Thursday, February 5, 2009

Episode II, Clone Wars, Rise Of The Ranters, Again!

Deja Vu? One Decade ago this happened...

In 1999 Battle Vortex was a quiet little web site much like it is today. Well, it was until I interviewed Raph Koster about Ultima Online, but basically, there were people that knew it existed, but not a lot of interest from the MMO community at the time. Lum's site was picking up speed because he was pissed off and making comments about the industry and UO. Snarky, smart, yet funny. I started to get some momentum rolling on the community side, and started a war with the general masses. Between LTM, BV, Vulpine, The Choosen, many devolpers, and many others, some really wonderful magic happened.

The thing I see happening is that we are getting passionate again. Other ranters are coming out, new faces, same old problems with the games, same old wants and desires. The only difference is this time, we have a decade of experience to throw in their faces! The players may have changed, but the message remains the same. It is time for a change!

Lately I have been reading a lot. I have even started to go "outside the box" and read other people besides Lum, and all of the developer pages I frequent. Everyone seems to be afraid now like we were of OSI back in the day. Even back then, eventually the industry and the gamers got together and started to make things go in a different direction. This time the war won't be about PK's, this time it will be about the other problems and ideas we have been plagued with for the last 10 years that didn't get fixed yet. We want our games to be better, and one day we shall have it!

So, I was browsing last night, for no other reason then I wanted to see if there was anything fresh out there related to my own small area of webspace, Battle Vortex. Well, I was not suprised that there is not much new, but I did find this "Way Back Machine" thingy and I laughed my self into a lather. Of course, I bookmarked the link on my other damn computer, so I will get it later. Anyway, the funny parts to me were that my commentary was much the same as it is today. I play the game and point out all of the stuff that I like or don't like and tell stories of how I got myself killed.

I found the first ever "Adrick Leaves UO" post... Oh man, it made me laugh because that guy quit gaming at least a dozen times before he got sucked into the Matrix of the Empire. I wish I had been as cool as Lum to be able to keep all my archives and port them from new system, to new system, but I suppose I will just have to live with the way back systems and old archive sites out there for pieces of my work.

What I am getting at is that there was a time when the players, and even developers alike wanted things to be different. They won some, the lost some, but it all starts with someone standing up and saying that something needs to happen here! I see that happening again, all over the place. It is a comfortable, yet disturbing time right now, and I hope that we will prevail once again!

Arthas, your vitural arse is going down! Again!

Laters.

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