Posted by Darlow on May 17, 2000 at 18:23:01:
In my humble opinion, the thing was a bad idea from the start. Those boots offer an *enormous* advantage, especially for such an easy series of actions. As long as it exists, evil chars are going to keep getting boots for the mechanical advantage, at which point the Immortals have to waste their time punishing them, after which they come to the Forum and bitch, etc, etc.
Actually, I have a suggestion for this. The.. individual who rewards you (sure, the exact quest is about as secret as Thrym's practice weapons, but I might as well maintain the illusion) should get 'detect evil', and not give the second part to evil chars. Something like '*sigh* I suppose I must in honor reward you for your assistance to my bardic friend. There. Now get out of my sight." That person is hardly going to trust an evil bastard to rescue.. er, the guy needing rescuing.. from a bunch of other evil bastards, right?
And for the poor, benighted evils, they get their own quest, for neutral/evil only, based out of, say, the goblin village. The troll commander hires the evil guys for a job his own troops can't manage, viz, kidnapping the head elder from the Vale of Arendyl (he sends a few orcs with you to actually make the grab) and bring him back for ransom. Then he sends you off to Darsylon to collect the ransom in the form of magical whatevers, which you can either return for a reward or simply abscond with, etc, etc..
...I'm getting a little far afield from my main subject, though. What do you all think? Hopefully, I can get someone more eloquent than myself to restate my argument in more persuasive terms...