About the past, the present and the future. Fry on a soapbox.
Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 1:02 pm
Not sure how to say this, been thinking about it for days. It is a rough idea, need to write it to get it right for myself as well.
*pushes two soapboxes forward and stands on them*
I am detaching from SoR. Where I used to care, that caring is slipping away. Where I used to give a a damn, I dont give that much anymore.
More announcements made that show a change. Saga of Ryzom is becoming something else, I think it is mainly for survival in the weird world of MMO's.
Reality is: most people who play MMO's are the people we call PvP kiddies. A company needs to appeal to these kiddies in order to make a profit. If a company doesnt make a profit, it will shut down in the end.
What made SoR a special game was in the gfx (still at a lonely top there), the community and the enviroment interacting with itself.
What made SoR a common game was in the buggy implementation of about everything, the grinding, the sloppy patching and the buzzwords like: "unique", "players influencing storyline", "living world", "uncertain future" and other stuff pointing towards the lore.
Yay! Great! So we fell for the buzzwords and into a warm bath of anonimous friendlyness. People were kind to us for no other reason then the kindness itself. We travelled, we discovered, explored, hunted strange and strong or weak and well-known beasts. And all things considered, there was no other option as the game was barren of any pre-fab entertainment. Every attempt to spice things up resulted in a servercrash or showed the hollow (but beautifull) shell SoR really was.
In one way or another, homins made their own lore by being a Kami fanatic, a mercenairy or a Protector of Yubo. Some very great artists came to the surface here, be they in politics, poetry, graphical arts or war.
About 4 or 5 months ago, the mess was getting cleaned up or on the right path for reliability and flexibility. At this time the powers that control Nevrax (in the end it is all about who put in the largest sum of money) looked at SoR and asked themselves how to gain a profit from this dapperdrain.
The answer was partly R2, player generated content that players will pay for to get hosted. Brilliant, really. That will not only bind people twice but will allow for a smaller (expensive) Eventsteam and Contentdevteam.
But yet another gamble, SoR will need to be profitable or growing towards profitability in a few months, a year mostly. And what do all succesfull games have in common? Right, some form of PvP, GvG or FvF.
No programmer can ever create the same amount of nasty, vicious, devious, creative and above all unpredictable behavoire for the same price! Other humans are not only challanging, they are money generating content too.
But now, what will this do to the community that was cheered all over the world by many players who stuck around long enough to survive starterisle?
It will disappear, simple.
The community came from the lack of other things to do, from the hardships of the grind, from the suffering the buggy environment caused. It is not the PvP killing the community as we knew it, the long-desired content is causing this. PvP is implemented now to draw in new people to keep the company called Nevrax afloat, it is not a cause of anything, it is a natural step in the jungle called "Free market economy". PvP is a result.
When I reread this, I draw a weird conclusion. The people who made this great community, created it out of a lack of other things to do. Now there is something else to do, and these very same people look for another place that is barren and full of promises to be everything SoR promised to be.
Concluding: The community we all love was made by a group of masochists.
Writing this post helped me decide something difficult. Considering SoR will be like all other PW's, switching will only make me a noob again. Okee, some new mechanics to discover, some new lands to see, but likely just another grindfest. And another grindfest, I just don't have the time for that, I like being higher lvl too much to be lower lvl again.
Leaving the game when it is about to release more content would be a waste of the investments made in the game in money, time and brainpower. I may not like all the aspects of the new stuff, but I actually don't expect to fully like a new game either, just that it will take me a bit longer to realize.
Second conclusion: switching games now is fooling myself and will eat up all my spare time.
So I stay, sometimes fighting the diggerkillers, lvling my 2h axing a bit, digging / crafting some. All in a bit lower profile, having a job takes it's toll.
I lost the enthusiastic (zealous?) belief I had in SoR, the devs, the events team. I lost my trust in the company's voices, as I feel lied to about the way the game was going and the influence we could have. But I respect the attempts to be open about things, to be honest, to give us what we want. I also know that sometimes the accountants win...
I gained the tranquility I long for so much in my life, the ability to play for only an hour or two per day, I regained my sleep. The game gave me friends around the world, who were there for me when stuff was bad, for whom I could be there when their stuff was bad. The game gave me food for thought, taught me about addictions, about QA, about people and group behavior. The last year I wasted more time I can ever imagine playing a computer game and I can look back at that, realizing I got wiser.
So if you doubt about SoR, stay with me, stay with us. We might be able to teach the PvPkiddies some things about what a community can be, if only by telling the legends we were part of.
*pushes two soapboxes forward and stands on them*
I am detaching from SoR. Where I used to care, that caring is slipping away. Where I used to give a a damn, I dont give that much anymore.
More announcements made that show a change. Saga of Ryzom is becoming something else, I think it is mainly for survival in the weird world of MMO's.
Reality is: most people who play MMO's are the people we call PvP kiddies. A company needs to appeal to these kiddies in order to make a profit. If a company doesnt make a profit, it will shut down in the end.
What made SoR a special game was in the gfx (still at a lonely top there), the community and the enviroment interacting with itself.
What made SoR a common game was in the buggy implementation of about everything, the grinding, the sloppy patching and the buzzwords like: "unique", "players influencing storyline", "living world", "uncertain future" and other stuff pointing towards the lore.
Yay! Great! So we fell for the buzzwords and into a warm bath of anonimous friendlyness. People were kind to us for no other reason then the kindness itself. We travelled, we discovered, explored, hunted strange and strong or weak and well-known beasts. And all things considered, there was no other option as the game was barren of any pre-fab entertainment. Every attempt to spice things up resulted in a servercrash or showed the hollow (but beautifull) shell SoR really was.
In one way or another, homins made their own lore by being a Kami fanatic, a mercenairy or a Protector of Yubo. Some very great artists came to the surface here, be they in politics, poetry, graphical arts or war.
About 4 or 5 months ago, the mess was getting cleaned up or on the right path for reliability and flexibility. At this time the powers that control Nevrax (in the end it is all about who put in the largest sum of money) looked at SoR and asked themselves how to gain a profit from this dapperdrain.
The answer was partly R2, player generated content that players will pay for to get hosted. Brilliant, really. That will not only bind people twice but will allow for a smaller (expensive) Eventsteam and Contentdevteam.
But yet another gamble, SoR will need to be profitable or growing towards profitability in a few months, a year mostly. And what do all succesfull games have in common? Right, some form of PvP, GvG or FvF.
No programmer can ever create the same amount of nasty, vicious, devious, creative and above all unpredictable behavoire for the same price! Other humans are not only challanging, they are money generating content too.
But now, what will this do to the community that was cheered all over the world by many players who stuck around long enough to survive starterisle?
It will disappear, simple.
The community came from the lack of other things to do, from the hardships of the grind, from the suffering the buggy environment caused. It is not the PvP killing the community as we knew it, the long-desired content is causing this. PvP is implemented now to draw in new people to keep the company called Nevrax afloat, it is not a cause of anything, it is a natural step in the jungle called "Free market economy". PvP is a result.
When I reread this, I draw a weird conclusion. The people who made this great community, created it out of a lack of other things to do. Now there is something else to do, and these very same people look for another place that is barren and full of promises to be everything SoR promised to be.
Concluding: The community we all love was made by a group of masochists.
Writing this post helped me decide something difficult. Considering SoR will be like all other PW's, switching will only make me a noob again. Okee, some new mechanics to discover, some new lands to see, but likely just another grindfest. And another grindfest, I just don't have the time for that, I like being higher lvl too much to be lower lvl again.
Leaving the game when it is about to release more content would be a waste of the investments made in the game in money, time and brainpower. I may not like all the aspects of the new stuff, but I actually don't expect to fully like a new game either, just that it will take me a bit longer to realize.
Second conclusion: switching games now is fooling myself and will eat up all my spare time.
So I stay, sometimes fighting the diggerkillers, lvling my 2h axing a bit, digging / crafting some. All in a bit lower profile, having a job takes it's toll.
I lost the enthusiastic (zealous?) belief I had in SoR, the devs, the events team. I lost my trust in the company's voices, as I feel lied to about the way the game was going and the influence we could have. But I respect the attempts to be open about things, to be honest, to give us what we want. I also know that sometimes the accountants win...
I gained the tranquility I long for so much in my life, the ability to play for only an hour or two per day, I regained my sleep. The game gave me friends around the world, who were there for me when stuff was bad, for whom I could be there when their stuff was bad. The game gave me food for thought, taught me about addictions, about QA, about people and group behavior. The last year I wasted more time I can ever imagine playing a computer game and I can look back at that, realizing I got wiser.
So if you doubt about SoR, stay with me, stay with us. We might be able to teach the PvPkiddies some things about what a community can be, if only by telling the legends we were part of.
