Social Media

Yesterday, I unexpectedly found myself buried under a deluge of emails. "The webconnect has broken!" "My client's acting funny!" Now, luckily for me, this mysterious rash of MUCK dysfunction was simply a result of the game having gone down.1 When the MUCK came back up a little while later, though, I began to think about those emails again. I could detect subtle notes of panic in their phrasing. "Why has my computer betrayed me like this," they seemed to say, "and without leaving me a clue how I can repair it?"

Which brings me to social media. Now, as a rule, I think the concept of 'social media' is a joke, but when I was confronted yesterday with the possibility of hundreds of people2 abandoned in the dark, blaming their own computers for a failure they could not know was beyond their power to control, I came to realize that social media could also be a useful solution. NarniaMUCK has several social media presences, run by different staffers, independent of the game server, and we can use them to let players know whether, when they can't connect, the issue is server- or client-side. In that way, we can perhaps do our small part to save you from having to unnecessarily meddle with your MUCK client's settings.

So! Here we go then.

Facebook: NarniaMUCK's Facebook, run by Antheia and Melody, the most long-established of our external presences, provides game news and outage updates and an opportunity to creep people's real names.

Tumblr: The official NarniaMUCK Tumblr, run by someone, I don't remember who exactly, provides less news and more of an artistic, visual perspective on NarniaMUCK. However, the platform will require you to drop all your penultimate 'e's. I don't make the ruls.

Twitter: I set up this Twitter today because I thought this article sounded stupid with only two links in it. It is currently run by me and whichever staff member takes it over once I get bored, and provides news about outages and jokes about how Twitter is dumb.

To be serious for a moment, though, I did love getting those emails yesterday. They clued the staff in to the problem and set in motion the process of Fe fixing the server in that magical way he does. In no way should the first couple paragraphs of this article be interpreted as an exhortation not to send us emails when there is an issue. I really only just wanted to sound dramatic, and to call attention to a couple alternate ways to disseminate information about NarniaMUCK if the game is down.

The inherent humour I find in writing paragraphs about using the Modern Internet as a backup for obsolete 90s-era web tech is just a bonus.

bc

• 1. I say 'luckily for me' because, while I can't do anything about the MUCK being down, I can do even less about a comedic MUCK client. At best I can heckle it a bit.
• 2. Ten people max, bc, get your hyperbole under control here