First off, let me start by saying this is not supposed to be some gloom and doom rant about why Allegiance and its community sucks. As is obvious to anyone who has talked to me, I love Allegiance (the only "game" I play) and I love its community (which is why I try to do as much as I can for it.)
As of late, the mood, demeanor, and quality of posts in the forums and in IRC have been rapidly changing. What was once in my experience a great, open, fun environment to hang around in, has become a veritable battlefield of opinions and spammers. If it's not "old" players versus "new" players, its "good" players vs. "n--b" players. That or it's some 12 year old kid spamming utter idiocy.
None of this appeals to me, and I'm sure it doesn't appeal to you either.
What once was
I don't want to make it sound like some sort of utopia, but when I first entered this community it was a really great place. "Old" players helped me out, showed me the ropes in-game, and I was able to chat with like-minded people in IRC on all sorts of Allegiance-related (and unrelated) topics. Chat was quick and fun, with no real disrespect coming from any direction. As long as you didn't spam or directly insult anybody, everyone was cordial and willing to answer any questions or requests one had. I still recall my first run-in with Ozzy (or hell, nearly anyone from XT), who is infamous for his attitude and method of talking to newbs, or anyone with "dumb" ideas. After getting over the initial shock of his statements, I understood a lot of what he was saying. Discussions on the forums were relevant and pointed. Someone would make a well-thought-out suggestion, and there would be a flurry of replies from competent people with answers and comments. Spammers and Lamers were either ignored, or quickly dealt with. Almost everyone SEEMED to be an adult, or at least mature enough to respect each other enough that even when someone did insult another, it did not result in vulgarities and horrible phrases being thrown around. One of the main reasons I became addicted to Allegiance was because of all these reasons.
What is now and never should be
Today and what seems like will be tomorrow, everything is reversed! "Old" players sit in-game kill whoring (just sitting around, camping, racking up kills with no intention of winning the match) and either making rude, insulting posts and comments, or not being helpful at all. The forums have become caustic - full of spam, insults, and idlers. Questions go unanswered or worse - people asking questions are insulted for their "stupidity." 12 year old kids (or what seems like, and I hope, could only be coming from a 12 year old) flood the channel with useless banter and pointless comments and I can't seem to add them to my ignore list as fast as they crop up. I login sometimes and feel like I'm sitting in a 90's era AOL chatroom - YES, it's really THAT bad.
What happened?
Who knows? Maybe alleg has been flooded by a significant amount of younger people, maybe the old people have moved on or given up. Maybe banning all the anti-carebears caused such a huge rift in the community that we have now been invaded by Poland. Maybe this is just what happens when Open Source communities grow? Where did this huge shift occur? What caused it? One can only guess.
So, what now?
I've been playing pugs less and less, even when I play squad games I don't get any real enjoyment as most of the time PK wins without much of a struggle. Perhaps my crappy PC is to blame, which ever since R4 has only been getting 10-15 fps so I can't even enjoy dogfighting. The long and the short of it is I'm off. I'm sick of the idiocy from newbs and the bickering on the forums, and I think a break from Allegiance is just what I need.
juckto (still with a lowercase j)
So long
I've always been an advocate of quality > quantity, and I guess that makes me crazy.
The game now seems to be at an all-time high of players (since it became abandonware) which is what many people wanted.
But at what expense? Not to undermine the squads that are suddenly doing well in squad games, but the squads that would normally roflstomp them are basically MIA.
XT for instance, between real life issues, permabans (me), and "team balance" - the remaining small number of XT members that would still like to play PuGs with fellow XT, can't. Two XT on a team is a stack. As as result of all of that, XT gets no team practice in PuGs like it used to, and nobody has time to show up to scheduled practices in addition to squad game dates.
Variety is the spice of life, Alleg, and everything else. The people that are ridiculous characters, like me, are shunned for being a character. The quiet people, are quiet, and don't really have much influence anyway. So what's left is what I'd like to call a ball of homogenized bull@#(!. and it's the same thing that's killing the quality of this game, imo, that killed WoW (if you were into it to began with).
I've been playing WoW since I've been banned, in a very specific manner. I find the role that gives me the most influence in a group, and I make sure I'm the best at it, and that's my niche.
(Just like I did with comming TF exp, rushing rix hvy scouts, PT bomber cheese)
And everybody complained for years.
It's not fair that I'm a priest and I take a lot of damage from melee! (IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T PICK A CLOTH BASED CLASS)
It's not fair that one tanking class is better at a certain type of tanking than I am! (YES IT IS)
It's not fair that I need a different set of gear for my different specs. (BLAH BLAH BLAH)
and the kicker- It's not fair that people that are better than me can get better gear than I can!
Two expansions later, you get what the majority of the community wanted - a bunch of homogenized bull@#(!.
Now you can do virtually everything in WoW as any class, with any spec, and with any set of gear. There is no niche for competitive players, at all. Since they took the game in this direction, I quit WoW, and slowly so is everyone else who is competitive. And like it or not, it's the competitive, troublesome, loud, angry players that fuel a playerbase. You remove the incentive for the competitive players to play, and you kill the game. And most of the people I play with, talk to (none of whom are as aggressive as I am) will say the same thing. WoW is not fun anymore, though many people still play out of habit.
I've spent more hours playing against a stack than damn near anybody, and the people that stacked against me are the people I learned the most from.
In fact, I learned the most from the group of people that I hate the most - My own squad.
Nowadays I spend my gaming time playing L4D with Aarmstrong because he'd sooner play L4D with me than Alleg with the mob of boring voobs.
Have you ever considered how many people do things just to complain about them? I assure you there is a percentage of the community whose favorite hobby is to complain about people like me, which is fine. But now they've lost interest in the game since I'm banned.
What would happen if there was no such thing as crime, hate, pain, anger, fear? Think about how many jobs would be lost that battle those things. Hell, our whole military is (hopefully) aimed at battling those things, and the military is probably employing more people than any other thing.
The game now seems to be at an all-time high of players (since it became abandonware) which is what many people wanted.
But at what expense? Not to undermine the squads that are suddenly doing well in squad games, but the squads that would normally roflstomp them are basically MIA.
XT for instance, between real life issues, permabans (me), and "team balance" - the remaining small number of XT members that would still like to play PuGs with fellow XT, can't. Two XT on a team is a stack. As as result of all of that, XT gets no team practice in PuGs like it used to, and nobody has time to show up to scheduled practices in addition to squad game dates.
Variety is the spice of life, Alleg, and everything else. The people that are ridiculous characters, like me, are shunned for being a character. The quiet people, are quiet, and don't really have much influence anyway. So what's left is what I'd like to call a ball of homogenized bull@#(!. and it's the same thing that's killing the quality of this game, imo, that killed WoW (if you were into it to began with).
I've been playing WoW since I've been banned, in a very specific manner. I find the role that gives me the most influence in a group, and I make sure I'm the best at it, and that's my niche.
(Just like I did with comming TF exp, rushing rix hvy scouts, PT bomber cheese)
And everybody complained for years.
It's not fair that I'm a priest and I take a lot of damage from melee! (IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T PICK A CLOTH BASED CLASS)
It's not fair that one tanking class is better at a certain type of tanking than I am! (YES IT IS)
It's not fair that I need a different set of gear for my different specs. (BLAH BLAH BLAH)
and the kicker- It's not fair that people that are better than me can get better gear than I can!
Two expansions later, you get what the majority of the community wanted - a bunch of homogenized bull@#(!.
Now you can do virtually everything in WoW as any class, with any spec, and with any set of gear. There is no niche for competitive players, at all. Since they took the game in this direction, I quit WoW, and slowly so is everyone else who is competitive. And like it or not, it's the competitive, troublesome, loud, angry players that fuel a playerbase. You remove the incentive for the competitive players to play, and you kill the game. And most of the people I play with, talk to (none of whom are as aggressive as I am) will say the same thing. WoW is not fun anymore, though many people still play out of habit.
I've spent more hours playing against a stack than damn near anybody, and the people that stacked against me are the people I learned the most from.
In fact, I learned the most from the group of people that I hate the most - My own squad.
Nowadays I spend my gaming time playing L4D with Aarmstrong because he'd sooner play L4D with me than Alleg with the mob of boring voobs.
Have you ever considered how many people do things just to complain about them? I assure you there is a percentage of the community whose favorite hobby is to complain about people like me, which is fine. But now they've lost interest in the game since I'm banned.
What would happen if there was no such thing as crime, hate, pain, anger, fear? Think about how many jobs would be lost that battle those things. Hell, our whole military is (hopefully) aimed at battling those things, and the military is probably employing more people than any other thing.
Last edited by dashredda on Tue Mar 31, 2009 9:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
There are two types of Allegiance Players - Those who log in to play with me, and those who log in to complain about me. With me gone, both types lose interest. I am Allegiance.Mastametz wrote:and I forgot to add to my list of things people are addicted to, Video Games...how could I forget that.
It's in there with hallucinogens and God, categorized by general loss of reality..
juckto... I'll miss that @PK
Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.
Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 1 2009, 09:35 PM) But I don't read the forums I only post.
I promise once the shakes are over, and you have chewed your fingernails down so low there isnt much left but bloody nubs.....its easy to quit alleg and never come back (looks around nervously) 
Alleg + Where quality gameplay for Spunky is priority #1
God Bless the pessimist for he brings extra ammo.