TWISTED POST MORTEM [Author: wirehead]
Some post-TwisTerTour 2000 analysis for you.
It’s been fun hating Dr. Twister. Many think that the current crop of rant sites basically started for no other reason than to say mean things about the poor Doctor. With a few exceptions, that’s not quite true.
It’s not TwisTer most of us despise — but the community he represents. And that community is a large part of ORPGs, and one that cannot be ignored. It’s the folks (not all kids, despite public opinion) that want to cut the corners, take the most direct route, and roll over whomever it takes to get to… well, to win.
Here’s some quotes from that community, from the kTalk page on the last story:
Oh dear, you people are so silly… Ive been exploiting bugs since beta, you guys think drtwister is the reason people exploit? You’re kidding yourself…our clique knew about the bugs posted on his site months and months before he even posted them. You people have no fucking clue…he held SO MANY BUGS BACK so many bugs that could have really, really fucked up this game beyond repair. Bugs i still know that arent fixed ^^ You people are so retarded scapegoating him just because he ran a webpage.
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i loved getting some great bugs from him and it highten my play 10 fold. Dr twister is a very important person in UO. He isn’t the one you should be made at, it should be the people that allowed this to happen. The ones that don’t act apon them like they should. I can only abuse teh bug, not correct it. Besides in a game that is more, who screwed whom more, harder and faster than the next guy, it adds another level of play that only UO can bring to the table.
This is the community from which Twister came — he was an active poster on xsploitz.com’s forums before opening his site, and his UO manifesto posted when he opened the site states, quite clearly, that his most fervent hope is that said community wins — uses every bug and exploit at their disposal to screw their opposition over. Some pertinent quotes from that document:
When something happens to you, the typical response is, “sorry, it’s part of the game.” SO, the bugs were written in as part of the game, we can use them to our advantage. If they don’t want them their anymore, they can fix them. They can’t hold us responsible, “it’s part of the game” after all.
So, will bugs, exploits, hacks and cheats ever stop in games? NO! Is this sad, does it ruin the game for everyone? I guess, but they will still always be there.
OSI encourages us to role play. The more we role play, the better the world will be for everyone. GREAT! From now on, I will be role playing a cheater and exploiter. After all, I don’t cheat and exploit others in real life.
As long as people play games, the more popular a game becomes, the more likely someone will write a trainer, or cheat for it. My advice, you can’t beat them, might as well join them. For all of you out there, debating on whether or not to use a 3rd party program or not, my advice is YES! Use them. Chose between UO Plugin, or UO Extreme. Don’t use UO Assist, you have to pay for it.
Screw OSI, because they have screwed us. We are all in this together, and we are all looking for that next big bug. Simply, to make the game more enjoyable. If you have a bug, keep it to yourself. Exploit it, have fun with it, use it as a party trick. Next, share it with a friend, someone who can help you define it and perfect it. Share it with me.
Share your bugs, so we can all enjoy them, that’s what we are all here for.
That was posted in December of 1998. It’s a long road from there to here…
The Dr.TwisTer Network is not going anywhere and I will continue to bring the truth about games to those who play them.
My commentary and philosophies have been criticized and praised. Everything that happened was indeed an experience. I’m glad I was able to be here for those who needed it, and help out whenever I could. It’s your decision if I helped make this game better, and it’s your thoughts how you would like to remember me in UO.
What a long, strange road it’s been, indeed. It’s been very interesting indeed, watching Dr. Twister grow up. His two currently active sites, for Asheron’s Call and Shadowbane, are actually positive influences for the community that they serve. And so far we haven’t seen any AC exploits. A few items that tiptoe right up to the line (such as line of sight exploits vs. monsters) but no outright lusty screwing of thy neighbor as we’ve seen so often on his UO site.
Why is that? Well, two reasons, really. One, as I mentioned before, I think the good Doctor has actually matured somewhat in his outlook — he isn’t openly out to destroy the games he covers now. And second is the nature of UO itself.
Ultima Online is unique among current ORPGs in that you can screw thy neighbor, in a multitude of quite irritating ways. And there are many, many people who are looking for every possible edge in order to do exactly that. To kill you, to take everything you own, to suck every last possession out of your house, and to stand over your dead corpse while your ghost watches him type : OWNS you, motherfucker!.
In that kind of hostile environment, where the game is literally a free-fire zone, it is a very small step to use a bug in the game to gain an advantage, especially over that punk who just OWNED you. And it’s oh, so easy to blame Origin for introducing that bug into the game in the first place. It’s all their fault, you think, because after all, since it’s in the game, everyone but me is already doing it. I’m just catching up.
The question you really should be asking yourself, is how do you win in such an environment? What does it mean to win? At what point does it leave “the game” and become the player itself? And this question remains, whether or not TwisTer is updating his web site.
*steadfastly refuses to comment on OSI/EA’s incredibly braindead, community chilling and morally void legal blackmailing of the UO2 affair*