issue with it is loading the picture on the client. If the pics are kept in a small enough resolution I could see them as being downloaded when opening a book (or entering a house for paintings). I don't know if this is able to be done at all, but even if its not having a seperate file for the pics used in books/paintings on each server (and giving players the option to limit updating these files to only the server/s they play on) may be an option./end daydream.

Whilhelmina

04-28-2009, 05:13 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.</blockquote>Yes please. That or the habitlity to exclude some categories when making broker searches. Something like "I want armor, I type "fulginate" and I exlude all things that are not plate armor".

Barq Bandit

04-28-2009, 06:16 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.</blockquote>I think excluding user-books from searches by default is a great idea. Very, very smart detail to attend to before things go live. Will eliminate the possibility of pranksters naming their books after master spells to get people's hopes up or possibly take advantage of a sleep-deprived player checking the broker one last time before dragging themselves off to bed. Decreases the hit to server performance drasticly. All around worth the bother of having to save a special search or just set item type to user-book.

SilkenKidden

04-28-2009, 07:36 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.</blockquote>I'd prefer that words in the title of a user written book be excluded from searches unless the player particularly indicates that user books are to be searched. Thank you for thinking of this problem and coming up with solutions.

SilkenKidden

04-28-2009, 07:38 AM

<cite>Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.</blockquote>I think excluding user-books from searches by default is a great idea. Very, very smart detail to attend to before things go live. Will eliminate the possibility of pranksters naming their books after master spells to get people's hopes up or possibly take advantage of a sleep-deprived player checking the broker one last time before dragging themselves off to bed. Decreases the hit to server performance drasticly. All around worth the bother of having to save a special search or just set item type to user-book.</blockquote>OMG yes. I can just see myself pouncing on a book entitled Earthen Avatar (Master).

Barx

04-28-2009, 08:11 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As I'm making tweaks to the broker integration for user books, I had a few thoughts.User books are the only items in game where players have control over the names and how they will appear on the broker. For example, if I create a book called "Grandmaster Rothgar" and put it on the broker, this item will show up when you search for grandmaster, or just master. I could see this causing lots of extra results in your search unless you are being specific about item type. Because of this, would you guys prefer if user-books were excluded from the search results by default? This would also mean that the server could skip over user books when doing name matching and possibly keep all the books from impacting search performance. The downside is that if you wanted to search for user books, you'd have to specify that in advanced options, or make a saved query for it.So basically this means you could only search for user books if you selected them from the "Item Type" dropdown list. Your feedback would be appreciated.</blockquote>I like that idea. That will prevent duping people into thinking that they're buying a master spell "Oh look, Spell (Master 1) by Someguy" is only 5p, buy!" And then if you're looking for custom books you just have to select the type.

Tremis2

04-28-2009, 12:57 PM

Exclude them by default from broker search.Since I don't read much the current ingame book, I'm not sure I will ever buy/read a user written one.Broker search is complicated enough to find what I'm looking for. Moreover the new naming convention for spell will be confusing enough not to make it harder with new book system and people who try to abuse from it.Written book is a nice addition for some people, for others like me is not.

Rothgar

04-28-2009, 02:07 PM

Thanks for the feedback. At least from the responses so far it seems that excluding books from search results by default is the way to go. Not only will it keep false hits down, it'll keep all the extra user books on the broker from having a bigger impact on search times.Noaani,The problem with allowing image uploads from the client is that we cannot trust the content on the server side no matter how its implemented on the client. In the end, its just a stream of bytes coming from your computer to our server and everything must be validated on the server side. With images, there's no way to programmatically validate it without having a human look at it. Besides the validation issues, this feature would be a lot of work. Its a cool idea and we've certainly entertained it in our discussions, but realistically I don't think it would be high on the priority list due to the amount of time it would take to implement.Freliant,The author of a book will not be able to pick it up in your house unless you give him trustee access to do so. This will not be changing anytime soon.

Gkar

04-28-2009, 02:41 PM

it might be to late for this idea..have a book store in each of the starting cities then have a UI specific to book buying. as part of the ui you could see a best sellers list(by book and author) for each city and all of Norrath

Yimway

04-28-2009, 02:42 PM

You still lose me as a contributor if you can't provide some mechanism for the author to prevent the buyer from reselling the book after reading.I'm not going to publish zone guides and other tomes of knowledge that would have value if I'm going to end up with a marketboard of people reselling my same books against me when they are done with them.

GrunEQ

04-28-2009, 02:48 PM

I'm all for this broker change as long as there is a drop down catagory for User Books.

Freliant

04-28-2009, 05:30 PM

Yep, I am for broker category you have to select in order to include books. Heck, even a checkmark near the search button that says "include books" would be awesome. Checked = you see books, not checked = No books will show up.

Valdaglerion

04-28-2009, 06:35 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I received a PM about books that contained a good question, and rather than answer it in private, I wanted to answer it here.Authors can change text only. Curious to know since the text is not linked - if I have a book written by Joe in my house and Joe visits my house, can he change the text in the book on the shelf?I've made it so that books can only be edited while they are in your inventory and not when placed in a house. So, in the example above, if Joe is a trustee to your house, he could pick up the book, edit it and place it back down. If he is not a trustee, he would have no way of editing the text.</blockquote>There is a good use for this in guild halls though, a place where you might not want a large number of people to have trustee rights.One of the things being discussed in our guild is allowing certain book types to become a knowledge transfer system by category. In order to make it work we need multiple people to have permission to edit these books without giving them TRUSTEE rights to the hall itself.Having a book wirtten by someone, placed in the hall and allowing the originating author continued access to the book for editing rights is pretty interesting for some uses.Any way to add a lock to the book so you can allow it to be edited or not?

Azzad

04-28-2009, 09:31 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>You still lose me as a contributor if you can't provide some mechanism for the author to prevent the buyer from reselling the book after reading.I'm not going to publish zone guides and other tomes of knowledge that would have value if I'm going to end up with a marketboard of people reselling my same books against me when they are done with them.</blockquote> Don't flatter yourself. You're not going to write anything thats not already on the wiki or ZAM. Even if you did, they're not implementing this so you can make some plat. It's for people to exchange stories and flame your enemies.The only people who are going to make plat off this system are the sages making blank books.

Yimway

04-29-2009, 11:06 AM

<cite>Azzad wrote:</cite><blockquote> Don't flatter yourself. You're not going to write anything thats not already on the wiki or ZAM. Even if you did, they're not implementing this so you can make some plat. It's for people to exchange stories and flame your enemies.The only people who are going to make plat off this system are the sages making blank books.</blockquote>Funny, I didn't read that was the only intent for the system. I think it has interesting possibilities outside of just RP fluff, and its really up to SoE and Rothgar if they will provide the functionality to make this more than a fluff feature.Lastly, I wouldn't pursue the features needed to implement useful game lore into the book system if I wasn't confident I have better detailed information and more exclusive information than is available via any wiki, or even subscription site.

Oakum

04-29-2009, 01:12 PM

Different people look at books different ways. Some will resell. Those who like to read though will keep them.How many times have you went to a zone for aa ect that you havent been to in over a year and not been able to remember how to do it.If I bought guides, they would end up in the guild hall library so that a 18 months from now, I could look up things like the strats on vp nexona or whatever. Sure I could look them up online but my casual guld does not get on line much at all. If it was available, I could muster a 2 or 3 group raid (lvl 90 being the max cap) in the guild hall, and tell the raid to read the book while we are waiting for the last 2 people to zone in, ect.Knowledge is the greatest treasure in the world but is easily lost when no one passes it on. How many great cities, buildings and monuments were not created in the middle ages because the secrect of concrete was lost when rome fell?How much further along now would civilization be if people didnt have to relearn everything lost or destroyed when civilizations fell or conguered others and their information was not passed on. Metal working, mechanical mills and pumps built over 2000 years ago and then how they were made was lost for a long time.The only knowledge that is truly useless and a waste is what is not passed on to those who might need, can enjoy the story, or can learn from later on.On the flip side, I can understand people wanting to make money on it. Our familys must eat, lol.Off my soap box now, lol.

Barq Bandit

04-29-2009, 01:42 PM

One of the uses I've thought of that I'm really looking forward to is for each of my characters to have their own little persistant notebook without having to use the ingame browser and something like Yahoo Notes. I can note down customer orders, names and addresses of people I'm about to visit to buy from (because I nearly always forget by the time I've made it from the broker to their area), the raws I've calculated that I need for such and such crafting job, etc. Going to be neat!

Valdaglerion

04-29-2009, 03:37 PM

I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?

Yimway

04-29-2009, 03:53 PM

<cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?</blockquote>1) I wouldn't want all books to be that way, I just want 2 versions of the recipe, one that does, one that does not.2) As stated in previous threads, you don't get to sell your used book in the same marketplace as the author selling new books. The potential marketplace here is very small making even a couple dozen copies sufficient to serve the entire market if they can be re-sold after use.

Barq Bandit

04-29-2009, 03:59 PM

I would like the option to have a book that can be editable by multiple users.I would like to see an option that would to allow editing while the book is placed if the user desires it, and with that another option to allow the owner of the book to set what access level people need to have before editing a placed book. I'm imagining these as checkboxes for "Allow Editing By Others" and "Allow Editing While Placed" and a drop down menu for "Access Level: Visitor, Friend, Trustee".I've been in a guild before where we'd often imagine a ledger placed at the front of the guild tavern or guild hall, and we'd create this on the guild forums. It would be great to be able to actually have this physically represented within the game. I'd also like to be able to put out Vistor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.

Jgok

04-29-2009, 09:32 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've just made a change so you can now specify the language for your user book. It will of course have to be a language that your character knows. If the reader understands that language, it will be displayed in their normal font. If they do not understand the language, it'll be displayed in the appropriate font for that language.</blockquote>Excellent. I've got at least one story that just has to be written in Ykeshan/Froglok.Related concern... How does this work on the PvP server? If someone were to get hold of a book from a different faction, but written in a language they understand, could they read it? Or will the PvP servers only be able to write books in one of the "faction" languages?<cite>Zhadowsee@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Or they may make a book slandering another player. (Or is it libel? I forget.)</blockquote>Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.<cite>Snapdragyn wrote:</cite><blockquote>What exactly is 'inappropriate'? I see troubled times ahead here.What if a romance describes holding hands, perhaps even a kiss? What if the characters described are both of the same gender? Now we're into territory where someone somewhere would probably file a /petition if they came across a copy, yet I, as a [Removed for Content] man IRL, will object very strongly to the censorship of having an otherwise unobjectionable story removed simply because the characters were [Removed for Content].</blockquote>That's a very valid concern, IMO.<a href="http://www.gamegrene.com/node/41" target="_blank">http://www.gamegrene.com/node/41</a>Granted, that happened back when EQ was still run by Verant, not SOE, but consider the ramifications when folks are allowed to write and publish fanfiction in the actual game, not on third-party websites. Censorship is censorship, but I also understand that SOE has to put SOME limits. The story you describe should be fine (IMO), but perhaps the one mentioned in that article wouldn't be.<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>So, I can publish my Atan's guide to plat farming and sell it for an arbitrary price?</blockquote>Jgok's Guide to Making a Million PlatinumStep 1: Write a guide to making plat.Step 2: Set the broker price at 200 plat.Step 3: Sell the guide to 5,000 people.Congratulations, you're a millionaire!

Rothgar

04-29-2009, 10:09 PM

<cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?</blockquote>There is a small error in your assumption. Multiple players cannot edit a single book and no one can edit a book while its placed in a house. Only the original author can ever edit the text and this must be done while the book is in their inventory. I was simply pointing out that an author of a book would need to have TRUSTEE access in order to modify the text of a book in your house. This is so he could pick the book up, edit it, and put it back down. I know that some of you want a lot of options to give multiple people the ability to contribute to a book. We have talked about doing something like that in the future but it will most likely exist as a different type of object, and not a book.

Azzad

04-29-2009, 11:03 PM

<cite>Oakum wrote:</cite><blockquote>Different people look at books different ways. Some will resell. Those who like to read though will keep them.How many times have you went to a zone for aa ect that you havent been to in over a year and not been able to remember how to do it.</blockquote>Right. So if I found myself in this situation I would have 3 options:A) Teleport back to my house/guild hall and hover my cursor over dozens of books until I find the right one. (which may be "checked out" in the case of a guild hall). Then run back to the zone I was in.B) Waste at least one entire bag slot filled with books of zones I might happen to go into someday.C) Click a button that brings up the wiki.I just don't see any situation where someone would buy one of these guides but if you enjoy writing them go for it.

Bratface

04-30-2009, 12:30 AM

<cite>Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd also like to be able to put out Visitor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.</blockquote>From earlier in the thread:<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.</blockquote>This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item. It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.</blockquote>Emphasis mine.

Quicksilver74

04-30-2009, 02:19 PM

For Multiple Authors, a Bulletin Board would be nice. I remember EQ1 had one such board, I believe it was in Highkeep. OMG how cool would it be to have, in your guild hall, your own bulletin board and treat it as if it were some primitive form of an internet forum? I could see a thread now!Topic: Training DummiesBody: Pinpoint, Please restcok the box of Training dummies. I have been pounding them all day and there are wood chips and wool all over the floor, yet no more dummies in the box. Also we need a guild hall maid ammenity, because I'm not cleaning up the mess! Sincerely, Crabbok

Oakum

04-30-2009, 08:26 PM

<cite>Crabbok@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>For Multiple Authors, a Bulletin Board would be nice. I remember EQ1 had one such board, I believe it was in Highkeep. OMG how cool would it be to have, in your guild hall, your own bulletin board and treat it as if it were some primitive form of an internet forum? I could see a thread now!Topic: Training DummiesBody: Pinpoint, Please restcok the box of Training dummies. I have been pounding them all day and there are wood chips and wool all over the floor, yet no more dummies in the box. Also we need a guild hall maid ammenity, because I'm not cleaning up the mess! Sincerely, Crabbok</blockquote>LoL, I'll bite.Sorry, we had a maid from Qeynos but she was hanging out with you a lot and quit mutttering something about dirty diapers and raising a hatchling for 12 to 18 years.The maid from freeport and her "man" spent all their time in a bedroom being visited by lots of people, quit, and then bought their own guild halls with the proceeds of "whatever" they were doing in there.With our inabiity to keeps maids "unsatisfied" we are currently stuck with having the dwarf and ogre stableboys do all the sweeping. Since they often track as much "stuff" in from the stable as they remove while sweeping we have decided that certain things like indoor training grounds covered with "protective mulch" are much preferable to indoor stables covered with mount droppings with wooden caltrops sticking out of them (from the chips they missed).Especially to halflings like yourself who prefer to run around barefooted.Since you ARE the guild carpenter, please make 1000 dummies to refill the box. You may use the guild crafting table and the harvesting box but dont forget to restock the harvesting box at the completion of each hour in case your glorious leader should want to craft something.Most SincerelyYour great and fearless leader.Oakum Stormchaser. PS, I know you like the size of the newest members chest but she is an ogre and you are a halfling. She keeps mumbling about she needs ask the cook for "much bigger slices of bread" or if can she "borrow a big pot" and mumbling about "crab sandwiches or crab soup" when she sees you looking at her from across the room. She also often talks about how hard it is to raise 2 young ogres as a single parent since she killed their father and fed him to them when she caught him eyeing a high elf but not in a "I'm hungry" sort of way. She complains that has very little time to adventure and slay dragons for gold anymore to buy food without him around to watch them for her so she is always looking for extras to take some of the load off.I suspect she "might" be involved with the recent rash of pet dissappearances from the hall. However, being a smart Wood Elf, I would rather just buy new pets then go to her house and ask her about them.In short, I would advise you to forget the size of her chest.Your most perfect leader.Oakum.

Barq Bandit

04-30-2009, 09:54 PM

<cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd also like to be able to put out Visitor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.</blockquote>From earlier in the thread:<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.</blockquote>This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item. It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.</blockquote>Emphasis mine.</blockquote>Ah, thanks for that, Bratface. Missed that one.

therodge

05-04-2009, 06:34 PM

would it be possible for the books to recognise item numbers and produce a link to that item, if not if it could be put it would make my life alot easier

Bratface

05-05-2009, 12:11 AM

<cite>Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd also like to be able to put out Visitor-editable comment books for players who visit my homes to leave a short note if they like, to let me know they'd been by to visit and what they liked about the place, etc.</blockquote>From earlier in the thread:<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is there any possiblility of using this type of mechanic to have a guest book in a house or guild hall? I'd love to be able to add a few words to a guest book in houses or guild halls I see.</blockquote>This is still something I'd like to add as an amenity or house item. It would share a lot of the same 'technology' but needs to be a different type of item.</blockquote>Emphasis mine.</blockquote>Ah, thanks for that, Bratface. Missed that one.</blockquote>Glad to help, it's a long thread and things are easy to miss.

Bratface

05-05-2009, 12:13 AM

Double post

Kriptini

05-05-2009, 01:46 AM

Rothgar, earlier you mentioned that if the book is written in a language that the player does not know, the text will show up as if it was written in that language. (I.E., if the book is written in Death's Whisper, and Player A doesn't speak Death's Whisper, the book will display symbols as if it were in Death's Whisper.)My question is this: Are the symbols that are going to be used consistant with the symbols that NPCs use? If so, then one could make a "Rosetta Stone" book translating all the characters. Would this be a potential problem?

Barq Bandit

05-05-2009, 05:22 AM

<cite>Kriptini@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Rothgar, earlier you mentioned that if the book is written in a language that the player does not know, the text will show up as if it was written in that language. (I.E., if the book is written in Death's Whisper, and Player A doesn't speak Death's Whisper, the book will display symbols as if it were in Death's Whisper.)My question is this: Are the symbols that are going to be used consistant with the symbols that NPCs use? If so, then one could make a "Rosetta Stone" book translating all the characters. Would this be a potential problem?</blockquote>If I'm reading this right, you're asking if one could make a book with two languages, both Common (English to us) and some other language. That sounds like it might be a bit too complicated to bother with for such a specialized purpose. All the fonts for the various languages are in the EQ2 program folder, of course. Those can be fun to play with in forum signatures. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />If you wanted, you could screenshot anything written or said in another language you don't understand, and translate letter for letter what it actually says using the fonts. I know the notices out by the arena in Maj'Dul say some pretty humorous things.

RedFault

05-05-2009, 01:54 PM

Regarding people's concerns about their works in-game being copied by other players for profit, wouldn't a simple timestamp at the time of a book's creation allow the original author to prove him/herself conclusively to be the original author, and therefore request (via /petition or whatever) that the plagiarist's copy be removed? If the timestamp were displayed in the tooltip, then the OA could link to his/her original copy in chat context, as well. Just a thought.

therodge

05-05-2009, 02:23 PM

Rothgar

05-05-2009, 02:26 PM

<cite>RedFault wrote:</cite><blockquote>Regarding people's concerns about their works in-game being copied by other players for profit, wouldn't a simple timestamp at the time of a book's creation allow the original author to prove him/herself conclusively to be the original author, and therefore request (via /petition or whatever) that the plagiarist's copy be removed? If the timestamp were displayed in the tooltip, then the OA could link to his/her original copy in chat context, as well. Just a thought.</blockquote>Customer Service will not be getting involved in these types of matters. It's all too subjective. The furthest that CS will probably be going is to remove people's ability to create/edit books if they abuse it.Now, entertaining the thought of a timestamp, it wouldn't work anyway. If it were stamped when the book was created, someone could just create a bunch of books the day that the feature comes out with nothing but an "x" as the text which would stamp the book with the oldest date possible. Then they could use these books later on and replace the text. If on the other hand we made the timestamp change everytime you edited a book, authors would no longer have a representation of when the work was created because everytime they fixed a spelling error it would reset the date. Showing both wouldn't be any more proof of creation time than showing nothing.

Yimway

05-05-2009, 02:40 PM

Thats another arguement for attune on read imo. Cause you can track that timestamp, and you can audit if/when the accused plagarist read the book to copy it.

Rothgar

05-05-2009, 03:28 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Thats another arguement for attune on read imo. Cause you can track that timestamp, and you can audit if/when the accused plagarist read the book to copy it.</blockquote>Wouldn't that be easily solvable by reading it on another account or having your friend buy the book and paste the text to you in an email? There is just no way to protect your text content and CS isn't going to get in the middle of disputes. I think their time is best spent on other petitions and not playing Judge Judy to players squabbling over "copyright" issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Hirofortis

05-05-2009, 03:54 PM

I am trying to understand why people are getting so worked up over copyright. This is for entertainment factor. If you are worried about someone stealing your work, then publish it in a manner that has copyrights. Otherwise publish it to all for there enjoyment. Everyone knows that if someone starts stealing work, a few posts about it will more than make up for it as they will loose all credibility. We have all seen people who have done stupid stuff like that and they do not last long. The comunity does not tolorate peeps like that. Trust in your fellow players and enjoy what is beign offered. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Valdaglerion

05-05-2009, 05:40 PM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?</blockquote>There is a small error in your assumption. Multiple players cannot edit a single book and no one can edit a book while its placed in a house. Only the original author can ever edit the text and this must be done while the book is in their inventory. I was simply pointing out that an author of a book would need to have TRUSTEE access in order to modify the text of a book in your house. This is so he could pick the book up, edit it, and put it back down. I know that some of you want a lot of options to give multiple people the ability to contribute to a book. We have talked about doing something like that in the future but it will most likely exist as a different type of object, and not a book.</blockquote>Ah. This makes sense. I didnt mean multiple editors on a single book but rather a collection of books where each author was responsible for a book so multiple people could contribute to the collection.But having the book needing to be in inventory to change the text negates this usage all together and thanks for the clarification.On that note - If a book is written by Joe and placed in a guild bank to which Amy has access rights, can she read it from there or does she have to take it into inventory to read it and then replace it in the bank.As far as the timestamp issue -Wouldnt tracking a date and version present a decent solution to the originating author?Joe writes a book. "WHEN HE COPIES THE BOOK" the date gets set and the version gets set. All books copied from this book receive that date and version. Joe edits and the book. When he makes the first copy of the edited version the date gets reset and the version incremented. All books now copied receive the new date and version.For the record, I agree that copyright issues have no real relevancy here. I am thinking about versioning and dating being useful in tracking information over time for things like guides, etc.Finding a good author and realizing they have a updated version to a guide you use makes a potential purchase. Without having a version or the ability to review the material you wont know if the book for sale is the same one you have.

Rothgar

05-05-2009, 06:37 PM

<cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>I personally do not want to see these things become LORE, No-Trade, Attuneable or any of such tagging. Books are a fluid thing. Our guild is thinking of tons of useful mechanisms for them at this point and putting such trivial restrictions on them for reselling is counter productive.Real books can be sold after you read them. If they couldnt, there would be tons of stores and people out of work. If the material you provide is worthwhile, than it will be kept and treasured, stored on a shelf at the very least. If not, it will find its way into the market again.Rothgar - in thinking over the permission thing for changing text while a book is in a home or hall. Would it be possible to change that to FRIEND instead of TRUSTEE??Someone visiting your house would likely have Vistior access, most houses and halls require a relationship to get FRIEND and granting TRUSTEE is pretty much a no no. We are envisioning many ways to use these books but do see need to have multiple authors contributing to the volumes for various topics. Having to open the entire guild hall to TRUSTEE for that many people would be unwise. Thoughts?</blockquote>There is a small error in your assumption. Multiple players cannot edit a single book and no one can edit a book while its placed in a house. Only the original author can ever edit the text and this must be done while the book is in their inventory. I was simply pointing out that an author of a book would need to have TRUSTEE access in order to modify the text of a book in your house. This is so he could pick the book up, edit it, and put it back down. I know that some of you want a lot of options to give multiple people the ability to contribute to a book. We have talked about doing something like that in the future but it will most likely exist as a different type of object, and not a book.</blockquote>Ah. This makes sense. I didnt mean multiple editors on a single book but rather a collection of books where each author was responsible for a book so multiple people could contribute to the collection.But having the book needing to be in inventory to change the text negates this usage all together and thanks for the clarification.On that note - If a book is written by Joe and placed in a guild bank to which Amy has access rights, can she read it from there or does she have to take it into inventory to read it and then replace it in the bank.The book will have to be in your inventory in order to read it, so they would have to remove it from the bank to read it.As far as the timestamp issue -Wouldnt tracking a date and version present a decent solution to the originating author?Joe writes a book. "WHEN HE COPIES THE BOOK" the date gets set and the version gets set. All books copied from this book receive that date and version. Joe edits and the book. When he makes the first copy of the edited version the date gets reset and the version incremented. All books now copied receive the new date and version.For the record, I agree that copyright issues have no real relevancy here. I am thinking about versioning and dating being useful in tracking information over time for things like guides, etc.Finding a good author and realizing they have a updated version to a guide you use makes a potential purchase. Without having a version or the ability to review the material you wont know if the book for sale is the same one you have.I think this feature is one of those borderline things that some would find handy and some wouldn't use it at all. You would still be able to manage this information yourself if you so wished. You could even include the version number in your title if you wanted people to know that you were selling an updated version. I'm not saying that this feature isn't a good idea, but probably below the line that we would draw in terms of how much more time we spend on this feature. We have to put the nail in the coffin at some point and will probably not make too many more changes to the feature unless its a bug fix or a quick win that the majority of players would find beneficial.</blockquote>

Valdaglerion

05-05-2009, 08:11 PM

This sounds like good stuff Rothgar, cant wait for this to make it to Test and start playing around with it. This is one of those items I am really excited to see come into the game. While not game affecting to many, this is one of those items which may enhance game play for some and definitely incease the RP and questing for others.Looking forward to it, thanks.

Lodrelhai

05-05-2009, 11:32 PM

Sooooo looking forward to this! Definitely having a book on me at all times to write notes about what prereqs I need to do in time for guild day, what commissions I need to fulfill, stragies for this week's instance - all the stuff I'm usually tabbing out of game to look up.I'm also going to copy the TIWIKE into a book (or several, one for each section) and place it in the guild hall for reference. Probably also place a copy on the broker, for a high cost, with the title "Things I Wish I'd Known Earlier (mail [actual item cost] to author for copy)" with the actual cost being based on the fuel cost and how many volumes need to be mailed.

RedFault

05-06-2009, 12:48 AM

Well I'm not one to beat a dead horse, but for the record I agree that "copyright" issues in a fictional world aren't really a programmer's gravest concern. I just thought I had a good idea, which the experts easily shot down. Ah well, that's why I PLAY the games rather than program them. But this is definitely a cool feature, and I love a lot of the suggestions I'm seeing here in the forums. I can't wait to see what comes of it.

Seraki

05-06-2009, 03:49 AM

<div> First off it is a neat idea. I have some concerns though,. 1 All you have to do is watch level 1-9 chat a little while to see how comfortable those who like to abuse the system have become with having their way. We have level 80 players running around with obscene or otherwise disgusting names on their heads [and their pets]due to a little creative spelling. Some of them seem to have been in game for a long time so will the censorship of the books last when enforcement of the other word policies seems to have gone weak? 2 If this is a sage thing then is it to counter some expected negative results to sage value from the incoming auto spell updater npc that will be available to guild halls soon? 3 What about mentioning other players in a book with out their permission? One could say some pretty damaging things with out ever using words that the chat filter would catch.</div>

Azzad

05-06-2009, 10:28 AM

Will the entire book have to be in the same language or can you switch on the fly?Say I want the story to be in Common but my character finds some Sathirian runes. Can I switch to Sathirian for a sentence?

Vinh

05-06-2009, 04:15 PM

This is a cute idea, but I see it getting out of hand, very fast. I hope SoE has the workforce to keep up with it. I wish they'd fix the broken items in the game, before venturing into something so fluff.

Seablade

05-06-2009, 04:26 PM

I think that it is an interesting idea and the right road for EQ2 and its players. MMO games must evolve to keep their entertainment factor. What was exciting and innovative a decade ago is not necessarily that now, and player created books will be something different for sure.I have another idea along the same lines as player-created books that may garner a flame war, but here goes: I would like to see some form of player-created or at the least guild-created quests for their members. I realize that something would have to be done in regards to xp to ultimately make it "fair" for all, but something like that would (seemingly) be nice to have something created by players that has never been in the game before. Being a programmer myself, I realize that something like this is potentially a long way off and a difficult addition to the game, but I think it would be important for the continued success of EQ2.I do have reservations regarding player books though concerning the kinds of documents that will be allowed. What I am afraid is that some players (so inclined) might use these books for political speech. I don't necessarily have anything against using the books for that but I can see that since the real-world players live in other parts of the world, in addition to those that live here in the United States, Sony might become party to EU and/or US hate speech lawsuits and other dictates of foreign governments due to a player-created book that spoke something derogatory (regardless of the truth or veracity) about some dignitary or politician and thereby broke some EU or US law regarding politically correct sanitized speech. Remember, this sounds silly (I almost didn't make this point) but the truth is that this world has become inane in regards to restricting what any one of us can say. The United States is on the same road with that of England and other European countries concerning free unobstructed speech with more and more restrictions subjectively applied based on the whims of a seedy politician.The only point I have to make is that I don't want this seemingly innocent addition to EQ2 to be its ultimate demise because someone gets a bee in their bonnet over what someone else wrote in a "book."

Cocapez

05-07-2009, 12:24 PM

<cite>Snapdragyn wrote:</cite><blockquote>What exactly is 'inappropriate'? I see troubled times ahead here.What if a romance describes holding hands, perhaps even a kiss? What if the characters described are both of the same gender? Now we're into territory where someone somewhere would probably file a /petition if they came across a copy, yet I, as a [Removed for Content] man IRL, will object very strongly to the censorship of having an otherwise unobjectionable story removed simply because the characters were [Removed for Content].</blockquote>I have to agree with you on this, though I am not personally homosexual myself, I can see where your concern comes in, though in defense of soe I honestly doubt they would do something like that just for the fact that they could potentially get into a lot of trouble for sensoring a story just because the characters happened to be anything but heterosexual.I would like to at least think the CS persons of soe would keep this in mind when reviewing the petitions of those for books.

Cocapez

05-07-2009, 12:50 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am not reading all the posts from the first one, but seriously you are spending dev time on this?!?!?!?!?Judging by level chat most people can't spell, and do not have any idea what the word 'grammar' means. Why on earth would I want to read a story they produce when I have access tot he public library.Please do real dev things with the money I am sending you.</blockquote>Is there anything the devs do that doesn't make you complain? Seriously I only ever see you look at everything like it is something bad try looking at the good that will come from this.I personally like the ideas that a lot of people have had stating guides and such for new players and raiders alike. I am the type of person that will find that one person that is a total nooblet and take them under my wing and help them become a player even better than myself. So me writing a book to help out those nooblets and just handing them a copy that enables them to have a better understanding of the game is a wonderful thing, imo.(side note: My lvl 80 Templar has her mythical and I will be the first to say that she still sucks at healing! So it's not hard for someone I help to learn the game to become a better player than me. I'm a much better crafter. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" />)

Cocapez

05-07-2009, 12:52 PM

My last post for now, since this is the third one today, I haven't seen anything about when these are supposed to go to test. Did I miss it or did no one answer that yet, maybe there is no set date for these to be released on test? I just cant wait to start playing with this feature and figure out how it works.

Valdaglerion

05-08-2009, 07:42 PM

According to Kiara, LU52 is expected to hit test the week of May 18th. SOoooo, IF this makes it to LU52 we will hopefully see it in another week or so /fingers crossed.

Cocapez

05-10-2009, 01:48 PM

sweet thank you so much, I scanned through all the posts maybe I missed it in the 16 pages of posts.

Lohkei

05-10-2009, 09:04 PM

I already got a title for my book. "Truth of Sony". I can put in things like SOE has taught me its cheaper to develop new buggy fluff and not fix older buggy fluffy content.I can list things in my book about some of the bugs and mob pathing, terrible in zone LD's and quests like "To save a queen" is not able to be turned in unless you petition.Put in cool stories how the "Play nice policy" takes priority and has a faster response time over in-game zone bug out issues.Oh well, I can't reveal the whole book, but stay tune I think it my be a best seller.

Kaalenarc

05-14-2009, 11:55 AM

<cite>Lohkei wrote:</cite><blockquote>I already got a title for my book. "Truth of Sony". I can put in things like SOE has taught me its cheaper to develop new buggy fluff and not fix older buggy fluffy content.I can list things in my book about some of the bugs and mob pathing, terrible in zone LD's and quests like "To save a queen" is not able to be turned in unless you petition.Put in cool stories how the "Play nice policy" takes priority and has a faster response time over in-game zone bug out issues.Oh well, I can't reveal the whole book, but stay tune I think it my be a best seller.</blockquote>I wonder how SOE will react to something like this? I know the person above is (probably) kidding, but you know, I will give it one day, maybe two, before someone posts a book on the broker about why SOE did something wrong, or bashing another player, or their guild drama,etc. Wonder how SOE will respond to the SOE Bashing/harassment thats likely to ensue.

Koava

05-14-2009, 12:47 PM

You said May for this to hit TEST ? I thought I saw June ?According to EQ2Wire ... "These changes will appear on the Test Server on or about June 18th."I think there is really NO issue about SoE and their possible heavy handed censorship. Remember you are a "guest" here. This is THEIR world and you sign an agreement everytime you enter it, so you agree to all their policies when you agree to play, thus their policy is not censorship, but their effort to shape the world in a way that suits their mold, or the way they see the world.If you want to make political statements, distribute smut, bash other players or SoE, there are un-censored web site and other means that are much more accessable and chaeper than buying a player made book and then making 400 copies and sending them to people.I do not see the plat sellers making books and sending them to people through the mail system, that is against the companies business models ... in other words there is a better place to spend their advertising budget more efficiently.Personally, I am looking forwards to putting some of my stories in pring and passing them along to a few people that like my work ... maybe there will be a contest or two.

ev4debug

05-19-2009, 09:59 AM

What about language?Is mandatory to write english book or we can write in our language (italian for me?)thanks!Ola!

Whilhelmina

05-20-2009, 06:41 AM

The main question is : if they apply the obsenity filters, will it check for language before removing perfectly normal words if they are written in another language.

GrunEQ

05-20-2009, 04:13 PM

After seeing Denmother's preview I just want to give a big <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" /> for the nice looking books and that odd tiers will lie flat and even tiers will stand up. So nice to have some color and variety in books. Many thanks!I was a little disappointed (just a a little) that none were laying open. But I'm sure that just leaves room for later. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />

Whilhelmina

05-21-2009, 09:22 AM

Yep, thank you for the very nice bindings of those books <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Valdaglerion

06-03-2009, 02:32 PM

The books work perfectly. About 10 pages of solid text, more than enough for intended uses and gives way to creating volumes and collections as needed.The changing appearance between Edit and Read mode was very cool, nice touch.Aesthetically I think the only suggestion I have is to include another book at some time that looks like an open book when placed on a counter. This would look like a guest register of sorts.Really nice job on these Rothgar, kudos~

Rothgar

06-04-2009, 10:19 PM

<cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>The books work perfectly. About 10 pages of solid text, more than enough for intended uses and gives way to creating volumes and collections as needed.The changing appearance between Edit and Read mode was very cool, nice touch.Aesthetically I think the only suggestion I have is to include another book at some time that looks like an open book when placed on a counter. This would look like a guest register of sorts.Really nice job on these Rothgar, kudos~</blockquote>Thank you Artemiz! I do have a couple of small bug fixes for books so far, but other than that I haven't heard a lot of feedback. Sometimes thats good and sometimes thats bad. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Bratface

06-05-2009, 12:51 AM

<cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>The books work perfectly. About 10 pages of solid text, more than enough for intended uses and gives way to creating volumes and collections as needed.The changing appearance between Edit and Read mode was very cool, nice touch.Aesthetically I think the only suggestion I have is to include another book at some time that looks like an open book when placed on a counter. This would look like a guest register of sorts.Really nice job on these Rothgar, kudos~</blockquote>Thank you Artemiz! I do have a couple of small bug fixes for books so far, but other than that I haven't heard a lot of feedback. Sometimes thats good and sometimes thats bad. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Rothgar <3Love the new books, they are awesome.I would also like to have had some open books, maybe the rare ones be open, stacked or different in some way, having them all be standing books was a small diappointment but done is done.You did a wonderful job with these, I made a few on test but haven't been back to try writing in them but I will be soon I hope =)

Rothgar

06-05-2009, 03:08 AM

<cite>Bratface wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>The books work perfectly. About 10 pages of solid text, more than enough for intended uses and gives way to creating volumes and collections as needed.The changing appearance between Edit and Read mode was very cool, nice touch.Aesthetically I think the only suggestion I have is to include another book at some time that looks like an open book when placed on a counter. This would look like a guest register of sorts.Really nice job on these Rothgar, kudos~</blockquote>Thank you Artemiz! I do have a couple of small bug fixes for books so far, but other than that I haven't heard a lot of feedback. Sometimes thats good and sometimes thats bad. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Rothgar <3Love the new books, they are awesome.I would also like to have had some open books, maybe the rare ones be open, stacked or different in some way, having them all be standing books was a small diappointment but done is done.You did a wonderful job with these, I made a few on test but haven't been back to try writing in them but I will be soon I hope =)</blockquote>Bratface, actually, they aren't all standing. Half are standing and half are laying flat. We do plan on creating some that are opened. This was definitely something that Domino and I discussed a long time ago.