So, you want to know about me?
So how did I get into Runescape?
For me everything started back in 2003. I was still in school at the time and had a fancy for playing chess against anyone who would play. One guy called David was perhaps the best at it and we played a fair few games when we had time. It was one afternoon during dinner break that I found David on one of the library computers playing Runescape, being bored of losing at chess. A little bit of pestering for him to tell me what it was and showed me how to join, and I registered my first and only account. That evening I worked my way through Tutorial Island and soon found myself immersed in a whole new type of game.
So how did I choose my screen name?It's a funny thing for a person obsessed over language to be named by a typo. As it stands though, one of my earlier games was Gauntlet Legends, and I had a little trouble using the interface when I was aged nine or so and accidentally spelled "Mike" with two E's. It sort of stuck after that. The "Lil" part comes from being the younger of two Mike's in my family; the "Little mike". Little Mikee was just slightly too long for Runescape though, so I shortened it to Lilmikee and logged on.
So how did I join Zybez?
It was not long after I joined Runescape that I also joined Zybez. I forget the exact purpose but I was ultimately looking for help on some detail or other, when I stumbled across Zybez. I registered on the forums, didn't really know how they worked and kind of left it at that, and went back to scaping. I browsed the forums a little and worked out what they did and the purpose they served, but Zybez (at the time, Runescape Community or RSC) didn't hold my interest. At least, not until I became involved in clans.
So how did I become involved in Clans?
I don't think clans have changed massively (if at all) since early '04 but certainly it was an intense experience. I'd originally been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, a game with it's own clan system built in, and through some coincidence stumbled into RSC's clans forum. At this point I had the bright idea that I would make the most awesome clan to ever exist (It didn't work obviously, but that never stopped me trying).
The idea behind my clan was to split it into seven factions, each dealing with different segments of Runescape. One for PKing, one for skilling, one for parties, etc. Ultimately, I never quite got enough members to put the clan into full motion but it did have enough people to run for a good two years. Of course, at the top of this chain was myself, there to deal with other clans and sort out any problems between the members.As far as dealing with other clans, we really didn't do much. We had an alliance with the Dragon Tamerz, who would go on to merge with the Chaotic Angels and Darkwood to ultimately form Dragonwood. When that happened, we allied with Seeds of Dragonwood (as the main Dragonwood clan had level requirements and we did not, being an all-encompassing system) until we eventually fell apart. We had several other allies and some notable people I remember from our allied clans are MotoX champ, who originally led the Dragon Tamerz, Div Arena from a clan who's name I've forgotten and Heyboboo from Dragonwood.
It was internal conflict that ultimately drove my own clan into disbanding. The nature of the clan allowed a wide variety of people to join, and that's exactly what I got. Enter some die-hard clanners with lazy casuals, the occasional spammer and one complete maverick who flipped his lid over so many small things. After two years of running, I finally gave up when I was accused of some manner of treachery by one of my former friends. I left the clan, who briefly tried to merge into Seeds of Dragonwood before scattering.From there, I returned to Zybez.
So What have I done on Zybez?
Zybez is a much more modular and open-ended community. Think of each board as it's own "faction" of Zybez and you'll have an idea of what I wanted for my clan, albeit on a much larger scale. I settled down in the
Stories & Poems Board around the time it was still visited by Angel, Apollo and Five Aces, and occasionally ventured into General Discussion. I also visited Suggestions occasionally before realising Jagex couldn't give a rats ass for what the players wanted, and wandered into Off Topic instead. I even tried a brief stint in Questions, but
McShieldSniper was answering every question like he'd swallowed Google for breakfast and by the time I even read the questions he'd posted an answer. At the time Off Topic was subject to frequent board wipes to delete spammy and pointless topics, which usually ended with them being recreated seconds after. Popular ones were "Say something nice about the poster above you" (I guess people love being complimented) and bar fight topics.
I never did all that much around Zybez at this point. Back then in General Discussion the major posters were
Omega and
Busybyeski (and I suppose myself, since I got several ratings for it), and GD held a round of official Community Leader applications. I remember refusing to enter on principal thinking I'd rather earn my promotion than beg for it, then regretted it when Omega was accepted, and not long after earned a +3 rating and senior membership. That annoyed me mostly because Omega couldn't spell properly.
My memory around this point is a little fuzzy because there was really next to nothing going on. At least, not until I came back from a two-month break from RSC to find out I'd been promoted to
Senior Member, the rank most of you will remember me by. At the time, I just shrugged it off and went back to my usual posting routes, which hadn't changed much. Except for double-teaming GD topics with
Arno, which usually killed them pretty quickly.
Mostly I lurked in S&P, where by now Angel and the others had left and a new generation of regulars was floating around.
Soulefoin,
Imperial,
Bando and myself were the main contenders, and we were rather insistent on representing the S&P. We worked on the Multiple Writer Project, made a few S&P signatures and such to attract people to our quiet corner of Zybez. A major moment back then was during a three-day period when the Off-Topic boards were closed and S&P was moved to the index page. After convincing the admins (I think I spoke to
Loyal2Death) the S&P and other OT subforums were left on the index page, and OT itself had no subforums. An insignificent gesture but it felt like a victory at the time.
It was in '07 that someone decided that Zybez was too cluttered, and mass-pruned the entire forum. Years worth of poems and stories were deleted in an instant and S&P wasn't too happy about it. I took the banner up personally and went to argue with
W13, who promised that if he ever prunes the forums again he'll leave S&P out if it (and I will hold him to that or so help me I will have him hung, drawn and quartered). At this time the S&P Hall of Fame was created as an archive for the best works from S&P, in case W did prune the main forum itself.
There was a bit of friendly competition over the S&P competitions (
Poem of the Month and
Short Story of the Month), which at the time changed hands between members with fair regularity. The Poem of the Month competition was revived by Soulefoin and soon after Bando created the Short Story of the Month. Nowadays I'm in charge of both and the S&P as a whole, but there was no real leadership back then and the main reason people turned over leadership of the competition was to allow themselves to enter. It was an interesting period. This leads up to more recent times, starting with when I established the Blogs Team.
So how did I establish the Blogs Team?
Some time between then and now (I am REALLY bad with dates) I started talking to Recone32. You might know him better as simply
Mike. He was interested in starting a Zybez Newsletter, to which I told him if he got the project running I'd hang around and help out if needed. Recone, or rather by now Mike, posted his RSC suggestion and basically got told no. If I remember the excuse was "the staff have tried several times to start a newsletter and it's failed each time". I pointed out that the staff doesn't have to make it when half a dozen regular members just volunteered to help. Someone relented and gave us a chance, and the Zybez Newsletter was born.
The biggest problem with creating a newsletter was that nobody knew what to expect, or what was expected. A few people tossed out ideas, some wrote beta articles, some people asked what should aim for and formatting and such. I just sort of watched as none of it really led anywhere. After maybe a month
Ben Goten turned up and said something to the tune of "Well we gave you a chance and haven't really turned anything up." Not one to keep my mouth shut I pointed out that the staff member in charge hadn't given us much direction and we didn't even have a place on the site yet. As it turned out we did have a section on the site and we hadn't been told. Then things changed a little. It started with me making suggestions. "Well since we have a spot on the site we can at least try putting something there? If you try doing this..." And from there it turned to me saying "Okay, you do this, you do that and I'll take care the stuff here". Stuff got done, articles were written and edited, the format was changed to suit the internet, and somehow I ended up in charge. That was when the
Zybez Blog was born.
Well, fairs fair, I am a writer so the blogs was in my element, and people didn't really need more than a push in the right direction. I just happened to be there to give it. It was still a strange moment for me. Something a bit less familiar happened not too soon after, though. Some of you might remember
Jeremy, some of you may not, but he out of the blue asked me if I'd ever considered DJing for
Zybez Radio. Up until he mentioned it I didn't even know there was a radio. I told him as much, saying I'd might apply some time and see what it's like.
The week after I was promoted to the team. Go figure.Naturally,
Ulk and Jeremy have done the most work in shaping the radio as it is today, no doubts there. I've still done what I can to hold up the supports; in my time as a DJ I hold the record for the most hours DJed in one week (like 45) and for the longest single DJing session (24 hours) another. I also run the AFK DJ so the radio never goes offline with a playlist of 20,000 or so songs (in retrospect a bad idea; there's like 500 songs people actually like listening to in general. Not getting rid of them now though). There's also Andromeda, my IRC bot which evolved from giving a simple turn out of radio information (the current DJ, song, listener count, etc) to giving a simple turnout of radio information and some other stuff as well. It's a handy feature for the listeners and useful tool for the DJs. Something of a pet project of mine, although learning the code gives me a headache sometimes.
The radio perhaps takes the most dedication, because it needs constant attention to keep running. It can test a man's patience (and indeed we've lost many a DJ who simply don't have the time to dedicate) but the actual work is comparatively simply. For me it's only slightly more work than the Blogs team (which writing comes naturally to me, so others may well find the blogs to be more work) but by far and away the difficult team is the
Zybez 20 Podcast.
So how did I end up working on the podcast?
Now there have been several attempts at a Zybez podcast before. The first one I was aware of was pieced together by Ex-DJ Joker, and was shot down pretty hard by
Atarah (scary man if you piss him off, so don't do that). From what I recall someone (maybe Ben Goten again; he was head of content since forever) lay down some requirements for the podcast which were ultimately not adhered to and it was thrown out. I was turned off the idea of a podcast after that and sort of ignored it when
Silver and
Frogg split from the radio to produce Zybez 20.Still, a few episodes down the line and it hadn't crashed and burned yet, though I heard a few complaints here and there. Vague rumours to me, I didn't pay much attention. Once or twice I joked about making a "Zybez Britcast to show those Americans how it's done" but wasn't seriously considering it. At least not until someone (I forget who) said the podcast was failing and I should go for it. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to get involved, I just did. I called a few people together, got everyone on vent and we started recording what would later become
episode 8. We just did it for a laugh, and it somehow worked. I ended up recording
episode 9 as well when Frogg and Silver had problems getting people together to record, and the next thing I know I'm organising, editing and producing the whole thing. One minute I'm just helping out and the next I'm in charge.
Unlike the radio the podcast is only done once every few weeks, so once it's done I can take a breather. A good thing too, because a lot more effort goes into it. Simply getting people together to attend is difficult, and people with good mics and vibrant personalities are hard to come by (and I have to mention
Rambo for being a frigging god when recording the podcast. Him just being there makes everything twice as interesting). Editing the podcast when done can take hours, which is cutting out swearwords, background noises and unnecessary content. Harder than it sounds, especially when
SOMEONE records six hundred twelve second sound files instead of one single file like a normal person would.
Aragon breathes into his mic way too much as well, which doesn't help. Then again, he does a fair bit of work for all the teams so I can forgive him for that.
Thankfully (for me), lately
Wriste13 and Silver have been focused on the editing so I have time to make sure interesting people turn up, recording is done properly and everyone knows what we're talking about. I still feel like something is missing from the podcast... A hook, a gimmick or something to make us stand out. Still, such things come in due time and so far we've done fine without.Through all of that (and some other stuff I've forgotten about or not mentioned) I think I established myself pretty well in Zybez. Anyone who's been to Zybez at least semi-regularly should know me as that accentric Senior Member. Speaking of which...
So I'm red now? How did that happen?
I have no idea. It just did.
So what will I do now?
Wing it. I don't plan for much (or anything really) and I just deal with things as they happen. Someone needs a bit of direction or organisation, I can help with that. Need a topic deleted or a troll dealt with? I can help with that too. Might be a whole new game for me but there's still a ball that needs kicking, and that's what I do.
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