Starstable Theories

Just thought I’d refresh that. Might reblog this post every month or so just so folks know.

Hullo folks! Expecting me back at the end of the summer? Yeah, me too.

Ended up figuring out something about myself. I think I’ve always known it, but eh, really came home true over my break. First of all, my break did a lot of good. Let me sort things out and focus on the podcast, which has been amazing to work on. Challenging for sure, but a load of fun. But the thing I figured out. I can’t sit still. Maybe it’s undiagnosed ADHD or something, but if I don’t have something to work on, I feel worse than I how I feel when I am working on something. And so where leaving Tumblr for a bit helped me focus, I always would be feeling like I could be doing something more and not having my blogs just sort of bogged me down as badly, if not worse, than the feeling I was already getting from being on the platform.

But I still think it was for the best. I don’t think I’ve changed any of my opinions. I still feel the contest could have been handled better overall, for a lot of reasons I’ve gone over and still support strongly, but the space has let me refine them as logically, researched opinions and less as a mixture of that and some admitted rage. I am not so proud as to say I don’t acknowledge my own emotion and passion. It won’t be going anywhere, and I’m still a fiery spirited, stubborn ass, but my perspective is always changing. That’s naturally part of being an adult, growing and changing as you learn more about yourself.

In the end, I’ve resolved a couple things. I suggested it when I left that the theory blog was becoming difficult to produce. While I am a fairly skilled cynic, or so I’ve been told, and I enjoy thinking of theories, between the scale the theory blog was aimed for, responding to asks, and now the podcast, I don’t think I have the energy for it. At least on the podcast I have people to actively bounce theories off of in a welcoming atmosphere, where as the blog is aimed to convince a theory in one go and in that regard can be frustrating to just continuously try to disprove portions of lore that might disprove my own content (Hullo the Doors Theory). And so, I don’t want to do the theory blog anymore. I’ll stay on it. Once Stormy and I finish sorting out things with the trade off, I’ll open the submit and let y’all add to it as you want to keep it active. But I won’t post or vocalize on it. I leave it to y’all to fill.

As for the other SSO related blogs, the Veena blog is rarely active because of the nature of that blog, and the SRS blog is now only active for sharing the podcast posters. Neither of them become routine in that way. And so, I’m left with this one and what I believe its purpose will become. And over the past month or so, I’ve been able to engage more with the community than I feel I ever have, both ingame and through the podcast tests. And that’s always what I’ve tried to do, and what I want to continue using this blog to do. I mean, I’m a pretty fearsome devil’s advocate when I try, but the things that matter to me are vocalizing opinions, on all sides, whether I agree or not, and on promoting community. That’s why I founded the Society with El and Stormy, and that’s why the podcast works so hard to get people to engage with it. Heck, it’s why I go by Echo. The origins of “echosound” go back to my derpy little RP forum and a project I had called The Echo Call, where members were called “echosounders,” one of my alternate usernames still. The Echo Call was all about preventing cyber-bullying and prejudice and generally the crap in the world.

And the reason I stuck with it was because of an idea of that project. The Echo Call was called that on the idea of what an echo is. An echo is the bouncing of sound waves, which weakens and alters it a little, but casts it further. And someone might hear that and then interpret what they managed to hear and say it again. And so they create an sound that goes out among the world, creates its own echo, and so on. Then in its own slow but adaptive way, the world changes. I’ve reached a position where I would consider myself with a significant portion of power. I have a standing in the world, however small now, maybe however big later. And from that place, I want to reverberate the change we want to see in the world. It may not sound the same to everyone, and it may not come back the same to me ever again. But I took my privilege and used it to try and make the world a better place. And that’s all we can ask of the world in the end. 

And while I doubt I will ever stop arguing like a badger when I have passion and conviction behind me, I do believe I am more capable now to help promote open conversations and community than I have ever been. And if I can make that happen for anyone else, I feel like I’ve succeeded in some caliber to make the world better. And as pompous as this got as a reintroduction to myself to this blog, I wanted to make it clear what I work for and why I do what I do. I will never be perfect or outstanding or professional as people will call it. But I will be real and powerful and determined in everything I engaged myself in. And I just hope I do a little good along the way.

Also more horse pictures. Those would be nice too.

Thanks again, Stormy ( @ssoautumnknights ), for holding on to these for me. Looking forward to the podcast and being back. Might possibly have an exclusive secret no one has found yet in this update. Thank you all for sticking with me. I’m trying to get better all the time, so it matters all the more that people have tried so much to help me achieve that. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. For your efforts, I will never stop trying.

I honestly needed to do this a while ago when I said I was thinking about leaving. Wish I wasn’t so stubborn to not take a break then. But this is the end of it. I am still put out. I support my individual arguments, just not the extent for which I think I wanted SSO to resolve it. I do think they need to communicate better, but hey, maybe the podcast can point that out. I’m taking a break from making SSO content. I don’t know if I’ll come back to the theory blog. It’s not terribly fun. I mean, I still love being a critic, but it feels like a reach after a while for SSO and then there’s just the general bad air from the platform. It’ll be nice to have a breather. I’ll be on my main for the summer, mostly for recipes and puppies. I think the GW2 one will be updated, but that one is easy. It’s just pictures, and I think we may have a full party of SSO folks before the summer is out. But it’ll be nice to just focus on the channel and starting my freelance editing stuff.

Stormy will have hold of my blogs until I decide to, if I decide to, come back to each. I think I’ll come back to the SML one. Possibly with a big rebrand. Definitely Veena. That one is a lot of fun. I’ll be in game. I’m still not giving them money until I feel like I trust them, but I’ll be in game. Trying to do my best for the community and all. And the podcast matters. 

I’m sorry this stink got out of hand. I think good intentions got mixed up with high emotions from finals and general stress. I’ve said a lot of times I don’t believe in taking down old posts because they were angry or wrong or anything. We have to learn from our mistakes, and trying to erase them doesn’t help anyone grow. They may be ugly to look back on in a bit, but it’s where I was. Good reminders for where I’m going.

See y’all around.

Just as an update for my plans, chiefly I think the SSO ones concern y’all. If you’re interested in having your opinions vocalized in this situation, you can comment on the video, tag me in a post, message me at the channel email ([email protected]), and I will be turning my anon on as well (Solely for submissions) to collect comments to be read off in my last video on the issue. Tell me if you want your name left out, and I’m happy to oblige if you would prefer that privacy. It’s frustrating that this is even an situation and I just hope SSO would respond, but if they’re not, I’m making plans for where I’m headed off to.

So, tired and angry makes Amelia not a fun person. Just as a very serious update to my blog post earlier, I do mean what I said. If SSO continues this “contest,” I am going to leave SSO’s community permanently. I realize I haven’t been the most active lately, and that means a lot of content is going to go away, but I cannot continue to morally back SSO if this is the rabbit hole they’re deciding to go down. And I have better places to spend my time and money than on a game that is going to endorse harassment.

It’s been an awesome run. Hope it gets to last longer.

OK, so it’s past midnight and I’m running on a week of losing an hour of sleep, and generally just starting dead week feels, so let’s just get into it.

In case you haven’t heard (and I’m not going to link it because I’ll do a better job covering it than SSO has), SSO is hosting a competition with their Instagram. The process is simple. You have to, of course, follow their Instagram, and then follow through a series of chained Instagram accounts through tagged pictures linked on each of these “contest” accounts. And yes, I will be putting it in quotes throughout this entire post. Because that’s what it is.

Once you have the picture of your “dream” horse, you tag a friend and yourself on that picture with SSO’s “contest” hashtag and wait for the polls to roll in in however long they’re going to run the “contest.” They have three places, and considering the prizes for first, it is completely lame and not worth mentioning the other two because first is literally a gaming laptop and a horse in the game for you and your friend based on your picture. So whatever generic merch are given for second and third is really irrelevant. And that is the “contest.” No, honestly, that’s it.

So obviously people are going to read this title and already start with the “But Echo, SSO is doing a contest. They’re giving on content and people need to stop whining because they can’t get it.” And yes, I understand that there is a huge outcry on the Instagram right now saying “FREE PONIES FOR EVERYONE,” which absolutely undermines the MMO model and shows so many people not understanding the SSO is an actual company needing millions to function every year. Ok? People tried this when I made my complaints about the lead function being behind a pay wall. You have no understanding, or really respect, for me as a writer if you think that is ever the side I’m on when writing my arguments.

What I actually want to talk about here is why this is so incredibly broken as a contest and how it honestly seriously damages SSO’s credibility as a company. No, really, I honestly think someone needs to be fired on the team for suggesting this idea it is so incredibly broken, because it undermines so much of SSO, both their product and their community as a whole.

Firstly, do you know what is going to happen to those two players who get first? They’re going to either be put on this huge pedestal for their custom horses, or they’re going to be banned from the majority of the server for winning an inherently broken “contest.” Which means two players are going to get the short end of a huge stick. Those horses will probably be worth something to them for all of two days before they realize absolutely nobody actually wants to talk to them, either because they’re being heavily excluded or everyone just wants to see their horses. The only real win they have is winning those computers, but that’s not even a guarantee, because SSO doesn’t even clarify what a “gaming laptop” is. That is so utterly vague, and considering that SSO isn’t a very intensive game to play, I don’t see what the team is quantifying for this reward. This may just be because they can’t associate themselves with a brand because they can’t afford the partnership, but the prize is so uncalculate-able on a level of sketchy backdoor deal “contests.” Honestly, if we can’t define the prize as it is, then why should be trust the “800 euro” label smacked on it? We funded a man to make potato salad on Kickstarter for hundreds of thousands of dollars, ~$900 could go for anything depending on the deal a person got. This makes SSO shady at best.

Continuing that, we don’t even have a guarantee that this contest will even be available to the NA area, confirmed SSO largest and most profitable region. SSO has a history of running contests that would not send mailed rewards to the NA region, and there is not clarification, as far as I can see, that they have changed that policy now. Which means we don’t even know for sure if players are excluded based on region at the start of the contest. That’s like Online Contest 101, clarifying the complete terms of your contest. As so many people have pointed, and I sarcastically opened with, SSO has not.

To continue the discussion on exclusion, let’s talk about the platform: Instagram. SSO is developing a very unhealthy trend of this reliance on social media. I understand the market that is their largest demographic probably uses all these social media, but understand that the most common comment I saw reading through this “contest” was “my friend doesn’t have an Instagram, who wants to be my friend?” I don’t have an Instagram, and I’m certainly not planning on getting on for a broken “contest,” but it proves that an even larger part of SSO’s demographic does not have access to the social media that they want to use. Which means someone on their PR team is not paying attention very well. Instead of focusing on making events, you know, in their game, SSO is continuing a push towards social media that is exclusionary and not well thought out. Yes, dev teams need to be on social media. No, SSO fans are probably not on the most common platforms for this, like Reddit and we know they aren’t watching Tumblr. But there are more people watching their YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to make a whole “contest” exclusive to a singular social media that isn’t even widely used, not to mention it furthers the idea that the devs don’t even play the game and are spending too much time on the game’s social media. You need to look like you play your own game. That’s just common sense.

Furthermore, let’s get to the actual issue here with the “contest:” the horse options. Let’s be honest; there is an 80% chance at least that the winning horse will be some sparkly, colorful, or otherwise unnatural color. It’s not like SSO has turned a blind eye to adding unnatural white horses, but at least that can pass as natural to the average player. Magenta and cyan rainbow ponies cannot. And it contradicts so much of what SSO has promised about their game. Obviously, we’ve had promises that they’ve clearly been able to break, like the lead function, but this undermines SSO on a larger scale. SSO, for the narrative it has, strikes a balance between realism and mysticism. The game is magical when it needs to be, but it’s realistic as well. Stereotypical at times, but it’s a believably setting. Even with the magic, it leaves a hint for whimsical plausibility. Magic colorful ponies and unicorns shatter what immersion SSO has going for it. After all the promises that this would never, ever happen, no magic color, no mythical breeds, heck, even using these kinds of colors as an April Fool’s joke, SSO is copping out on one of the oldest promises in the game. Yes, I understand it’s only two, but it’s only two for right now. We have no promise that this is the only time SSO will be running a “contest” like this. They have stated that they have spent months on planning this.

And that’s honestly what scares me the most about this. SSO’s PR has directly stated that they have been spending months on this. And let me quote it before it gets removed for sheer audacity of calling this a completed project:

starstableonline We are SO excited to finally reveal this project we have worked on for a couple of months 😃 Let the creativity start –>@my_star_stable_horse Link in bio for instruction video and rules! 😃😃

This took a couple months? I would understand getting the models together and ready, but you’ve already admitted that takes about a month, if. And if this was a huge “contest,” that would have been rushed. This series of accounts could be made in a matter of hours with a tab on Gmail and Instagram open to copy in all the new info for these dummy accounts. You’re saying you spent that long setting up these rewards but didn’t even bother to proofread the actual contents of the “contest” you were putting out?

So, yeah, I’m utterly disappointed in this. Not because I don’t get some “custom horse,” but because it damages so much of what SSO has suggested matters to them: their community, the treatment of that community, their credibility as a company and creators, the ability to live up to promises, their reputation as a whole. In the end, this is just going to be two massively bullied players on a Global scale, and SSO looking like a bunch of unorganized college students still learning how PR works. And that’s coming from an unorganized college students still learning how PR works.

What makes me even more disappointed is that SSO did know how to do contests right. Anyone remember a few years ago they ran a contest where you got to design a T-Shirt? And some of those T-Shirts actually where put into the game and are still for sale for pretty cheap in Fort Pinta. Because that was a super cool contest. And no one got hurt. And in the end, everyone won! Those artists got a nice pat on the back, the community got some cool gear, and SSO looked like they knew what they were doing and got some free designs. You remember even further back when SSO actually hosted events where if you logged on during a certain week, you got a free T-Shirt? Those were awesome events directly on their SSO News Page, where everyone could see it. You wonder why so many players are confused on the news and what it is. Who can blame them? SSO hardly seems to know where to put it anymore themselves, why should players be any less confused?

The point I want to take away from this is that I don’t think SSO is an awful company, I just think they’re making some really poor decisions. And, yes, to some extent, I do think that the individual who was given the greenlight on this should be fired, or at the very least, not given that kind of position again because they did not do their homework very well and look at this on the long term. My real disappointment though is that I know SSO can do better, and that those poor kids are going to get super harassed, which I find really not cool, particularly considering the outreach SSO has had with me to prevent that kind of situation, and then is directly going to cause this situation themselves.

But how about instead of pitching a fit, we do something? I am going to take this link and personally submit it to a contact I have on SSO team, even potentially turning down the chance to participate in the surprise I can’t mention to do so, because this means so much to me. This move has me concerned on so many levels for SSO as a company, that I honestly am questioning my future support of their brand. The fact that SSO would allow this situation to happen, however hypothetical, shows a shortsightedness on their part that is incredibly alarming. If you agree with me about this stance, please, take this post and send it to SSO. All of you. Drop it in their support. Fill their social media with this link from so many people sharing it to them. I’ll even include it below once the post is up, in a super meta-way, so you can just copy it and go. And go. Ask your friends to do it. Get content creators to post about it. Guys, honestly, if YouTube can rally behind creators to get channels back from oblivion, why can’t the SSO player base rally behind something that is honestly going to damage the game as a whole?

Thanks for your time.

~ Echo

Guess what?

Carney, Courtney, Barney, and Marley all share a father and three of those four people believe that their father is dead. Courtney last spoke to her father a month ago (or maybe a year? She isn’t sure, but she’s convinced he isn’t dead).

We learn in Spring Riders that their father, Ronnie Bob Summers, is running Bayridge Stables! At least at the point Spring Riders is set, he is alive and well in the north-west corner of Jorvik.

Guess what?

Carney, Courtney, Barney, and Marley all share a father and three of those four people believe that their father is dead. Courtney last spoke to her father a month ago (or maybe a year? She isn’t sure, but she’s convinced he isn’t dead).

We learn in Spring Riders that their father, Ronnie Bob Summers, is running Bayridge Stables! At least at the point Spring Riders is set, he is alive and well in the north-west corner of Jorvik.

Sooooo, I just got some pretty major news. Don’t worry, I’m not leaving any of my blogs, but God, are you going to have to bare with me.

So, I went to see my adviser yesterday for my next semester of class. It was a kind of tired conversation because I had just found out Taegen wasn’t going to be moving back for another 6 months after we had planned the night before, and neither I or my adviser had gotten much sleep. So we were picking out classes I ought to take when my adviser asked, “Are you a senior next year?”

“No, I’m a junior.”

“Really, cause you only have 9 classes left to get your BA.”

She emailed the head of the department to doublecheck, and yeah, I only have a year left of college. I literally just magically skipped a year of college. I’m getting ready to start my Surprise!Senior year.

And this is going to be a massive change for me. It means that in a year, a lot of things are going to happen. Taegen will be moving out, I will be walking, we’ll be getting married in the summer, and that means I have to get a job and an apartment, not to mention basically plan the whole wedding on my own since I’m the only one in state, and, oh, I have my senior year, which means a capstone, and…holy, a lot of things are about to happen that I really thought I had two years to plan for.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that this is going to happen, chiefly the Taegen wedding bit. But Lord…talk about a blindside.