Re: Re: Re: Ragnar... you're underestimating the negative effect...
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Originally posted by Myers
You know this is not true. The video was planned. Amnesty is a dyamic story element. Dust Brigade are very important, and thier attacks make the game interactive.
First, I don't post things that I know are not true. You will find yourself much more welcome and respected on the boards if you don't start your posts by calling someone a bald-faced liar.
That said, you are right about the video. I asked a friend after reading your post and he reminded me that they had been planned beforehand. My bad.
I have long contended that the amnesty was actually a convenient bug and mechanics problem work-around that they could make into a storyline element because they really had nothing else to offer.
The Dust Brigade had potential (like the Manteze War, remember that?) but has been reduced to bored GMs and ARKs ganking people. There are numerous old threads about this, and in each case either Cosmik or Cz ended up saying something to the effect of 'sorry, we're taking a fresh look at how we do events.'
I am pretty sure that Funcom admitted that the Steps of Madness and pumpkins didn't have anything to do with the storyline. It had a story associated with it, but it was not part of the clan vs. Omni story. This was after everyone was screaming "You call THIS a storyline?!?" after the October 31 debacle.
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I wonder how you could possibly think all this stuff is not productive to the story.
You are in the fourth generation of defenders of AO's storyline, by my count. The first three were: "The storyline WILL start on October 31, they just have to fully recover from launch"; "Sure, the storyline has started slow but things are really gearing up!"; "They just stopped doing events during the holidays since people were gone but they'll start again real soon"; and now "They always said that the storyline would take a break in the Summer, so that is what is happening."
The first three generations have pretty much given up and dropped (I was in the first generation, btw). My old clan: the Knights of Avalon, mostly dropped out of the game (a few of us joined another clan but are playing only very sporadically now). I still see clans trying to goad Funcom into starting a storyline, just the other day Utildai and his clan were picketing the Council HQ demanding action. Not action against anyone in particular, just action. ANY action. And that pretty much sums up the depths to which our desires have fallen: all we want from you people is a VERB! :)
The movies never had anything to do with the storyline. The player interaction with the cyborg storyline consisted of fending off half a dozen attacks. Battles only, no RP. The Manteze War were never even mentioned in the movies. With the exception of an appearance by Ross and Radiman, the other characters never appeared in-game (and when Ross appeared, an Omni player tried to assassinate him and was never punished by Omni-Tek). After the bombing of Omni-1, players spent weeks searching for the Dust Brigade HQ so that they could launch an assault on it, only to finally be told it wasn't in-game.
Sorry to bring everyone down about the storyline. But these are the facts as I remember them.
Scorus
Re: Re: Re: Re: Ragnar... you're underestimating the negative effect...
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Originally posted by Scorus
I have long contended that the amnesty was actually a convenient bug and mechanics problem work-around that they could make into a storyline element because they really had nothing else to offer.
If you've read "Prophet Without Honour", you'll remember that Ross refers to the amnesty in chapter...uh, it's somewhere in there. I wrote it. I should know. So it was part of the planned story for a good while.
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The Dust Brigade had potential (like the Manteze War, remember that?) but has been reduced to bored GMs and ARKs ganking people. There are numerous old threads about this, and in each case either Cosmik or Cz ended up saying something to the effect of 'sorry, we're taking a fresh look at how we do events.'
The Dust Brigade have been silent for a while, now. Silent...but not forgotten. And not gone. Oh no.
I have fond memories of the early Dust-to-Dust attacks; quiet, peaceful country folk being viciously attacked and mowed down, slaughtered by hooded madmen. Yay!
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I am pretty sure that Funcom admitted that the Steps of Madness and pumpkins didn't have anything to do with the storyline. It had a story associated with it, but it was not part of the clan vs. Omni story. This was after everyone was screaming "You call THIS a storyline?!?" after the October 31 debacle.
Here's the thing. Our approach to the storyline was always more "TV-show" than "novel" or "movie" - in other words, major arcs tying everything together, but with standalone episodes and events that told their own little stories. In this case, however, there was actually a connection, albeit a minor one: The guy who manifested the Pumpkinheads worked with insurance technology, which, again, connects with the Shadowlands. It didn't work as well as it should have, but there you go. We're going to focus more on the main story in the future.
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The movies never had anything to do with the storyline. The player interaction with the cyborg storyline consisted of fending off half a dozen attacks. Battles only, no RP. The Manteze War were never even mentioned in the movies. With the exception of an appearance by Ross and Radiman, the other characters never appeared in-game (and when Ross appeared, an Omni player tried to assassinate him and was never punished by Omni-Tek). After the bombing of Omni-1, players spent weeks searching for the Dust Brigade HQ so that they could launch an assault on it, only to finally be told it wasn't in-game.
The movies definitely had a lot to do with the storyline. Alright, so you couldn't meet up with Eleena or Joshua, but that doesn't mean they didn't live in the same world. If they'd started walking down the main street in Tir, they'd have a line of 200 players following right behind. Not very immersive. After all, Eleena and Joshua were supposed to be regular people - representatives of the players themselves - meeting up with the "celebrities", Ross and Radiman, and others.
The only solid rumour that I'm aware of regarding the Dust Brigade's headquarters place them somewhere in the Outzone, the non-terraformed regions. Players cannot enter the Outzone, not at this point. There's no atmosphere out there, the region's off-limits to everyone but terraforming personnel...and it's not in the game.
This doesn't mean the Dust Brigade has been written out, or left hanging, or forgotten. They're there. Hiding. Waiting.
-Ragnar
Re: Re: Re: Re: Ragnar... you're underestimating the negative effect...
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Originally posted by Scorus
First, I don't post things that I know are not true. You will find yourself much more welcome and respected on the boards if you don't start your posts by calling someone a bald-faced liar.
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Sorry, I was just a little angry about you critizieing things I liked about the story. (Especially the Dust Brigade) Even if they were bored GMs I thought it was fun. Alot of this is opinion. Some people didn't like the way the story was being told, some people liked the way the story was being told. People had expectations, back then mine were surpassed.