To a Mouse

If you are familiar with this Scots poem you'll know I'm not addressing Sherry the Mouse. At least, not directly.

The poem is about a farmer who uproots the home of a lil ol mouse who spent so much time making her home in a pile of hay he turned over.

The famous line of this poem reads:
"The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,"

The best laid plans often go wrong. I lovingly call it "tempting fate." We all make our plans for the day or week but nothing is guaranteed. The reality is that we do our best and hope for the best.

I'll be dealing with some medical issues for a spell which means I'll be hit and miss a bit. It's not something new to me, just more enhanced this time. Everyone has something. This is mine. I often see players mention things here and there about what they deal with and that sitting down, interacting on the forums or in their game is sort of the release they need. It takes you out of yourself and reacting with others. I've always loved that with MMOs and even discussion forums. So much so that I made it my 2nd job

Which brings me to my 2nd job. I love Stratics. Mainly because of who I get to work with at Stratics, but also because this community has been the backdrop of everything I love (and dislike) about UO and now other games I'm interested in as well. So while I might go offline here and there, I am personally invested and plan to be a part of the team dedicated to keeping Stratics around for as long as I can.

Which brings me to my last few blog posts. I've been pretty vocal personally about my dislike on losing GrimmOmen on the UO team. Part of it is due to knowing him over the years and being able to call someone a true friend. That makes it personal on top of the normal anxiety of another UO team loss. But that aside, the foundation for that friendship has been UO and having that commonality has allowed others to reach out to him past UO too. In our present world of social networking, the majority know of his bagpipe competitions, that his wife is brilliant and funny, and that haggis is gross (Okay so I threw in the haggis part). So losing that UO connection is of course felt by many. It's like losing a great artistic finger in the body. Yeah it keeps functioning but something will always be missed and you can't quite put your finger on it

Friendship aside, there has been a bit of talk recently about what's next for UO which seems to happen every year like taking a pulse. We're invested, not just financially but personally. As the longest running mmo out there, it comes with years and years of baggage. It is responsible for friendships formed from all over the world only to find out sometimes that our friend lives just a few hrs away. When those friends move on, especially if they've passed away, it is felt by us, sometimes even more so because that was our only connection.

UO set the standard in so many things and has never been fully and successfully replicated. It's uniqueness is it's immortality but it comes with a price: age = bugs, staying relevant, leading the pack vs playing catch up, smaller team, smaller budget, and keeping a pulse on and evolving with the current community. Again, it made me think of the mouse, "the best laid plans o mice and men," and that no matter what we may want for UO, what UO may need, anything can turn over the mouse in the hay and set things topsy turvy. So maybe Sherry the Mouse is relevant here after all, eh?

What the UO team feels, we the community feel as well. What impacts them impacts us as players who've made second homes filled with years of memories in game. So when long standing players get vocal, I look at intent. When the intent is pro UO even if the delivery sounds negative, I listen and remain hopeful. What I hear I pass along in feedback emails from the Stratics team to the UO team.

So to sum up, I may be hit and miss awhile as I focus on needful things but Stratics will stay a priority as our best laid plans depend on server stability and community happiness, and I'll be in UO gaming when I can to catch up with friends and players on hopefully many more events to come, as well as some fun new titles coming up that I'm anxious to try (I'm looking at you, Zosimus and Flutter). Rebuild and plan again if you need to, even if you get tossed around in the hay a bit