Post by wagonwheel on Aug 27, 2022 13:06:28 GMT -5
Hello! I’m TPO Wagonwheel the Dancer, a character in Armageddon MUD. I’m breaking the rules to be here and apologize to staff up front. I do believe that what I’m doing here is for the good of the game. Since I’m not sanctified I’ll do my best not to be sanctimonious.
If you’ve played Arm in the last year you know who my character is, a stupid dancing ne’erdowell around Allanak by the name Wagonwheel the half-giant. I would like to apologize to the many players who don’t like my character and I will admit it was often a challenge to play a half-giant character because I kept stealing scene after scene. My honest intentions were to play the character as somewhat quiet. Nonetheless other players liked Wagonwheel just fine I suppose.
Before I launch into Wagonwheel’s tale, I would like to correct a couple of inaccuracies about the game as it seems that few of you have recent information.
Staff have become rather nice these days as long as you are assertive, polite, flexible and most of all don’t expect anything to happen in the game. More about that last article soon. While my experience may be atypical, my clan staff were downright friendly and checked on me a lot to make sure I was having a good experience. Credit where credit is due.
And of course my story would be incomplete without admitting that yes, one or two staff members were quite sarcastic with me and it’s a shame, because for the rest of the staff reading this you should realize you’d be getting an actual glowing review if not for that guy.
I get along with Shaloonsh and agree he is unhinged but he has been nothing short of nice to me. I also admit that just because I had a mostly good experience, doesn’t mean that five people aren’t being picked on by staff in some other part of the game.
So what happened? Staff was rude to me a few years ago and I took a break from playing. During the lab leak there was nothing to do and I was isolated without people to interact with, and with lots of time on my hands.
Armageddon was a blessing, especially playing a social character. My first couple of weeks playing Wagonwheel were fun trolling people as everyone and their cousin tried to rope me into their cookie-cutter plans and cookie-cutter clans using Elon Musk-tier sales pitches. Everyone tried to hire the most irresponsible person in Known World.
Eventually I got roped into a clan by a guy named Akeem. RPing with him was pretty close to my best RP experience to date. Wish that could have gone along longer. He was smack in the middle of setting up a clan and wanted my help. The name of the clan is the Consortium of Wonders.
So to be clear I don’t think that my character was all that much help in the day-to-day operations of the clan because I was playing a stupid half-giant, but somehow a lot of work got done. Most are familiar with the arduous nature of setting up a clan, yet we were really chugging along.
Midori (the musician in the group), Akeem (business admin) and a very helpful support staff pitched into to host over a dozen RPT and raise all of the needed monies.
We bought a wagon, and then on the way to pick it up one of our star guards died do to a mishap during a gith attack. I probably goofed which contributed a lot to this character’s death, but I didn’t question that it was appropriate that staff mobbed us with gith. I think that’s how things are supposed to work, your clan makes a couple of scores but then staff chose to throw a wrench in the gears so that things aren’t too easy.
Every couple of weeks, we’d have a few big wins and then a setback here and there, as described. If anything staff were maybe going 5% easy on us. But not 10%, never say ten because they did throw a lot of wrenches in the game. My point is that the stars aligned, PR was good, money was fine, we had plenty to do, a few interesting conflicts, a cool backstory and suddenly we were on the verge of making it. The jewel in the crown for me was that our clan owned and operated a bar in the South Labyrinth. I couldn’t believe I was playing a stupid half-giant, and liking it!
Everything was building up to this big meeting with the Senate that we had coming. I’m going to be a bit mum on this point. Everything else that I’ll describe here IMHO should be open source at this point, even though it’s only been six months. My reasoning is that if anyone cared and bothered to investigate this stuff, it’s all open secrets. Any NPC would give you the back story about it because none of it was secret. Except the Allanaki Senate meeting, which would be the one point of the story IMHO that might be worth sleuthing around a bit and finding out with staff cooperation. The rest of the story isn’t that interesting except anecdotally and as backstory.
That’s basically the backstory to what happened. The meeting with Senate went well and exceeded our expectations. And pretty much the very next real life day, Akeem went missing. Just about the best friend I’ve ever had in this game, gone.
But I wasn’t sweating it, because that’s how the game works. Your clan catches a couple of bonuses and then hits a setback. I wasn’t sure what to do because a few things were bungled after that and in my opinion there should have been a lot more OOC communication. My problem is that as a player in the clan I deserved a full vote on what happens, however as a character I treated my half-giant as pretty much a dumb unambitious half-giant.
But Midori sucked it up with some help from a few other NPC who really took our side and she and I managed to keep the clan going. Midori ended up connected to the mafia. She had to be in the top three most powerful PC, and almost nobody knew it. Quiet, melodramatic, efficient, self-effacing, and libidinous, she pretty much never threw her weight around and mostly just ran the clan. Quite a trooper.
Now my character was reaching like the 20 day mark, and people had mostly gone soft on me up to that point. Well, except for the time that I was arrested and tortured. Anyway at one point in time a highly interesting very organic conflict develops between me and this female PC who was basically minor nobility. What was cool about the conflict is that we had been friends for the longest time, and had even covered for each other a couple of times. We’d broken character a couple of times and I had a big sense that I really like this player.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to finally have an opponent! I had the impression that her player was about 5% smarter than me. Very even competition, I was all about this and communicated my approval to staff. It was game on.
I shed the first blood. She hired an assassin who was himself played by a legit dude, it seemed. Couple of weeks go by, and he disappears so I’m pretty much just skating.
Then my foe hires a Templar to come screw with us. The Templar sucked. Notice that’s the first criticism I’ve made as this review enters it’s third page. So the Templar threatens me, then kills Midori to get at me.
But all is well and good so far IMHO, as far as the staff are concerned. I fully understand that Arm is a game where you expect your friends to die. And die she did, in some lame Templar’s interrogation chamber.
Obviously this represents a staff blunder, given that Midori was probably the most powerful PC in the game at the time. There’s no way a mere Templar would have had the authority to execute her offhand. Total disgrace.
Bonus points was where staff, far nicer than they were a few years ago, allowed her to make a complaint on the GDB to highlight this very problem. And the complaint went nowhere. People obliviously responded to her with the usual staff-apologist drivel. No one seemed to get it. It was a waste of her breath.
Unfortunately, it’s not over yet because in response to this of course my character went into hiding. And to me everything that happened is fixable. As far as I’m concerned, every death we experienced was partially justifiable under the spirit of the game. Every death was fully justifiable except Midori’s. But even that kind of thing would be fixable if we all just did a little retconning, and allowed Akeem to play a different PC, allowed Midori to maybe play her own slutty sister as a character or something cool. Totally fixable.
Until somebody burns down my bar. I just don’t know what to say about that. I had nothing going for me in real life when this happened. I can handle the death of a character. But burning down the bar? Why? Why not just burn down Allanak? What do they expect me to do? Rebuild it? Take a hike, Staff.
It makes no sense. And as far as any of you are concerned, most of this would just be the latest game melodrama and not worth posting, but I wanted to prove for everyone that this is a game where truly nothing happens. You can take ten of the most talented players off of the internet. We had money. We had solid docs. We had mob connections. If anything, staff mostly went easy on us.
Until the point that they burned down the bar, because that proves that even when the stars align it’s still not possible to achieve anything in Nessalin’s Empire of Dust.
If you’ve played Arm in the last year you know who my character is, a stupid dancing ne’erdowell around Allanak by the name Wagonwheel the half-giant. I would like to apologize to the many players who don’t like my character and I will admit it was often a challenge to play a half-giant character because I kept stealing scene after scene. My honest intentions were to play the character as somewhat quiet. Nonetheless other players liked Wagonwheel just fine I suppose.
Before I launch into Wagonwheel’s tale, I would like to correct a couple of inaccuracies about the game as it seems that few of you have recent information.
Staff have become rather nice these days as long as you are assertive, polite, flexible and most of all don’t expect anything to happen in the game. More about that last article soon. While my experience may be atypical, my clan staff were downright friendly and checked on me a lot to make sure I was having a good experience. Credit where credit is due.
And of course my story would be incomplete without admitting that yes, one or two staff members were quite sarcastic with me and it’s a shame, because for the rest of the staff reading this you should realize you’d be getting an actual glowing review if not for that guy.
I get along with Shaloonsh and agree he is unhinged but he has been nothing short of nice to me. I also admit that just because I had a mostly good experience, doesn’t mean that five people aren’t being picked on by staff in some other part of the game.
So what happened? Staff was rude to me a few years ago and I took a break from playing. During the lab leak there was nothing to do and I was isolated without people to interact with, and with lots of time on my hands.
Armageddon was a blessing, especially playing a social character. My first couple of weeks playing Wagonwheel were fun trolling people as everyone and their cousin tried to rope me into their cookie-cutter plans and cookie-cutter clans using Elon Musk-tier sales pitches. Everyone tried to hire the most irresponsible person in Known World.
Eventually I got roped into a clan by a guy named Akeem. RPing with him was pretty close to my best RP experience to date. Wish that could have gone along longer. He was smack in the middle of setting up a clan and wanted my help. The name of the clan is the Consortium of Wonders.
So to be clear I don’t think that my character was all that much help in the day-to-day operations of the clan because I was playing a stupid half-giant, but somehow a lot of work got done. Most are familiar with the arduous nature of setting up a clan, yet we were really chugging along.
Midori (the musician in the group), Akeem (business admin) and a very helpful support staff pitched into to host over a dozen RPT and raise all of the needed monies.
We bought a wagon, and then on the way to pick it up one of our star guards died do to a mishap during a gith attack. I probably goofed which contributed a lot to this character’s death, but I didn’t question that it was appropriate that staff mobbed us with gith. I think that’s how things are supposed to work, your clan makes a couple of scores but then staff chose to throw a wrench in the gears so that things aren’t too easy.
Every couple of weeks, we’d have a few big wins and then a setback here and there, as described. If anything staff were maybe going 5% easy on us. But not 10%, never say ten because they did throw a lot of wrenches in the game. My point is that the stars aligned, PR was good, money was fine, we had plenty to do, a few interesting conflicts, a cool backstory and suddenly we were on the verge of making it. The jewel in the crown for me was that our clan owned and operated a bar in the South Labyrinth. I couldn’t believe I was playing a stupid half-giant, and liking it!
Everything was building up to this big meeting with the Senate that we had coming. I’m going to be a bit mum on this point. Everything else that I’ll describe here IMHO should be open source at this point, even though it’s only been six months. My reasoning is that if anyone cared and bothered to investigate this stuff, it’s all open secrets. Any NPC would give you the back story about it because none of it was secret. Except the Allanaki Senate meeting, which would be the one point of the story IMHO that might be worth sleuthing around a bit and finding out with staff cooperation. The rest of the story isn’t that interesting except anecdotally and as backstory.
That’s basically the backstory to what happened. The meeting with Senate went well and exceeded our expectations. And pretty much the very next real life day, Akeem went missing. Just about the best friend I’ve ever had in this game, gone.
But I wasn’t sweating it, because that’s how the game works. Your clan catches a couple of bonuses and then hits a setback. I wasn’t sure what to do because a few things were bungled after that and in my opinion there should have been a lot more OOC communication. My problem is that as a player in the clan I deserved a full vote on what happens, however as a character I treated my half-giant as pretty much a dumb unambitious half-giant.
But Midori sucked it up with some help from a few other NPC who really took our side and she and I managed to keep the clan going. Midori ended up connected to the mafia. She had to be in the top three most powerful PC, and almost nobody knew it. Quiet, melodramatic, efficient, self-effacing, and libidinous, she pretty much never threw her weight around and mostly just ran the clan. Quite a trooper.
Now my character was reaching like the 20 day mark, and people had mostly gone soft on me up to that point. Well, except for the time that I was arrested and tortured. Anyway at one point in time a highly interesting very organic conflict develops between me and this female PC who was basically minor nobility. What was cool about the conflict is that we had been friends for the longest time, and had even covered for each other a couple of times. We’d broken character a couple of times and I had a big sense that I really like this player.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to finally have an opponent! I had the impression that her player was about 5% smarter than me. Very even competition, I was all about this and communicated my approval to staff. It was game on.
I shed the first blood. She hired an assassin who was himself played by a legit dude, it seemed. Couple of weeks go by, and he disappears so I’m pretty much just skating.
Then my foe hires a Templar to come screw with us. The Templar sucked. Notice that’s the first criticism I’ve made as this review enters it’s third page. So the Templar threatens me, then kills Midori to get at me.
But all is well and good so far IMHO, as far as the staff are concerned. I fully understand that Arm is a game where you expect your friends to die. And die she did, in some lame Templar’s interrogation chamber.
Obviously this represents a staff blunder, given that Midori was probably the most powerful PC in the game at the time. There’s no way a mere Templar would have had the authority to execute her offhand. Total disgrace.
Bonus points was where staff, far nicer than they were a few years ago, allowed her to make a complaint on the GDB to highlight this very problem. And the complaint went nowhere. People obliviously responded to her with the usual staff-apologist drivel. No one seemed to get it. It was a waste of her breath.
Unfortunately, it’s not over yet because in response to this of course my character went into hiding. And to me everything that happened is fixable. As far as I’m concerned, every death we experienced was partially justifiable under the spirit of the game. Every death was fully justifiable except Midori’s. But even that kind of thing would be fixable if we all just did a little retconning, and allowed Akeem to play a different PC, allowed Midori to maybe play her own slutty sister as a character or something cool. Totally fixable.
Until somebody burns down my bar. I just don’t know what to say about that. I had nothing going for me in real life when this happened. I can handle the death of a character. But burning down the bar? Why? Why not just burn down Allanak? What do they expect me to do? Rebuild it? Take a hike, Staff.
It makes no sense. And as far as any of you are concerned, most of this would just be the latest game melodrama and not worth posting, but I wanted to prove for everyone that this is a game where truly nothing happens. You can take ten of the most talented players off of the internet. We had money. We had solid docs. We had mob connections. If anything, staff mostly went easy on us.
Until the point that they burned down the bar, because that proves that even when the stars align it’s still not possible to achieve anything in Nessalin’s Empire of Dust.
