Dancer Archive

                        The Entertainer Manifesto
                                   By
                             Creeva Murkado 

Another one dropped the profession today, it's all over the message boards. "Master Musician Bids Adieu", "I have to leave the prof before the devs do anymore"...

Damn Entertainers. They're all alike.

But did you, in your PVP l33 lifestyle or game development job, ever take a look behind the eyes of the entertainer? Did you ever wonder what made them tick, what forces shaped them, what may have molded them?

I am an entertainer, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with cantina... I'm more social than most of the other players, grinding missions just bores me...

Damn entertainer. They're all alike.

I'm a master in my entertainer class. I've listened to people telling me to AFK the profession and drop it. I explain for the fifteenth time of the night I’m not a buff but. I’m here to bring a needed aspect that otherwise is stagnant and a grind. "No, Mr. Developer, I didn't AFK. I did it all without flourish macro’s

Damn Entertainer. Probably did AFK the profession. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a guild. It’s an entertainer guild, trying to raise the bar of what entertainers should be. I want to make a difference, be a role model, have players expect more of their entertainers while at the same time taking care of their wounds.

Damn Entertainer. All he does is spam spatial. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the internet like pixie through a smuggler's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetence and workload is sought... a message board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn troll. Spamming the message board again. They're all alike...

You bet we’re all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food from development when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing recipients, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world no longer, but we want it back... the world of the cantina and the needy customer, the beauty of the large groups and gatherings. We make use of a service already existing and enjoyed our place in it, until developers took it away. We want equality like every other class... and you call us whiners. We seek after developer attention... and you treat us as second class citizens that pay the same as everyone else. We exist without any useful purpose, a class that you can’t make fit, without a defined future... and you ignore our concerns. You do a combat upgrade, you remove mind wounds, you remove BF, and you leave in recursive macros, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the ones that should wait patiently.

Yes, I am a whiner. My whine is one inspired by mourning. We hope and we prayed the last year that we would get more attention, we have but 99% of it involved removing our usefulness from the game community. I don’t want to be a buff bot, I don’t want flashy lights and useless effects. I want to entertain in a meaningful way that is part of the community instead of feeling tagged on for posterity or backwards compatibility.

I am a entertainer and this is my manifesto. You may make me leave the profession because I can’t take no more, but some of us will always be waiting, hoping and fighting... after all, we're all alike.


This is written in respect to The Mentor for the inspiration.

Say what you will about the past. But we had a good game, for those who had the opportunity to play it. Some may say that the "new game" will be better than the game Creeva and I shared, but the fact that it may be better does not deny the fact that we had a game that deserved playing. It is unfortunate that more did not take the opportunity to play it.

The thing that was good about the game that was, is that the most important things Creeva and I did had nothing to do at all with BF, mind wounds, or even buffs. Those things--and rightfully so--were not under our control. What was in our control were all the things we did around it. What was good about it is that the things we did as live players made the difference.

EXCELLENT POST!!!!!!

Every starting char I've had on every server has started as an entertainer. None of the characters were intended to continue the entertainment path, but for me,it was a way to get to know the community, find out who the good people were, who the articulate people were. I remember at launch, the cantinas being jam packed, every player atk, and conversation, jokes, general good will overflowing. I quit SWGs a little over a year ago, and came back to it. My very first stop was the cantina, and I almost quit again at that moment. The fun and laughter was replaced by spamming bots. I found myself surrounded by twenty entertainers all as dead as an NPC. How disheartening it was.

One of the reasons I came back to SWGs was because there was so much more to offer than just combat. It was a world, a true world that you could live in. The cantinas, the witty entertainers, and the conversation was an aspect of SWGs that truly set it apart from other MMORPGs. I cannot believe that they allowed it to slide.

Good luck to all of you, and here's hoping for a better future ahead.