ahuxley was nice enough to list some bad CLIQUE habits for us:

• tight tunnels
• light up stairways
• ledges
• dead ends
• lots of detail in a box room
• strip lights along a long straight tight tunnel
• doors to no where
• height as some ‘feature’
• all the junk people pass of as ‘creative’

This is a very convenient list, because if you want to be in the CLIQUE, you will never get there without first making a map with all these bad habits. And, if you want to rebel against the CLIQUE, then you need to make a map with none of these bad habits.

As I sit here, listen to gay stripper electro music, and explore the long-lost contents from my first laptop’s hard disk, I can’t help but succumb to the barrage of Marathon memories that come from that magical “AlephOne” folder located in my ancient home directory. Please remember with me…

…The odd little moment in the same group chat that prompted RyokoTK to utter the phrase “this shit is bananas”…

…The Bad Map Showdown between Ryoko and W’rkncacnter summer 2005 that culminated in the creation of Super Cool Kill Zone and its slightly superior friend, Carnage Vila 46…

……

…Hawkeyefile…

…Aleph One RPG, to which I sacrificed an entire night’s sleep. I didn’t know about tables in Lua, or much else, but I was damned if I let a few dozen if/then statements stop me. There was only one thing I could do: create the most revolutionary scenario ever seen by man, one line at a time, winning over people like W’rk, never stopping, never firing…

…The result of AORPG…

…Three Middle Fingers…

…Crashes and uncertainty for Marathoners and the impending Pfhorums apocalypse during the winter of 2005–2006, which culminated in BenUrban’s takeover of the #alephone IRC channel. Little did he know it would all end for him some day…

…Godot…

……

…The big dreams of a regular guy named Assassingao…

…Victory Dance I–holder of a million tomorrows, several simplici7y maps, a wall-climbing extravaganza, and something special from Goran himself. VDI really did suck, but who cared to say so at the time? Not I…

…Pfhortran…

…MOTHAFUCKA_TARGET…

…Pfhorums v0.0, Secret Leaked Beta Edition, Land of Dreams and of Nightmares…

…The first (and supposedly last) time I left Marathon because of real-life issues. Good thing I never came back…

…The time MoppyPuppy came to the AlephOne chatroom on AOL Instant messenger and complained that he had recently been raped by lesbians at the beach, in an incident involving leather straps, a pole of imprisonment, and oil…

…The first moments of nausea after the initial dozen links from Hentai Sama. After that dozen, it is all a blur…

…Film.mp4…

…Signing up to get active on the Alt.Games.Marathon newsgroup…

…My old habit of hosting games lasting 15 or 20 minutes, almost always on Beyond Thunderdome. There exist videos of such things, and one of my favorites is HR, Kim Lao, and me in a savage fight to the death that spans dozens of kills…

…When SBO not only had news, but exciting news…

…The first-ever Internet game c/o Aleph One’s developers…

…The downloads and debates over the Aleph One nightly builds, which used such startling new features as the metaserver and in-game chat. The same nightly builds that gave Treellama mind-shredding nightmares. The same nightly builds that hosted KawaiiPet’s Lua Olympic Games…

…loch…………………………………………..

It seems that some people are confused about what the CLIQUE is and what it is trying to accomplish. Let me see if I can explain. Really, the CLIQUE only has one simple goal; completely ruin marathon. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a closer look at some of the members.

Treellama – For quite some time, he has been single-handedly ruining Alephone. There used to be many developers working on the alephone engine, but now it’s pretty much down to just one person. Ever wonder why that is? Many of the previous alephone developers tried to help add cool new features, and once Treellama joined the group of developers, the helpful ones all started to disappear. Coincidence? Every time someone makes a helpful suggestion for a new direction for Alephone, the idea gets shot down just to make sure Alephone gets ruined even more. Hell, just look at the list of feature requests that seem to never make it into the engine. This is no mistake. Remember how much you liked NIBs? Yeah? Well, it’s gone now.

RyokoTK – Ryoko has been an administrator for the Pfhorums for a long time now. I haven’t been counting, but the number of people that have been banned for no reason must just be massive. He is the reason you aren’t allowed to voice your opinion about anything on the Pfhorums. If you disagree with anything he says, not only will you be kicked out of the Pfhorums, you will disappear from the face of the planet. When was the last time anyone heard anything from Macsforever? The Pfhorums have done a great job of documenting every horrible thing RyokoTK has done, so I think I’ll let you read through that stuff if you need more proof.

W’rkncacnter – My job is to make sure no one feels welcome anywhere. Have a bad idea? A good idea? I don’t care, I’m going to shoot it down. Nothing new or cool happens in the community because of me. Remember that time I was a total dick to you for no reason? Well, chances are I don’t, because I’m an asshole to people so often I can’t remember one thing from another.

Irons – Irons’ CLIQUE job is top secret. I doubt any of you would understand it even if I told you, so don’t worry about it too much.

I’m going to leave figuring out what jobs the other CLIQUE members have as an exercise for the reader. Just remember, if anything annoys you in the marathon community, you’ll know who’s behind it.

A while back, I wrote a post about how the community was dying down a bit. People were posting less on the pfhorums and the metaserver’s activity dropped a little. WELL! Now it’s the summer, and once again we get a new wave of activity. Of course, with activity comes a huge increase in retardation. As I had mentioned before, stupidity has always been at the core of the community, and if you’ve joined the metaserver recently, you’d have to agree with me.

If you look at the numbers alone, the metaserver has been more active than it has in the last 7 months at least (as long as I’ve been recording statistics). At the current rate, there will have been more than 3,500 games this month, which is roughly 1000 more than the previous months. I’m guessing this is due to it being summer and people are more free to waste time, and this is a good thing.

But there is a cost. If you’ve visited the metaserver lately, you’ll rarely find a time when at least one person isn’t spamming the chat with random bullshit. At best, you’ll find people talking about the game they’re playing, but they’ll be typing as 12 year-olds typically do on the internet. “How r u?” is a typical sentence you’ll find. When it’s in full fail mode, you’ll get people typing whatever they can as quicly as possible and hitting return so that there is a constant stream of crap being thrown to the screen, and no one can talk properly. And since there is rarely anyone around that can do anything to stop it, there is no reason for these people to stop doing it.

The worst part about this is, good players and smarter players have been driven away by all the new idiots. People have either left completely or have resorted to muting everyone in the metaserver just to play.

I have to wonder how Marathon attracts new people that are so young, and why these people would be interested in such an old game. Some of these people weren’t even born when the game came out. While I do think it’s cool that marathon is still attracting new people, I just don’t understand why it always has to be accompainied by a crowd that takes the fun out of the game.

It seems to me like it’s a lose-lose situation. Either the community doesn’t attract new people and it dies out, or it does attract new people that make the game harder to enjoy. What happened to the days when I could actually play games with people I didn’t find annoying. Did this ever actually exist? Am I just blocking out how much it really sucked?

I don’t know which is worse. Having a community that isn’t active and is kind of boring, or a community that is just plain annoying. Well, I’m still here, so I guess I’ll take either :C.

It’s a tough topic in a male-oriented community (which, let’s face it, is every gaming community—but especially Marathon): Misogyny.

misogyny (n.): The hatred of, or pathological aversion to women.

Phallus 1

Phallus 2

Phallus 3

From birth to unbirth, there is no way to fight against the prejudices of our greatest passion.

Or is there? Let’s explore some methods.

12 July 2008

Dear Irons,

We have decided that your Proposal (EN-C445C-9A) no longer speaks to the hearts or minds of the Single White Female audience that was originally our target demographic. While we would still like to see your new Marathon game, we feel that it would do best as a scenario among the multitude that followed Infinity, rather than as our new project.

Our Deepest Apologies,
Bungie Studios

They didn’t like the gratuitous sexual content.

Here’s what experts say:

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Camping
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The One has left the community! The One was a young outsider with a sharp wit and a talent for programming, and he vanished early this May due to conflict on the Pfhorums, and woe is us! We’re in a lot of trouble!

So, a nerdy, childish forum-goer decided he had better things to do than become involved in the Marathon community. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you and the other hundred visitors of this site are reading this article right now. Because less than 3 percent of you people understand literary allusion. Because less than 15 percent of you play on Total Carnage. Because the only truth you know is what you get through JFO. Right now there is an entire generation of Marathon players who never knew anything that didn’t come out of JFO.

JFO is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. JFO can make or break mappers, administrators, writers, and artists. JFO is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless community, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that’s why woe is us that The One left the community! This site is now entirely in the hands of the CLIQUE, and there’s a new community leader, a man called Jon Irons, taking The One’s place in dominating the Pfhorums. And when one of the most influential Marathon groups controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless community, who knows what shit will be peddled for tru7h on this website.

So, you listen to me. You listen to me! JFO is not the tru7h. JFO’s a goddamn amusement park. JFO is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of trolls, mappers, artists, writers, pornography peddlers, and programmers. We’re here to assuage our own boredom!

So if you want the tru7h, go to the Story Pages. Go to the MSF archives. Think for yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real tru7h. But, man, you’re never going to get any tru7h from us. We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear, and we’ll lie like hell. Oh, we’ll tell you that Ryoko always bans the trolls, and that nobody in the CLIQUE ever makes a bad netmap, and no matter how much trouble the Marine is in, don’t worry, just look at the remaining level count. At the end of the game, he’s going to win. We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in jokes and illusions, man, none of it is true! But you people sit there on the metaserver and the forums, day after day, night after night — all ages, colors, creeds. JFO is all you know!

You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here! You’re beginning to think that the CLIQUE is reality and that your own posts are substandard. You do whatever the CLIQUE tells you — you map like the CLIQUE, you review like the CLIQUE, you force your friends into Marathon like the CLIQUE. You even think like the CLIQUE! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion!

So close your web browser right now. Close it now! Close it right now! Close it and leave it closed. Close it right in the middle of this sentence you’re reading now! Close it!!

(With apologies to Chayefsky.)

This month’s winner goes to Alan for his post in the wonderful Viva La Vida topic.

Why is epstein talking about pudding???

Also I am not spamming. Treellama, I said everyone (should) buy this album. (Should). I’m not forcing you. See look I put it in bold for you and this time I put parentheses for you too so even you can understand. And getting one email about something you don’t like is not spamming. If I were to email any of you once to say hi and ask stuff about you like, how are you. Would that be considered spamming? I know that would be a weird email but that was just a example. This isn’t even a email. Everyone of you entered Chat and saw this topic and visited it and didn’t know if you would like it. And most of you, or all of you didn’t like it when you did. Then you visited it again but this time knowing you don’t like it. This is kind of like searching for something on google and then something you don’t know about comes up as a result out many other results and you enter it. Then you don’t like it and leave then come back again, and again and telling people that it’s spam. Everything I underlined is wrong.

Anyhoo… Two more days until the album Viva La Vida comes!

GO PEOPLE WITH ACCENTS!

I feel that I should also mention epstein’s awesome posts in the topic. Continuing to talk about pudding made the topic worth reading.

June’s Mariusnet stats have been posted. You won’t believe which map won this month.

As usual, the log files and summary are available.

Link.