Supposedly, SoI has an entirely new staff now, as they try to recover from very minimal participation. However, I was very surprised how similar the entirely new staff is from the old staff that brought the game so low.
Sage the supposed head, just as "hands off" as Nimrod. And Sage too is prone to these long-winded pronouncements on how there's going to be new rules for staff and everything is now going to be better: (http://middle-earth.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3382)
Then there is Amaterasu almost exactly as terse and dismissive and... well... Asperger's as Rishte ever was.
And Uriel, always present, with her fingers in every pot, trying to run everything, but so easily overwhelmed and inclined to rash decisions apparently based mostly on who had her ear last. Is that not Frigga's clone?
Would you guess, with most all the senior staff turning over in a short period, that at least one of them would have had some big new idea for change, would want to put their new mark on the game? And yet the whole setting and tone hasn't really changed an iota.
This wouldn't be the first time: remember when Kite morphed into Icarus?
My whole experience trying the game again gave me a feeling of Déjà Vu.
Does anyone actually play SoI anymore? The forum is completely dead and nobody has talked about the game in ages. I figured it had been abandoned by now.
Either way, I'm skeptical of the idea that their staff changed their identities to fool people. It's more likely that the game's culture shapes its members, leading to similar styles of staffing. Over the years I've noticed that the same small handful of personality types are drawn toward staffing, which we've seen on Armageddon as well
What SoI should do is move on from the Utterby phase and build Laketown. That was the original plan as Utterby was simply an alpha/beta. They presumably have their code systems approximately where they want them - certainly good enough to be playable - and building areas isn't a particularly big undertaking if you have two or three people who can put in a solid shift for a couple of weeks. It's been done before. The game's setting pretty much creates itself, it's not like they have to come up with a bunch of history.
When a game is in the situation that SoI is in now, the only way to attempt a rescue is to reboot and attract players with a clean slate. It doesn't always work, but it's worth trying. It's sad to see SoI brought so low because it used to be the other big RPI next to Armageddon, but certain people poisoned the community too much. Since it's well-known what happened to SoI in the past, it should be possible to prevent it from happening again if the right people are involved, but I have no idea who's on staff nowadays.
Why Laketown/Utterby, the entire setting is one of the dullest periods in Tolkien's stories. There are way more interesting periods of time they could have set the game. If they are going to make any kind of push they'd be better off biting the bullet now when there are no players to upset and changing the place in the timeline, new rooms, etc etc.
"Either way, I'm skeptical of the idea that their staff changed their identities to fool people. It's more likely that the game's culture shapes its members, leading to similar styles of staffing. Over the years I've noticed that the same small handful of personality types are drawn toward staffing, which we've seen on Armageddon as well"********************************************************************************************************Yeah, I would not have expected it either, but I certainly have seen evidence of it at SoI in the past. If I went digging I might still be able to find an old e-mail response from Kite's account that is signed by "Icarus", so I've got some pretty strong evidence this technique was used in the past when players really got to resenting a staff presence. I've also noticed some odd uses of the names in their forums. Of course players getting promoted to staff take on new names, but both "Sage" and "Uriel" create staff accounts on the forums less than a year before taking over the game, and are very inactive before emerging as leads. I would guess that anyone tapped for such high-profile roles would have been present longer, and more active than those accounts indicate.
Curious. I am not involved with SoI what so ever, but when I was reading about those two GMs being the same person, I wondered if it's true and was pretty open to that possibility. If Holmes didnt show up and dispute it entirely, I would've probably left thinking that its true.
Did anyone who actually played the game, found Mike's post believable when you read it for the first time?
Why Laketown/Utterby, the entire setting is one of the dullest periods in Tolkien's stories. There are way more interesting periods of time they could have set the game. If they are going to make any kind of push they'd be better off biting the bullet now when there are no players to upset and changing the place in the timeline, new rooms, etc etc.
Wasn't that always like SOI's thing? That nothing ever happened?
dumpsterfirediva: @pinkerdlu wild out here.
Dec 30, 2023 17:01:08 GMT -5
grumble: Guys, please don't fuck with Amanda, she's one of the few of you I actually like, if you're in the process of fucking with her, please cease.
Dec 31, 2023 19:13:14 GMT -5
mehtastic: Armageddon's 60 remaining players really do deserve one another.
Jan 1, 2024 7:01:06 GMT -5
Azerbanjani: Bold of you to assume there's 60 actual people left
Jan 1, 2024 21:12:46 GMT -5
Azerbanjani: The last three-ish roles I played in Apoc kept me away from pk centered areas mostly so no idea how it was. I do recall being on the fringes of people getting murdered for silly reasons but that was more of an OOC fringe not IC.
Mar 26, 2024 20:29:34 GMT -5
Azerbanjani: I think APOC is probably going to be the best/most okay-ish arm-ish experience but it suffers from a lack of staff and I think a bit of helpfile necessity (I was supposed to be making more of those and I did but I slowly lost desire as people bitched more)
Mar 26, 2024 20:30:02 GMT -5
Azerbanjani: The parts that are arm-ish drive me crazy to no end though (Human superiority/noble stuff, gemmed, a few other things but not that much more). I also just hate the Diku codebase in all its glory
Mar 26, 2024 20:30:42 GMT -5