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angelophileHad and heard a lot of opinions on the subject of XET and just want to give my own rant on the subject, without worrying about offending or upsetting anyone. So if you don't want to read it
So... XET is dead in the water? Sure looks like it. Let's face it, this is hardly a new opinion and isn't exactly new news. I think it's been pretty obvious to everyone since around January time that things were on the slide. So, six months down the line have things improved any?
Nope.
Let's face it, it's now only a matter of time before XET closes. This is pretty much clear I think, I don't think anyone will be surpised by that. It's depressing yes, but not exactly a novelty. Yep, it was my first X-men/superhero mux too, the first that didn't use combat systems as a spur to rp, the first where I've really got close to those people I've been rping with.
What it isn't the first at is having a finite lifespan. Let's face it, when has any mux lasted forever? Mux can keep going with the actions of a few players, but mostly those muxes end up being members only clubs. All the rest tend to reach a point then fade away. More often than not this happens withing weeks or months, not years, so in the scheme of things XET has done pretty well. It's lasted. But it hasn't lasted forever. In any mux you get a core team of admin who keep things going. When they disipate, as eventually always happens, there's two ways things can go. The first is rare - that a group of players come in, are accepted by all the other admin without complaint, and work towards keeping the mux going. This can go in indefinitely, but sooner or later pretty much every admin burns out. It's the nature of the job. Because it -is- a job. A job you don't get paid for, and you'd have to be pretty dumb or perverse to do that indefinitiely without some grumbles.
The second way is more common - staff burn out and aren't replace. Or if they are it's with people who don't entirely mesh, can't pick up the ball and run with it for various reasons. Often this is down to the lack of enthusiasm from the staff who are already there. That position I know well having been in it many times myself. The only real solution can be to start afresh with an entirely new staff. Sometimes that works - XMA is trying it. I've tried it. It can work sometimes, other times the mux is already too far goe to make a recovery.
XET has, or had, a lot going for it. Interesting theme, interested players. However, what it also has now is about 3 years worth of convoluted continuity. I wouldn't app a character who had been played previously to any degree there. I took Jono because he'd had 2 posted scenes. Some of the existing characters have -hundreds-. who's going to read them all? Who has the time? And of course, if they don't then the long term players complain. There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth that the way the player is playing the character isn't what had been established in their own back scenes. The thing is, the only people who care about this stuff are not people apping for characters for the first time, but the lon established characters or admin. The only characters that I've seen that people have successfully picked up again are Ororo, Logan and Emma. Ororo and Logan were probably lucky - their characters weren't really messed with at all. Emma had to undergo an entire personality and memory transplant before she could be played. Is anyone going to be able to successfully pick up characters like Betsy, Illyana, Jean etc etc? Yep, there's the school of thought out there that they should be tossed aside and people move on. That's a reasonable attitued to take.
Except... XET is an X-men mux. Who do people think of when they think of the X-men? Phoenix, Cyclops, Storm, Psylocke, Beast, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Gambit etc Of those characters one has a player who never rps, one has an established history that won't be too hard to pick up, two aren't even X-men and two have been screwed up in the past. So on this X-men mux there are.... um... two X-men. One of which has a player, one doesn't, but has a hefty established backgound.
So what am I saying? Well, I'm saying that after 3 years if most of the players for major characters have left it's almost impossible to pick up the baton for them again. Muxes succeed the first few months when people are trying new things with tried and tested characters and when people stick with characters. Scott is a success story in one way because his player has stuck with him. However, to anyone coming in to app on the mux they don't see anything they recognise. The appeal for new players to join a mux where the majority of the characters they know are either not there or radically different as to be unreconisable is minimal.
So that can be seen as one cause of XET's downfall. The others? Well, there have been a lot of fingers pointed at certain admin, players, you name it. I think the plain fact of the matter is that the mux slumped, the admin slumped. Hypnos should be given a lot of credit for keeping the game going as long as he did - he's the visible face of the admin there and to us proles at least seemed to be driving things along by willpower alone. Maybe there were hundreds of people working behind the background to make things work, but all I ever saw was Hypnos. So I have built up a respect for the guy - as far as I can see he's slogged his guts out keeping the mux going as long as he has. Now things have fallen apart it's easy to start looking for a scapegoat. Indeed, I can understand people's recent frustrations. But the blame for XET's failure can't be levelled purely at one door. Fingerpointing might help work off some frustration but it's not going to bring the mux back. Nothing is.
So there's been a lot of talk about where the mux goes from from here. Can it recover? Nope, the impetus has gone. There's no-one enthusiastic enough to drive things along. Yep, there are players out there who have energy and want to keep playing with the characters they're used to. Do I believe that they could take XET on and make a success of it? No, XET has run its course. Let it go. Move on. The mux is dead, there's no bringing it back.
There's a lot of things working against it reviving. The theme isn't always going to be popular, the established history isn't. The lack of characters in their canon places and unsullied by past rp isn't. The near burnout of the vast majority of the players isn't. The fact that even if people -do- try and keep XET going I don't personally see enough lasting enthusiasm there to keep things running indefinately. It's different with a new mux. You can open a new mux and everything is exciting and shiny and new. Any attempt to do the same with an established theme and established characters from a mux isn't going to work. It's second second hand stuff. Established characters taken, resestablished, given new backgrounds that only their players will understand and plopped onto a mux? A new mux has a chance of succeeding. A new mux where people can apply their old characters, people like Zandra, Kelly, Rina etc who aren't going to work on places like XTP. An XET continuation in any shape or form I can't see working. The mux is dead. XET: The Next Generation isn't going to be a success.
It's a negative view maybe, but not wholly unbelievable I don't think.
At the end of the day I've also built up too much respect for Hypnos to agree with any attempt to force him out or whatever else may happen. Why? Other people have problems with him? What people? At the end of the day, the person I've seen really working for the mux is Hypnos. Now, people -can- tell me they were there too, working behnd the scenes, slogging away, never visible, never getting recognition. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. I'm human though. I don;t entirely believe what I don't see. People can tell me things second hand, but I have the idea that Hypnos is an okay guy so firmly established in my mind that any attempt to now tell me otherwise, which, to be fair, no-one has, is doomed to failure. I'm stubborn, set in my ways, often unreasonable, as in this case maybe, but hey, at the end of the day my opinions are my opinions. These have been established not only by me but by others who have -kept- themselves behind closed doors as well. Don't claim any of the glory yourselves? Then don't expect my support to fall on your side always. I'm fickle like that.
However, that said, I'm fully aware that a lot of people have put a lot of work into XET over the years. We all have. Whatever these people do thay have my support. Those that have the energy and drive to go off, take what they've learntfrom XET and open a whole new mux to get a whole new set of people enthusiastic about things again, fair play to you. XET came from the ashes, maybe it can happen again.
So... XET is dead in the water? Sure looks like it. Let's face it, this is hardly a new opinion and isn't exactly new news. I think it's been pretty obvious to everyone since around January time that things were on the slide. So, six months down the line have things improved any?
Nope.
Let's face it, it's now only a matter of time before XET closes. This is pretty much clear I think, I don't think anyone will be surpised by that. It's depressing yes, but not exactly a novelty. Yep, it was my first X-men/superhero mux too, the first that didn't use combat systems as a spur to rp, the first where I've really got close to those people I've been rping with.
What it isn't the first at is having a finite lifespan. Let's face it, when has any mux lasted forever? Mux can keep going with the actions of a few players, but mostly those muxes end up being members only clubs. All the rest tend to reach a point then fade away. More often than not this happens withing weeks or months, not years, so in the scheme of things XET has done pretty well. It's lasted. But it hasn't lasted forever. In any mux you get a core team of admin who keep things going. When they disipate, as eventually always happens, there's two ways things can go. The first is rare - that a group of players come in, are accepted by all the other admin without complaint, and work towards keeping the mux going. This can go in indefinitely, but sooner or later pretty much every admin burns out. It's the nature of the job. Because it -is- a job. A job you don't get paid for, and you'd have to be pretty dumb or perverse to do that indefinitiely without some grumbles.
The second way is more common - staff burn out and aren't replace. Or if they are it's with people who don't entirely mesh, can't pick up the ball and run with it for various reasons. Often this is down to the lack of enthusiasm from the staff who are already there. That position I know well having been in it many times myself. The only real solution can be to start afresh with an entirely new staff. Sometimes that works - XMA is trying it. I've tried it. It can work sometimes, other times the mux is already too far goe to make a recovery.
XET has, or had, a lot going for it. Interesting theme, interested players. However, what it also has now is about 3 years worth of convoluted continuity. I wouldn't app a character who had been played previously to any degree there. I took Jono because he'd had 2 posted scenes. Some of the existing characters have -hundreds-. who's going to read them all? Who has the time? And of course, if they don't then the long term players complain. There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth that the way the player is playing the character isn't what had been established in their own back scenes. The thing is, the only people who care about this stuff are not people apping for characters for the first time, but the lon established characters or admin. The only characters that I've seen that people have successfully picked up again are Ororo, Logan and Emma. Ororo and Logan were probably lucky - their characters weren't really messed with at all. Emma had to undergo an entire personality and memory transplant before she could be played. Is anyone going to be able to successfully pick up characters like Betsy, Illyana, Jean etc etc? Yep, there's the school of thought out there that they should be tossed aside and people move on. That's a reasonable attitued to take.
Except... XET is an X-men mux. Who do people think of when they think of the X-men? Phoenix, Cyclops, Storm, Psylocke, Beast, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Gambit etc Of those characters one has a player who never rps, one has an established history that won't be too hard to pick up, two aren't even X-men and two have been screwed up in the past. So on this X-men mux there are.... um... two X-men. One of which has a player, one doesn't, but has a hefty established backgound.
So what am I saying? Well, I'm saying that after 3 years if most of the players for major characters have left it's almost impossible to pick up the baton for them again. Muxes succeed the first few months when people are trying new things with tried and tested characters and when people stick with characters. Scott is a success story in one way because his player has stuck with him. However, to anyone coming in to app on the mux they don't see anything they recognise. The appeal for new players to join a mux where the majority of the characters they know are either not there or radically different as to be unreconisable is minimal.
So that can be seen as one cause of XET's downfall. The others? Well, there have been a lot of fingers pointed at certain admin, players, you name it. I think the plain fact of the matter is that the mux slumped, the admin slumped. Hypnos should be given a lot of credit for keeping the game going as long as he did - he's the visible face of the admin there and to us proles at least seemed to be driving things along by willpower alone. Maybe there were hundreds of people working behind the background to make things work, but all I ever saw was Hypnos. So I have built up a respect for the guy - as far as I can see he's slogged his guts out keeping the mux going as long as he has. Now things have fallen apart it's easy to start looking for a scapegoat. Indeed, I can understand people's recent frustrations. But the blame for XET's failure can't be levelled purely at one door. Fingerpointing might help work off some frustration but it's not going to bring the mux back. Nothing is.
So there's been a lot of talk about where the mux goes from from here. Can it recover? Nope, the impetus has gone. There's no-one enthusiastic enough to drive things along. Yep, there are players out there who have energy and want to keep playing with the characters they're used to. Do I believe that they could take XET on and make a success of it? No, XET has run its course. Let it go. Move on. The mux is dead, there's no bringing it back.
There's a lot of things working against it reviving. The theme isn't always going to be popular, the established history isn't. The lack of characters in their canon places and unsullied by past rp isn't. The near burnout of the vast majority of the players isn't. The fact that even if people -do- try and keep XET going I don't personally see enough lasting enthusiasm there to keep things running indefinately. It's different with a new mux. You can open a new mux and everything is exciting and shiny and new. Any attempt to do the same with an established theme and established characters from a mux isn't going to work. It's second second hand stuff. Established characters taken, resestablished, given new backgrounds that only their players will understand and plopped onto a mux? A new mux has a chance of succeeding. A new mux where people can apply their old characters, people like Zandra, Kelly, Rina etc who aren't going to work on places like XTP. An XET continuation in any shape or form I can't see working. The mux is dead. XET: The Next Generation isn't going to be a success.
It's a negative view maybe, but not wholly unbelievable I don't think.
At the end of the day I've also built up too much respect for Hypnos to agree with any attempt to force him out or whatever else may happen. Why? Other people have problems with him? What people? At the end of the day, the person I've seen really working for the mux is Hypnos. Now, people -can- tell me they were there too, working behnd the scenes, slogging away, never visible, never getting recognition. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. I'm human though. I don;t entirely believe what I don't see. People can tell me things second hand, but I have the idea that Hypnos is an okay guy so firmly established in my mind that any attempt to now tell me otherwise, which, to be fair, no-one has, is doomed to failure. I'm stubborn, set in my ways, often unreasonable, as in this case maybe, but hey, at the end of the day my opinions are my opinions. These have been established not only by me but by others who have -kept- themselves behind closed doors as well. Don't claim any of the glory yourselves? Then don't expect my support to fall on your side always. I'm fickle like that.
However, that said, I'm fully aware that a lot of people have put a lot of work into XET over the years. We all have. Whatever these people do thay have my support. Those that have the energy and drive to go off, take what they've learntfrom XET and open a whole new mux to get a whole new set of people enthusiastic about things again, fair play to you. XET came from the ashes, maybe it can happen again.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-18 02:22 am (UTC)Won't work though.
Like I said, it's been 6 months now. I give all credit to the admin for trying to make things work now but it's a case of being a little too late now I think, and, in my opinion, the game has naturally run its course.