Wheel of Doom

The Wheel of Doom was a one time event from April 15 to April 17 2008. It was located in the Easy Street in Valmorgen, but only visible after purchasing the Treldan Wood map.

Spinning the Wheel cost 1 turn and had a negative or - at best - no effect. And you got a t-shirt.

The effects were the following:

* Nothing
* Max HitPoint loss. 20 from your max amount (but never less than 1 HP remaining)
* Loss off all gold (max 9999)
* Loss of one level worth of experience
* Death. Not affected by resurrection or hardiness. But only 50% of normal turn loss.
* Gender change (i.e. a male character becomes a female character)

After receiving the t-shirt, you could keep spinning the Wheel, but no new event would happen. Dropping the t-shirt allowed a new event to happen - for example to get another gender change.

The Wheel of Doom was created by **Dumble Dwarf** (with help from **Dorgath** and - of course - **Karmic**). He explained it in a post on the forum:

The wheel had six events and the best event was 'nothing'.
The details of other events...
1. The XP loss depended on class (1 level)
2. The gold loss was all your gold, but no more than 9999.
3. The HP loss was 20 from you max amount (but never less than 1 HP remaining)
4. Death has no chance of res. or hardness but only 50% normal turn loss.
5. Last but not least, there was the gender change.

The wheel event, like my previous limited events, was a political statement. There had been complaints that players should be warned when something bad is about to happen (like XP loss). So I decided to have an event that waned you of every consequence should you proceed to ignore the warning. I was curious to see how many people would ignore the warning and spin the wheel anyway. It's kind of like how the cigarettes sold in the United States are plastered with warning labels and thousands of people start smoking (for the first time) every single day. I believe warnings won't stop people from doing things they are inclined to do anyway.
Those who spun the wheel, got a unique item, with a unique ability. It's roughly the equivalent of those infamous cigarette promotions where smokers got "free" merchandise (t-shirts and stuff) for sending in the coupons that came inside cigarette packs.
The carny was a stereotypical sort of character one might run in to at a circus or carnival but partially inspired by the fictitious cigarette lobbyist in the 2005 movie "Thank You for Smoking".

And some more in a second post:

Which reminds me to thank Karmic for the tip on how to drain exactly one level of XP and how to change gender, and thanks for loading the images and setting up space in Valmorgen.
To my co-developer Dorgath, thanks for working through all the dialogue with me and setting up all the corresponding state code. It turned out to be such a better event than my original plain wheel with a warning sign next to it. I don't think anyone understood why it came out on the 15th, but that's OK.
To everyone who spun the wheel, thanks for being brave (or dumb) enough to do it. Enjoy the t-shirts and the new spell.
Special Note: I removed the drain gold spell from all new t-shirts (just in case they wind up getting handed out accidentally in the trading post or something similar). Only the original shirts from the Wheel of Doom will have the drain gold spell (and I seriously doubt that spell will ever be included in another item).