My Fifteen Minutes of VIRTUAL Fame

Most of my close friends and gamer friends know this story, but the forums where it originated have unfortunately shut down - YEARS after the game ended.   I like to imagine a dusty, drafty old wooden stage like in Phantom of the Opera.    Regardless,  I think it says a lot about the power of online relationships - to have an independently funded forum stand years after the game ends.  Star Wars Galaxies created a community and a group of friends that were changed like no other MMORPG.  Now, after marriages, divorces, births and even deaths, our group is a simple Facebook group who posts on occasion....

So here, for posterity, I post my SWG:Intrepid, 15 minutes of Virtual Fame

Back in 2005 I played a game by Sony called Star Wars Galaxies.  For the record, Husband created a Wookie before I started playing and I really hated the game at first.  REALLY hated it.  I couldn't do anything -- not even chat.    It was very frustrating....

I finally got the hang of it -- by meeting people who helped me along the way.   It was fun and I put in countless hours mastering professions to get my jedi character.  At that time, you had to master a magical profession (there were 27+ at the time) in order to open your Jedi slot.  Finally, with Musician, I unlocked my Jedi.  It was so exciting!  I was so pumped.  So pumped my husband bought me a Jedi Christmas Ornament that year!  Still cracks me up to this day when I hang that on the tree.




Anyway,  I stumbled upon an independent forum which consisted of players from the same "galaxy" as me and we all would post about the game, make our own content etc.  It was there that I learned about the "Player Dupe", Brucelee, and the innocent player ban from Sony Online Entertainment.  SOE for short.  


Basically what happened - there was a glitch or bug in the game that on funds transfers, would cause the funds to duplicate.  This bug was repeatedly exploited by several people in the game and could (and in a lot of ways did) wreck our in game economy.   If you don't know this already, in game economies are very much like the economies we see in real life.  It's a balance of goods and services, supply and demand.   In the situation where the credits were "duped", cheaters were rapidly becoming very wealthy causing an unbalance in the economy.    Sony learned of this behavior and immediately started banning players.  Not just the players who "duped the credits" but those that received (innocently) those bad credits for goods  / services.  This is what caused the uprising...revolt...and ultimately the protest.

I knew NONE of this at the time of the protest.  I knew everyone was pretty upset...and there were people furious about several popular players.  I CERTAINLY wasn't one of those players and I was not well known AT ALL on our server.    (Yes, we even had celebrity status players in our online world -- it was crazy!).    I certainly hadn't received any of the duped credits -- I probably had 100 credits at the time and the dupers were millionaires 2 & 3 times!

The night of the big protest, I was online.  I told my husband I really didn't have a horse in the race as far as the protest goes because I was pretty poor as far as money went.    I didn't craft, I didn't go on great quests....I just played casually.    When it came to the credit dupe,  I knew people cared -- and it was a big deal for a lot of people on the forums.    Also, I felt like banning those who innocently received the credits was pretty crummy on the part of Sony.    So for the protest, I decided I would get my character, Allehe, do a live report on the protests and all that was going on.  That was the start of what would become Intrepid News Network - or INN.   I just started doing a "news report" acting as a "field reporter."  I made up (who was eventually taken over by another forum writer) Anchorman Dan in the "studio".   We bantered back and forth.  For over a year, no one but myself knew who Dan was!   It was a crazy fun night.   Hundreds -- no kidding - HUNDREDS of characters landed in the Theed Starport (imagine the Times Square of an online game.)   Sony was furious.  They were teleporting us to crazy places -- coord 0,0 , out in space, to the Death Watch Bunker (that is where my jedi Avalie ended up).    They kept broadcasting messages telling us to log out of the game or the area.  The more they tried to get us to go away, the worse it got.  Finally, we crashed the server.  I went to bed.  I was banned from the Sony forums (reinstated later after much reprimand!)

Here is my report:  The Allehe Report of the Theed Protest in Star Wars Galaxies 2004  (PDF File)

You may have noticed there were no images.  Unfortunately the images were lost years ago in a different server crash.  Many of the images had "interviews" with players who  had intimate knowledge of the credit dupe.   I do still have a hard drive with the information that also crashed -- but I haven't given up trying to get the images off of it one day!

On with the story -- so the protest was on a Friday.  A week from that day, I got an email from someone I didn't know - who asked me about my "report" and the whole protest.  I really didn't think a THING about it.  I replied that I had recorded the entire thing in a "report" here:  and I linked him to my report.   I told him if he had questions, just to ask.

Next thing I know, I am getting some instant messages from our forum administrator saying I was crashing the entire server.  The hits were coming in like crazy and people were trying to read the article.  Sony was having a fit!  The hosting service was really peeved -- as other business sites were crashing.  I'm sitting at my desk -- at my office -- wondering what in the world?!?

I got a message from one of my guildies -- telling me that I was suddenly being thrust front and center of this credit dupe issue and Sony.  I had no idea what was going on.  Then, I got the articles.   My friend sent me a link to this:  Boing Boing link which was the start of the crazy.

Guildies Rajh and Carrie....I am still friends with them today!  :)

We traced it all back to the email I received and a site called warbucket.com.   Warbucket is a gaming forum site who had some pretty hardcore gamers talking about the report, the protest etc.  Cool moment alert - When Penny Arcade (an online comic site) heard of the drama they created a cartoon based on the reports of my character!  

Here is the cartoon:

Most of the sites have faded away, been discontinued, lost in cyberspace or archived off the protest info.  At one point I had a listing of over 100 sites discussing the INN report!

Other resources:

• mmorpg.com discussion about the protests
• Intrepid News Network
• Clickable Culture
• IN A MAGAZINE:  p.88 of Computer Games
• Gamers' Mafia
• Neogaf
• FreddysHouse Forums
• RPG.Net
• G4TV
• Neocron-Game.com
• GamersCircle.net
• AdultSwim !!!!!
• Alienado
• Nasioc.com
• Xebuxoruk.com
• FFShrine
• Massively.com
• Rage3D
• BusyGamerNation
• Informative Article about the protest, economy dupe and Yale Law:  Fun!
• QuartertoThree
• Creeva's world

So it was really a Cinderella - Rags to Riches moment for my character.  Suddenly, I had very wealthy "friends".  I had "opportunity"  and Intrepid News Network became an in-game reality.  We hired reporters and I became very rich reporting on and hosting player events.  A group built and decorated INN Studios (see pic)....

After the word got out, we would have MANY inquiries about the credit dupe and protest.  Game enthusiasts, game reporters etc.   Several times, I was contacted college students doing a research project on Online Gaming Economies - asking questions.  

Now, the game has shut down.  The forums have shut down.  The lights are turned off and we all went our separate ways.  It was a fun time while it lasted.

May the Force Be With You,