y Diablo II site column, Flux's Decahedron, began in November 2002, as a weekly feature.  I backed it up to bi-weekly in January, and then abandoned it entirely in April, due to a lack of time, interest, and inspiration.  At the time I began my column the site hosted several other gaming columns, all of which were serious, faux-journalistic, and very seldom D2-related.  My desire was to write a column that was funny, lively, and about the game, while not shrinking from controversy.  In fact you could make a reasonable argument that not only didn't I try to avoid controversy, but that I actively sought it out.  I wouldn't dispute that, anyway.

Since I had a feedback section added to each column, and posted them all with a link to a forum thread for more comment, you should read the columns and then the feedback if you are really interested in them.  This page will archive only the updates I did on this site about my column on the D2 site, and only those that are of interest/length.  I don't often write about my doings on diabloii.net, since most of the juicy things I'd like to say would get back to the people I was saying them about, or would reflect poorly on that site.  But on occasion, I can't resist.

The most recent ones are added on top, so read from the bottom up if you're new to all this.

March 28, 2003

The D2 site column went up Wednesday and as often happens, some of the early feedback, both email and forum post, was nasty. Not especially nasty, just critical for the sake of being critical.  No flames, no "you suck donkey balls and your mother reeks of curdled sour cream" but more like, "you aren't funny anymore."

Your worst yet

Was there a point to that, Flux?

I smell glue. The horse has been dead on every one of those issues for . . . ages.

Or did you write that one for the folks who just bought the game?

This happens most every week, where I get a few pointless ones like this, and almost always they are in the first hour or two after the column goes up.  Then the majority of the mail comes in later that day, or the next day, and it's 99% positive-unto-glowing.  More so than I think I in any way deserve, really. At least more than I deserve for those columns, which I'm sort of sick of myself.

There are um.... 84 emails in about it thus far, and probably 20 are just like this one:

Hey man I really loved Decahedron #14. Your sense of humor is so witty...it's gold man :)

I love the mention of the old 'Why don't they make planes out of the same material as the black box' comment. Nice work, keep them up, Flux. 

I bring this up not merely for the purposes of auto-fellation, but to make a point also.

First of all, I don't know why I get most of my pointlessly bitchy forum posts or mails right after it goes up.  Chance?  People who refresh the site every 15 minutes all day hoping for v1.10 news are testy?  People who live in the forums and reply to everything quickly have chips on their shoulders and like to take shots at their betters the admins? Or none of the above.

Secondly, and what I think is more interesting, is that the pointlessly bitchy replies are always in the forum.  No one ever mails (maybe once or twice in 14 columns and like 1500+ emails) just to say it wasn't funny.  However the real flames (aside from column 3 which launched The Great Necromancer Discontent of 2002) are always via email.  I've gotten maybe 20 vicious flames, where the guy is obviously being a dick for the sake of being a dick, and all have been emails.

Now you can factor in that that sort of language in the forums will get you banned and your post deleted, and will mostly be ***ed out anyway, and possibly that's why there aren't such flames in the forums.  But still, I find it weird that the short and pissy feedback is always in the forum, while the really nasty ones are always via email.

The obvious reason is that people want to insult me in the forum where others can see.  They get a little rush of fame or feel daring or whatever.  It's fun to be nasty in criticism of famous people.  I've got a whole site section that's based on that theory, after all.  I just find it odd that I'm the "famous person", at least in this D2 fansite venue, and I wonder what the attraction to just being slightly nasty for the sake of being slightly nasty is.  I enjoy ripping up bad movies and literature in my reviews, but I don't go to George Lucas' home page to write about how stupid Episode Two was.  And I would never say it was bad just based on nothing.  I have solid reasons for thinking the movie sucks!  And I provide examples, etc.

To say...

Most inane.

Beating on a dead horse. Too many "reminds me off . . ." references.

Sorry but this time it wasn't even funny. I feel cheated out of 5 minutes of my life.

Btw it's "article" not "artical".

...as one of the forum posts does would just never occur to me.  I don't see the point of engaging in that sort of a public pissing contest, just to show off my urine.  If you have a legitimate, intelligent criticism, even if it's mean/insulting, that's fine.  Posting just to hear yourself whine is stupid. I also have no idea what he's talking about with "article" vs. "artical".  Somehow, perhaps immodestly, I suspect that my grammatical and spelling skills are substantially greater than his, and I would never misspell "article" in that fashion.  A search through the new column finds neither of those words anywhere in it, so as I said, no idea what he's talking about.

I've added this sort of thing to my long list of "really stupid and weird antisocial behaviors evidenced by people on gaming forums and Battle.net" which I'll do something with. Someday.

Actually I might, since Malaya enjoys analyzing human behavior, especially illogical or antisocial types, and we've talked about collaborating on some sort of artical (sic) on the subject.  I've long marveled at the idiocy and cruelty found in human behavior on Battle.net, the dregs of which I receive reports about in my dii.net site inbox every day, and it would be interesting to try and organize and make some analytical sense of it all. Or at least get an interesting d2 site article out of.

It also occurs to me that the D2 site could use a blog.  I could easily do something along the lines of this entry every day there, though it would be a lot shorter.  We often go two or three days without news, and half the headlines the last 3 or 4 months are from the guest articles and site columns that I conceived of and set up and keep running. In theory Gaile and Elly would do them from time to time also, but since neither of them enjoy writing extemporaneously, outside of forum posts (of which Gaile's are generally naggy and Elly's are generally defensive or right to the point), I suspect it would be mostly me.  Which is why it will never happen, and I'll leave it at that, rather than going into too much inter-site politics.

And anyway, we do 4 or 5 articles or columns every week, and have hundreds of thousands of forum posts a week, so why bother with one more non-game related writing thing every day?  Other than that it would be interesting and boost site traffic, that is.  Plus none of the columns or forum posts are really about the state of the site, or silly forum people, or the state of the game.  I'm talking about something quick and fast and light.  Yes, they call them "blogs", I realize that. Anyway, it'll never happen and honestly, it would be 99% my work, and I don't need to add more work.  But damn if I ever did my own gaming fansite, it would be the bomb.  I had so many great ideas for improving Dii.net over time, and so many of them were shot down by my co-workers, for all sorts of reasons, very few of which I thought had anything to do with the quality they would add to the site.

And no, there's no way I'll ever be into another game enough to do a site about it, even if I didn't have this site and even if I didn't have other things to do and even if I had the time and money to do something non-profit like that.  But it would be such a cool site if I did.  All the best content, and the best original features and writing, and a really fun and snarky style and personality.  And yes, I'm entirely too in love with myself.

The columns I've been doing weekly on the D2 site are enjoyable to write and most of the tens of thousands of readers seem to like them.  But I often wonder if non-D2 players would get them or find them funny, or if they are way too "inside" where you have to know the game well to appreciate the humor.  Two mails on that subject today:

I just read (well looked at) your D2 column. It might as well be in Russian since I am not familiar with the game.

------

I love your decahedron columns. my wife always wonders why I laugh so much when I read them cause she just doesn't get them seeing as how she doesn't play d2. what amazes me is I generally agree with everything you say in them, that's rare for me to agree with people but anyway. keep the great columns coming there a great break from cows ;-)

I guess that answers that question.

December 16, 2002

So I write these humor columns for the D2 site.  I put some effort into it, editing and rewording and fine-tuning them, trying to get just the right comic timing and turns of phrases.  Unlike these daily updates, which are 98% unedited and stream of consciousness.  Not that you'd ever notice by reading them. *cough*

So most of the D2 readers appreciate them, and grasp that they are humor.  Some don't.

1st of all bear druids straight suck theyre not worthy of 3rd place. all they do is attack1ce every 4 days and do low dmg because they have no good skills.

2nd an mf barb in the party is worthless they dont fight they just wait for you t kill something and as u would say "hork" theyre asses off. 

3rd a necro sux he shouldnt be in the top 5 mil. all they do is sit there pulling up minnions who dont even kill anything and shooting little skulls rthat do 50 dmg while eeveryone else kills for them 

4th a pally deserves first plce my pally doesnt need help in an 8 player cow run in hmode he clears monsters so fast it would make ur head spin all a pally needs is a fast high dmg weapon (mine uses fury zerker) and with multiple pallys u can end up with 2-3 auras like conviction fanat and holy freeze so everythinganywhere near u is so weak even a lvl1 with a cracked dagger can kill it.

and finaly wheres the fo sorcs? a sorc with max fo/mastery and max meteor/mastery can kill all the monsters in the gme before anyone else steps out of town.

i think u should get a reality check or resign.

This is perhaps the dumbest mail yet, but it's not at all out of the ordinary.  I can accept that he has horrendous English skillz (which isn't out of the ordinary for the D2 site/Internet either) and knows far less about D2X than he thinks he does.  That's nothing unusual.  It's the fact that he doesn't even seem to grasp that it's a humor column, not a serious scientific study of character rankings by killing speed, that disturbs me.

So not only doesn't he grasp any of the jokes, he doesn't even notice that they are jokes.  The third paragraph of the article, before the ranking starts, is this:

This is not in any way a list of the characters in order of killing power, or popularity.  Don't send me email asking how I could say Character X is better than Character Y, based on your lack of understanding of the whole concept... well actually scratch that, do send me that email, it'll give me something to post in the comments next week.  In fact forget that you read this whole paragraph.

Somehow I don't think this mailer read this paragraph, comprehended it, and is just playing along here.

December 13, 2002

While my first two columns on the D2 site were pretty uneventful (people liked them, but there wasn't anything controversial), the third one posted Wednesday is more than making up for it.  Everyone who has a character like the ones mentioned (ridiculed) in my column is emailing to set me straight on how my comments were grossly inaccurate.

The Necromancers Union is by far the most active, and the minute the column went up there was about a 100 post thread on the Necro forum full of people having shit fits about my cruel Necro jokes.

Here's an amusing one from some junkie.

I gave dude a pretty nasty feedback. He is a total ***. At least only total newbs will read this article and not realize that its a total piece of mindless troll ****.

Given how totally he missed the joke, it's pretty funny to see him say that "total newbs will nor realize"...

I love reading them though, even if most are clueless.  There is such bitter vitriol and fury there, over such a silly issue.

Ironically, this is just the sort of feedback I've been anticipating from the Band Names section since I wrote it.  The kids get so wrapped up in their favorite bands, much more so than a character in a computer game.  How can I have filled an entire section on a busy webpage with cruel jokes about over 300 famous rock bands, and not snared even one flaming diatribe from a near-tears 13 y/o with their little world of N Sync worship crashing down around them?

Anyway, I'm still waiting on Band Names flambé, but it's only a matter of time. At least I have these Necro mails/forum posts to tide me over until then.  Most of them are intelligent and thoughtful, and just sort of regretful and disappointed in me for taking such an easy route to humor.  Not that they thought it was funny, of course.  But mixed in amidst the adult complaints are plenty 'o "near tears" cries of outrage, and those are the ones I like best.

It's going to be really hard to refrain from future Necro jokes, since they are just so guaranteed to get a rise out of the easily-risen.  Half the fun in an insult is seeing the insulted react, and it's just fish in a barrel to get Necro fans charged up.

I think they sort of enjoy it on some level though.  It makes them feel special, like a chosen race.  Chosen for persecution, but hey, at least they're being paid attention to.  Beats being the forgotten and unplayed character, one seen only with pity and ignorance.  Most minority (non-racial) groups enjoy being persecuted, for it bonds them together against a common enemy and gives them a shared purpose. (Well, not really, but it's funny to say it.)

So there are some really funny and bitchy emails, but unfortunately it's on the D2 site, not for the Band Names stuff here.  And I don't run the D2 site and we try to keep it somewhat professional over there, so I can't just paste the most pathetic snivelings on the main page and hold them up to proper ridicule.  I get leeway to do pretty much what I want on the column pages, but I don't think Elly would appreciate me being too cruel to the site mailers.  Even the really dumb troll types that we spend all of our private conversation time laughing about.

Necro fans have a long history of being especially rabid, for whatever reason. Pre-game it was because he was the wicked and evil character, so the troubled youth were drawn to him and you had all of these angry kids with emotional issues worshiping a video game character, and god help anyone who appeared to disparage their chosen one.

We hosted a Necro guild on the D2 site years ago, before the game was even out, and at one point they were all boycotting our site and posting nasty things in the forums for some silly ass reason.  As I recall they didn't think our Necromancer report, based on playing the game at Blizzard North, was thorough enough.  Or something.  It was an odd situation with a guild we hosted sort of declaring war on us.  Being as we could have just deleted their site in a minute, or changed their password to lock them out while we edited their page to read however we wanted it to read.

They had an excuse though, being as they were all like 14-16, and insane with anticipation for the game.  The people posting angry flames now are a bit more tragic, being as they are (I assume) adults, and talking about a character for a game that's been out nearly 2.5 years.  I guess their devotion is impressive, if somewhat misplaced.  I should also make clear that it's just a small % of the necro fans who are flaming; most just want to point out that my assertion of pussy-tude for the necro is incorrect.  Which is of course the whole point; it wouldn't be funny to make the joke if he really were totally lame.  Which is why I have one brief mention of the Elemental Druid (a character that really is hopeless) and a full entry on the Necromancer.

Then again, I'm the one spending time writing articles full of pissy jokes about the characters in a game that's been out for 2.5 years.  Articles that pay me nothing, and garner me much hate mail.  (At least they do when I'm lucky.)  So whose interests are more misplaced?

December 12, 2002

At last, after months of trying, some hate mail.  Unfortunately it's not really "hate" mail, and it's not for anything on this site.

I thought this was total horse shit myself man, sorry. Necros underpowered in .09? Ha, I think not... MF barb #1!?!?!?! WTF Maybe if you plan on doin mf run constantly, and that is as boring as watching my hair grow... Obviously you didnt "factor in" pvp as one of your "variables" in your "scientific" rating system. Maybe next time when you decide to make a best/worst list you'll take the time to actually KNOW every class you talk about instead of running around like a damn newblar saying "NECROS SUCK, NECROS SUCK!!!! OH SHIT, I BETTER GET BACK TO MFING CAUSE THAT NECRO JUST PWNED ME... OH, IT WAS LAG... LAG!!!"

If only rock band fans were as defensive and easily-baited as Necro players in D2...  The comments section added to the article next week should be entertaining, at least.

November 29, 2002

The other funny thing is that basically all I've done since posting it, and my article the day before, is read fan mail.  Probably 40 mails about the story and 70 about the article, thus far, and all but 3 or 4 total are very positive. I can see how celebrities get to be such idiots and so vapid and shallow and smug, since they probably get 50 letters a day, forwarded by their publicist, telling them how great they are.  At least I'm reading all of my mail, so I see the good with the bad, and it's not like anyone is mailing to say how great I am (well, aside from the Milton comparison guy yesterday), they're just saying they liked a story/column I wrote.  I could actually use more bad, since it motivates improvement.  People saying "X was very funny" doesn't really give you anything to build upon.  Other than your ego.

Imagine how it is for celebrities, movie stars or the like, with only glowing love letters, and really crazy people fixating on them and mailing about how awesome everything about them is.  It's like being surrounded by "yes men" for years as the boss of some company; you lose all touch with reality.  Especially if you're vapid and insecure to begin with, so you take everything they say seriously and to heart, and let it build you up.

The D2 top 10 article will be fun to do feedback on each week, I think.  There are a ton of interesting mails to quote for this first column, with lots of people sharing their own ideas or disagreeing with my conclusions.  And this one was a very non-controversial topic.  Wait two weeks until I do the best 5/worst 5 characters, and insult necros and sorcs and such.  I love angry mail, so I'm giddy with glee at the prospect.  Well, almost.

November 28, 2002

As I mentioned recently, I got the clever idea for columns for the D2 site, with top 10 _____ lists, about the game.  I posted the first one Wednesday afternoon, the 10 worst monster types in the game, and it went over pretty well.  I was pleased with it, so knew readers would enjoy it. 

The tally to date is 35 emails about the article, of which 34 are full of praise.  Most of them are about like this, but longer on the suggestions.

A very interesting colum. Was very funny! Keep up the good work, One suggestion though, how about blood/moon lords, they are so f*** annoying with that stun hit, and they never seems to die lol. oh and I suggest Hell/ice spawns as best monster, you dont have to do ne work, they blow themselves up lol!

Jackpot

I'm surprised how many people seem to be taking the list seriously, as if it's some sort of scientific document and might be found lacking in evidence, or will be revised as additional information is presented.

What is the one non-praising email?

Hey Flux,

Just had to reply, somehow your worst monster article seemed really bad to me in comparison what you have written before.

Regards,
Siaon

Fair enough.  I wonder if he means in comparison to the other D2 site features, which are almost always serious stuff like FAQs or strategy guides or the like.  So he expected it to be a serious article with pros and cons of the monsters, and objectivity, and didn't like that it was full of jokes?  Dunno, and I think it would appear a bit too anal to mail him and ask for clarification.

One funny mail asked me if "shat" was a typo or what, since he'd never heard it before.  I like to increase the vocabulary of the readers, but that's not quite what I had in mind.

There are several very flattering mails, with this one taking the crown, thus far.

Dear Flux,

I rarely if ever compliment a writer on their writing, seeing as I believe Milton to be the best of all writers and his style and ability has, as of yet, never been duplicated or even touched since his time, or even before his time, but you are a great writer, not a Milton, yet, but a great writer, and this is reflected in your last installment on monster types. Even though I disagree with you on a few points, I am impressed with your sense of voice and style. Well done, sir. I, even though I have put my D2X hat on the proverbial hat rack, and I will take it down again and put it on, have given up the wonderful game, still find your articles engaging and interesting.

Kudos, and best wishes

Orlic

"Who's Milton?" You ask?  Well I hope you've heard of him, he's one of the most famous authors ever.  His novel Paradise Lost is probably what he's best known for.  It's odd that someone would like Milton best, being as he was writing in the 1600's.  Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, and the changes in style and grammar make it hard to compare contemporary work with something one-hundred years old, much less 300+.  If your favorite writer every is from hundreds of years ago, in terms of writing style, then you're never going to find better, I wouldn't think.  Just because you like the style of his/her writing, and no one is writing like that anymore.

I must admit my familiarity with Milton doesn't extend much further than what's in the last paragraph. If you want to learn more, my quick Google search turned up this likely-looking site, dedicated to the man and his work.

The comparison strikes me funny too. Milton is one of the most famous authors in the history of the English language, yet Orlic sounds quite sincere.  My ego doesn't quite expand far enough to consider him seriously, especially considering the source material.  A humorous top 10 monsters list that I wrote the day before.  It's a bit like telling the director of a dish soap commercial that he's the best director since Orson Welles.

Anyway, nice to get feedback, especially the argumentative or suggestion-filled type.  As I said about the last fiction I posted on the D2 site, almost every mail about it was like, "Great, write more."  Which is nice, but doesn't really give you much to sink your teeth into.

On the D2 site we had a regular bi-weekly column for two years, called Garwulf's Corner.  (Follow the link if you want more details or to read some.)  It was written by Robert Marks, vaguely-famous as the author of Demonsbane, the Diablo II eBook Blizzard put out shortly before starting on their real Diablo novel series, which were written by a more accomplished novelist, Richard Knaak.  Garwulf told me around column #49 that #52 would be the end, since it would wrap up nicely a two-year run.  He suggested a couple of weeks later that we run a guest columnist invite, and find someone to carry on the column concept, and that he might write an intro to the new guy's work.

I was glad he'd said it, since as soon as he told me he was quitting I'd thought about finding a replacement(s) but didn't want to carry on that search while he was doing his last few columns, as it would have made him such a lame duck.  But since he'd brought it up, that was all good.  At the time I thought I'd do a bi-weekly column as well, since I've been doing them here every day, though not on quite so singular a topic.

So I started jotting down notes for possible column ideas, and considering what sort of thing I might want to write about, while also organizing the cattle call for replacement columnists. The applicants turned out very well, and we got three regular columnists from it, all of whom have gotten up to at least their third column by now, submitted, not all posted yet.  This is a frightening success rate, given the usual site contributing volunteers, who we're lucky to ever hear from again after they agree to start helping out on something.

So the volunteer columnists are going fine, but I would still like to do some columns at some point.  The ideas that I had for them were too controversial though.  I don't want to be just another guy writing about whatever gaming/Internet-related topic, so I put off doing one until I thought of something worth doing.

And yesterday, out of nowhere it hit me.

I don't remember the genesis of my revelation, but I was reading emails and such, and for some reason I started to think that a certain monster was surely the dumbest one in the entire game.  As I pondered, another one equally as dumb occurred to me, as well as a couple that were very cool.   And I thought, why not do a listing of the best and worst monsters.  Say a top/bottom ten, but do it like the Band Names section, where it's not the names that are funny, but the comments.

A normal top 10 list is funny (or tries to be anyway) solely from the list title, and the items in the list.  That's obviously impossible for the Diablo listing I'm doing, I mean here's my rough list of ideas for Best Areas in the Game. In no particular order, as of yet.

• Den of Evil
• Tristram
• Act 1 Cathedral
• Arcane Sanctuary
• Flayer Jungle
• Chaos Sanctuary
• 3 sub-surface dungeons in Act Five.
• Zombie Garden
• Baal's Throne Room
• Secret Cow Level

Wow, funny huh?  I bet you couldn't wait to read another list like that!

So obviously the humor is going to come from the captions and remarks I make.  I'm posting one today, and then every Wednesday, mostly since the majority of the lists are very specific to the current version of the game, and there's an off chance that Blizzard will finally get the patch out in December, and I don't want to die with about six lists all done and totally inaccurate due to the new state of the game.

November 5, 2002

I didn't accomplish much on this site today, and nothing on the novel; though I did a bunch of stuff on the D2 site.  The odious project there now, one that's entirely my fault, is trying to evaluate and pick a new columnist or two to replace Garwulf's Corner, a bi-weekly article we'd had submitted for the last two years. I didn't think they were especially brilliant, but they were usually worth a read and anyway, it was free content for the site.

So when he announced that he was quitting, we thought we should get someone to replace his work.  Well that's what I thought anyway, and one co-worker agreed, and the other was ambivalent.  More on her in a sec.

So I did a page for people to submit their columns if they were interested in trying out.  They had to send one written, and ideas for at least two others, so we'd see they weren't just a flash in the pan.  We'd like to get people for ongoing contributions, that we could count on, not just have a bunch of random submissions every week from random people.

That's all good, but someone has to root through the slush pile in the first place, and since neither of my site co-workers were all that hot for the whole columnist thing in the first place, the duty fell to me.  There are probably 50 emails with applications, all of which have at least one 1000 wordish column, almost all of which are okay but not spectacular.  And they are on quite similar and frequently-overlapping subjects, which makes reading several in a row mind-numbling.

We've had numerous contests on the site in the past, most of which have generated hundreds of entries, often all on the same subject (per the contest rules).  It becomes amazingly difficult to read with any comprehension or attention when you're reading the same thing over and over again.  I can't imagine how English teachers grade essays on the same thing for 5 classes of 30 students each.  Maybe do batches of 5 at a time, with something else in between (like a weekend in Vegas) to clear the brain.

One complicating factor is that we've announced me as a continuing columnist, so I'm supposed to be thinking up stuff to write for that.  I thought it would be easy; after all I'm doing 3 or 4 articles a week on this site, on various topics.  Generally stuff generated by current news items, but it's easy enough to find motivation, and I have no problem filling a page with letters once I get started (case in point). The odd thing is that one article I had tentatively planned to write tied in slightly with a bit of behind the scenes D2 site nastiness, which would have been easy to work into the article, when/if I write it.  I (apparently) can't go into details, but there's something to do with how news and major events are handled by Blizzard that we'd like to see them change,  and that they asked us (and others) for suggestions on how they might handle them.  Basically it's something we've (the d2 site staff) always wanted to try and influence them to alter, and we were recently given an invitation, but didn't want to take it up in the form it was offered in.

This is hopelessly vague, I suspect.

Anyway, that opportunity we didn't take up as an official site comment would have been relatively easy to work into my projected columnist article, and I thought perhaps we'd want to get my/our thoughts on it out there that way.  As an editorial by a columnist, of the "views expressed are not necessarily those of diabloii.net, etc" type.  Upon suggesting this a huge and absurd argument began, one that had virtually nothing to do with the actual topic, but which became an extended, defensive rant about the very topic of columnists and especially whether or not I should be one; barely-disguised as discussion of this one particular column idea, which was deemed to be irrelevant and of no interest to the readers. Deemed that by a staff member who admittedly never reads any of the Garwulf's Corner columns.  It eventually dawned on me that that disregard for our current columnist was grounds for disqualification for discussion of any proposed future columnists and/or columns, and as you might suspect, my pointing that out didn't go over real well either, and much more defensiveness and ad hominem commenced.

So the net result of all that is a general frostiness and lack of friendly chat on ICQ, and the removal of one name from the "People who should take a look at/give their opinion on new columnists." list. Which just means I have to vet them a bit more tightly, since my evaluation is going to be almost the whole judge/jury/executioner.

September 15, 2002

One thing I'll probably be doing on the D2 site on a regular basis in the future is a bi-weekly blog.  We've had a guy doing a bi-weekly article series called Garwulf's Corner for almost two years now, and in the most recent one, #48, he announced that #52 would be it, the last one ever. Read it if you want to see his explanation, but basically he's sick of doing them, and feels like he's run out of new things to write them about.

That pretty well poisons the well for anyone coming after him, but nevertheless I'm going to dredge up a cold wet bucketful. My idea was to just do the sort of mini-blogs he's been doing, about whatever strikes my fancy.  I'm basically doing 4 or 5 articles as long or longer than his usual one every week here (the 2 or 3 other days I do just news comments with a short bleh thing at the start) so how hard can it be to do one more every two weeks?

I guess I'll find out.

Monkey wrenches have already been applied in terms of subject matter, since suggestions from d2 site co-non-workers have been complicated.  We're talking articles, pulling info from disparate locations, doing research to set up time lines of events, etc.  Not exactly doctoral thesis level stuff, but certainly more than 15 minutes of typing about why LotR is roxor.  Which was more the sort of thing I'd though about doing, being as that's what Garwulf usually did.  Of course I want to do better than him, not look like I'm just slurping up his sloppy seconds, even though I am.  I had thought about doing regular non-game articles on the site in the past, but that was back when Elly was still having a lot of issues about anything personal going on the site.  She used to be annoyed by any sort of joke or personal comment or non-game OT comment, in any article or screenshot caption or news update.  The idea of a full article that wasn't exactly about the game was totally out of the question.

That's one of the main reasons I started this site, to have somewhere to write whatever I wanted to write, humor and sarcasm and news items and all of that.  Not that 99% of what's here would be appropriate for the D2 site, but what's here has grown over time, while my initial desire was just to be free to do a site how I wanted to do it.

I had long arguments/discussions with Elly about how the D2 site was being run, what sort of stuff we were posting on it, etc.  My position was always that we should play up our assets, and if we had a funny comment to put into an article, or other interesting things to write about, we should do so.  She was always totally against that, and would go into posted articles or screenshots or news updates and remove things she thought were not appropriate, often just cutting them out carelessly, leaving sentences that made no sense or were fragments, etc.  This rather infuriated me, I will admit.

Over time she's come to be much more mellow about that sort of thing, and will make jokes herself at times, and doesn't object to others doing them.  I don't have any explanation as to why she's loosened up though.

The odd thing is I'm not going to say she was wrong long ago.  Most of the other d2 fansites were terribly unprofessional, and by our being mostly professional we really stood out and appeared more authoritative.  Other sites were all run by hyper 15 y/o's, who couldn't help but put in long slobbering updates about things they liked and long sobbing ones about things they were disappointed by.

I don't think either of those are necessarily awful; I wouldn't mind reading a gaming info site that had personality to it also, (The late great Lum the Mad had that.) but the problem was that none of the kids could write decently.  So it would be one news item in 9 paragraphs of preamble, midamble, and postamble, (Two of the three preceeding amble's are not really words.) often studded with amazingly poor writing.  Elly and Gaile and I used to almost never look at the other sites, as it was just depressing to see our news and content stolen and regurgitated (often exact cut and paste, without even changing the font or table colors), but we would sometimes find great humor in the writing quality.

The funniest site was long before the D2 beta even began. Entitled the graveyard, it was almost as busy as dii.net way back in 1998 or 1999, despite having almost nothing about the game.  The guy running it had no interest in the game, other than as a game that was coming up some day that he might want to play.  He wanted to run a rant site, and just sort of combined it with a d2 site to keep the hits up.

[Incidentally, there's really no point in paying attention to site traffic or the "community" more than a month or two before a game goes into beta.  Kids run sites then and can get traffic with any sort of regular updating schedule, almost regardless of what they update with.  Moreover, the traffic at that point is 99% super hardcore fanboys, who have no taste in site quality, and are much more likely to read a crappy site written by one of their peers, since they like the attitude, than they are to read a quality site by a talented adult.  The whole fansite "community" pre-game is a big junior high style clique, with constant back-biting, jealousy, rumor-mongering, news-stealing, etc.  When there isn't much actual game info, the kids have to fill the time with something.

Unfortunately, we did not possess this insight back pre d2-beta, and constantly worried about traffic, and wondered how in the hell the crap those idiots were posting on Graveyard or Yeggs, with their total lack of accurate game info, were getting almost as many hits as we were, when we posted everything hours or days ahead of them and with much better presentation.  Of course both of those sites vanished, Graveyard long before the D2 beta even began, and once the actual game was out our superior quality and dedication to updating pushed our traffic up exponentially.

This phenomena repeated itself with Warcraft III, where a junky fanboy site at War3.com was as popular as Elly's new site Warcraftiii.net (which I have nothing to do with), despite that one getting constant plugs from the obscenely-busy Dii.net. It was because the traffic that far in advance of the game was mostly hyper fan boys, and they liked to get into forum slag fests and see updates with poor spelling and grammar.  Once the game was out and updated had to contain actual info and be done quickly, not just copied from game previews, that site dropped like a brick balloon.]

Anyway, I was speaking of the Graveyard site before that long digression.  We enjoyed it on one level just because the guy running it was such an incredibly awful writer.  Angst-ridden high school misunderstood computer nerd with math/programming skills inversely proportional to his writing ability.  Yes, that describes half the webmasters on the Internet.  So a typical Graveyard update would start off with something about D2 from a new game preview and then instantly go off into a fairy tale land of mixed metaphors and wandering sentence structure, and talk about his field hockey try outs at school that day, or something.  All on the main news page of what was in theory a D2 fansite  I would kill to have saved some of the Gyard updates that Gaile and I used to copy and ICQ back and forth, laughing ourselves into tears at them.  The site is long, long gone unfortunately, it didn't even last until the D2 beta.

Anyway #2, that was part of an even longer digression.  Good thing I didn't just criticize some other site webmaster for this sort of thing.

I was saying I'll be doing a Flux's Corner, or something (God I hope someone thinks up a better name than that.) like that, once Garwulf quits in 7 weeks.  Not sure what I'll write about, but given the preceding 10 paragraphs, something about the early history of d2 fansites might not go awry.  I've got ideas for 3 or 4 other articles.

My initial comments were about Elly forbidding anything like that in the past, and being surprised that she's for it now.  Not only is she for it, she was pouring out invective about Bliz's wretched handling of their anti-cheating measures in D2 and now in War3, and encouraging me to write a no-holds barred article about it.  Being as she's making her career doing gaming fansites, primarily Blizzard gaming sites, I'm surprised she's willing to risk their wrath.  Probably since Bliz PR/community relations is such a disaster of missed opportunities and misguided priorities Elly doesn't care if they get pissed. It's not like they give us anything useful now anyway, especially considering the extra effort we've put out (spent our own money to attend E3 and ECTS 4 years running, not to mention endless hours on the fansites promoting their games) 

I personally could care less. I like and am friends (well, as much as you can be friends with people you see once a year) with a number of the Bliz North people, and I wouldn't want to insult them.  I also know a few people in Bliz Irvine who work on Bnet and do a good and very unsung job. But let's be realistic.  I'm hardly working on the D2 site and I can't imagine that I'll ever work on a gaming site/fansite again.  I don't have any interest in War3 (didn't play the beta CD at all the last 3 months or so of the beta), I'm not following or going to play WoW.  I haven't had any contact with anyone in Bliz PR for many months, and if they pull me from their beta mailing list I won't shed any tears. I got unsolicited emails from people offering up to $150 for my war3 beta CD early on, but didn't sell it, foolishly, as it turned out.  It's not just Bliz, I've not had any interest in any computer games other than the little online strategy ones like Bejeweled or Attaxx or Seven Seas for a long damn time.

So anyway (#3) I'll be doing a bi-weekly (maybe weekly, if I can possibly think of enough topics) article thing on the D2 site starting in oh, early November.  I'll probably link from here when I do one there, though I'll try to not write most of it here and then reuse that there.

This is all top secret at this point, BTW, so hush hush!

Actually it's not, or I wouldn't be writing this.  I can't imagine anyone knowing that I'm planning on doing an article series on the D2 site in the future changing their life in anyway at this point based on that.

And yes, part of my motivation is that I can plug this site from them.  Not that I'd mention this site in the actual articles, but the main page for them would be something like Garwulf's is now, with a link to here and a short bio and maybe a picture.  I've got no idea how many hits he got from that, but one of my leading referrals to this site the last three months is one unlabeled link from the June 2002 Fact of the Day archives, on the D2 site. The link is from "YMMV" in a comment, and it goes to the slang page here, where that acronym is explained.  I got 47 hits from that during the 10 days of stats I have for July, which isn't much compared with over 500 from US Google, but it's more than I got from any international Google, for comparison's sake.

My real goal is to get other stuff done, and get to working on my forever-planned D2 novel.  I'd like to post a chapter every other week on the D2 site, and would post revised versions here, with comments and such, for my permanent archives.  The articles I'm doing to be content.  The fiction I write because I love writing it, and there's always the chance (however small) that I might get some sort of book deal from it, which is my long term career goal.  For the last decade+...

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.