Sheesh the pounding you take when you dare to question the sacred cow.
Ooohhhh, that burns! "Cow," OK, I can accept that, but "sacred" is really kind of mean...
I hope this is the last post of this thread. I would like it to be, at least.
First, foremost, and far most important, the AvA is not run by yours truly. There's a whole group of us, headed by Fork. At different times some of us appear more frequently than others; you'll remember that Fork and Soda carried most of the first part of the year with The War setups, TheBug ran the arena for a couple of months after that, and Slash and Duke have controlled most of the admin matter all along. As Duke points out, right now the planets are aligned in such a way that most of the staff members have real life issues which prevent them from participating as much as they did earlier in the year. They will be back as things shake out for them. Of all the staff members, I am probably the only one who was initially elected as an assistant, and my sorcerer's skills remain far below those of the rest. That's one of the reasons why my setups tend to be more...er..."traditional," rather than imaginative. Things will get better as times go by.
Second, even an imbecile would not risk a friendship over a game. Shifty and I go way back; I have always valued his opinions. Probably because of this I lost my temper and came out with the "some people can't be pleased" comment, which I regret and for which I apologize. Shifty and I disagree on various details of what we consider to be the perfect AvA; possibly we always will. We can still get along here.
Third, one of the things that contributes to a robust arena is public participation. Otherwise I'd have to agree with Shifty that we'll have an arena that satisfies a small handful of people, and which is avoided by everyone else. If you think something's wrong with a setup, say so. If you have a notion of your own - as many of you do - post it here so we can put it up in the future.
Fourth, Duke is wrong (yes, it happens) when he says that anyone can be a staffer. HTC controls that, and we have found that HTC will not necessarily approve people who are recommended by the staff. If you want to be a staffer, let us know, but much as we wish we could, we can't just bring you on board. (There is mild tragedy in this, as I expect a number of us would love to be replaced.)
Finally, I really appreciate all the nice comments people have made. Thank you very much.
Look forward to seeing you all try Soda's new setup for the week.
- oldman
