Post by Admin on Sept 29, 2015 19:51:40 GMT -5
Mystical Unicorn was created by Geezer and his wife, Roc'C. He created this shard for he and his wife to play on after shard hopping and not being able to find what they were after (or perhaps after getting booted from somewhere, I'm not 100% sure).
Geezer put a lot of effort into this world, even customizing the code before compiling it (something most people who just want to magically start a shard know nothing about and never do). However, for reasons unknown, his wife eventually stopped playing. Maybe being an admin with access to every secret ruined the game for her or maybe she just got tired of Ultima Online. Either way, once she stopped playing, Geezer logged in less and less. Eventually he decided he no longer wanted to run the shard, but so many people loved it and logged in daily (over 50 at a time back then) that he decided to hand it over to a duo of seasoned GMs and 1 newbie GM who happened to have the coding know-how and infrastructure to host. Those people were Ariel, Kila, and myself. Ariel and Kila had both been playing UO and GMing MU for quite some time and did a fantastic job dealing with trouble players, dealing with good players, making fun events, and still enjoying themselves. I was less of a fan of the administrative work, but I still handled so many pages from players, liked to wreak havoc on players
, and kept myself deep in code until the time would come that I would end up doing a lot of player things as well. Things went pretty smoothly for a while. I would say 2 years at least, but eventually Ariel did not want to be a part of it anymore. It's honestly been so long that I don't remember her exact reasons, but I am sure that the Admin I had become was a part of it.
Still, Kila and I pressed on. Even when Ariel was around, we saw a lot of GMs disappear like Athena and Sallene who were also long time players but had simply moved on. We also saw new GMs join us as we "hired" (for $0.00 USD) talented people to help run the community. Some of these included Guy, Inferna, and Maggie Kane. It was still split up about the same work wise with Kila, Guy, Inferna, and Maggie doing most of the in-game dealings with me writing new games and modifying code so that old games could have new light. I helped run the last 2-3 years of Christmas events where everyone had stockings. Kila ran many contests for people to be creative with stuff like "Backpack Art" and "Best House Deco". I can't speak of what the rest did because I did not pay the kind of attention I should have.
So what went wrong? By nature, I'm a bit of a controlling person, but I had never had an outlet to truly be in control before like when I ran MU. Never before did I literally have the power to wipe the world away, and that was a bad kind of intoxicating. It didn't start out bad, but I eventually became a big rule enforcer who wasn't keen on hearing other people's opinions when it came to the shard. I knew what was best and it still ran because of me. Without me, it wouldn't exist. I always like to think of myself as more mature than my age, but my age of 20-23 was really showing back then. I was in college, dealing with serious illnesses and the death of my mom. I thought I held it together, but I ended up taking it out on the world of MU. Part of me wishes I could change things, but part of me also realizes that it was a good growing experience. I'm just sorry everyone else had to experience it with me.
And it was obvious that I was being a jerk-face as a player named ShawtyGangstaBoo would so often say, because every day more and more people left. I even managed to make my own guildmates hate me to some extent. The only two of them I've ever truly apologized to were the leader, Muad'Dib and his wife, Junia. So consider this the apology of a former player, a former guild member, a former counselor, a former game master, a former admin, and a former overlord (very bad).
I'm sorry to you all. I hope you can forgive me for the crap I may/may not have put you through.
- Kev
Geezer put a lot of effort into this world, even customizing the code before compiling it (something most people who just want to magically start a shard know nothing about and never do). However, for reasons unknown, his wife eventually stopped playing. Maybe being an admin with access to every secret ruined the game for her or maybe she just got tired of Ultima Online. Either way, once she stopped playing, Geezer logged in less and less. Eventually he decided he no longer wanted to run the shard, but so many people loved it and logged in daily (over 50 at a time back then) that he decided to hand it over to a duo of seasoned GMs and 1 newbie GM who happened to have the coding know-how and infrastructure to host. Those people were Ariel, Kila, and myself. Ariel and Kila had both been playing UO and GMing MU for quite some time and did a fantastic job dealing with trouble players, dealing with good players, making fun events, and still enjoying themselves. I was less of a fan of the administrative work, but I still handled so many pages from players, liked to wreak havoc on players
, and kept myself deep in code until the time would come that I would end up doing a lot of player things as well. Things went pretty smoothly for a while. I would say 2 years at least, but eventually Ariel did not want to be a part of it anymore. It's honestly been so long that I don't remember her exact reasons, but I am sure that the Admin I had become was a part of it.Still, Kila and I pressed on. Even when Ariel was around, we saw a lot of GMs disappear like Athena and Sallene who were also long time players but had simply moved on. We also saw new GMs join us as we "hired" (for $0.00 USD) talented people to help run the community. Some of these included Guy, Inferna, and Maggie Kane. It was still split up about the same work wise with Kila, Guy, Inferna, and Maggie doing most of the in-game dealings with me writing new games and modifying code so that old games could have new light. I helped run the last 2-3 years of Christmas events where everyone had stockings. Kila ran many contests for people to be creative with stuff like "Backpack Art" and "Best House Deco". I can't speak of what the rest did because I did not pay the kind of attention I should have.
So what went wrong? By nature, I'm a bit of a controlling person, but I had never had an outlet to truly be in control before like when I ran MU. Never before did I literally have the power to wipe the world away, and that was a bad kind of intoxicating. It didn't start out bad, but I eventually became a big rule enforcer who wasn't keen on hearing other people's opinions when it came to the shard. I knew what was best and it still ran because of me. Without me, it wouldn't exist. I always like to think of myself as more mature than my age, but my age of 20-23 was really showing back then. I was in college, dealing with serious illnesses and the death of my mom. I thought I held it together, but I ended up taking it out on the world of MU. Part of me wishes I could change things, but part of me also realizes that it was a good growing experience. I'm just sorry everyone else had to experience it with me.
And it was obvious that I was being a jerk-face as a player named ShawtyGangstaBoo would so often say, because every day more and more people left. I even managed to make my own guildmates hate me to some extent. The only two of them I've ever truly apologized to were the leader, Muad'Dib and his wife, Junia. So consider this the apology of a former player, a former guild member, a former counselor, a former game master, a former admin, and a former overlord (very bad).
I'm sorry to you all. I hope you can forgive me for the crap I may/may not have put you through.
- Kev
