2001-04-17 - 12:55 a.m.

The Last Stand of Massive Johnson

Wow, the Diaryland server has been up and down like a jack-in-the-box. Reminds me of Planetarion. Speaking of which...

Oh no, he's going to talk about Planetarion again! And I'll bet you guys were looking at the title and hoping it was going to be a porno entry. Maybe later for that.

This is going to be the last Planetarion entry for a while, I promise.

Anyway, as I told you last time this round of Planetarion had officially ended, and the Planetarion creators hoped to turn the post-round game into free-for-all by giving all the players a massive resource donation. It worked to some extent, but for the most part it was merely annoying. Then the creators decided to up the ante by giving everyone DOUBLE the amount of the previous donation.

Again, for a player of my size (top 60), it was a nice sum of money, but for the average Planetarion player (who was about 1/200th of my size) it was a lottery jackpot.

All the big players started to get major enemy incoming, and it was much more serious than after the previous donation. My alliance, Fury, was especially hard hit since they had been declared the "winner" of the round. and the former #1 galaxy and #1 player got reduced to penury by the barbarian hordes. When the round officially ended we were galaxy #9, but over the week that followed, attrition pushed us up the list until we were galaxy #5, and the top Fury galaxy as well.

And we had our problems too - several of our players got hit by these so-called "newbie attacks." "Newbie" was originally a term for a player new to the game, but it eventually meant any player with a low score.

The stated goal of the creators was to make the game "more fun" with the donations, but it just made the game more annoying. Most of the attacks looked very suspicious - they were not squadrons of low scoring players attacking us, they were one or two people using multiple accounts to attack likely targets. Having more than one account, or sharing your account password, is strictly prohibited in Planetarion, but it's tough to catch people doing it.

For example, here is something that went on earlier in the round that shows how clever people can be and how alliance politics works on a large scale.

After the first two months of the game a triumvirate of alliances ruled the game: Legion, Fury and RB (ReBorn). One day there was an announcement that a large chunk of RB was getting deleted for cheating. How they did it was very interesting.

About 40 players in a wing of RB hooked their planets up to a web-bot that periodically checked their accounts. If the bot detected any hostile incoming it would alert all the members of that wing, sometimes beeping them on their pagers! It also enabled them to somehow access their planets using handheld web devices. One RB player told me that he was at a party when his beeper went off, he was able to monitor his planet, get defense and then go back to the party a minute later.

A very clever way to play the game, but totally against the rules. This was password-sharing on an unheard-of scale. One of the players in the wing ratted them out to the creators, and when the existence of the bot was confirmed, the guilty accounts were frozen and then deleted.

This was a terrible blow to RB - they lost about 17 players in the top 100. Immediately they looked like easy pickings so Legion and Fury, their former allies, fell on them like an Ethiopian at an all-you-can-eat buffet. In a few days RB was a shadow of its former self with the remaining members removing their alliance tags and going into hiding. Of course, this left Fury and Legion bigger than ever.

Anyway, to return to the present time, this new wave of "newbie attacks" was a lot less funny than the previous one. In fact, yours truly was one of the main recipients of this negative attention. Two days ago a major offensive was launched against my planet in the middle of the night. Luckily I was online monitoring my planet when it happened. When I scanned my attackers my annoyance turned to concern. Previously these trivial attacks had featured huge amounts of weak ships, this attack contained nearly all hard ships. This was going to sting.

During the attack I completely annihilated my attackers, but lost about 15% of my score. The frustrating thing was that there was no point in counter-attacking because my attackers had nothing to offer. And why did they attack me? It was because of my planet and ruler name: "Massive Johnson of Your Moms House." That's what I get for choosing such a smack-talkin' name. I found this out when one of the attackers sent me a jeering note speculating on the actual size of my "Johnson."

Sigh.

In the last week we had been sparring with a much smaller galaxy, numbered (22:7). Earlier in the round one of my less-ethical galaxy mates had been using that galaxy as his own private resource mine, attacking them again and again. When they got the first donation they launched an attack on the guy in our galaxy, which we beat back fairly easily. While I was sympathetic to their complaint, my sympathy ended the minute they launched ships at us. I then led a counterattack on 22:7 which was rather disappointing because so few of my galaxy-mates cared enough to come along. They would regret their apathy soon enough. I suspected 22:7 might try something because they had changed their galaxy-name to "We Don't Forget."

Sure enough, the 22:7 guys launched on us last night, when the game was just a few hours from its end. I managed to organize a defense, and instructed the rest of my galaxy to launch on the attackers so that the last thing they would see was our fleets bearing down on them. Then, I went to bed.

This round of Planetarion stopped today at 12:00 Central European Time. Since that was 6AM Eastern Standard Time, I wasn't awake to see what happened at the very end. Not that it mattered much.

So, this round of Planetarion is over. What have I learned?

For me, this round was an experiment in revenge. My account was so big I didn't have to take crap from anyone. If someone sent me a note that I felt was less than polite, I would respond with an attack. I started to feel like a schoolyard bully, and moreover I discovered that I enjoyed beating on those smaller players who sassed me or attacked my friends. Many of these players were outraged that I launched on them. They felt that some unspoken code of ethics prevented me from smacking a player one tenth my size. That's one of the interesting things about the game - you can leave your scruples at the door.

However, I found the pursuit of revenge was ultimately hollow. It was like a bottomless cup of coffee you could never drain that always left you thirsty. Too much was never enough.

Probably part of it was that it was all a tinhorn space opera played with pretend starships. When things got too nasty you could always take a step backward and say: "It's only a game!" Most of the people I pounded accused me of having no life and taking the game too seriously. Maybe I was - or maybe they were just trying to salve their wounded egos.

I think next round I'm going to try not to be so bloodthirsty and be more of a team player. I'm going to try to help the members of my galaxy grow into a fighting unit, one for all and all for one. I'm also going to try to take a more active role in Fury, if I have the time. I think I'm going to be spending less time on the game this next round. I suspect that my readers will be happy to hear that!

So, I intend to put the sword of revenge aside... unless I find those turkeys from 22:7 again! Then I may take it out to play with, just a little bit. What's the harm in that?