Us vs Them!
Posted by Kwip on June 25th, 2005 | 1 Comment 
Bitch bitch bitch. My goodness. Certainly is an awful lot of Cheerios being peed into lately, huh?
With the recent significant changes to the game, there is a tremendous amount of bitching going on. Claims that with the new economy, the game is ruined; with the new drain changes the game is ruined; with the inability to research new spells (i.e., fire up Arcane Knowledge II) the game is ruined; and I think someone whined that the leader of a Fellowship showing up as a triangle is obviously discrimination against octagons and tetrahedrons. People seem to think two things: first, that I have some mysterious power over the devs, that if I ‘come on board’ with them, the devs will INSTANTLY drop EVERYTHING they’re doing to work on my concern, no matter how petty. And second, that I agree with their bitching.
The first is, of course, true. We all saw that how as soon as I made DT Kwip (who has nothing specialized), the Devs instantly got behind me and made it really interesting to not have anything specialized
The second…sigh. Look, I really love the community of AC players. You guys have been great to me; you’ve always been the source of such joyful inspiration. But let’s get one thing straight: a frightful number of you are childish, ill-mannered idiots. Sometimes I have to wonder how you continue breathing without accidentally running out of your parent’s basement and smashing your testicles in the garage door.
Case in point: this whole ‘us’ versus ‘them’ attitude. Uh, guys, far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade, but the Devs write a code for a game that we play. We, the players, are not Rambo. They are not ‘the man.’ And it’s a good thing, too. I dunno if you’ve ever seen Jason Booth, but I would not put bitch-slapping out of his realm of abilities. And I’ve got it on good authority that Kim does not respect the “some places just don’t get kicked” rule. So if YOU want to rumble with them, that’s on you. But have fun standing in the parking lot at 3 o’clock, ’cause I don’t think they’ll be there, goombah.
Look, the best thing that reaches Developers is ideas. If we have ideas that are well thought-out, balanced, possible and even an improvement to game play for the MAJORITY (which equals a few more than you and your pet iguana), then odds are good that they will implement your idea. Then you may rejoice. This is when things are known as ‘going well.’ People are happy, dancing in the street is a commonplace occurrence, crime is on the decline, and puppies frolic in the grass, amusing us by dragging their crotches across the lawn.
However, sometimes there are some DARK times. When your ideas are not well thought-out; when your ideas propose a desperate imbalance to the game; when your ideas are so out of whack with what a sentient life form could possibly think is a good idea that you fail the Turing test on the first question; when the developers of a game DON’T EVEN ASK YOU, THEY JUST PUT SOMETHING RIGHT INTO THE GAME! When these tragedies occur, babies cry, kittens die, blood (and frogs) fall from the sky, and Republicans are elected into the office (without even cheating). Yeay; I say unto you that these are times which doth bit the biggeth one!
When the dark times happen; when your ideas aren’t implemented, or when different ones are, this is not – are you ready for this? – THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. It has happened that Turbine has put things into the game that didn’t work out as intended, or they did, but the player base hated them.
In fact, last year when Devilmouse was supposed to sign an autograph but instead stabbed me in the eye with the marker, knocked me down and stood on my crotch, afterward he said, “Whoops!”
As you can see, Devs are capable of admitting their mistakes.
So something has gone into the game you don’t like – my first bit of advice would be to give it MORE THAN A WEEK before you launch your “Turbine/MS eat babies!” campaign. Talk to other players. And please note, by ‘talk’, I mean post your concerns on a message board intelligently, converse with other players about your concerns, and get feedback. This does not mean post to the boards with poorly written snippets focusing on the suspected mating habits of Turbine/MS, their sexual orientation and their genealogy.
If you hate the changes, want to leave, fine, thats your prerogative. But do you have to put up a five-page rant about why you hate everything? What are you expecting to get back from that, exactly? If youre putting it up with intelligent observations and suggestions, thats pretty cool maybe some of those suggestions will be taken, and then youll find a reason to come back in a month or two. But if its just a meandering, blathering bitch-post, then do us a favor: nobody gives a shit why youre leaving. We just want you GONE, mmmkay?
So. Those of you writing asking me to harsh on Turbine about all the recent changes. Any doubt left in your mind whose ass Im kissing here? It aint yours, double-wide. I fully find for the defendants. And to that dumb ass that posted something on the AC Vault boards about Its us against them, Im willing to go the distance uh, Rambo, youre not fighting a war here or running a marathon, mmmkay? Youre not going to prove anything nor go any great distances. Well, no, I take that back; you DID prove what a goombah you are. But BESIDES that, the only distance youre going to go is the distance between your bedroom and the shower so you can try to wash the funk of being a loser off your sorry carcass when everyone laughs at what an idiot you sound like.
So can we stop whining now? Heh – right, that was funny. Well, it was worth a shot, I suppose.
And ANOTHER thing I’m getting emails with “join our team” messages about: 3rd party app developers. To those of you who are bitching about how they dictate usage: screw you. They put all that hard work, sweat and tears into creating them. They owe you usage of their apps because they have a melee plugin? No, they owe you two things: Jack and Shit. And I think they’re fresh out of Jack. They figured out how to create those awesome tools all by themselves. And you know what? In the process of busting their ass to figure out how to do those things, they gained a lot of respect for what they were building and grew awfully fond of it. So damn straight they’re going to be picky about how it gets used. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Oh, so now you figured out how to make your own plugin? Wow, that’s awesome. Yes, you do get status for that. It is to be respected; you have achieved something nobody else has. What’s that? It’s a drain macro that will be all over the place in another month? Oh, sorry. I take back what I said then. Drop dead, assface. Thanks for ruining the game.
See, there’s a reason so many of the 3rd Party App Devs were thought of highly: they have great power. With that power, however, comes great responsibility. They had a responsibility to do things beneficial to the game, and not hose it up for everyone. Some of them may have had their ‘own’ plugins; great, fantastic. So long as they and their friends used them, and those plugins weren’t interferring with my playing, I’m happy. In fact, in return for the awesome help that their plugins provided, I’d gladly have buffed their macros! I don’t care! Oh, darn, they’ve taken over 1/1000000th of the map. Gee. Guess I’ll have to resign myself to suffering through the other 999,999 parts. You say they had plugins running in important places? Bullshit. Prove it. You can’t? Then shaddup.
Now, unfortunately, some less community-minded people have developed apps that will allow any goombah to run their plug-ins out and about and pretty much torpedo the game for the rest of us. Oh. Wait. They did it for “the rest of us.” Right. I forgot. How kind of them to single-handedly create these things (well, single-handedly in that they used mostly other people’s code to do most of it) that will save us unwashed masses from the evil exploits of the Devs. Yesh, I know how much my game has been ruined so far. That’s certainly why I’m still here, after almost three years. It was all about letting myself be oppressed. Thank GOD you have come to free us!
No, wait, my bad – you’re not doing this to be complete assholes! You’re doing this to pay back the 3rd Party App Devs who were mean to you because they didn’t answer your questions in chat channel when you asked “whut r VB stand for?” Ah, gee, I’m sorry. I forgot this was the INTERNET, where people are kind to newbies, and they always offer all their skill, time and dedication to help people replicate the same things (that took them months/years of study and hard work to replicate). My my my. They certainly ARE hypocrites, aren’t they? How dare they try and enjoy the fruits of their labors without giving us full access to all their tools! In fact, I’m kinda pissed that Kalroth has a WAY better computer than me! I DEMAND I be given access to play my game on his computer!
Bah. Take your “code socialism” and stuff it. Decal devs have always done things for the betterment of the game, and I stand firmly with them. I hope Nerfus Buffus III scans to see if you’re running plug-ins that Nerf doesn’t like, and if it finds them, posts a your username, password and a picture of you having sex with a goat to all the boards, calls your mother and tells her that you’ve accepted Hari Krishna as your savior, melts all the ice cream in your freezer and then shoots out lasers that melt your face! How ’bout that, biyatches?
I spent a few minutes getting buffed by the bot, during which A’ took my armor and baned it for me. Not that he was expecting much trouble on the skill sell-back quest, but after that, we were headed to the Caul Island, so I needed every bit of protection available.
Finally, I get my buffs and A’ finishes mocking me, and we set off on our adventure to get me Life Magic.
This dungeon is neat, I have to admit. Not just the design, I mean the whole concept of being able to unspec a skill AND get those xp back – that’s pretty schpiffy. Gives me hope for Kwip on Darktide. 
One thing is pretty clear to me, right out of the gate: I’m not only the LOWEST level character on this hunt, I’m also the most clueless. Everyone does the equivalent of baby-sitting a "special needs" child as we portal into the first dungeon – they all surround me with a ‘safety net’ of their bodies to keep me from running into anything too dangerous.
After that one small… mishap, I do manage to make it to Caul with everyone. And there we proceeded to whup up on some little imp bastiches!
