Going Rogue

Welcome o/

Let this be my introduction and my history. What led me to create this blog, and where I come from.


First things first
My first MMO. I mean ... my very first MMO, was actually SWG: Star Wars Galaxies - which I played very much from about 2005 and almost until the very end.

During what felt like an eternity, I managed to get to know thousands of players and during fan gatherings/events; Through my work with writing guides and finally as a representative for the players (much like what you know as the CSM).
During these times
I had done research into "Smuggling" and as a result I had created a player to look into how this aspect was handled in EVE back in 2007 or so. The result was a piece that I brought forward to my community in SWG. Not far after that, the smuggling system was revamped. It didn't get much better than it was, but at least someone made an effort in doing "something".

To be honest. It was propably the best thing that the developers could do with the spaghetti code.

SWG ended for me when my now late brother was diagnosed with the big C. I had to step down to focus on my family. Only a few people in my community knew this, while I told the playerbase something else entirely. At that point in time, I simply had no interest in them knowing.

I had an amazing coorporation with the players and the developers and further matured the representative program. And during the last period of my time with the teams, I also got to know a little website called Stratics.com.

One of the friends from SWG was writing stuff for Stratics, which had developed from just a UO Community Cradle to a website where other games was frequently commented and reviewed. It was an interesting place, but the "logistics", or backend systems for the content was rubbish.
After SWG finally shut down, I went there to keep hanging out with friends I used to hang out with in SWG.

After some time though, I ended up reactivating my EVE account - and thought why not start writing guides again. So I looked into the EVE Stratics website, and noticed that nothing was happening. I reached out to the powers that be, and ended up becoming the Managing Editor there. I followed people like Misty Matonis and Kevin Dodenbostel, who had both been poached by CCP from Stratics - Not that I had any interest in following those footsteps. My job prospects has always been very good and I also have property investments that are set up as a retirement option. I do this because I find it to be an excellent "brain activity".

Transitions oh my
So, I started out with EVE Stratics and to begin with, they had almost 5 monthly visitors. I say almost, because I wasn't sure about the website statistics. Some months I could see just one visitor so I wasn't actually sure that the tracking system worked. It barely had a pulse! But we began by transforming what you see Stratics as now, as a wordpress portal with content and EVE Stratics was the first in line for that makeover. Old content was slowly trickled over and it took time. Boy did it take time. Everything had to be copy-pasted. Broken links researched. Images retrieved. Everything but the text I basically had to redo. I poured hundreds of hours into those old articles to revive them on the new portal.

The owner, TGN at that time then sold the website. Before I was finished with the old articles, the server access shut down. So now we only had the new content being created (interviews and new guides) and the old articles I had ported over. No drama, but now the decision was being made that the content was not correctly created in wordpress. When that work started. We had 12-15k monthly visits on EVE Stratics. Not bad, considering everything.

Thus began a new round of copy-paste work. From the top, once again into the breach. I think it took about half a year before I could trust the system to start publishing new content again. Fortunately, the dialogue with the CCP teams had been improving and I was able to get some great interviews lined up, and I ordered the tickets for the fanfest, flights and all - hoping to get more interviews lined up.

So then - we had been sold again. This time, the decision was made that Stratics was to return to its roots.

The content not related to Ultima Online, was split to a seperate website (Ravenant).
The idea was to create a "facebook for gamers". It was a semi-good idea, but there would be more funding coming along when visitors came. It had massive potential. It ended up being shut down within a year.
This time Stratics was put up for sale again, this time the community started a kickstarter in response to buy it back. Ravenant was just dead.

The 18 year old community secured funds to get Stratics back, and nothing of my content was made available to me again. I was also not provided with any publishing platform and requests to do so stagnated. Leadership finally declined to answer any of my emails and I had to make the decision of what to do, to keep my brain occupied.

So here we are.

Future
My plan is to provide an experimental platform for my guides, articles, interviews on a semi random basis. Perhaps a bit of streaming cloak and dagger intel if I can figure out how to. Nothing like 40 hours of work every day being done now and it will never be like that. I already have a job. I am a boardmember, an investor and I have family commitments etc. So just hobby work like usual, but at least I hope it to be somewhat consistent but most importantly - a stable environment.

You will never find me to be bitching about stuff. I simply don't have enough emotions tied up in any game to do that. I will just describe my findings and hopefully provide insight. Some topics may be based on my findings in real life as well, just to spice things up a bit.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading!
I'll see you around :)

Vince