Restarting Metal Gear

[Dr Brain]

I can't imagine the SSC being too upset about a new zone being added to the game. It's not like a MG clone popping up when MG is an active zone. The worst that realistically I see happening is that the name of the zone has to be changed.

[Cheese]

strangely enough, they have the attitude that they dont want extra zones clogging up the directories

 

 

wierd huh

 

 

 

also anyone can conclude that lynx is dumb

 

 

.

Edited January 12, 2011 by Cheese

[Dr Brain]

strangely enough, they have the attitude that they dont want extra zones clogging up the directories

 

Source?

[KthxTheLegend]

I think what they meant but were obviously too nice to tell you (although im not) is that they don't want you're shitty extra zones clogging up the directory. Something that is good and ran by someone who isn't an obnoxious douchenozzle probably will get the go ahead. Edited January 12, 2011 by KthxTheLegend

[the_paul]

Yep everyone who says you're a bad sysop for having 3 failed zones and 0 successful ones in you repertoire are dumb, you got it. How can you say we don't want new zones when we've all voted yes on this one? We want MG to come back, we just don't want you to have anything to do with it. I think Audrey and her team will do a great job. I never played MG much or competitively, but I remember going there while I was bored or banned and thinking how awesome this zone could be if there were more people in the pub. I'm actually borderline excited to get the chance to play it while theres actually a decent number of people there, don't let me down Audrey and co!

[Cheese]

source is unofficial statements from a few council members

[Audry]

out of curiosity, if you have all the settings and all the files required to get MG back up and Testtube doesn't respond, how long would you wait for a response before deciding he has abandoned it and open MG back up anyways. Cause really, apart from ethics and i guess the SSC council which could deny biller, there's nothing stopping the project.

 

I don't know... I will have to discuss with the council and see what can be done. I mean, we all know Testtube stopped being involved a while ago, but he always holded down to the zone ownership for some reason.

 

If they give me the permission to get it on SSC without TT approval first, i will still considere TT the owner of the zone... kinda like a silent partner lol.

[PoLiX]

strangely enough, they have the attitude that they dont want extra zones clogging up the directories

 

Source?

 

Probably quoting myself. MG isn't an issue in the case. The case he is dealing with is putting a bunch of empty zones that the sysops don't care to deal with anymore and were thinking of shutting down in his zone, and broadcasting them all as seperate zones. If the owners wanna just shut them down, but are fine with them as sub arenas, then they just should be that, sub arenas. If it was 2 zones working together on 1 server and wanted to broadcast both, that is a different story. But these guys have even said they dunno why their zones are still up even.

[Audry]

mmm I am confused... when i talked with cheese about that whole thing he told me something about you being ready to help him out with his whole plan of getting all the zones together or something...

[»Swift]

Lets get this straight. I rule, you all drool. Nuff said. If you want to continue bickering be my guest, but do it elsewhere on the forums. Trashtalking is done in it's own place.

[»Blocks]

I mean, we all know Testtube stopped being involved a while ago, but he always holded down to the zone ownership for some reason.

 

If they give me the permission to get it on SSC without TT approval first, i will still considere TT the owner of the zone... kinda like a silent partner lol.

If my memory serves me correctly, Testtube was the zone's host back when Julius Caesar was the owner. JC helped pay for a while, and they took donations, but ultimately I think Testtube ended up spending a good deal of money, which was a nice thing of him to do. Then JC was accused of stealing donations, he got kicked out and Testtube took over as owner and host. This was in 2004, I think.

 

If we are looking for a ceremonial blessing to restart MG, I bet Admiral Kirk could provide it.

[Audry]

Well i discussed with Mom (<3) a little earlier. And if Testtube never answer us, it wouldnt really be an issue to get the zone up and running.

 

I mean, no one wants to claim possession of the zone, we just want it to be alive.

 

she also said she'll try to catch his attention if she sees him log on aim.

 

So yeah... now we wait and see i suppose!

[Prok]

Well, me being somewhat of a vet and a diehard Evolved member for life would like to add some input. I would love to see the zone back up and running and would love to play there again. The thing is i dont see it going anywhere past where it was before it shutdown. I see about 11 people there and all in spec. I believe most all of the old mg players have already moved on from this game or most of them are alaised. I know that 90% of E dont even play anymore, and most of the other regulars to the zone have gone away.

 

There is the possibilty of new players coming in and making MG their home zone, but i just dont see enough people actually staying.

 

This is to not say dont give it a shot because it does have potential and id love for it to happen, but dont be surprised that after a couple months it dies right down to nothing again and all the hard work put into it go to waste.

 

Thanks to Audrey and everyone else helping out, id be willing to help a bit even though im not that knowledgable about much aspects of the game except playing, but i do remember most of the events andd such in zone.

 

Best of luck to whatever happens, and if it happens ill see ya there!

 

-Prok

[Plugman]

First of all, hello to everyone of past and present. There are a few factual things previously mentioned that I'll try and clear up to the best of my knowledge, and a few opinion things as well.

 

First up the facts.

Intellectual Property (IP) rights (aka ownership of MG). Note: I am no legal expert, this is to the extent of my knowledge and I do not claim for it to be 100% true.

As lego somewhat pointed out in a couple of posts up, JC never owned the server and nor did freak. Interestingly however, testtube doesn't actually "own MG" either, nor did he ever, what he did own was the actual physical servers, its domainname etc etc. that we all used. The actual owner for the IP right as far as my knowledge goes, is Admiral Kirk. Kirk said to me something like "it is HE who concepted the zone way back as realms and HE never officially gave up IP rights to the zone (nor could he?)". In addition to this, as far as my recolection goes he is quite happy for the zone to be managed and maintained by other individuals, but simply wishes to retain the right to "tear it all down" if he so wishes and the right to retake control if he so wishes (i.e. not everyone can go and create there own MGCTF). It is essentially a form of freeware. In short: That means the concept of MGCTF, the actual IP rights behind the zone, the public maps and all that crap, is owned by kirk, as he is happy for people to maintain it as they see fit.

Who has copies of all the files and shit

Well, as I've told Audrey I have copies of most of the stuff, I also know most of the 2007-2009 era sysop's would also have copies. As I also told Audrey, Kirk probably has all the bots etc.

 

Now the opinions.

Why MG ultimately closed

Well, I'm sure . I simply don't think there is one reason why things didn't work out and why the collapse of a large zone was so quick. The aforementioned as well as what was blamed during the time are quite true (the switch, the "ownership", etc.). The only true thing which I think can be said about its "death" is that it was not due to one particular source, there were many things. I will say however, the one true thing that rings in my mind (which was eternally complained about at the time) was the continuum (LOLGETIT) of the sub-par management of the zone matches only by the sub-par alternatives brought up in complaints. This leads into my next opinion...

To change or not to change

Personally, I think simply copy/pasting the old files and sticking it back up would not work. As many noted the player base is still lurking. However, people and the size of this group have changed and the think the zone needs to reflect that. Not to mention copy/pasting would inevitable bring back a lot of the problems, if you're going to do this, do it right. Take the time and effort to iron out the problems.

 

Anyway, I'll do what I can (which isn't really much nor do I want it to be). Best of luck to all those putting in effort.

 

Edit: prolly should change that signature huh?

Edited January 14, 2011 by Plugman

[Dr Brain]

Arguing about intellectual property in a game based on an illegally hacked client and server seems like an exercise in futility.

 

Ultimately the only thing that matters are what the people holding the billing server (Priit, GS, and the Subspace Council to some extent) and directory servers (a diverse group of hosts) will do. And for MG, the answer is probably that they're not going to go out of their way to kill it, regardless of any IP that may be brought up.

[F5Tornado]

yeah I miss those days of MG... But there were definitely staff issues. While I liked a lot of them when I was staff (not all), there were still those who

 

1) could not get along with the general population and mouthed back like they shouldn't.

 

2) Liked to abuse use their power and people knew they would but got hired anyway *coughOneXcough*

 

3) and this reason isn't really their fault, but new staffers were improperly trained. As in "here's how you do this command. Figure the rest out on your own, including where to get all event coords." Keiver trained me and while he is keiver so tends to be lazy afk a lot, he still told me everything I needed to know and made sure I hosted test events with bots (which so many after me failed to do) and that I had no more questions before hosting events for real. I saw way too much of a new staff member hosting their first week of events, complicated or not, and after bringing people to the arena saying "hold on need to get coords."

 

I know it's a job you are volunteering for and there are no monetary benefits whatsoever, but hiring people who could actually treat the job of staff like something that you should just wing and whatever if you don't do things right, was what happened a lot down the stretch.

Edited January 14, 2011 by F5Tornado

[Sketter]

First of all, hello to everyone of past and present. There are a few factual things previously mentioned that I'll try and clear up to the best of my knowledge, and a few opinion things as well.

 

First up the facts.

Intellectual Property (IP) rights (aka ownership of MG). Note: I am no legal expert, this is to the extent of my knowledge and I do not claim for it to be 100% true.

As lego somewhat pointed out in a couple of posts up, JC never owned the server and nor did freak. Interestingly however, testtube doesn't actually "own MG" either, nor did he ever, what he did own was the actual physical servers, its domainname etc etc. that we all used. The actual owner for the IP right as far as my knowledge goes, is Admiral Kirk. Kirk said to me something like "it is HE who concepted the zone way back as realms and HE never officially gave up IP rights to the zone (nor could he?)". In addition to this, as far as my recolection goes he is quite happy for the zone to be managed and maintained by other individuals, but simply wishes to retain the right to "tear it all down" if he so wishes and the right to retake control if he so wishes (i.e. not everyone can go and create there own MGCTF). It is essentially a form of freeware. In short: That means the concept of MGCTF, the actual IP rights behind the zone, the public maps and all that crap, is owned by kirk, as he is happy for people to maintain it as they see fit.

Who has copies of all the files and shit

Well, as I've told Audrey I have copies of most of the stuff, I also know most of the 2007-2009 era sysop's would also have copies. As I also told Audrey, Kirk probably has all the bots etc.

 

Now the opinions.

Why MG ultimately closed

Well, I'm sure . I simply don't think there is one reason why things didn't work out and why the collapse of a large zone was so quick. The aforementioned as well as what was blamed during the time are quite true (the switch, the "ownership", etc.). The only true thing which I think can be said about its "death" is that it was not due to one particular source, there were many things. I will say however, the one true thing that rings in my mind (which was eternally complained about at the time) was the continuum (LOLGETIT) of the sub-par management of the zone matches only by the sub-par alternatives brought up in complaints. This leads into my next opinion...

To change or not to change

Personally, I think simply copy/pasting the old files and sticking it back up would not work. As many noted the player base is still lurking. However, people and the size of this group have changed and the think the zone needs to reflect that. Not to mention copy/pasting would inevitable bring back a lot of the problems, if you're going to do this, do it right. Take the time and effort to iron out the problems.

 

Anyway, I'll do what I can (which isn't really much nor do I want it to be). Best of luck to all those putting in effort.

 

Edit: prolly should change that signature huh?

 

 

Arguing about intellectual property in a game based on an illegally hacked client and server seems like an exercise in futility.

 

Ultimately the only thing that matters are what the people holding the billing server (Priit, GS, and the Subspace Council to some extent) and directory servers (a diverse group of hosts) will do. And for MG, the answer is probably that they're not going to go out of their way to kill it, regardless of any IP that may be brought up.

 

 

I've stopped caring about all this creating zone stuff and politics and just play the game and zones for what it is for the past 2-3 years on and off, and when i read all the stuff going on i can't help but giggle at some of the posts.

People are right when they say that you end up have a different perspective of things when you see the game for what it is and take a back seat to all the drama, and how unnecessary this all really is.

We're not dealing with peoples lives or running some type of for profit organization.

If anything been proven is that this game isn't profitable because even the mock version of this whole game (ComicRift) has it's own problems. And even the owners that obtained the rights to Subspace TM after virgin gave it up (I believe it was BDE) even threw in their towel.

So when watching people throw their wight around with the suggestion of legal entitlement, is entertaining.

And to watch some people succumb to this, makes this game into a decade long sitcom.

 

I want to give props to Brain on his comments above. Same people, same roles, same problems, same drama -you got it- same sitcom.

 

What made me giggle the most was this guy who has no involvement in all this but has a % of chance in being the owner requesting/demanding that at will he can tear down, shut off other peoples work.

Really? Are people going to yield to that? It's an invitation for future problems. (in this game, with all our colorful people, that's extremely easy to come by)

Zones dead, just make a mock of version of the zone, give it a different name.

No one can then make a compelling argument to then take it down since there is no zone to convey a viable complaint.

 

This game is getting to complicated for it's dying age.

Edited January 14, 2011 by Sketter

[Plugman]

Seemingly people are missing my point(s); I am actually in full agreement with you. What I was basically saying for those who missed it, is simply there are no problems so don't overcomplicate nonexistent problems. The only thing you have to worry about is doing it "better". Edited January 15, 2011 by Plugman

[F5Tornado]

Seemingly people are missing my point(s); I am actually in full agreement with you. What I was basically saying for those who missed it, is simply there are no problems so don't overcomplicate nonexistent problems. The only thing you have to worry about is doing it "better".

 

Hey Plug. Is there any place (or even a vent server) that all the old MG people have gone to? I know the obvious answer could be here but just wondering if there are any other spots now. I just randomly checked this site for the first time in probably a year or more and was surprised at my timing.

Edited January 15, 2011 by F5Tornado

[Plugman]

Hey Plug. Is there any place (or even a vent server) that all the old MG people have gone to? I know the obvious answer could be here but just wondering if there are any other spots now. I just randomly checked this site for the first time in probably a year or more and was surprised at my timing.

Lol, I'm actually in the same position as you having just returned back home. As far as I know there is none, Audrey would be more likely to know if there is. If there isn't, I may take to setting up one so we can reminisce about ages gone past like old men with fine whiskeys in our hands.

[F5Tornado]

Hey Plug. Is there any place (or even a vent server) that all the old MG people have gone to? I know the obvious answer could be here but just wondering if there are any other spots now. I just randomly checked this site for the first time in probably a year or more and was surprised at my timing.

Lol, I'm actually in the same position as you having just returned back home. As far as I know there is none, Audrey would be more likely to know if there is. If there isn't, I may take to setting up one so we can reminisce about ages gone past like old men with fine whiskeys in our hands.

 

Well I'll summarize my life since MG died. I finished my last year of college and graduated with a degree in Meteorology in May 2010. But I suck at interviews (get too nervous, question all my actions) and have been turned down 3 times so January 2011, still unemployed thinking Grad school is my only option right now.

 

Which also means I'd gladly help out with MG if needed because I clearly have the time right now.

Edited January 15, 2011 by F5Tornado

[»Blocks]

yeah I miss those days of MG... But there were definitely staff issues. While I liked a lot of them when I was staff (not all), there were still those who

 

1) could not get along with the general population and mouthed back like they shouldn't.

 

2) Liked to abuse use their power and people knew they would but got hired anyway *coughOneXcough*

 

3) and this reason isn't really their fault, but new staffers were improperly trained. As in "here's how you do this command. Figure the rest out on your own, including where to get all event coords." Keiver trained me and while he is keiver so tends to be lazy afk a lot, he still told me everything I needed to know and made sure I hosted test events with bots (which so many after me failed to do) and that I had no more questions before hosting events for real. I saw way too much of a new staff member hosting their first week of events, complicated or not, and after bringing people to the arena saying "hold on need to get coords."

 

I know it's a job you are volunteering for and there are no monetary benefits whatsoever, but hiring people who could actually treat the job of staff like something that you should just wing and whatever if you don't do things right, was what happened a lot down the stretch.

Not to pooh-pooh your comments, but I think that if the success of the new MG has a high dependency on staff and staff issues, then we are doing it wrong. One of the reasons I believe HS is successful is because it essentially runs itself (those involved with HS, let me know if you disagree). After an initial effort investment, the developers need only to descend from on high every so often. TW has done a good job of automating their events, which I think is something MG should look to imitate (and not just by adding doors in all the events, that was dumb).

 

Lastly, MG needs to solve the problem of getting players. It's not fun with 10 people in pub, it's fun with 40.

[Audry]

F5, training a new staffer takes time. It can't be done in a little session of spamming every possible useful info and hoping for the noob to remember everything.

 

It's with experience (which mean hosting events that could fail, answering help calls even if you dont know the answer etc), mistakes and help from "senior" staffers that you can become better.

 

So your whole idea of staffers not getting a decent training is pretty wrong imo.

 

All you can do in that "training" session is give the useful infos, let the noob get used to the commands, and hope for the best.

 

Just my 2 cents

 

 

 

Oh and we all talk to each others on msn, or ingame (alot changed aliases tho). I'm usually on Audrey (instead of Audry).

[F5Tornado]

F5, training a new staffer takes time. It can't be done in a little session of spamming every possible useful info and hoping for the noob to remember everything.

 

It's with experience (which mean hosting events that could fail, answering help calls even if you dont know the answer etc), mistakes and help from "senior" staffers that you can become better.

 

So your whole idea of staffers not getting a decent training is pretty wrong imo.

 

All you can do in that "training" session is give the useful infos, let the noob get used to the commands, and hope for the best.

 

Just my 2 cents

 

 

 

Oh and we all talk to each others on msn, or ingame (alot changed aliases tho). I'm usually on Audrey (instead of Audry).

 

I know training a staffer takes time Audry. But there were times where some just didn't get trained at all. I don't remember names but I do remember asking around and hearing about how some who really weren't doing to well even after a while just were never trained period. Tell your new staffer not to have his first week or so of events be DT2 or DTQ or something with extremely complex macros.

 

Also keiver was able to tell me everything I needed to know and after our first session I was basically good to go. Although I do catch on quickly to things.

 

Lastly, hi Audry and Blocks!

Edited January 15, 2011 by F5Tornado

[Plugman]

Not to pooh-pooh your comments, but I think that if the success of the new MG has a high dependency on staff and staff issues, then we are doing it wrong. One of the reasons I believe HS is successful is because it essentially runs itself (those involved with HS, let me know if you disagree). After an initial effort investment, the developers need only to descend from on high every so often. TW has done a good job of automating their events, which I think is something MG should look to imitate (and not just by adding doors in all the events, that was dumb).

 

Lastly, MG needs to solve the problem of getting players. It's not fun with 10 people in pub, it's fun with 40.

Couldn't agree more. You can't develop a "new MG" by just changing a few things such as who's on staff, who manages this etc. It has to be more fundamental than that. For example what f5 was talking about, why not simply have people teach themselves? I'm sure some are aware there was essentially a list of what you were being told, so why not simply expand that 'list' into a 'manual' and have people teach themselves. I never understood the "secrecy" that was put behind these things (locked forums and BS). As has been pointed out, this is not a political or financial product; the less that actual development has to do with day-to-day running of things, the better.

As for the population problems... well that's definitely something that will have to be nutted out.

Edited January 15, 2011 by Plugman