SL Suffering at the Hands of TSO's Problem Players?

I'm a dirty, dirty girl.

Its never about what games people come from that justify who they are.. its the people themselves... Games dont make peoples personalities.. people do.

MMM, so you will be over at what time tonight Ingrid...hehe

Just kidding

but Tya your right and I adore your response as it rings oh so true.

Shadow.

Willow there are many people, such as myself who never played TSO and blended right in since day one.

I was in TSO for the beta plus about 9 months. I left largely because "custom content" was going nowhere. SL is the perfect refuge for people frustrated with the limited customization options of other games.

There were some ogres in TSO, and I think they need to be met with terminal sanctions if they cause any trouble here. But there were angels in TSO as well, and I think they need to be welcomed with open arms.

Of course, sometimes telling the difference is problematic...

You know what is bothering me right now?

It's that I see friends of mine in this thread taking totally uncalled for pot-shots at one person, instead of just letting things die down and slowly go away.

How can you people be so two-faced to pretend to be all nicey-nicey in-world when I talk to you, and then come to the forums and do a hatchet job of Prokofy?

I'm not saying that Prokofy doesn't have any responisibility in this thread, as he himself should have just ignored it and left it alone, but some of you people, merely jumped on the thread JUST to attack Prokofy, and that's just wrong!

I ask you all once again to stop treating others in this manner, and instead, let's hold CIVIL discourse and OPEN conversations instead of acting like a bunch of 5 year olds who just do it because the see others doing it.

My friends, please, I'm asking you that you show caring and compassion in the same manner that I show you, for everyone here. Prokofy, I ask you to stop answering these threads and trying to explain anything. Some people are going to say what they want, some are going to believe what they want. The true measure of a friend though is someone that doesn't care what is said about you, but finds out for themselves about you by interacting with you.

So please, everyone, let's drop this, "We hate Prokofy" ideal and instead let's talk about things that have more and better meaning. Like how about all my friends, and all those that don't know me as a friend yet, swing by Slate this evening about 6PM PST and say HI. We are currently in the process of revamping Slate (again) and it's probably one of the only times you are going to see the SIM without much of anything on it Who knows, perhaps one of you will find that you enjoy the Slate Community Group well enough that you will want to join up with us and become one of our Core Group members. Anyway, let's stop being mean, and instead, let's come on down to Slate and just have a good time!



Thanks!

In that case, sit next to me!

*sniffs* I took a shower this morning

I was in the beginning beta of TSO. That's where I actually met Cristiano! haha.. Man that was ages ago.

My second day in world, the alt of WW came and visited me in Alphaville (my main home always). Didn't know it was him at the time. Later I made other friends on the forum. And actually ended up rooming with WW for a bit on another city. Alphaville stayed my home though.

I had the charter version and all. Even had a TSO comic strip that some still remember. But I left in Februrary.. I guess about 2 months after it went live, due to RL issues. When I came back about 8 months later, it was just not the same.

Cristiano found me and told me about THERE. I was in THERE for like a month and a half till I finally checked out the game SL that he was telling me about. Once I tried SL, I couldn't go back to anything. I even left EQ which I had at the time been playing for 5 years.

Oz Spade is my only referral to SL thus far. hehe.. Guess he is enough to handle for you all though. Met him in THERE. A couple of my TSO friends are here in SL too. And even a few people that I knew from my EQ days.

I'm babbling, but I guess my thing is that there are different types in all of these worlds. Some are great, some not so much.

I understand that you mean gnomed in the most general sense to represent the repetitive faux work that many players relied on to have their income. There were, however, many folks who relied on a different form of income in TSO. Some of us ran popular properties earning money on the basis of how many people showed up there, how long they stayed, and how productive they were while there. This system of rewarding popular and efficient hosts is somewhat like the dwell one earns in SL; therefore, many TSOers were relatively prepared for that aspect. Perhaps TSOers were unprepared as a whole for a culture in which they were competing against professionals for jobs and in which jobs with low expertise levels are rare.

As a TSO transplant, I knew the minute I got in SL that I would only go back to TSO to set my virtual affairs in order. The freedom and adults only environment that SL affords are worth the difficulties I encountered when I first started (having no sense of where I fit in to the community, in what ways my rl talents prepared me to contribute, and what to do with my time here). I do know a number of TSO transplants who have done marvellously well in that transition. I know a smaller number who hated SL and didn't come back mostly because they didn't like the unfamiliar feel / bugginess of the game, the perceived unfriendliness (which I didn't experience at all, thankfully) and the sense that, unless one is a highly skilled IT professional, one doesn't have a chance of 'making it' (perceived differently by different people, but generally seeming to mean having some kind of income) in SL.

One thing I want to be clear about however is that it is easy to imagine that TSOers as a lot were driven by a sense of entitlement. In fact, I saw many forms of entreprenurial spirit happening in TSO (running stores or unusual properties, selling of rare pets, real estate investing, money transferring between 'cities', etc.) So, it could be that folks had to make a transition in coming here, and many of us had to make a transition not long after when the only *job* for which we could conceivably be prepared to undertake (events hosting) went from being a job that one could do for money to one people largely expected should be done for free.

Why is that funny to you, Ulrika. It is sad to me that you find that funny as you had, prior to this post, been rather one of my forum heroes. I so often agree with you on political issues that I thought that meant you were likely maybe a little evolved as a human being.

Why would it be funny to call TSO people dullards? Or to call someone names, effectively; even an individual with whom you do not agree deserves the bare basic respect we would each ask to be accorded to ourselves. Entire groups of people being called dullards is pretty nasty. Up for some pollack jokes? ethnic slurs? blonde jokes? I am really disappointed.

I find this VERY condescending and uncalled for!!!! Our world??? Its my damn world as much as anyone elses. You are NOT special, your one of us.I came from TSO and I could post say........ Are the people who arrived after Feb 04 affecting OUR world? Should people comming after this date be banned if they ever were on another MMOG?

This has to be one of the most obnoxious threads ever posted.

I found that particular quote funny, as it appeared nonsensical to me at first and suddenly was understood. It was that moment of surprise which caused me to laugh and make my post.

As for saying that every member of a group is more intelligent than the other, that to me is nonsensical! In fact, intelligence in a population follows a normal distribution. So, while the average intelligence of a population might be higher or lower than another, there is still a tremendous amount of overlap. Thus, from my position as a statistician, I do not interpret the shifting of the average IQ to be an insult to an entire group of people rather I recognize it as a mathematical possibility.

To expand, in retrospect I cannot say whether or not the average intelligence between TSO and SL is different. Anecdotally, I would say that SL's average IQ would be higher, although that's not worth much in any field of science. Whether or not (edited) IQ is between the mean of TSO and SL is even more difficult to say.

To summarize, I don't feel that appreciating the surprise of that joke either globally called any single group a dullard nor specifically pinned down (edited) IQ. (Which despite a wicked chemical imbalance is most likely quite high.)

~Ulrika~

Ulrika, what is your view on this? You opened it up for discussion and have basically stayed out of it. I still dont really understand your initial reason for posting to begin with. Did you get the replies you anticipated? Have you learned anything from it? Do you have a stance on your own topic?

I have no stance. I created it as a vehicle to increase the pressure on PN during the "shunning", knowing that he and his cabal couldn't help but throw themselves into it. I admit it's a shameless use of the forums to promote my own FIC agenda and it worked well.

*sigh* I know. Some days I'm Princess Leia and other days I'm Darth Vader. It's the Ulrika dichotomy -- I oscillate between a caring pacifist and a violent leftist.

I must admit that the thread actually became quite educational once it settled down. I learned a lot about TSO and its relationship with SL. This is my first MMOG.

~Ulrika~

Hmmm I believe psychologists call that Schizophrenia....

No they don't! Yes I do!

~Ulrika~

Saying that complaining about TSO users is like complaining about New Users is trolling, Chip?

Interesting.

Ok, I think I know what this thread is about...

I know Ingrid can be a dirty gas bag sometimes, but shes not THAT bad. I mean come on, she has her more indearing moments, mentionaly if she can control her constant farting.

Embrace her gassyness, we use to use it for hot tubs in TSO.


Dont let her misbehavior represent all of use TSO refugees! We can do much better than her!

P.S. thanks for the "dont ban barnes" support guys I feel oh so loved. Yeah but if you have to ban Ingrid, I understand. Shes just trouble.

Persephone,

I was in TSO myself - I am embarassed to admit it, but I actually still have my TSO account, and I have not played actively since around February of 2003 (I can't bear to destroy my house lol). TSO actually introduced the concept of dwell that SL ultimately picked up. In fact, when they first added it, I thought to myself, oh lord, it's skill houses all over again lol. It didn't work out exactly that way, but there was a lot in common between the two.

I have a lot of respect for TSO - it was the first online game to capture my attention. I was addicted to it heavily for months, but ran into the barrier that so many creative people did. The lack of new content was just unbearable after awhile. Also, entry for me into the early betas of both There and SL were the nails in the coffin of TSO for me. Surprisingly, There initially interested me much more than SL, but that quickly changed. Once I figured out that There was as much of a dead end as TSO, with the added benefit of painted on cleavage and $1000 Amex bills, I started craving more so I went back to SL. One building class and 2 years later I am as addicted to SL as ever (and making a profit instead of spending a fortune).

You are right in that my statement about gnomes was a generalization about the income earning mindset in TSO - the endless benefactor who would buy your paintings and gnomes and everything else. I hated making gnomes, so what I did to earn money was paint paintings lol. Everything in my house for a long time was made purely by painting. I was also completely unafraid to beg for money from friends if I really wanted something. A gay friend of mine made me marry him in exchange for giving me money for a bookcase, so yes, there you go, I was married to a guy in TSO lol. It was very lurid.

One thing I do think a lot of people are missing in this thread is that underneath the provocative (and understandably offensive) question Ulrika is asking, there is an interesting question there. Now that SL seems to be attracting the staunch holdouts of TSO - the ones who would not leave for ANYTHING, it is an interesting question of whether or not we will start to see some of the seemier elements of TSO life make the transition as well. TSO is legendary for its griefers, child brothels, mafias and Barnesworth Anubis. We already know what can happen if they let Barnes in. Are the rest coming? Maybe they are already here. God knows a lot of the mafia crap in SL is pretty damn childish, it would not surprise me if they were 14 year old TSO refugees.

In the end, whether we are from TSO, Everquest, There, Furcadia, some MUD from 1994, or never played another online world before, we all come here with certain expectations and hopes of what it will and won't be. The great thing about SL is that if it is not what we want right at this moment, there is no place that has more of a potential to become what we want it to be, often times at our own hand. That is what is endlessly exciting about SL to me, and why things like TSO, There, etc.. can't ever begin to compare. At the same time, SL owes a great deal to the environments that have come before it, and even that have come after it (World of Warcraft has captured the attention of a huge portion of the SL player base). Every online world has something special about it, and by proxy, so do the users that come from them.

Ingrid, you weren't in the top three slots. Neither was Barnes. Or Traxx. Or some other talented people. And it made you all mad as hell. You might have stayed if you won, but you didn't, that other guy won with the American slum ghetto thingie..can't think of this name...and he won, for the same reason that Michael Moore won at Cannes, not because he was good, but because he was anti-American and anti-Americanism was the new black that year...

Custom content? Huh? You never talked about custom content. And when those Maxis/EA.com people came up with LOADS of new cute stuff like magic trees and milkhakes you were all like, feh, over here in SL drinking your milkshakes under your magic trees here LOL.

Yes i was. Not that I really care.. it was stupid.. just like everything else was compared to the stuff made here.



Yes i did. All the time. I didn't talk to you though. I didn't even know you there except I'd hear the occasional remark about how you were bad news. And i didn't bother with the TSO forums - babbling 16 year olds yammering away about jam.




What? lol. What does THAT mean?

TSO was mind numbingly boring. Completely unchallenging. Totally devoid of any creative possibilities. This isn't news to anyone. Maybe you were able to have fun with your alts and roleplaying, but thats definetely not for everyone. The only reason i spent a year or so trying to amuse myself in TSO was because my computer was too shitty at the time to run SL. I tried. I had a beta account in SL but wasn't able to play. Too bad... I could have been a FIC oldbie by now.

I will officially sublet my alt's FIC status to you, since that account also has an early 2003 birthdate

God bless you child.

The humour in this joke is predicated on the idea that people from the sims online collectively possess an intelligence level significantly lower than prokofy and that people from second life collectively possess an intelligence level significantly higher than prokofy. All of these assertions are repugnant and a personal attack not only on Prokofy (i'm amazed the lindens missed it and left it in) but also on all players of the sims online.

Ulrika says that it is the surprise of the joke that caused her to post about how funny it was. I say it is the absolute nastiness of the joke that causes me to post: very offensive indeed. Something I would note, also, is that many of the players in The Sims Online are teens, so it is utterly impossible to judge from speech and behaviour what their intelligence is (speaking as one who has taught them).

Intelligence is one measure of a human being, but not the only one. Certainly, kindness, loyalty, maturity, and industry are others. Intelligence is a fine thing to have, but it is only one thing that makes up a superb human being. It is a quality that clearly doesn't guarantee civility as much as one might hope.