Our chroniclers

Author: Вальтурияя

It was a remarkable sunny summer evening. I was riding my unicorn towards the foot of a hill as usual. “I’m being late again”, I thought, being about to reach my destination. “Thank Twin-Gods they are not there yet”. I slided off my staunch mount and sat at the steep to enjoy the sunset.

Suddenly I spotted a flying chariot from afar; three ice drakes were harnessed in it. Quite an unusual sight, “Must be foreign magic”, I told to myself. The air around me got filled with bright light, it seemed as the chariot was shining a little as it landed next to me and I was able to distinguish the rider’s face.

“I greet you, Arctic, how was your trip?” I asked and continued without letting him put in a word. “Be aware, my other guest is not here yet, we need to wait for him”. Arctic smiled in silence, reached for his chariot, and an adorable bouquet appeared in his hand. “The trip was great, the weather is nice today. I have picked these flowers for you on my way here”, he said.

Unfortunately, my other guest was running late, so we sat at the precipice and started a little chat. He appeared to be a surprisingly modest and interesting company… All of sudden, dark clouds ran above us and we were surrounded by wreaths of heavy dark smoke. The wreaths coalesced into a large cloud which soon shaped in a silhouette. It took the white sharpshooter few moments to leap up and aim an arrow at the silhouette. Fortunately, I came to my senses fast enough to shove his weapon aside. “Everything is fine, that is him”, I said. “I greet you…” I barely managed to pronounce the name of my second guest as it sunk in the grim silence enveloping us that lasted for a minute.

My guests studied each other long, until my second guest broke the silence he wreaked. “Shall we keep wasting our time or rather begin?” he asked in a cold tone. “Indeed” I shattered. “Let us get down to the interview. I shall conduct it in a rather unusual manner; its characteristic feature is for both of you to answer my every question simultaneously. Do you mind it?“ Neither of them did.

How long ago did you get acquainted? Upon what circumstances did that happen?

The Russian Chronicler (R.C.): My greetings. I shall start from a little far in time, if I may. I am assisting the Administration of our game for several years now with styling the news texts, and the first time I felt like meeting the international server chronicler was more than two years ago, when I first started putting some thought into future perspectives. Server merge was only a ghostly somewhere far ahead, but I needed to think up the base for story line well in advance. Unfortunately, I didn’t cross Arctic then, and our acquaintance occurred just 5 months ago, during active preparation for the merge.

Arctic: We met quite recently and we arranged a plan for collaboration only a week before the merge. I can imagine that over this time when I have been composing the news blocks for the ex-com, the .ru had this responsibility on the shoulders of different players, and I was usually ignorant about the figure of the Russian chronicler at any given moment. The only exception was a relatively short period when DeMoN-MAX was responsible for .ru news texts (in fact, we both participated in composing the news back then, and I was recurring to this in order to plant some seeds of .com story elements, well aware that at certain point we will be having server contacts of one form or another. When the server merge was just around the corner, I felt that we would absolutely need such collaboration – and that is when I learned the chronicler’s nickname and addressed him with a proposal to collaborate. I would say, that was when we got acquainted.

Were you a "match of characters"?

R.C.: I wouldn’t concentrate namely on characters, since I am a rather complicated and not always “normal” person myself, which is inherent to some people of creative intelligence. This has some effect on work too, and may even be a source of inspiration for what’s its worth; however it has little to no impact on what concerns professional collaboration. So far there was no ground or any signs of possible conflicts. Okay, there was this one thing in the beginning of our joint work when I was treating my colleague with suspicion and disbelief, but it’s nothing I can do about it, paranoia is one big evil thing, and I usually don’t tend to trust even people whom I know for some time. Well, luckily, these suspicions of mine were cast away quite soon.

Arctic: We don’t know each other too well and basically, our communication is that of an exclusively professional form for now. Literally like, “Where were we yesterday? Oh, right, Abu-Bakir and Bilir, alright, so…”

We have undoubtedly matched in our plans about developing the story line for future. As few as I knew about Russian story characters, was the Russian chronicler informed about the English ones, so soon after we met we “exchanged cards”, so to say – biographies and some descriptions of personal treats of our characters, and a quick list of events namely in terms of the story. Next we made a sort of careful estimation about the global courses of story development, and to my greatest pleasure we found out that our courses not only didn’t gainsay in any way, but even complemented one another. I believe this has influenced our relation greatly, too, you could say, no clouds gathering above allowed us to communicate in a more ingenuous way. Although no slacking allowed, there is much to do.

Have there been any conflicts at all in terms of work?

Arctic: It is too early a stage to speak of conflicts. Right now the foremost goal is to link the stories, and when it comes to evolve one common storyline – then we’ll see. As players could remark, at the moment the two news editions are composed differently, even though they narrate about the same thing. Russian forum presents English characters roleplay so that Russian players could shape some idea about my creations. English forum, on the contrary, speaks more from the side of Russian characters (I usually don’t write from their PoV, just sort of more about them). Well, all this is natural, isn’t it, .com knows their characters, players want to learn about the Russian ones, and vice versa. I repeat, there is nowhere the conflicts could even arise from.

R.C.: As I’ve said, there were no conflicts as such, neither based on character treats, nor on merging our ideas and existing storyline threads. When the server merge appeared in front of me all of a blunt, immediately I felt some inner fear of the unknown. I didn’t know Arctic at that moment. I had literally no idea either of him or of any details of the international server story I was afraid that our current positions in the story, and our groundwork for future would become incompatible. But those fears were groundless, fortunately.

Did you have any problems with the fact that the news were different before the merge? Or do you discuss everything before composing news now?

Arctic: The problem for me was that the Russian chronicler had no free command of English. Google may certainly give an opportunity to seize the bottom line of a news in general, but it was absolutely unacceptable for me, for I yearned to deliver the full background of the news blocks including the little details – especially the little details, because they hold the richness of an image, be it a character, an event, a geographic location etc. I had to edit manually the Google translations and send them to my colleague. At this point I have only presented about half the contents of all .com news for introduction – work goes slowly in that direction.

Naturally, the Russian chronicler was already familiarized with the events and the way they were presented, with the help of an online translator, but I am still eager to make him know the little details. Right now, partially because of that, but even just because it’s the right way, we certainly discuss the details of the news in process of composing them… Since right now we are introducing each other’s characters, we often ask each other about some interesting details of their personalities (after all, a character’s creator knows better than one who just read about that character).

R.C.: This is a considerably difficult matter, as after merge there was the need to synch the news both in time and content. Moreover, the “write Russian/English text and just translate it” was not an option, because so far the two servers had entirely different approach of composing the news. As such, Arctic’s hands were much looser in what came to freedom of composing (volume, content, style). In my area it’s much stricter and I often have to fit in the frame set by the Administration team. I cannot state for certain what the reason behind it is, but I suppose that it is about the players’ attitude towards the news in particular, and the story-based content in general. The international server has much more attention focused on it, there are even players that are involved in the story, and many people are actively discussing it. Over here it’s so much different. I personally have not noticed a single post about the story part in the entire threads dedicated to discussing the latest news. In fact I’m almost certain that the Russian mirror of the game counts even more players interested in this part of the game, but alas, the relative fraction of such players among the big mass number is very scarce. Most likely they are just lost in the mass and do not declare their interest, thus shaping an impression that the literature and story part of the game is not cared about. This saddens me as a writer, but most probably is a reason for such an approach to managing the news. For this reason, we coordinate the main points of story development, but often each of us writes in a totally different style.

Arctic: After reading my colleague’s reply I remembered too how, just after server merge, I realised that we had unmatched degrees of freedom. You must have noticed how I speak about my own news – the news blocks (meaning several 3-5 posts in one thread), that’s quite avid of me.

Indeed, I never felt any limits in composing the news, and I was well allowed to determine the necessary volume myself, which, as it appears, the Russian chronicler was not allowed to do. Well, the ultimate decision is still up to the Administration to make, we’ll try to get some sort of license for the “golden mean” in terms of news volume.

I would agree that the interest toward the literature part seems to be higher among players of the international mirror – likely because of the “density” of the two mirrors population. The quantity of interested players may be higher in .ru, but the interest is lost among the posts of uninterested players who are concerned solely with how sweet and hot the new features are, with exp/fsp ratio etc. (which they have a right for, of course).

Everybody remembers the scandal with artifact descriptions of the last war. Unveil the secret please. What happened then?

R.C.: Alright, not the best question to answer. There was a little misunderstanding with descriptions for rare set artifacts. Thing is, the now-uploaded version of artifact descriptions was prepared long ago, but scattered among the huge heap of other works. When the server merge was performed, I was informed that the descriptions were uploaded, but being utterly busy I didn’t double-check them. As it turned out, another version was uploaded, not the one I had sent. That version contained several inconsistencies, and after players noticed and listed them, I noticed them myself. The upside of it was that players do read and think through those descriptions, but the downside was the unpleasant situation which I would like once again to apologize for. I hope it won’t happen again. I certainly learned not to slack off checking the uploaded data. Actually, this was the moment when I feared the first conflict between us and was trying to avoid it, but Arctic’s reaction to my humble observation and displeasure made me happy, and everything was solved out rather peacefully and constructively.

Arctic: It was a common situation with the rare set arts in my opinion, it is queer why there was so much drama around it. I had been translating, updating and refreshing many parts of the game during the merge, often mixing many parts because there were different deadlines on different things, and the sizes of those things weren’t always favouring that. While translating the names and descriptions for all the new artifacts I realized that some set artifacts had no descriptions whatsoever – so I had to compose my own, in a press-time mode on top of that. As many have noticed, I didn’t know much about the Trilateral war events, this war was not held in my realm. Nonetheless, I got a grumbling from the team that the English part had texts and the Russian part didn’t, so I just translated my own descriptions. Funny thing is, at that moment I was already acquainted with the Russian chronicler, but I didn’t imagine that he was responsible for managing artifacts descriptions as well. 5 days passed since uploading my descriptions until he came up with that subject, in such a careful and humble way as if he was trying not to hurt me, hehe. He notified me that he had another outlines for those artifacts, and that on that day there was a wave of unrest with the Russian players about the current ones. Without further ado I uploaded his, a little later the translations were also made.

Could you shed some light on the results of the first few months of your collaboration, about your impressions and thoughts upon it?

R.C.: Honestly, before the merge I wasn’t concerned much about not matching personalities with Arctic. I was much more troubled that our ideas would become incompatible. There was much apprehension about failing to compromise on the key points since we maintained the game plots well apart from each other and had no contact. And while the international server had at least some mentioning of an “overseas Empire”, our news line didn’t have any such mentioning at all. Fortunately, most of my fears dissipated soon enough. And it is to mention that our ideas, concepts and approaches are very different, may be called radically opposite in some points. But I wouldn’t call such differences conflicting, they are more like supplementing, I repeat. Let me give an example. I try to keep the global idea about the game world, its timeline from world creation until possible end point, constantly in my head. Also about all lands and countries on the map, peoples that might populate them, political situations – globally. The scope is immense and at times I let slip a multitude of little details. As for Arctic, he concentrates all his attention on specific plot lines, personalities and scenes, paints every detail and every little trifle that might seem meaningless out of context. When we combine our efforts - for me it is an ideal combination for maximal use of the game world potential. Another example is the ideological concept of the plot, the shaft it evolves along. In my case it is space and time, with emphasis on time paradoxes and global military and politic intrigues. My colleague attempts to discern the questions of the universe essence and related concepts and phenomena. This is an interesting and complicated subject, and I haven’t yet fully grasped it so I shouldn’t be writing this in detail. In any case, our ideas have surprisingly compounded into one whole story. We had to find some serious compromise only in discussing the concept of the main villain of the game world. Here we had to make some give-and-take in terms of motivation of this character, but I must say, the final decision that we reached is absolutely fantastic and very prominent. If only we are allowed to bring all these ideas to realization, I believe that the game plot will undoubtedly become original, interesting and fascinating.

Arctic: The springboard is huge, and even though we have agreed on the primary collaboration and on plans for nearest future, there is still much work ahead, and not only in terms of creation. The main question is still what the Administration thinks of this. We may very well write each other our amazing ideas and praise and admire each other, but if all that doesn’t prove useful to the game and doesn’t find understanding within the team, our plans will be vain and pointless.

The very first action should be to determine how important this aspect would be for the players. Actually I understand very well that the game is there for many years already, and the Administration has pondered about this matter, so this enquiry must be demonstrative. I have lodged a poll in the daily newspaper not so long ago, for just three weeks, to check how our plans correspond to players’ wishes. And then based on the results I might bring it up with the team and try to prove again that this element is necessary for the game. Think about it, all games that feature a well-developed, masterfully composed universe and a well-planned event sequence are on a higher grade compared to games that lack all this.

As for the plot elements, we certainly have different approaches to different things. I am more of an exact mind person; my colleague is a humanitarian mind. As I’ve noticed, he always grasps the plot globally, grabbing the picture in full, while I, on the contrary, give much thought to details, I even would very often write the news beginning from the central part, and then think on the intro and outro. It’s like constructing a jigsaw puzzle. Some like to start from the borders, some from the middle. But in our case the two of us are constructing it, and we are not hampering each other, since putting our approaches together gives an even clearer picture, as clear as neither of us could form it out alone.

Yes, each of us had our own ideas about plot development. I was left to my own imagination to a much greater degree in the English part than my colleague in the Russian part (for example, it is no secret that I was given the Team’s blessing to develop the Elementalist faction in my understanding of it, and in terms of plot I had planted some good seeds to pick this subject up in future). Until now we have been writing in different clefs. But there is nothing tragic or impossible about it, I repeat, after reviewing the existing material we realized that there were no direct and irremediable inconsistencies. And we even share rather optimistic views on future plans (not that we wouldn’t have to yield to one another at some points, by rejecting or revamping some of the existing outlines etc.).

The sun was already at the horizon and the sky grew crimson red. “Our interview has reached its end. It was a pleasure working with you” I said, removing the quill and the inkwell into my bag. “Can I give you a ride?” Arctic inquired courteously. “Thank you for your offer, but flying isn’t my area” I mouthed. Mounted on my unicorn, I admired the chariot slowly flying up and away into the sunset. “Wonderful magic, isn’t it, my Russian-speaking friend?” But no answer came. There was but a bouquet of dry witch bloom at the spot where the chronicler stood seconds ago.

To leave a comment please register