A meltdown at Lum’s old house

To those that don’t play MMORPGs this will make little sense. You are warned.

I get email updates of slownewsday.net. I usually read them and then hit delete. There is a link to the discussion thread, but I rarely read it. Slownewsday.net used to be the The Rantings of Lum the Mad. Since Lum stopped playing UO and eventually left the site, I didn’t find a lot of interest in the topics. It wasn’t bad, it was just different.

Today I saw a story about Dark Age of Camelot by Roark. I read it and felt he was full of shit. I clicked the link and posted a three line rebuttal and minor flame. When the thread updated, I saw that a full scale riot had broken out.

There were harsh words and personal attacks by the writers, the readers, game developers, former Lum writers and even the main man, Lum himself.

It morphed from flames on Roark’s post to a general slagfest about the state of the slownewsday site in general. The schism between the old guard and the new guard was obvious.

It was nasty. It was harsh. It was hurtful. And I couldn’t stop reading it.

Like a multi-car pileup on the information superhighway, I had to slow down and watch. Personality after personality, known only within the otaku MMORPG circles laid down post after post. Lots of colored names if you know what I mean.

Soon enough saner heads prevailed on the site and there was attempt to bring people back together. Like making up after the schoolyard fight, people begrudgingly shook hands and walked away.

But the damage was done. People know what was said. It stung. It won’t be forgotten. The wound may heal, but the scar will remain.

I was a long time reader of Lum’s rants. I remember the post on Dr. TwisTer’s that shined a light on Lum’s page for the first time. IIRC, it was on the webtoys server Lum’s owned for something completely different. Through server move after server move, I followed. I even had a link about me on the front page.

But it’s not the same anymore.

Why is it different now? Actually it’s simple. Eldin is stating the new goals on the front page ala Citizen Kane about wanting to ‘serve the gamers and the gaming community’. In all due respect, he’s full of shit. I’m sure he means well, but he’s wrong.

What gave Lum that edge and difference was that it was about having fun. Pure and simple. Fuck with the game like a GM creating lewt and selling it on eBay, you fucked with Lum’s fun.

I remember the excitement we felt as OSI announced Siege Perilous. Like kids before Christmas we couldn’t wait to begin. You could feel the pride Lum felt when his guild produced the first GM Smith on Siege. It wasn’t about community. It wasn’t about making games better. It was about having fun.

Like friends sharing a beer and talking over the gossip at work, Lum’s was about reveling in our shared addiction to online gaming and enjoying the company for people who knew what you were feeling.

After four years, my wife still has little clue about why I play computer games at night. I can’t share my achievements with her. She doesn’t get it. She loves me, but she will never understand the satisfaction I felt upon killing the GEAR-using sploit monkies in-game and posting screenshots about it. People at Lum’s and Battlevortex got it. They shared the passion. They laughed at my jokes.

Somehow at Lum’s/Slownewsday they lost the concept of having fun. They got wrapped up in being journalists. They cared about having an impact on the game’s design. They wanted to be treated seriously. They wanted people to behave. This is where today’s meltdown came from.

Eldin, Roark, and the current crew are smart cookies. They can do great job with slownewsday, even after today. But I fear they are on the wrong path.

If Eldin wants slownewsday to succeed, the path is simple.

Here’s my advice:

Get back to enjoying games. Have fun.

Write about that. Write about what’s cool, not about what’s wrong. The rest will follow.

Rant when you really feel the passion to, not because it’s expected that you do.

Don’t try so hard. Try to share your passion about playing, not your anger. Sure there’s going to be ‘they screwed up!’ stories to write, but they shouldn’t be all you write.

Drop the ‘serving the community’ idealism. Let’s stratics and warcry do that.

You’ve got the stage. The audience is watching. Do you want to entertain us or simply read the news releases like a TV talking head, tsk tsking over the latest gang violence?

Food Tip

To make a most excellent hamburger, place two small pats of butter inside the meat before grilling. Sprinkle a bit of garlic salt on the meat as well.

Oh my friends, the moist and juiciness is something you will not soon forget.

Stuff

I’ve been play a lot of Return to Castlewolfenstein lately. Must… play… medic…

UO has been waning for me. Perhaps one of those periodic lulls that I’ve had from time to time. Battlevortex is fuxxored for almost a week now. Poor Fear.

Michele’s gunna be out of town this week, so I get the Single Dad role for a bit. Combine that with work in ‘busy as hell’ mode and I’ve decided I should be taking those stress vitamin supplements that Michele wants to me to take.

Here’s a new place for you all to visit called Metafilter. Tasty tidbits.

I saw the second episode of Enterprise and enjoyed it. The show is good, has plenty of action, minimal amount of ethical dilemma, and Vulcan breasts. If only UPN was on DirecTV, life would be complete.

Yesterday, Martin and I watched Andromeda. Lots of good action, no Vulcan breasts though. We can’t figure out how the huge ship is run by 4 people. Isn’t there at least a engineering crew to yell at or something?

I have a new object of techno-lust. I have no need for the Henry Kloss Model One Desk Radio, but I feel an amazing tug toward it. I have no place to put it, but some how feel drawn toward it, like a moth to the flame.

OK, OK

The complaints are increasing for me to update Cruft. Settle down my faithful droogs.


First of all, my beloved linux box at the office went down when the power failed in Burbank. This is the last screen shot I took. The box actually stayed up 193 days.

While I’ve not been posting, my brother has been posting tons. Go read his stuff.

A good friend of mine is going through the initial stages of divorce and it is creating emotional shrapnel all over the place. Boy o boy, D-I-V-O-R-C-E is nasty when you see it up close.

Hrrm, what else? I haven’t been playing UO much. I was gone in NY the week before the attacks and haven’t been in the groove since. The Return to Castle Wolfenstein test/demo is out and I’ve been playing that a bunch. It looks like a total winner. Death to Half-life!

Supposedly on October 9th, Dark Age of Camelot is coming out. I’ve pre-ordered it. Who knows, after 4 years it may break me of my UO habit.

I enjoyed the new Star Trek: Enterprise show. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. For the record, I think the gel scene was fine. My mother, however, was quite incensed by the skin shots and wrote a letter to UPN. OMG, my mother is one of those crazy ladies complaining about sex on TV.

My buddy Martin has been working a bunch lately and making me ponder the value of the corporate life. Perhaps I should go be an actor like Martin…

That’s enough for now…

The Attack

I still feel quite numb over the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I try to force myself to wrap my mind around the enormity of the tragedy, but it seems impossible.

My brother & wife live in DC. I have lots of friends in NYC. Hell, I was in New York last week. Thankfully they are all safe.

I don’t have anything much write that hasn’t been covered elsewhere. My brother has written a good account of his experiences.

Whiel I would like to strike back against the enemy THEM, all I can really do is fly the American flag in front of my house as a symbol that America endures even through this crisis.

So I go back to work and move forward. If I stop and become afraid, then the terrorists have won.

Fight Censorship

I’m a firm believer on putting my money where my mouth is.

I don’t much like censorship of books.  I especially don’t like censorship of books that teenagers like because some adults are uncomfortable with the ideas presented.  I recently read an article on plastic (actually the original charleston.net article) about a guy that wanted Catcher in the Rye removed from the high school library because it was a "a filthy, filthy book".

Mr. Scared of Teenagers is on the school board and tried to ban the book.  He was voted down 6-1 and the book remained on the shelves. That would not stop him.  It seems Mr. Closed Mind checked out the copies of Catcher in the Rye from the high school library and now plans to keep them, in a ridiculous plan to stop teenagers from reading this novel.

Now, I’m not saying you need to like the book.  Conservative blowhards like George Will don’t like it either.  But at least he isn’t calling for it to be banned.

I thought to myself, "Self, that is a load of crap.  Someone should do something."

So I did.  

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I have the ability to reach out an affect things from a great distance.  I sent four copies of Catcher in the Rye to the high school in the story to replace those taken by Mr. Filthy Filthy.  It’s simple, it’s easy, and YOU should do it right now.  Send a message, do something real rather simply thinking in your head that censorship is wrong.

Most everyone reading this site has some money.  You all certainly have $10.  In fact some of you have plenty of money to spend on something like this.  That’s all it takes to send a message. 

Go to Amazon.com and ship a copy of Catcher in the Rye to one of the high schools affected by Mr. Censor Jackass.  You can send a paperback or a hardcover, it’s up to you, but DO IT NOW.

Don’t be one of those people that sits at their computers and just thinks they should do something.  DO SOMETHING NOW.

Send the books as a gift to the following high schools:

Summerville High School Library
1101 Boone Hill Rd
Summerville, SC 29483

Fort Dorchester High School Library
8500 Lincoln Blvd
Charleston, SC 29420