Time for a little history lesson!
We started out with Old Maloria under the leadership of CyberX and BinaryCrash. I don't remember the exact date it was launched or the date I came on board as a measley little events team member.
Anywho, CyberX and BinaryCrash eventually left as they no longer had enough time to handle it. I believe the server then went to MrWorry, Pokilty, and Twusk. It's been a long time ago, so I don't remember who was technically highest on the foodchain at the time. MrWorry and company kept Old Maloria around long enough until the playercount began dwindling to nothing.
Once the playercount dropped everyone was introduced to the wonderful "wait.nw" level. A new development project was started. A new overworld was created with new tilesets. It was what an "upgrade" should be. It saved the general idea of Old Maloria, while ading many new features and polishing old ones. This era of Maloria is now known by most as the "v1" era.
v1 did good for a while. By this point I had worked my way up to Developer or something like that. Midway through the lifespan of v1 the powers that be decided to plan for the future, and began discussing plans for v2. Development on v2 began on the main server alongside v1. Some older players may remember seeing a few admins running around with "v2" text floating above their head while we worked on the new systems. v2 added classes, exp, and leveling.
Unfortunately, you can't exactly finish developing and polishing a completely new server on a single gserver while still keeping the 'old' server running. I believe Maloria was removed from the classic list at this time so we could finish getting v2 ready.
v2 development finally wound down and we had to re-apply to get classic. Passed all the "tests" and then we got failed on scripting for a couple scripts that could easily be abused. Fixed those and a few weeks later Maloria was back on classic and boasting record playercounts that rivaled Unholy Nation and Era for a while.
I was now the manager after MrWory had left because of his lack of time. Things were still going good for the server, we had an active development team, kept pushing out updates, and kept players interested.
I'd say v2 lasted a good year atleast before things really started to go downhill. Most of the development team were beginning to grow up. I was in highschool at this point and had other obligations than graal. The same can be said for most of the development team at that time. Most of the dedicated ones that had helped design and build the server were reaching highschool or college. They were getting licenses, and jobs. The upper management/developers of the server (me included!) didn't have as much time as we once did to run the server.
v2 was now a few years old at the point. Many of the systems were beginning to show their age. Developers and NATs went through adding new items for players, but never followed through with actually putting most items out for sale. Corruption ran rampant with staff members giving large sums of money or items to their friends. Duping bugs were discovered and abused full-force.
Everyone knew something had to be done. TB3 had joined the ranks and was responsible for many new features later in the life of v2. However, with the server crumbling beneath us we decided to start on v3. There wasn't a whole lot of planning, little documentation. Things were going great though, until TB3 dissapeared. We were left with only a general idea of how to move forward, a number of half finished undocumented scripts. Throughout the time I was manager, we tried a few different ideas/plans for v3. Each time we tried, we would have an energetic staff team that worked great and pushed out the content...for a few months. Then key memebers owuld just dissapear and the process would repeat itself.
With v2 still online, being horribly neglected, and averaging less than 10 players, I finally decided to pull the plug on it and concentrate on v3. Its just too bad I didn't have enough time to actively manage v3 development.
Most people thought I should quit because i wasn't active enough. They were right, I should have, but I was stubborn and believed that we could still get v3 finished. I think I also wanted to prove a point to all those people telling me that v3 would never get finished.
I should have listened to them and handed it off to someone else sooner.
I finally decided to get out of Maloria for good and in 2007 or 2008 I handed it off to Vash-Aniki. beyond this point I don't know enough about what went down to be able to tell you. Ziro could explain it better as he was more actively involved at that point. All I know now is Ziro is in charge, and they are working on v3 again.
Ziro also touched on a number of other things in his post that led to the collapse of v2.
Now to answer the two big questions:
1. Will v3 ever get done? Only time will tell.
2. Am I responsible for Maloria's downfall? Yes.
What can everyone learn from this?
-When developing a server, PLAN EVERYTHING OUT IN ADVANCE. You want a solid plan before you start development. Then if someone leaves or dissapears, they don't take all of their plans with them.
-If you don't have time to manage a server, let someone else. One hour a day is not enough time to spend managing a server if you want to be successful.
-Managing a server is not as easy as most people think.
(wow that was a lot of typing) |