These forums are, I think, outrunning their usefulness to the game. In looking through the memberlist at those who have been most active here I can see that those same people are also not active players. In fact, often I can reference some (forgive the pun) hot topic here on the forums and people actually playing the game haven't bothered to login to the forums and so have no idea about it. So, I think, with just about all active threads here. Except maybe the eq sets thread.. which probably I should update. I think it is slightly inaccurate. Someone remind me.
Still, I dutifully update the news here and try to respond to anything pertinent but also do my best to stay out of the way of the nonsense. I took a misstep in my last post here and the posts since have been the most obvious and predictable outcome. In the past I typically let it go or shut it down, but I'd like to try a different approach this time.
I'll embrace it. Let me explain.
This would be an attempt, not to defend myself or any other immortals, but simply to clarify my point of view regarding the game at large and the motivations for the decisions that I make regarding it.
I have been playing Arctic for well more than half of my life at this point. I have no regrets. I have met great friends who've become very important parts of my real life outside the game and also many others who have always been wonderful partners in dying miserably in zones we've had no right being in or, more often, ones we ought to have been fine in but just died anyway because OEOEOE. I love Arctic and for as long as I am able I will always keep Arctic online. I am forever grateful to the many people who have done so thus far and particularly to Scrappinak for having done it longer than anyone else and also to Loflika at present for doing it now.
Arctic is an uncommon thing in the world of online games and even beyond the fact that it is a MUD. Even among other MUDs we're a bit unusual. Our playerwipes -- which our players (mostly) love and continually return for -- are widely seen as a horrible atrocity in the MUD community at large, for as much as it continues to exist (pretty sure this means they're all lame and we're the best).
The active immortal staff of Arctic has been in a slow and steady decline for years and years. We've grown up (or at least most of us have) and the amount of time people have to commit to the development of the game has declined even more. So here's a quick break-down of what it looks like now:
Loflika continues to be our benevolent host, housing us and keeping us online, Flook is around often for oversight and general decision making, Jorquin resurfaces every once in a while to throw a pwipe in to satiate our need for renewal, Sanjuro continues to provide us with incredible high level content in which to die horribly and hope to eventually conquer (though not completely it seems, so keep exploring). Sometimes we get lucky and Adepali resurfaces from incredibly demanding job to help with a code change or two or Wratha remembers that we exist and helps me solve what Adepali doesn't have time for and Keila helps us to fix bugs in the code and make any adjustments to things that are otherwise likely to never get done. Lucky for us Aristox and Scrappinak are still an active voice in the background for us to get advice from and nobody knows the game better than they do, especially since nobody was in charge of the whole beast for longer. Sometimes we can even trick Aristox into coding something for us!
Of course there have been flaws in our staff from time to time in the past and a lot of people have a very poor opinion of some people who've been in charge before. Most people playing now have a very negative view of Hoss for maybe a myriad of reasons but largely the drastic changes to reduce the efficacy of overall player damage. As a player you see it as a giant nerf in an effort to ruin your fun but the view from on high is very different and the change, really, would be very beneficial to the game itself. The game is heavily skewed from what it once was and the way that it has developed over many years and implementors/creators wasn't very intentional. The effort to rebalance the game was met with very poor player opinion and ultimately saw the game go through the most major revision in its history, as well as a general handover of the overall operation of the game, which hadn't been done in quite a long time. The intention of the changes was not really meant to have that outcome and we can all agree or disagree about them but the thing that was really the issue is that the players themselves were perhaps not considered enough, if at all.
The overall intention, and mission, of the staff of Arctic should always be to keep the game interesting and fun for as many players as possible. We have a great and incredibly varied group of people playing this game. It is a much smaller group than once played, for sure, and that's unfortunate but ultimately understandable. We are not at all the most appealing game to play. I think people don't remember enough what it was like to start playing here, clueless, scared and a ripe pk target for anyone who'd been playing even a day longer (and sometimes less!).
I am currently entrusted with the day-to-day operation of the game. This means that the vision for the game is mostly under my control. The decisions I make are what I believe is best course of action. I can do just about anything I want, and yes, it is hard not to just delete Icewall and make it a five room straightaway with Sleet and Feal at the end. There is a lot that I could say about how I make decisions and that's something I could try and explain in more detail if people actually even care.
For me, for the preservation of the game itself and the continued loyalty of the playerbase are paramount. The trick is that the playerbase, being so widely varied in interests, ideals and idiosyncrasies as it is will almost certainly never agree that anything I do was the right thing. People always bitch. A lot of immortals over time have fallen under the notion that the playerbase is stupid and we should just do what we know is best, people be damned (sometimes literally). This is not my view, though I'm sure some will perhaps disagree. I find no pleasure in doling out punishments to people and have little interest in the continual policing of anyone. Somewhere in a helpfile someplace it says 'Don't be a nuisance.' and for me, if you aren't, we're probably cool. I don't think that I've ever historically garnered the sort of people who would be nice to me just to be potentially rewarded (bear in mind that the age old response to any shout of mine has long been 'kamsux' which was started by a friend and continues on still to this day) because most often the people I play with are constantly subjected to me fixing things that are broken which just ultimately makes the game harder! I'm really more a liability than an asset as a friend. Get ready to blame me when your friendly efreeti gets harder to find, for example.
If you are not my target market then you are not someone who, I think, plays this game for the love of it. You are probably someone who plays this game for a time, maybe every wipe, maybe just every once in awhile, someone who is around for the wipe rush or the thrill of PK or the popping of all the shinies but not really just here to play.
That's great. Happy to have you for as long as it takes you to either get what you want and then get bored or to get bored for trying and being unable to.
Again, though, you aren't my target market.
My target market is the people who keep playing, which perhaps is largely the people who may never be on top of the wipe rush and who don't really even want to be, and hey, that's fine. They play longer, they play forever, this game is their game, you just stop in from time to time. If you stop coming, they won't. If they stop coming, you probably will. I won't, though.
I work for the active players of Arctic.
Thank you to everyone who plays this game and loves it and wants to see it continue on.
May dragons fly in your dreams forever.
And to the people who seek to defame Arctic or belittle those who dedicate their time to it or spoil the enjoyment of others:
I don't need to be agreed with, I make the decisions I do based on what I think is best for the game and its active playerbase.
I am not concerned with what I need to do to "get back" whichever people who have moved on to other games.
I am concerned with making this game fun to play for the people who play it despite the many waves of change that have come through it over the years.
If that isn't you, you are not my target market.
Welcome to Arctic.
