dotgain's Journal: Vile City Valedictory

Rt Hon. David Lange
Valedictory

Ladies and gentlemen of Vile City, it is an honour to be speaking with you.

Those of you that were online about 12:pm June 11 Game Time would have enjoyed quite a show. Having a moderately high level player withdraw huge sums of cash and start teasing people would have been the last thing you expected, but I'm glad to see most of you knew what to do and asked no question.

Specifically, I borrowed a Tinfoil Hat of my good buddy who introduced me to this game December 2007, liquidated my entire inventory, even using the "Sell" to game feature for once. I played a series of games involving bounties, bribes, TFH city hopping (sorry for the hassle, it's only a game). It lasted about four hours, and total of approximately $40bn was mugged from me. I'm glad a lot of you had fun in the process, and sorry if you got left out.

During this last night many of you sent me PMs with your regards, some very nice notes that - given the usual content of the forums and newspaper - I really didn't expect. But by the end of the night so many of you had written in that to address you all would make one my already big letters even bigger.

So to all of those people, I thank you very much, and regret that I didn't meet many of you until my last night. Mind you, between all the attacking, gang politics and forum brouhaha, Vile City isn't exactly conducive to meeting like-minded people in the first place. But it'd be a shame to walk off on you all like that, so I'm going to keep the account for at least a week to check in on PMs and set up contacts with people out of VC.

Thanks for asking if everything's OK in Real Life (tm) - It is, and will hopefully get even better when I give it back the time I gave to VC. In Real Life I'm a father of two, a computer programmer, and a trainee helicopter pilot. But my air-stats are nothing compared to my VC stats, so I'm going to concentrate on those now.

Thanks also to those asking me to reconsider (when not begging for my account ;). Thank you, but my mind is made up, and given I have NO assets now, I'm pretty commited. In turn, I ask YOU to reconsider YOUR stay here. If you're having fun, great, but I wasn't, and I don't expect to again any time soon. And this furore about the unpaid prizes just makes me sick, so I'm also making a stand - a lot of you are now.

A lot of you are, and I'm proud of you. Being the VC activist has never looked like a good idea; the threat of having all your work vanish before your eyes in a ban is bound to hush many. So where FM deserve to be treated with nothing but comtempt, they continue to get our patience, and more sickenly, our money. Unless someone's prepared to sue them for fraud, they're beyond reproach, and I don't believe they'll lift their game.

To my esteemed colleagues, I encourage you:

• Play like it's a game. Do something else if you're not HAVING FUN.
• In the forums, have a bit more respect for one another, grow up.
• Know your enemy. If your enemy is the game itself, then we're all in the same gang.

Ladies and gentlemen, may you find enjoyment, peace and love in what you do.

I remain,
Right Honourable David Lange,
aRudeDude,

and Ben