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More than words – The Voice of There |
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More than words – The Voice of There |
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I decided to give Rick his own column since he does have a unique way of expressing himself. Also it saves me the time of putting disclaimers on each and every article he does. ;) So for some comic relief, we present to you The Blue Nose Files
PAST RAMBLINGS
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EXCLUSIVE SECOND REPORT ON THE STATE OF THERE ADDRESS
Okay, so last week, a couple of Voice staff members thought it would be funny to get me all hyped up about covering the State of There Address on Tuesday and conveniently neglected to tell me that it was the following Tuesday. I unknowingly attended an entire week early and became extremely frustrated from the perceived lack of interest from the community -- and Steve himself -- when no one bothered to show up. Needless to say, I was sorely disenchanted with the entire situation. This week, before Geea turned me loose like a puppy chasing a soccer ball into the Buggy Arena during a derby, I made very certain that I had the correct place, date, and time.
In attendance were most importantly, me, as well as other less important people such as Steve, Alex_ and Vash_Community (I think they're related, they have the same last name), Mackie, Xeryus, Virtual_Vikki, ZachC, Mescad, UBER_GEEK, Karythe, MarineDude, Baloo, Kysses, Nep, jleidlein, and probably some other people I forgot about. From what I could tell, these were all people who either worked for Forterra Systems, who were a member of the press, or who slipped someone a few thousand Therebux to get invited to this shindig. I tried to break the ice by making a weak "Alcoholics Anonymous" joke, but no one laughed so I think it hit way too close to home for everyone. After Alex_Community
gave her opening remarks (we
Steve tossed out facts and figures like 97% of their new content comes from the developer program. I think the other 3% shows up by accident or something like that, I'm not sure. The introduction of ThereCare reduced their customer support costs, and they've multiplied the member base by 4 over the last year. For those of you who are math geniuses, that's precisely double the what the member base would now be if they had only multiplied the member base by 2 over the last year. He also mentioned that the rate of new members has increased by a factor of 2 since last summer. His advice is to greet new members with open arms and show them the ropes, instead of running them over with buggies which would be typical human nature. For me, anyway. I'm not really sure what all was said that this point... most of it flew over my head, and I was busy checking out RavenTresses' profile and flirting with her in IM. The second half of his address was He would like to see Forterra work towards improvements in helping us spread the word to our family and friends regarding There, as well as provide more in-game avenues of fun, such as paintgun and racing kits for PAZes, a re-vamp of event hosting and rating systems, and probably more ways to run over people with a larger variety of vehicles, which happens to be a lot of fun for some people, you know! They are wholly committed to the continued success for There, and can't wait to see what the membership creates for it with the current and upcoming customization tools.
So, thank you, Steve, for giving us some insight as to what's upcoming for us in 2005, and for taking the time to address us. We appreciate the world that all y'all have provided and maintained for us, and we will endeavor to push the tools that you give us to customize our world to their limits in creating new content for our fellow Thereians. We look forward to the continued releases which will bring us the much-needed bug fixes, PAZ re-design, scripting features, and improved auctions and developer tools.
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The Voice of There is not owned, operated or affiliated with There, Inc. All rights reserved. All graphics, logos, articles are the property of The Voice and it's staff. |
I
ventured into the There Community House and met up with Steve
himself, who was sporting jeans and a flashy green and yellow flowery
Hawaiian shirt. I had to turn down the gamma control on my monitor in order
to see after he arrived. It took a few minutes to make sure all the
broadcasters for the various radio stations were ready to broadcast to the
dozens of listening parties all over the virtual world, all slathering their
drooling chops in front of their jukeboxes waiting for tender morsels of
information. I believe that Alex_Community was still busy
writing her opening comments literally seconds before she started the
address. I have to truly respect a person with such a mastery of
procrastination who works so well under pressure!
had to wait until she finished writing them), she turned over the floor to
Steve, who started talking some nonsense about what There
was like a year ago and why they changed their name, and something about
some military contract for millions of dollars and whatnot. Then he quoted
Kevin Costner from Field of Dreams where it's said "If you build it, they
will come." but then he said that's not true, and that we have to build
things for ourselves. So it's more like a field of our own dreams which we
have to make ourselves, but with less baseball and less Kevin Costner.
Basically, he said that the State of There was CONFIDENT and STRONG, more so
than ever before in its history (especially more so than since way back in
the early alpha versions when There was just a simulation of an avatar
getting run over by another avatar in a buggy) and on behalf of all of the
Board of Directors, the executive staff, and the team at Forterra, he
thanked all y'all for making There what it is today... which is really
awesome.
At
this time, I was getting a little frustrated that they weren't talking more
about me. But I continued to listen because I knew that my comprehension of
the address would be critical to writing this story and being able to report
what was said to you, the loyal reader. Steve went on to
list some recent improvements to the world of There: something about being
able to use DirectX, which expanded their market to include every computer
built after 2003 (they have still yet to break into the Commodore 64 and
VIC-20 market, however), the ThereCare website, the reduced pricing on
membership from $50 to $4.95 (about the price of lunch at a Chinese Buffet,
which are awesome by the way because crab rangoons are the best!), and
enhancements to the Developer Program, to include the resource-based pricing
model, increased texture sizes and resolutions, and animations. Recent
releases have brought us bug fixes, new objects such as the Monster TUV,
Bacios, and skirts, and new landscapes such as Comet Island, Snowman Island,
and that Astrology Pavilion thingy.
about what we could look forward to in 2005. Their idea for There is to
capitalize on the trend that people want to do everything online, and
There's niche is the part where we want to hang out, socialize, and connect
with others, establishing meaningful relationships with them. And then
running them over with buggies. Steve says they are
focusing on three things... the economy, the developer program, and real
estate development. He was talking about a lot of real cool things we can
probably look forward to this year... some possibilities are making our own
card games, other ways for people to make money besides designing, such as
exterior/interior design or being mayors of themed neighborhoods, custom
scripting, improvements in the auction system, PAZ re-design, and a lot of
other nifty things I'd forgotten by the time I sat down to write this. I
can assure you it was all really cool though!
The
address was followed by a question and answer session, but at this point,
Virtual_Vikki had moved in front of me to film from a
different angle, and I was all distracted by her butt. So unfortunately, I
missed a lot of the questions and answers. Steve also
neglected to answer my question regarding the rumors of an impending alien
invasion of There, so I think that he may already be under their control.
All in all, it was a great update to the community on the status of our
virtual world, and I really hope all y'all got a chance to catch it in some
form or another because, quite frankly, I really wasn't paying all that much
attention and it was hard to hear with my N-Sync MP3s blaring in the
background.
