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WARNING: Following post may instill a great feeling of tl;dr in the reader.
Uhm, I guess I'll try and fill in some pieces from when Maniaman handed over management to me.
I joined the Maloria staff fairly late in v2 as a GAT by persistence of Laslow. I fairly quickly made my way up to Developer and almost immediately joined the v3 team, though in a minor role. This was when Zero was heading up v3 development. For reasons I don't quite remember, Ziro left, and I became the Head Developer, but not too long after I had to resign that position because I falling very far behind in school.
Fast forward maybe 6 months or so later, not entirely sure how long. Maniaman obviously needed the help, Zero had left, and I felt that I could commit the time to Maloria and came back (as Head Developer, again). At first I tried to see if I could work with Zeros systems, but to be honest with you they were very complex, probably more so than needed. And me and Maniaman decided that not only were the systems too complex to be a viable option without the expertise of Zero, but the gameplay just wasn't what we were looking for.
So we started over. Maniaman had his own ideas and plan that was actually mostly complete, and I attempted to script the systems myself but at the time I wasn't quite ready for that advanced of scripting and recruited a scripter who learned mostly from Inverness (who ended up being my more or less mentor as well, and who I had worked with before Maloria on Aeon) named Stan. He was talented enough for the job, to be sure, but we would have our disagreements and one time it became too much and he quit with a half finished server. This became a similar situation as when after Zero left and by this point Maniaman had resigned and given the Manager position to me.
So, I started over again, this time somewhat able to script everything myself (albeit with help from people like Chompy), but with little plan and little staff and very little support from the Maloria community. I don't blame them for this, I was starting over again. To this day I don't know if that was the right decision or not. I know I was not nearly prepared enough and did not handle my duty well during this whole time though I to this day believe that my overall vision for Maloria is better than what I see now.
My decisions as far as gameplay were concerned were driven mostly by discussion with my asst manager, Nate. I had him as my assistant because not only did he know the server better than most and was (at the time) loyal to Maloria, but he would not hold his tongue. He gave criticism where it was needed. When it came to gameplay I mostly payed attention to his advice. Unfortunately I had become rather arrogant at the time, something I'd like to think I'm now beyond, and when it came to overall management I didn't listen to him, and I payed for it.
So over the months I toiled on Maloria which few staff, most of which were fairly inactive and/or did not do much work, all the while facing considerable outcry from Malorias devout players about my Management. I began falling back in school again, this time with my senior year coming up to worry about, and more stress than anyone should have to endure for a video game, and awareness that I had screwed up pretty bad.
I knew that if I kept going this route that I would drive Maloria to the ground, so I resigned. Rather than give the position to Nate, however, I gave it to Josh, who had payed for the server. But he apparently did not want it, and from what I remember gave it over to Ziro and Nate, which I did not approve of, but what could I do? After this I essentially quit Graal for at least a year and quickly moved on.
I know little of what happened afterwards, you'd have to ask Ziro, as I stopped having an active interest in Maloria. I don't look back at my management in a positive light, there are so many things I would have done differently, but I still believe that what I had planned for Maloria was much better than what seems to be in store for it now. |