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Hi Everybody.  :D
Four years ago, I was real new, and was whining in chat about never seeing a Dragon. I said if I ever did see one (in PVE, of course - Kingdoms would make this complicated) I would tell everyone, and we would all just kill it. Oh, how people laughed at me.  They told me of how greed makes people go sideways and if I made any announcement like that someone would come take it, and all the servers would be in an uproar trying to get there, and I had no idea what I was talking about, and what I suggested was laughable. Over the next four years, I came to understand that it isn't so simple. I learned that if you are going to do a public slaying, you gotta give people time to prepare.  I learned those who host them are incredibly generous people who spend hours and hours setting these things up, and it is a Huge undertaking.  But I never learned that people are greedy and awful.
Wurm is full of really amazing people.  We all come to the servers and help build an imaginary world together that is made of generosity, teamwork, really hard work, cooperation, laughter, adventures. People have spent years of long hours creating massive Impalongs that were endless days of joy, friendship, competition, and generosity. This last couple weeks, there was a beautiful Impalong that was so completely amazing, it felt like real life. Vooch and his staff were generous and kind to an extent that staggered and amazed me. And yesterday happened.
Yesterday, I found a Dragon.  First I contacted my alliance member and spewed a stream of all-caps uncontrolled excitement and explosions of glee that were mostly incoherent, but he dropped his anvil and came to help immediately. Then I phoned a friend in the alliance who dropped everything in real life to come help me. Then I contacted two other friends in the game who respectfully explained they were too busy.  They kept quiet and didn't tell a soul.  When it became apparent a couple hours into this that I was in over my head by a hundred feet or more, I pmmed Stanlee who sat in pm with me for hours helping with how-tos.  He agreed to host the event, but we needed to pen it, and I found it in a friggin bowl of dirt on Inde, and after the 4th attempt to mine something suitable for a holding mine, we were 6 hours into the project with nothing but messes to show for it. We needed more workers. So I pmmed people I didn't know that well, but had interacted with enough to like them, and they dropped everything and headed over. Meanwhile, another friend had finally awakened in another time zone and she logged on and sailed over to help after reading my likely incoherent joy-bomb of a forum pm to her. These people put in anywhere from 4 to 12 hours of solid problem-solving and various levels of impressive skills. No one talked. No one tried to take the dragon or get greedy.
We finally opened a mine and tried to get the thing into it in order to run a public event, but it wouldn't pull that far. When I say 'opened a mine', I mean we needed five tiles strongwalled, reinforcements, and dirt wagonneered to put all over for the surface. This was not a group of inexperienced players At All.  This was in a huge area that appeared like it would be real easy to find a place to pen it, and after digging 200 slope down, still couldn't find rock, and when we did, it was reinforced, or snaking caverns. We went to pull it.  We pulled for an hour.  By this time, me and a few others had been awake 5 hours into the wee hours of the night past our bedtimes, and had been there for up to 10 hours.  I said That's it.  I'm doing it.  I am going on Freedom Chat and telling everyone to come kill this little monster now.
And they came.  And when I told them to wait down by the water until everyone was there, they waited. And when I told them to put their tents down and wait by a guard tower and listen to my rules and my plan, they waited. And when we fought it for quite some time, because we were not a huge group, and it died, no one grabbed the corpse except the person I told to grab it. Nobody was greedy.  
I'm not naive. I know there are bad people out there in the world. But most people are good, and Wurm has a ton of really really good people. We all interact with each other in a little chat box in the bottom of our screens, and in that sacred space, friendships are forged, grand plans are hatched and carried out, ideas are debated, and generosity abounds. I really wish I could have given Independence a big public slaying with time to prepare and a beautiful Stanlee set-up with bells and whistles, or a wonderful Demonanightshade set-up likely with amazing lighting and decor, or that any of us last night could have done that with this dragon, but it wasn't to be.  And when I just went on Freedom chat and babbled about a dragon in a sleep-deprived absolutely run-out-of-ideas stupor, y'all were there, and you were all wonderful. You make Wurm awesome, and I Do love everybody.  Thank you all.

Edited by Nirav
to tag folks
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I like this. I can feel your excitement, excellent writing.

We need more posts like this. We need more situations like this.

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Glad it worked well for you in the end. Sadly Inde got a mess of a dirt layer, penning them can be difficult if there is no rock nearby (dragons allow you some leeway to pull them farther from their spawn than others, but then they tend to run off).

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The very same reasons I love this community so much as well. Always warming heart to read these experiences to make people happy and work together. Also, loved the way you wrote this, truly felt your excitement and could relate to that! :)

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@Nirav

 

Thank you for the kind words.  We had a blast at the NFC impalong!

 

I'm surprised you still had the energy afterwards to go out and slay a dragon!  I went to bed and slept for over a day and I'm still trying to recover... lol

 

Congrats,

- Vooch

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It was an absolute blast working with everyone and I was happy to have helped! As frustrating as not finding a place to mine was, it all worked out in the end and was so exciting! 😊

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In my decade of playing, I've found the good people in the community far outnumber the few toxic ones. If I tried to share all the positive experiences I've had with folks in Wurm, we'd be here all day. 

 

I've had corpses and death piles located and returned, someone I didn't know all that well let me put on his scale set to get the journal entry, random strangers stopping to help dig some high slopes when I was new, giving me nice gear for PvP, letting me camp at their deed, the list goes on. 

 

That's not to say I haven't had negative experiences in Wurm, but they are pretty few and far between, and I generally think if you behave positively, you will mostly get the same in return. So, you know, be nice or whatever. 

😛

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7 hours ago, Schiann said:

If I tried to share all the positive experiences I've had with folks in Wurm, we'd be here all day. 

I actually have all day to read it. I, for one, like to read wholesome stories.

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I think we had a similar story on Celebration this Thursday. I am not sure about details, but I was asked by a friend if I wanted in on a green drake kill and when I arrived, it seemed like a similar situation... a green beast in the open and people gathered together by a word of mouth. The end result was identical to yours... everyone played nice and we had a great hunt.

 

Thanks for sharing your story. Yes, there are all kinds of people on Wurm, like anywhere else. And I know stories of extreme greed or foul play that happened over the years. Some were quite bad. But the good stories are greater yet. So many wonderful memories. Those I consider my friends on Wurm (or even friendly acquaintances) are great people that demonstrated their friendliness and generosity over and over again. There are some I would trust with my prize horse, or my favorite fantastic item. It's really heartwarming to think about that part of our community and interact with them in game. Wurm is richer for having them.

 

Congrats on your dragon kill, Nirav. And here is to your next adventures!

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On 10/30/2020 at 8:08 PM, Nirav said:

my likely incoherent joy-bomb of a forum pm to her

 

Those are the best pm's to wake up to :P 

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Everything about this is fantastic. 
The narrative, the sense of excitement, the way it came together at the end... and all the fabulous comments on this post. 

 

Congrats on the slaying!
What a truly epic experience! Thank you so much for sharing the tale. 💜

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