tl;dr version:
Boxcar bots are fixed, have a good summer! :)

gl;wr (good length, will read) version:
OK, I think I fixed the news, so thanks to qz installing curl earlier today. :)

I'm completely wiped and did these updates after a crazy long day of work and commuting, so I'm not 100% sure it's perfect, but let's see. It's not worse. News and Scores are the two I focused on and the news is reconciling with IRC data from FFA correctly.

I'm not trying to rant about this aspect but it's going to come off that way. At some point it would be nice if more altruistic, trustworthy folks with the skills to get things accomplished would step up and start helping support this community through hosting. The reasons that qz and I (and now Zarcon, and formerly slag) were able to have the background to work on the game was because of our work with hosting sites.

At this stage we've worked very hard to give the community the tools to create some pretty neat things in terms of clan hosting but we haven't had a single public, multi-clan hosting site created since EE started. I guess what I'm saying is that at some point the community is going to need to start acting like a community again and not simply expect the same handful of people who have been keeping hosting sites going for 5-6 years (during E2025 too) to keep doing it forever.

So it shouldn't bother anyone that Boxcar was broken because I was too busy -- life happens. However, it should bother everyone that no one stepped up and made something new and better at a time when it would have been great to do so.


--- END BOXCAR/ADMIN RELATED CONTENT ---

This next piece of material is fairly simple. It's called "free floating hostility." Seventeen minor Alliance server items I'm bored with, tired of, and pissed at. So I hope you're ready for a little random anger. (and if you get this reference, mad props to you)

Hosting:
-I'm still incredibly busy this summer so my focus will be on offline things, but the one thing I will be working on is new hosting stuff with a group from PDM/MD. It'll be internal for at least a while based on how it's being developed.

LaF:
- Further to the last point, apologies to all the awesome LaFfers who were great testers and idea folks for Boxcar, but your leaders did their best to burn bridges with me and assure me that all trust in me was lost.

-Let me assure everyone that the decision to out those guys was not political and our post accurately reflected the information we had from the server. I even continued to update relevant threads in the following days despite the fact I didn't really have the time to do it.

-It still boggles my mind that to some folks in LaF, the net result of TC stealing a database password, exploiting it in potentially many forms for probably 2+ years and passing it off to the active Don of the alliance, who used it to form the basis of his political planning, is that I'm the bad guy for not coddling LaF's interests.

-Part of the reasoning why ppl in LaF think that I'm "the next Duque" and that I was all too eager to throw LaF under the bus was because I made a post chastising LaF for becoming everything that we together fought against for so long. That's my right as a Don and a Godfather, however, my access was completely cut for it. I can't even begin to count the number of times other Dons and Godfathers criticized other leaders, myself included.

-When I first realized that all this was true and it was going to be a big deal, I expected that I would be going back to help repair LaF's credibility and try to make the server a better place, probably in a supporting role alongside folks like H4 and SG. Detmer can confirm this as I was talking to him about it, but after talking to a few LaF folks, it was clear that I was seen as part of the problem.

MD:
-You're a better alliance that doesn't need to try and complete the goal you weren't able to complete in 2006. The fact that at least one MD leader was telling PDM leaders that I was a LaF spy and that I shouldn't be allowed into PDM leadership is just so wrong. I got more intel on MD's planning from LaF than I got from MD. Ironically, that intel was got through stolen information which is horrible, but for quite a while it was unfortunate that a traditional PDM enemy was giving us planning information that our FDP wasn't sharing with us; especially when we were expected to take part in round 2 of the conflict.

Major war alliances:
-You guys honestly need to reform how you play this game or there's not going to be a game for you to play. Stop trying to push the buck to the staff to make all the changes through code so that you can keep continuing your failed policies; you can do things to improve the game as-is. This is a community, you get out of it what you put into it and too often what you put into it is a net negative for the community.

-If given the chance I am 100% confident that nearly all if not all major alliances would also abuse a password or other exploit to gain a competitive advantage over their enemies. This has happened time and time again through the history of the game.

Alliance Leaders:
-I'm incredibly tired of the lack of ethics, morals or just general good behaviour by many players. As leaders, it's time to start reigning in the crappy politics of lying, cheating, sketchy spying, and doing anything you can to gain a competitive advantage over an opponent. It's not all leaders by any means, but I can definitely point to at least one person who is willing to do "dirty" things in every major alliance.

-Further to the previous point, alliances need to stop with the crazy conspiracy-focused planning where all wars must be planned to be slam-dunk wins where the war is over by the end of a weekend. I don't understand how anyone finds it fun to build a war-focused country all round and then only use it 2-3 days at a time. Some of that is due to mechanics, but alliances could maybe try to take on a challenging opponent some time and not keep looking for easy victories.

Trolls:
-To everyone who flamed me about how horrible it was that I was playing in LaF while being an admin and having opinions... how do you feel now that I haven't been in LaF for over a year? Is the game a better place? Is your alliance better off for it? You guys were so busy focusing on trying to tear down my credibility that you didn't realize that I was holding LaF back from it's naturally more destructive state.

-My views on what's "good for the server" have never changed with the political fortunes of the alliances I played with, but everyone else's argument seems to have flipped over time. Except SoF... so at least they've been consistent. I stopped pushing the argument because, honestly, this is how I felt at that point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AAP7zORyWA

-The fact that many trolls seized on the smallest, most inconsequential elements of our initial post re:hackings to try and spin it to paint LaF as a group of cheaters is not accurate and I told everyone that numerous times.

Personal:
-There are two ways for this game to succeed. One is for the existing community to become the positive community it used to be when Earth thrived. The other is to completely rebuild the game focusing on a completely different market of players. This game was essentially built for the Alliance server community and I don't feel that the community, as a whole, has done enough to temper the polarized players who are currently running the major alliances on this server.

-Some folks need to learn to leave the game in the game and remember that it is, indeed, a game. We should be treating each other as competitors; not mortal enemies.

-I spend so much of my very limited EE time dealing with drama-related items that I haven't even looked at the EE game code in months. We all want to make the game better, but time and time again, it's the drama that needs our attention. It's so incredibly frustrating.

--- END HOSTILITY ---

I re-read this and I really don't like how I wrote this post, but all of that has to be said at some point. Apologies if I pissed anyone off.

Like I've said a dozen times before, I'm super busy this summer (busiest one I can remember) and there's a lot of things in flux, so I'm essentially taking the summer off from active development and won't be around all that much. This was planned before the stupid drama stuff happened, and that was indeed what pulled me back in up to this point.

So to everyone (and I mean EVERYONE), I wish you all a great summer (or winter) and when I am able to start putting time toward development again I hope that I'll be returning to a better server.

Cheers,
Dave

Thanks for everything pang :) We deeply appreciate your efforts with the game.

Thanks.

That actually didn't give me the impression of a horribly angry rant (then again, I'm not directly targeted) and I can only say that, in my opinion, you hit the nail on the head with a lot of those points.

1) Pang is right

2) Pang, you owe me a beer, you've been around the corner for years and we haven't hung out!

3) The best part is how bad people will troll this thread. I'm guessing 16 posts until it because "Evo Vs LaF: Who is the greater evil"

Evo is :P

Nice post Pang. Maybe some of the angry Laffers will chill out when given some time. It was a fluffty situation and not everyone reacts the same. Enjoy your summer.

<3 pangy

good post pang.
enjoy your summer bud, and have a few brewski's for me

Yeah this was actually a well written post. Being a critic of some of your previous posts, I think that should mean something. :P Have a good summer and thanks for boxcar fixing and general goodness that you did and do.

Cheers!

thanks pang

Thankyous pang :O

usually it's just the trolls and ppl that are complaining, that are the loudest.
But I'm quite sure that at least 70% of the EE community appreciates all your work as much as I do.
Thanks a lot for all your work!

heya Pang and the Gang, your work on the game and on boxcar really are appreciated probably +more+ than you know.

There are genuine friendships here; people we probably will never meet face to face but real nonetheless.

And that's the true value you extended to us when you kept the game alive.

Have a great summer!

Let's all be positive and make this community work!! No war. Ever. No landgrab. Ever. No market so no buy outs. Ever. Everyone just mass explore for 2 months, self tech, and buyout our pm to win the game! Happy ending!!

LaF is the Prime Evil. :P



As long as leaders don't give crappy reasons to FS other alliance or things that put efforts of some players to waste.
IMO as a player, I'd rather accept being FSd by saying they're pissed with my country name than making so many dramas for the sake of FS.

thanks, much appreciated :)

Pang can i nitpick? the country search still doesnt work :P

but you dont have to feel bad about being "hostile" we already knew youre an emotional player :)

Thanks Pang, I sure appreciate your work on the game. Despite a few negatives, and I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of your comments, this a a fun game and an interesting community. I'm glad to be part of it.

I agree re: hosting solutions. Although, I do feel as if there should be a "utopia fall back solution" where there is some type of clan message board ingame.



Anywho, good thread pang. I agree 100% on everything or nearly everything.

Nice post pang

good post, I skipped most of hostility stuff since it doesn't concern me but read parts of it.

i didnt ready anything....but i will say this;

dai pamkers dai!

No spoilers!

Good post. Unfortunately. this post, like so many before it will fall on deaf years.

Pang, Thank you for all of the time and effort you put into this so we can play this game. It is appreciated. Enjoy your summer(well try to it sounds pretty busy)!

Pity post.

This game isn't worth your time Pang. Why do I say that? Because I went AWOL a few weeks ago and it's been great. Not playing this game is more enjoyable than playing the game.

That is a real problem when you're talking about entertainment.

You'd be better off investing your time into something more productive (financially and enjoyment wise).

I'll continue to be AWOL but I will prob check back in here from time to time just to see how its all going.

Surgeon General's Warning: Mehul disease may be contagious and hazardous to one's health and mental well-being.

You forgot to address ghost acres and how they will be removed so that untalented players in RD cannot make the top 10.

Or is that something that won't happen because PDM takes those same advantages? :cheapshot:

You still won't make the top 10 regardless of whether RD can abuse ghost acres, Thomas. :truthshot:

I'm not addressing game mechanics on this thread; this is purely a boxcar PSA with a personal political rant afterward.

But my personal opinion on landtrading is that it's a great learning tool to learn how to grab without pissing other people off when you do it poorly. When it's used with the express purpose to gain crazy amounts of land by optimizing every hit for a competitive advantage, that's when it's too far. That's what I, personally, want to curb. Most ppl in PDM came around to that line of thought after we watched RD grow huge when we GAVE them our land in the lead up to the first SoF war, and then they literally pissed it away (deleting 40k land countries) to steal ANW from our other FDP.

Oh, and then RD sold us out like 3 days later because Chump is either spineless, two faced or both, leaving PDM to get hit again by our mutual enemy while RD pacted out and sat on the sidelines asking us for netting advice. But in all honesty, I'm more disappointed in RD for their actions on the Team server than anything they've done on Alliance (in EE). On Alliance, RD acts spineless and selfish (as all alliances do from time to time), but on Team they're literally making the game unplayable.

great post

Thanks Pang!!!
I thought Sex Offenders was fluffing up team. Then again I haven't looked at team in months

Stone HIM!!

RD doesn't exist in Teams anymore because RD in Alliance didn't want the bad publicity that came from sharing a name

Great post, Pang. Thank you and the other admins for all their work. Once more, thanks again!

fluff you Zen. What an asshole

Uranus is so heinous,
that we must just complainus,
because your gas is so toxic,
that it makes us go flopus.

Hairy Plopper.

To anybody reading this thread and thinking "oh, here he is talking about this person, or that person"....

No, its really to/about ALL of us.

I hope everybody enjoys the game while it lasts, because one day it will be gone. I seriously have no idea why pang puts in the time and effort that he does into this....

i thought it was because he enjoyed doing it and enjoyed the community. think he's probably just a bit stressed and is flipping his biscuit.

hmm, that reminds me...

did any Canadian Earthers happen to get busted in Berlin recently?

He is talking to all of us, but I guarantee it is directed more at some than others.

99% of this was a message to you. The rest of us are the 1%

thanks!

how on earth is it rd makes the server unplayable.. sorry, made the server unplayable?

dislike rds political actions on this server all you want (we'll likely agree! except i'd pact out everybody, constantly, regardless of anything :P), but to simply make things up about other servers is ludicrous, pang :(

unless you're referencing like a year ago, in which case, i agree wholeheartedly and did everything i could to stop them from playing like such.

team has/was always been a cesspool, before RD ever went over there

from day 1 that server has been broken.

just about everyone over there is guilty of making the game unplayable. that is, anyone who has been in an alliance that has more than 1 tag.

singling out RD for that failure of a server is incorrect and shows personal bias, pang.

I disagree. RD was *more* culpable than others, although there are many who have lesser guilt, as well. I certainly admit that once the stance was taken that there would be no admin intervention to enforce team limits I became more guilty than many.

As to if team was broken before RD, I wasn't around for that.

rd won the war against.. i forget whom, but the war was over more than one tag vs just one tag..

but this happened a long, long time ago. and since then rd has entirely left, come back kind of, and then entirely left again.

somehow us leaving, kind of maybe for a while coming back, and then leaving again is making the game unplayable for everybody?

If the admins of the game aren't going to enforce the main rule of the team server (5 countries per tag), then yeah the server is broken. And they never once (tmk) enforced the 5 countries per tag limit so yeah it was broken from the get go. It'd be like mutlies infesting alliance for many many many resets and them wiping out the real alliances and then the game admins blaming the multies for ruining the game.

I'd say the minority share of blame should be placed on ALLLLLL the players of team (atleast those who's tag had more than 5 countries). The majority share of the blame should be placed on whatever crackerjack game admins team has had over the last X resets.

Most of what Pang said is accurate except for this:

"-Further to the previous point, alliances need to stop with the crazy conspiracy-focused planning where all wars must be planned to be slam-dunk wins where the war is over by the end of a weekend. I don't understand how anyone finds it fun to build a war-focused country all round and then only use it 2-3 days at a time. Some of that is due to mechanics, but alliances could maybe try to take on a challenging opponent some time and not keep looking for easy victories. "

The game mechanics facilitate this mentality wholly and solely. When an alliance can prepare and declare war as early as Turn 101 this is not going to change. The 'gentlemen's agreement' of at least getting a valid reason for war from the current reset, is dead and buried and the vicious cycle of revenge and counter-revenge rolls on unabated. The abuse of these game mechanics (perfected by LaF) will continue until one side says OK we deserved that, peace out, start again. Won't happen.

yes i demand u recognize the fact that TSO ruined team server... do not neglect us and ignore us damn it!!! but all in all.. good post pang