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.