how many of you still play?

I stopped because of someone who wasn't even ON staff until after I spent a year and a half there trying to discredit and condescend to me on the GDB by making it a point to publicly explain to me 'how staff make decisions' after being mocked, having a post changed by staff to something mocking what I said, and so on. I have stayed gone because life is too short to fuck around and kiss the ass of people who have no respect for you while begging breadcrumbs from their table for a fucking hobby. It's great if you are able to keep your illusions and a heavy dose of denial. I am not anymore. As much as I love the world, setting, players, and some of the code (especially watch/hemotes, emote targetting, etc), every time I think about who I would have to deal with and kowtow to... I wind up not logging in. Not worth it. I have people to mock me and walk all over me in person. If I wanted that, I certainly wouldn't have to look to the internet for it, and even if I did, there's plenty of other places besides a game to get that.

i'd vote no but the polls expred.

Why? First time: frustration burnout. second time: nyyyyrrrrrreeedddddd... and also a reminder what burnd me out had gotten worse.

No comment..

I don't play anymore and probably never will. It was a game that I cared a lot about for half a dozen years, and then Nyr and his sycophants took over and made it untenable. The game had been stagnating since about 2007, of course, but it wasn't until Nyr's influence took root that Armageddon became actively unpleasant to be part of. It pains me today to see the playerbase act like terrified backpatters who depend on the "boss" for food (i.e. karma and whitelisting) and so need to treat him and his crew with fawning, deluded support. This used to be a great community full of people with backbone, folks like LoD and Angela Christie who said what they meant, but people like that are gone - many specifically because of Nyr - and now you can only thrive on Arm if you join the grovellers.

That's not what we're talking about. And just because a PC is long lived doesn't particularly mean anything. I'm sure plenty of staff get schadenfreude now and then from seeing even fellow staff alts killed. And anyhow, it's virtually impossible to intervene in such a situation. And the times when they have blatantly intervened on the spot are fairly infamous incidents.

But things happen too fast on Armageddon for such stuff. The fuckery is more of a long term effect. Behind the scenes screwjobs and such when no one is looking. When we talk about 'thriving', we don't mean going out and killing someone. We mean getting any kind of significant plot traction, descriptions, buildings or anything remotely resembling imm effort. Examples might be trying to barricade a door, trying to build an outpost, or say, applying for one of the merchant warehouses which require an OOC staff discussion about your 'trustworthiness'.

We mean the same people getting picked for the same top roles over and over again.

I think you're well aware of this. Yes, you can thrive in the sense of being completely on your own, and giving the finger to the powers that be, now and then, in some spiteful fashion. But as soon as you find your way onto someone's black list (and even before then), you're well and truly fucked. I had only positive account notes for years, and I had extremely basic requests go unheeded or ignored for months. Because I never played a female gypsy or aide or skyped with Nyr, evidently. You'll certainly never affect the game world in any meaningful sense, unless you take the Abuzer route (get so codedly powerful that there is almost nothing they can do about it without force storing you - which has happened).

Although, they can still fuck with you, such as turning off your ability to increase your skills, or arbitrarily lowering them without telling you. Both have been done in the past.

Now, if you initiated an elaborate plot requiring staff support and cooperation to go about killing these PCs, then maybe you're onto something. But then, haven't you played Arm with like a half dozen different accounts over the years?

If you just bushwhacked them, then good job, but that means nothing. The opportunity to bushwhack someone's pet now and then is what kept me even playing the game for a couple years past 2009. It's not thriving. It's existing. Without that opportunity, we're just their fuck puppets. And even some people on the GDB would wise up eventually.

I still play or I should say, I started playing again. I stopped playing around 2007, because my career didn't allow me to play anymore. So I missed out on many of the things that people are talking about simply because I missed out on the Arm 2.0 thing or all of the other weirdness. But I find it all believable and immediately noticed it's not quite the same game it was when I left. I do see clan leaders being more frustrated and people I would've thought would be excellent RPers from their posts on the GDB not give a shit or just be shitty in general. I still feel like I have a couple more characters left in me before I leave again, but I do feel like I get little return on my efforts from both staff and many players, but I'm still doing it because I enjoy RP.