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. |