The Training Room: Freeport Suyin's estate at 1 Integrity Rd, FreeportAntonia Bayle So a friend suggested to me that I rebuild the Training Room. I told him that I have absolutely no intention of ever reopening the bar, but sure, I'd go in to restore and update a few things. In I went to work on the Training Room's Freeport location. It's an older bar with a lot of history that spanned two servers. On LDL, it was simply known as Fight Pub and run by Legends of the Tundra. For three years, I did a lot of publicity for Fight Pub on my druid Sapphirius and ran it from Qeynos, Maj'Dul, and Kelethin. When Kunark came out in 2007, I betrayed my monk to bruiser for the Gorowyn housing, moved her to AB, and changed the name of the tavern to the Training Room. I ran TR for another three years, with a lot of help from Ijaka, before I finally shut it down late summer of 2010. (My grandparents were dying, and I wanted time to take care of them.) By then, I was running Training Room from five different locations in various alts' homes: Qeynos (the original location), Maj'Dul, Gorowyn, Freeport, and Kelethin. After I finished restoring TR:Fpt, I decided that I might as well restore the other three locations. No, I did not miscount. TR:MD was refurbished into Suyin's personal desert home, both in character and out, so that one will remain as it is. As I finish each of the remaining three locations, I'll post them here. album link: http://imgur.com/a/Ma3It#0 The Bar Those who regularly visited the Training Room are probably going to get a blast from the past with these screenshots. TR:Fpt underwent some very minor changes since I last ran it three years ago. Pretty much, I liked everything about it and didn't want to change a thing. I did redo the kitchen counter and sink, and I updated the shadow box. I replaced all the feather-stuffed pillows with spuncloth ones because I pirated the green pillows to use in TR:MD's remodel two years ago. Water Closet Yes, there's a bathroom. You can't expect people to get drunk and fight and not give them a place to relieve themselves after all that beer. Arena TR: Fpt's arena was the only location which featured a 3-dimensional "dynamic" arena. Each month was a new theme for TR: Fpt that usually matched whatever holiday was going on at the time. Since I planned to publish the house, I knew I would not be able to change the arena's them every month. Instead, I rebuilt what Varzok affectionately called the "cat tree." I originally built the "cat tree" in a downstairs room in the Gorowyn location, but because Gorowyn was so so big, I dismantled that arena and built a flat one in an upstairs room, closer to the bar. It's a series of posts and platforms that duelists can run across and fight on that will give mages and rangers the ability to keep some distance from their melee opponents. I even softened the ground for them this time with some sand. TR was always a neutral event, but goodies could sometimes have a little trouble escaping the city without getting arrested by the Knights of Freeport, so Suyin always made sure to give them a back door to escape through. Bath House Like the rest of the bar, this room underwent very few changes. It pretty much looks the same as it did when I ran TR three years ago and only received a minor update. The rest of the house comprised Suyin's private quarters. Her style could best be described as "minimalist" because I wanted to keep the item count as low as possible. As a result, I blocked off the basement with the bathroom and blocked off the secret room with a Wantia armoire. I always made sure to keep the item count right about 350 items. It went up to 400 on some holidays, but never more than that. This was not only to reduce lag but also to reduce load times for people zoning in. Suyin's Private Chambers Since I had no intention of ever opening again, I said "screw it" to the item count and lined Suyin's bedroom with tapestries and sumac. Interestingly enough, after all that effort to completely revamp Suyin's bedroom, I wound up using essentially the same furniture in the same arrangement. I did add a few extra knicknacks, but that was it.
The only room that underwent any amount of drastic change was outside. Suyin used to have a shrine to Innoruuk & Rallos Zek on her outside patio. Well, when that patio was expanded, that outside shrine didn't look so good, so I built her a garden. The Garden I wanted it to have a definite Japanese influence with decks and walkways and arched bridges. Too bad we don't have koi for her pond. I also had these grape vines sitting in my plants warehouse collecting dust. I had no idea what to do with them, so I built a pergola on the top balcony with a fantastic view of the water. Here's an overhead view of the garden. You can find this on the Housing Leaderboard doohickey under large homes, listed as "The Training Room: Freeport."
I'm in love with that garden! Btw, I know we don't have koi, but the baked fish flipped on their sides make a decent substitute. I've done that a couple times now
And fish now added, using the new in-game pitch & roll features. Koi for the koi pond! But I still have the problem of the screenshot for the house not showing up on the leaderboards. It's just a little black box. I did get some fantastic help from GM Vhaern, but he confirmed that it was a server-side issue. We hoped that, with the updates today, maybe something would happen to fix this little problem, but alas, TR's listing will just have to stay without a screenshot.
