Had enough (rant, but not what you might think)

[cerebrix]

Hola and stuff everyone,

A few of you know me, most of you probobly dont. But ive been kicking around the game since jun 02 on and off. having just come back from a bit of a long break due to moving from state to state and real life type stuff. I come back to a bit of an upsetting rubi ka for me. What happened? Wait, that isnt the important question here i think...

I remember, not nearly as long ago as some of you might think, of a thriving and engaging place called rubi-ka. A place where you could see living breatheing characters kicking around the planet adding real life to it. no matter what time of day or night it was, it was easy to find at least 30 people online like this hanging out at reets, hiding out in rompa, or even relaxing in the back of babboons. ive been back for a few weeks now and man, its almost a coin toss on if youre going to find someone actually living in this place.

some people ive asked about it blame the state of the game, lots of camping, uber guilds, pvp, or tower battles. After looking at all of this i know whos to blame here.

firstly i blame myself......

secondly, i blame everyone else......

I when i think about what i love most about ao, and what i miss most, its all things I could have done something about. how? by being there for my friends more. by promoting the game irl more and inviting people to share my little piece of the year 24k.

i know everyone is busy these days. i am too. i know everyone logs in and has their adgendas for what they do or dont wanna do every day. i get that too. but man... this place, this engaging game. this planet. its ours. really it is. its only as good as all of us collectively make it.

now pointing fingers isnt going to bring back the thriving nightlife that rubi ka once had a year ago. But seriously a little effort from each one of us is. its something very very possible. all it requires is a few minutes of your time during any given week. just once. not even some kind of commitment. just talk to a friend about it. someone you know, someone you see looking at ao in the store. hell even looking at any mmog. anyone can be turned on to this game. its so easy to do.

personally. i promise come friday to buy 10 copies of ao and just give them to my friends. hell its only 5 bucks now at gogamer.com for a copy of sl. 10 bucks at eb games.

ive tried just about everything out there. im sure most of you have too. but rubi ka is home. and im in it till the end at this point.

now its time for me to do my part as a citizen of rubi-ka.

whos w/ me?

thanks for reading my little rant. hope i didnt piss anybody off. really, im trying to help here.

- Me

[Dragonfruit]

hey waddup, you're the dude who gave me a div 9 when i was a noob cause i looked like a fixer! keep up teh good work

[Metalynx]

Easy to explain: Back in the days of yore, when ao started...FC was brekaing new ground. They wanted a game that would make everyone happy. For awhile...all prospered and it was good. Then FC came to teh realization..they wont sell more copies unless they compete with other games out on the maorket. How do we attract more people??/ Shoot straight for the market that has always made money: power gamers.

WIth that mentality..the game shifts its gewars..and over time...lesses the stress on social peopel and makes it more of a "game".

What this does is...even though we are a creative bunch of people...able to maek our own events after FC left us out to dry....we are limited by the tools we have left to us..and eventually...exhaust our resources for "social" activities.

Some of you...who might have ben around for a long tme..might remember me as a near permant fixture at GSP parties. I went to near every one (man...you try partying 10 hrs a day...just to get to all the DJ's party).

Well...if your still around...you might notice something. I no longer go anymore. Why is this?? becasue of limited tols and resources we are forced to use...nothing is unique anymore. I daresay I may hold the record for number of friggn socal events ever attended in RK. Weddings, Funerals (yes funerals), barmitzvas (ungh) lvl 200 dings, b-day parties, save the leet foundation, dance a thons, beauty pagents,bachelor auctions, hell ive even been to a Baby shower.

Frankly im sick of it now. Due to the tools left...all of them looked the same Even GSP parteis...make me faintly ill now. Why? becasue its the same thing...the same groupof 10-20 peopel...slapping same dance macros...spouting nearly the same banal prose they ahve for last 10 parties. There is always a Nekkid Trox. There is always some annoying assclown who heckles the DJ's. there is alwasy some scanty clad woman..who acts like a ice queen bitch.and is sarcastic to everyone. There is always the timid wall flower..using her good looks..shyness as a means of gettng sympathy for a elswise low ego. There is ALWAYS 2 lesbian chicks making out and having near sex on the dancefloor. There is always one guy who comes..sits down where all an see.and bemoans the fact he has no woman..and generally tries to get ladies with the "woe as me" pity factor. Lastly...there is always one woman that shows up...scanty dressed..who immidieatly proclamins that she has arrived..and you can all bask in her glorious beauty (basically a flirty, irritating attention whore, who gets upset when other women try to "upstage her")

guess the point im saying is. im not alone in this feeling. Many of my freinds..once the original reetheads, dont go anymore. They all feel the same. its always the same shit. you can only do the same thing so many times before it beomes dreadfully boring. The scene is the same. The friggin peopel are the same.

Part I blame FC for. We were left out to dry , social wise. the only advancements they made socially...is a few gestures added that are only used to do lewd acts...and a few new bts of clothing (can I say...Tentacle swimwear anyone?)

Part I dont blame them for. they need to make money. Socialites will log on..stay for a few hoursand log off. POwer levelers will log on..stayonline for 19 hours..bitch..moan..complain..threaten to leave..but stay..due to a hope of a new patch..that will make them uber. They will staybecasue they will get dissatisfied..and make a new alt...thus extending their lifespan.

I gues I coudl blame the playerbase...but not really. You can only have so many ideas with a limited sructure before they are all thesame. Peopel get bored with the same thing.

Face it...games been out near 3 on years now. Social scene is dying..and only peoepl who are doing it now are the decadent people who hold onto it like a life preserver.

And I HOPE I pissed some peopel off. I stopped coming to GSP gatherings largely because of children who felt that they could not act with decorum. Becasue of that inability to control themselves, it became so repetative.that it was assumed ther would be immature morons gracing the parties. thus I dont go anymore. If I want to see children play..thers a elementary school right down the road I an go watch.

Ask around. Im not the only one who feels this way. None of this has any bearings to the GSP events themselves..its the participants.

[Boinky]

Not all people in AO have been there from day one, in fact SL infused a good deal of folks I think, so possibly not all of those frequenting GSP events are the same tired old people from release. Others, like myself, atend events/parties sometimes, but not all the time.

Generally speaking as far as AO goes I think it does grind on ya a bit over time. And also a very big factor in current times is SL. SL sucked 90% of the playerbase off Rubi-Ka and has made them stay locked to whatever zone they are currently at up in SL. I'm certain this is the fact. I see this in my own guild, and we are generally more RP centered & further from the mindless powergamers, but still many of us are tethered to the highest level garden we are saved in, because FC gave us SL, and SL gives us little other choices than that. SL is set out in a line. From point A you progress to point B and so on. Makes it much harder to interact slightly out of your area. If I'm at point F & you are at point L we will never meet in a million years in SL!

sorry...

/rant off

[cerebrix]

ok lynx,

point taken, and a very well thought out point at that. so lemme ask you.

since we cant rely on funcom. what do you think we should do to fix the situation rather than walk away?

just curious what your take on this is given how long youve been around.

[Dragonfruit]

I got an alt to try each one of those personalities, and when I got bored of the last one, I didnt come to reets anymore. i went on to a different aspect of the game, exploration. I got in my yalm, and explored the massive game space of rubi ka. It was interesting and fun, by then it seemed more fun than doing missions or hanging out at reets. you never know how big rubi ka is untill you travel through it.

[Metalynx]

how to fix it?

Not bloody easy.
Get fc to give us more tools (perhaps the half arsed things in AI coming out they have spoken of...new clothed..new places..towns...etc). perhaps the it will allow for more change.

or....go somewhere else. Iknow lots of new peopel are around nowdays, but the social environment tself is stale, and allot of users, new and old are jaded from false promises given by the great gods called Funcom.

As for the people acting the way they do nowdays...well mass genocie was a personal favorite of mine. Also hoking up electrodes tot he nuts of each user, so when they act like an ass they get a nice shock.

Ultimatly, ther is no way to "fix" things. we are largey at the mercy of the game developers for matieral to work with. W could whine on the forums about such..making huge elaborate posts..getting lots of peopel to sign the post supporting our suggestions.......and proptly watch the post get closed becasue of some flame fest that inevitablly starts (another name for the AO forums I use is the "Flamecom" forums).

Or we sit tight and see whats in store for us.

Dont mind me...im starting to fel ive been here long enough that Ineed to sit donw on my rocking chair on the porch, grab my shawl and a glass of leamonade..and wack the shins of all the youngsters I see.

Heedless to say, my opinions mostly vary from others.

[Jugsmalone]

Hi all well i personally still love attending the shows and the parties However it is impossible to get a decent team for leveling early in the day which means its the nights we must do this or watch everyone else gain in levels and credits while we sit and hope to win a gsp contest just to buy the new implnats we need so if we want to be self suporting and not beg or rely on others we must leave the night life of fun and parties and go and kill rock ppl to level and earn a few credits each night to buy the uber Tier armor and new improved weapons and items...... to far to run back to reets when your way out in Shadow lands and not very smart to keep leaving your teams at 9pm every night to go and party theysoon wont invite you to team any longer.......This is just my own take on things

[Riviques]

well, personaly, id be gratefull that FC is putting what they are into the game. take a look at anotehr game i used to play: Earth & Beyond. they had only 1 expansion pack, simple gameplay, no way to make strong guilds or ANYTHING. AND!! now EA is dropping the game come september. now look at what FC is doing. when AO was first realesed, it SUCKED! there was no way to play the game at all. then the notum wars came out. things changed. huge improvment. now we get the shadowlands. new barriers are borken again. and even now the next expansion pack, alien invasion is on its way, with even more new technologies and ideas being put to use. when you look at what you got and compair it to other things, you tend to be a little mroe gratefull...

[Demenzia]

Kinda hard for me to push my RL friends to play, given that they're all long-time students and in Japan, Germany or England, and don't reall have the money for an online game. I tried though, but the heck... given the way things are, I do things in game then, for the people I know there, and hoping that people I don't know jump in as well.

On the other hand, it's been a while I've stopped going to the parties myself, and I guess it's kinda for the same reasons Metalynx stated. Same thing, same people, but also I will admit that I have more things to do myself in game since I'm leading my org, so I simply cut on the parties. I still listen to the shows on GSP stream and visit here from time to time, but a party... I don't know, been there, done that, I feel like I've seen them all, sort of. And also, organizing RP little events takes time. It's nice to say "yeah let's do an event"... but I realized quickly enough that to do so, there was like 1 week (minimum) peparation before it.

Now I don't know what it's worth... just my own way of seeing things and trying to improve them. Not exactly on the social scene, I'm afraid I'm actually just not a big party animal and found my fill with a few parties only. Maybe indeed it needs more places too. Not always the good old Reets, but more... insolite places... I don't know. This won't solve the problem of morons, that is, but who can do anythign against it anyway.

Bah.