just an observation on cloakwood...
when i played on bg for the first time, cloakwood was a dangerous place. there were spiders size of a double wide trailer running around, most usual outcome of fighting them was being poisoned. they were moving around the area they were in. that's not to count packs of roaming gnolls and goblins. some of them were rather tough too. at night - forget about wandering into the wood. there were ogres and ogre mages all over the place.
times changed... giant, yellow hued spiders gave way to smaller counterparts, ogre mages went to some wood university to study and were replaced by necrotaurs and wolf packs. regular ogre count decreased as well.
then some more tweaking commenced, and most hostile creatures lost will to move around...
now, i've not played on bg for some time, and if i understand correctly, the current contingent of bad creatures in the bad wood is an improvement from an empty wood -- in my experience they all are rather low level, stationary mobs.
the situation contradicts the claim of cloakwood being a deadly place. it still would quite certainly kill a lone level 1 toon, but it's not even remotely challenging for a group of low mid levels (4-6), and i would guess that a group of well organised lvl 1-3s could traverse the wood just as well.
now, as a disclaimer here i must state that i really, really do appreciate all the hard work put in by all the builders. it just sometimes seems that it's.. well.. lacking unified direction.
the cloakwood, as an example, has undergone one major visual/map overhaul. while it does look prettier, it also decreased in size available to players. the spawns, well, i think i made my point. if easier spawns were desired, i would not blink. it's a decision of dm team, but it seems spawns are also getting less responsive as updates come in.
i understand that visions of different people in charge vary, and they all would like to make the thing to their likeness, so to speak. but perhaps we are throwing away too much of the work of previous builders?
now, on a different note, i will congratulate myself with my longest post ever, have another dirnk, and read this in the morning thinking.. wtf was i thinking?!?
