Interview with Cantbstopped (eng)

Author: kalabunga

Greetings, noble Lords and Ladies of our glorious Empire!

This is our first interview with anyone from this server, and that’s why we have decided to interview a person who means a lot to this server - cantbstopped. CBS has found a spare minute to talk to us and so we headed towards the Royal Castle. We took our sits behind the dining table placed in one of the castle audience chambers, took couple of sips of miraculous tea and our conversation began:

1. Let us begin with some of the most common questions. Please introduce yourself and tell us whom and what are you in real life? Where are you from? How old are you? What are your hobbies besides obviously LoWM?

My name is Alexei (Alex), I’m 28 years old. I’m an economics major. I’m engaged in entrepreneurial activity. I reside in Kiev (Ukraine). My hobbies are basketball, chess, history, sociology, psychology, and I also study different religions from various historical ages.

2. How many languages do you know?

If you meant to ask me how many languages I could speak, that would be 4, but with a bit of a dictionary magic that number could easily go up to 7. I have superficial knowledge in most of the European languages, although it’s so insignificant that it’s not even worth mentioning.

3. How have you got here? Was it some random Internet ads that brought you here or maybe someone referred you to this game? Is it your first MMORPG experience or maybe this was the first one that you thought was good enough for you to stay?

I was actually referred to this game by someone whom I knew in person in RL and who has registered here before me. I took a glimpse over his shoulder while he was playing and said, ‘Hey, that’s HoMM V!’. I’ve signed up the very same evening, that’s how I got here. No, this isn’t my first MORRPG experience; I used to play couple of other web games prior to LoWM.

4. Why ‘cantbstopped’? Does that nickname have its own special history?

Nah, there wasn’t anything so special about it. It really was yet another commonplace story. At first I had an idea of picking up ‘Wu-Tang’ nickname (it’s the name of one of my favorite hip-hop bands) but it turned out that it was taken. So I’ve tried the ‘unstoppable’ nickname, same story, unavailable again. So I thought to myself, ‘Alrighty then, let’s try to trick that system because it seems like anything is taken here already!’, and so I’ve composed a nickname with the very same ‘unstoppable’ meaning but bit of an American-like. That’s how I came up with ‘Can’t be Stopped’, or ‘cantbstopped’, or CBS as lots of .com players tend to call me.

5. Do you spend a lot of time playing? Could you say that you gaming affects your real life and vice versa?

It doesn’t affect anything and you have a normal live to lead, unless you play like a maniac ofc :) I have LoWM tab active in my browser all the time and I just minimize it to tray when I’m busy with some RL issues and participate in battles or answer my PM when I have some spare time.

6. Have you ever tried to leave the game for good or you’ve just played at the same level of intensity all the time non-stop?

I’d say I never tried to leave the game. But yeah, there were couple of times when I haven’t played for like months. Mostly that was because of my RL business projects that required all of my time and besides that I needed a rest. At times I even had those thoughts like, ‘Hell with it, I should just probably quit’, but I tend to explain those with impulsive overreaction to something either than with some sort of disappointment or, for example, with the fact that this game affected my RL or my family or my work. These are probably most common reasons for majority of those grown-up players who decide to leave this game.

7. Are you familiar with the ‘Heroes of Might and Magic’ series? In your opinion which one is the best one?

Nope, I’m not familiar with them all because I started playing that game since the second or the third part. Now I can’t even recall which one that was. I enjoyed HoMM V the most, although from time to time I get nostalgic about the third part of this game.

8. How have you got to know about the .com server?

I’ve noticed someone mentioning it in .ru forums. So I thought to myself, ‘What kind of a .com server that guy was talking about?’, and so I browsed the forums and came across with an old announcement that encouraged .ru players to participate in the newly (by time when that announcement took place) launched international LoWM server. And so I’ve decided to sign up there as well.

Why? It isn’t that complicated. Lemme explain that to you. I played as a necro from the very beginning and I didn’t have any additional characters on .ru server. I’ve actually switched to steppe barbarian lately just for a change of having fun playing with different from necromancer faction and gotta admit I liked it a lot. Anyway, besides this episode I never had a chance to play for various factions and I didn’t want to have my activity limited by those legal limitations that were set for additional characters by the game rules, and so I came up with an idea of creating a separate fully functional account on .com server to serve that purpose.

9. And so you’ve ended up playing at both HeroesWM and LordsWM servers. Could you draw some comparison between them?

Both servers are unique in their own ways. I think I need to explain myself here. Russian server is more active in terms of events, wars and other in-game changes that take place there. Also there are way more players there than here. But the atmosphere in .ru forums is more spiteful, so to speak.

LoWM doesn’t have that many players and that results in the fact that most of the players know each other since they interact with each other in battles and in forums all the time and that is why LoWM atmosphere is more friendly and benevolent.

There’s simply no way these two servers could be compared to each other, since one of them has more events and news while the other boasts with its outstanding friendly community. It’s more interesting to play at .ru server game-wise but as a person I prefer the atmosphere and attitude that LoWM community offers.

10. Okay, make your guess on the clan wars, what will they be like, when they’ll be implemented and what will it all be about?

You want my guess on when they’ll implement those MCs wars? My bold prediction is that it will happen right after the pigs will fly :)

Okay, okay, I’ll get more serious. It’s really almost impossible to make any predictions when you have to do that while lacking the information and that would ultimately become nothing else but reading the tea leaves and I don’t really do that.

On the other hand from what we’ve read from various Administration interviews, it became obvious that those wars will focus on MCs gaining control over the territories and production (mining/machining) facilities, so in other words that’s gonna be wars for gold and glory.

11. You’ve mentioned that you play as a Necromancer on .ru server, but you’ve decided to gain some faction resistance from Steppe barbarian as well. As it can be clearly seen from your .com profile you have 8th FS level of DE and Dwarf, 9th FS level of Elf and 5th FS level of other factions. So what was that all about?

I wouldn’t say I’ve switched to Steppe barbarian on .ru to gain some faction resistance, but the reason I did that was to just have fun playing the newly implemented faction.

Speaking of my .com account, that’s a whole different story. I intentionally raised all of my faction skill levels to gain that resistance that comes with each faction skills level. Elf used to be my main faction and I raised DE FS level to 8 since I figured it was a tough opponent and I needed to gain some major resistance from it, not to mention this faction is pretty cool in terms of thieving in minAP.

I also have set myself a goal to become the first .com player to achieve Dwarven 8th FS level and I have succeeded. Now I have thoughts either of making it my new main faction or leaving it as my secondary behind Elf. Dwarves proved themselves to be tough customers for almost any opponent in PVP battles so why not?

I’ve raised my other factions to 5th FS level pretty much long time ago and by those times I thought that 15% of factional resist was way enough. But now being a virtually 16th combat level player I tend to think that I might need to raise them all to 7th FS level. But prior to that I would like to raise 10th FS level on either Elf or Dwarf depending on which one of those two I’ll have as my main faction.

12. Do you play any significant role in LoWM? You’re a member of multiple official clans, how did you get to where you are?

I do have a wide range of official duties although I wouldn’t say it is something out of this world. First of all I am a Keeper of LoWM and I hold the very same post at HoWM. Not that long time ago I’ve initiated a rebuilding process that was meant to restructure and to improve our LoWM moderation system. And ofc, I’m a nexus between LoWM server and our almighty Twin Gods so to speak.

How I got to where I’m now? Well, at some point of our LoWM history we had a situation when some moderators tended to abuse their powers badly and nothing has been done about that. I wouldn’t like to call out some particular nicknames or describe what has happened back then but it really pissed me off badly so I’ve offered my services as an official to help this community out and to deal with that situation. That was how I got appointed to my first official post as a Keeper. Currently I’m in charge of that particular department along with couple of other official staff departments.

13. What was your reaction to Arctic’s departure who used to serve as an Administrative assistant to LoWM?

If I had to describe it in one word that word would’ve been ‘ambiguously’. Each and every month he used to spend less and less time fulfilling his official duties and that resulted in him leaving this game for good. I think that his departure has ended some era in LoWM history. Some say it was the brightest era of them all; some call it the ‘dark ages’. I’ve communicated with Arctic on various game-related issues for pretty much a long time and from what I’ve learned about him as a person was that he used to be a restrained and competent official but unreliable at times even though that fact never stopped him from fulfilling his duties.

On my behalf I would like to wish him all the luck him can get in RL!

14. The last news on .com was posted on May 1st, 2012. Do you think players are disappointed with the lack of activity or do you think they got used to it?

You can’t make Admins do something just like that :)

It’s obvious that it’s impossible for the players to get used to the lack of news. There you go a quick example of what do I mean. Regardless of the fact that there are way more events and changes on .ru server than here, Russian players still tend to whine about the lack of activity here and there. I mean there must be a reason why such threads appear in forums from time to time. People want some action badly.

Although I wouldn’t blame Administration and accuse them of not doing a damn thing since when we need them to fix something or make any type of correction etc here on LoWM, I simply report those issues and they are getting resolved. That means that Admins are alive and at least breathing :)

Do I think players are disappointed about the lack of activity? Hell yeah! It would’ve been at least strange if they weren’t.

15. Watching the C&A ‘Finance & others’ section at times makes me think that players tend to violate game rules at their will since they somehow believe that Administration forgot about this game. In your opinion would that be correct to say that LoWM needs a judicial system or would it be right to say that everything is fine?

Violators will not escape their punishment, that’s what I can tell you for sure. They’re getting blocked on a daily basis. I’d rather call those who tend to openly violate game rules the stupid ones. But hey, there’s nothing new about that, .ru players pull out the very same stuff so the situation with .com violators isn’t anyhow unique. But what’s indeed typical is the fact that each and every one of them has a strong belief that he can outsmart the system and some of them hope they will evade the punishment left unnoticed to tons of other issues that might take the attention off of them. Epic fail.

16. What’s the worst thing about .com server in your opinion?

For example, one has to wait for like hours for a caravan trigger due to insufficient amount of players at the night time. I mean that system gotta change :)

17. What could be done to motivate .com players to invite new people in?

The invitation program must be changed like it has been on .ru. That will definitely motivate players to invite new people in (.ru players receive not only gold bonuses but special artifacts and also diamonds for the players they invite).

But you have to keep that in mind that lots of LoWM players have western either European mentality and as we all know consumption became a cult over there to a much greater extent than a cult it has become in the ex-USSR countries for example, so one willing to motivate players has to be ready to provide them with some decent customers support service. Lots of those guys want that 24/7/365 customers support service that will instantly answer any of their questions regardless if dumb. It’s quite obvious that it is way easier to ask someone from support service and have that info instantly delivered instead of spending 5 minutes to find the very same information browsing ‘About the game’ section on one’s own.

18. If there was anything that you would like to change about this game? Maybe there’s something you don’t like about it?

There you go an example from not that long time ago. I really didn’t like the way our moderation system worked and I’ve initiated a rebuilding process of that system. Some changes were implemented already. So far everyone seems to be happy about it. We’ll see how it goes though.

I have thousands of brilliant ideas, really. But that’s not about me and/or my ideas but it’s all about Admins providing me with a green light and trusting me to initiate something. It’s their game and it is always their call.

19. What would you like to get from Administration most of all? If there’s anything you would like to happen the most?

I’d like to get an UCI (unique character image) from them as a prize for becoming the first .com player who have reached 8th dwarven FS level, that’s what I’d like to happen the most :)

Now on a serious note, I’m desperate to see them expand their staff. It’s obvious that two chaps aren’t enough to deal with all those multiple issues they have to face on a daily basis. If there were more spare hands there would have been more news, more events, more updates, and that according to the players’ point of view is the most important thing.

Also I would’ve loved to see the new economical system implemented in this game since as to my economical knowledge our current economical system is mostly irrelevant. Typical is the fact that such [irrelevant and unreliable] economical systems tend to invoke artificial crisis’s to cure themselves so to speak. The very same artificial crisis happened back in the days when those unpleasant changes of the ‘GU 2’ took place. Pretty much the same thing happened when another artificial Subprime mortgage crisis shook the world in 2008 in RL. By that I meant to say that sick economics tend to provoke sick consequences. One must remember though that the most efficient way to get out of any (regardless if it’s an in-game or RL) crisis is to go on a war on someone or something. I will not add explanations why would that be and why it is so because it’ll take a lot of time and most people will find it extremely boring.

20. Well, guess that’s our show for this week. Is there’s anything you would like to wish our players and our Administration?

I’d like to wish y’all people health, love and perseverance :) Don’t get me wrong here, there’s no hidden message behind that, I just believe that those three are the most important things in everyone’s life.

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