Binary Visions

It's funny. You wait 3 years for the game to end so you can go public and make a big fancy goodbye post and then the time comes and you don't know what to say.

I suppose I should start with the names for which I'm best known: SgtSteele, Entropi, TheWatchmaker, TheJokerOfSpades, TheJokerOfClubs, TheJokerOfDiamonds, Strayshot, CoffinsNail, BrickDissuader, The "Keep Your Eyes Open" crew [6414, Caigne, Kabarr, Diced, Phasmata, Kitasu, Kisoku, ToroFurioso, and Piqo], as well as many of the United Tomorrow characters.

Next, I'd just like to say thank you. Thank you Rarebit for giving me the opportunity to be in LESIG and the tools to put on events in MxO. Thank you LESIG for supporting my stories, at least when I wasn't being a lone wolf.  Thank you Paul Chadwick for mentioning me in an issue of The Sentinel.  And thank you, members of my audience, for supporting my stories and playing along. Thank you for making me believe that I could make it as a writer some day.  I've had such a great 3 years here and, while I'm glad that I don't have to leave wondering how MxO is doing without me, I'm sorry it has to end.  I hope that many of you stay in touch in the future via my blog.

I've had a lot of names in the Matrix Online. 10011 from the start. Bodhisattva in LESIG. Message_Buffer for posting story stuffs. Inkblot the volunteer forum mod.  Outside the Matrix, I'm a 21-year old physics major at UCSB. Next year I'll be graduating and hopefully getting a job continuing my work on robotics.
Back when I started MxO, I was still in high school. I was 10011 the Vector machinist. I was the faction leader of ASSIMILATION, which was a fairly unremarkable PvP faction aside from the fact that Bayamos was in it. I enjoyed the game for the first few months, LEs and private meetings with Agent Gray, but after the events dried up, so did my interest and I quit. I probably never would have come back to MxO if it weren't for one fateful story that cognoscente from Vector told me about the afk data-mining exploit. Eager to come back and try it out for myself, I logged into the forums and discovered an invitation to LESIG. It's very funny to think that if I hadn't been trying to exploit the game, I never would have come back and written all those stories.

After joining LESIG, I had the pleasure of becoming one of the first commandos on Syntax: SgtSteele. That was a fun acting experience and we LESIG really had a blast reviving the players' interest in the game.
Soon thereafter, Rarebit announced the Liaison positions and once again, I jumped at the offer. I immediately knew that I was going to be the liaison for the Vector Mervs and that I was going to be the saucy and impetuous Entropi. Fortunately the "cant LO your home server" rule wasn't in place at the time, although I had no ties to the Vector machinists anyways by that time, with my faction gone and Bayamos having been banned. I'm not entirely certain, but I think I can lay claim to having been the first LO ever, as I was the first to be publicly introduced by the Merovingian in a private meeting with Merv faction leaders.
My time as Entropi was wonderful and the Mervs were great and extremely enthusiastic about the RP-PvP we did. To my surprise, the Zion and Mech players also took quite a liking to me and we had our share of hostility and name-calling as Entropi leveled all the way to 49. As Merv LO, I also had the pleasure of laying claim to some of the best events each month. Most notably, I remember claiming the very first Twin reintroduction. I think I might have done one of the first events involving org areas too, but I don't recall. Anyways, it was wonderful fun and I managed to pick up ~500 CQs along the way. That was my senior year in high school and I had only 2-3 classes per day and a robotics job in the late afternoon, so I had a tendency to spend long lunches jacked in.

Of course, I began to develop an interest in trying to recreate events on the scale of what the old LE team produced and the Watchmaker was born. Once again, I think I can brag and say that I produced the first LESIG event back then in January of 2006. The Watchmaker began as just a random character that I intended to provide chit chat on the bench at Mara C. But as players discovered him and talked with him, they grew convinced that there was more to him than meets the eye. So naturally, I was forced to craft a 2-month story for them to unravel. First came the quest to decipher the Watchmaker's macroed looping error message and determine the proper steps to fix him.  I don't know if anyone remembers the binary code hidden in his pants, but that was amazing.  With macros, his pants flashed black and white to spell out a binary message.
After players fixed him, they discovered that a portion of his timing code had been stolen and could pose a potential threat to the Matrix. The players then had to run checks of specific hardlines throughout the city, with the help of the Watchmaker's pal Mercury (the Uriah mission contact) in order to uncover messages that had passed through those hardlines. Now, these messages were from the various mission contacts around the city and I spent a lot of time researching their mannerisms and backstories before writing those messages. Through reading the messages and solving a simple puzzle, players discovered that Grisaille was to blame and was trying to engineer a virus that would incapacitate his father, Mr. Black, so that he and his siblings could usurp his power and take control of his substantial holdings. I often consider this to be my best story and closest to the heart of the Matrix Online.
Unfortunately, with the end of the story, it also meant the end of the Watchmaker. That event had a really spectacular finale, with the Oracle arriving to thank the players and the Watchmaker, before hugging him goodbye and apologizing. There was a crowd of quite a few people there. I could maybe exaggerate it to a hundred people. The instant they saw Agent Harris show up at Debir Court, they knew something was up. And they really surprised both me and Rarebit. Everyone screaming "Nooooooo" and yelling at Agent Harris and trying to break his Admin bubble. We put on a rather dramatic show for them. I'll put up some screenshots when I have a chance.

As for the Joker and the rest... I'm going to need a little more time to write about that but I have to be dressed for my girlfriend's sorority formal in 20 minutes so I must leave now. Thank you all for being such a wonderful audience for my stories.

Please check out my blog (http://binaryvisions.wordpress.com/) which I will hopefully continue to update with supplementary material and anecdotes about MxO. Also, if you have any unanswered questions about my stories and the things I did in MxO, please ask them here and I'll do my best to leave no question unanswered. I'll continue my nostalgia trip later with the Jokers, Keep Your Eyes Open, and United Tomorrow.

Oh, and as you may have noticed, I found an old sig I used years ago after the Watchmaker. Enjoy!

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Oh d*mn.  Thanks for all your hard work pal.

Exemplary work, all of it.  Thank you for your contributions.

/thanx a lot brave!

Winter of 2007... Hard at work on the thermal map in Photoshop.

What's his power level?
Over nine-thousannnnnnnnd!!!

I found these humorous clips from when players were interrogating ZAITSOProxy. I had several very specific cues planned that would trigger the information and everything else would lead to annoying and repetitive chatter. And believe me, my roommate and I had so much practice playing with DR SBAITSO, "Let's talk about exciting stuffs."

You're an inspired mind, Bod. Always fun working with you.

10011 wrote:

Winter of 2007... Hard at work on the thermal map in Photoshop.

I remember talking about this. Wasn't there some kind of party going on at the time? My memory may have failed me there.

Either way, sir, you are a bit of a legend! Your creativity and the entertainment that came with it was almost second to none here.

/standingovation

Your stories have kept me more involved than anything Rarebit could ever dream up.

You're one awesome human being 1 =) Thanks for all the stories and content you've given us over the years, MxO definately wouldn't have been the same without you - dare I say kept a population as big as it did? - I think so. The best of luck to all your ideas and plans. It was a great honor to work with you and help you with the map pieces being distributed on Rep as well. All the best but we're not quite there yet.... are we?

Thank you for all your hard work! 

Lyr

Wow I had no idea you did all this and that I had met you so many times unknowningly, your stories have been amazing!!!

/standingovation

Anywho if you ever write any stories or join another MMO please tell us so we can all go join it and RP more in your fantastic story line.

I very much enjoyed working on your puzzles, 13. They kept my mind active when I was going through some tough times dealing with a failing hip joint.

Thank you very much for the hard work to put into the game for all of us to enjoy.

There are a few unanswered questions about the Joker story that I have for you.

First of all exactly what was "The Tower" ?  I had a few possibilities I came up with, including a web blog for hard core gamers I ran across one day or a reference to a Tower I ran across in the Prima guide. What did you have in mind ?

Were you trying to talk Rare into allowing us to make a trip to the "ascension" island construct that was never released into the game as part of the Joker event ?

I had a problem getting three of the  "ley lines" to converge ... I managed to resolve two of them (although factoring the outgoing frequencies still proved to be a problem. however the one I marked Mara 3 (on page 9 of the unidentified Broadcast thread) ran of in the direction of tabor Park. What was that all about ?In one of the Pamela Target images an area of the image was marked as anomalous .. Was that a easter egg reference to the Morpheus Sim ?  Was it desgned to be RP'ed out some way ? If so what happened with that ?

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

Best Regards,

Con

Conrac wrote:

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

   Yeah, I would love to see the primary node decrypted.

Wowwww....

I must say, I was never involved in any kind of live event in MxO, but I did take note of some "underground LESIG stuff going on" - a post about the conclusion of the Watchmaker story here, those "unidentified broadcast" posts, interesting bluepills on MySpace, etc.

that stuff always had a kind of "obscure" character to me, it felt like "some mysterious stuff going down... out there", but I didn't fully get what was going on, or what it was all about in the first place.

though alintrigued about that, but either didn't ask, or got only vague answers from others; everyone else seemed to know what was going on and was discussing some puzzles all around the internetz, while I didn't get jack.



I'm glad to be understanding it all before the end - a specific questions about the Joker(s), though:

What was Paul Chadwick's involvement in those storylines (he did mention it in some interview, or Fain Faire, whatevah, and said he couldn't give away anything)? Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

Would be intrigued to get to know about that (as, of course, all the rest as well).




Your multi-tasked, significant involvement and contribution to MxO is nothing short of amazing.

Binary guy rulez!!!!!!

Conrac wrote:

First of all exactly what was "The Tower" ?  I had a few possibilities I came up with, including a web blog for hard core gamers I ran across one day or a reference to a Tower I ran across in the Prima guide. What did you have in mind ? Were you trying to talk Rare into allowing us to make a trip to the "ascension" island construct that was never released into the game as part of the Joker event ?

"The Tower" as it was vaguely mentioned in some of my writings, particularly Dr. Rajlich's journals, was a sort of private and underground club where redpills, Exiles, and even some members of the bluepill underground would meet to exchange information. The name "The Tower" is applied to the place where these people meet, although the location would change every time they meet in order to preserve the safety of the group.  So The Tower could be anywhere in the city at any particular moment in time, although most likely to be found in some seedy underground location like a basement or underground bar.  Rajlich writes about The Tower as a place where he would go to exchange information about 991. I'm not sure where else I might have referenced it.

Players made the assumption that it referred to the "ascension" island construct on their own and turned it into a red herring. There was never a connection to that construct as far as I was concerned.

I did actually write The Tower into the BA52 story as a place where players had to go and meet with random exiles played by LESIG but we'll see if that ever bears fruit.

Conrac wrote:

I had a problem getting three of the  "ley lines" to converge ... I managed to resolve two of them (although factoring the outgoing frequencies still proved to be a problem. however the one I marked Mara 3 (on page 9 of the unidentified Broadcast thread) ran of in the direction of tabor Park. What was that all about ?In one of the Pamela Target images an area of the image was marked as anomalous .. Was that a easter egg reference to the Morpheus Sim ?  Was it desgned to be RP'ed out some way ? If so what happened with that ?

Lets just say that while I do make mistakes from time to time, this was not one of them. It was a very subtle tie to the continuation of the 991 story, but the people who were aware of it on the 991 end never met up with the people who were aware of it in-game.

This is something I'll explain at the very end. I think that when Keep Your Eyes Open ends, I will make a master timeline that explains everything chronologically from the origins of 991 through the end of this July.

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Conrac wrote:

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

This one has always been a sore point for me and it was simply a case of me creating layers and layers of puzzles and then having no extraordinary content to put at the top. When it came down to the most extreme level of information that the Joker would have access to, I didn't have a whole lot to offer. As a LESIG member, I really didn't have any story information beyond a normal player. I was able to give away lots of info pertaining to my own story, but the value of that information was only proportional to the puzzle-solvers interest in my story. Since Rare didn't have any special insider information to offer me (the Oligarchs would have been a nice touch), I was forced to just leave an unbreakable code to represent the intel that 991 inevitably would have had about those particular characters.

In reality, it was just random strings of numbers.

Later, I thought about relating it back to the story and having those numbers be relevant for cracking "Pandora's Box", but since I never had a chance to make it, I never had to worry about it.

Anyways, many apologies for any lost time spent trying to crack a random string of numbers.

zeroone506 wrote:

interesting bluepills on MySpace, etc.

Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

You reminded me of something else I worked on years ago that I had forgotten.

Back during the MySpace craze, I made MySpace pages for two bluepills, Chad Williams and his girlfriend. I happen to forget her name and can't find it. Their pages and blog entries provided some perspective on what it was like to be a bluepill. For example, Chad's girlfriend and her friends went to Club Succubus for Halloween and her friend went into the back with a man and never came back. She wrote about her agitation trying to find her friend and the unhelpfulness of the police. Then there was a sudden transition where she never mentioned the incident again and started talking about her new friend.

Chad Williams lived in an apartment above Debir Court and wrote a series of blog entries about a homeless man in the courtyard without a shirt (who happened to be TheWatchmaker) and then after the Watchmaker Finale, Chad noticed a strange man making noise in the courtyard. When he looked at the man, he looked back and Chad could have sworn he had no face, alluding to The Joker's supposed facelessness behind his signature bandana.

Their MySpace pages also had lots of photos of them attending the Piece of Blue Sky concert together, which was also around that time.

zeroone506 wrote:

What was Paul Chadwick's involvement in those storylines (he did mention it in some interview, or Fain Faire, whatevah, and said he couldn't give away anything)? Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

Would be intrigued to get to know about that (as, of course, all the rest as well).

Paul Chadwick had no real involvement with my story, although I recall the incident you mentioned. I think it might have been at the SOE Block Party in San Diego where Paul Chadwick did an interview. One of the players asked him if he was responsible for the Joker character who had recently attained fame on all 3 servers. I think I recall Chadwick giving some cryptic answer like you mentioned "I wouldnt want to give anything away". Bonus points if anyone can find a recording of that, I'd love to have it posterity.

Anyways, after hearing him provide some vague recognition for me, I got his email from his blog and sent him a full overview of what material I had produced for the Joker storyline at the time. I never got a response, but he must have read it and liked it because the next issue of The Sentinel had a personal ad that directly quoted the first line of Doctor Rajlich's "Tier 1" journal: "I must be saying obsession is a terrible thing." More bonus points if someone can link to that issue of The Sentinel.

10011 wrote:

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Yeah I guess i could have phrased that better, but the genesis of the Nodes was interesting background as well.

I was asking about the Matrix font characters appended to the various data tags in the Pamela target images.

You're pretty good. Hope you're able to continue using your talent through some other medium.

Conrac wrote:

10011 wrote:

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Yeah I guess i could have phrased that better, but the genesis of the Nodes was interesting background as well.

I was asking about the Matrix font characters appended to the various data tags in the Pamela target images.

Oh. No, those were just there to add the feeling of something Matrix-y. Clearly those glyphs were used a lot in the films with no real significance and I continued with that. Although I think in a few instances I put minor messages in them as easter eggs.

Entropi was great. I enjoyed interacting with her in secret and finding you sneeking around here and there.  You're stories were always above and beyond and on great scales with twists and turns.

I thought your stories were great but I couldn't be involved with them because they frustrated me too much.  I was pretty miffed to find out you go afk with a running macro while we stood around for hours trying to figure out just the right thing to say to get a response.  There was no one home! lol

I was there when the watchmaker was fixed and was taken out by the Agent and was impressed with the folks that helped you out because I knew it must've taken a lot of patience.

I interacted with the joker on vector a few times, he was completely insane and very suicidal lol

Would You have anything to do with those mysterious Morpheus Sim HEX Codes?

Hydrazine wrote:

Entropi was great. I enjoyed interacting with her in secret and finding you sneeking around here and there.  You're stories were always above and beyond and on great scales with twists and turns.

I thought your stories were great but I couldn't be involved with them because they frustrated me too much.  I was pretty miffed to find out you go afk with a running macro while we stood around for hours trying to figure out just the right thing to say to get a response.  There was no one home! lol

I was there when the watchmaker was fixed and was taken out by the Agent and was impressed with the folks that helped you out because I knew it must've taken a lot of patience.

I interacted with the joker on vector a few times, he was completely insane and very suicidal lol

Well, TheWatchmaker's macros ran while I was at work so that people could get more exposure to the story. 6414's running macros were more of a taunting mechanism, although I had specific conditions planned that would get responses from her. I think only one person ever managed to trigger a response and he didn't realize what he had done to do it.

mantra777 wrote:

Would You have anything to do with those mysterious Morpheus Sim HEX Codes?

Since I'm not entirely sure what the Morph Sim hex codes were, I think it's safe to say no.

Oh funny story, a lot of the desert images used in the hunt for Mauser mini-game that Vogt made were taken in the area near where I live. I was just reminded of that.

Thanks!

I must say, seeing all those various, obscure "underground plots" being revealed as one single mastermind's creation, now being exposed and explained, but also demystified and disambiguated from outside the fourth wall, has a really cool feel to it.

I'd always thought it was some "LESIG project", while other things might be player events or something - never would've thought it was one person pulling the strings. Very cool to know this 



Few more questions:

1) On Myspace, there were some more (I think 3) bluepills mentioned on the forums, who also appeared in game. One of them, I think, became a redpill over the course of time, but then killed himself or something (sorry, I've never had time or possibility to delve into that, so I don't remember), which was also posted on the forums.

Was that all you, as well? (almost a rhetorical question, with all the info revealed so far :d )



2) Now this I doubt more, but did you have anything to do with the so-called "Third Renaissance"?

A thing I never got, as well.

Few years ago, a user posted some weird (OOC) encounter in the game, where some guy talked big about how the official story sucked, and he was just a wheel in a huge machinery which would "overthrow the system" and impose their own ideas on the community, some kind of storyline with player involvement etc.

Then, the same guy appeared on the forums, and started talking EVEN BIGGER in an EXTREEEEEEMELY sophisticated language, a.o. saying things like "there are things going on in the undeground and there's nothing you can do about it".


A while after, some internet ads / website about "The Third Renaissance" started to appear, and later on, this group apparently organized some kind of player events inside the game.

A player called "stewart daniels" speculated about a connection between that and that "big shot" player from before.



Anyway, I've never got what that all was about, and didn't have the possibility or time to find out, either.

Would you have any info on that, or is it something completely unrelated?

Nope, I'm not familiar with either of those. Sorry. I was only involved with the big projects that I already listed. And then I had varying levels of involvement in different LESIG projects other than my own.

I think that one of the reasons that my events were so successful was because it was done by a single person. Since I was behind all the characters involved, I had knowledge of every player's interaction with the story and could adjust other characters accordingly to take advantage. I also had a wide range of feedback from players' reactions and could adapt and tailor the events as I went along. I also didn't have to worry about creative disagreements as I had full control of my story.
The only disadvantage was that as I created more complicated storylines, I also had less time to focus certain elements of the story. For example, my inability to to plan United Tomorrow live events. As the puzzles became more complicated, they took up more of my time to complete. And then there were things like that bookcase that I spent weeks and weeks meticulously photoshopping and then never really used in the end.