This story is about the creation of one of the biggest new player events in Entropia History back in 2008. The road to this event begins when the great society of Global Alliance, under the leadership of Dave Ozi Epsolon, split into 2 levels. The skilled players remained in Global Alliance, and the upcoming players went to Global Alliance Guard. After the split, Dave put me (Raven Raven Valicur) in charge of society events designated to help out newer players. That is where the story began.
Back in those days, there were no such things as acceleration chips, vehicles, or any other speed-modifying items. To get to new teleporters, you needed to run from place to place. We often made teleport run groups as a society to help people get to other teleporters. Upon getting the request from Dave about making an event, I got to work looking into ideas that could work. I knew the teleport of Fort Troy was a very nice place for newer players to go to; the trek there was treacherous and long. Having run this route many times myself, I was well aware of the dangers near Fort Troy at the time. In order to see if this was a doable route, I ran it many times myself. I timed myself with both running it directly and using server borders to revive jump. This was to help me get an idea of the average time players could run it.
The hard part was how to stop people from using the server borders to revive jump and give themselves an advantage. This was when I contacted the Society I had friends in to help me get baseline times for all agility levels. The society called The Knights of Calypso had many players and was one of the largest in Entropia (Project Entropia at the time). One of their members and a good friend, named Thaddeus, helped me design the safest route between revive points. The second part of making this event was to determine at what agility we cut off to ensure only new players were participating. We came to the agreement that by LV30 agility, most players were close to graduating their discipleships. At this time, we had the agility cap set and the route made.
By around March 2008, I began searching for people to assist me with running the event. Thanks to Dave, who by this time had left his leadership role in Global Alliance and joined the Dark Knights, got in contact with the Calypso Rescue Team. Due to the hazards of the outposts east of Fort Troy, no new player would have gotten out, thanks to all the massive Araneotrox stalker population. And with their help, we could ensure new players can get out if they revive in the wrong places.
Once all the help was arranged, we set a date and posted about the event on the PCF. As we started assembling the prize pools, a society member came forward to offer a very rare unlimited club that new players could use as the top prize. At that time, the Loughlin Masher One unL was worth over 1000 ped (which is massive to new players). Akilie Ray Docile's donation brought the prize pool to very exciting levels. After the post was updated, new players with 30 or less agility started signing up in droves. By May, the sign-ups were over 100-150 new players. If they all showed up, it would mark the largest new player event in Project Entropia's history. And by this time Cryengine was released, and the name was now Entropia Universe.
On May 2nd, we arrived at Port Atlantis to setup start line and get new players lined up. One of the Global Alliance Guard members helped me by placing wood boards and mind essence, showing the start. I began scanning every participant to ensure their agility was 30 or under. The line of participants was long, and it wrapped around the sweat market and further. I was in shock at how big the turnout was. The actual turnout was unknown as we lost count to how many showed up. The Entropia Universe advisors even showed up to cheer on all the runners. When we fired the rocket and race began, Thaddeus set out with the runners to help me record the entire event. At the time I had also contacted an Avatar called Dethifier who owned Treasure Island. He allowed us to use his Mansion on TI to hold award Ceromony. The friends i made in this journey show how a group of people can help an entire universe of players have fun. Some of those players are still playing to this day and that makes me proud as an event organizer.
My Journey in Entropia began a long time ago, and I am proud to call myself an Entropian!
For those who wish to see the video, please go to YouTube and search "The March on Troy Entropia" to see the video Thaddeus made of the event!
