Back in the Day

Day 3,033, 20:40 • Published in USA USA • by Melissa Rose

Stressed Out
Wish we could
turn back time
to the good ole days
Way back when, in the days of Emerick and Claire. When there were epic Presidents and grand wars for the fate of the country. Congressmen ran for their states and we needed an extremely large quantity of players every month that were willing to just sit on the ballot as a blocker. We had to stay up until midnight on the 25th just to get that last snipe.

I miss it.

I miss arguing with Pfeiffer and negotiating with Claire. I miss the craziness of IRC at 11:55pm erep time of a ---- snip but that’s not the game we are playing anymore.


We, as old players, like to look back and wish we were still playing that game. We get nostalgic and look around and say “but this is crap.” The game is dying, that is obvious to anyone, but it’s not there yet, why are we trying to push it off a cliff? We just need to let it get there on it’s own.

We stifle the new player. We tell them the game is not worth playing, but who are we to say that? If they are enjoying themselves, then so be it. It’s their time; if they want to be here, then it is worth playing for them. Not all of us do it. but enough of us do that it bogs down the meta with our negativity. I’m actually not just talking about the eUS Forums. Yes, that place is abundant with negativity, but it’s not the crux of the problem. I see it in articles, in shouts, and continuously on IRC.

We try to drag others down to our level of apathy and ambivalence. When older players wake up and see value in playing again, we latch on and try to drag them back down. We all need to step back, really look at what we are doing and try harder to mentors and advisors instead of negative influences.

I do realize that I’m lecturing a bit, and that was not my intention; so, I’m going to step off of that and move on to the actual point to the article.


I look around and I see something I didn’t expect.

Actual new players (by new I mean that have started in the last two years). I see new spins on old ideas. Then, I see people slam that down, but something happened that surprised me. They started to fight back. They stopped listening to us and started playing the game they wanted to. We have tried to force them to do things the way we always did them, but they have been obstinate and defiant, like children becoming adults.

I like it.

I like seeing the energy of some of these young players. I like watching them try and fail and learn. It rejuvenated my enjoyment in this game so much that I started doing stuff again. I think that, if we give them a chance, we might actually have a game worth enjoying until it does finally die, and it might take a bit longer to get there if we let it.