Amric said:
I'd imagine he's doing beta testing for EUIII....He had a story on HOI2 at one point, I believe....I don't think he does EUII anymore...I could be wrong, but I haven't seen him in here for a LONG time...
Hmm. I'm really, really, bored now, so just for once I'll reward thread necromancy of one of my unfinished AARs with an explanation rather than just ignoring it.
Clarification for the curious. I stopped EU2 SP a long time ago when I got bored of it, leaving a couple of tales dangling (Persian Tales - more talespinning than playing
, In Hoc Signo Vinces - victory was won but I'd tired of the format of the AAR by then), and mainly continued with EU2 MP AARs of which the Machiavelli and the Throne of Heaven series are undoubtedly some of the better (I can heartily recommend reading them, they feature a decent number of good talespinners amongst the players
), and then finally stopped entirely with EU2 about a year ago.
At one time I did Victoria beta testing and got started on a really good Victoria Beta AAR that was being released by installments before Victoria hit the stores until the damnable early pirating of Victoria before release caused a clampdown on all further Beta AAR releases (Paradox in an understandable reaction chose to stop ANY further disclosure of game mechanics until the paying customers could get their hands on the game), which caused that one to be aborted.
Then with CK I started on an SP AAR that was never intended to play more than a few weeks and certainly not to the end of time (Byzantine Letters), and I duly dumped it when the multitude of problems with CK overwhelmed the fun; Some people expected a grand finale in style with my early WC projects, but that was never the intention with that silly AAR. (Though not the original intention, WC was completed a bit after 1200 but the game was bogged down in a court gone critical with many hundreds of courtiers, which was driving me mad. NO, YOU DON'T MAKE A BETTER STEWARD, and I don't care to spend most of my time playing selecting educations for hundreds of children and trying to find the right Dukas out of many score in long unsortable lists).
For HoI2 I've written only one SP AAR entitled "Chopsticks II", a followup as it were to my HoI1 AAR, but the exact contents of that one is classified information and only readable by the elect.
...I know that this "ending of AARs when I don't feel they are fun anymore" can be immensely annoying to the reader who expects a full story arch with a conventional beginning-middle-end structure, but I've never hidden the fact that (unlike many) my primary reason to write AARs is to entertain me, not the reader. As such, it is only when the constraints on my time (of which there are many) allows me and I retain interest in a game that I'll perform such a nice wrapping up. That's also one of the primary reasons that I tend to write very episodically: Fun is to be had in each installment, not necessarily in an overarching story.
Apparently my style of posting was incredibly frustrating to some people as was my tendency to appear, post an AAR, make a couple of comments in other AARs that I chose to read in a day or two, and then leave again for weeks before the next infrequent update, instead of sticking around, reading dozens of AARs and taking part of the vibrant community that was developing in the new AAR area, and some silly buggers began around 2004 to describe me as a vacant lord slumming with the locals and posting works of inferior literary merit (on the merit issue I'll certainly not disagree
) with the unfortunate (it was specified) effect that people, who should have known better, read and commented on unhistorical tales of conquest instead of paying attention to the really good AARs being written.
In other words, brand recognitioning and giving a lot of people what they wanted by pandering to the lowest common denominator was offensive to some of those who tried to give people what they really needed and saw the deluded readers flocking elsewhere: I'd post something outrageously silly filled with typos and unhistoric actions written in 2-4 hours top and get dozens of posts within hours after posting while more deserving authors would spend days writing intelligent dialogue, detailed descriptions, historically plausible [for a certain value of plausible] and intricate plots just to get a couple of comments from a few dedicated readers. The worst thing is - I can well understand the reaction; Were I the one investing so much time in a work of love, it would grate to see it being bypassed by many in favour of a cheap laugh. However, that's just how the world works.
I have pretty much left the AAR forums for good since then with regards to reading, commenting, or participating in any sort of discussions, with the exception of multiplayer AARs where the fun is chatting with the other players while ignoring the AAR forums as such. I hope that you all have a fun time, and I'm sure that great and wonderful AARs are being written, but it simply hasn't been worth my time the last year or so.
I might return for EU3 but I'd probably run into the same issues again, so don't count on it (except for MP AARs).
