Random thoughts and comments

Hah!  Hang in there, Bro!  Nelson Mandela was in prison for years but went on to become the President of an entire country!

On another note, has anyone noticed that like 98% of the internet got taken over by normies?  You all are like the only people that I can talk to these days.  For example I popped into a hacker chat room the other day, and I was the edgiest person in there.  By far.  It was fairly uncomfortable for me, because I ran a quick calculation of exactly how far down I'd have to tone it down in order to fit into a MOTHER-Fing hacker chat room, and it's a long way down.  

Nice to hear from you bro!  Keep it spicy!

Don't take any guff from these swine!

A long, long time ago, Shabago used an NPC to pressure a player to mudsex with him by threatening to derail the player's plot with power that is unattainable by a normal player. (That player went on to become staff and was instrumental in applying the rape ban to the game, which includes coercive/blackmail sex RP.) This was way back before Tuluk's recent closure, probably about 6 or 7 years ago.

I'd like to come forward and voluntarily resign from the Shadowboards. Effective immediately, I will be a Storyteller instead of a Producer.

Shabago once saw me post a RL pic of myself and commented on it. It was up for about 30 seconds on the discord server, he commented on it about a year later. 

And with this shitshow to deal with, staff will be even less likely to do anything about the fact that the actual game itself is a woefully stagnant snoozefest where hardly anything happens and most characters have no meaningful goals to pursue outside of whatever they can come up with themselves out of thin air. It seemed like staff had finally begun to tentatively acknowledge that something needed to be done, and then this scandal hit and will probably set Armageddon back at least a year in terms of gameplay.

Not saying it was wrong to bring Shalooonsh's bullshit into the spotlight, mind you--staff did this to themselves by covering for him and letting him back on staff when he was already known at the time as a highly controversial figure disliked by many. They're now reaping what they sowed when they covered for him and looked the other way, but that doesn't change the fact that this ordeal will make it even less likely that the issues that make Armageddon's roleplaying environment so lifeless will be fixed in any sort of timely manner.

I've been checking the game out once a year for the last six or eight years, and each time, it was more dead than the last. Nothing fucking happens. With my latest (and, I'm now certain, last ever) PC, I spent two months in the Masterless and the one and only thing we did in that entire time was attack Bebop's templar sort of accidentally. Two straight months of sitting around in the mul outpost, talking about our plans and waiting for staff answers and whatnot. Absolutely fucking nothing happened. Oh, wait, we did go kill a mekillot one time. Other than that? Spar, craft, talk, wait.

I had an enforcer with AI strength, exceptional agility and 120+ hp/stun, with fully maxed (not just master but actually fully maxed) bludgeoning, two handed, sap, disarm, bash, everything--who had literally never engaged in PvP because there simply was never anything going on anywhere. It was so painfully dead that if not for the fact that I kind of like the idle progress-bar-filling nature of Arm's single-player desert Skyrim gameplay, I cannot fathom how anyone could enjoy what this game has to offer.

About a year ago, I briefly toyed with the notion of applying for a noble. Then I thought to myself: what the fuck would one even do as a noble? What is there to do in that role? What has any noble done in the last several years that actually mattered? If one was to log in during a random afternoon, what could one expect to accomplish? What conflict exists in the game that a noble might play a meaningful part in? Beyond mindless murder plots, what could one actually do in such a role without requiring constant staff hand-holding and waiting weeks at a time for request answers?

I couldn't help but admit that the answer to these questions was always: nothing.

So instead I played a random idiot in one of the game's like ten desert-based clans, stuck in some camp doing nothing and with nothing to work with, unable to reach any of the pieces that might be pushed towards some goal that could actually matter to anybody. A few weeks back, I became perma-wanted for the second time in the character's life; and for the second time, it was without being caught committing a crime or doing anything to any PCs. I told staff to go fuck themselves and quit the game, and for once, I think I can resist the temptation of rolling up another PC again next year.

What a lot of people fail to realize about Arm is it's never been about "having shit to do" and always about interesting characters and stories being told. If a character draws you with their story, personality, etc. because there's a good player behind it that is all you need. It seems the vast majority of those players are now gone, that's the problem now.

When I played Larimar I ran into maybe 5 characters that just blew me away and made me want to play with them. One of them was Kutai, Aromits avatar who ended up pkilling me. He can RP a cool character and draw you in, just deciding to pk with an avatar is on my "fuck this" list so I left when I found out.