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Here is a brief re-cap of the last few years of Babylon, trust me I was there for every single day of it.
The common perception is that Malinko stole Babylon or led some sort of hostile takeover, which isn’t too far off, really, except for the whole stealing part. From my understanding Alexander was having commitment issues and was relying heavily on Malinko for help, (this was at the tail-end of the Alexander-Outlaw regime, and after Outlaw left, just Alexanders sole 3rd or 4th reign). Eventually Alexander agreed and did in fact pass Babylon onto Malinko.
At the time, Malinko didn’t want the server, and it was given to Kisharha and Silent. Kisharha was a tyrant of a Manager, and Silent did little to stop her. She was essentially the female Malinko, but did absolutely nothing in terms of production, allowing Babylon to fall further and further back through the year that she was manager. She hired friends and firing anyone that stood against her. I myself was fired several times and reinstated by Alexander (who remained “in control” and still had a level 4 RC at the time).
Eventually, she fired more than half the staff team and Silent stepped in and removed her himself, before stepping down and the server was put up in Limbo. Malinko stepped in once again, and still not wanting the server, handed it off to Odin. Odin was an active manager but was prone to disappearances, and it was no shock when 3 months had passed without any activity out of the then-revival manager.
Odin was removed, and Malinko finally decided to take Manager for himself. He appointed his then-girlfriend Artanis to co-manager, and much like Kisharha, ran the server how he wanted it. Unlike her, however, he had minor production in the very least, having hired one of the best levels tag-teams in Crono and Inferno to reconstruct his massive overworld idea.
I’m skipping a lot in history here, but Malinko’s time on Babylon is well documented, and I don’t need to restate any of it here, the jist of it is that he had another mental breakdown, another suicide attempt, (Inferno and Crono had both left by this point, as well as the majority of the staff team), and handed the server over to myself.
By this point in time, Babylon had been “Under construction” for close to 3 years, and had retained its classic status (not paying for gold to work on it) simply because when a server is moved from the classic list to under construction, unless it is restarted completely, you maintain your payment status.
As Manager, I brought back Inferno and Crono, as well as promoted Grey Bakami and James Ryzon to be my Co-Managers. Production started to pick up, and after a brief falling out with James, he left. Inferno and Crono became very inactive (Crono due to other commitments and Inferno because he refused to work if Crono didn’t), so the only remaining staff members were myself, Grey, and Pandar.
I levelled the majority of what was left of the overworld while Grey and Pandar did their best to script all the new systems we were trying to put in place.
It was stated earlier in this thread that in today’s day, Babylon couldn’t stand as it’s own server, that person is correct in every sense of the word. I knew that, Grey knew that, everyone involved knew that, and we put everything we had into trying to fix that problem, but years of inactive managers and outdated systems and levels and scrapped inefficient scripts made this a near impossible task.
I lost interest in putting so much effort into bringing back a server that would not even resemble that which Old Babylon really was except for a name. Grey and Pandar maintained their enthusiasm, something which I respect to this day, they put in so much effort it’s unbelievable. The efforts of those two will unfortunately be overlooked in the annals of history, and I just wanted to take a second to point out that Babylon would have died a long time before it did without those guys.
Seeing the end of my rope, I left the server in Grey’s name. I returned a few times to finish what had come to be my overworld, and to help with ideas and management plans, but nothing more than that.
Things get a little hazy here, as the information provided goes from direct to indirect rather quickly, but I believe I was well “in-the-know” at the time.
Grey continued to develop with Pandar and others involved, but the PWA or Stefan or someone high up finally decided to put a timeline on our classic status, and unfortunately the server was still not near enough to completion to stay afloat, and the server was shut down.
From here, it is my understanding that Topaz bought a development server for Grey and company to continue developing, but since none of our developers had Gold status, this was a lost cause from the start.
It’s been discussed between myself and Grey, the last two Managers, that a revival of Babylon just isn’t practical. And we kindly ask that no one attempt to do so. The server should, as Crono said, rest in peace, and be remembered for how great it is. It got dragged through the mud and ripped apart and changed so much over the last few Under construction years, it’s better to just let the server stay dead and move on with your Graal lives. Any sort of revival at this point would only demean how great that server really was.
I sincerely hope I’ve shed some light on the subject, and put some people’s minds at ease.
(Please keep in mind some of the older Manager information might not accurately follow the timeline, It's been a long time since then. But this is only a jist of what really happened after Babylon disappeared.) |
11-03-2009, 08:18 PM
Babylon
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