The War of the Jessie Wall: Comments, Corrections, Reflections, Corrections

So the epic story of the Jessie wall, the WWIIOLers, and everything else associated with them will be going up in the next couple weeks. (Yep, it's a 10 parter!) Here's the place to talk about it, along with anything and everything that might be related to it. If you feel I've missed crucial points, or got others wrong, post here; if you just want to expand on anything I say, post here; if you have your own reflections on the incident, post here. In other words, just post.

(Also, by request, most of the screenshots are expandable, so if there's an image you like, click away, for the big picture.)

Just one question and this is in no way meant as an attack on you Hamlet, but why is this piece being done after most of the WWIIONLINERS are gone? The group no longer ranks in the Group rank, and may not even exist anymore, i havent' checked.

It seems the story is gonna be told now by who is left and not by both sides...

I could be wrong but it just seems that way to me.

JV

It's a fair question! The thing is, I've been working on it
for almost two months, and talking with folks on both
sides during that time (not to mention the folks on neither
side). Whether or not it's a balanced presentation, well,
that's what I'm hoping you guys opine upon here.

We're still here ya'll!!!!

95% of them are gone.

lol I know you are Syank, but your group was over 100 strong, i know you've lost a lot right?


oh well just making sure it doesn't turn into a one sides presentation but I trust Hamlets objectivity and if he says he has both sides then i look forward to reading it.

JV.

Yes, your right, most of the 130 wwiiolers are gone, if Hamlet presents the side he was given by many of the wwiiolers about this incident and some subsequent incidents, it will explain why Lindenlabs didn't get roughly another $30,000 a year from our membership...

Read the first article, there is more to this it seems than most know. So I am looking forward to it.

After reading the second article, I reeeeeeeally hope this doesn't devolve into one of those "my country is better than yours" / "500 pages of flame wars concerning gun control" discussions. That said, I have some issues with Yuki's comments in article II.



I don't agree. First off, Canadians love guns more than Americans - they have about one gun for every three people. I don't know whether it is written into the Canadian constitution that the citizens have a right to bear arms, but it is certainly evident that they are allowed to do so. Also, I have spoken to several Canadians over the years in IRC, and they all loved first-person shoot-em-ups. Does that mean Canadians are more likely to run around shooting people in PG sims than Americans? I doubt it!

I think Yuki is over-analyzing cultural differences. I don't think your nationality is going to influence whether or not you are a jerk in SL.

I'm still here aswell

Still working hard building the massive gallery of all things wwIIol.

Yuki had it wrong I think,the main reason our guys were such gun nuts is our gaming history plain and simple,wwIIol attracts a very different gamer then second life does.We came from a war game,most wwIIol players love weapons in general.

It has nothnig to do with a cultural difference,infact I'd guess that about 1 in 5 of our group members are canadian,wwIIol has possibly thousands of canadians playing.

The reason there was lots of shooting and such in pg sims was jsut the fact that many of our guys were not interested in the game and were just screwing around.

They came in with those of us that were interested just to see what all the fuss was about since for about a week every other thread on our boards was second life related.

Also,I'd like to make a correction to something in the article.

In part 3 hamlet mentions the first wwIIol players to enter second life who used it as a centcom or whatever.

Those guys did not start the wwIIolers group,they started the wargamers.

Those first dozen or so guys i think were all buddies from the TOT i believe which is a large squad in wwIIol,they came into this game some weeks before the rest of us.

Then later on someone posted it on our forum since it was free back then in beta so a few guys came over,thats when it started really.

Heh fact is not many were interested,that is until the guys who were ingame got attacked by a group of players who didnt realize that unlike some we would enjoy getting shot at .

Afterwards an AAR was posted on the boards and hoards of us began signing up to fight with the others.

mm I don't recall a trickle. I recall more a stream. I was in Shipley when I started seeing strings of avs fly into the outlands. I poked around and ended up at the welcome center where they were coming in one after another. Avondell came to greet new groups and lead them to the outlands.

Now, my timing may be off. I didnt keep any notes on this event so maybe thats the next installment. But that is my memory of it.

'Course them Canadian fellers, they were in WWII - the one that happened before anyone had heard the term "online."

That's a beautiful idea! Using SL to plan exploits in other games, especially ones where strategy actually matters (CTF, team deathmatch, assault, etc).

By the way, that WWIIOL museum is great, I get a kick out of it every time. Wonder what the Lindens would think if some of those "Richards" started popping up to demonstrate what people thought of certain threads.

hehe over at our forums every other thread has em

I'd like to add another correction.

we did NOT fire first.

there was no killing (or atleast nowhere near as much as the article makes it sound like) when we got there.

the first thing we did was build our place,then the group of folks came over and like the article says,they said they thought our bunker is an eyesore.

they said they didnt want fighting,someone even said that the game is for chatting and we cant shoot or something of that nature.

then as eukyant said our reply was basically "suck it up".

that article leaves out what eukyant said following that.

the full quote is

"suck it up...and they didn't like that either. Then, they opened fire."


the violence was not started by us,there may have been people doing some killing i dont know but they acted as individuals not representing the group.

then it was the group of SL'ers that started the fighting with us.

Well written, Hamlet.

A couple of corrections. Misnomer is right, the first night there was about 25 of us, and in 24 hours there were 60. And we wernt using SL for a CENTCOM...I dont remember anyone even suggesting that. We came over...basically....because invading other games is a hobby for our OT forum denizens. Someone finds a game and we all converge on it. There have been at least 10-12 games we did that to before this one. Not to disrupt or grief...just to play. For fun and because we can. SL is a good game and it attracted a lot of us. A similar number still play Nukezone, after 2 years. I...and many others...left this game because of the extremely negative factions in the community. Not because the game doesnt kick ass.

Anyways, good series of articles....cant wait for the rest.

Avondell

avondell the centcom he was reffering to was the place the ToT guys built a few weeks before our group got there.

they did make a centcom and its still there actually.

Acually, the first group of people in this game from WWIIOL were not called the WWIIOLers. that was the group i started, the so called "Second wave" of WWIIOL members.

and i know it has been said before, but we did not shoot first.
we just settled in some land we found and started building like ants, then someone opened fire, we started dying and it was MAYHEM! (fun mayhem, BUT MAYHEM!)
when we moved to jessie, we most definatly spend the first day or so building houses, bunkers, what not on it. then people started making groups called "WWIIOL SUCKS" and stuff like that. not fun. but then there was always nice people that dropped by and shot us (bel muse) heheh and we had little fights here and there. then there was a person (dont remember name) who joined our group, and gained our trust, i promoted him to officer, then he went and recruited a bunch of greifers to come and kill us all...over and over ...and over again. it was always cool when lyra and hikaru came by too. but now jessie is just an empty island...

These are all very interesting addendums/amendements/etc.-please keep 'em coming. Like they say about journalism in general (and I say in Part II) "War of the Jessie Wall" is only the first draft of history. And I think I'll make that my only comment here for now, until all ten parts go up-- because this topic is you guys' forum to put in your own POV, not mine.

Where are these articles? I can only find part 4. Maybe I'm blind or perhaps its too early still.

Check out the Archive section just under Hamlet's headshot, Madox. They have been consecutive since he began this series on the 7th.

And Hamlet, great reading! There is so much of that whole time period I was not aware of, since after certain key people pretty much disappeared and things got a lil corny for me, I split.

I wish it was Monday already, I want to read more!

Actually, parts I-V are all featured in this week's entries (though they'll be archived next Monday). Just go to http://secondlife.com/notes/ , and scroll down to the bottom of the screen, to start with I.

Glad you're liking it, Lyra!

Excellently done so far Hamlet. Can't wait to read the rest of it. This was the most contentious culture war in my time in SL and it's interesting having some of the blanks filled in. Great read

Just to try to help fill in a little of the story. I am from the first group of WWIIONLINE folks who got here about a month prior to the group that is now called the "second wave".

We were all from one squad in World War II online called 1st ToT. We play on the German side. We had 35 ToT members join after I posted on the ToT forum about SL. Most of the guys took a last name of VALEN but we were in a group called the TEMPLARS.

When we arrived here I met Bel and Catherine and BBC and explained that we were from a WWII group and that we wanted to try out SL. They were very helpful in getting us organized and we tried to be good SL citizens despite our interest in FPS shoot -em up style play.

We realized the potential for creating a personal combat area and openly stated that we were interested in trying to create that area some where in the outlands in SL.

I realized early on that there was some negative feelings among old time SL lifers about war gamers and there were some negative comments made in the forums. We decided to name our group the TEMPLARS instead of a WWIIONLINE name...


...more

In our WWII online forum we cautioned the new guys coming into SL about the concerns about war gamers and suggested that we be try to fit in and help SL out. One thing we did was set up a TeamSpeak server dedicated to SL and I began to run classes to get set up on the teamspeak server. This helped our startup time quickly and we were able to get BEL and BBC and other long time residents on the voice server where we continued to have excellent relations with them and our group.

We began to build bunkers and develop weapon systems and even had some great melees with BEL and other SL residents. Things were going pretty well and we were looking forward to being able to buy a large area of one of the new Sims to create a combat area. We built quite a few bunkers and the WWIIONLINE center where I live. One of our squad members posted something on the general WWIIONLINE forum about SL.

About this time AVONDELL and a few of the other WWIIONLINE guys showed up. As they are mostly ALLIES and thus our mortal enemies over on WWIIONLINE we really did not have much to do with them but sadly we watched the situation deteriorate as more and more of the WWIIONLINES came in. The worst impact was the fact that since we were WWIIONLIE guys too, we began to get painted with the same brush. SL became less and less fun for us to log on and most of the ToT guys drifted away. We had been saving up as much cash as we could save to buy our "combat area". As each ToT member has left we have been passing on the cash until I ended up with most of the cash we had saved to buy our new home. The Lindens have taken most of the cash we saved away from me so I don't have much of it left. I have my account and think a few others have stayed .

I hope we can all get over this sad experience whoever was at fault. I look forward to contributing along with my WWIIONLINE friends and my new SL friends in whatever way I can..

Sturm22
1st ToT 2nd Panzer Division
Intelligence Officer

Sturm Valen
SL Lifetime member
Federal

Sturm,
Thanks for that clarification. I for one knew that you guys (collectively know by me as the "Valens" came in as a group. I remember when you guys came on since you kind of stuck out being so many with the same last name . I knew you guys were war gamers but I really never knew until now you were also WWII folks.

Interesting. I'm enjoying this unfolding of the events. I always thought the big influx afterwards was the first WWII wave since the Valens showed up in mass but then quietly settled.