Why I no longer play Armageddon

I don't think the problems caused by Qoriya were much felt by the nobility, much less her allies.

IIRC that was Kelara Dasari.

I'm reminded of something Gordon Ramsey always says to restaurateurs on Kitchen Nightmares who show him all the positive comments they get left in notes. "How many of those people actually came back here?! In my restaurants, we almost exclusively pay attention to the negative responses so we'll know when there's a problem."

Fuck off, transparent staff account. That whole "Nobody can know for sure if they're not staff" act is dated and ineffective.

Damn straight. I would bet it would have been huge with the Legion of two months ago. Players dealing with some environmental hazard the staff throw at them gets boring. It'll go on until the staffer stops it. Stuff that is entirely the product of another player, on the other hand, is something you can fix yourself. It's a chance to pit your skills and resources against someone else where victory won't be determined by some arbitrator and where the stakes really just boil down to bragging rights. Even better, the story you wind up getting to tell, whether you win or not, is meaningful to you because you mattered in making it.

Case-in-point:

You keep trying until either there's a new upper staff who don't suck or until you accept the futility and quit Arm entirely. Sorry, man.

Nyr lied? Nyr contradicted himself? Impossible. As you can't see, all of the information you discussed is behind these black redaction marks. Obviously he was encouraging every player to be the change once they are conscripted into Arm's script as extras. Being some kind of change that... oh lord... changes things in any way outside of staff control..? No. Just no. Why would you think that?!

The staff could crush your ideas even if every NPC in the world is a merchant and only PCs could play magickers. They aren't able to crush your ideas because they have a virtual status quo to maintain. They're able to do it because they're staff and you're not. The text on the screen that accompanies the death of your plot happens solely because they have the power to write it.

Very powerful post, RR. Something about the tuluk announcement seems to be increasing our population here. And you're clearly an ultra long time vet, so your departure from the game I'd say represents a staggering loss. If knowing this means nothing to the staff then that's clearly the number one problem with the majority of them to begin with (I say majority because I do recognize that there are a few good apples). The sad thing is staff like Nyr are probably genuinely happy to see you go, because I bet a kid like him would feel threatened by your intellect. He screams of inferiority complex.

I interacted with Sargax quite a bit over the years. At a time when many players were trying to be overly verbose and flowery with their emotes, yours were always short and concise, but specific, focusing on driving plots more than trying to impress others with word count; and the simplicity allowed for a consistent, well defined persona. Sargax was a very real, very visceral part of the game for me and at the risk of sounding like an ass kisser, your character has influenced much of my RP style to this day.

One question for ya. The staff specifically told you to stop hunting Tukukis? Did they give any reason why? I know the allanaki liberation alliance was closed in part because the game wanted to disassociate with real world terrorist themes, given the current events of the day. Could that be why? If so I think that's lame but just speculating. The city's been a complete ghost town despite nyrs chanting of "everything is fine, everything is fine" so maybe they were oocly protecting tuluk's dwindling population (which would make sense, given their history of coddling and protecting their favorites). Also, if you have any classic Nyr emails I'm sure we'd all love to see a few contributions to nyrs greatest hits. I have a few real gems from him with my current player account but I can't yet share here because reasons.

Even before my fingers touch the keys I know that what I type next will be met with silence but I challenge anyone on staff today to reach out to one of the vets like RR who you've driven to quit and have an honest and open discussion with them, making absolutely certain that you try to listen and understand. Understand that like you they are human and make mistakes, understand that being in a position of authority means the onus of "being the better person" and not succumbing to petty remarks is on you. You won't do it, but I promise you if you even made the effort you'd fine the game will halt in its downward descent and take a turn for the better. You see I can admit my faults openly, and say what I've done wrong in the game, and have a discussion about how we all might happily move forward. Can you?

ALA was gone before 9/11. But there were elements of terrorism - rightfully so, if you ask me - after 9/11, like for instance when some gladiator games were bombed by masked rinthers.

The biggest problem with ALA that I can remember was the fact that it was an acronym...


Pretty sure the ALA help file was up until after 9/11, but I'm not sure that it was ever active.

It doesn't help if bombers shout "ALA" after they blow something up. I think it'd be okay if the name was changed.