The Four Ages Of Loathing

Anyone up for some long-winded musings on KoL history? You're in the right place.

Some comments from younger players about the game got me thinking about the different sorts of worldviews that players had, depending on when they started and how they focused their energies in the game.

I think there are four eras of Kol, that players more or less fit into. It's a general trend; there are always exceptions, of course, but I thought I'd cobble together some thoughts I'd had about the long view of KoL's history, and post them here for general reflection and refining.

Players 11-25,000 (Feb 2003-March 2004): The Early Gamers. Very community-based, most knew each other, especially at the beginning. The good guys were bad, and the bad guys were kind of good, too. You had people like Pimonkey, Spikey, Firestorm ZERO, Quato, Adamson, and so forth; all of these people did things that were beneficial to the game, and also did things that were, or could be seen as, detrimental (spams, flaming, hacks, bug exploits, and so on).

The division between good and evil was very fluid. They took bad behavior and game mechanics less seriously; the level of drama was low, and people didn’t stay angry or bitter about bad luck or coding problems for long. These people set the groundwork for the game's mechanics, its traditions, and its social norms, which have changed to some extent - flaming is no longer considered a virtue, 1337speak was still considered ironically funny (whereas it is despised now), and the old timers had little concern for proper English (pace Pimonkey).

Perhaps there are more divisions within here that I don't see; I still don't know enough about the era to say for sure.

Towards the end of this era, certain of the top players became sort of canonized as the elite of the game, whom the many new players to come would look up to. The Boris, Jarlsberg, and Sneaky Pete of the game – the undisputed stat champions – were TheBub, Giboc, and BoozerBear.

Players 25,000-150,000 (March 2004-August 2004): A mass influx of new players rolled in with more publicity. The hits on somethingawful.com, Fark and other major boards brought a huge number of new players to the game. These players were intensely committed to powergaming, and extremely sharp on economic matters and bugfinding, which come to a head in this era. Many of the new players looked upon wealth and stats as status symbols, and it was really in this era that economics became a massively important facet of the game, far beyond what Jick had intended when he first created it. Many of them tended to specialize – to tirelessly work the markets, or their stats, or /pvp, carving out a niche for which they would be remembered. These people would become the major players in the game in the post-Black Sunday era.

One thing that cannot be underestimated in this era is the effect of /lounge. Lounge was implemented some time between late March and April 28, 2004. At that time, Lounge access meant a considerable amount of power, if you knew what you were doing; you had easy access to most of the people who either had ideas on how to move and shake the game, or the ability to actually do so. New players who were “swept up” into lounge – people like Inari, theitsybitsyspider, and others – suddenly found themselves with vast amounts of game power at their fingertips in a very short time. Contrary to how /lounge was seen later – that it was awarded to people who did good things for the game, who made major contributions – in this era, to a large extent, people got /lounged first, and then did major things in the game because of their ability to network and plan. Warehouse 23, for one, grew to great prominence as much for its members' social climbing as for anything else.

Again, many of the players of this era wore gray hats in all things – they were philanthropic and vicious, economic barons and chat spammers, clan warfare pwners and flamers, bug exploiters and bug reporters, people who were both celebrated and disliked. I need only cite a short list - Jayo, Contr!ckster, DaPunisher, Legend Dan, WhatTheDeuce, Lect, Qrrbrbirlbel, Bashy, Birdy, hAvAAck, Sealh8r, G_God, and hundreds more - to make myself understood, I think.

The key break here is Black Sunday; the event was world-changing. Anyone who had not bought from the W23 Ramen Bot, or watched the Icy Peak get nerfed, saw the game in a completely different light. I am no Marxist, but it is fascinating how this economic breakdown predicated a vast social change in the game as well.

Players 150,000-400,000 (August 2004-February 2005): The inheritors of the post-Black Sunday frame of mind. They were less devoted to economics, since becoming rich was very easy. Bug exploiters are looked down upon, and powergaming falls by the wayside. The new elite are philanthropists and the socially upright - people who speak clearly and intelligently, who show character and fight good fights. Black and white lines are more clearly drawn; bad behavior is punished more severely.

Players that grew up in this era didn’t have much of a shot at the leaderboards, and they knew it; they’d shore, to be sure, but they knew their route to prestige wasn’t going to be via game mechanics. Instead, they (perhaps unconsciously) effected social reforms. /PvP, instead of a winkingly nasty free-for-all, transformed into a gentlemen's game. Scamming went from annoying to intolerable; chat asshattery (especially as the channels filled to bursting with new players) went from something to be ignored to something to be /Ignored. The Canadia exploit, the 668 effect, and the death of the Reset left Third Era players increasingly hostile to bug exploitation, and increasingly more vocal about it. Giving to newbies, while certainly not new, became an honored tradition; the leaders here were Age 2 players (Arbitrage, Insane Steve, Bashy, Sandrylene, and others), but they had multitudes of nouveau riche followers. Meat and level became almost irrelevant; generosity, eloquence and ethics (indeed, indignance, at times) were how this generation typically chose to distinguish itself.

What of the players of the first two ages? As 2004 went on, players of the first era faded from the scene. They dropped out of lower chats as /Villa and /Lounge became accessible to many of them; other players simply left the game gradually, particularly over Black Sunday and the death of the Reset. Players of the second age, unimaginably wealthy and knocking at the leaderboard’s doors, remained very powerful, but were not necessarily held in high esteem by those who resented the bugmeat and items as ill-gotten, the stats as exploited. Nevertheless, they called the shots in the most well-known clans, made headlines in the forums, and drove the markets up and down as deflation set in.

Players 400,000-now (March 2005-present): In a stabilized economy, a new era has come, I think, of people who have grown up in the post-post Black Sunday era. They are keenly aware of class divisions, and concentrate their efforts on the impending ascension. Many philanthropy projects having ended in ruin, and with such institutions as the ten-meat sale and free-buffs-for-the-asking suffering backlashes, the newest crop of players work to ensure they will be prepared for the 800-pound gorilla. I think they see it as their chance to shine, to make themselves known. They are attentive to the words and possessions of older players (even though they often understand the history behind them poorly), and are to some extent embittered by their advantages. Partially because they have seen very few bugs over the past few months, and partially because they have grown up not knowing anything of the idea of a Reset, they have come to see almost all bug hunting or loophole exploitation as illegitimate - and seriously question the continued status of some older players because of it. They view Ascension most profoundly in terms of their own benefits - a "leveling of the playing field", to whatever extent possible. By far, their role models come from the Third Era, and they continue to observe their social norms and believe their philosophy about the community.

In many ways, it remains to be seen what the social impact of the New Era will be. Their period is still waxing, and many of them are just recently making themselves known and heard. It certainly seems the case to me that Ascension may well bring a new Era beyond this, in which the newest players grow up without having ever known what the game looked like "unfinished", or understanding what its players' goals were when the Quest was not the foremost reason to play.

addendum:

Eltneg brought up a good point back there that I neglected. The nature of clan power has definitely changed. Many Era 1 and 2 players were fanatically devoted to clan warfare, the chase for goodie bags; after Black Sunday, that imploded. Third era folks got used to Head Clan at the top of one board and Crazen Markay (or the sn4x0rs) at the top of the other, and clan warfare as a game strategy kind of petered out beyond that, aside from a few aspirants.

There was definitely a big focus on the top clans in Era 1, from what I can tell; because the game was so small, it was easy to get most of your big gamer friends into one or a few clans that ceaselessly trumpeted their greatness on the forums. That waned in Era 2, when so many up-and-coming people joined the game and many of the older clans started to fade from public view. It was very common to find hotshot players in small clans, very very large clans, or solo outfits, throughout much of the summer and fall of 2004. (AFH's troubles were a big factor here, but it wasn't the only thing.)

Some time in the middle of era 3, a sort of "consolidation of 1337ness" occurred. (I can't really think of a better way to say it). The big players here were (unsurprisingly) two of the top clans today - Philanthropists, and Aflubadubdub! (and later, the Loading Dock, as well). Both of them worked hard at culling players in solo clans and poaching outspoken people from unknown clans, so that both became bastions of the noteworthy. This process continues today, and the number of "consolidator" clans has grown considerably. It led to a long period I often called "the era of good feelings" - not necessarily compatible with the divisions above - where most of the top clans were more or less allied and often worked together, setting aside personal differences for the sake of philanthropy or other game advancement. It remains to be seen how long it will last.