Well, well, well...
as one of the (probably) most active ww-players and one who has been playing for quite a long time, and especially as someone who never has had a long pause from the game, I think I should say something on the topic. Yes, I feel like I have a sort of duty to post on this thread.
Many people (me included) often sigh after the "good old times", even though if you look from the real old timers' perspective, I'm just a newbie. I remember the early games and there certainly was something different from the current state. I think it was simply that the game was new back then. None of us had played in a dozen or more games, like now. Everything was new and new situations kept popping up all the time. Nowadays most of the even hilarious and extra challenging situations have been faced sometime in the past, and the senior players always bring those cases up - never thought of this, but possibly spoiling the newcomers' fun by saying "I know, it was like this in the game this-and-that, problem solved".
What I'm saying here is that we old players might indeed be the problem. I don't want to generalize, but very often we slip to this kind of thinking (I guess it's what you call formulaic thinking, isn't it?) and cease to think from fresh viewpoints just because we see no reason for it ("it was like that before, it is like that now, why would there be a change?"). And this is where we go so wrong. How often have I stopped, following some clearly trodden path of thought and realising it's not logical, it's just something we've always done before? And how often have I heard the wise words of a newcomer who still has a fresh perspective of the game who has not created the routine yet? Often, I tell you. Every time I'm a wolf (very seldom
) I can't help thinking how odd and random it is who is caught and who is not and why it is so. Also, I often think about the things that are clearly considered as signs of wolvery and how wrong they can be and how everything is, in the end, so random.
Also, one of my prejudices of us oldies has proven itself true on this thread. I hope no one is offended if I phrase this bluntly, but I think many of us are quite nit-picky. We want certain style of games, certain mods, certain people to play with. (I myself confess doing the two last ones, but often my hunger of ww exceeds my nit-picky sense of what would be a perfect game.) Somehow, it seems, many people are chasing a perfect game, some dream game or some nostalgic beautiful game of past. Those, sadly, can not come true. So we should be content with those we can have - intelligent, challenging, enjoyable and awesome games.
I do understand the craving to the old times, more than well. There are so many "old school players" I miss a lot and who I'd so much love to play again with. Besides, like always, time has made the early games look more fantastic than they probably were, the less memorable ones have been forgotten and only the greatest remain in active memory, thus making the whole picture of early ww games slightly biased. Although I'm quite sure that in the old times there was significantly less of the nuisance-like players who don't show up at all or post one one-liner post per day if even that... (and now I truly mean those one-liner players, I'm not exaggeratedly describing quieter players - even though I sometimes seem to demand vocal play from everybody, I have nothing against quiet players if they contribute - it's just their style.)
For my currently running game I tried to get some old faces playing. Because I missed them, I wanted to see them playing and - to be honest - to integrate them to the current wwing society and make them know the newer players. Sadly those I invited were all too busy and declined the request. It's the time...
I think we should have one (or hopefully more than just one) realtively small, classic game in which some true old-timers would play alongside with the newer guys. Some truly old school player could mod that so it would assure that many hardcore old timers were interested to play. But I definitely think it should be no closed game for just the old timers, but one with both old and new players and they could get to know each other. Besides, both the older and newer generation would have new challenges as they would be playing with many players they're never played with before and that would force them to think from a fresh angle. (And we go-betweens or always-hang-arounds could just be losers...
) AND you shouldn't play it during the Christmas holiday if I'm going to be away 'cos otherwise I'm going to be really sad!
I would be sad as well if the current state of inactivity in ww remained. I love ww. It's just a perfect game: no game is identic with another - it's always an individual challenge, it's a way to spend time with your friends or getting to know new nice people, an intriguing intellectual and rhetorical challenge, a way of both relaxing and doing something exciting and, with good mod and players, even a literature pleasure. Because of those things, I've never really stopped playing (except when I've had not time or no net access) and hopefully never will.
Yours truly,
Thinlómien
PS. Interesting... I think this discussion actually resembles the one we had here and in, for example, LiveJournal at the time of the davem-crisis. Back then, most people said they have a problematic relationship with the books discussions: they always follow the same lines, nobody's there anymore, everything has been discussed etc. Doesn't that sound familiar?
PPS. It is great that so many "old faces" have posted on this thread. Both the fact that they follow this forum frequently enough to see this thread and what they say about playing give me hope of seeing them around in the werewolf games again some time in the future...