A few years ago a thing was going around on the internet called Cicada 3301. It was a phenomenon that got all of us in college (com sci geeks that we are) really excited. It required the work of teams of people to get far with it and it was shady. No one knew what it was about. People all over the world were throwing ideas back and forth about who could be behind it. Most believed CIA or MI6. Other people assumed it was a religious group of some sort as a lot of the material involved that. Unfortunately, we heard about it late on and before we had hardly got interested it was over. Someone had solved the mystery and the whole thing went dark.
Similarly when I was a lot younger there was 2005 World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood Incident. World of Warcraft can't really be said to be a continuous MMO. Each expansion changed it in some fundamental way. However, at this point in the game it was version 1.12 (the original). Much of the game's core mechanics were flawed and this allowed for some very interesting things to be done (exploited). In 2005 a new dungeon was released called Zul'Gurub. It was a 15 person instance. Note the word: Instance. It was supposed to be self-contained space. It was NOT. Wonderful things happened as a result of this! Corrupted Blood was a Damage Over Time spell (DoT). It did considerable damage, somewhere around 1500. A person could only take a little over 3000 max at that time. After infecting one person it would go off and infect another. This caused quite the challenge for healers. All of this was fine and people learned to deal with it. That was... until someone's pet was infected. Rarely did healers pay any concern to a person's pet. One day someone, we don't know who, put their pet away in storage before leaving the instance. This was essentially the same as putting the pet away into a portable hole in DnD. When they took their pet out again... the world died. Literally. Hundreds of thousands of people died... This was so much like a real life plague that FEMA asked Blizzard if they wouldn't mind doing the event again. FEMA found the event much like their projections of how a real life plague would unfold. Blizzard declined...
If you lived through this event it was an amazing experience. Players had absolutely no idea what was going on. Most simply walked into a city and discovered people laying dead all over. Many others fled. Some had the disease. By the time it was all over NPCs and Players had the disease to such an extent Blizzard had to do a hard reset of the system going back to a point where the disease had never occurred in the first place. I remember watching hoards of people fleeing out of a teleport area that was NEVER used before then. Especially in such large numbers. They had no idea even what they were fleeing from. Some believe that another faction was invading. Some believed someone had trained world bosses into the capital cities. All anyone really knew was that people were dying.
And it got really spooky when instant messages stopped working. I was part of a large healer outsourcing guild. We had people all over the world, but one by one we started losing contact with them. This was before the age of voice chat and a lot of people weren't so coordinated as to use instant messaging outside the game. So literally, what was happening in the game was the only way to know. And what we knew was that half our guild had simply gone missing. They weren't answering messages and that was eerie. This went on for about six hours.
The Horde (I was Alliance then) - one of two major factions that didn't share the same language ( couldn't understand each other's text) - assumed we had done this to them. We assumed the Horde had done this to us. One of two continents had gone completely off the grid. Anyone that went there vanished. No messages. No warning. Gone.
Blizzard had turned off the other continent to try to isolate the plague on our server. We didn't know that. However, both Horde and Alliance had slowly figured out we were too disorganized to be doing any attacking. We used tricks in the system's flawed text filter to code what we were trying and not trying to do over to Horde players and vice versa. Eventually we both came to the conclusion that we should band together, take a region, cut it off from anyone who might harm us, and basically kill anyone and every who showed up. The region we finally chose to do this was called Winterspring. It is a bottlenecked region. It was the only region with one way in by foot: a tunnel on the south east most boundary. There was also a single landing zone: we killed anyone who landed there. You could resurrect at the graveyard nearby so it really didn't matter. If you caused any problems we killed you until you stopped. For the rest of the night both Horde and Alliance held this little cold back end of the world and as far as I know we're the only organized group to have survived it without infection until the server shut off for us too. We NEVER knew the cause of the event. We never were certain anything we were doing was remotely addressing the problem as we didn't know what the problem was.
I feel like Elite is just on the verge of such a moment. There's rumors going around that there are Fake Humans (whatever that means). There are videos of weird ships for months now:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuv0CMqQ_s&feature=youtu.be
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--mLpP4RII8
Galnet got in on it.
3. https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/31-JAN-3302
Unknown Objects
Barnacles
The arrangement of asteroids...
So, something's out there.
Here's the question:
- Do we want a monster we can see?
or
- Do we want a monster we imagine?
I want to imply the differences here very strongly:
During the making of the original Jaws the shark was supposed to be able to do all kinds of things. FORTUNATELY the salt water broke the shark. Repeatedly. All the time. They ended up having to recreate the movie to IMPLY the shark. VERY, very, rarely did it do anything or get seen. And THAT, made the film.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaRwTxKB2E
The same thing happened with Alien:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYJXaEN8F4Q
Black Angel uses this effect by the length of scenes to imply importance. Video 1. above is similar in texture. There is the slow regard of the subject in question; and thanks to digital technology, unresolvable.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8pHKP-vv4
Lastly, Kairo. This film makes use of the implied so much the entire film itself is a masterpiece. Probably the Library Ghost is most relatable, as a character is able to run to the very spot it was seen and yet not find it despite being in broad day light for all to see in a convincing way.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibrY5NCaB0M
Most important of all... for every instance that the implied arises you can talk yourself out of it. This really burns the nightmare fuel. "DID something just happen or not?"
For instance... was video .2 a graphical glitch... or not?
Similarly, I am out by Heart and Soul Nebula and a few weeks ago my entire hud shut off. Everything. When I got it running again I couldn't get my scanners to work. I couldn't jump. I was basically in a ship that I could steer and that was that. What caused this? I have absolutely no idea. I slowly had to reset system by system the entire loadout of my Asp. I turned things off, I turned them on, I turned them on in different combinations. I set my fire groups again. And slowly, slowly, I was able to start jumping. And each jump I lost my nav-lock to the next system. So I had to go back and turn all of that on. Basically, my whole ship's computers just gave up! Now, I'm sure this was some bug of the game. It eventually fixed itself to the point I could limp around one jump at a time, but I had to get onto the forums here and try to talk my way through resetting my fire groups to fix it.
That... was so realistic to an actual computer crash I seriously began to wonder if I hadn't found some sort of easter egg.
Also, the experience immediately above reminded me so much of the fabled stories of extraterrestrial encounters: You know the ones. The power turns off on the side of the road - the person wonders what is going on - a shadow passes over the road - above a blob of darkness more black than black lumbers by in ominous silence.
For me, I was having nightmares of flying into the anonymous black hole now that my hud was on the fritz and I couldn't find anything around me except by eyeballing it... but that moment is one of the best I ever had in this game.
I make this post because I believe it can be simulated and it raises fun inspirational ideas for possible content in the future down the road. But again...
Here's the question:
- Do we want a monster we can see?
or
- Do we want a monster we imagine?
This is a game, so both (maybe), but how? Ideas?
Similarly when I was a lot younger there was 2005 World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood Incident. World of Warcraft can't really be said to be a continuous MMO. Each expansion changed it in some fundamental way. However, at this point in the game it was version 1.12 (the original). Much of the game's core mechanics were flawed and this allowed for some very interesting things to be done (exploited). In 2005 a new dungeon was released called Zul'Gurub. It was a 15 person instance. Note the word: Instance. It was supposed to be self-contained space. It was NOT. Wonderful things happened as a result of this! Corrupted Blood was a Damage Over Time spell (DoT). It did considerable damage, somewhere around 1500. A person could only take a little over 3000 max at that time. After infecting one person it would go off and infect another. This caused quite the challenge for healers. All of this was fine and people learned to deal with it. That was... until someone's pet was infected. Rarely did healers pay any concern to a person's pet. One day someone, we don't know who, put their pet away in storage before leaving the instance. This was essentially the same as putting the pet away into a portable hole in DnD. When they took their pet out again... the world died. Literally. Hundreds of thousands of people died... This was so much like a real life plague that FEMA asked Blizzard if they wouldn't mind doing the event again. FEMA found the event much like their projections of how a real life plague would unfold. Blizzard declined...
If you lived through this event it was an amazing experience. Players had absolutely no idea what was going on. Most simply walked into a city and discovered people laying dead all over. Many others fled. Some had the disease. By the time it was all over NPCs and Players had the disease to such an extent Blizzard had to do a hard reset of the system going back to a point where the disease had never occurred in the first place. I remember watching hoards of people fleeing out of a teleport area that was NEVER used before then. Especially in such large numbers. They had no idea even what they were fleeing from. Some believe that another faction was invading. Some believed someone had trained world bosses into the capital cities. All anyone really knew was that people were dying.
And it got really spooky when instant messages stopped working. I was part of a large healer outsourcing guild. We had people all over the world, but one by one we started losing contact with them. This was before the age of voice chat and a lot of people weren't so coordinated as to use instant messaging outside the game. So literally, what was happening in the game was the only way to know. And what we knew was that half our guild had simply gone missing. They weren't answering messages and that was eerie. This went on for about six hours.
The Horde (I was Alliance then) - one of two major factions that didn't share the same language ( couldn't understand each other's text) - assumed we had done this to them. We assumed the Horde had done this to us. One of two continents had gone completely off the grid. Anyone that went there vanished. No messages. No warning. Gone.
Blizzard had turned off the other continent to try to isolate the plague on our server. We didn't know that. However, both Horde and Alliance had slowly figured out we were too disorganized to be doing any attacking. We used tricks in the system's flawed text filter to code what we were trying and not trying to do over to Horde players and vice versa. Eventually we both came to the conclusion that we should band together, take a region, cut it off from anyone who might harm us, and basically kill anyone and every who showed up. The region we finally chose to do this was called Winterspring. It is a bottlenecked region. It was the only region with one way in by foot: a tunnel on the south east most boundary. There was also a single landing zone: we killed anyone who landed there. You could resurrect at the graveyard nearby so it really didn't matter. If you caused any problems we killed you until you stopped. For the rest of the night both Horde and Alliance held this little cold back end of the world and as far as I know we're the only organized group to have survived it without infection until the server shut off for us too. We NEVER knew the cause of the event. We never were certain anything we were doing was remotely addressing the problem as we didn't know what the problem was.
I feel like Elite is just on the verge of such a moment. There's rumors going around that there are Fake Humans (whatever that means). There are videos of weird ships for months now:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuv0CMqQ_s&feature=youtu.be
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--mLpP4RII8
Galnet got in on it.
3. https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/31-JAN-3302
Unknown Objects
Barnacles
The arrangement of asteroids...
So, something's out there.
Here's the question:
- Do we want a monster we can see?
or
- Do we want a monster we imagine?
I want to imply the differences here very strongly:
During the making of the original Jaws the shark was supposed to be able to do all kinds of things. FORTUNATELY the salt water broke the shark. Repeatedly. All the time. They ended up having to recreate the movie to IMPLY the shark. VERY, very, rarely did it do anything or get seen. And THAT, made the film.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaRwTxKB2E
The same thing happened with Alien:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYJXaEN8F4Q
Black Angel uses this effect by the length of scenes to imply importance. Video 1. above is similar in texture. There is the slow regard of the subject in question; and thanks to digital technology, unresolvable.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8pHKP-vv4
Lastly, Kairo. This film makes use of the implied so much the entire film itself is a masterpiece. Probably the Library Ghost is most relatable, as a character is able to run to the very spot it was seen and yet not find it despite being in broad day light for all to see in a convincing way.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibrY5NCaB0M
Most important of all... for every instance that the implied arises you can talk yourself out of it. This really burns the nightmare fuel. "DID something just happen or not?"
For instance... was video .2 a graphical glitch... or not?
Similarly, I am out by Heart and Soul Nebula and a few weeks ago my entire hud shut off. Everything. When I got it running again I couldn't get my scanners to work. I couldn't jump. I was basically in a ship that I could steer and that was that. What caused this? I have absolutely no idea. I slowly had to reset system by system the entire loadout of my Asp. I turned things off, I turned them on, I turned them on in different combinations. I set my fire groups again. And slowly, slowly, I was able to start jumping. And each jump I lost my nav-lock to the next system. So I had to go back and turn all of that on. Basically, my whole ship's computers just gave up! Now, I'm sure this was some bug of the game. It eventually fixed itself to the point I could limp around one jump at a time, but I had to get onto the forums here and try to talk my way through resetting my fire groups to fix it.
That... was so realistic to an actual computer crash I seriously began to wonder if I hadn't found some sort of easter egg.
Also, the experience immediately above reminded me so much of the fabled stories of extraterrestrial encounters: You know the ones. The power turns off on the side of the road - the person wonders what is going on - a shadow passes over the road - above a blob of darkness more black than black lumbers by in ominous silence.
For me, I was having nightmares of flying into the anonymous black hole now that my hud was on the fritz and I couldn't find anything around me except by eyeballing it... but that moment is one of the best I ever had in this game.
I make this post because I believe it can be simulated and it raises fun inspirational ideas for possible content in the future down the road. But again...
Here's the question:
- Do we want a monster we can see?
or
- Do we want a monster we imagine?
This is a game, so both (maybe), but how? Ideas?
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