(un)determined

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kehra. I am Tweek’s fiance, and I run Tasera for Kha’tie. Now that you know who I am and where to find me, I shall continue.

I joined this community by chance. February 2003 I was trying to play Myst on my computer and it wouldn’t run. I did some checking around and wandered into CyanChat to see if anybody was there and if they could help me out. By the time I received the answer to my question, I had found a place that I thought I could call home, finally.

Couple weeks later, I’m there enjoying the chaos when in steps this guy named Tweek. I was like, “What a weird name.” And everyone greeted him happily. In fact, I thought he must be someone relatively important to get such a greeting. It was immediately clear that he was sarcastic, kinda grumpy, but quite funny. We started speaking outside of the chatroom, and from there most people either know or can guess the rest.

What difference does this make? I just want you to understand what you are dealing with. I want you to remember that above all else, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Tweek. Where he choses to keep silent, I give his thoughts a voice. And you better believe that’s exactly what I’m doing now.

I have never seen anyone more passionate about something in my life as Tweek is/was about Uru. Mr Grumpy, as we call him, lights up when it comes up, whether he will admit it or not. When Uru went live the first time, he was all over it. He was out there doing things and being in the middle of everything and enjoying every minute of it. I admit I was jealous. At the time I couldn’t play. But when I did, we spent a grand total of 13 hours straight going through everything together. Things he’d seen and done 50 times before. He was in the guild of greeters. He was helping. He was doing what he loved.

The great thing about Uru was that we were part of the storyline. We got to make things happen in ways that even Cyan wasn’t fully prepared for. But hey, that was part of the game, right? And nobody went full force with that like Tweek. He had so many things in the works I was surprised he even slept. He had started the Third Path, which I thought was an absolutely brilliant idea. He was starting to pick things up and he seemed to be loving it all.

I don’t think I have to explain how he felt, how we felt, when it closed.

Despite that, he kept going. He kept trying to do things outside the game since he couldn’t do them in game. I was proud of his dedication even if I couldn’t fully be a part of it. I had been crushed in a different way and couldn’t stand to be part of anything that reminded me of it.

Remember my introduction? Here’s where that information comes in handy, because let me tell you, I’m pissed and I’m not going to stand for this shit anymore.

How dare you, the community, treat him so shamefully? After all he’s done for you. He’s not gotten half the recognition he deserves for damn near everything he’s done for you. How dare you talk behind his back and then post it for him to see? How dare you stab him and then have the nerve to pretend like you don’t mean it exactly as it sounds? How dare you yell at him for helping and doing what he thought was right? How dare you bitch and moan about how he’s power hungry and withholding information? How dare you time and time again take everything he gives you and shit all over it?

Who exactly do you think you are? Does your shit not stink? I don’t give a rats ass if everything in the world was perfect you’d still find something to complain about. Why don’t you get off your lazy, fat, mind-numbed ass and find out why things aren’t going right for you? You’re unhappy with what Cyan/Ubisoft/Gametap/Bumfuck down the road is doing? Why the hell are you yelling at people who obviously are just as unable as you to get the information you’re looking for? Do you really have such a problem in real life accepting when things happen that are beyond your control? Or are you really that deluded to think that what happens from them has nothing to do with real life?

Guess what? Every single person you argue with and bitch at and stab in the back is in fact a real person. You push them they are going to push back. Face the fact that Cyan is not going to be giving out the information you want and quit yelling at the people YOU ELECTED because they can’t get the information either. Remember that fact? You elected them not once, but twice!

Some people are lucky enough to believe that what someone says online has no bearing on them because they are just words on a screen. The rest of us know better. There is a person behind that screen and that person has an opinion of you. Humans, being social creatures, care what others think of them regardless of whether or not they say they do.

Those of you who want to continue to bitch and whine and stab can consider yourselves assholes, officially. Tweek is a respected member of this community by those who actually have a brain. You know, those in the majority who watch what fools you are and shake their heads. I’m not going to just shake my head at you anymore. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I could continue for some time but considering I’ve already done that, I think I’ll leave it where it is. I think you can grasp how I feel about the situation.

Ever since it came out, I was not in the least interested in Gametap. I fully expected it to have stupid games nobody wanted to play. When I found out Uru was going to be on Gametap, I was not happy as I didn’t want to have to pay for a bunch of crap I wasn’t going to play when all I wanted was Uru.

Here, friends, is the step by step process of how a mind gets changed:

1. Get nifty offer to pay loads less for lots of time on Gametap.
2. Sign up for said offer, considering you’re going to have to sign up eventually anyway, might as well pay less for it.
3. Have a look at product to find out what exactly you’re going to have to contend with to play awesome game.
4. Find out product has lots of games you already own and love, not to mention some addicting as hell games otherwise.
5. Log in after latest update to find not only Uru on front page, but it’s got it’s own section in the gametap picks area.

At least from within Gametap itself, they have been promoting the hell out of this game. I love them already. Really. They have proven themselves worthy of Myst in my book. *hugs them*

I’ve been fairly well nonexistent in the Myst Community these days. It’s not entirely because I want to be. I miss some people I used to talk to regularly. But without anything happening to draw my attention that way, I have to quietly celebrate all things Myst while doing other things. I am generally quite busy these days. I think about it at work, oddly enough…

When not at work, I’m either reading a book (I have a stack I need to get to) or I’m checking on ATitD, which I am currently paying for. At this point, paid vs non-paid must hold my attention. I’m still updating the journal for that as I go along.

The community for this game is a harsh one. They fight with all claws out. They are fiercely protective of what they view is right. And they have some of the most extremely helpful people I have ever seen in a game. There are few griefers, although it happens.

The game is small, the people who run it work hard, and there are few of them. But every one of us knows things aren’t as well planned out as they should be. This is truly an “I thought this was cool so I’ll throw it in” type game. That attitude will never win over the masses. Especially masses paying for the opportunity. There are frequently bugs in everything, and they don’t always get fixed in a timely fashion. Some bugs have never been fixed. It’s annoying, but you can’t expect a small team to be perfect.

Events usually begin as “I feel like starting this now, so let’s see if it works” type events. If it works, it will get put in as a scheduled event at some point down the road (if they remember). Usually this first event is a test event to see just how many bugs will need fixed before the real thing happens. It’s short, sweet, and I usually can’t participate as I’m either not on for the duration of the “we’re going to do this, okay here it comes, event time, prizes” that tends to be there and gone within the hour, or I don’t have time to get there and actually make a difference in whatever score I would get to recieve a prize because I live in the boonies.

This is probably among the bottom five things that annoy me in this game…

Some people, however, take it too far and complain about everything. Boy that sounds familiar. I find it hard to take things in that light in a game. Not everybody is going to be on for everything. That’s the way it works. Those complaining about an event being held in their wee hours of the morning would have complained because they weren’t given enough time to get a good score if they’d been there. They would have complained because it was just thrown together with no real instruction on how the event would happen. There was no structure. It was a small test. That was made perfectly clear beforehand. And if a developer is going to test something, you can bet it’s going to be WHEN THEY ARE ON. Guess what? Pretty much everybody involved, and the guy running the show, is American. So yeah, its’ going to be on our time. Wow, imagine that.

But hey, it just gives them something else to complain about right? I’ll say it again. It’s. A. Game. I’ve complained about one thing in this game, and it is a rather obvious problem. It still hasn’t been fixed. It probably won’t be fixed. So I had to find another way to pass the test. No I’m not happy about it, but they are busy people. They aren’t even halfway done coding the rest of the game to come. I can live with it. It’s a shame others can’t.

Hans Henrik Staerfeldt’s Law of Player/Admin Relations: The amount of whining players do is positively proportional to how much you pamper them.
Many players whine if they see any kind of bonus in it for them. It will simply be another way for them to achieve their goals. As an admin you hold the key to many of the goals that they have concerning the virtual environment you control. If you do not pamper the players and let them know that whining will not help them, the whining will subside.

From here.

Pretty much knew that already.

There is absolutely no point anymore.

I give up.

The asshats win. Hooray.

Goodbye.