The curtains are pulled back, revealing two figures seated on either side of a table. A countdown can be heard being silently whispered a few meters from behind the table, and then... "Lights! Action!"

TibiaRP: Howdy Aestyn, Thuddy and any other names you might be known as! We're glad you could take this interview with TibiaRP. :)
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: <squints eyes as lights are too bright> THANKS! It's glad to be here, and thanks for having me. :D

TibiaRP: Mind telling us a little bit about yourself?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Sure. I'm GM Aestyn, or I guess if you've played long enough, you may also know me as Thuddy. Although it may seem like I don't do anything but Tibia, it's quite the contrary! I am your typical average "young-adult" in their early 20's. I have a job as well as go to university, as well as have a lovely girlfriend (sorry, ladies!) I listen to music every chance I get, and believe it or not, and believe it or not, I feel like I'm a woman since I have more cravings for chocolate than any of my friends which are females; they always make fun of me when we go to the mall. Anyways! I probably rambled on a little bit too much... :p

TibiaRP: What about Tibia, how did you first stumble across the game?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Well, one day I was over my friends house and he said he had started playing a game and loved it for some reason. At first, he showed me Runescape, a game that looked so boring I couldn't even bare to watch, and then he showed me Tibia. He showed me how he was able to hunt things, blabla, same ol' story. Intrigued, when I went home that night, I made an account myself, and alas, my first character "Invisable Eyes" was born. Granted I spelled "invisible" wrong, it was my first character ever, and incase you are wondering, it was on Amera. ;)

TibiaRP: When were you first asked to become a GM; what was it like, what were your feeling?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I guess you are asking me when I was asked as GM Thuddy, in which case, I was really excited that they had noticed the work I have done, and were able to trust me with that kind of power. We were all on test server when it happened: Craban teleported me, Trithaithus, Vauban, Xadam, Renjiro Braveheart, and I think Ogfetan Riglan (not sure if he was there), all to GM isle (first time I was ever there), and then asked us all over a nice mug of beer. It was quite nice, actually. When I had told my good friend Excessus of being asked, he had told me he had known about it for weeks, if not months already that I was going to be asked, and yelled at me that I "better not stop updating TibiaNews" otherwise he'd kill me.

TibiaRP: What can you tell us about the process of becoming a GM, after the initial invitation.
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Haha, well, that part is very stressful! You are asked to send in an application with information, background stuff (much like an application for Rising Dragons, actually, ahahaha!) but much more elaborate, if you will. You send in the application with scenarios to the HGM (in this case, I sent it to Craban), and talked nervously to the people who I would share my recruitment with right after that. Trithaithus, Vauban, and I had been very close before we were invited, so we shared our applications with one another checking over it to make sure it was all good! After checking it a million times and finally sending it in, you are asked to wait until you get a reply from the HGM (this could be either good, or bad, depending on feedback from CipSoft and the current GMs!) It took I guess about a week or so for me to get a reply back, and then another week for me to have my date set for becoming a GM. On November 23rd, 2005, I had received my very blue cape. :p The process was the same, even up until the latest recruitment in March of 2009.

TibiaRP: Wait, wait... so if your application is no-good, you could be denied from becoming a GM even after you're invited?! Say wha?!
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: That's true! You are asked to apply to become a gamemaster, so you are invited to apply; not invited to just become one right off the bat. Although I don't recall when that has ever happened, it was always a possibility!

TibiaRP: Yikes! Anyhoo, what about your first day on the job - how was that?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I remember as soon as Craban had given me the cape, I made my GM char, "GM Thunder Lucky" and "GM Thuddy" simultaneously, and then found someone misbehaving (can't quite remember what they were doing) and Craban made me broadcast the message. I was on my home server at the time - Calmera, so Game-Chat went nuts with people saying "omg he's a gm! grats!" I guess it wasn't a surprise to them that I'd become a GM one day. But, luckily, I had become a GM right around server save, so right after the broadcast, and the flood of messages, server save happened! But, the day had only just begun. I was a lame-o and took off from school (it was the day before Thanksgiving, so who cares!?) and everyone from the team helped me out that day. Between Issalia, Borr, Exce, Dazetih, and Tyrell - so many had been helpful and were there if I had ever needed them. It was quite fun the first day having so much support and going to a new position where everyone was there for eachother, even moreso than the tutor community.



TibiaRP: Do you have any funny or interesting GMish stories to share with us?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Too many, too many, too many. They were more interesting when I was able to ban botters, and hearing their excuses about how they weren't botting and blabla, but, one complaint I saved was this one:

"Dear gm,

I dont blame you for thinking i was botting. However i was in the shower at the time of my banishment, and my 18 month old son was on my character because i did not have time to log him off. i was hoping that it would log off after the 15 minutes of being afk. My son just clicks the mouse and presses escape and F1 (hotkey). I am just letting you know this because i belive your actions were infair."

I guess it would look something like this: http://www.jimboykin.com/images/nater.jpg
;)

TibiaRP: Hey, give the man a break - his son was playing man!! :( Speaking of botters... Recently, a massive ban wave took down 16,000 botters and gave many a permanent deletion warning. Do you think CipSoft is on the right track to eliminating the botting problem?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I think their idea is promising for trying to catch botters, but given the community feedback on the GM forums, the RV reports in-game, and the community speaking in Game-Chat, not everyone is getting caught, which still seems to be a flaw in the system. Players want efficiency right when it happens; they want someone who is botting that they report to be banned right in that instant, not some system to get many botters every month or every few weeks. They want the system to co-exist with GMs, as many GMs would, but this is not possible. Whether it is more efficient or not than manually banning players as a GM did, I think it's very promising, and I do love the new idea of the final warning being permanent, so that makes me smile. We've asked for it for so long, so it's about time!

TibiaRP: Could you share any plans or ideas CipSoft/GMs may have to counter power abusing? The problem is very wide-spread across all of Tibia, but very rarely are players banned for it.
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Power abusing is a very sensitive case, and takes a lot of investigation in order to ban someone on. In order for us to ban anyone, we need to be 100% sure, if not, 110% sure that they are actually violating a rule. We have several factors to consider when investigating power abuse, and whether or not it can be actually left up to the community instead of us intervening with it. Most of the time, it is possible for the community to handle it rather than having a GM jump in; as this only causes more chaos as people would believe a GM is helping one side of the war, for example, and then labels them as "corrupt" or "bias." I have had my fair share of investigating power abuse, and the investigations I have done required me to log on the game world daily for over two months. It is very tiring, stressing, and time consuming. In the end, most of the players who were doing it do end up notated, though, or sometimes even banned.

TibiaRP: Moving onto fansites... You've been a big name on the fansite scene for quite some time, and now you've even gone ahead and created your own site - TibiaScoop - from scratch! Hows it going?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Haha, I guess you can say that. The site is coming along quite well, actually. We have our coding source in and everything, we are just still working on our design. Jack Bourer is truly an amazing coder, and I'm glad he decided to help me with my own site, just like he used to help with TibiaNews. We are already up and running (though it may be amateur looking..) so if you ever want to swing on by, by all means, make an account on the forum and introduce yourself! I have had the domain since September '09, so we are going into six months of having it now, and a lot has been already worked on and finished; we have just added our "Scoopedia" to the site recently, actually! Given it is from TibiaXML from TibiaML, it is still great to have up there!

TibiaRP: Why did you decide to creat your new fansite?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I had the idea when I still worked for TibiaNews, as I didn't like the direction the site was going, but still worked for the site that I had for years upon years. Then in May of 2009, it was decided by the other deputy editors of TibiaNews and the ones I had promoted myself, actually, that I had "not been part of the daily updating or behind-the-scenes meetings/discussions integral to the existence of TibiaNews for quite some time." As well I guess it was because I refused to go talk to the people I don't really consider your "friend" on Skype/Ventrillo, as I had no reason to discuss things with them over a headset, and much prefer using text. I also guess trying to get some activity on the site by creating threads and actually gaining it - I was seen I guess as a "threat" to them and they decided to remove me from the staff. The feedback in my removal thread was overwhelming, and I just want to thank everyone who stood by me that whole time. Your words don't go unnoticed (so go visit my new site!) So back to why I made it: I have been part of a fansite for years, since 2004/2005, and really still felt like something was "missing" not being on TibiaNews, and although I was offered positions at Tibiacity, Tibia ML, TibiaENT, and many more, it was not the same. So, the only way I'd be able to feel the same, or better, was to make my own site. :)

TibiaRP: Could you share any future plans you have for TibiaScoop?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Tibiascoop! Tibiascoop is my project that I keep trying to make time for daily and hopefully will become a great fansite with many promises. I hope to be able to finally deliver a site that caters to its community's wants and needs; to be able to create a site that has news that is worth reading and updating as frequently as possible. What the community wants, it gets (some exclusions may apply!) I am one of the most open people to talk to with suggestions or proposals, and so long as you back up your idea, I'll most likely see it in your favor. As we have posted in one of our threads on our board, "Tibiascoop is a fansite for the players, by the players. Any contribution you can make will help the site flourish into a widely recognized and used news site." Our 'catchphrase' for the site, if you will, is "no matter the news' flavor, we always get the scoop!" This meaning - we are as unbias as possible, and as subjective as we possibly can be. You can read the inspirational speech that Warbane has made on our forums (http://www.tibiascoop.com/forum/viewtopi...f=86&t=23)

TibiaRP: Have you had any rough bumps along the way?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Sure have, like any website that's just getting started. Jack, our coder, really wasn't able to start until he was off because of holidays, so work on Tibiascoop didn't really start until November/December, although we had many proposals, much planned, and a forum already for our viewers. We are still hitting some bumps by getting the frontpage "just right," but with time will come perfection, right?

TibiaRP: Right! Back to the GM side of things, we've gotta ask you ... WHAT ON EARTH was CipSoft thinking with their new plan for rule enforcement?!
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Where to begin...I do see it as promising at some aspects, and hell, I hate banning people already to begin with, as GMs have been becoming less and less able to take care of rule violations to begin with (such as botters, for example). So, their idea of moving the rule enforcement system to office-base is generally a good one, in my opinion. I do like being able to discuss things with players on their home world, or on my Live GM Chats, or somewhere on the boards, so they know that gamemasters are people and they realize that we actually care about that. The one thing that makes Tibia different from all other MMORPGs was the voluntary gamemaster support it has/had. I would love to continue to be able to show support for players, talk with them, sign random trophies to make them smile, give them hugs in photographs, etc. in the future, so we will see what will come of it and if GMs will actually be completely abolished, or perhaps move to a more community appointed role as proposed by myself and many others already. I guess one of their reasonings is that many players do not feel as if they get answered in-game when they report something (as there's only 30 or so of us), and given the current report system being flawed, it was not possible to always catch someone when they reported something, since there was no central report system, and reports didn't stay online even if the person was offline. So, I guess with taking many proposed ideas from gamemasters, or players in general, the new system which could have potentially worked for gamemasters, will work now for customer support. However, as many things are still up in the air as the "first wave of changes" have not commenced yet, I still reserve many of my opinions to myself. The only part I am concerned about at this point is what will happen with the current gamemaster team and where we will go from here. I love working with them, and we are one big family when we work together. So, not seeing them or working with them would be quite a disappointment in the future. But, alas, as CipSoft has said themselves: they only have the first step(s) planned, and still many more stages to go.



TibiaRP: If all the rule enforcement is taken over by CipSoft, do you think that they will be able to handle all those reports by themselves? Most players doubt that the current CipSoft team will be able to handle it, and if they hire more staff that means they would probably need more money - so players would have to pay the price (quite literally!) On top of that, there are only so many hours in a working day.
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Well, for starter's, I don't think that prices will raise for premium in order for them to hire more workers or start working longer hours, if need be. If they did that, the whole new system would already be a complete fail. Do I think they will be able to handle it all? Well, I think that if they worked side-by-side us gamemasters, that yes - they would be able to handle it all. However, let's say there is 30 people in the office that is labeled under "customer support," the same amount of gamemasters there are in Tibia. It takes quite a while to investigate a report, and since we never did have a central report-system, and seeing as they most likely will, they will get thousands of reports a day. They have already promised that every report will be looked into, and every report will receive a resposne when it is received, and when it is processed. I think moving completely (or mostly) to an automated system to take care of reports (if that's what they plan on doing) is very impersonal and no one at all would like that. I also think that if they do plan on manually looking into all of these reports, that I really don't think they know what they are getting themselves into. But, since everything is still up in the air, I guess I can't be too quick to judge them about it all. They should know what they're doing since it's their own game, right?

TibiaRP: Moving back onto Tibia as a game, what is your stance on world transferring? Many players support it, but many players are also against the idea. Do you think it has really destroyed communities as some players predicted?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I guess I can't be a person who speaks down about it, considering I transfered my highest leveled character from Calmera to Magera, but I do understand what some people are saying, although I think they may be a bit overdramatic about it if they say it "destroyed communities." Many players want a new place to live - for whatever reason, and I have already met wonderful people who have transfered their characters who just didn't want to deal with the power abusers on their world, or if they just couldn't stand being on that world anymore. Take many players from Antica, for instance; most have moved their characters to Refugia because of the power abuse that happens on Antica now. I do like the system and the ability to be able to move your character, and I do like that players who violate the rules by account sharing, or botting, are unable to move their characters, since they really don't deserve to, anyway. The only downside I see from this all is the amount of trade threads that really don't belong on certain World Trade boards these days. It's annoying to see someone selling something, then you open the thread, and you notice they say that they want to world trade it from another world or whatnot. Those threads should be DESTROYED! :(

TibiaRP: What about the name changing feature ... do you think, along with the world transfer feature, that this could really allow some players to do something horrible on one world and escape to a new one with a virtually clean-slate?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Well, given what you are saying, sure, it could allow for some potential harm, but just as much as the next thing does. For me, I changed my character that I transfered over as well. I figured "Thunder Lucky" was a thing of the past, so decided to change it along with my new world I'm on. Many players may agree with this, or even some of the players that are stuck with "on <world name>" and have and have world transfered, they want to change their name as well. As for people having a complete clean slate, I think player's are smart enough to be able to catch a scam-artist if he's been known within his community. Players tend to follow offenders to their new home world board to let the new world know what they are getting themselves into with the player who just transfered.

TibiaRP: A wizard has turned you into a mudkip, is this awesome? (Y/N)
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: OMG I LIK LUV MUDKIPZ! (I guess that's a yes)

TibiaRP: What are your views on the clearing of current quests, where the guilds that "own" the server charge high fees to basically hold the hand of the player and walk him through it easily?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I think that's absolutely absurd. I understand that there needs to be bad/good in the game for it to work and be fun to play, but there's a line that people cross sometimes that they should just realize in the end that they actually aren't getting much benefit from any of this at all: since it IS a game. I just wish the community was able to smack these idiots in the head.

TibiaRP: Farmine is a city that grows as you progress in the quest. Do you see more of such quests being a reality in the future?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: That really brings the roleplay aspect of Tibia back into the game, so I do hope that such trends keep happening as CIP adds more content in the upcoming months/years.

TibiaRP: Talking about roleplay... what do you think about it?!
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: I'll get the whip, you wear the bondage gear ... OH, Tibia roleplay..as I'm talking to a roleplaying site, you ask me what I think about it? ;) I think it's a very important feature in the game and brings much more excitement than just your average player. I think more players should think of story lines for their characters, rather than just jump the gun and start levleing.



TibiaRP: Alright, ready for some quick questions?!
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Sure... NO... Yes... O_O... ok, go!

TibiaRP: Here we go, starting off with Tibia-related questions...
Favourite vocation - Druid!
Favourite city - Yalahar
Favourite world - Magera / Secura
Favourite CipSoft member - Rejana :D
Favourite guild - Rising Dragons <3
Favourite update - Eh, all are alright
Favourite event you've attended - Freehugs event on Keltera <3
Favourite thing to do in Tibia - Chat with friends and strangers o_o

Now for some real-life related questions...
Country you would most like to live in - Probably Australia
What you work as, at the moment - I am a student, as well as a supervisor
TEAM EDWARD OR TEAM JACOB?! - TEAM JACOB!
Your favourite thing-to-do (hobby) - make rice krispie treats xD
Favourite movie - At the moment, Shutter Island
Favourite musical artist/band - Jack's Mannequin, Something Corporate, The Rocket Summer, fun.
The most 'extreme' thing you've ever done - go on Kingda Ka at Six Flags. Great Adventure <3

TibiaRP: Thanks for your time, Aestyn/Thuddy! Any last words before we wrap-up this interview?
GM Aestyn/Thuddy: Thanks for having me! I can only ask for everyone who reads this to check out my new site and to make an account for our forum! Otherwise, it's been awesome sitting here for the PAST FEW HOURS talking with you, mate! <SMUG>



"Well, that's a wrap!" shouts a voice. The lights dim down and the curtains are drawn.