This is a bit inaccurate. Most AOO members were NOT beta testers.
Take myself for example. Or more to the point, the Dread Duke Marat.
Yes, it is certainly true that some people were in the beta test,
but there were plenty of other people in G1 who were also beta-testers.
I certainly did not benifit from someone else's experiance; there
was no "list of tips and tricks" circulated or anything like that.
> Furthermore they didn't just use
> the rules but they did some really underhanded things like attacking only
> newbies so that they could take over their nobles (possible without np's back
> then).
This charge got leveled at the AOO time and time again, but it is
virtually groundless. Two things that certainly DID happen: at the
very begining of the game (when we were *all* newbies), a couple of
factions (notably Bastrestric ther Archymonaged) engaged in more-or-less
random attacks in the area around the IC. This pretty much stopped
when Bastrestric was killed (and why didn't anybody ever LR him? Did
nobody other than us have a working priest at that time?). The other
thing that certainly happened is that The Sheriff set up shop just
east of the IC. *Every turn* he published a notice in the Times telling
people to stay away from a specifically stated set of provinces unless
they warned him in advance, and *almost* every turn someone clueless would
wander over into the provinces without warning anyway, and of course
they would get whacked.
And yes of course there were the full scale wars: the trouble Steve
Chapin managed to single-handedly stir up with the Iron Nation; barely
surviving the subsequent attack on Mt. Oly; followed by the West Provinia
campaign. The wars on Tollus, Rimmon, West Provinia (hats off to the
Gauls), West Camaris, the 3 major assults into Faery, dozens of smaller
skirmishes all over the place. However, I don't think any of these can
be classified as "newbies".
> As a result most G1 players have carried their hatred and derision of
> AOO players over into G2 and would kill them given half a chance.
This is simply absurd. Most players couldn't give a rat's ass. I'm
sure there is a healthy minority who share the above view, but G2 is a
different time and a different place, and it seems that the NP restrictions
will serve to prevent a repeat of G1.
-- Please use bron-oly2@bronze.corp.sgi.com for Oly2 correspondence. Use bron@sgi.com only if you require fast response. These statements are my own, not those of Silicon Graphics.