Stop Baglessness - Bring Mari Back

How many new players know that they can - or at least, are supposed to be able to - get (3) free, small* bags (collectibles [red], ingredients [green], and gems [blue]) with each new toon?  I say "supposed to" because I have a few new toons which were unable to acquire said bags.  Well, at least the free red and blue ones.

I've always been able to get the free small** green one from "The Twelve" patron, but the other two seem to be glitched.  I posted a thread about this in the fora (sorry, "forums") a few weeks back.

Back before DDO revamped and reorganized "The Harbor" area, there was an NPC whose job was to give out the free small red and blue bags.  Mari Mosshand was her name.  Additionally, if you somehow lost either (or both) free bags, she would replace them (at least, in theory - I never lost any, so I have no first-hand experience with getting replacements, but it was part of her dialog, if you talked to her after getting your free bags).

But after the revamp, for some unknown reason***, they removed Mari and 'farmed out' her job to "Baudry Cartamon" and "Fitzpat the Fence"; Baudry gives out the red bag, Fitzpat the blue.  At least, they are supposed to.

Now, I do not recall having any issues receiving the free bags on brand new, level 1 toons.  But on at least (3) different occasions, my Vet Status 1 and Vet Status 2 toons have been denied these items.  It's a bit frustrating, to say the least.

I had hoped that my little thread would have attracted the attention of the devs.  Maybe it did, but if it did they remained silent.  No word from QA/CS on actually being able to get the missing bags, either.  I've filed a bug report and even asked Cordovan to see if he had any issues when he recently rolled-up a new vet status toon for his 12-hour livestream back on November 12.  Unfortunately, he only checked-in with one of them and not the other, but didn't have any issues with the one.

While I know programmers† are like car mechanics†† when it come to looking at code done by others ("Hmmm...who worked on this before?"), they should remember an old axiom:  "If it's not broken, DON'T 'FIX' IT!"  Mari was not broken.  Why they didn't just relocate her instead of removing her and coding Baudry and Fitzpat to give out the bags is completely unfathomable to me (because it violates another axiom:  "The KISS Principle:  Keep It Simple, Stupid." and re-coding Baudry and Fitzpat was way more complex than simply moving Mari to a new location).  Not too mention there is now no way for the free bags to be replaced in-game (that portion was apparently NOT coded into Baudry or Fitzpat - at least, as far as I can tell).

Even though my little post had 800+ views, it only had 15 replies (three of which were mine).  I did include a poll and nearly 100% of the respondents (20 out of 21) voted to bring Mari back (the 'dissenting' vote being "There are free bags available from someone?").  Maybe if it had more replies and was kept alive longer it would have had a greater impact.  Maybe.  But, alas, it did not.

Oh well.  Perhaps, one day, Mari will be back.  One can only hope.


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* And a free tiny green one from one of the Cannith Crafting tutorial quest givers, found in a couple of places around Stormreach, including the harbor, just outside the Market gate.

** "The Twelve" patron has always (at least, since I started playing) given out a free small green bag.  However, back before they 're-indexed' the green bags and created the "tiny" bag, the original small one was the same size as the new, tiny one.  After re-indexing, the old "medium" became the new "small".  The old "medium" one was identical to the medium red and blue bags (except green and held ingredients, of course) - meaning it was available for purchase (using platinum) at various vendor locations and was "exclusive", meaning you could only have one in your backpack at any give time.  But after the re-indexing, I theorize that someone forgot about the original free 'small' bag by "The Twelve" patron that probably should have been changed to "tiny".  So new toons now get a free, "small" green bag that is identical to the one you can buy for platinum.

*** Someone in my thread postulated that perhaps Mari was one of the victims of Yaulthoon.  But that theory doesn't quite hold water as, according to DDOwiki, Yaulthoon appeared in U9, while the harbor wasn't revamped until U19 - ten full updates later.

† I should know - I'm a programmer (hehehe).

†† There was an old "mechanics classroom" skit that I wish I could find to link to, but I can't locate it.  I think it was on "Saturday Night Live" and I think it had Steve Martin in it, but my Google-fu is weak on this one.  Sorry.