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I just spent the last hour reading qan's thread about TW and I thought I'd like to sum up some things and talk about things again from an "insider's" perspective. The other thread had more or less degenerated into the same few people saying the same things over and over for the last few pages (aside from qan's final post), so I thought I'd start anew so that this wouldn't get lost.
There are a number of issues that I'd like to address in my post, so this may be a long one. Qan's post reminded me very much of a similar thread that I started when I was fired from staff back in Febuary of 2001 for inactivity. After a year and a half stint, I was fired for what I at the time thought were for political reasons, and thus I rehashed a very large 'vision' of what I thought should be done to reform TW at the time. In fact most of my post consisted of an e-mail I had sent to the deans of staff a few weeks before I was fired. There's no point in going over my specific circumstances because I've made amends with them all, but needless to say the same systemic problems have appeared again, although in a different fashion.
At the time TW had just lost it's long-running deans of staff MikeTheNose and Crown of Thorns (my favorite uppper staff member until Mr. Spam appeared), and hastily promoted others to the upper positions. People who were excellent mods and great people, but were perhaps not the best suited for running the staff. Staff slowly degenerated from what used to be a club of mostly >20-somethings (I was one of the youngest in staff at the time), into a large collection of 14-year olds who had very little in the ways of maturity. Meanwhile games were stagnant, and everything felt stagnant.
Trench Wars now faces a different problem. Staff doens't have the same immaturity problems it did in the past, but as the game of Subspace/Continuum enters it's 9th year of existance (yeah I've been playing for almost 8 years now... scary), a larger and scarier problem has appeared. Basically people in this game and zone have grown more and more apathetic. People have grown lazy, people have gotten lives, grown up, got a job, and generally have less time and less want to dedicate real work to this game. This is an overall symptom of a game which has just gotten old, and nothing will fix it.
What does this mean for staff? What this means is that, while in the past few years even, it was possible to count on a 'new and undiscovered' person to suddenly come out of newbieness and do great things (i.e. Mr. Spam, THE PUSHER), it has been increasingly difficult to do so these days. This is a combination of old former staffers being alienated from staff, and also a combination of the fact that most of the best qualified people have already been on staff and are done with that, or have already left the game. What we are left with is, what we are left with.
Agree or disagree with me if you wish, but look simply at the status of various squads in the game. No longer is there a feeling of excitement, the kind of which was felt back in TWL Season 5, when new great players were still being born, and seemingly 'newbie' squads could rise up and take on the vets (i.e. Onix, Spastic in season 6). Now as most people will say, new supersquads are merely the rearrangement of older squads, and new talent is hard to come by. This issue is futher compounded in staff where there is only ONE organization to join and thus be alienated from (if you hate one squad you can always join another). So what can be done? What are the problems? What can we do? I'll try to summarize to the best of my abilities in the following post.
Before I continue, I do admit that I personally have not been too active lately, and thus do not know the specifics of things that have happened in a past few months. Therefore I will try not to comment on specific things, but rather on bigger issues I believe need to be addressed.
There are a number of issues that I'd like to address in my post, so this may be a long one. Qan's post reminded me very much of a similar thread that I started when I was fired from staff back in Febuary of 2001 for inactivity. After a year and a half stint, I was fired for what I at the time thought were for political reasons, and thus I rehashed a very large 'vision' of what I thought should be done to reform TW at the time. In fact most of my post consisted of an e-mail I had sent to the deans of staff a few weeks before I was fired. There's no point in going over my specific circumstances because I've made amends with them all, but needless to say the same systemic problems have appeared again, although in a different fashion.
At the time TW had just lost it's long-running deans of staff MikeTheNose and Crown of Thorns (my favorite uppper staff member until Mr. Spam appeared), and hastily promoted others to the upper positions. People who were excellent mods and great people, but were perhaps not the best suited for running the staff. Staff slowly degenerated from what used to be a club of mostly >20-somethings (I was one of the youngest in staff at the time), into a large collection of 14-year olds who had very little in the ways of maturity. Meanwhile games were stagnant, and everything felt stagnant.
Trench Wars now faces a different problem. Staff doens't have the same immaturity problems it did in the past, but as the game of Subspace/Continuum enters it's 9th year of existance (yeah I've been playing for almost 8 years now... scary), a larger and scarier problem has appeared. Basically people in this game and zone have grown more and more apathetic. People have grown lazy, people have gotten lives, grown up, got a job, and generally have less time and less want to dedicate real work to this game. This is an overall symptom of a game which has just gotten old, and nothing will fix it.
What does this mean for staff? What this means is that, while in the past few years even, it was possible to count on a 'new and undiscovered' person to suddenly come out of newbieness and do great things (i.e. Mr. Spam, THE PUSHER), it has been increasingly difficult to do so these days. This is a combination of old former staffers being alienated from staff, and also a combination of the fact that most of the best qualified people have already been on staff and are done with that, or have already left the game. What we are left with is, what we are left with.
Agree or disagree with me if you wish, but look simply at the status of various squads in the game. No longer is there a feeling of excitement, the kind of which was felt back in TWL Season 5, when new great players were still being born, and seemingly 'newbie' squads could rise up and take on the vets (i.e. Onix, Spastic in season 6). Now as most people will say, new supersquads are merely the rearrangement of older squads, and new talent is hard to come by. This issue is futher compounded in staff where there is only ONE organization to join and thus be alienated from (if you hate one squad you can always join another). So what can be done? What are the problems? What can we do? I'll try to summarize to the best of my abilities in the following post.
Before I continue, I do admit that I personally have not been too active lately, and thus do not know the specifics of things that have happened in a past few months. Therefore I will try not to comment on specific things, but rather on bigger issues I believe need to be addressed.
). The only other person >>I<< can even vaguely think of doing as good as job as him is myself. Unfortunately for Trench Wars, I do not want this job as I have things to do in real life that require most of my non-free and free time. Mr. Spam was also damn good at it, but alas he's not coming back anytime soon.
. Everything aside like comparing dock, PL and others to people to past sysops and smods, we really need to focus on the zone problems. I dont see DoCk> or Pure leaving staff or stepping down, it isn't going to happen so the good old "you suck, find someone else" isn't going to help here kids. Lets stop dwelling, starting banning flammers and get some stuff done here.
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