Difference between revisions of "Talk:History of SC2Mafia"

Revision as of 02:37, 28 April 2013

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TimeTrx --!_TimeTrx_! (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2013 (PDT)

What to include

Gentlemen and ladies, we have a lot to decide what to include. We have interviews and articles from new and old. Any suggestions post them here:

DarkRev Interview

[8:24:54 PM] DarkRevenant: anyway, go ahead
[8:25:00 PM] MIKILL: thanks
[8:25:14 PM] MIKILL: Hi my name is Mike
[8:25:32 PM] MIKILL: so i just want to ask you a few questions
[8:25:40 PM] DarkRevenant: Sure thing.
[8:26:09 PM] MIKILL: So lets start off with how you started with sc2mafia.
[8:26:43 PM] DarkRevenant: Several years ago it was wc3mafia.
[8:27:22 PM] DarkRevenant: As in, it was a WarCraft 3 map, which I used as an exercise in interface design under strict system constraints.
[8:27:41 PM] DarkRevenant: It worked fairly well, but then I moved on to other things, namely StarCraft 2.
[8:27:54 PM] DarkRevenant: Back in March 2011, Nick (oops_ur_dead) dared me to remake Mafia for StarCraft 2.
[8:28:18 PM] DarkRevenant: Being in college in a Freshman dorm, I figured "why not" because it was a decent way to pass the time.
[8:28:38 PM] DarkRevenant: I marathoned through it and a few weeks later (early April) I had the first version ready.
[8:29:31 PM] DarkRevenant: It had some minor success while testing, but my old crew (from the Wc3 days) and a few others I met started playing it in earnest after I finished.
[8:30:07 PM] DarkRevenant: As I recall, the roles list was very spartan by then, having just Citizen, Sheriff, Investigator, Doctor, Mafioso, Godfather, Serial Killer, and Survivor at first, as I recall.
[8:30:27 PM] DarkRevenant: Soon after, Mason, Escort, Consort, and Jester were made.
[8:30:48 PM] DarkRevenant: Escort and Consort were Stripper and Hooker back then, which was what caused the first C&D from Blizzard.
[8:31:18 PM] DarkRevenant: Anyway, once it was properly released, the map took off and was on the front page of the popularity contest within a week.
[8:31:33 PM] DarkRevenant: It's been on or near the top 10 for the next two years
[8:31:40 PM] DarkRevenant: up until the current date.
[8:31:56 PM | Edited 8:32:03 PM] MIKILL: The split game modes?
[8:32:17 PM] DarkRevenant: Added once Blizzard changed the Arcade around (1.5 patch I think).
[8:32:40 PM] DarkRevenant: It was something I wanted to do at the start but couldn't do due to the flawed Battle.net system.
[8:33:17 PM] MIKILL: Why the drop for sc2mafia now?
[8:34:13 PM] DarkRevenant: Nothing lasts forever. Also, many of the regular players were playing for the purposes of trolling people, and eventually got banned.
[8:34:51 PM] DarkRevenant: Because of the changes in the system, Mafia doesn't need a top spot; as long as the people who want to play it can play it, I don't really care about what spot it has on the list.
[8:35:09 PM] DarkRevenant: There are better measures of success than a result of a popularity contest, after all.
[8:36:03 PM] MIKILL: Yeah. So when did the Player Reports become a thing?
[8:37:27 PM] DarkRevenant: I don't recall the exact date, but it was almost immediately after Blizzard added the Player Account Handles (the 1-S2-1-689689 things, which I sometimes refer to as Account IDs). Gamethrowing became a serious problem, so once this functionality was added to the game, we immediately started doing some reports.
[8:38:16 PM] DarkRevenant: The system evolved significantly. At first, it was just a free subforum with people posting threads with problem players listed; there wasn't much precedent.
[8:38:46 PM] DarkRevenant: We did bans to make an example of some of the players to deter this behavior, but it didn't do much in the way of deterrance.
[8:39:01 PM] DarkRevenant: Gamethrowing remained a problem, so we gradually systemized the whole thing.
[8:40:03 PM] DarkRevenant: For a few months, I was writing in bans to the code manually, but I quickly tired of that so we made a sitebound system to handle the banlist. Now when I save the map, I run a program that edits the map's code to injest the banlist in there before I upload.
[8:40:32 PM] DarkRevenant: Eventually it turned into a full forum with subforums, rules, a hierarchial staff, and several support programs.
[8:41:08 PM] DarkRevenant: I can't be entirely sure, but I seriously doubt other Blizzard mods aside from DotA ever had such a massive system in place for moderation.
[8:41:27 PM] MIKILL: Absolutely.
[8:41:48 PM] MIKILL: Speaking of hierarchial staff.
[8:42:00 PM] MIKILL: How does the inner site politics work?
[8:42:06 PM] MIKILL: I have heard
[8:42:19 PM] MIKILL: everything from oligrachy
[8:42:30 PM | Edited 8:42:36 PM] MIKILL: to theocracy with you at its head
[8:42:41 PM] DarkRevenant: An Oligarchial Theocracy.
[8:43:02 PM] DarkRevenant: I'm like an absentee pope.
[8:43:22 PM] DarkRevenant: This leaves the remaining cardinals to make all the decisions at this point.
[8:43:43 PM] DarkRevenant: I occassionally run into the room naked with various declarations, and I deal with the most serious issues, but that's about it.
[8:44:19 PM | Edited 8:44:29 PM] MIKILL: So basically Raptor and Oops are your right hand men?
[8:44:56 PM] DarkRevenant: Raptor, Elixir, Oops form the upper group
[8:45:44 PM] DarkRevenant: with Creed, Lysergic, and Slaol in the lower group of the Cardinals (following the Catholic analogy).
[8:46:28 PM] DarkRevenant: A large number of mods in no particular order form the rest of the staff.
[8:47:06 PM] MIKILL: You mentioned that you knew Oops_ur_dead before.
[8:47:30 PM] MIKILL: I was reading the old archive, was he not always admin?
[8:47:49 PM] MIKILL: And has he always been a troll?
[8:48:25 PM] DarkRevenant: He's admin now because he knows how to run a Debian server and has matured a lot from the five-or-six-years-ago-self that he used to be (believe it or not).
[8:48:29 PM] DarkRevenant: And yes.
[8:48:56 PM] MIKILL: I know I have dealt with him first hand
[8:49:23 PM] DarkRevenant: I think the only reason he's controllable at all is because his boss is an even bigger troll.
[8:49:55 PM] MIKILL: lol. I tell you later about how a trolled him but for now, So what was this Bronie-Com war thing about?
[8:50:32 PM] DarkRevenant: We stage crazy shit every now and then. That particular case was staged between oops_ur_dead and BlastYoBoots a couple years ago.
[8:50:54 PM] DarkRevenant: It refers to an old Clan I used to have when I was doing stuff in WarCraft 3.
[8:51:01 PM] DarkRevenant: COM: The Council of Mages
[8:51:30 PM] DarkRevenant: So named because I started it around a magic arena game I made in Wc3 called Battle Mages.
[8:51:57 PM] DarkRevenant: I didn't participate so I don't know the details.
[8:52:59 PM] MIKILL: This old website you talked about wc3mafia is it still around? Or was it a clan?
[8:53:20 PM] DarkRevenant: It was a clan, and it had a website.
[8:53:37 PM] DarkRevenant: The Clan went defunct after Sc2 came around.
[8:53:54 PM] DarkRevenant: The website got converted to sc2mafia.com once I had some money to get a domain and server.
[8:54:22 PM] DarkRevenant: Very few people with active accounts would remember the old domain names we used.
[8:54:32 PM] DarkRevenant: Hell, I don't remember the order in which we went through them.
[8:55:22 PM] MIKILL: Ok, so what are the top (most important) things you remember about this site (sc2mafia)?
[8:56:09 PM] DarkRevenant: First of all, the server is hosted and paid for a guy who apparently dropped off the face of the earth 4 months ago.
[8:56:18 PM] DarkRevenant: He works for SystemInPlace, a VPS hosting company.
[8:56:36 PM] MIKILL: hence the ad at the bottom of the site page
[8:56:38 PM] DarkRevenant: The server itself is a donation, as in I don't pay for bandwidth.
[8:56:58 PM] MIKILL: go on
[8:57:20 PM] DarkRevenant: The question is fairly open-ended and hard to answer.
[8:57:37 PM] DarkRevenant: There are not a whole lot of things related to the site itself that are of any great importance.
[8:57:57 PM] MIKILL: Ok, most memorial events on the site or sc3mafia the game
[8:58:02 PM | Edited 8:58:22 PM] DarkRevenant: We switched from SMF to vBulletin in late 2011, but that's about it.
[8:58:14 PM] MIKILL: I remember that
[8:58:22 PM] MIKILL: it used to be white
[8:58:26 PM] MIKILL: correct?
[8:58:50 PM] DarkRevenant: I don't think we used that theme for long. We always used darker themes.
[8:59:37 PM] DarkRevenant: Anyway, a few interesting things relating to the map itself:
[8:59:57 PM] DarkRevenant: Fun Fact: Mafia has been in trouble with Blizzard three times.
[9:00:14 PM] DarkRevenant: First time, it was removed for having Stripper and Hooker roles.
[9:00:34 PM] DarkRevenant: Second time, a lawyer asked me to remove the donor benefits from the map.
[9:01:22 PM] DarkRevenant: Third time, it was removed again because the word "jew" was in the long list of words used for the ask-for-an-execution system.
[9:01:37 PM] DarkRevenant: It was technically there for the better part of a year before Blizzard finally made me remove it.
[9:02:10 PM] DarkRevenant: It was actually one of several words Blizzard didn't like, such as "Osama".
[9:02:23 PM] MIKILL: lol, go on
[9:02:42 PM] DarkRevenant: Offense: Inappropriate Map
Map Name: -Mafia-
A map published under this account was found to have contained: Word strings used to trigger specific execution methods that are not
appropriate.
"bin laden"
"osama"
"jfk"
"kennedy"
"nazi"
"saddam"
"hitler"
"kkk"
[9:03:06 PM] DarkRevenant: (Excerpt from automatic email)
[9:03:34 PM] DarkRevenant: In any case, none of these words were displayed anywhere; players had to find them through experimentation.
[9:04:54 PM | Edited 9:05:01 PM] MIKILL: I know you started the FM Mafia I, how did that come about?
[9:05:25 PM] MIKILL: And become a repeating event?
[9:06:33 PM] DarkRevenant: Other websites do forum mafia games, so I figured it would be a good idea to do the same on a website literally titled "Sc2Mafia".
[9:06:47 PM] DarkRevenant: So I did the first one to start the tradition, and it carried on from there.
[9:07:48 PM] DarkRevenant: Now, they are large and elaborate spectacles. I don't know of any other sites that have the same kind of style of game we do (the entire subforum dedicated to a single game, with a large set of rules, roles, and other intricacies).
[9:09:12 PM] MIKILL: I was reading a post that said who's online feature would be disable over the FM temporary but it was never turned back on, any explaination?
[9:09:56 PM] DarkRevenant: Laziness, I guess. Nobody really bothers to turn it back on. Maybe because someone always forgets to turn it off when the game starts.
[9:10:21 PM] MIKILL: I thought the accounts are invisible (except to staff)
[9:10:30 PM] MIKILL: or have it turned on
[9:10:31 PM] DarkRevenant: DarkRevenant shrugs
[9:10:35 PM] DarkRevenant: I don't run FM.
[9:11:13 PM] MIKILL: Ok, the french forum and menatour what was that all about?
[9:11:41 PM] DarkRevenant: For a relatively short while, there was a French community. I think at one point a popular French commentator did a number on Mafia.
[9:12:03 PM] DarkRevenant: Menautor was a benefactor who was a pseudo-admin for a while.
[9:12:20 PM] DarkRevenant: He managed the French stuff.
[9:12:35 PM] DarkRevenant: Also had a Teamspeak server that we used for a while.
[9:13:52 PM] MIKILL: Why is there a difference in Ranked games and regular games? What is the difference?
[9:14:41 PM] DarkRevenant: Ranked games are more strictly regulated (watchlist and kickvote and point-banned are automatically kicked), award more points, and advance your ranked stats.
[9:14:54 PM] DarkRevenant: Leaving early is always a penalty, gamethrowing is treated far more harshly, etc.
[9:15:27 PM] DarkRevenant: Also, in Ranked games, Ranked setups are the only ones allowed (the three presets that I recently put into the Standard list).
[9:15:36 PM] DarkRevenant: I'll be changing those setups fairly soon.
[9:16:54 PM | Edited 9:16:59 PM] MIKILL: So why are trolls (arch, admiral, burnt, etc) given such lee way? No other forum is so light on trolls, flamers etc.
[9:17:29 PM] DarkRevenant: We're talking about a forum for Mafia. Battle.net Mafia.
[9:17:36 PM] DarkRevenant: If we banned all the trolls, eventually we'd ban everyone.
[9:17:57 PM | Edited 9:18:00 PM] MIKILL: Personnal attacks?
[9:18:08 PM] DarkRevenant: Those guys have been banned multiple times before though.
[9:18:35 PM] DarkRevenant: They always make alt accounts, and at some point when their rulebreaking becomes more tame the mods stop bothering to delete the accounts.
[9:18:51 PM] DarkRevenant: And yes, we've done IP bans.
[9:19:08 PM] MIKILL: They just use a proxy, right?
[9:19:37 PM] DarkRevenant: We have a number of anti-proxy lists but it's not holistic
[9:21:59 PM] MIKILL: Yea, I know. So donor, pat, and ben will there a be a next level for donating an insane amount of money? Have you thought about getting donation from blizzard's micro trans store?
[9:22:53 PM] DarkRevenant: The map marketplace is not in and might not ever be in. If it's ever in I'd imagine it won't be until after LotV is out.
[9:24:34 PM] DarkRevenant: Anyway, I could make another donor level but the only one who would currently qualify for that much is long gone.
[9:24:53 PM | Edited 9:25:02 PM] DarkRevenant: Well, Slaol would be there if we considered his commissions to be donations.
[9:25:06 PM | Edited 9:25:09 PM] MIKILL: I'd donate it...
[9:25:37 PM] MIKILL: lol
[9:25:50 PM] DarkRevenant: The donor levels are $1: Donor, $30: Patron, $100: Benefactor
[9:26:19 PM] DarkRevenant: And the next two levels would be $500 and $2000.
[9:27:13 PM] MIKILL: so have donations gone down since donor priviledges were removed?
[9:27:29 PM] DarkRevenant: You seriously have to ask?
[9:27:56 PM] MIKILL: I don't know you never update the spreadsheet
[9:28:06 PM] MIKILL: It still says i'm a donor
[9:28:49 PM] *** DarkRevenant sent DonationGraph.png ***
[9:29:23 PM] DarkRevenant: I added those benefits in mid-December 2011.
[9:29:32 PM | Edited 9:34:17 PM] DarkRevenant: And they were removed mid-March 2012.
[9:30:06 PM] DarkRevenant: The graph speaks for itself.
[9:30:19 PM] MIKILL: Wow
[9:30:23 PM] MIKILL: yea it does
[9:30:36 PM] DarkRevenant: Those are weekly, by the way.
[9:30:47 PM] DarkRevenant: Each month has around 4 data points on it.
[9:31:30 PM] DarkRevenant: Obviously, if the benefits stayed in, I would not have experienced any financial issues this past year and lately.
[9:32:06 PM] MIKILL: k, do you mind if i use this picture?
[9:32:10 PM] DarkRevenant: Go ahead.
[9:32:23 PM] MIKILL: Thanks.
[9:32:32 PM] DarkRevenant: Actually I'll make a
[9:32:37 PM] MIKILL: So this has been part of the reason your gone so much?
[9:32:37 PM] DarkRevenant: more scientific one.
[9:36:18 PM] *** DarkRevenant sent DonationGraph.png AdGraph.png ***
[9:36:52 PM | Edited 9:37:01 PM] DarkRevenant: At this point, the raw donations (from straight-up cash donations, not including Slaol's commissions)
[9:37:10 PM] DarkRevenant: are about $400 away from $10,000
[9:37:42 PM] DarkRevenant: The total ad money is $1,200 (the site ads have been disabled because the site doesn't follow Google's PG13 policy).
[9:38:19 PM] DarkRevenant: If you include both, and add in commissions and various non-cash donations I've been given a total value of around $12,000.
[9:39:08 PM] MIKILL: ok, I pretty well out of questions...
[9:39:18 PM] MIKILL: Anything you would like to add?
[9:40:37 PM] DarkRevenant: Just that
[9:40:49 PM] DarkRevenant: I would like to know if other maps have gotten financial success like Mafia has.
[9:41:01 PM] DarkRevenant: Relatively speaking, 10 grand is an absurd amount to gross for a Blizzard mod.
[9:41:09 PM] MIKILL: yea
[9:41:30 PM] MIKILL: I'm submitting the info here: http://wiki.sc2mafia.com/en/index.php/History_of_SC2Mafia
[9:41:42 PM] MIKILL: you will be able to check up on it
[9:41:50 PM | Edited 9:41:59 PM] DarkRevenant: I'd also put it in a thread if I were you, since the Wiki isn't exactly protected.
[9:42:02 PM] MIKILL: wiki can be reverted by dean two
[9:42:15 PM] MIKILL: plus it can be added by anyone
[9:42:31 PM] DarkRevenant: welp
[9:42:32 PM] MIKILL: anyway thank you for your time
[9:42:35 PM] DarkRevenant: i probably have to
[9:42:37 PM] DarkRevenant: update that graph now
[9:42:40 PM] MIKILL: lol]
[9:42:47 PM] MIKILL: ok talk to you later --!_TimeTrx_! (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2013 (PDT) You may only use this for historical purposes only.