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| An unofficial publication of After Hours news for and by After Hours players and wizards, and the general public at large. The news and rumours herein are not the official views of the After Hours administration, nor are some of them the whole truth in its entirety. Now on with the gossip! 20 Questions with Vortex.. This issue, we interview a somewhat controversial figure among the wizards; Vortex. Vortex has been a wizard since November 1997, and played for a year before that, first as a fighter, then as a monk. Of course, he was also at After Hours in the heyday from 1992-1995. He currently lives in Virginia where he works as an economist for an industrial trade association. 1. So what exactly is a trade association? We lobby the government for regulational preferences. You know; please pass a law that everyone has to use a 80 watt light bulb. Well, all of our member companies would benefit because it puts their competitors (the 60 watt lightbulb makers) out of business. Except that we do industrial goods. Motors and drives. That sort of thing. 2. And you like this sort of thing? I don't know. I was in college, young, naive. The internet hadn't really taken off yet and government seemed like a cool kinda thing. I've been doing it for three years, so I do have the itch to start seeing what else is out there. 3. And what would that be ? Well, for one I hate being someone else's dog. I dunno. I hear about all these people making gobs of money running Persian Kitty and Danni's Hard Drive. Sucks. Where are all these losers when I need money? I need to get a scam. 4. What kind of scam would you run? I think the best kind of scam would be an internet business. Not to make anything. No, I would just like to go public, sell it, and run with my 51 billion. 5. Haha. Well let's turn to After Hours. People want to know what you have been up to ? Well, I coded a variety of rooms but I only really settled lately on a castle in the clouds, much like Evo's, but of a different culture. To date, it was at 125 rooms, but designing, coding and detailing is incredibly difficult. I think everyone has a different style of making rooms. My style is long and a pain in the rear. 6. How is it a pain ? Well, I like design a castle to have a particular feeling. I want players to feel scared when they enter this room, or feel relieved or whatnot. You really have to work on the atmosphere and immersion, which is why I am trying to put more interaction into the areas. 7. Interaction? That sounds neat. I hope so. I am trying to have 3 mini-quests in the castle. The problem is you really have to think them out before you implement them, which was not what I was doing. It sets you back a bit, and then you find out that the castle is not designed, so you have to take out a whole section and recode 10 rooms. 8. You said every wizard has his own style. Explain that one. Well, if you look at some of the rooms on the mud, you can see how lots of them are shitty. Others are pretty cool, and some are really cool. I'm going for really cool, honestly. I'm also trying to build in a sense of role playing. 9. You've been here a long time. What are some changes you see? Fixing the rooms so they map right. Hargrove's working on it now. God save us *laughs* 10. What are some changes you would like to make to the mud? Huma's revisions made it much easier, but I'd like to do more on the high end. I'd like AC 20 armours and WC 50 weapons, but I think that's too much of a rewrite so they've nixed those ideas. I'd probably do more changes too of things people have been bugging about for ages: increase bank to 5 million gold, lower pub prices, increase other pub prices (you put the more expensive one in Hawkwind's where people really rack up), do the same with monster levels and HP, treasure, add talking and interactive monsters. Stuff like that. (Im working on some of it). 11. If you were God, what would you do? *laugh* I'd get a second for starters. I really think it puts you in touch with what players want. I dont even know what players like to get anymore, or what the majority of the populace is.. I'd probably modify segments of Orrendia. Some cosmetic stuff. 12. Who do you like the most? I always thought Guldur and Huzzah were the funniest, but there are a bunch of people. Most everyone is my friend. I don't think there's any one person I like the most. 13. Who do you like the least? I hate player killers. That and seniors who keep sending your rooms back for recoding. 14. What bugs you about After Hours? Well, Im kinda bummed that more people aren't on. I remember the days of 40+ players, and that was really fun. 15. What inspires you about After Hours? I think I'm in love with the social aspect of it. In the old days at least, once you came to power, people really feared you. And among the 20/20's, they would try to get a bunch of you in a heap and clear out the Badlands. 16. What is your favorite area? I love Hawkwinds. You just cant beat cheap xp. 17. Is it true you had 25 characters once? Yes! *laughs* 18. What was your favorite class? I loved fighters because all the other classes else sucked at low levels. 19. How did that era [of multi-characters] end? I think that Rawdog got me in trouble. *breaks into laughter* I think it was inevitable that someone was going to see that 25 guys were logging on from the same IP. Finally Zappo confronted me, and I came clean. Sent him a list. No hard feelings though. Most of those seconds were 2/1 or 2/2...you could get that in about 10 minutes. 20. Boxers or briefs? Boxers Please email your articles or literary works to Vortex. |