Weekly Newsletter 12_31_07: An Influx of Players

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Updated Fri, Jan 02, 2009 by Dalmarus

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An Influx of Players

December 31st, 2007 - By Dalmarus

"With great power, comes great responsibilty" - Uncle Ben, Spiderman

"With free play time, comes large amounts of asshats" - Dalmarus

As I'm sure most people have noticed in the last couple of weeks, with the reactivation of previously cancelled accounts (active until January 17th), there has been a nice influx of players coming back into the game. Before going off on my "cranky old man" tangent, let me first state that I think this is actually a great thing.

An unfortunate side effect though, is that I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the game this week answering questions in tells to players all over Telon. In and of itself, I have no problem with this and I actually enjoy helping other players enjoy the game. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be here talking to you, now would I? The problem I've had though is that virtually every tell I send out has started the same way since a few days after the account reactivations - "Please ignore them, they're just a bunch of," asshats, jerks, dillweeds, etc.

It grates on my nerves to no end that there are a number of people that have come back (or are logging into the game for the first time) and are asking honest questions for a bit of assistance, just to be answered by some jackass that thinks they're humorous or is just plain rude. I know some people get annoyed with answering questions, but for those folks, I have two things to say. Get the hell over it, and if you don't want to answer, then don't. The last thing we need is for people being a complete asshat when someone asks a question in the game.

This game is not completely intuitive. There are a number of systems that are confusing to a lot of people. If those individuals have never played another online game, or have only played other games with less confusing (or better explained) game mechanics, then it becomes even more confounding.

Stand Off

Take a second to ask yourselves this question and answer it honestly - How many people reading this were never confused about various things in the game such as, Using Weaknesses, Brotherhoods, The Riftway System, Item Deconstruction, Flying Mounts? Those are just naming a scant few of the multiple game mechanics that can confuse a new player. If no one had been confused by them (myself included), then I never would have posted those guides to help people out. There would have been no need.

Rather than ridiculing new players asking questions, we should be helping them.

Players continue to talk about how the game needs more content, more fixes, more everything. The best way for us to get that? By having as many subscribing players we can get. You may think you're being funny by giving rude answers, but it's the same concept as someone hopping into UO back in the day and getting ganked repeatedly before you have time to figure anything out in the game. I agree that's a bit of an extreme example, but you get my point. We should have enough respect for each other to try and help one another out when confronted with a game mechanic that is confusing to us. We were all newbs at one point, and no one enjoys being harassed.

I'm hopeful that the majority of asshats that have logged back in with the intention of simply complaining and trolling in the chat channels will not have had the chance to do too much damage before they're accounts are deactivated again at the end of this free play time. If we can even keep 20% of the people that came back to give it another shot, I think it will be great for the game.

Do your part to make this happen. If you really love the game and want to see it continue to improve, take the time to answer a few questions while you're playing or at the very least, resist the urge to be a dillweed and give nothing but smartass (or completely rude) answers to your fellow players in need.

Before I sign off this week, I do want to give a warm welcome to those players that have come back into the fold and have seen the great improvements the SOE development team has brought to us.

There have been a lot of great players returning and we're glad to have you. I stayed up 2 hours past my intended time last night in Tricksters playing with a number of players that had been gone for over 5 months. They were loving the changes and improvements and I was happy to witness that. The fact that we had found that perfect mesh of styles didn't hurt anything either.

Loving the game after a 5 month hiatus? To me, that's a pretty good sign for the future. What do you think?