Welcome To The Future!

Hm... Where to begin? There's so much to say...

Let's start with just the basic features. I have to admit, from a purely gameplay point of view, I'm very disappointed. 1.2 wasn't supposed to have any new features, yes... but I think we all expected we would at least keep the ones we have. Instead, we now have a site more bare-bones than W-H was a year ago when I joined!

Yes, I know that Karl's supporters are going to rally behind 'it'll be done later' and all that. Yeah. Like those art shops? Or the pack alliances feature? You know, the stuff that we were promised in 1.1? Which was several months late in the first place. And then there's that 'pack messages' button that was around since the original game that never was finished...

You'll excuse me if I don't believe any of the crap about what we're going to get in the future. Track record says that we probably won't get it.

So for now, we've lost features. No boss fights, quests appear to be absent, territory level limits removed, no point shop, no pack list, no suggestion forum (Karl finally admits that he doesn't give a shit about what we want! Yay!), no mate cash/point transfers (fun fact: if you were mates with yourself beforehand, the mate screen will say you've been mates since 1969!)... the list goes on.

And what about that art theft? W-H is still breaking international law here... You'd think that would be more important than, say, adding arrows to the map...

To forestall the loyalists who will point out what we gained... Let's take a look at that. Search user has a filter, forums and users online got a slight makeover, top 5 was expanded (at the cost of packs), PIN was removed (yes, I count this as a good thing), useless map code was removed... Not much else, though.

When you compare those, I don't think the gains add up.

Of course, that's not counting the new PvA and PvP systems...

Let's start with PvP. Admittedly, PvP was always kinda pointless and imbalanced in the first place, but now... well, admittedly, it no longer depends so much on who hits first. Unfortunately, now there are issues like simultaneously killing each other (entirely possible). And with crits removed, HP tanking is incredibly overpowered, and there's no way for lower levels to even have a chance against higher levels.

The 'flee' option is absurd, as well. You hit the attack button - you deal with the consequences. I mean, you already have a DP bank. What difference does it make?

And, of course, there is absolutely no reason to ever use the Defensive options. Attacking is still way better, because if you have your defense up to a high enough amount, then you're going to not be able to hurt anything anyway, and just do 1 hit every time. Heck, that's still a problem - it can take ages between equally-matched accounts doing 1 HP damage to each other constantly.

Of course, the XP has been increased... who the fuck cares? PvP has never been a serious source of XP, and it never can be without unbalancing the game. I mean, if it was, people would create bogus accs to attack and avoid the map. So it makes no difference.

And since PvP now takes longer, everyone who already has large amounts has a huge advantage over anyone who doesn't. This goes for PvA, too - gaining 100k PvA is going to take way longer than it did before.

Speaking of PvA... I'll be blunt. It sucks. Royally. More loading time. No crits (try beating that jackalope now...). Defense is pointless, and only one attack option is worth using. Plus, wolves can't scratch as an attack. And it takes so much longer...

Of course, Karl assured us that since XP was increased, this was a good thing! Uh-huh. Let's see... in the starting area, I could previously click 3 enemies at once and gain 15 XP from the loading time from 1 page. Now I must fight 1 at a time, load multiple pages, use the mouse, and I still get less XP. Leveling is now considerably slower. The XP change doesn't make up for it, giving those with millions and millions of XP another huge advantage over newer players. As if the 10x XP wasn't bad enough.

You know, Karl claims the 10x XP hasn't ruined W-H, because the point of W-H is just to level up and get stronger. I think he fails to realize that the competitive aspect is a large part of it, because, honestly, as a single player game, W-H is terrible. There are free games you can pick up that are better for single player. The competition is more entertaining than the game itself... when it was still possible to compete.

Of course, Karl doesn't get this, because he doesn't play his own game. He doesn't know how boring it gets to gain millions of XP. Ever wondered why things seem unbalanced, or why the island is terrible? Karl has no clue what he's doing in regards to gameplay, because he's never actually played the game.

And the map... Well, the arrows make it way too easy to spot hidden tacos, but not a big issue there. Of course, it's still ridiculously easy to run a bot program, which is once again against the TOS... but Karl hasn't been great at catching people doing it in the past.

Oh, and those little help windows? Completely worthless. Heck, several of them are downright wrong. It's like the outdated FAQ from before...

This is a step backwards, not forwards. I think most people should be able to see that...

Oh, and how about this? Band's got quite a good point. We don't normally see the cash from W-H go anywhere but Karl's pocket (and paying for trips to visit his girlfriend), but the planned changes are absurd. Karl has publicly stated that you will only get 1/3 the points from donating, and get no points when purchasing a custom. And that's just a few things. Tell me if that doesn't sound like he's trying to squeeze more money out of people.

Anyway, I'm getting bored discussing the features, so let's move on to other things...

You'll notice quite a few people have been banned, with convenient notices to not complain about it. Maybe because there's no good reason for it? Nah... Karl would never do that, would he?

Heck, even Tea was banned for a bit. The excuse? A coding bug. Yeah, right. Like he manually inputs the ban codes. I'm sure there's an admin 'ban' button. He's lying through his teeth.

Anyway, as I predicted, I was banned as well. The reason? "Multiple TOS violations." Hm... yeah. More specific, please? Oh, wait... He can't be more specific.

I did look over the TOS, and even with their updates... I didn't break them. All exploits I found were discovered when I was actually a bug finder; I found some bugs beforehand, but that couldn't be illegal, since a bug can't be abused (exploits can). Nothing I've said on the site violates the TOS, either - sure, I called suggestions stupid, but I refrained from calling the users names. Didn't swear at anyone, either.

And, of course, W-H's jurisdiction doesn't extend offsite. In other words, I can basically say whatever I want here, and Karl can't do anything about it. On the other hand, if he wants to believe his jurisdiction does extend offsite... he'd have to ban quite a few other users, including some of his staff, for breaking the same 'rules' I have. So anything I've done offsite can't be the cause without Karl being obviously hypocritical.

Really, Karl's just taking the opportunity  to get rid of me. Banning me now, while people are excited about 1.2, distracts them and prevents too much of an uproar.

Besides. The word is that Karl stills blames Aiden and I for hacking the site in December. While I'm flattered that he thinks I have the capabilities to do that, an actual hack like that is way out of my league. Neither of us were even involved in that. I'll refrain from saying anything on Aiden, but just trust that I have some good info that he wasn't the one. Besides, if he had hacked it... he would have shoved it in Karl's face.

For myself... just ridiculous. Remember, I was staff back then, one of the top 5, my pack was the best on site... no motivation. And, as I said, I don't have the capabilities.

You're probably wondering how I managed to get all the info... Suffice it to say that bypassing Karl's systems isn't that hard. Also, he IP banned my neighbor instead of me. Good thing he doesn't play W-H...

Now, the obvious solution here is to actually start breaking the rules, cheating, and actively using harmful exploits. Why? Because, by track record, Karl will then unban me... and hire me. I'm serious. Look at WDK/Rhan/Whatever, for example - W-H's first major cheater, banned multiple times... all she had to do was keep coming back, and eventually she's unbanned. Or Inno. Deliberately trying to get banned by abusing the DP glitch? Keep her on as staff! And there have been quite a few more; I just don't want to expose the rest to scrutiny.

Besides. I don't actually have anything against the average players. Sure, I could hand out a master list of everyone's emails, or sell it to spam companies... But why? Sure, Karl's annoying, unpredictable, and unstable... but I've got no reason to actually harm the players. If I wanted to, I would have sent everyone viruses a long time ago...

And anyway, I'm not interested in doing the ass-kissing that seems a requirement for the staff these days. (Hey, want to join the staff? Donate large amounts, criticize practically everything I say, and kiss Karl's ass repeatedly, and you're set!) And, honestly, while I'm entirely able to stay around W-H... I don't see the point.

I mean, I beat the game, back when it was hard. I led the best pack onsite. Heck, it took staff removing our members, the site being hacked, and 10x XP for anyone to get past us. If you really think your pack is so much better than BM... come back when you've got over 250 million XP... without any multipliers. Because that's what we had at our height.

Anyway, as I was saying... I've beaten the game. Nothing left to do, especially now that we've lost even more features. The only thing that's been keeping me (and a lot of users) on the site is the community. And, honestly, even that hasn't been too great lately; a lot of players have left. Besides, I can still keep in contact with people without being on W-H, and I get the feeling quite a few people are quitting over 1.2 anyway.

So I'm not going to bother going through the effort of hanging around anymore. I've had my fun, got my entertainment value from the 10 pounds or so I donated (although it was through the community, not the game), and had a good run. Heck, I even made a friend or two. Note that I left this ambiguous, so I can keep annoying all those people asking if I'm their friend. Just because I'm not malicious doesn't mean I'm not evil...

So, yeah, I'm out of here. If you want to keep in touch, try my MSN at (removed - see comments) . This is also my email, but I barely ever check it anyway, so MSN is a better bet; just send a note along telling me who you are. And if you're some random player I've barely ever talked to... don't bother. I'm not really interested in maintaining contact with the vast majority of the site; after all, I only knew maybe 5% of the players. But if we've talked a bit and you'd like to stay in touch, go ahead and add me.

Let's see, what other loose ends do I have to tie up...

Let's go with BM. I'll admit, I had a great time running it, and I enjoyed my time with most of the members. However, Karl's grudge against me and his constant trying to destroy it did get annoying. I think BM's days of being #1 are probably at an end... but as I said, it took a hell of a lot to take us down. Good job to all the members - we had one hell of a run. Now it's probably time to head out and do something else; maybe even find another site...

Anyway, for those BM members out there... I'm not planning to disband the pack, though, of course, the final decision is Lumi's. If you want to head somewhere else, go ahead; I don't care much, since I'm gone. If you want to stay, that's fine too. As for who replaces me as alpha... Well, there's no rank change for now, and I don't really care that much... But I'll say Kas, for the heck of it. Because I've always wanted to put her in charge of something... but everything else in the past I actually wanted to succeed. Now I don't care so much.

Of course, she might quit or something, but that's not really my problem anymore, now, is it?

For this blog itself... While I could amuse myself by posting instructions on exploits and things, I'm going to say no. So, no more regular updates for now; I may still post occasional notices on here, though. I recommend either using the follow feature so you can see if there's ever a new entry in your dashboard, or subscribing to the RSS feed so you can check every few weeks. I might eventually use the blog for something else, since I like the name/URL/etc. I might disable comments after a week or two, since I don't intend to check the comments for more than a week or so from today.

So you'll be left with Sea's blog as your only major W-H blog. You will also note that she has coincidentally been hired as staff, which, of course, means that she cannot disagree with anything Karl does... ever. So good luck getting anything but 'OMG X is so awesome' for blogs about W-H.

As for my guide... well, the one on Webs is completely out of date and useless, so it doesn't matter. And Spleafnet is down for who knows how long, so there's not much I can do there. So, basically, I won't do anything. And no, you may not copy my guide in any way, shape, or form to make your own. Sorry, but I'm not exactly feeling generous towards W-H.

Besides, I advise against making your own guide. It's a ton of work to maintain and code, you can't ever disagree with Karl, and you almost never get any gratitude. Practically every staff member (and a lot of the regular members) learned W-H from my work... And the thanks I get? Banned. Hell, I never got a single benefit from the guide - you would think it would have qualified me for a free custom or something. I mean, Chesh got one ages ago for 'being helpful'... Of course, I wouldn't really have wanted another custom anyway, so it doesn't make much of a difference.

If you're wondering what I'm going to do now... I'll be around the dark corners of the internet somewhere. Maybe find a nice RP or two; been a while since I had time. Look for another site, play some video games... the usual, really. I've been weaning myself off W-H for a while. If banning me was supposed to have any effect, it should have been done ages ago... All I feel now is apathy. As a piece of advice, apathy really is a handy thing to cultivate these days. Try it sometime.

If you want my opinion on W-H... I don't know if it will die, but it's bleeding members as is. Before long it'll just be noobs and die-hard Karl-loyalists. Far worse than, say, Neopets. Honestly, I'm somewhat glad to jump out now.

So, yeah... welcome to the future of W-H. From now on, the site can sort out it's own problems.

Are you still writing this entry? It's been an hour! Let's just get out of here already.

Yeah, you're right. Let's go.

Error 404: Author Not Found!

I normally try to avoid skipping entries, scheduling them in advance when I'm busy, and making up things off the top of my head when I have no topics. However, some unfortunate circumstances have conspired to-

Stop being so lazy!

Hey, at least I finally finished reading that novel. I deserve a break now and then for all my hard work!

When did playing video games become work?

...I don't play video games all the time. I've got other abilities.

Such as?

Eat, sleep, breathe, and videogames, mostly.

You don't really expect people to get that webcomic reference, do you?

Well... not really.

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't have an entry for you today. Why? Well, W-H was supposed to come back up on the sixth (which is when I'm writing this), apparently with 1.2. It's now the seventh for most of you who don't live on the Pacific coastline, and W-H is still down (and the chat is inaccessible, and the EC has expired, and nobody has remembered we have an emergency forum). Of course, W-H has never been on a strict timetable, especially with Karl in another country than the majority of W-H's users. That, and delays have been rather common in update history. I remember 1.1 was over a month late, after all.

However, I'm going to be foolishly stupid optimistic here, and assume that W-H will be up by the time you're reading this Saturday (assuming you didn't stay up until midnight to read this. If you did, I apologize), hopefully with 1.2. Of course, by then it will be too late for me to write any sort of entry about it, assuming Karl hasn't banned me (admittedly, that would be an interesting entry to write...).

You're probably about to... well, actually, you're probably about to insult me for being lazy and not writing an entry. That notwithstanding, you might be thinking that I could easily just write an entry later on Saturday (Do I use 'today' when it's tomorrow for me writing, but the same day for you reading?). And you would be right... normally.

Unfortunately, I've been conscripted to work all day Saturday on a ministorage my father owns, replacing several sheetrock walls. I really hate sheetrock. However, it's not like I had a choice, and I am getting $10 an hour for it, so I'll probably make a good hundred or so. Which I can then spend on more videogames!

So, basically, the point is that I won't be home Saturday to write an entry. Unless the work gets canceled do to the weather, which is still a possibility, in which case I will have time and might get an entry up later on, assuming W-H is up.

And I can't put in a generic entry, because, of course, if this really is 1.2 coming (the signs point that way), then whatever entry I wrote would be liable to be incorrect by the time it posted, which would be just pointless for all of us.

And for those of you wondering why I don't just have Sesh cover for me or something... She's not really that happy with me right now. I ran out of candy, and I haven't installed DAO for her yet. So while she's still hanging around making comments, she's not really up to writing an entry right now. Besides, there'd be the same problem - it's probably incorrect.

Why can't I just talk about myself? I wouldn't mind.

Don't be silly. Why would any of my readers want to read that?

Because you're boring?

Go away.

Anyway, to summarize for those people who either skipped to the end here, or have really, really short memories, I'm doing backbreaking labor on Saturday without access to a computer, and W-H isn't up while I write this. So you're stuck without an entry today, in all likelihood. I might throw in an entry on Sunday. Depends on a lot of things.

Anyway, now that you're done reading this short notice, you can go and spend your time reading webcomics instead.

Short? This is nearly as long as your normal blogs.

Hm... You're right...

Alright, I guess you did get a blog entry today... even if it was a blog entry about me not being able to write a blog entry. Be happy with what you get.

Art Theft: Punishment Is Needed

(Unrelated note: Today is Mass Effect day on Steam, like I predicted. Go pick up the game; the first one is only $5 today. Yes, I keep mentioning this. Take the hint, maybe?)

So, I had a problem confronting me while writing this entry. Do I either focus on W-H being down, in which case it will inevitably be up again by the time this entry posts, or do I pretend nothing happened and see about writing a topic purely from my (admittedly extensive) notes with no way to double check any info? And there's always the third option, like Sea took - skipping an entry altogether. Although that was somewhat out of the question. I mean, I don't really have a reasonable excuse to get out of writing one...

What he means is that he'll take any opportunity he can to avoid his novel assignment.

Well, of course I will! I mean, who the hell wants to read about cathedral building?

Anyway... I'm going to go with the second option, since I happened to be lurking on the chat when Karl mentioned the site should be up soon. If you haven't noticed, the chatbox is still accessible - you just have to go to the login page, then the chat (via URL, of course).

Of course, without easily-accessible sources, I at least have an excuse to keep this entry fairly short. So, in that spirit... Let's talk about art theft.

I can just feel the rejoicing in all of you. Yeah... Anyway, you may relax, because this isn't about theft perpetrated by W-H itself, or any members of its staff. I'm talking about art theft by users.

Every so often some noob tries to sell stolen art on the art board. Fortunately, there are plenty of experienced users who jump on them, they are promptly reported, the thread removed, and the user punished. And then every so often we have site artists selling stolen art on the art board, and it's funny as hell to watch. Bonus points if you remember who I'm referring to (pre-hack). But again, that's not the subject here.

However, things are a bit more lax elsewhere. While anything on public forums is usually caught, as well as any fairly-well known packs (and quite a few noob ones - remember those stolen banners?), when you get into profiles, it's another story.

I'll be blunt - it's incredibly easy to find noobs with tons of art they do not own on their profiles, and, noobs being noobs, no credit given either. It's all over the place. And, honestly, almost nothing is done about it, particularly since most staff can't actually edit profiles. Back when Phoe was around, some things got taken care of, but then, Phoe came with her own set of art theft related issues. You know, it begins to seem like W-H is doomed to have art theft issues no matter what...

Aside from the obvious issue of staff not being able to do much, there are a few others, such as a lack of any sort of 'report profile' button. I'll be honest - I never really liked how the support tickets worked. There's an incredibly small amount of space, far too little to actually describe much. You end up getting inbox spam when your tickets get answered. And I never found asking for info through them was any good... but then again, that's probably just my experience; remember, most of the current staff learned a good bit of what they know about W-H from a guide I wrote.

The other relates to the TOS... again. There seem to be a lot of issues with the TOS. I mean, most sites have a TOS that's pages and pages long, covering a ton of possible situations. Ours? It's rather vague, and not very adaptable. And then we've got the widely-varying standard on how those rules are enforced, with interpretations changing per staff member. So, basically, if the TOS doesn't absolutely say 'you can't do this', then it's actually fairly likely nobody will get punished for it.

And, of course, the TOS doesn't forbid art theft. It says you can't use W-H's images, of course, but it doesn't say anything about posting images you don't own and claiming them as yours, or requiring credits, or anything. We've basically been going on an unofficial rule about it, which, if I remember correctly, was mostly defined by Phoe... great credibility there.

So I think it should be obvious we need to update the TOS to specifically forbid it, even if it should be common sense, and then take a hard-line stance on it. We've got a very large artistic community, after all - art theft is a big deal to a lot of players. It's bad enough W-H itself is involved in art theft - worse that not much is done about art theft by users on a daily basis.

These things need to be cleaned up. After all, it would make W-H (and the staff) look a lot better if they actually did something about it. It's understandable that moderators (for example) can't exactly do much about the art theft on the map, but they certainly can deal with the users, right?

The only reason I mentioned the lack of a 'report profile' feature is due to the sheer magnitude of the theft on player's profiles, actually reporting it all would spam the support ticket feature. It'd be a nice addition, but not really necessary, especially if the staff is pro-active and can go and clean this all up without us having to individually report profiles.

W-H needs to have clear rules on art theft, preferably harsh, and start enforcing them. It's really the only way to even begin recovering the site's image after all the theft on the map. Can you really object to that?

Updating The 'What Not To Suggest' Thread?

As a demonstration of my statement that controversial entries generate more views, I would like to nominate the previous entry. It made sense, there wasn't any real reason to argue with it, and almost everyone agreed with it. Thus, it also got a low number of overall views. This is one of the reasons I actually write controversial entries - nobody cares about something everyone agrees on. I mean, how many people do you see arguing that humans don't breathe oxygen?

Still on the blog front, a good portion of the blogs started as part of the 'fad' seem to be dying off. This is good, because, honestly, said people didn't have that much  to say. If you've got an article or two you want published, consider following Mei's example and jumping in as a guest writer for another already-established blog. Heck, since blogger technically allows multiple authors, you could write one entry a week, and in cooperation with two other authors, you'd still have 3 entries a week.

And, like, something needs to get posted on Sundays. They're boring.

I'm sure those of you who have Steam have already noticed, but they're having a week-long sale on EA games. Considering that they started with DAO and DAII, I think the odds that they'll include Mass Effect are fairly good. If they give 50% or more off on it, you should definitely pick it up. I mean, it was totally  worth it at $20; at $10 or even $5, it's a steal...

You should pick up Origins for me.

Since when do you want to play video games?

It's more fun than listening to you all day.

...Whatever. Anyway, on to today's topic...

So, I was browsing the suggestion forum a few days back when I ran into one of those inevitable suggestions that have been made a million times or so and constantly shot down, and I made a remark that the 'What Not To Suggest' thread should be maintained by the forum regulars on the suggestions board.

I hadn't actually thought about it at the time (it just popped into my head), but upon further consideration, it actually seems like a good idea.

For those of you who are regular visitors to the suggestions board, you'll realize that the majority of suggestions we get have been made before; we get very few unique ideas. And while we have the 'What Not To Suggest' thread, it's rather out-dated and is not maintained, plus there are noobs who ignore it anyway (we should totally mute people for ignoring it).

Honestly, I'm probably the most frequent, or an least most infamous, person seen on the suggestions board, where it is apparently my self-appointed job to shoot down everything in sight. As an off note, for those people complaining about how I'm out to destroy W-H, I would think supporting the stupid suggestions would better accomplish that, rather than shooting them down for entirely plausible reasons.

Anyway, the point is, I get tired of seeing the same suggestion over and over again, and typing up the same replies continuously. I mean, a lot of the suggestions out there have such obvious flaws in them, it's absurd to believe people didn't think of them.

I think we should make more use of the what not to suggest thread. Not that every suggestion we shoot down should be in there, but anything obviously stupid, or suggested multiple times, should be added. I don't mean the controversial topics - just the ones the majority of the influential players agree upon. And the only reason I'm saying it like that is so that I can discount the noobs who have no opinions (Yes, including the ones who follow me around supporting whatever I do. I hate them too).

I think it's fairly obvious at this point that the staff aren't going to be able to do this. There's already way too much on the forums for our limited number of mods to handle, and, honestly, most threads have nothing done about them until someone messages a mod. And nobody ever uses the flag feature, probably because it's annoying, hard to use, basically guarantees inbox spam, and it's impossible to flag an actual thread. Not to mention it's like, 5x slower than sending an MSN message to a staff member...

But that's aside from the point. Basically, I'm saying exactly what I said in that post - the thread should be maintained by the regulars of the suggestion forum. Who exactly qualifies as a regular... that's not my job to decide. But it should be fairly obvious - anyone you regularly see on the suggestions forum with valid reasons for their support or lack thereof.

And no, this isn't self-promotion. Honestly, I don't care who does it, as long as it gets done well, and I have better things to do all day.

Like procrastinating on that novel assignment?

Shut up. As I was saying, about three or so active players should be chosen to maintain the thread, adding and adjusting things as time goes by.

How exactly this could technically work is a bit more complicated. Theoretically, the thread could be recreated on a pup acc shared between the players, but then you run into issues where they delete each other's work and/or just have bugs that delete content. Like those dreaded ISEs we run into every fifth page.

On the other hand, the thread could be done so that each of the players has one post on it, and then locked by a mod. Since you're still able to edit your posts even after a thread is locked, they could each individually work on the thread. However, this could theoretically be an unintended glitch that will be fixed in 1.2; Karl never had any comment when I informed him of this months and months ago. So I'm not sure there.

There are probably other options, of course, but those two would be the simplest without requiring any staff involvement aside from a mod.

I won't say this is a pressing issue or anything, since no suggestions ever get added anyway, but it would help reduce the clutter on the suggestion forum. That, and it would give a few people something to do rather than making new blogs all day. Seriously, people, enough with that.