Posted by Taerin on July 14, 2000 at 21:05:48:
In Reply to: As much as I hate to admit it...this thought has crossed my mind as well. (nt) posted by Sid on July 14, 2000 at 20:07:19:
I don't think Challen would be so disturbed by the minor transgressions of the imms if he was anything less than an elite player. He walked into the game and started kicking ass, and rose to the top; he has a knack for identifying the mechanics behind the illusion, and for divining and executing the simple strategies needed to excel. So who does he look to? Obviously, the immortals and to elite roleplayers. Everyone plays the game for some sort of challenge, and with some sort of goal in mind. Most people would settle for being a decently pking hero or tattooed char... these CF milestones provide a challenge and boast a number of decent role models to aspire to. Challen, however, didn't find it difficult to become one of these role models. The only people left for him to CF admire were the imms, the people who created this game at which he excels. Once he discovers the minor transgressions of the imms, his CF ideals are cracked. Being at least a pseudo-intellectual himself, and a few years beyond the naive blossoming of 13, he finds himself standing above those highest on our gaming hierarchy. He is left with none to admire by his standards. And so of course ensues a mild disgust. Myself, as a moderately sucky player with roleplaying that phases with the moon, was never bothered by this. As an immortal, the first thing you realize is how incredibly, incredibly, incredibly anal and demanding the immortal staff is about immortal abuse. If you are even suspected by a third-person shade of a rumor of leaking the most irrelevant information, you will be talked to. If you're suspected twice, you'll be shown the door and allowed to try again with another character. The politics and infighting he listed as turning him off on the game are a soap opera that can be turned on and off. The only reason he was attuned to it was because he chose to operate at a high level of CF awareness; given that CF is just a game, I contend that it can be played without involving yourself behind the scenes. Challen's curiosity and elite-status just pushed him really quickly (within 2 years) into the soap opera; given his mastery of the game, he felt it necessary to look beyond the game and didn't find a shining Asgaardian palace. Instead, he found a group of people defined by their addiction to a text-based internet game. He found the minority of players so socially misanthropic in real life they create a sort of bitchy social structure around their addiction; also he found the immortals, an admirable... yet human... group of individuals who one can view in two ways. The first, and in my mind correct view, is that they are talented people who devote massive chunks of their free time to building this illusion. They would best be looked upon a bureaucracy on the level of a volunteer charity. All bureaucracies have some petty politics, but the politics aren't important to the ultimate work; the crack whores and homeless who go to a Detroit soup kitchen are going to get soup (really)... there's no need for them to know that the cook is a bitch, the server is fucking the bouncer, and the chairman is a demented millionaire who videotapes each bowl of soup served. Err... CF is nothing like this, incidentally :P I'm just getting a little too into my illustration.... The point is that involving yourself with the human interaction behind the soup kitchen is destructive and useless: take the goddamn soup and just hope the kitchen stays open. The second way to look at them is as the next level of CF being. To view them as a higher CF awareness, as a rung of people who are as far above elite players as elite players are above level-sitting pkers. To view them as special happy people who idealize all the tenets of CF. In reality, they make the tenets because they think that'd be a great game; but they are human, not even all of them are elite... they're contributing to best make possible a gaming ideal for everyone to take a shot at. Everyone including themselves. I'm not saying brother Challen is some freak; he simply formed some preconceived visions on what an immortal should be, visions that the average CFer (being average) are a little too grounded/sucky to expect. His visions were shattered like Entropy's mirrors, and hopefully he's now spending his free time doing something a little more worthy of his intellect :P It's ironic, actually... he shares something with virtually every imm and a lot of the better RPers/contributors, in that he's much too fucking smart to be playing this ghetto game with social deviants and Quake-playing 13 year olds. Challen could've either immed and tried to drag the rest of the game/staff up to his standards, or quit. And, well, he quit. As a former imm, and someone who's really objective at this point, playing just a few hours a week, I feel qualified to assure every player that the imms do nothing to worry about, and verge on the neurotic to make sure that it stays that way. After pissing off a number of them, then learning to work with them behind the scenes, I left with respect for all the staff... Cador, Bria, Pico, BT, Zulgh, all of them... for the shit they put up with, the thousands of hours they put into helping out, and the creative energies they dump into a free text game. Now I can comfortably play as a mediocre-PKing mediocre-RPing player with no qualms about what goes on above my head; I have no worries about favoritism, inside knowledge, or any of the other bullshit that's spewed in the various OOC CF forums. I know that if I ever want that 'favoritism' all I need to do is jack up my in-game energy and try for it with a good role and a little thought.