Tarlach Fair Number 6 is currently in planning. We're hoping to have the fair around May. Right now Zabuden is doing some planning and is gathering some materials, prizes, and staff. The official call for staff and donations will start after the Christmas Holidays are over. Many people feel like right now, the thing our server needs most is a fair.
However, planning may come to a halt as long as chat box is down since I can't contact people about it.
The Current State of the Tarlach Fair;
Tarlach Fair #5 on August 13th, 2011 was a grand success, thanks to everyone that participated and see you next time. :)
Fairs so far: December 16th 2009, March 22nd 2010, June 26th 2010, December 18th, 2010, August 13th, 2011.
The Tarlach Fair was the inspiration of one player originally and shared with a handful of friends and the official Nexon forum for the Tarlach Server. No one thought it would work. Feedback in the beginning was initially highly negative, but the players persevered through the mockery and trolling. We gave up our own time to raise another stat by about 0.001 point with an endless push of buttons for hours on end and chased the social dreams the adventure that is Mabinogi provides.
Spooklee, Torhu, Finalprayerr, Erosikaku and Dronit lead the first Fair with hope in their hearts and reached for the skies. Scraping together our pennies we were able to afford a small handful of bugles and announced the fair in Emain on CH3 on December 16th. 14 of our friends RSVPed and said they'd try and bring whoever they could. Over the next 4 hours, over 200 players hit the city and participated in several events that were tweaked and teased out over long sleepless nights between excited friends.
170 of you showed up for PVP. 60 of you showed up for the Dungeon Runner contest. 85 of you stayed for the Bard Off even as another 50 filtered in to play or watch. Over and Over, these words came back to Spooklee because everyone wanted to know; "Is this a GM event?"
One full year later, Spooklee has organized and run 4 Tarlach fairs total, averaging 170 players attending, regardless of time of day, vacation or work hours. The community was encouraged to speak out during and after every event to tweak the events to the party hungry community. New games were presented every few months along side old favorites, the Staff grew from five to forty volunteers and twenty part time staff, and the average lifespan of the fair grew to 7 hours. Everything from items to gold to just someone donating an hour of their time to help hunt for items was given freely to the event, proving that not everyone wants to make others suffer.
By the players, For the players. I appreciate Nexon for making Mabinogi available to me to do things like this. Unfortunately, times are tough and the rent on Spook's house is inching upward with every passing year and a paid job must be found to maintain his presence. While the fairs themselves cost about $50 to maintain bugles, cash shop prizes and a few NX codes, the time spent organizing the events is worth several months of work days. As much as I love doing this kind of thing, I have been completely unable to find a heir to my party throne that can fill my shoes.
The volunteer staff for this event have told me time and time again; "It'd never happen without Spooklee." Indeed, if this wasn't true, I wouldn't have been able to make the event in the first place. I filled a hole in the server by creating something from nothing and delivering on a consistent basis. So it is with regret I must close this chapter of my Fantasy Life, until I can find some kind of work that will allow me to not end up in the street.
This website shall remain active as I work on writing a Handbook of sorts of all the things I learned while running this event and, perhaps, someone else will try to take up the mantle and bring the Tarlach Fair back to life. Edit; Zabuden and Loveforlife of the Rayout guild as well as many supporters from both the guild and on the server united together to bring together the 5th Tarlach Fair based on everything Spooklee had presented to them. They did a really good job, considering he wasn't involved and he even showed up to participate.
Spooklee is proud of his server, and everyone who makes an effort to do more than just +1 another stat.
Welcome to the website for the Tarlach Fair, an event inspired by the players angry with wasting time on Nexon Random Events to get nothing but empty bottles, NPC buyable items, or equipment that was untradable for the opposite gender. With the ride of packet editors and modders during December cheating the skiing event and the people with 20+ characters forcing the owls to give them 20 or more Becky Witch Dresses, Spooklee came to the conclusion hat there was too much negativity going on over Mabinogi and wanted to bring back the good old days of a united community that was here for Fun and Friendship.
With only 3 weeks to work with and a randomly selected date, the first Tarlach Fair was held on December 16th and staffed entirely by Spook's closest friends, those he trusted the most to be fair and honest to anyone who decided to attend the event. The fair was hosted in Emain Macha, and the staff had guessed maybe 30 people would attend, from the friends they had told and said they would come. When the proverbial gates opened and the Fair announced its first event, over fifty players were packed into the central square about Spooklee, excited and asking questions. As the fair went on and reports filtered in, more and more people kept showing up, asking what was going on and signing up for events.
What had originally meant to be a small gathering of people looking for something different to do ended up being a 200 player party rivaling the lag of the Market channel and boasted the total lack of bots and advertisement spammers. The event itself, understaffed as it was, ended up lasting just over 5 hours and all who attended came back asking for more, saying it was the best run player made event they'd ever seen and maybe Nexon should hire Spooklee. There were even comments from other servers begging Spooklee to make a fair for them too, so jealous they were of Tarlach's success.
Due to popular demand, Spooklee has agreed to continue organizing fairs for the community of Tarlach, and the Staff is growing as interest is increasing and word is getting out. The fair is run 100% on donated gold, items and time of players dedicated to bring good times and joy back to the community at large. Much to the surprise of the community, Spooklee announced running a fair once every three months rather than twice yearly.
Disclaimer; Spooklee, the filmographers, permanent and temporary staff do not work for Nexon. We have no ability to bend the rules of the game or cause things to spawn where they should not. The fair is completely made by players, for players. There are no GMs in our staff, no Tech staff and no Customer Support Staff. As far as Spooklee can tell, not having a major in Business is preventing Spook from being able to actually work for Nexon. Go figure.
If you want to learn more about Spooklee, there's a page for that. If you want to see the current staff for the next upcoming fair, there's a page for that too. Spook is making an effort to consistently update the website as new information becomes available, but only information that is important to fair events. This will not be a general news site nor a patch information website. There will never be a forum here, and membership is limited to those whom Spook can trust for getting a particular job done.
