Summer 2001 News

I Guess Abby's Got a Bad Case of the Worms Enough people have pointed this out to me, but to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, check this out. I think we all knew this would happen sooner or later. Now personal unfortunaties aside (though I don't really see what Abby's personal life has to do with her running her crap-ass shard, or if that's even an excuse), technical problems along the lines of this "worm" were innevitable considering how many people hate the Lair. Ironic, since if I were still playing on that shard, I most likely would've been responsible for either cleaning the mess up or preventing it in the first place. However given the scope of Abby's understanding of computers, I wouldn't be surprised if the damage caused by the "worm" was not much more than the result of her forgetting to plug in her computer. Wouldn't be the first time. Either way, it seems Abby's got quite the knack of bringing destruction down upon herself. Huzzah! -August 27, 2001

You Want Me to Stand on the Giant 'X'? I know pirates are supposed to have an affinity to water, but boy, do I hate rainy days. The good news? Well, we've got quite a few items on our plates this morning for breakfast. I've been playing some Quake2 mods lately - ActionQuake2 and D-Day: Normandy. Why Quake2 mods, you ask? Well, besides that RedFaction demo mods are nothing more than lame-ass weapon changes, and Quake3 mods take a bazillion years to finish, I thought it'd be neat to reminisce of the days when making modifcations for games was about having fun, and not politics or reputation. Do I seem bitter? Damn straight! Mods nowadays take forever to do, and most of the time just get dropped in the end. With the major exception of a very small sect of the Half-Life community, the art of making modifications for games is all but dead. So mourne with me, my bretheren. Return to making maps for Doom, take out your sprite editor for Leiro, and remind people just how boring it is to just play the game that came out of the box ;) In Ultima Online news, Trokair has been hard at work getting his Obsidian Artificers guild up and going. Feel free to stop by his shop in the Kynn's Demise shard and check some of his creations out. And as a special bonus, Trokair has been doing some scripting himself in our labs. I've added the Golem project to our list of inventions for Ultima Online. -August 26, 2001

The New Face of a Two-sided Wooden Nickle Banjo brought two things to my attention this morning. Well, besides the fact he was hungry. It seems a little while ago, the Lair of the Sorceress has some problems. Now what makes this interesting is not that a former staff member decided to come back to the Lair to care a giant butt or something in a local mountainside, but that he managed to find a current staff member that was disgruntled enough to help! What would bring together the banished and betrayed? Hopefully we'll find out in the near future. Banjo also built a new menu interface, complete with its own "mystery button" for a feature not-yet implimented. Banjo tells me it's for something special he's working on. -August 18, 2001

Famed Innovention Good lord! So much news, I forgot to put on my pants this morning! To top things off, our smaller child site, The Arbiter Halo Squad, have effectively merged even further with The Mischief Pirates. This means that any Mischief Pirate wishing to play Halo come this Fall may feel free to join the Arbiter as well, and any Arbiter who wants a little fame and glory in the lull time of playing games besides Halo can share some news as a Mischief Pirate. Consider The Arbiter our Halo Division. So what the spoot have your friends the Mischief Pirates been up to the last few weeks? Well, we have had some interesting times at the Krynn's Demise Ultima Online shard. This fledgling shard is just starting to get underway, but if things continue as they have been, this could be the place to be if you're interested in having FUN while playing Ultima Online. Trokair and Vanthor have teamed up to sell overpriced armor wares to players with heavy pockets (heavy because of GOLD, sicko), and their Obsidian Order store has had some great business. Meanwhile, Heroboy and I have been getting Banjo to build us a whack-load of cool inventions for this UO shard. We design them, he puts them together, and we ship the prototype off to the offices of Krynn's Demise for testing. Want to see the things Mischief Pirate Teknologies has built exclusively for the Krynn's Demise shard? Take a look here. On another important note, your's truly will indeed be hosting some kind of game server in the not-too-distant future. So far it's a race to see who can deliver me the goods first. Currently in first position, we have the chance to play our own Everquest server, specifically, hosting the Ocean of Tears zone - giving us plenty of oppertunities to do our Pirate thang. Tied for second place are an Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online server - and what's holding them back? There may never be any kind of homebrewn server hosting of these two games, since both projects are being worked on at the same pace as I update this damn page ;) . The runners up include less Gray Area time commitments, such as our own NeverWinter Nights persistant campaign, or some kind of Halo server. At the bottom of the heap (last but not least) we have the possible occasional OpenRPG Dungeons&Dragons session. So, as you can see, there is no shortage of oppertunities for the Mischief Pirate-at-heart of us to get together and play a game of some type. As to which game, that remains to be seen ... -August 12, 2001

Pet Projects I've discovered a great place for the wife and kids - Nabisco World! Not sure who built the place, but boy, would I like to shake their hand! I've been on Anarchy Online (don't ask and don't tell), and what have I been doing? Well, trying out my newest character, Derek "Bluerose" (AKA Dr Funkenstein) Stazk, seen here. Who wouldn't want to play as a trash-talking, lanky black guy? -July 27, 2001

World Exclusive! The Mischief Pirates are always hard at work to dig up the dirty stuff the man doesn't want you to know. Find out which brother duo was responsible for the greatest mailbox heist on the Lair of the Sorceress of all time - a secret even *I* didn't know until tonight! Also, stay tuned the next week - will the Mischief Pirates return to Ultima Online? What shard would they possibly want to play on?? All in due time - The Pirate Way returns to the dull 16-bit sprite world of Origin design. -July 23, 2001

The Devil Made Me Do It No big update today. All I can say is that I tossed my own theme song onto my member page, and drop a hint of something interesting within the next two weeks or so. -July 14, 2001

The Truth Will Set You Free Everyone say 'hello' to our newest member, Trokair. Hooray for public awareness! -July 8, 2001

Market Review We're finishing off our week-long focus with the problems on Lair of the Sorceress with a bang! Much like the candy from the pinnata you had to settle for because you were too slow to grab the good stuff, we dig up the real dirt on the shard. How are the staff coping with all this insurrection? Which staff member left because he couldn't put up with his fellow staff? Are staff members ... cheating, and then punishing non-staff people who do?? Read all about it in our Input section! Learn all the secrets Lair players had to die to bring you! After reading all that, it's time to sit back and put your Reflect Caps on. Where does this mean the Lair will end up? Will it become an ultra-cool place where imagination and fun rule supreme? Or will it become a destitute wasteland, nothing more than a machine for staff members to make new house designs? Until Banjo can figure out how to scrye into the future, only time will tell us. Your buddies the Mischief Pirates will be checking back with the Lair of the Sorceress at a later date, so stay tuned to find out about all the changes (or lack there of) made since this week past. Most importantly, for those of you who haven't had a chance to play on the Lair of the Sorceress yet, give it a try! What do you think about it? Let us know! Only through "constructive crtisism" can we ever hope to save our beloved Lair. And on a personal note, to the git at IP 204.238.15.20 who tried to use Telnet to log onto my computer last night, simply because they can't handle me and my ways, you might want to rethink who's computer you're playing with :) -July 7, 2001

That Not-so-friendly Boot in the Ass It seems everybody on Lair of the Sorceress is getting jailed (Van Impe is jailed, so the staff can give him an unsolicited 'talking to'), saying goodbye (1, 2), or just plain getting kicked off (1, 2). Now THAT'S service with a smile! -July 4, 2001

Hostile Staffers Remember this poor guy? Well, naturally I had to respond to help him out. heh and naturally, the Admin of the shard removed the topic from the message board all together, after deleting just my post earlier in the day :). When's this shard going to wise up to more than half their population is already thinking of moving on? I'm was just suggesting other shards, too. I guess I should've expected this from LOTS. -July 1, 2001

A Weenee Roast and A Hotdog Stand After working hard these last few days at both my jobs, [rubs his eyes], I thought today would be a great time to give you not one, but two juicy Mischief Pirates stories for your enjoyment. The first being about everyone's favorite crappy Ultima Online shard, The Lair of the Sorceress, and the second about my privileged attempt at beta-testing Anarchy Online. -June 30, 2001

Monkey Shines Last night Brak (long-time supporter) left a message for me on my answering machine while I was at work. It seems that he was rather frustrated by the menu interface my own helper monkey designed for the site, which reminded Brak of an earlier incident of his own helper monkey. You can hear the latter part of the message here. On a related note, if you're wondering just where our helper monkey came from, you can read the tale of how we first met back in the Stories page. -June 24, 2001

I Like Pie Please say hello to our long-time supporter, Heroboy, who is the newest member to the site. He even comes complete with his own story. I would also like to point out that any likeliness to any other characters named "heroboy" is purely coincidental, so please don't sue us. And no, our Heroboy is not the sandwich! Also check out our new page layout! It was made by the simian hands of my helper monkey. -June 22, 2001

Tipping Your Hat I thought it might be prudent to submit a guide to help members when they are thinking of commiting the kinds of acts we're famous for. Take a look in the Input section. -June 12, 2001

Welcome This site came online today. We currently have one page in our Stories page, about Baja and his last shread of joy in Ultima Online. Go check it out. Now let's get this place hopping! -June 11, 2001