Post by Mr. Game & Watch on Jul 17, 2021 20:25:18 GMT -8
Hey all! So, as you all might know, April 7th was the site’s 10-year anniversary, 10 years since the site was first made public. I wasn’t actually there when that happened, no, I didn’t join the site until a couple months later, on July 18th, 2011. Today marks my tenth year with the site.
Now, initially, I was planning to make a mission to celebrate this occasion, dig up an old plot thread that I wanted to play out and maybe tie it into Next Xenith since that’s the big thing right now. Considering that we’re experiencing that good ol’ mid-event mission fatigue, I figured that wasn’t going to be the best idea. It could have been a good shot of adrenaline to get some morale and muse going, but that would also mean I’d be running three Next Xenith missions that would likely get caught in limbo, so I’ve decided to do something a bit different.
Around this time last year, I was doing retrospective journal logs about my experiences and the site’s general history, and I thought I could do something like that again, though a bit different. Y’see, way back in 2015 when I was super admin and running the site fulltime, I had very specific building blocks of ideas in regards to how I was going to manage the plotline of the site over the next couple of years. These ideas were more or less discarded after I stepped down in the fall of 2015, on the basis that I was no longer in sole control of what direction the site was headed and I handed down the reigns to the other staff members for the sake of pursuing the plot where they saw fit.
In celebration of my ten years with the site, I thought it would be fun to speculate an alternate history of the site, where would SSB: Life Itself be plot-wise if things continued to go as I planned them back in the day. What if I hadn’t stepped down and I still reigned over the site with an iron gauntlet?
Short answer: we wouldn’t be celebrating a ten-year anniversary because I would’ve run this place into the ground long before that. Cue credits.
Seriously though, let’s set our mind’s eye back to 2015 for a moment. Not everybody was there, I know, so allow me to illustrate the scene for you. The general plot was in a much earlier state, we were fresh off the Enter the Bull’s Ring plotline where a group of Life Sphere heroes saved Mario and Sonic from a kidnapping plot constructed by Black Shadow, who, at the time, was considered to be the face of the Starvia. Mother Brain was still the leader of the Starvia plot, but very little was seen or heard from her. Black Shadow was the one going around and committing atrocities in their name.
During this plotline, all three of the Life Sphere leaders were captured, but Samus’s fate remained vague. I set up the belief that she was infected, there was a scenario where two of the rescue team encountered an infected enemy that was wearing her varia suit, but from the beginning, it was never my plan to infect Samus, my main goal here was to get her out of play for the moment and figure out her return later. There were a couple reasons I wanted to do this. Firstly, I wanted to play up the rivalry between Mario and Sonic, so cutting out the neutral leader was the best way to do that. In addition to that, it would segue way into the next Event Mission I had lined up, the finale to Gang Wars, which I’ll get into in a bit.
The main thing I want to get into here is that this was a pre-Absolution world. Sonic was not intended to be Mephiles in disguise from the site’s inception, that plot point comes to you with the curtesy of Quote. I’ve always known that people were offput by the idea that Sonic’s plan and platform as leader was to blow up the planet, so I always saw it as a challenge to try to justify it or at the very least, rationalize it.
Anyways, with Samus out of the picture, that brought rise to the Gang Wars finale. Brief summary of Gang Wars: three previous villains from different worlds find themselves in positions of power in the Black Market. The Black Market is generally made up of races and people from different video game worlds that are considered to be the ‘bad guys’ so they’re usually perceived as the underclass. The people of the Black Market would never rally behind people like Sonic or Mario, but if there was a leader that they felt would better represent them, it would be easier to unite them with the Life Sphere against the Starvia threat. For this reason, these three began a campaign to join ranks with Mario, Sonic, and Samus, one that brought them into conflict with one another.
There was King K. Rool, the croc with vast control over the trading and smuggling sphere in the Black Market. He boasted that he could improve distribution of rations and weapons supplies to the Life Sphere as a whole if he was given power. Then there was Bowser, he had the sway and influence over the vast majority of the Black Market’s people since most of them were native to the Mushroom Kingdom. His plan was not all that different from Mario’s, he just wanted to amass an army to fight the Starvia head on. Lastly, there was Eggman, whose technical prowess made him an invaluable asset amongst the Black Market. His ideals were based on creating the best possible defense system for the Life Sphere, whatever it took to keep the Starvia from invading the Life Sphere again.
Up to this point, there were a series of missions cataloguing the ongoing struggle between these three factions, each trying to improve their forces or inhibit that of their opponents. With Samus presumed to be infected and/or dead, that left a power vacuum open considering that the Life Sphere’s government was so heavily based around a three-leader system. As such, war were declared and all three factions geared up for one final battle.
Even though we’ve had a couple attempts at making this site event happen, it didn’t play out as smoothly as we expected it to. With the prospects going in, and the general tide of battle, Eggman was lined up as the most likely candidate to win it all and end up as the next leader, as evident by the fact that currently in continuity he’s the chief engineer for the Life Sphere’s defense force. In which case, this is where our path starts branching off.
So, with Eggman as the new leader, the Life Sphere would become a bit more technologically advanced, not right away, of course, but it would be a subtle and gradual thing. Defenses would become improved and the Life Sphere would be become more heavily fortified.
The next event mission that would follow Gang Wars would have been known as ‘The Day of Reckoning’ and it would have involved a villain I had been slowly building up during the course of Gang Wars. Enter Black Doom.
Let’s give a rundown of Black Doom, shall we? I introduced Black Doom during an early portion of the site’s lifespan. The general idea was that he was meant to be a sort of third faction to the Starvia conflict, opposing both the Life Sphere and the Starvia. He saw himself as the only being that could rid the planet of the disease and was staunchly opposed to residents of the Life Sphere interfering in his attempts to cure the planet. The main thing was that his troops, the Black Arms, were immune to the Starvia, whereas the residents of the Life Sphere were not and every time they left the Life Sphere, they risked increasing the numbers of the Starvia army.
In this chapter of Black Doom’s plan, he would seize control of the Life Sphere. Utilizing Diaboromon, a living computer virus, he would use Eggman’s technological advances against the Life Sphere, turning what were protocols to ensure safety against the populous, locking them out from the outside world, preventing them from ever leaving again and ensuring that the Starvia couldn’t grow stronger. The Life Sphere would be turned into a massive prison, the place where Black Doom would store new arrivals when they landed on Li and house those uninfected. That way, Black Doom could wage his war against the Starvia and prevent their army from growing.
If this sounds familiar, I actually tried to transition Gang Wars into this event on its second run, merging them into one bigger event. Instead of Gang Wars coming to a conclusion where one army won out, it would instead end with the three gangs teaming up to take out the bigger threat. Again, it being Gang Wars, that plan didn’t pan out.
The Day of Reckoning would have played out into three acts. The first act would have seen a team enter cyberspace to fight off Diaboromon and return control of the Life Sphere’s defense systems to Eggman. The second act would have taken place in the Police HQ, as Black Doom would have released all the criminals from their cells and freed them from their trophy form, specifically to cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible so that the general populous would be reduced to trophy form. This would have had a lot of call backs and involved reviving bosses from previous missions.
Finally, there would have been the third and final act. With Diaboromon defeated and the criminals detained, the Life Sphere would fall back into the hands of its citizens, and Black Doom would be forced into a position of retreat. He wouldn’t leave without some sort of contingency though, so he’d attempt to kidnap Mr. Game & Watch for the sake of using Shadow Bugs for his own dark designs. A team would be dispatched to stop him, and this would have been the final confrontation with Black Doom.
Following the end of the chaos, the Life Sphere would be in a state of repair, though research on a Starvia cure wouldn’t have slowed down. During the before mentioned event Enter the Bull’s Ring, a crew of Life Sphere citizens found the blueprints for what was thought to be the Starvia. It wasn’t the Starvia exactly, but its makeup was close enough that it excelled the reach for a cure exponentially. Around this time is when I would have introduced the concept of a functioning cure. I don’t think there would have been an accompanying event mission for the cure itself, but I think it would have spawned some interesting plot threads.
The major influence that the cure would have is discussion about a full frontal assault against the Starvia forces. If Bowser was to be the victor of the Gang Wars, then that idea would have been doubly enforced. This would then have led into the next event mission, the final war against the Starvia.
How this would have played out in practice, I was never 100% certain considering that it was always a couple event missions away from becoming a reality and generally speaking I like to have a roadmap of general malleable concepts that get more detailed as I get closer to them. This is a roleplay site after all, things change shape and concepts get rewritten to fit the current atmosphere. For example, if First to Fall, Last to Lead didn’t happen, Black Shadow would have been a major player in this event.
I think the general shape of this event would have been something similar to Gang Wars, a big thread that followed the goings on with the frontline of the battle with a series of smaller threads happening and influencing its path. And like Gang Wars, it might have turned into an over inflated mess, but dang it, it would have been my over inflated mess.
With the cure in hand, the beginning of the war would have seemed simple, considering that the Life Sphere’s army could easily cure the infection from the Starvia’s troops and reduce the size of their army without needing to kill them. This mission would have had a three-act structure though, so, of course, complications would arise and you know, general darkest before the dawn stuff. The battlefield would become engulfed in smog, the Starvia growing stronger and the Life Sphere forces becoming infected with a new form of Starvia, rendering the cure useless. It would then be revealed that the mysterious formula that was found during Enter the Bull’s Ring was actually just one of many experiments that Mother Brain was working on, a stronger more potent form of Starvia that she was saving in her back pocket for when the Life Sphere grew confident enough to mobilize a counterattack on their base.
Then, you know, final showdown stuff, a group of Life Sphere heroes facedown Mother Brain, presumably they’re victorious and once they have access to Mother Brain’s lab they don’t have much troubles developing a cure for the new Starvia. Proceed to big happy party times. For the sake of not getting into potential spoilers for the site’s current working story, that’s all I’ll say about that.
Many years ago, back even before we did Enter the Bull’s Ring, I made a poll asking for people’s input on what direction the site’s story should take, most importantly what should be done with the Starvia. The majority voted that they wanted the current site about the Starvia to still be used, but perhaps in the future we would pursue a different path with the site’s plot. This is where the new plot would start up.
While there might have been small pockets of Starvia still lurking around the planet of Li, the planet would have more or less been purged of its influence, meaning that people would no longer be forced to live within the Life Sphere and start to expand outwards, starting up colonies and camps in the outskirts. There wouldn’t necessarily be an event mission for this point in the site’s plot, but the general feel would be to endorse expansion and exploration, getting to know the planet for what it is rather than letting the Starvia’s infection define it.
Of course, colonization wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows, new threats would probably emerge from either the planet or from nefarious individuals from the Life Sphere.
During the course of this expansion though, the Life Sphere itself would become this sort of walled city. With the threat of the Starvia gone, the Life Sphere would become the dominant force on the planet, the strongest fortification by far. With my portrayal of Eggman in Gang Wars, I made him a bit more regretful of his past evil actions, wanting to create a safe environment within the Life Sphere to atone for his mistakes. This is where that mentality would have taken a turn. Obsessed with making the Life Sphere the ideal metropolis, slowly he would have secured power, built up his influence, and annexed the other leaders from the Life Sphere, feeling that the animosity between Mario and Sonic would only fuel future conflicts within the city walls.
Eggman would soon gain complete control of the Life Sphere, and essentially boot out anyone that he perceived as problematic to maintaining peace in this utopian society he was trying to create. This would include most of, if not all player characters, changing the Life Sphere from the main hub world of the roleplay to this neigh unreachable fortress that player characters could interact with, but very rarely and with extreme limits since any attempts at brushing against the grain would result in them getting ushered out by egg bots.
In a way, Eggman would become the new central villain, in the sense that the plot and the general opinion of most players would probably be to reclaim the Life Sphere. However, Eggman himself wouldn’t be waging war with the smaller colonies, so long as the Life Sphere was under his control and he would be more than happy to share resources with the colonies. It would build up this dynamic that the colonies would want to stay on good terms with Eggman, for the sake of keeping the ability to trade resources, but the people would be in opposition to Eggman on a fundamental level.
As for where things would have gone from there, I’m unsure. I never thought that far ahead, considering that, generally speaking, everything I had planned already was already my roadmap for the next 5 years to maybe a decade. I’m sure I would have plotted further ahead had I gotten further into my plans, continually stacking blocks of ideas atop of one another until the end of time.
Now, putting my roadmap into consideration with how events have played out on the site, I’d say we’d be roughly at the big finale to the Starvia arc/early into the colonization plotline. I mean, with the ten-year anniversary being this year, it would certainly make sense to do the big Starvia finale event.
Keep in mind though, this is just how things would have played out if I was left to my own devices and without any outside influences, which would have been unlikely to happen. In all likelihood, things would have changed course for a multitude of reasons. While a lot of this stuff was malleable and could be reshaped, if necessary, a lot of the time with roleplay, player actions can change the course of things and make a different path more enticing than the one you’re currently on. Not to mention that as the site matured and we gained more staff members, I was no longer the sole person responsible for moving the site forward, so getting more input from other staff members on how to proceed with the site plot would have changed the course of the site. But it has been an interesting thought exercise, revisiting my old plot threads and thinking about how this place would look if my role with the site hadn’t changed from how it was half a decade ago.
Now, initially, I was planning to make a mission to celebrate this occasion, dig up an old plot thread that I wanted to play out and maybe tie it into Next Xenith since that’s the big thing right now. Considering that we’re experiencing that good ol’ mid-event mission fatigue, I figured that wasn’t going to be the best idea. It could have been a good shot of adrenaline to get some morale and muse going, but that would also mean I’d be running three Next Xenith missions that would likely get caught in limbo, so I’ve decided to do something a bit different.
Around this time last year, I was doing retrospective journal logs about my experiences and the site’s general history, and I thought I could do something like that again, though a bit different. Y’see, way back in 2015 when I was super admin and running the site fulltime, I had very specific building blocks of ideas in regards to how I was going to manage the plotline of the site over the next couple of years. These ideas were more or less discarded after I stepped down in the fall of 2015, on the basis that I was no longer in sole control of what direction the site was headed and I handed down the reigns to the other staff members for the sake of pursuing the plot where they saw fit.
In celebration of my ten years with the site, I thought it would be fun to speculate an alternate history of the site, where would SSB: Life Itself be plot-wise if things continued to go as I planned them back in the day. What if I hadn’t stepped down and I still reigned over the site with an iron gauntlet?
Short answer: we wouldn’t be celebrating a ten-year anniversary because I would’ve run this place into the ground long before that. Cue credits.
Seriously though, let’s set our mind’s eye back to 2015 for a moment. Not everybody was there, I know, so allow me to illustrate the scene for you. The general plot was in a much earlier state, we were fresh off the Enter the Bull’s Ring plotline where a group of Life Sphere heroes saved Mario and Sonic from a kidnapping plot constructed by Black Shadow, who, at the time, was considered to be the face of the Starvia. Mother Brain was still the leader of the Starvia plot, but very little was seen or heard from her. Black Shadow was the one going around and committing atrocities in their name.
During this plotline, all three of the Life Sphere leaders were captured, but Samus’s fate remained vague. I set up the belief that she was infected, there was a scenario where two of the rescue team encountered an infected enemy that was wearing her varia suit, but from the beginning, it was never my plan to infect Samus, my main goal here was to get her out of play for the moment and figure out her return later. There were a couple reasons I wanted to do this. Firstly, I wanted to play up the rivalry between Mario and Sonic, so cutting out the neutral leader was the best way to do that. In addition to that, it would segue way into the next Event Mission I had lined up, the finale to Gang Wars, which I’ll get into in a bit.
The main thing I want to get into here is that this was a pre-Absolution world. Sonic was not intended to be Mephiles in disguise from the site’s inception, that plot point comes to you with the curtesy of Quote. I’ve always known that people were offput by the idea that Sonic’s plan and platform as leader was to blow up the planet, so I always saw it as a challenge to try to justify it or at the very least, rationalize it.
Anyways, with Samus out of the picture, that brought rise to the Gang Wars finale. Brief summary of Gang Wars: three previous villains from different worlds find themselves in positions of power in the Black Market. The Black Market is generally made up of races and people from different video game worlds that are considered to be the ‘bad guys’ so they’re usually perceived as the underclass. The people of the Black Market would never rally behind people like Sonic or Mario, but if there was a leader that they felt would better represent them, it would be easier to unite them with the Life Sphere against the Starvia threat. For this reason, these three began a campaign to join ranks with Mario, Sonic, and Samus, one that brought them into conflict with one another.
There was King K. Rool, the croc with vast control over the trading and smuggling sphere in the Black Market. He boasted that he could improve distribution of rations and weapons supplies to the Life Sphere as a whole if he was given power. Then there was Bowser, he had the sway and influence over the vast majority of the Black Market’s people since most of them were native to the Mushroom Kingdom. His plan was not all that different from Mario’s, he just wanted to amass an army to fight the Starvia head on. Lastly, there was Eggman, whose technical prowess made him an invaluable asset amongst the Black Market. His ideals were based on creating the best possible defense system for the Life Sphere, whatever it took to keep the Starvia from invading the Life Sphere again.
Up to this point, there were a series of missions cataloguing the ongoing struggle between these three factions, each trying to improve their forces or inhibit that of their opponents. With Samus presumed to be infected and/or dead, that left a power vacuum open considering that the Life Sphere’s government was so heavily based around a three-leader system. As such, war were declared and all three factions geared up for one final battle.
Even though we’ve had a couple attempts at making this site event happen, it didn’t play out as smoothly as we expected it to. With the prospects going in, and the general tide of battle, Eggman was lined up as the most likely candidate to win it all and end up as the next leader, as evident by the fact that currently in continuity he’s the chief engineer for the Life Sphere’s defense force. In which case, this is where our path starts branching off.
So, with Eggman as the new leader, the Life Sphere would become a bit more technologically advanced, not right away, of course, but it would be a subtle and gradual thing. Defenses would become improved and the Life Sphere would be become more heavily fortified.
The next event mission that would follow Gang Wars would have been known as ‘The Day of Reckoning’ and it would have involved a villain I had been slowly building up during the course of Gang Wars. Enter Black Doom.
Let’s give a rundown of Black Doom, shall we? I introduced Black Doom during an early portion of the site’s lifespan. The general idea was that he was meant to be a sort of third faction to the Starvia conflict, opposing both the Life Sphere and the Starvia. He saw himself as the only being that could rid the planet of the disease and was staunchly opposed to residents of the Life Sphere interfering in his attempts to cure the planet. The main thing was that his troops, the Black Arms, were immune to the Starvia, whereas the residents of the Life Sphere were not and every time they left the Life Sphere, they risked increasing the numbers of the Starvia army.
In this chapter of Black Doom’s plan, he would seize control of the Life Sphere. Utilizing Diaboromon, a living computer virus, he would use Eggman’s technological advances against the Life Sphere, turning what were protocols to ensure safety against the populous, locking them out from the outside world, preventing them from ever leaving again and ensuring that the Starvia couldn’t grow stronger. The Life Sphere would be turned into a massive prison, the place where Black Doom would store new arrivals when they landed on Li and house those uninfected. That way, Black Doom could wage his war against the Starvia and prevent their army from growing.
If this sounds familiar, I actually tried to transition Gang Wars into this event on its second run, merging them into one bigger event. Instead of Gang Wars coming to a conclusion where one army won out, it would instead end with the three gangs teaming up to take out the bigger threat. Again, it being Gang Wars, that plan didn’t pan out.
The Day of Reckoning would have played out into three acts. The first act would have seen a team enter cyberspace to fight off Diaboromon and return control of the Life Sphere’s defense systems to Eggman. The second act would have taken place in the Police HQ, as Black Doom would have released all the criminals from their cells and freed them from their trophy form, specifically to cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible so that the general populous would be reduced to trophy form. This would have had a lot of call backs and involved reviving bosses from previous missions.
Finally, there would have been the third and final act. With Diaboromon defeated and the criminals detained, the Life Sphere would fall back into the hands of its citizens, and Black Doom would be forced into a position of retreat. He wouldn’t leave without some sort of contingency though, so he’d attempt to kidnap Mr. Game & Watch for the sake of using Shadow Bugs for his own dark designs. A team would be dispatched to stop him, and this would have been the final confrontation with Black Doom.
Following the end of the chaos, the Life Sphere would be in a state of repair, though research on a Starvia cure wouldn’t have slowed down. During the before mentioned event Enter the Bull’s Ring, a crew of Life Sphere citizens found the blueprints for what was thought to be the Starvia. It wasn’t the Starvia exactly, but its makeup was close enough that it excelled the reach for a cure exponentially. Around this time is when I would have introduced the concept of a functioning cure. I don’t think there would have been an accompanying event mission for the cure itself, but I think it would have spawned some interesting plot threads.
The major influence that the cure would have is discussion about a full frontal assault against the Starvia forces. If Bowser was to be the victor of the Gang Wars, then that idea would have been doubly enforced. This would then have led into the next event mission, the final war against the Starvia.
How this would have played out in practice, I was never 100% certain considering that it was always a couple event missions away from becoming a reality and generally speaking I like to have a roadmap of general malleable concepts that get more detailed as I get closer to them. This is a roleplay site after all, things change shape and concepts get rewritten to fit the current atmosphere. For example, if First to Fall, Last to Lead didn’t happen, Black Shadow would have been a major player in this event.
I think the general shape of this event would have been something similar to Gang Wars, a big thread that followed the goings on with the frontline of the battle with a series of smaller threads happening and influencing its path. And like Gang Wars, it might have turned into an over inflated mess, but dang it, it would have been my over inflated mess.
With the cure in hand, the beginning of the war would have seemed simple, considering that the Life Sphere’s army could easily cure the infection from the Starvia’s troops and reduce the size of their army without needing to kill them. This mission would have had a three-act structure though, so, of course, complications would arise and you know, general darkest before the dawn stuff. The battlefield would become engulfed in smog, the Starvia growing stronger and the Life Sphere forces becoming infected with a new form of Starvia, rendering the cure useless. It would then be revealed that the mysterious formula that was found during Enter the Bull’s Ring was actually just one of many experiments that Mother Brain was working on, a stronger more potent form of Starvia that she was saving in her back pocket for when the Life Sphere grew confident enough to mobilize a counterattack on their base.
Then, you know, final showdown stuff, a group of Life Sphere heroes facedown Mother Brain, presumably they’re victorious and once they have access to Mother Brain’s lab they don’t have much troubles developing a cure for the new Starvia. Proceed to big happy party times. For the sake of not getting into potential spoilers for the site’s current working story, that’s all I’ll say about that.
Many years ago, back even before we did Enter the Bull’s Ring, I made a poll asking for people’s input on what direction the site’s story should take, most importantly what should be done with the Starvia. The majority voted that they wanted the current site about the Starvia to still be used, but perhaps in the future we would pursue a different path with the site’s plot. This is where the new plot would start up.
While there might have been small pockets of Starvia still lurking around the planet of Li, the planet would have more or less been purged of its influence, meaning that people would no longer be forced to live within the Life Sphere and start to expand outwards, starting up colonies and camps in the outskirts. There wouldn’t necessarily be an event mission for this point in the site’s plot, but the general feel would be to endorse expansion and exploration, getting to know the planet for what it is rather than letting the Starvia’s infection define it.
Of course, colonization wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows, new threats would probably emerge from either the planet or from nefarious individuals from the Life Sphere.
During the course of this expansion though, the Life Sphere itself would become this sort of walled city. With the threat of the Starvia gone, the Life Sphere would become the dominant force on the planet, the strongest fortification by far. With my portrayal of Eggman in Gang Wars, I made him a bit more regretful of his past evil actions, wanting to create a safe environment within the Life Sphere to atone for his mistakes. This is where that mentality would have taken a turn. Obsessed with making the Life Sphere the ideal metropolis, slowly he would have secured power, built up his influence, and annexed the other leaders from the Life Sphere, feeling that the animosity between Mario and Sonic would only fuel future conflicts within the city walls.
Eggman would soon gain complete control of the Life Sphere, and essentially boot out anyone that he perceived as problematic to maintaining peace in this utopian society he was trying to create. This would include most of, if not all player characters, changing the Life Sphere from the main hub world of the roleplay to this neigh unreachable fortress that player characters could interact with, but very rarely and with extreme limits since any attempts at brushing against the grain would result in them getting ushered out by egg bots.
In a way, Eggman would become the new central villain, in the sense that the plot and the general opinion of most players would probably be to reclaim the Life Sphere. However, Eggman himself wouldn’t be waging war with the smaller colonies, so long as the Life Sphere was under his control and he would be more than happy to share resources with the colonies. It would build up this dynamic that the colonies would want to stay on good terms with Eggman, for the sake of keeping the ability to trade resources, but the people would be in opposition to Eggman on a fundamental level.
As for where things would have gone from there, I’m unsure. I never thought that far ahead, considering that, generally speaking, everything I had planned already was already my roadmap for the next 5 years to maybe a decade. I’m sure I would have plotted further ahead had I gotten further into my plans, continually stacking blocks of ideas atop of one another until the end of time.
Now, putting my roadmap into consideration with how events have played out on the site, I’d say we’d be roughly at the big finale to the Starvia arc/early into the colonization plotline. I mean, with the ten-year anniversary being this year, it would certainly make sense to do the big Starvia finale event.
Keep in mind though, this is just how things would have played out if I was left to my own devices and without any outside influences, which would have been unlikely to happen. In all likelihood, things would have changed course for a multitude of reasons. While a lot of this stuff was malleable and could be reshaped, if necessary, a lot of the time with roleplay, player actions can change the course of things and make a different path more enticing than the one you’re currently on. Not to mention that as the site matured and we gained more staff members, I was no longer the sole person responsible for moving the site forward, so getting more input from other staff members on how to proceed with the site plot would have changed the course of the site. But it has been an interesting thought exercise, revisiting my old plot threads and thinking about how this place would look if my role with the site hadn’t changed from how it was half a decade ago.