Wrote the following article for a contest we had,.. sometimes I just explode, verbally,..and there's just nothing I can do about it,.. serio'.
From the Script of “Remember the Titans” (2000)
You got one minute, Coach
Take the other time-out, Coach.
Ronnie Bass!
Coach, Rev's going back in, right?
Not at quarterback, son.
I can't make that pitch, Coach.
Yes, you can.
When I was 15 years old, I lost my mother and my father in the same month, Ronnie--the same month.
12 brothers and sisters. I was the youngest one, but they were all looking up to me. Now, I wasn't ready yet,
either, but they needed me. Your team needs you tonight. You're the colonel. You're going to command
your troops tonight. - Do you understand?
- Yes, sir.
Twins right,
zero read.
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
193. O Captain! My Captain!
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Captain, it is not yet critical, it is, but with sudden-death overtime. Goallineblitz, its players tell their own tale.
We, the players of Goallineblitz, are speaking here to Bort, our Captain, who we recognize as the founder, creator, enigma, and general wraith of the game, as we troll the forums for his little tidbits of information (affectionally called Bortisms), here and there, that get quoted back and forth, probably more than any other one persona within the game, he's the nerfer (in-game term used to describe a fix in the sim for an exploit that allows a particular type of build to excel) of player builds, and creator of the sim engine that we all love to hate, and hate to love. He has given us this game, the game of American Football, in an MMORPG, this, truly, is America's game of choice, be it at whatever level, from peewees to Pros, we, as Americans, love our football, we spend countless hours watching, playing, coaching, discussing, living and breathing this game, and Bort has become our best friend and our worst enemy, as he continually tweaks and prods the game engine, in an effort to make it at least, if not better than, then the equal to "World of Warcraft", most generally regarded as 'the" most popular MMORPG. We are saying here, it's almost time, but time we DO have, to truly get it right, before it comes out of "beta" testing and becomes THE Alpha game of THE Alpha sport of THE Alpha Nation of the world. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Bort, it tolls for thee.
Where, you ask, do the players tell their tale?,..why, of course, in the forums. The whole site is based on forums, and there's a master page that contains all the latest updates to posts in each forum. From that page, you can navigate to anywhere within the site, or you can stay local, within your own team forum. Each time someone posts something new in a forum, the forum button reads new, meaning you haven't seen something yet within that forum that somebody has written. You could probably surf the site for days, and not read everything there is everywhere within, and a lot of us do endeavor to do just that,..there may be a Bortism somewhere we missed, and we the players, always trying to find some tweak of build or incremental advantage to the game would hate for somebody to know something that we didn't.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
One of the best parts of this game are the opportunities for discussion and debate, and of course, the general tomfoolery that you can find available in the forums, we have forums for everything in GLB, from public debate, where we discuss the different variations of the sim that come out every season, to private forums for coordinators to work on their various and complex AI's (Artificial Intelligence), all the way to even a private forum that discusses One Million Degrees of Purplesmurf (one user's in-game persona), from the "serious" GLB'er's, The Network, to the actual self-proclaimed "Mafia" of GLB in the GLB Addicts Forum, we have forums inside of forums, forums for each region where a lot if not all of the discussion is centered around your team and the various teams in your division, even to an Epic Suggestion forum, where the very best of the ideas espoused in the other forums go to live on, and eventually become a part of the game.
We even have forums dedicated to things that Bort has on his NTGH (Never Going to Happen) list, most notably, the Unofficial GLB Draft Forum, which was started as a suggestion, grew to a movement, and soon will be a staple of the well-informed owner. The game itself is ever evolving and changing, and so, to, are its players, as we get to know people more by their particular avatars and their wit and style, than their name, and more, as we, as players, tend to recruit our friends to this game, because we love it so much, we introduce even more diverse and varying interests to the game. I reference above a few quotes from one of my all-time favorite movies, "Remember the Titans",..where the bottom line is you judge a man more by his character than his color, here in GLB you are judged more by your intelligence, wit, style, and prose, and also by the quality of the product, your "team" and "players", that you put on the field.
Inside of the various forums, are the topics, called threads, and anybody is allowed to start a thread about whatever they wish, the only small issue there is, once you’ve created a thread, you’re the only one that can delete it, I guess you or the mod’s (moderator’s) and I suppose Bort and all his minions have probably deleted a lot as well. However, it seems, not everybody in GLB land is an English major, not by far, I find it hilarious, to me, personally, when somebody creates a thread with poor spelling or diction, and usually, if not right away, sooner or later, that person will take some heat for that. You can’t edit the thread title once you’ve posted, the only thing you CAN do is delete it and start over, however, usually by the time that person notices what he and/or she has done, the thread has filled up, and it would be a shame to kill it at that point.
Threads are where we as the users of the site can pose questions, or make statements, or just open discussion on any and all variety of topics, most being GLB related, but there’s also a lot of just general threads here as well. A personal favorite of mine, and probably of just about everyone on the site who has ever visited it, and of course, this site being not totally dominated by testosterone, but for the most part, yeah,..is the Megan Fox thread in the SouthAmerican Main Forum, where it started as a tribute to the actress, and there’s a lot of links to pictures of her there, but has degenerated considerably to include links to just about every internet beauty you could possibly think of, with a nod to its most famous and highly anticipated contributor, and also, a Soldier in the “family”, Adam Allison.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Goallineblitz stands at the brink of glory, anxious to go public, to become, as they say an "Alpha" game,..it has been in "beta" status for a year, testing, tweaking, probing, getting feedback, analysis, learning, growing, becoming the great game that we all wish it to be, is it ready, is the game engine realistic, are the stats realistic, does it matter?,..it's an MMORPG, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, and that is what it has become, we have all grown together, learned the game, the engine, the exploits, and as the game evolves, so too do its players, its coaches, its captains, its owners, and at it's core, the root of it all, it has become more than just a football game, it has become a way of life,..from the Addicts to the casual player, we all have become a community, and as, with any community, there are different factions, groups, cliques, etc., but we all have the one thing in common, the love for the game, and the written word.
[Coach]Ref!. Unnecessary roughness!
That's a penalty!
On the quarterback? Are you kidding me, Coach?
Na nanana
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
Did you see that, man?
That's a bad white boy, man.
Hike!
Na nanana
Hey, hey, hey
Good-bye
We've got ourselves a football player.
My Tale
My personal addiction to the game came about innocently enough, I played quite a bit of online chess, prior to finding Goallineblitz, and I was chatting with someone I was playing with one day, and they told me of another, different game, Bush League Baseball,..not an MMORPG, but, more a funny type game,..well, it was there, in the forums, that I first heard of THIS game. So, on day 6, of Season 2, I created Biggie Cheese, an OT, a rat, he was, a character from the Barnyard Movie, he sings Mr. Bombastic in that movie, and I just thought it was funny as heck, so,..my addiction was born. He signed on with a team almost immediately, and I began to make him strong, and a good blocker, and then I made another player,..a cornerback, Fastas Lightning, because the team I had just joined were in need of several pieces, and I was more than willing to help.
From there, it has gotten progressively worse, but there exists a light at the end of this tunnel, in another three or four seasons, Biggie will have to be retired, as in-game, the life span of our players is but ten seasons, after which their skills will start to decline, and there may exist at that time the opportunity for them to be enshrined or made coaches, or more probably, he will be retired, and here's where the never-ending story begins again, I will receive 70% of the flex points (in-game money) back for him that I've spent on his development and training, over his life as a player, and of course, Biggie Cheese will be reborn.
I now have over 60 players, and hold the title of GM on no less than 12 teams, two of which I'm the Offensive Coordinator for, where I offer build advice and espouse general football psychology, on another team, I am the Offensive Line Coach, where my job is just to make sure everybody gets their tactics set correctly, the other's being in-game friend's teams, where I most typically am the financial adviser.
Currently, I'm the Owner of the Santiago Voodoo, a team I have built from the ground up, starting at the beginning of season 4 with a level 13 capped team, that started existence in the A #8 League in SouthAmerica, a team that now plays in the AAA # 2 SouthAmerican Conference of GLB, after record promotion and relegation. We have a website that is open to the public, a totally completed stadium, and I have recently taken over the Offensive Coordinator duties there, as well, as I felt that I knew the players on my team as well as anybody, and there's that aspect of control that you must have.
I, personally, have probably written upwards of a million words within this game, it seems, and although not all the players tend towards the explosion of syllables that seem to come from my keyboard, there do seem to be a lot of varied points of views within these forums. I've thought at length of a way to combine all of these posts to a book of our experiences within GLB, because I have truly lol'd (laughed out loud) on more than several occasions at things that I've read here, but don't know if their would exist a market for such a thing. In RL (real-life, to the uninitiated) I am a Registered Land Surveyor, and although I do draw pictures, more or less, for a living, I believe my other calling is as a writer, I'm not always funny, or even astute, and it seems, this has ignited again with the passion I have for this game.
I began playing when I was around 8 years old, and when my son turned 8 or so, he, intuitively chose football as his sport of choice, and so I again became involved in the game I had grown up playing and loved so well. I started small, I believe when I started, I was no more than a water boy for his first team, however, my involvement grew, and before he moved on to High School ball, I had gone as far as to begin coaching a BBB team here locally. That lasted a little while, however, the passion faded a bit, and I began to follow, with earnest, my son’s high school football team, who went on to win two State Championships while he was playing there, and since have won another. However, my son has now moved on to University, and there again was the void where the game I have loved my whole life used to sit. I still loved to watch college and Pro football, but there’s just really nothing like being involved at the levels that I was.
Goallineblitz has filled that hole admirably, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, and now I’m a full-fledged card carrying Capo in the GLB Addicts Forum, I have moved up the ranks at record pace it seems thru service to the “family”, where I keep current a list of Greasemonkey scripts and also do recommendations on Veteran Abilities. It is the first forum I visit upon logging in to the site, after, first, of course, checking over my players, whom, it seems, have started to take on a life of their own, to see if any have leveled so that I can assign their skill points. You see, in this game, we have avatars for ourselves, our in-game persona, but each of our particular players also have their own avatar (or picture). Nightly, it seems, I arise at the stroke of 3:00 AM CST , that’s when nightly training becomes available, and I religiously do my training thru sleep-encrusted eyes with a fresh cup of coffee, after which, I will either troll the forums or work on scouting or Advanced Intelligence, or whatever. Goallineblitz.com has truly invaded my life, and filled the void, and for that, Bort, and of course, Digital Daggers, I, myself, and we, the patrons of your product, thank you.
P.S. Have since been promoted to Under Boss in the “family”, after further service and the publication of this article in the GLB Addicts Forum.
