New Year Post, Dec 31, 2009

In keeping with Alter Aeon tradition I've decided to write a New Years post and for your benefit this one will actually be formatted. Looking back on some of the old ones i can't believe how shitty we all used to write. I mean I still write pretty shitty, but at least I format my posts. Anyway, a stream-of-consciousness year in review:

Maul/Mikael died from lung cancer. Aldrich died from complications related to asthma(?). Some newbie named Cris died after he slashed his wrists open. I guess he was sad because he was blind. Cris may have actually died last year. I don't really remember now.

We continue to have a large blind player base. Some of them are cool, some aren't. They're a blessing though. Without them we would probably have a player base similar in size to the one that we had 10 years ago. Also at some point dentin decided to remove the 'inactivity disconnect in two ticks' feature. That way we look like we have a larger player base than we actually do. These days we're averaging about 30-50 people connected at any given time, although I suspect the real number is more like 10-35.

Getting more people to come here continues to be a struggle. Dentin has his theories as to what the problem is, while I have my own. A mortal named Ouch started releasing these "Ralnoth Times" news letters a while back and the latest issue contained an interview with Dentin where Dentin attributed a drop in the player base a few months back to a certain unnamed high-level player who allegedly started some pernicious rumors about the new modifications to how regen worked. Dentin's reasoning was that these rumors drove a bunch of people off. I found his reasoning to be humorous and unrealistic. I think he may be losing touch with reality. I wonder if in 2000 if we had all been able to look 10 years into the future and see that the mud was in the same rut, would we have still continued in earnest?

Aside from the player base failure we have had many great improvements. The rules are no longer a mystery as they are now categorized in the "rules" command. The development of user-created channels has done wonders for subduing much of the drama and animosity between the police and those being policed. And yet it has also caused the integrated mud community that once existed to drift apart. That along with the development of way points and the email code has made it so that we tend not to interact with each other nearly as much as we once did.

The gods have mostly all been castrated. Their roles being increasingly confined to that of builders. About time though, right? Speaking of building the mud has grown in size enormously. I used to think going from Ralnoth to the end of the southern road was a long walk, but these days that shit is easy. The areas that are being built are of very high quality as well. For example, Atlantis looks like a real piece of shit compared to the stuff being constructed now.

The introduction of 3 more classes will probably be the next big change. Dentin thinks that the transition will be smooth and that everyone is overreacting. And he's probably right. Regardless, many people, myself included, continue to cross their fingers and hope that he just forgets about it so that we can all quit worrying and move on.

In closing I leave you with what I've selected as the quote of the year from October 5th, 2009:

[bovine] Dentin: for fucks sake, how many people does this actually affect anyway? stfu about it, what the hell