Good Trolls

Fun story.

Yesterday, a troll made a few accounts and feigned a rather convincing roleplay on the SDOF, very similar to the type the J Mods used, capitalising on the activity spike. The thread reached over 400 posts in less than 48 hours. It was then confirmed fake and hidden.

What's notable here is the fact that a determined troll can cause that level of enthusiasm. Most players were skeptical, but hopeful. Among his first actions, the troll opened communications with a similar protocol to the ones used to shut them down, but with one crucial flaw: Mod ComNet, a Jagex Moderator made the last post. This person wasn't a J Mod.

Then another account was used to spam the threads in the Headquarters section.

Several characters were used in the main thread, short conversations were held, the group went completely nuts.

I responded with complete skepticism and negativity, as is standard. When he showed up on the Combine's thread, I promptly told him to, "get the fuck off of my thread."

Respect to the guy who pulled this.



Regards, IVIilitarus

You Shall not Parse!

No meaning in the title. I just like the pun.

Activity on Stellar Dawn is spiking. That's a problem, considering that an off-hand comment in an interview can cause this. Pre-Beta forum activity is supposed to remain steady and increase over time, not spike at intervals. Things only spike after a low average. Low forum activity average screams of incompetent marketing. A spike means it's likely to drop back to original levels.

EVE Online is fun. Lasers are win and stuff. I got bored of Moros and needed something with less violence (but not lacking violence) and more thought to get the noodle working.

Regards, IVIilitarus

inb4alpha

So some employee at Jagex did an interview and let it slip that Stellar Dawn was now in the internal alpha-testing phase.

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/feature-jagex-finds-a-hero/

They visiting moderators will either keep it quiet or vehemently deny it and point to The Vaunted Plan again. (Hint: The latter ain't worth shit.)

My return-to-EVE plan is coming along nicely and if Stellar Dawn doesn't get anything really, really soon, I'm hitting EVE Online seriously. I miss that Rattlesnake I lost a whole lot and Jagex isn't exactly doing much.

One thing I always find laughable is when employees make excuses like, "Less time spent chatting to you means more time in the office."

This gets particularly impressive when it comes from a community team member. Not talking Jagex, though they've done this before. Just in general. As the community manager, your paycheck rests on sitting at your comfy chair in the office and typing messages to the players. It's not hard to keep a window open on the side to tell people that the game is in progress and you're at your desk, working on it.

Better yet, you're the only link between community and designers, which means it's up to you to take into consideration the last 7 months or so of complaints about your company doing jack shit to someone who cares and making sure they realise that they're making a negative impact on people. Negative impact on people, not a substantial amount of customers. The few dozen or so of us complaining don't matter on the income graphs, but it isn't that hard to have enough empathy to realise that your plan sucks ass.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Escalation

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6855533/3/Moros

http://www.stellardawncentral.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17435

Regards, IVIilitarus

I Always Wanted to be a Jedi

I tucked into Knights of the Old Republic 2 recently, because I really, really wanted to see what happens a few years after KotOR, which I'd bought and played years ago.

Thing I've noticed is that KotOR 2 is a lot like KotOR, but better in every way. It's the same, but better. I dunno how they pulled it off. The missions and characters are more interesting. The story is more engaging. It intertwines perfectly. The first game was my first RPG and awesome, and this one is just whoa.

However, Kreia is a sanctimonious bitch.

This also got me interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those of you living under a rock or just not interested in the latest gaming news, The Old Republic is an upcoming MMORPG set a few years after KotOR 2. All part of that era. Once done with the game, I went over to The Old Republic's website to find some more stuff about it.

So the bitching starts here. When I got there and began staring in awe at how well updated the website was and how active and large the community is, I realised that Jagex is so terrible at marketing MMORPGs, that they've dulled me to good MMORPG marketing. I got the same feeling I got from Empire at War before release, of seeing a very filled website full of detail on game mechanics, classes, units, story and location. I was stunned, and then realised that this is what a pre-release site for a game should look like. Too many months spent on Stellar Dawn means I've forgotten just what a good game looked like.

I still have no idea why Jagex would do this to their game. They're a company running games on an obscure platform without the gigantic budget Bioware has, so that means they should be doing everything they can to build support for their game. Bioware doesn't have to do a thing. It's Star Wars and it's Bioware. Those 2 things alone would make me buy it. Jagex is doing a homebrewed universe with half the recognition and they're doing jack shit to promote their big title.

It's understandable that they wouldn't care about a few of their players like me complaining before release. They'll get enough publicity to get it going even if the people on the forums now dropped dead. What I don't understand is why they're going to jeopardise their into game's future for their vaunted, bullshit 'Plan'. The moderators think its funny when they say the first rule of the plan is, 'Do not talk about the plan.' They haven't been sitting around for years, waiting for something that's already died once.

Is it the company's execs who are too stupid to market what could be a great title? Does player support have a good reason for sitting on their collective ass? The employees aren't allowed to discuss their game on their own website. Recently, the BETA application system saw downtime and was changed slightly and threads started cropping up about it. When a bug in the system, followed by one extra field you're supposed to fill in a 3 field application causes a spike in activity, you know something's wrong with your game.

Stellar Dawn is slated for a 2011 release. No details given.

The Old Republic is slated for a 2011 release. No details given.

Compare these two websites:

http://www.stellardawn.com/

http://www.swtor.com/

And tell me which upcoming sci-fi MMORPG is more likely to make their 2011 release date.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Activity on the SDOF is Like Summer Rain

Sporadic and unpredictable.

At least there's no shortage of stupid people anywhere on the internet.



Clan Camp got released. Launched The Combine RSB on RuneScape. Activity died just in time to see the CRB become useless.

I quite like the emblem, though. Used the Combine colours. Surprisingly pretty.




Regards, IVIilitarus

Existential Questions

Okay, so I made a calendar fuckup.

Turns out, the Clan Camp would be released the Tuesday in 3 days, not the Tuesday in 10 days like I'd thought.

Which is kinda awesome.

I'm gonna need those 4 players or so to help me start it off, though. Not sure if I need them friendlisted, or on the same world or even at the location. Hard to tell.

I want to use RuneScape's system as a testbed for how much I need to adapt the Combine's leadership and advancement systems for use in Stellar Dawn, as RuneScape's system is likely to be very similiar and almost identical in the beginning of Stellar Dawn. The Combine needs the complex system of specialisation and independence from a leader's orders because I don't trust myself enough to be there when I'm always needed, so I need everyone to pull their weight.


Another bit of nostalgia that hit me was whilst going through Marlaine's blog links, I found Tim's (one of the major bloggers back in the day) and through the links in Tim's blog, I found Mat's (former clan mate) blog. And I found the piece below.



Thing a lot of the bloggers (including me) don't realise when they leave a blog inactive or quit it completely is how many of their readers have just lot out. Every blog gets a readership. You don't write successfully because you're an attention whore (like me), you write because you love it. I really envy people like Marlaine, who almost never seem to take breaks from this sort of thing. The kind who outlast their readers.

I really, really miss those days, now that I think about it.

Regards, IVIilitarus

In Spite of Consequence

Things are looking up. The Clan Camp will finally give all of those bored Combine members a little something on RuneScape a little something to do in the wait leading up to Stellar Dawn. If Stellar Dawn's clan support is anywhere near as good as RuneScape's is advertised, I'll be satisfied, as long as they include a good system of war and conflict, not just hiscores, but real, high-stakes warfare.

Combine's making some or other progress. We've passed the 1900 post mark on our thread and the logo is sort of moving forward. Still wondering about media organisation and various other junk like that.

Today's Livid Farm update also brought along the Clan Camp in its first form; the camp is now under construction, with trees being felled and a Guard Captain and Sergeant standing in front of a pile of supplies.

Guess it'll be done, despite their lack of effort by the 12th, anyway. I'm gonna need a few active Combine members around for release. The Guard Captain said you need 5 friends to form a clan.




Also, whilst hammering out a very, very long comment on one of Marlaine's recent blog posts, I realised that with the release of the new clan Vexillum and if it is wearable on the back or cape slot, I could theoretically have 3 banners out at one time; my Banner Carrier, the Vexillum and a standard PoH banner wielded in the weapon arm.



Regards, IVIilitarus

A Thing of Beauty

The Stellar Dawn Official Forums have seen a boost in activity lately. Which is great news for me, because that means The Combine's catching some activity. New logo's progressing fine and I uploaded a list of possible colour schemes for everyone to argue over. It's pretty much been decided that upward pointy thingy + star + motto + translation of motto is going to be our new logo. Just need to work out the design.



School starts tomorrow. So expect more bitching and fewer blog posts.

Regards, IVIilitarus

With Regards to the Idiots Who Try to Save Money

I got a bit into Runescape again more recently, what with Jagex effectively abandoning the Stellar Dawn Official Forums, their new leadership change and teaming up with Hasbro to develop an MMORPG based on the Transformers franchise.

Guess what that means for Stellar Dawn?

I hope Transformers Online fucking burns.




So like I said, I got back into Runescape a bit and went Castle Warring (my all-time favourite minigame). Whilst in the waiting room, I got into a discussion of why I was rich, had a Dragonfire Shield, Godsword, Armadyl Armour, but still used my Barrow's armour over a set of Bandos armour.

I did the math myself more than a year ago, when on a my shark killing fest and came to a groundbreaking conclusion;

Bandos items are collected, cost ineffective pieces of shit.

It's been a year down the road and prices have changed, but the conclusion doesn't.

I'll do the math again just for you.

As of this posting, the Bandos Chestplate sells for a hefty 19.2 million and the Plateskirt runs for 21.4 million.

Guthan's Platebody is 604k and Torag's Platelegs are 849k. Guthan's is the cheapest and all Barrows Platebodies have equal stats.

So Barrows armour is well over 20 times more expensive than Bandos Armour. Logic dictates that such a discrepancy in price would mean Bandos was far superior.

So we do a stats comparison.

Bandos Chestplate Statistics

Attack Bonuses:

Stabbing: 0
Slashing: 0
Crushing: 0
Magic: -15
Ranged: -10

Defence Bonuses

Stabbing: 98
Slashing: 93
Crushing: 105
Magic: -6
Ranged: 133
Summoning: 52

Damage Absorption

4% Melee
0% Magic
9% Ranged

Other Bonuses

Strength: 4
Ranged Strength: 0
Prayer: 1
Magic Damage: 0%


Guthan's Platebody Statistics

Attack Bonuses:

Stabbing: 0
Slashing: 0
Crushing: 0
Magic: -30
Ranged: -10

Defence Bonuses

Stabbing: 122
Slashing: 120
Crushing: 107
Magic: -6
Ranged: 132
Summoning: 60

Damage Absorption

5% Melee
0% Magic
10% Ranged

Other Bonuses

Strength: 0
Ranged Strength: 0
Prayer: 0
Magic Damage: 0%


So when compared side by side...

Guthan's Platebody has;

-15 Magic Attack below Bandos.
+24 Stab Defence above Bandos
+27 Slash Defence above Bandos.
+2 Crush Defence above Bandos.
-1 Ranged Defence below Bandos.
+8 Summoning Defence above Bandos.

+1% more Melee Absorption above Bandos.
+1% Ranged Absorption above Bandos.

-4 Strength Bonus below Bandos.
-1 Prayer Bonus below Bandos.


Which means even though you're paying 30 times the price of Guthan's Platebody, Bandos is consistently worse. -15 Magic Attack is meaningless, as no sane person mages in a Barrows Platebody. -1 Ranged Defence is a 0.77% difference.

-4 Strength Bonus means a difference of 10 lifepoints in damage.
-1 Prayer Bonus is really, really tiny. Especially if you are in grave need of a Prayer Bonus, you will wear something with a better boost. Like Verac's.

So you're paying 30 times the price of Guthan's Platebody for an item that is consistently worse.

Let's see if the Tassets fare better compared to Platebody and Chestplate issue.

Bandos Tassets Statistics

Attack Bonuses:

Stabbing: 0
Slashing: 0
Crushing: 0
Magic: -21
Ranged: -7

Defence Bonuses

Stabbing: 71
Slashing: 73
Crushing: 66
Magic: -4
Ranged: 93
Summoning: 25

Damage Absorption

3% Melee
0% Magic
6% Ranged

Other Bonuses

Strength: 2
Ranged Strength: 0
Prayer: 1
Magic Damage: 0%


Torag's Platelegs Statistics

Attack Bonuses:

Stabbing: 0
Slashing: 0
Crushing: 0
Magic: -21
Ranged: -7

Defence Bonuses

Stabbing: 85
Slashing: 82
Crushing: 83
Magic: -4
Ranged: 92
Summoning: 30

Damage Absorption

3% Melee
0% Magic
7% Ranged

Other Bonuses

Strength: 0
Ranged Strength: 0
Prayer: 0
Magic Damage: 0%

So when compared side by side...

Torag's Platelegs have;

+14 Stab Defence above Bandos
+19 Slash Defence above Bandos.
+17 Crush Defence above Bandos.
-1 Ranged Defence below Bandos.
+5 Summoning Defence above Bandos.

+1% Ranged Absorption above Bandos.

-2 Strength Bonus below Bandos.
-1 Prayer Bonus below Bandos.

Once again, you're paying 25 times more money for an item that has consistently lower stats. -1 Ranged Defence in this case is only less than a 1.5% difference. The Strength and Prayer Bonuses still don't justify 25 times the price or use of armour that is worse in 2 thirds of categories.

Combined, the difference is quite dramatic.

When comparing Guthan's Chestplate worn with Torag's Platelegs to the Bandos Chestplate worn with the Bandos Tassets, the Barrow's equipment has...

-15 Magic Attack below Bandos.

+38 Stab Defence above Bandos.
+46 Slash Defence above Bandos.
+19 Crush Defence above Bandos.
-2 Ranged Defence below Bandos.
+13 Summoning Defence Bonus

+1% Melee Absorption above Bandos.
+2% Ranged Absorption above Bandos.

-6 Strength Bonus below Bandos.
-2 Prayer Bonus below Bandos.

A Rune Full Helm has less Stab, Slash and Summoning Defence compared to the difference. Meaning if you wear Bandos over Barrows, you've given up the equivalent of a Rune Full Helm in Stab, Slash and Summoning Defence without using a single extra slot and saving over 20 times the money.


"But we save so much money on repairs!"

That's the best reason people have for paying exorbitant prices.

Okay. Fine. Let's stack the repair costs of Barrows against the buying price of Bandos armour.

We'll start with some stats. Let's assume the character repairing the Barrows uses an NPC repair, not an armour stand at home, so must pay full price for repairs. You know, because his skills suck.

That means a total of 85850 is spent on repairs for Barrows armour every 15 hours.

85850 x 250 = 21.46 million.

Meaning that you can repair both Barrows items fully for 250 times before it matches up to the cost of a single set of Bandos Tassets.

85850 x 223 = 19.1 million.

Meaning you can repair both Barrows items fully another 223 times before it matches the cost of the Bandos Chestplate.

The total number of times (at today's prices) you can repair your Guthan's Platebody and Torag's Platelegs 473 times, before it is equal to buying the Bandos Chestplate and Platelegs.

So 473 full repairs meant the items fully degraded 473 times.

473 x 15 = 7095 hours

That's 7095 hours of combat without a break, before Barrows items can degrade enough to make up the cost of Bandos items.

7095 ÷ 24 = 295 days.

So you have to spend 295 days fighting without a single break for eating, sleep or even repairs to make up for the Bandos items' price.

My total level is 1882. I have 4 skills at level 99.

I have spent 172 days on Runescape in real time, spread over half a decade.


So somehow, you need to spend over 50% more time fighting with Barrows armour than I have spent training every skill on my character 1882 levels, before you save enough money on repairs to make Bandos items cost effective.

The Bandos items still have consistently worse stats.

Does that answer the question to which one is better?

Is that a lesson to the people who spent over 20 times what they could have for a worse item under the guise of saving money in the long term?

Once again, my groundbreaking conclusion: Bandos items are collected, cost ineffective pieces of shit.

The only reason to buy Bandos is for giant spikes and looking rich*.

Regards, IVIilitarus

*looking rich does not equate to being intelligent.

Writing tl;dr's for Fun and Profit

The Combine's in the middle of reforms. Reforms are planned upgrades to the Combine that happen at intervals, fixing things that go wrong and adding lots of pretty new stuff.

First Reform changes the way the Combine is organised (sigh, again) and will be the last ginormohugic upgrade to the Combine before BETA release.

Speaking of the BETA, Jagex has stated that they will give out no new information until BETA announcement. They' stated that it's all part of their plan.

It's really not hard to tell that that is not how you manage a pre-release video game. Especially not an MMORPG.

More information on a Combine Reform is a bit of a tl;dr (like half of my writing), so can read the wiki pages.

Right. A wiki.

See, Jagex forums aren't a good place to write and archive tl;dr's, what with the 2000 character limit and habit of inactive threads dropping offa the edge in a month. Our offsite forum could only handle so much of my junk, and I write too much, so why the hell not? SDCombine Wiki was born.

So far I'm the only one editing and adding to it on account of the Stellar Dawn Official Forum being deader than dead. Lots of goodbye threads are popping up in the Stellar Dawn section and a number of my best clan members have become inactive (after saying goodbye, natch). I've stuck a buncha stuff in, already, but still.

Despite being a sci-fi-ish and Stellar Dawn blog, I got offa my ass and pulled up two Fletching levels today, thanks to the Double Experience Thingie.


Regards, IVIilitarus

True Jagex Fans

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Stellar Dawn Forums be Dead and Jagex be Stupid

All Jagex forums have a Change/Move/Lock Requests thread. I only use it to stalk Jagex. See, when someone is done with the chore of doing what we incompetent players forgot about at first, they have to hide the post.

It's been over 2 weeks since a post was hidden. Jagex isn't even looking anymore.

Sucks, don't it?

On a stranger note, the forums have recently seen a rise in players who can't type and have no clue as to what the hell is going on.

Regards, IVIilitarus

Robot Genocide

The Stellar Dawn forum has recently seen a spate of Roleplaying threads.

The first 2 that got in before mine are at 91-92-179-84679 and 90-91-269-84049.

I dove in and dropped my own. 91-92-178-84650

Robot Genocide was launched recently and there won't be killing for a while. I want to tweak it with the community and build up support for it before launching, so as to guarantee success.

It's a very, very humourous take on giant robot warfare. Doesn't take itself seriously at all. Absurdity is the norm and the aim is to live up to the title.

Have a looksie, pl0x.

I also caught these 2 funnies in Canting yesterday, when the Tasks update was released. Perfect comedic timing right there.






Regards, IVIilitarus

Common Sense

http://services.stellardawn.com/m=forum_fo/c=goZZO68v45c/forums.ws?84,85,327,84434

It's kind of like that.

Fanfic Uploadies!

I would like to take this opportunity to bring news of a historical event. And to wave my ego in your faces a bit more, that too.

I made the first Stellar Dawn non-developer uploaded fiction onto fanfiction.net.



A very short series and a short story.

Most of my existing stories are found here, but fanfiction.net has far fewer restrictions such as censorship and post size, so I will be posting all future Stellar Dawn fanfics to fanfiction.net. I may or may not upload more of the pieces from that thread to fanfiction.net.

I'm still getting comfortable with the format for fanfiction.net, so future uploads will be more organised and of a higher quality, as these 2 uploads were meant for the Stellar Dawn forums, hence their small size.

On the Origin of Pastries by Means of Bored Forumites

Space Pie (or Spacepie) is a micro-meme that, I dunno. Sprung up somewhere, and only went...somewhere from there.

See, Space Pie is a pastry. And it's edible. It's name has 2 words; Space and Pie.

Then it goes to Hell.


It's kind of like that.


See, it kinda sprung from bum-fuck nowhere and caught on. Kind of like The Combine.

Someone asked what it was and the community responded.

It only gets better from the first post.


More insight.


First rule of Space Pie appears to be something along the lines of, "Don't ask about the ingredients of Space Pie."






On another thread, a forum mod tries to exercise another, overused and dead meme.


So they jumped him.

That's Space Pie in a nutshell. Space Pie is traditionally given to new players introducing themselves, as tokens of goodwill or used as justification for war between 2 parties.

See, Space Pie is revered. Of course we have a Space Pie Appreciation thread! Well, I just respect Space Pie. I don't worship it. But these guys do.

Respect Space Pie. Or else.

Regards, IVIilitarus

The Combine: 2; Everyone Else Added Together: 1

A certain bright spark named Mr Wiggglez saw an influx of clans and a few larger, clearly dominant ones (Combine included, bitches) and decided to organise, moderate and incite a war between us.

The Inter-Clan challenge was thought up to foster some growth between people who generally don't know each other. And to fill our time while Jagex continually screws up their marketing and information release strategy.

Clans are invited to an event suggested by a player. Someone fills out a suggestion form, Wiggglez takes a look, approves and invites whichever clans. Clans may turn down an invitation. Once participants are organised, a date, time and place are all determined.

At that point, The Combine shows up two-thirds of the time and kicks everyone's asses.

Proof?

6th post of this thread.

This is why I love The Combine.

Regards, IVIilitarus

The Combine

I'd like to take a moment to jabber on about The Combine.

See, I made The Combine (we call it The Combine and refer to it as the Guild, we are The Combine. It's a name. We happen to be a guild.) when I decided to jump on the clan-making bandwagon. Nobody else was doing it, so I was essentially the first guy to really make a clan for the sake of making a clan, and be able to say "I made a clan before the game was released. I don't care if it's stupid, but I did it."

At the time, I recall the major clans were were StellarStop, which is more of a fansite community. Really, it's a fansite. There's a link. Visit sometime. There was also the Void Alliance, which collapsed.

See, StellarStop was founded as a community and bunch who would get to know each other before the game. The Void Alliance was a 'heavy Roleplay based/milsim' clan. Founded on the 14th and 16th of July, respectively.

So it was a good 10 days into it that my ego hit a peak and decided to found a clan so I can say, 5 years from now, "I FOUNDED A FUCKIN' STELLAR DAWN CLAN BEFORE YOUR CHARACTER EVEN STARTED!"

Riiiiiiight.

So on the 27th of July, The Combine showed up, and man, that'll be remembered as a dark day.

See, I started The Combine as a Tech-race specific guild to help myself. Ya know, let it grow and crash eventually. Every clan I ever started and/or joined died or I left for some reason, so I figured this would wouldn't be any different. It'll die a few months into the game and I'd write a heartfelt goodbye and join some other loser clan or something.

That plan went screwy when The Combine actually took off. Now I had problems. People were really coming in and we were becoming a respected clan because I kept stressing intelligence and maturity in the opening that only intelligent, mature people showed up.

So I overhauled the thread, shut down recruitment for a few weeks and rewrote that trash into something useful. Took it seriously. I'mma actually run this shit and make it last, because my plan of building an ego just died with a load of awesome people flying in.

The original Combine thread is over here.

Current Combine thread is here, and a helluva lot better.

See how the original sucked ass and the new one didn't?

In the time between I panicked as my plan died and I actually took responsibility for a well-established and well-stocked clan, the Borg and Titan Empire were founded, on the 3rd and 10 of August, respectively and they started snatching up people, useless, inactive as well as mature and intelligent.

See, we mighta been founded weeks earlier, but we never became the biggest or best because our leader was a dumb, egotistic fuck who tried to manipulate our collective ass into making him more respected and when he finally got his act together, the others were way ahead. Wait a sec...

Okay, so short version is, when I got swamped by people who were awesome, responsibility kicked me in the balls and I took it up, building [bold, unjustified declaration]one of the best clans in-non-existent-game[/bold, unjustified declaration].

As it turns out, when I redirect the effort I usually use to promote myself, I can do some pretty awesome stuff.

Like The Combine: The Offsite, Official Forums!

The Combine: The Twitter!

The Combine: The Facebook Page!

Okay, maybe the Facebook Page is a little much, but you gotta admit, I do some pretty insane/stupid stuff when I put my mind to it. Like found a guild for the sake of founding a guild. And then actually turning it into something meaningful.

Since then, a whole bunch of other clans have jumped on the bandwagon and most never quite take off (or get any members at all). See? Jump on a bandwagon first and they call you trend-setter. Do it too late, and they call you unoriginal copycat.

Shit.

I'm a leader now.

And I got stuff to do.

You know what, founding, building and running a guild has been a learning experience thus far. I've been stressed out, I've panicked, I've jumped with joy at the prospect of new members, I've overseen discussion, participated in them, we've made ourselves a known guild and I was at the head of it.

With the above in mind, I can say one thing with utmost sincerity and honesty;

It's really, really hard, please don't make me do it again.

I mean, really. Do you know how much effort goes into doing shit like that? If I knew, I woulda found some other way of getting an ego trip. So watcha say, Combine! Let's not crash and burn/spontaneously collapse or appear destined for greatness and die overnight like the Soviet Union did?

Also, if you look up near the top of my blog, you'll see a fish tank (with fish). Click inside to feed them. That's one fishy for every Combine member, rounded down. We're at just over 20 at time of this posting and I can safely say we have the best people here.

If the fishies aren't busy eating and you move your mouse cursor around in the tank, they follow you around. See, it's a responsibility. You can either be nice and feed the fishies, helping others, but losing attention and love they give you (or your cursor), or you can have a fleet of mindless drones following you and asskissing you at every turn, who never quite find happiness with you.

Thing is, when you're leading them around in little circles and fun shapes, you're not always getting pampered and you might just as well be leading them away from the edges of the aquarium, to swim freely (or if your guild is dumb, to swim back into the wall). And when you're feeding them events and plans, you've got a responsibility not to treat them as your personal army of do-anything-I-say drones and have to keep them functioning to what the community as a whole wants.

That's what it's like to be a leader.

It's hard.

Regards, IVIilitarus