I joined Staredit Network more than five years ago. It was a vibrant community at that time, developing and growing around a game which, though it was long past its release, was still being explored and unlocked. I came after the end of the xboxknight forums, as I believe they were called, and old place for mapping utilities. Few now remember the bright days of v3, when post rank was proudly displayed in your profile and people were in an excited scramble to contribute and help out. The community was small, small enough at least to remain somewhat mature and civil. I was far, far below the median age of perhaps 19 at the time, although I remember that perhaps two years into my membership, on my birthday, I was voted nineteen years old. I won't disclose my age now, but I was certainly younger than 19 back then.
I was very interested in Starcraft mapping at the time. As it was for many, it was really my first leap into computer programming, and I quickly became interested in making UMS maps. I was never much good at melee - still aren't, really - but I had a lot of fun learning the intricacies of UMS and helping new members. Back in the day, we still knew relatively little, and it was possible to be a relatively advanced mapper without having a truly encyclopedic knowledge of the Starcraft engine and its functions. We had much yet to discover, and people's questions were on the whole simple. Today, the only things that really ever seem to merit discussion are of advanced triggering systems that really developed beyond my technical knowledge. But for a time, I was considered knowledgeable, and I made a few maps, left somewhat more unfinished, and had fun.
I also dabbled in modding somewhat. Again by modern standards I know very little, but back in 2005 Staredit Network had no modding division, and I helped found one, authoring a basic tutorial on modding that I know got several people started and moved many other along the path. The modding department of SEN flourished into clan [MM], and we attracted the attention of other modding sites, among them the dying Sovereign Modding Empire. Modding was fun for me, but I never really had the focus or drive to complete a full-scale mod.
As time passed, we broke all the barriers of Starcraft and succeeded in our mission to push Starcraft mapping to the limit. We know so much more now than we did: virtual HP, mobile grids, terrain blends, and so on. We really did hit the limit of trying to work on a game that was released in 1998, and the process was thrilling. I was near the forefront of EUD trigger research, never actually doing the memory searching, but the original MemCalc was hot stuff for the two or so weeks before Blizzard patched out EUD actions, drawing thousands of hits a day and spawning many discussion threads on various Korean forums. In other things besides, the voyage to the limits of Starcraft was exciting while it lasted. Today, we languish at the edge, waiting for a new and modern game to be released. (It was in March or May of 2006 I said that if Starcraft 2 were released in the next three years I would eat my socks, and it being almost the New Year, 2010, I daresay I am absolved of any sock-eating by this point).
My rise to the staff began very early, but it was a tumultuous experience, driven largely by a great amount of ambition and no small ego. I bumped heads and learned my way around the hard way, being demoted once and working my way back up through single-handedly managing the DLDB for a few months. Back then being on the Staff meant something; it was an honor bestowed to outstanding individuals, something of which I was dubiously worthy at the time. I hung in there though, doing my bit and then some, winning both friends and enemies. And in the end, I think I did a decent job.
The community kept growing rapidly, reaching at its zenith some eight thousand members, three hundred of whom were active each day. With a bigger community came a more bureaucratic administration, with more moderators needed as simple mutually agreed upon discipline and honor became encumbered by an ever-growing member base. Some old-timer began to miss the "golden days" of a smaller SEN, and a certain group within the elite began pushing, as I will ever believe, wrongly for less hierarchy and less leadership. I pushed back a bit at this, and was at the head of a wholesale slaughter of Staff sometime several years ago. I was stripped of my rank, along with those who were closest to me of the Staff, and SEN began to move more in the direction I disapproved of.
I believe SEN died that day. The death wasn't instantaneous, but the mentality against which I had fought steered the site toward ruin. Serious divisions developed, and a third faction emerged: Yoshi and ardent supporters of the open-source movement splintered to found Maplantis, dedicated at first to an extremist platform of ripping authors' right away from them and militantly enforcing open-source against their will. This rapidly softened to a more sensible doctrine of freedom with honor, and Maplantis flourished for a while, absorbing the more mature and intellectual side of SEN, leaving the old conservatives and the new, hungry, and immature body of younger members.
In the months that followed, I clung to a hope and a vision of a united community. I wanted to see SEN as what it once was, and felt that someday I would get the chance to rebuild it. SEN itself was hollowed out by the creation of Maplantis, but then SEN went down for real. Many feared it would be dead forever, and it was a chaotic time. I made an unwise move in trying to revive the name in a venture with someone else, angered among others Yoshi, but I too was very dissatisfied with the direction SEN had taken. When SEN finally came back as v5, it was a realization of much of what I had feared was developing on the beta. Gone were ranks and advancement, or any sense of hierarchy, really. While this worked for the members of Maplantis, I knew it would not work for SEN. A personal, honor-driven society does not function on the scale SEN was envisioned to be.
Moose, I think, slowly realized this. After months of running v5, I watched him turned a more sane head, and some of the right people got their Staff positions back. I applaud what he has done for Staredit Network since then, but it has sadly been too little, too late. I need not name the legions of longstanding members who have left forever. So many had become disgusted and fed up where I persevered that there is almost nothing left to build the community with. So many people have received Staff positions that are so young, and of a different era than we once were. The Staff are not the stellar group of mature and mannered individuals they once were, paragons of SEN membership. Our Staff now includes members too new and young for that, along with some who really are unfit for such leadership at all. This lack of the right qualities to lead - a lack of good judgment, of sensibility, and an inability to keep a temper in check while acting in an official capacity - permeates all levels of the SEN staff currently. I need only look at the Staff Forum to see a flame war the likes of which used to only be seen in the Other forums.
This I think as much as anything has driven me away. It hasn't been conscious, but I read less and less that is posted here with each passing day. The Terrain forum, I hear, has become a raging battlefield of egos larger than some continents and Serious Discussion is hardly any more placid. And when the Staff forum is almost as bad, I know something has gone terribly wrong. There is still some hope. Some bright sparks (I credit Devourer much for all the brilliant work he has thrown into the DLDB, doing in a few weeks what IP could not seem to finish in a few years) still fly, and I have continued faith in Moose to make the right decisions, when he is given license to do what he thinks is right.
But I have faded away significantly. To be fair, I am not a gamer, and never was, really. I haven't touched Starcraft in many years except to play the occasional LAN game with friends. When I game, it's DotA, and even that has only been very, very seldom recently. I have a busy and very happy real life, in which I live ever more and more, and so my time here is limited. And so I note my diminished presence here. I will still be around - log in every day most likely - but I am to be found less these days in what I read and say. Like everything else, it just might change when Starcraft 2 is released, but I doubt it. In my case, I am just not a gamer anymore.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2009, 9:14 pm by DT_Battlekruser. Reason: spelling and grammar
None.
