My Unholy Nation Experience

[Mark Sir Link]

I've played Graal for a little under 10 years, and had been pretty steadfast in my avoidance of Unholy Nation. I don't know why I hated it, I just did, probably because the rest of Classic's/Graal the Adventure's players did. So I would rarely log on to UN in an attempt to stir up some trouble for laughs and log off within 5 minutes or so. However, I got permanently banned from Unholy Nation sometime, I believe, in 2007 for my disruptive behavior. Early in 2010, feeling burned out on the games I had been playing after departing Graal after being banned on Classic, I found out that one of the few Graal players I had remained in contact with was at the very least friendly with UN's GP Chief and soon to be manager, Backdraft. Through Mystic, I began to lobby for my unban on Unholy Nation, which Backdraft was not receptive to. Eventually after getting Bell involved, it was decided that I would be given another chance.

So sometime in March of this year, I was unbanned and my second chance began. Being entirely new to the server, I had to begin completing quests to gain hearts, level 3 sword, and level 3 shield. To be quite honest, in reflection I am amazed I even stuck around to do this because of how awful the quest design is from start to finish. I had no idea where to go to start a quest, no idea what to do in some of the quests, and none of them were very exciting to complete anyway. Most of them were downright boring and in such arbitrary locations that there was no real desire to finish them. However, since I did already know people on the server, I was able to get through them with their assistance. At the time, FAQs seemed to just ignore questions entirely.

After reaching maximum hearts, sword, and shield power, I began participating in Unholy Nation's events and found out pretty quickly that they were virtually the entire focus of the server. Some people also tried trading hats and items, but it is virtually impossible for someone who just started on Unholy Nation to enter the existing economy at all. The only way I was really able to obtain any items was to get them through friends and cheat. Yes, I admit that I exploited a bug and spawned some several thousand EP. I have not tried to conceal it since it was found out, and tried my best to undo some of the significant damage I had done by giving away literally everything I had acquired, whether I obtained it through legitimate or illegitimate means. I am not saying that what I did here was ok, but am merely trying to illustrate that with the prices of items how they are, it is literally impossible for a new player to enter the economy as it is and nothing has been done to improve or fix this, as the management has seemed exclusively focused on satisfying the old players rather than doing anything to draw new players in.

Not long after I had been unbanned on Unholy Nation, I decided to offer my services as a scripter to the management. Backdraft informed me that the current Scripting Admin was AWOL, so I should contact Luca about being hired on Unholy Nation. So I tried. And tried. And tried some more. Luca seemed to be very elusive and not willing to really communicate with anyone, and it took an inordinate amount of time for me to find out what he would even like to see to hire me. I figured with the scripting of things I'd seen on Unholy Nation to this point, my past credentials working on other servers would have been more than suitable for a hire, but I was mistaken. I was asked to make an improved hat trading system for my application, but I decided to do him one better and create full out trading to involve hats, WNPCs, Gralats, and EP. I completed the backend about 2 hours after finally starting (I waited about a week to actually begin on it) and had hastily made a not so good looking GUI to go along with it for a demonstration. I showed Luca the mechanics of it that very night, but got no word on whether I would be hired or not until the next day, and not until I told him I would appreciate being told what his decision was as I had been offered positions to work elsewhere. It was not until I told where I had been offered positions that he told me he would hire me, and even then it seems to have been inspired by some grudge he had with a staff member where I had an offer.

I was assigned to one project along with Downsider, and I never completed it. It was a really boring project to be honest, and I had no inspiration to complete it. After sort of dragging my feet for a month and not completing any work on it, or any other sort of project, I ended up telling a LAT who was close with Luca that I didn't really intend to work on it. I would have told Luca himself, but contacting him was challenging at best.

I think it is pretty indicative of the Management on Unholy Nation that after this, I was never given another assignment. I can't say the same for every development staff member, but it seems to me as though there have literally been zero development assignments from the management in my entire time as a staff member on Unholy Nation, and it seems as though this trend hasn't changed at all.

My next job on Unholy Nation was sort of found by accident when early one morning, Allona asked if I could help script an event for her. Apparently the Events Team Development team had been entirely gutted and no one worked on events any more, despite events being the clear focus of the server. I scripted her event for her, and told her I would be glad to help her if she had any other events to be scripted. This is how my shift to Events Team Development came about. I believe that Gamerkid had taken over as manager by this point, and after Allona and I discussed it with him, I was moved to ET Dev. It was in this job that I really began a workhorse effort to bring about changes to Unholy Nation, even if it was only in Events. With the help of some creative and observant players, especially Rufus, I was able to locate and fix bugs that had been ignored for years, and improve the aesthetics and quality of several existing events. I spent a great deal of time rescripting many old events that used GS1 to use GS2, and I can only say I believe Gamerkid noticed, because not long after my move to Events Team Dev, I became the Events Team Dev Admin so that I could hire some people to assist me with my work.

I regret to say that I never really managed to find someone who was skilled or dedicated enough to help me with event creation and revamp, and pretty much continued to work alone with assistance from Rufus in GANI creation, suggestions, and bug reports.

Near the end of Gamerkid's term as manager, Rufus had suggested that trials be allowed to participate in events as long as they had free time remaining. Gamerkid agreed that this was a good idea, so I implemented it. Absolut_Cron took over as manager during the implementation of this, and as I added some finishing touches (mainly to tell trials that they must upgrade if free time is over and provide a link to the GraalOnline Store to purchase gold time), Absolut_Cron took issue with the whole idea. He spouted some nonsense about how trials shouldn't be allowed to play events, but then switched to the reason trials were blocked were because they didn't have 13 hearts, level 3 sword, and level 3 shield and might enter observer. Rufus and I explained to him that trials wouldn't be at risk of entering observer mode since they would require free time to play in events to begin with, and that if he felt that having a trial who did not have all the hearts, and maximum shield and sword power were at a disadvantage in events, and also a liability in team events, then perhaps paid players who had not completed quests should also be barred. He tried to tell us that that somehow did not make sense, and asked me to create a poll asking if trial players without 13 hearts and level 3 shield and sword should be allowed to play in events. This question seemed ridiculously long winded and intended to create bias, so I simply made the poll: "Should trial players be allowed to play in events?"

"Yes" won by an overwhelming margin, but Absolut_Cron felt I had somehow fixed the poll and introduced bias somehow by asking a straightforward question. I offered to create a second poll asking if "Should players without full hearts, shield power, and sword power be able to play in events?" but this never ended up happening.

[Mark Sir Link]

So trials were now able to play in events, which I would have thought would have been a decision made by myself and the Events Team Admin to begin with. I believe Absolut_Cron was still unsatisfied with this change but I point-blank refused to undo the changes, and it is likely he was unable to find another scripter willing to do it since scripter activity was very low.

I have seen several trials come to Unholy Nation and play in events and decide to upgrade, but this could be undone by the whim of the current Manager, who feels Trials should not play in events, the only thing there is really to do on the server. If the Manager is unable to make a good decision on whether Trials should be able to participate in events or not, I can't understand why anyone would believe he'd be able to make a good decision elsewhere.

Near the end of Gamerkid's term as manager, I was also given full NC control, and I guess by things Gamerkid has said ex post facto, he intended for me to end up with full level rights as well.

I began to make changes to fix things beyond the realm of Events Team related scripts, and a good number of players began to come to me first whenever they had a concern with something that needed fixing, which I took pride in. At the very least, it made me feel that players felt I was actively working and felt that I was as good a contact as any if they felt something needed to be done.

I won't even begin to list the changes I made because there were a lot of changes, and I can't even begin to remember what all of them were. However, I remember making a few changes to the forums that players had been requesting for a fairly long time, namely the ability to disable or create their own hotkey for opening the forums, and disable the forums from opening every single time a player logged on.

These changes were met with open hostility from the Manager, who had in the past publicly questioned why I had made certain changes, why I had certain rights (as if I had somehow assigned them to myself and was able to answer that question), and why I was doing anything beyond Events Team related work.

He even went so far as to post in an in game forum thread, questioning why I had made a change and claiming it didn't work. His claim about it not working was valid for three people - Luca, Rage, and himself. As I only had a limited view of the additional moderation tabs and such, I had not realized that the width of the GuiTabCtrl was expanding over the options button and preventing it from being clicked.

This incident alone tremendously shook my faith in the current manager of Unholy Nation. He told me he expected me to personally report any changes I made to him, but felt it was acceptable for him to publicly question my ability and decisions rather than taking his concerns straight to me. He questioned me in front of staff, and worse yet, in front of players for everyone to see.

I had always conducted myself with quite a bit more professionalism than the majority of Unholy Nation's staff. Nearly every night, there would be another argument about who should be fired, who isn't doing enough work, who was being corrupt.

I found these conversations ridiculous because over the past 3 months, there had been literally 2 people who had done any sort of development work that had made it into player's hands - Gamerkid and Myself. I didn't bother to jump into these conversations to remind the people pointing the fingers that they also were just as useless, just as lazy as the people they wanted removed. The entire driving force of Unholy Nation seemed to be participating in political issues on Unholy Nation, which Absolut_Cron allowed to build and did nothing to prevent during his time as PR Manager, and Manager.

I quit within days of the forum changes, and since then have made no attempt to stay out of Unholy Nation's political issues, openly pointing out to players and staff alike what problems there are with Unholy Nation, and informing players who submitted bugs precisely how long it would take for their problems to be fixed.

At this point I can only hope the PWA will make sort of serious effort into reviewing Unholy Nation. There is literally no guiding direction to Unholy Nation from the top-down. There are very few self-motivated workers remaining on Unholy Nation who will find work to be done on their own, and they aren't even development staff. I know Unholy Nation's management team is actively a turn off to many high caliber developers in Graal's community, and I am hoping the PWA will do something to change that. Unholy Nation still has a (relatively) high playercount, but I can only see the playercount continuing to lower if things continue as they are.

[Deas_Voice]

cool story, but why are you posting it(stopped reading after the first post)?

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Deas_Voice

cool story, but why are you posting it(stopped reading after the first post)?

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

At this point I can only hope the PWA will make sort of serious effort into reviewing Unholy Nation.

Maybe read before posting?

[kia345]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

At this point I can only hope the PWA will make sort of serious effort into reviewing Unholy Nation

They won't.

UN has players and along with Zodiac (also plagued with mediocrity) and Era (look what happened last time with PWAs), it doesn't need to be fixed as far as any authority figures are concerned. It's much more productive to egg on a server that's behind and threaten them by pointing out they're not contributing than to try to fix something that is broken below the surface, where potential customers don't see.

[Hiro]

as i was forced onto UN a couple years ahead of you after delteria, babylon, and doomsday all fell, i can verify that you're experience is not just limited to the management mentioned. even as far back as when NJ was manager, there has been a nonstop power-struggle between friends and groups of friends for staff-rights on the server. i say staff-rights because it isn't like their focus is to help UN out, or develop something they want released to UN's public. these are groups of friends whom have enjoyed the positions of staff for a very long time, to the point where them being staff on UN is directly correlated to whether or not they'll continue to play the server, much less work on it

now we're having a clash of groups of friends, those rooted in UN's staff and those forced to come onto UN as it's the only "functional" classic server. our current manager is worried about the influence of other groups, the same as any manager has ever been worried about it. the succession of friends-hiring-friends for the reason of them simply being friends is what perpetuates this mediocirty - there is no harmony within UN's staff, and never has been. all projects that have been released onto UN have been created by one or two people, at the most. all "major" projects that are trying to be released are being plagued with political friendship - in your own post you relate to a boring project luca asked you to accomplish, and having strained communications combined with a complete indifference towards both the project and perhaps some resentment from both managers, the development never took place

and i believe this is what happens to most projects that UN tries to accomplish. having no harmony within the staff itself, all updates typically come from one person who releases very sporadically, and without much public mention (the last publicly announced project that had any fruition was the achievements, which i'm pretty certain was created almost entirely by gamerkid) with leads many to think that it was just the whim of the scripter - hence why i can see crono taking issue with trial accounts playing events; it most likely seemed to him as if a staff member was just changing things without asking the man in charge first

and when the PWA steps in, as it did on era, the clashing of friends just becomes even more strained as one friend get's removed allowing a different group of friends to step in and slowly replace all the staff - the first manager the PWA selected for era, from what i hear, instantly hired a multitude of friends as staff members, even though they had histories of unstable staff behavior

so, honestly, the problem lies with the manager - because who else but the manager is supposed to try and get the team to work together? unless you want to change the staff-dynamics that have ruled over UN since it's conception, the manager has to get his **** in gear and and thus get his staff in gear

[MysticX2X]

I agree with what Kevin has said, for the most part at least. Not because I have any bias, but because of my own experiences that ended horribly. Unholy Nation, internally (and externally too), is a huge mess. After playing Unholy Nation for 6-7 years, and seeing it decline in recent years, I decided to help out and apply for the Levels Team.

Note: I don't mean to threadcop, but I decided it would be beneficial if provided another point of view by a former member of staff, instead of just making a new thread. I don't really care if you don't care to read it.

I was assigned to a large-scale project, new Castlewars, that, at the time, I believed to be the only decent thing that was coming to the players, as I saw nothing else (that was significant) for the current players after Gamerkid released the achievements system. The development manager, Luca, probably posessed no sort of care for the project, and never offered his help at all. Didn't seek out to find any scripting help for me, nor cared to look into the project comments when I told him I spent a great deal of time compiling a comment sheet to explain Castlewars and track progress back in may-June. He found scripters for whatever he or his girlfriend was doing. It was only until gamerkid took manager, that I was finally given a scripter.

Me and this scripter, Jumb0, did a lot for the time being, but he soon disappeared near the end of August, and I was left unmotivated to finish it, although I was working on it at a very slow pace. There was literally nothing else presented by the Dev Manager that I really felt could be of great use to the current players, aside from decently made quests, which have been in the talks way before I was even staff. In hindsight, the amount of time I had to create the levels was a very long time, but I literally saw nothing else to do, and told Tooty, a former Levels Admin, that I was up for any other assignment I could do in the meantime, so long as it had a proper use. I was given really none, beside an auction house that was never used.

When Gamerkid left management, and Cron-Star took over, he gave me levels admin after removing Khyber of that title for a good reason (was gone for over a month to visit her boyfriend, and immediately given Levels Admin upon returning), and giving me Levels Admin. She quit staff because of that action. I decided to vacate my admin position, and step down, and argued with Cron-Star to give her her position back, as she acted horribly to him because of her demotion, and he reluctantly did. Nobody told me to give it back, and in fact, told me to keep it, while the rest congratulated me. I decided to do this being frightened that Luca would also quit, and that would hinder development a lot. But I was wrong, dead wrong. In fact, dev could have been in a better shape had I stayed as Levels Admin, looking in retrospect. For my day as Levels Admin though, I did foresee a lot of change I could of done in retrospect to what is being done now, but whatever. I let Khyber decide what she wanted to do with the team, since she wanted the position very bad, and decided to focus on my project, while being an asst levels admin.

Less than 2 weeks after doing this, I was getting the feeling that both Khyber and Luca were attempting to have me removed, for which I found out after I was fired they were doing it at that time. It was sort of hurtful as I gave back her position. I felt like it was more vengeance than actual ethics, as it has been known that I don't exactly agree with what Luca has done in the past. About 2 weeks after I had that feeling, I was fired, and apparently blacklisted for not finishing a project. Kind of surprised me they fired me then as I was to finish the CastleWar levels completely by the end of September, which was about a couple weeks away, and was planning to work on things for Halloween. (I would show pm logs, but I cannot do it here) Castlewars was never really my fault with the scripting difficulties I had. Jumb0, the assigned scripter, had disappeared in mid august, so I was unable to do it. I also was experiencing several computer issues, where my PC crashed very frequently during the course of the summer. Apparently everything was overlooked, and I was somehow to blame completely, everything else ignored.

I was also cited for refusing to work on anything else or with other people when I was fired, to which I find ridiculous. The only thing I refused to work on was a noobie course Khyber/Luca were working on because it wasn't entirely necessary nor anything interesting for the current players, the ones who need content the most, nor was I comfortable working with Luca because of how he treated me.

I realize I haven't been working much near the last few months of me being staff, but there really wasn't much planned out with the entire dev team. If the entire dev team was producing, when I was not, then only would I have understood my removal. But I don't, and still don't. I could have fought for my job back, but being fired the way I was by those 2 people, I don't want anything to do with them, and wouldn't want to come back until Luca is demoted from Development Manager. I don't see why this hasn't happened yet, but I guess the commonly cited reason is lack of a "replacement", which is laughable. Luca has done a ton of illegal stuff in the past, such as giving out free items, or giving his girlfriend extra rights that she didn't need. But time and again, it is overlooked by the Manager.

I intended on quitting graal in light of what happened to me, but only for a few days, until I decided to reinstall (but not really playing), and just watch UN fall to its doom, until PWA decides to act.

Luca, in his term of Co-Manager/development manager, which spans about 6 months and going, has literally stressed nothing beneficial for the server besides a noobie course, and quests, which you can refer to my above point for. He didn't look at Castlewars as anything important to him, and even excluded that whenever asked about future things coming to UN. Only Cron-Star really mentioned it, when asked. I could go on about Luca's antics, but that would be far too much to write out.

The source of the problem I see with development is Luca. For any Classic players, you could consider him Master Storm v2. Prior to the load of BS you see him posting in the news forum on UN, he has done nothing to promote dev unity or any large-scale projects, and I only feel he is acting because his position is in danger. At the very least, PWA should look into the antics of Luca, and act on it, but I doubt they will as several complaints were sent about Luca from several people over the course of his term as co-manager (6 months). Management altogether could be a different story since Manager has went to about 4 different people this year, but my primary focus is really how development has went.

This thread may be deleted/closed, but I hope for somebody to read this at least.

[Crono]

actually read the whole thing

appreciate the "absolut_cron" to prevent confusion <3

[12171217]

Ever since I quit UN, my creativity and determination has exploded to epic proportions in school, sports, and my own programming projects. Love it. Might log in soon to see how things are moving along, but I don't plan on making frequent visits like I used to.

I think everyone should stop playing Graal; it's great.

[adam]

Originally Posted by 12171217

Ever since I quit UN, my creativity and determination has exploded to epic proportions in school, sports, and my own programming projects. Love it. Might log in soon to see how things are moving along, but I don't plan on making frequent visits like I used to.

I think everyone should stop playing Graal; it's great.

I didn't intend to stop, but I keep forgetting about it lately o.O

[Chakrah]

Kevin, I admire your honesty.

I think UN is at a loss of you not Developing anymore, because unlike most developers I have seen, you actually gave two ****s about the server's scripts.


That being said, I hope wherever you may go next if you do, you work just as hard as you did on here. (Unholy Nation)

[Elizabeth]

I read the whole thing, you did a really good job on the forum options. The "disable" option had been needed for such a long time. I was really happy to see it and I've had the forums disabled since.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Hiro

all "major" projects that are trying to be released are being plagued with political friendship - in your own post you relate to a boring project luca asked you to accomplish, and having strained communications combined with a complete indifference towards both the project and perhaps some resentment from both managers, the development never took place

I think this has a lot less to do with friendship groups more-so a lack of enthusiasm and direction given with projects. If you believe in your project (and are motivated about the direction you're aiming towards) I see no reason why people wouldn't stay engaged by that. If you're assigning people monotonous crap and expecting them to just do it then there's little going to come out of it, unless that person is motivated elsewhere. On this server it seems that Graal politics is the only kind of motivation that is employed. Attitudes are infectious, drama-free, and project-leaders really need to take advantage of that.

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Elizabeth

I read the whole thing, you did a really good job on the forum options. The "disable" option had been needed for such a long time. I was really happy to see it and I've had the forums disabled since.

tbh this wasn't a very complex/time consuming/etc addition and I consider it minor among the things I did.

However, the players continuously requested it so I decided to take the tiny bit of time required for this, which seems to be something the majority of other staff aren't interested in doing.

[nightslayer317]

Wow this was great. My first impression when I saw the large walls of text was to print it out and read it on the toilet. After finishing the first paragraph I couldn't stop reading.

I hope this gets made into a movie.

*edit : BTW Kevinbo, thanks for applying that option to disable forums on login <3