MORE FROM QUEEN DURGA OF THE BLUE PEOPLE… AND GREEN PEOPLE, TOO [Author: lum]
Apparently Ms. Mulligan had a somewhat stormy meeting with the rabble last night. Here’s a recap, from someone who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. (The salient points in the letter have already been confirmed from two other sources.)
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As I’m sure you’ve already heard, there was a meeting in the Seekrit E-Leet OSI IRC Seerz channel last night. Well, there’s one every Monday night, but there was a special guest last night. Yes, Durga, aka the Super Top Ultimate Professional Interest Director (you find the acronym).
Only two things were actually going to be discussed, first one, they don’t want seers working on the shards they spent years getting to know, since that might actually make them more effective and useful to the community and we can’t actually have seers that do something to help the shards that inspired their love for the game. It also brings up that dreaded ‘abuse’ word, which, being the honest and trustworthy sorts we happen to be in the seer program, we don’t really worry about. BUT, it comes down from above, that our newly-less-esteemed leader has been doing this for many systems, and that this is the only way to do it. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Of course, that’s the minor issue. A little fluff to spice up the real meaty question. Open applications for Seers. Yes, I said it, they want to put a public application on the web, and should someone apply (only have to be over 18 for this one folks, have to be over 25 to telestorm, but you can spawn drakes and gold at 18) they are now run through the hoops.
Hoop 1 – Someone actually reads the apps to remove well known losers. So if your account was flagged for something, you can give up now. Or you can get another account, that one will be clean.
Hoop 2 – Take the r33t Seer IRC Training courses, with such advanced topics as “IC and OOC : What it means to me”, and “Event Design for Dummies vols 1 and 2”
Hoop 3 – ingame tool training on the TC! Yeah, give them powers with no experience. Bah, who cares, it’s just TC anyway… right?
Hoop 4 – Group and Individual event… on TC. If you cannot find players to play in your event, players will be provided by the Interest program at no extra charge. (Note : There will be more and vastly different classes of players on normal shards, this is really only to teach you that .pl != .ps)
Hoop 5 – BS your way through a personal interview with an IGM, who has a large number of interviews to do after yours, and probably is tired, hungry, or just sick of interviews.
Hoop 6 – Congratulations, should you pass, here’s your robe, diploma, and full access to all Seer powers, have fun on _____ shard.
Now, I don’t know about you, but the current seers were a bit nervous about something so blatantly idiotic as this. I mean, look at the companion program. To quote, there were only 20 incidents out of 1200. This statistic provided by Durga him/herself, it may or may not be completely accurate. That’s only one out of 60! Wow, .66 percent is a pretty good rating… until you consider that even one rogue seer with full powers will be an abuse incident the likes of which hasn’t been seen yet. It’s like setting a balloon full or red dye in a kindergarten classroom, and telling them not to touch it… then after they behave for a week, leaving them alone for a few hours. Remember, these are some of the most creative – and creatively dangerous – people in UO.
But they are getting powers second only to GM’s with 3 IRC classes, a TC class, two mini-events on TC, and an IRC interview. Just wait, there will be one smooth-talking imbecile, and they’ll float through the classes. Maybe it’ll even be everyone’s favorite Doctor… Access Granted… self destruct in 5… 4… 3…
And let’s not even mention… oh wait, let’s mention it. These decisions were already final before the IRC chat even began, and the entire ‘discussion’ was a sham, built out of pretty sparkles and pixiedust to blind us and make us smile and think happy-thoughts. The meeting fell victim to Volunteer PR. Everyone got a nice song and dance, and seers dropped out of the chat like they were being hit with RAID – Green Robe formula. Although it was amusing to see one mis-statement almost get a good 70% of the seers to quit on the spot.
But, she is much more experienced, and better in every way – so that means she knows best – that was pointed out several times. Of course, after 2 months in UO as a player, she easily outranks the seers that have been doing this on the only game of this scale ever created to this date. It’s not like they’ve been filling a new and unique role or anything, we’re just insta-DM’s, ready to provide simple canned quests for the mass public. Well, at least we are in her eyes.