Good portal feature!

[Doctor]

IDK which dev (one assumes Karu, but maybe there are others) who put the account name below the character name on the main portal. I often forget which account has which character, so that's super handy. thanks!

[karu [WDL]]

That was Shaddex

[Overtkill]

Seconded! A nice upgrade.

[Kingdud]

Ah, and here I thought Shaddex had been forced out after the whole debacle over the line on the wiki homepage: "A word of caution to E&B Developers; Responding to information being included in the wiki by changing the E&B game content(drop locations, mission chains, etc) solely to make the wiki inaccurate will be treated the same as directly vandalizing the wiki. Do not fear fixing/modifying E&B game content as the wiki is flexible for a reason, but please do not be malicious."

 

Things I do not regret:

• Being the reason Byakhee quit being a dev.
  • Everyone who hates Agrippa. Who hates how hard the PP is. Those are all Byakhee. You are welcome.
  • Context: Byakhee viewed the Wiki as absolute evil. He wanted everyone to have to read and write down every word of quest text for themselves, figure out recipes/components/etc for themselves, and not have any (centralized) way to share that information. If the game allowed him to have random component requirements for Agrippa, I have little doubt he would have used that. When I put that quote ('a word of caution...') on the front page of the wiki, it was in direct response to him. He had threatened to just change the Agrippa quests randomly and frequently to stymie any attempts to document Agrippa content.
  • Shaddex, Kyp, and others spent weeks or months (I forget which) trying to change/remove that quote, but I kept putting it back. They attempted to threaten legal action against me for 'hacking'. lol. No hacking was needed; they just didn't understand the software they were running. Eventually they let it stay, and I quit being a pain in their asses.
    • It went so far as them threatening to delete the wiki entirely. I had backups and called their bluff. The wiki stands.
  • It was clear to me, at that point, that 'fun' was no longer a central pillar of this community. I did what Kyp so often suggests others do and 'got a life outside of the game'. It took over a year of constant pestering from the player base for them to include a link to the wiki on the main page menu, but eventually, they did. (well done!)
  • That's where I've been for the past 10 years. But now I'm hearing my name get mentioned, so I decided to come take a sniff. This will likely be my only post before I'm banned. Screenshot it, if you see it.
• Getting the wiki setup* (see 'do regret' section below)
• Coding the skills that made this emulator fun circa 2009. Shield Inversion? You're welcome. Shield Sap? You're welcome. Negotiate? Pretty sure that was me. And a bunch of others I no longer remember and don't have the SVN (yea, this predated git existing) commit history for.
• Working on the source code for this emulator.* (see 'do regret' section below) It made me a better programmer and is a foundational reason why I was able to have a successful 10+ year career in IT. Where I am in life today can be attributed to seeing good code back then. The code I refer to is from when the server was open source, largely written by Tienbau (Teinbau? names were never my strength) and one other person whose name escapes me.

Things I do regret:

• Making Shaddex set up the wiki instead of doing it myself (that had more to do with dev/server access roles than actual desire to do the work). You burned social credit with people and shouldn't have had to.
• In 2014, I was terrified of legal action by EA and didn't come back as a dev. We all grow as people. And this was an area I needed to grow.
• Being an immature ass. Some of my 'ass' nature comes from an unwavering dedication to wanting to make things better and being driven in that direction to such an extreme that I am now paid 4x what I earned back in 2009. Other parts of that 'ass' nature came from my own sadist tendencies that I spent a lot of years containing.
• "Who dares wins" / "Just do it": So many times in my career managers have told me "Don't develop <X>" and I went ahead and developed it anyway. Shockingly, everyone loved <X> once it existed. And the few duds that happened (I am, after all, the king of duds) were vastly outweighed by the good work.

And, since this is likely the only post I'll get to make, here is some more history:

 

1. Around 2010, the lead devs were found to be embezzling player donations (this was before Kyp was in charge; he was not involved AFAIK). This caused a pretty big blow up in the community and it is the reason I quit the first time. I wanted no part of that. The server was open source in those days, along with the database, drop tables, dev tools, etc.
2. Once Kyp took over, things went closed source. I do not have an exact date for this because I basically didn't touch the emulator for another, oh, 5 years or so. The embezzlement stopped. Though, how it costs $5000/year to run this place when I was able to run the server for all 150 players on an machine with an i7-920 back in 2009 escapes my comprehension. Maybe they're paying for dedicated server space instead of VMs, and the budget is for replacement hardware. *shrug*
   1. My personal head canon says EA got involved, and it went closed source because Kyp became the martyr who signed the deal with the devil in order to keep the game online for everyone else. And his cynicism comes from the NDA he had to sign never allowing him to tell anyone that's the deal he had to make.
   2. While that is my head canon, I also don't think it's overly likely. But it is the only theory I've ever come up with that makes any amount of sense beyond "he likes being in power and protects it at all costs" which seems...unlikely?
3. I came back around 2014 but was terrified of being caught in legal action, so I wanted no connection to anything that involved contracts or anything of the sort. I also wanted a wiki to exist, because nobody knew how to find things or where quests were supposed to happen, and in my RL career, I had used mediawiki to great effect (this was before Confluence became the standard) and knew how powerful it could be.
4. After the fight detailed above, I left to 'get a life' for another 10 years. It was clear I was going to be unable to help any further.
5. I keep seeing my name pop up in game, but seeing that Shaddex is still around and involved is weight off my shoulders. 10 years I've lived with regret I didn't need to. Glad you're still here buddy. And Karu, you're a solid dude. Nothing but love for you. You've done more for this community than I ever did. Woody, I still remember your 'voice'. I'm honestly amazed (and happy!) you're still around. <3

As for me? If you want my help, I'm here, but transparency remains my constant that I do not abandon. I see no reason to copy-paste data into the wiki. I have very little doubt that my name is hated to such a degree that my presence would/will cause more harm than good.

 

I'm loving that people like Codemonkey, Winlander, and so many others have made thousands of contributions to the wiki over the years. I love that Doctor is finally documenting all the ore fields. I love seeing those three collaborate on talk pages to get disagreements moved past and make things better. I love that we can all see that. And I can see there are so many more names who added so much content to that wiki over the years. Thank you all for keeping my dream alive. I got it set up, but you all made it worth it. (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ozons-salute)

[mozuzaeram]

I just want to play with my toy ships...

[Kyp [LDEV]]

1 hour ago, Kingdud said:

Ah, and here I thought Shaddex had been forced out after the whole debacle over the line on the wiki homepage: "A word of caution to E&B Developers; Responding to information being included in the wiki by changing the E&B game content(drop locations, mission chains, etc) solely to make the wiki inaccurate will be treated the same as directly vandalizing the wiki. Do not fear fixing/modifying E&B game content as the wiki is flexible for a reason, but please do not be malicious."

 

Things I do not regret:

• Being the reason Byakhee quit being a dev.
  • Everyone who hates Agrippa. Who hates how hard the PP is. Those are all Byakhee. You are welcome.
  • Context: Byakhee viewed the Wiki as absolute evil. He wanted everyone to have to read and write down every word of quest text for themselves, figure out recipes/components/etc for themselves, and not have any (centralized) way to share that information. If the game allowed him to have random component requirements for Agrippa, I have little doubt he would have used that. When I put that quote ('a word of caution...') on the front page of the wiki, it was in direct response to him. He had threatened to just change the Agrippa quests randomly and frequently to stymie any attempts to document Agrippa content.
  • Shaddex, Kyp, and others spent weeks or months (I forget which) trying to change/remove that quote, but I kept putting it back. They attempted to threaten legal action against me for 'hacking'. lol. No hacking was needed; they just didn't understand the software they were running. Eventually they let it stay, and I quit being a pain in their asses.
    • It went so far as them threatening to delete the wiki entirely. I had backups and called their bluff. The wiki stands.
  • It was clear to me, at that point, that 'fun' was no longer a central pillar of this community. I did what Kyp so often suggests others do and 'got a life outside of the game'. It took over a year of constant pestering from the player base for them to include a link to the wiki on the main page menu, but eventually, they did. (well done!)
  • That's where I've been for the past 10 years. But now I'm hearing my name get mentioned, so I decided to come take a sniff. This will likely be my only post before I'm banned. Screenshot it, if you see it.
• Getting the wiki setup* (see 'do regret' section below)
• Coding the skills that made this emulator fun circa 2009. Shield Inversion? You're welcome. Shield Sap? You're welcome. Negotiate? Pretty sure that was me. And a bunch of others I no longer remember and don't have the SVN (yea, this predated git existing) commit history for.
• Working on the source code for this emulator.* (see 'do regret' section below) It made me a better programmer and is a foundational reason why I was able to have a successful 10+ year career in IT. Where I am in life today can be attributed to seeing good code back then. The code I refer to is from when the server was open source, largely written by Tienbau (Teinbau? names were never my strength) and one other person whose name escapes me.

Things I do regret:

• Making Shaddex set up the wiki instead of doing it myself (that had more to do with dev/server access roles than actual desire to do the work). You burned social credit with people and shouldn't have had to.
• In 2014, I was terrified of legal action by EA and didn't come back as a dev. We all grow as people. And this was an area I needed to grow.
• Being an immature ass. Some of my 'ass' nature comes from an unwavering dedication to wanting to make things better and being driven in that direction to such an extreme that I am now paid 4x what I earned back in 2009. Other parts of that 'ass' nature came from my own sadist tendencies that I spent a lot of years containing.
• "Who dares wins" / "Just do it": So many times in my career managers have told me "Don't develop <X>" and I went ahead and developed it anyway. Shockingly, everyone loved <X> once it existed. And the few duds that happened (I am, after all, the king of duds) were vastly outweighed by the good work.

And, since this is likely the only post I'll get to make, here is some more history:

 

1. Around 2010, the lead devs were found to be embezzling player donations (this was before Kyp was in charge; he was not involved AFAIK). This caused a pretty big blow up in the community and it is the reason I quit the first time. I wanted no part of that. The server was open source in those days, along with the database, drop tables, dev tools, etc.
2. Once Kyp took over, things went closed source. I do not have an exact date for this because I basically didn't touch the emulator for another, oh, 5 years or so. The embezzlement stopped. Though, how it costs $5000/year to run this place when I was able to run the server for all 150 players on an machine with an i7-920 back in 2009 escapes my comprehension. Maybe they're paying for dedicated server space instead of VMs, and the budget is for replacement hardware. *shrug*
   1. My personal head canon says EA got involved, and it went closed source because Kyp became the martyr who signed the deal with the devil in order to keep the game online for everyone else. And his cynicism comes from the NDA he had to sign never allowing him to tell anyone that's the deal he had to make.
   2. While that is my head canon, I also don't think it's overly likely. But it is the only theory I've ever come up with that makes any amount of sense beyond "he likes being in power and protects it at all costs" which seems...unlikely?
3. I came back around 2014 but was terrified of being caught in legal action, so I wanted no connection to anything that involved contracts or anything of the sort. I also wanted a wiki to exist, because nobody knew how to find things or where quests were supposed to happen, and in my RL career, I had used mediawiki to great effect (this was before Confluence became the standard) and knew how powerful it could be.
4. After the fight detailed above, I left to 'get a life' for another 10 years. It was clear I was going to be unable to help any further.
5. I keep seeing my name pop up in game, but seeing that Shaddex is still around and involved is weight off my shoulders. 10 years I've lived with regret I didn't need to. Glad you're still here buddy. And Karu, you're a solid dude. Nothing but love for you. You've done more for this community than I ever did. Woody, I still remember your 'voice'. I'm honestly amazed (and happy!) you're still around. ❤️

As for me? If you want my help, I'm here, but transparency remains my constant that I do not abandon. I see no reason to copy-paste data into the wiki. I have very little doubt that my name is hated to such a degree that my presence would/will cause more harm than good.

 

I'm loving that people like Codemonkey, Winlander, and so many others have made thousands of contributions to the wiki over the years. I love that Doctor is finally documenting all the ore fields. I love seeing those three collaborate on talk pages to get disagreements moved past and make things better. I love that we can all see that. And I can see there are so many more names who added so much content to that wiki over the years. Thank you all for keeping my dream alive. I got it set up, but you all made it worth it. (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ozons-salute)

You won't get banned. A few corrections:
 

• Things went closed source to a desire to keep content fresh and not have everyone copying the repos we had at the time and setting up individual servers when we needed the money to keep developing
• In 2014 *we* were terrified still of legal actions from EA having only just founded Net-7 as an entity in 2012, I don't think I threatened you with any legal actions, but I may have declined something on the basis that we could be sued for precisely the kind of reasons throughout, I want the game to stay available. There is no deal with the devil (whether an NDA would prevent me from saying that or not). I would gladly work with EA if they wanted to license us similarly to some other games out there and provide the source but I am content with "game is available, don't rock the boat".
• The budget I put up does leave some surplus but it is only ever used on the game or software needed to support the game. There is no embezzling.
• More to the point, no embezzling I was ever personally aware of but perhaps that was before my time in "management" so to speak, I do know that the person previously handling donations before the formation of Net-7 expressed an interest in no longer having it in his personal Paypal account due to taxation concerns, that is why we founded Net-7 in the first place because the US-based devs felt the same.
• *I* am responsible for the mandate not to put active content data out there, because part of that closed sourcing was giving you something to work toward, find, and document on your own. That policy extended to our services, specifically, i.e. I didn't want you to hit the portal to simply search for the item so I made them add hidden flags to prevent that, but still make the data available to higher privileged accounts and of course out on public sites and wikis to expand presence which was more common of most gaming at the time.
• Shaddex was not forced out that I recall, in fact, the only folks in my tenure that could be conceivably thought of as "forced out" were a couple of folks that tried to fork the project to set up their own server, and try to confuse the player base on it. I won't name them, but they are 2, or maybe technically a 3rd, who worked here in one of the absent periods that you mentioned for yourself. I had pretty good reasons for all 3 cases. 2 being the fork/confusion, and the other being for constant conflict with the rest of the team.

[Oxymorron]

I'm happy and grateful for all the work that has been done before and still going on, but equally happy to have missed the drama to be frank. Diverse opinions and disagreements can be an important part of making thinge better but it sounds like it has been toxic at times (hopefully for short periods).

 

I have only made a small dent in reading the old threads (with the server going up and down currently it's something to do ).

What I can already summarize from reading quite a few old threads dating back 10+ years is this:

 

Look at far you have come! The persistence, tenacity and sheer amount of time and effort that has gone into this venture is nothing short of extraordinary. From devs to playerbase, the passion bleeds through - I salute you all. You are my new heroes.

 

Looking forward to hopefully sticking around abit longer this time and get to know both new and old people.

 

 

[Toaster]

I second the bit about the effort being extraordinary.

 

I'm recently back and checking on things after a long hiatus due to medical issues and I'm so happy to see the game still chugging along. I even made a donation just to try and help in a small way keep things going.

 

Thank you to the devs who have kept this going for so long.