My Unholy Nation Experience

[Absolut_Crono]

@ What I read from you Kia, you have to understand I dont agree with that, it is just what it has been. I cant take blame for what has been going on for long before I became Manager, all I can do is try and fix things from here on..

[BigBear3]

Hello Absolut_Cron

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

playercount

[nullify]

I forget if I've said this (in this thread), but I miss Delteria.

[Heroin]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

yeah, the fact that you would crack if you'd lose another graal server apparently.. isn't there anything else in your life you can put your creativity and devotion into? putting effort in this **** is like feeding pearls to pigs

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Heroin

yeah, the fact that you would crack if you'd lose another graal server apparently.. isn't there anything else in your life you can put your creativity and devotion into? putting effort in this **** is like feeding pearls to pigs

wat

[HirakoShinji]

Haha, yeah.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

60% of players focused on sparring? I seriously doubt that. I doubt that even 30% of players were focused on that.

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

To Hiro, I was always very interested and supportive of CW, as Mystic says I asked him about it pretty regularly. The real issue was the Development Manager did not focus on CW at all. Mystic had to find his own scripters, with the exception of Ben Rain, who approached me about it before he became PWA. This lack of support from his higher admins on the Dev side probably led to a good portion of Mystic's lack of enthusiasm. When I spoke to Luca about it, I was told the scripting would be replaced with another project's framework (the same type of thing I was talking about above), but that never came to fruition either.

Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items. The real issue is both that either players no long want these items, or cannot get them because of the old playerbase no longer playing and trading actively. From what I recall, trading was more the focus than anything else if we tried to pinpoint something accurately. With the economy in the poor shape that it is in, related to ep duplication largely, players dont want to buy things for the inflated prices. EP and item trading were probably the worst ideas to hit UN, because you no longer had to play events to win event items. That being said, most people loved the item trading and auction houses, so it's a double edged sword.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Hiro

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

[MysticX2X]

I wouldn't say 60 percent of the population focused on sparring, although 25-30 percent probably is a good estimate.

UN, in my opinion, has been a server where you can do whatever, and interact with whoever. (We have guns and cars people...) It was never really only sparring-focused, and I wouldn't suspect that to be LiquidIces intent either. I enjoyed collecting the rare items, back when they were actually rare. I also enjoyed the events when more people played instead of teaming with 10 other friends. These among many other things.

Hiro is right in the regards that UN really needs to focus on improving the competitive elements of the server that it used to have. Sadly, that is not the current development focus.

[xXziroXx]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

It'll just break when V7 comes out.

No, that's not a typo. V7, as in the next upgrade after this one.

You made two errors with that post. One, no client in itself has ever broken a lot of scripts -- GS2 in itself did however, but GS2 is far superior than it's successor anyways so who cares.

Second of all, v7 is not the next client no, as v6 isn't even out yet. We're currently in v5 and v5.3.


I'd also like to point out that PWA has done an extremely ****ty job with something they said after the release of GS2; that all Classic servers were to fully convert to GS2 within x amount of time or be taken off the list. It's been 5 years now, wtf.

[ff7chocoboknight]

Why do I still have wNPCs from 2006 that no longer work? Why are there broken player houses all over the server? Why can't UN's development team strive to improve UN? I think all of these questions have similar answers.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

Why do I still have wNPCs from 2006 that no longer work? Why are there broken player houses all over the server? Why can't UN's development team strive to improve UN? I think all of these questions have similar answers.

It is too le hard. QQ.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by xXziroXx

You made two errors with that post. One, no client in itself has ever broken a lot of scripts -- GS2 in itself did however, but GS2 is far superior than it's successor anyways so who cares.

Second of all, v7 is not the next client no, as v6 isn't even out yet. We're currently in v5 and v5.3.


I'd also like to point out that PWA has done an extremely ****ty job with something they said after the release of GS2; that all Classic servers were to fully convert to GS2 within x amount of time or be taken off the list. It's been 5 years now, wtf.

Ok, first of all, V6 has already caused issues with the GUIs. You are wrong there. Second of all, my point was that every version update brings issues that need to be addressed. I wasnt stating V7 was next, but that the issues that get fixed for V6 will probably have to be altered again in V7 and V8 and so on, because servers implement GS2 differently for different things.

As far as the PWA enforcing GS2, I am pretty sure it mostly has to do with functionality. UN "functions" with GS2, it's just patched GS1 though. What I am saying is we would need to organize the server firstly, then rewrite it into complete GS2 instead of patching broken scripts, otherwise we wont get anywhere.

@Chocoboknight What wNPCs are you speaking of specifically? There arent any broken playerhouses I am aware of, only ones that were removed. Lastly, UN's development team ALWAYS strives to make UN better, the issue is that there isnt much organization in the teams. That stems from long before I was Manager though. If a Manager quits or gets removed, the server's focus tends to drastically change, with people who have different ideas about what is most important. We dont have Managers stay long enough to work on one main goal, with the exception of Streety, who was removed for broken promises or something similar to that.

[kia345]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

That stems from long before I was Manager though. If a Manager quits or gets removed, the server's focus tends to drastically change, with people who have different ideas about what is most important.

So what your saying is, UN has no purpose, no theme, no function or background. It exists purely as a playroom for management and their cohorts, without any adherence to a tangible, or even predictable, future? It is dedicated to nothing, and instead serves as something for the administration to mold to their liking, only to toss everything aside when a bigger kid comes into the sandbox and takes over?

[MysticX2X]

Originally Posted by kia345

So what your saying is, UN has no purpose, no theme, no function or background. It exists purely as a playroom for management and their cohorts, without any adherence to a tangible, or even predictable, future? It is dedicated to nothing, and instead serves as something for the administration to mold to their liking, only to toss everything aside when a bigger kid comes into the sandbox and takes over?

What I've noticed from you in just about every thread is that you take one twisted idea and stick with it for the whole duration of your post with no sort of rationality whatsoever. It's pretty unhealthy thinking.

No, that is not what UN has been, or what he meant. (Or so I would assume) Every Manager has a different approach on how they want to improve the server, but it isn't easy to work off of what other managements left behind as it may be incomplete/a huge mess. UN doesn't have a theme; UN is a server where you're free to do whatever there is to offer. Well it's theme is Classic gameplay somewhat.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by kia345

So what your saying is, UN has no purpose, no theme, no function or background. It exists purely as a playroom for management and their cohorts, without any adherence to a tangible, or even predictable, future? It is dedicated to nothing, and instead serves as something for the administration to mold to their liking, only to toss everything aside when a bigger kid comes into the sandbox and takes over?

No? I am saying every Manager has different ideas from the previous management. I am pretty sure that is the same on every server though. The difference being we have had a lot of management changes in a short period of time. Keep in mind management went in the order Spryte (Malinko), Croweather, Sub, Streety, Backdraft, Gamerkid then me in a period of 2 years, having streety as around a year and a half of that time alone. There was not really enough time for stability in any other management team than Streety's after Malinko and Spryte were removed.

Also, I am not saying I agree with the way the server has worked in the past, merely that it has worked that way.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

No? I am saying every Manager has different ideas from the previous management. I am pretty sure that is the same on every server though. The difference being we have had a lot of management changes in a short period of time. Keep in mind management went in the order Spryte (Malinko), Croweather, Sub, Streety, Backdraft, Gamerkid then me in a period of 2 years, having streety as around a year and a half of that time alone. There was not really enough time for stability in any other management team than Streety's after Malinko and Spryte were removed.

Also, I am not saying I agree with the way the server has worked in the past, merely that it has worked that way.

aka not man enough to fix UN.

[Mark Sir Link]

I don't like the blame your predecessors approach, it's not like you were some peon on the chain of command during their reigns.

You certainly weren't accomplishing anything while PR Manager - in fact, PR and Staff relations got wildly out of hand while you sat idly by and did nothing.

I am still confused by what merit you reached Manager.

All I've seen in this thread is "Take my word for it that things will be better, but I won't offer any evidence to show that I've contributed to making this better in the past, nor will I show you any evidence that things are happening to make things better for the future.'

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I don't like the blame your predecessors approach, it's not like you were some peon on the chain of command during their reigns.

You certainly weren't accomplishing anything while PR Manager - in fact, PR and Staff relations got wildly out of hand while you sat idly by and did nothing.

I am still confused by what merit you reached Manager.

All I've seen in this thread is "Take my word for it that things will be better, but I won't offer any evidence to show that I've contributed to making this better in the past, nor will I show you any evidence that things are happening to make things better for the future.'

I was FAQ Admin. What do you think I could control during that period of time? FAQs? When I became Vic's Assistant, I handled FAQ and GPs, when I became PR Manager I dealt with PR issues more than staff in-fighting. Also, you say relations got wildy out of hand, yet you give no proof of any of that either. Unless you are going to say "I saw it all!", in which case I shall remind you that memory becomes skewered with time. What exactly do you expect for a FAQ Admin to change realistically though? I have not had much say in a lot of things in the past, and I am honestly trying my best to make positive changes now.

If you want to really be analytical though, what positive things did Backdraft do before the PWA replaced Streety with him? He hadnt done much of anything besides tag along with Streety on Skype at the time. All he had were a bunch of ideas, same as me, yet the PWA saw him as a better alternative to the active management.

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

I was FAQ Admin. What do you think I could control during that period of time? FAQs? When I became Vic's Assistant, I handled FAQ and GPs, when I became PR Manager I dealt with PR issues more than staff in-fighting. Also, you say relations got wildy out of hand, yet you give no proof of any of that either. Unless you are going to say "I saw it all!", in which case I shall remind you that memory becomes skewered with time. What exactly do you expect for a FAQ Admin to change realistically though? I have not had much say in a lot of things in the past, and I am honestly trying my best to make positive changes now.

What evidence do I have of relations going sour while you were PR Manager? I don't know, just several RC logs I can't directly paste here but have been passed around well enough.

You know, logs where you yourself start threatening staff with bans and saying you want to punch them in the face for disagreeing with you defending one of your Graal bud's when I know at least one PWA member said he should have been banned.

Not to mention RC just about every night being a gigantic argument between several staff members while you just sort of ignored it.

If you want to really be analytical though, what positive things did Backdraft do before the PWA replaced Streety with him? He hadnt done much of anything besides tag along with Streety on Skype at the time. All he had were a bunch of ideas, same as me, yet the PWA saw him as a better alternative to the active management.

straw man

[kia345]

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

No, that is not what UN has been, or what he meant.

It's exactly what he said he though. He points out that UN's short comings are caused by various exploits the previous managers brought about. Don't blame me for not beating around the bush, if you guys want anything done, you need to be blunt and recognize the problem: in this case, the problem is a string of inefficient, directionless management.

And you're confusing not being gentle for not being rational. If you honestly think I'm being irrational - or ever have been - then I'd say it's a safe bet that the better portion of your brain is probably dripping onto your shoulder right about now.

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

No? I am saying every Manager has different ideas from the previous management.

Yeah, that's what I said. New management comes in and then UN is a clean slate and they do what they want. The server is being treated as a sandbox for them to build up as they see fit. If you want to have the smallest sense of being professional, UN needs a direction. A direction that transcends management and acts as the basis for the server. Era has that. Zodiac has that. Even with alternating managers, you can still log on the server a year later and have a pretty rough idea on what to expect. On UN, you don't have the feeling after several weeks.

[MysticX2X]

Originally Posted by kia345

It's exactly what he said he though. He points out that UN's short comings are caused by various exploits the previous managers brought about. Don't blame me for not beating around the bush, if you guys want anything done, you need to be blunt and recognize the problem: in this case, the problem is inefficient, directionless management.

Of course they are, but that is not easily fixable. Malinko did a ton of damage during his period that had to be cleaned up/corrected by following managements. As I have iterated before, ideas by past-management are hard to follow up on as some difficulty approaches. Streety wanted to finish pet-world and the achievement system as his main focuses before going on to other things. Pet world became a mess with different scripters, and the achievement system was finally released by GK a few months after Streety was removed. Backdraft wanted to focus on the noob course, new quests, shrinking the OW somewhat, but none of those really went past a thought except for the noob course which is STILL being developed to this day. GK focused on smaller things, but wanted to improve his achievement system and see CastleWars get done after he found me a scripter. I know Cron-Star wanted to see the development of CastleWars become finished too but I was fired by Luca/Khyber, as well as seeing other things finished. Development is headed by Luca, so any development complaints really should be headed at him, who Luca and one PWA thinks is doing a good job at.

I don't think you can expect content lineage from UN. As I, and probably others, have said, UN was created for the purpose to do a wide variety of things that weren't always uniform.

There was really only Cron-star or Luca to choose from for Manager when GK stepped down. You don't want to see Luca as Manager...

And you're confusing not being gentle for not being rational. If you honestly think I'm being irrational - or ever have been - then I'd say it's a safe bet that the better portion of your brain is probably dripping onto your shoulder right about now.

Really? Because all I saw you do is derive your own fixated point of view and rant about it for a whole paragraph, when all he said was that Managers have different approaches to how the server should go due to said complications I have said above.

Yeah, that's what I said. New management comes in and then UN is a clean slate and they do what they want. The server is being treated as a sandbox for them to build up as they see fit. If you want to have the smallest sense of being professional, UN needs a direction. A direction that transcends management and acts as the basis for the server. Era has that. Zodiac has that. Even with alternating managers, you can still log on the server a year later and have a pretty rough idea on what to expect. On UN, you don't have the feeling after several weeks.

I've been expecting Era to reset for nearly 3 years, what is your point.

[12171217]

What UN needs is a manager with huge balls to just scrap everything and pull something decent out of his gigantic butthole.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.


Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

I wouldn't say 60 percent of the population focused on sparring, although 25-30 percent probably is a good estimate.

UN, in my opinion, has been a server where you can do whatever, and interact with whoever. (We have guns and cars people...) It was never really only sparring-focused, and I wouldn't suspect that to be LiquidIces intent either. I enjoyed collecting the rare items, back when they were actually rare. I also enjoyed the events when more people played instead of teaming with 10 other friends. These among many other things.

Hiro is right in the regards that UN really needs to focus on improving the competitive elements of the server that it used to have. Sadly, that is not the current development focus.

stop thinking about the current staff - back then, Absolut_Crono was not staff, and did not even play or if he did he never sparred. but, a large majority of the staff of UN did (like 50%) and my percentage of sparrers on UN includes those players who used to be able to hop from server to server sparring in different tournaments - aside from perhaps delteria, UN was always the center of where sparring happened. clearly just because our current manager doesn't seem to enjoy or appreciate what sparring does on UN (and you can say that for the past 5 managers now) it's influence on the players and past players who have quit seeing the dwindling state of what servers offer for sparrers, is quite real

and besides, i'm talking very generally when i say UN needs more competitive focus - i said we need to be able to swing swords at one another, because that's what a classic server is pretty much all about. sparring has just always been the best form of this competition

i mean seriously, what the hell else are you going to update that exemplifies the classic server style? something is going wrong when the focus of a classic server moves away from the sword

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by 12171217

What UN needs is a manager with huge balls

Case:

Originally Posted by jacob_bald6225

I volunteer to be UN manager!

[kia345]

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

Really? Because all I saw you do is derive your own fixated point of view and rant about it for a whole paragraph, when all he said was that Managers have different approaches to how the server should go due to said complications I have said above.

That doesn't mean anything is wrong or irrational; I think you're just spreading things too thin. As I said, beating around the bush talking about what's wrong and how this is all bad, without actually having any idea where to go from here, the same short coming the previous managers had with their shortsighted ideas that failed to revitalize the server.

He recognizes part of UN's issue is the managers constantly having their own little projects. Good, we know that. There's no reason to keep passing these explanations back and forth. The rational thing for him to do now would be to announce how he is going to remedy that. Because right now, all I've seen is "yeah, x is wrong and some people did some other stuff bad", then you guys carrying on with that and who's to blame, but no explanations as to how he will be any different. He's just pointed out that he knew there were a lot of imperfections that will be hard to fix, and you know what vibe that gives off? The vibe that he's just going to follow them down that road, doing more little things to "fix" it just as everyone else has.

UN is outdated and the damage has been done, there's a point where you can choose to keep throwing out small, novel updates (omg pets and achievements wow) to hide it or admit an overhaul is needed and actually put forth the effort and do it.


Also, huge balls.

[ff7chocoboknight]

I'd vote for Zippy on anything he runs for.

[Mark Sir Link]

At the very least I would appreciate if the PWA would create some sort of rules for players to start a PWA review of a server's management (such as a certain number of players requesting it) because I am certain that at any reasonable threshold, you would find that that is what the players want to happen here.

I don't think the PWA just deciding to do it on their own volition is a great idea.

[ff7chocoboknight]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

At the very least I would appreciate if the PWA would create some sort of rules for players to start a PWA review of a server's management (such as a certain number of players requesting it) because I am certain that at any reasonable threshold, you would find that that is what the players want to happen here.

I don't think the PWA just deciding to do it on their own volition is a great idea.

I second this notion.

POWER TO THE PLAYERS!

[kia345]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

I second this notion.

POWER TO THE PLAYERS!

I have it from a reliable source that they do not trust the players' input

[ff7chocoboknight]

Pfft. Aren't they players, too?

[HirakoShinji]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

Pfft. Aren't they players, too?

lol chocoboknight, they are.

[Mark Sir Link]

Brief summary of thread so far:

Cron is blaming predecessors for current state of Unholy Nation. Always an awful excuse when it is used, especially when he is also claiming UN managers always shift direction rather than following the course of their predecessor. I'm not sure how what the people did before him is relevant if his plan is to shift direction from what they did.

I have asked several times by what merit Cron reached his job, and the only thing I've heard back from him on that issue is the fact that Backdraft was also equally unqualified. So ignoring that straw man, I draw the conclusion that he reached his position through nepotism and nothing else.

I have also yet to see him speak honestly or truthfully, instead dancing around any sort of complaint or issue anyone has brought up.

And I still have no idea what he intends to do as manager, I only keep seeing give him more time to get things done.


I am almost amazed at how deliberately unhelpful the PWA is being both here and through other means of communication; then I remember this is Graal.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by HirakoShinji

lol chocoboknight, they are.

You're such a poser...

[ff7chocoboknight]

Guys, my name is my title. Call me Skyzer, please.


I've come to the conclusion that UN is incapable of change, and all you can do is hope for something terrible to happen on UN that causes extreme change.

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

I'd vote for Zippy on anything he runs for.

I appreciate the support ff7chocoboknight.Skyzer

[Mark Sir Link]

Funnily enough, despite even mentioning a level by name, I still have control to the level I mention and several others.

I probably still enjoy this the most of anything since it was entirely within Luca's hands to keep me around.

Originally Posted by Luca

you sure about everything?
Going to miss having you around

[Crono]

can someone list the developers etc on UN?

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Crono

can someone list the developers etc on UN?

Development Manager

• Luca

Scripting Team

• Jazz (oo_jazz_oo)
• Alex (born2kill)
• Dwarfy (thatdwarf)
• Hell Raven (Kristi)
• MysticalDragon

Graphics Team

• Nike (Riku21)
• LightDamage
• Loomis Knoble (lilian7592)
• Chakrah

Levels Team

• Khyber
• iBeatz
• C2 (javierkid)
• Exil (Kazuma)
• Ghost Pirate

Gani Team

• Dama (dark_mater_s)

Sound Effects Team

• Core (Super_Matt89)

Developers

• Joe
• Bane
• SubZero (doomboy00)
• Streety (SwimChao)
• GK (Gamerkid7)
• Rage (_Zelph)