I interviewed Favorit on October 18, 2005. This was his character at the time:
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_.-| | ( (
{ | | /\___/\ | |
"-.|___| \ o o / ___ _) )
.__|_|_. _( Y ) \. O /
| | _((_ ^-' _ /__< \
.+|______|_.-|__)-' (((/ ((_d
On the net, nobody knows you're really a cat...
Favorit 'Fixit' T'alim is a level 150 immortal.
He was created Tue Jan 06 01:56:14 1981 and he is 3y, 211d, 4h and 14s old.
He has been on for 11h, 28min and 39s, idle 1min and 11s.
He forwards mail to another account.
He has killed: A cloud of mortal whines, clad in tears, 0 exp
Dryad, -1 exp (party of 9)
Web page: http://wiz.bat.org/~favorit/
Phone: +31 611 310 293
This player has a blog - last modified 10d, 10h, 24min and 32s ago.
Plan:
>This place is dedicated to the memory of my closest friend, Vadim
>Kostoglodoff, who passed away on March 13, 2004 in St. Petersburg in the age
>of 33 years.
>
>Rest In Peace, my friend.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself "in real life"?
Typical freak. 18/7 behind a PC. I have lots of hobbies, but all are
tied to computers, rarely go outside, if only to a pub or have some fun
like bbq or whatnot. I've been married for 4 years (almost 5) and have
1 kid (recently). I had a very weird life as a kid. Started working when
I was 14 years old. I've been working non-stop ever since. Workaholic,
in a way. I've made my hobbies my job, and so far keep enjoying it...
what else... I like travelling, though later on not that much, as I'm
getting tired more quickly while driving. I hate flying, love driving.
I started as a 1st-line support geek (learning on a job) for a small ISP
in the city where I was born. I got home to people, helped them set up
dial-up, showed them what the internet is and how to use yahoo.com.
I loved it, got to know people, see places, and stuff.
Where are you from?
I was born in the city of Kharkov, in Ukraine. It's a city of about 2.3
million people population, situated almost on the Russian border. My native
language is Russian.
I always wanted to wind up somewhere. Never liked Ukraine. Too much going on,
too much corruption, too much whirling in illegal sutff to make something for
the living. But... for the rest it was mainly spontaneous. My parents never
thought I'd end up somewhere as far as I am now. But one day a colleague of
mine showed up and said that he has sent a CV to a Dutch company which is
recruiting from Ukraine. Back then I was a 19 year-old chap with an unfinished
university degree and somewhat fluent English/French language knowledge, so I
thought I'd try myself there as well. I went on a interview, which went
surprisingly good, and after supplying some loads of paperwork (hail Dutchies
and their paper fetish) and waiting for 9 months (getting married in the mean
time), I ended up here with $10 in my pocket, a wife, and a suitcase or 2 of
clothing crap. :)
When did you begin playing BatMud?
In 1999. August, I think.
How did you find Bat?
I was yet back in Ukraine, saw a friend of mine, Dandy, playing, and asked
what's up, and what's that. He showed me. That was a big mistake, to ask
what's up... but oh well.. too late now!
I can recall you were dragging me a bit in the beginning. :)
BatMud was my first mud. I then played Icesus for a while, wizzed there,
made some stuff, and got back here.
When did you wiz?
"Success: favorit 50% Wed Aug 21 23:00:25 2002"
The 50% is legacy stuff, from the times when wizhood could be obtained
through a quest. 50% was my immortality skill percentage.
That was 3 years ago and a bit. Time flies. I played to around 60m totals.
I think I was a level 65 mage when I wizzed.
What do you think of your newbie experience on Bat?
Ugh, my newbie experience... was hard, was fun, and was different than
it is now I'd imagine. Luckily i had friends to show me around.
Now it's easier, I've heard.
For me it mostly concentrated around ganking puddings in newbie mines
for mithrils, as a noob tiger. But then, I was never rich or with a
lot of exp...
What's something that no one else on BatMud knows about you?
To quote my plan... "On the net, noone know you're really a cat...."
Heh, dunno. I'm considered to be an open person. I can't hold those
"secrets" too long if they're burning inside to jump out.. so I guess
if someone doesn't know something it's gonna be nothing of importance.
I can for sure say noone knows what is the colour of my underwear at
any particular moment in time.
How did you come around to the decision to wiz?
Good one. Maybe it has started from a childish will to have more power.
Then certain archwizards have let me know by refusing my applications for
quite some time that it has to be more than that. Maybe the whole history
of me applying and getting refused made me be what I am now. And that is
a person who's truly interested in development of this game, in love
with it, its players, and its atmosphere, and who has made this game
a true part of his life.
Any words of wisdom for wanna-be wizzes?
Heh. It's fun here, it's fun there. Both incarnations of the Batmud
relationship is fun. You can easily get bored as a mortal, you can easily
get bored as a wiz. Finger grimsh for a good description of what
immortality is.
Grimsh Geezer is a level 130 immortal.
He was created before 1997 and he is 4y, 44d, 3h, 23min and 15s old.
He has been on for 12h, 15min and 44s, idle 1h, 56min and 21s.
He forwards mail to another account.
Web page: http://wiz.bat.org/~grimsh
Plan:
Choose no life. Choose no career. Choose no family. Choose a fucking big
project. Choose areas, guilds and original eq-pieces. Choose no sleep, high
caffein and kludge solutions. Choose fixing typos all day long. Choose tunes
from hell. Choose ugly descs in a range of fucking ascii colors. Choose telnet
and wondering why the fuck you're logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose
sitting in that chair watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing lines of code,
stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all,
pishing your last in some broken piece of code, nothing more than an
embarrassment to the lifeless, whining mortals who just want more and better.
Choose your future.
Choose to wiz.
One thing you must know for sure before you wiz - is that you are sure you want
to wiz. If you wake up one morning and think "hey, let's get a party and kill
moratar" - you aren't ready. Just go enjoy yourself as a player. If you wake up
and think "hmm, there're a few bugs I'd like to fix, I could code this and that,
make an area, whatnot" - welcome to the club.
What are some of the projects you've done here on Bat?
Most of the times my projects have nothing to do with mortal life. So this list is
far from complete, but this is the best I can do for you to inform you about my
activities. If you are a wizard - feel free to inquire in the game, I'll be glad
to show you around the stuff I have done.
* Chess and chess room in BatCity.
* New news reader (and also old one was converted to use sql)
* Expleeching event. (Yes, beat me, bite me)
* Mapper scrolls
* Different level ignore for different channels support
* Web interface for newsreader
* Emotes search command 'efind'
* Made it possible to have equipment-related emotes
* Added support for monsters to react on emotes targetted at them or around
* Jarear's newbie playgrounds (in cooperation with Hackop)
* Capture The Flag event (in cooperation with Hackop)
* New player killing system (SS pkill clans)
* Added realtime currency conversion to 'convert' command
* Monsters factions
* Constantly doing small fixes to things I see.
Which of your projects are you most proud of?
There's a very old good Russian saying "When we have it, we dont' appreciate it,
When we lose it - we cry about it."
Sounds like you could use some fanmail!
Oh, it's always good to receive, but we aren't here for that :)
I think most of the old players here are for the community. This ain't a game
you can complete in a month, and while you're advancing here, you get into this
community, which is tough to lose later on. New players are to find versatility
I hope and enjoyment of exploring the content, even though 3-d games are
dominating these days.
What do players do that you find most annoying, as a wiz?
They are way too conservative and don't like innovations. I find that... well,
not annoying, but discouraging. A wiz spends hours, trying to create something
new (it might bug first time too, or be unbalanced) just to get massively frowned
upon by old farts who don't like to get out of their digga-newbie forest-newbie
mines-necropolis run.
What new project(s) are in your future? Anything currently in development?
In the future - a lot of stuff I'd think. At this moment I'm working on some parts
of our website. Trying to keep up on some in-mud changes which weren't on the web
as they should, and we're working on providing more value-added-services on the web.
Thank you for the interview, Favorit!
[100 Acre Forest]
[Aband-Valley]
[Akira]
