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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Acheron
speculation on site changes
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talax
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 		speculation on site changes
there seems to be at least 3 possible explanations as to why the sites changed... some sort of brainwashing, time traveller changed the present by (probably) changing the past, or just a general coverup.

I think in general we can remove the coverup scenario, as you'll see below.

Changes to Meghan's page: Can be explained rather well by any of the scenarios above. The time travel changed the circumstances behind Jake's situation, or there has been a brainwashing of all involved, or someone hacked into meghan's page to change it's content.

Changes to Reggie's page: Again, can be explained by any. Pretty much similar to above, although the time travel may explain Reggie's more coherent posting better than others.

Sites going down:

NRU: It would be hard to take down a university website in a coverup or a brainwashing. How woudl you explain to all the students (and family) what happened? Time travel seems to explain this best (NRU never existed)

CFRG: This is a puzzler in all scenarios. There was never a clear connection between CFRG and NRU (in my opinion). But there may not have been a need for this site in the alternative timeline. The coverup may have removed the site though, if it was thought to be dangerous.

Coyotedispatch: Hard to explain it's disappearence except for time travel.

L3 website: kind of hard to explain in any situation, although coverup may win here (possibly threatened the lawyers?). Why would the lawyers disappear in a time travel change?

Acheron.us and Cypher Systems: I believe best explained by a coverup. Not sure why these would go down in the removal of NRU and the time travel experiments.

Possible in game site:
HCRD: Did not go down, still up and running. If it is ingame... what does it mean that it is still working? Not sure yet.


Summary:

The brainwashing would only really work for Meghan and Jake, so at best it only really explains their situation.

Time travel: Seems to make sense for a lot of the sites, but doesn't quite explain some of them. Of course, if you went back in time to stop time travel experiments from happening, that may create a paradox?

Conspiracy: Hard to explain the complete disappearence of a university with just that, but other parts seem to work okay.


Possibility... it could be a combination of the above as well...

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 1:47 am
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talax
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 		forgot this website:

Catalina First bank: Time travel possibly explains (bank never existed), although conspiracy may work (although if third parties had accounts at the bank, it would kind of upset them if their bank website just disappeared).


Jakes condition:
Time travel doesn't quite explain why Jake would still be living in Catalina (according to Meghan's page they are), if he was a grad student there would little reaon to move there if there is no NRU.
Although it seems that in the altered timeline (if that is what it really is), he may not be one.

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 1:52 am
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OnyxW_Hun
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Joined: 29 Nov 2003
Posts: 56
Location: Budapest, Hungary

 		I guess the main reason for the time-change was to take the USA research down. (Possible Spectrum operation?) They deleted the whole Turgenev thing. Turgenev never gone into the USA, there was no need to build a center to research this area (o NRU), Catalina remained the small town it was (No newspaper, no bank). Maybe even Acheron was made because of the research. Maybe the whole LLL was a result of Jake hopping in the past.
I guess the reason for Jake still being in Catalina is that a change in the time tries to make as little effect as possible - this is a theory in the time-travel area whether a change in time grows big in time or tend to disappear.
This way the paradox effect is smaller, too.
I'm still waiting any in-game replies. Most probably we'll make contact with Caretaker first since he already appeared.

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 9:45 am
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ThomasRStevenson
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Joined: 28 Feb 2003
Posts: 53
Location: Wayne State University

 		I am still very new to this Embarassed, but why are people saying there is no NRU? There is a difference between a server being down and never existing in the first place!

If we did a nslookup on to www.nru.us, and it came back as an unknown site, I could understand why people were saying it doesn't exist, but that isn't what happens. When we nslookup www.nru.us we get information back on the site.

$ nslookup www.nru.us
Server: ns.wayne.edu
Address: 141.217.1.15

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: nru.us
Address: 66.139.73.95
Aliases: www.nru.us

The name exist in DNS! Why would the name exist if there was not NRU in the first place? Maybe I am looking to deep into this! Twisted Evil

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:22 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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Location: State of Denial
ThomasRStevenson wrote:

The name exist in DNS! Why would the name exist if there was not NRU in the first place? Maybe I am looking to deep into this! Twisted Evil


We mean that there have been changes to the storyline - which may include that the New River University is not what it was a few weeks ago.

Yes the DNS look up is still available, but the site itself is missing. Gone, perhaps to not exist at all in the current time stream we are experience IN GAME.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:44 pm
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ThomasRStevenson
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Joined: 28 Feb 2003
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 		One other posibility, all of the site that are down are virtual site using server 66.139.73.95! This includes the two out-of-game sites collectivegamingexperience.com and thisisnotagame.com. Why would the PMs take these two out-of-game sites down???

Maybe the PMs had a major system melt-down on server 66.139.73.95, which took out every virtual site on this server. That would explain why the three sites, hexeditor.blogspot.com, www.geocities.com, and www.hcrd.org, which are all running on different servers, would still be up.

The PMs might be running around saying "what can we do???". So they do the best they can with what they still have working until they can fix their primary server.

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:55 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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ThomasRStevenson wrote:
One other posibility, all of the site that are down are virtual site using server 66.139.73.95! This includes the two out-of-game sites collectivegamingexperience.com and thisisnotagame.com. Why would the PMs take these two out-of-game sites down???


Under normal circumstances they wouldn't. Must be an unscheduled Technical problem.

Quote:
The PMs might be running around saying "what can we do???". So they do the best they can with what they still have working until they can fix their primary server.


Yep. Terribly frustrating.
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A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 5:44 pm
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talax
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 		I sure hope the server did fail, because having this be part of the intended storyline seems pretty crappy (it's cool in concept, I guess).
Especially since we didn't have any warning of it.

Anyway, I was going through some old contacts... has anyone tried emailing caretakerSPLATblackvault.com to see if he responds to that? blackvault is still up (confirmed not in game).

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 7:52 pm
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Server
Assuming it is a server problem, which seems like it could be a big problem, we still have the questions of why the blogs changed.

I think that Meg's changes sound like a government cover-up. Giving Jake both a car accident and a serious illness seems like typical overkill. Maybe the gov't settled the lawsuit against Jake, which never made sense to me anyway, and made her change it. The point is to explain Jake's absence in a somewhat plausible way without altering the text too much.

Reggie's blog - for some reason I couldn't find a copy of the old blog anywhere, just bits and pieces of it that people had quoted from. From this, it seems that the day of the week and times of the blog entries were kept the same. But everything else was eliminated.

My spec is that Reggie's changed so much more than Meg's becuase he is being set up to be the "fall guy" in the story. Also, many of his blog entries were clues to movies and to the Turgenev picture.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 8:35 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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talax wrote:
I sure hope the server did fail, because having this be part of the intended storyline seems pretty crappy (it's cool in concept, I guess).
Especially since we didn't have any warning of it.

Anyway, I was going through some old contacts... has anyone tried emailing caretakerSPLATblackvault.com to see if he responds to that? blackvault is still up (confirmed not in game).


E-mail sent Dec. 31, day after AnthraX reported the sighting in the #caretaker room on The Game Box IRC. Still no response, e-mail, phone or chat room. Also e-mailed minesweeperSPLATnru.us (Reggie/Marcus/John) at the same time, oddly haven't got a bounce as undeliverable as yet.

Was considering sending a "Hi how are you and how is Jake doing?" to Meg, but want to wait a bit to see what is going on with the websites.
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A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 8:56 pm
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drizjr
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Joined: 28 Nov 2003
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 		I can only think of two other possibilities.
Something is hidden in one or both blogs, that we haven’t found yet, to get us to another site. I’m still looking because I'm hopeful.

Or
If Caretaker concerns were 1) to stop NRU’s research at any cost and 2) to be sure that John Baxter was safe and sound; is it then possible, that he went back in time, and did something for those things to happen? Maybe he didn’t help Zeladzny to defect.
Caretaker's mission is accomplished at the sacrifice of the Starkey's way of life.
We, the players, no longer have a mission. Do we?

Oh, I hesitate to say this……...*sigh*…and I hope I’m wrong…but…
Could the PM’s server problems have lead to an early ending of Acheron?!?
Perish the thought! Game over????? Sad

PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 9:37 pm
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ThomasRStevenson
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Joined: 28 Feb 2003
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 		rose wrote:

Quote:
Assuming it is a server problem, which seems like it could be a big problem, we still have the questions of why the blogs changed.


Still assuming a server problem, the PMs had three ways to go:

1) Not do anything until the server was back on line, and risk having eveyone drop out of the game.

2) Send someone an email saying there was a delay in the game because of a server problem.

or 3) try to work this into the game somehow.

I think they picked #3, although I wish they had just picked #2. If we had a vote on which way the PMs should have worked this, would you vote for #1, #2, or #3 (or something else I didn't think of)?

PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 2:06 am
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scrivener22
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 		Of course they should have turned the server outage into a plot point, just as they did with the monthlong hiatus before. What's frustrating so many people (I think) is that the PMs are barely hinting at what that plot point might be.

Also, during the monthlong outage, I'm pretty sure it was made known that Real Life was preventing the PMs from carrying on the game. Now, though, they aren't responding, even cryptically/in-character, to e-mails asking what the deal is.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 2:25 am
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ThomasRStevenson
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Joined: 28 Feb 2003
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Location: Wayne State University

 		scrivener22 wrote:

Quote:
Of course they should have turned the server outage into a plot point, just as they did with the monthlong hiatus before.


Along those lines, maybe Meg could have writen that a major power outage had taken out the entire area for who knows how long. This would have explained why everything is unreachable.

Right now we are guessing between an out-of-game failure of the server, which doesn't seem like it was worked into the plot very well, or an in-game time-travel, where everything (except the DNS names) has gone poof.

The initial intro for Acheron said that we will have the power to go back in time. Maybe we should, and tell the PMs to plan this part of the plot out better. Wink

PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 2:38 am
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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Location: State of Denial

 		Meta: Technical failures
ThomasRStevenson wrote:

Right now we are guessing between an out-of-game failure of the server, which doesn't seem like it was worked into the plot very well, or an in-game time-travel, where everything (except the DNS names) has gone poof.


Since the Meta sites (http://www.thisisnotagame.com/ and http://www.thisisnotagame.com/acheron/ - the alternate registration site) have also gone down lead me to think it is a case of a real life crash situation and not a "game" one. It was nice that they are attempting to maintain the curtain, but the curtain is getting mighty ragged at the edges.
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A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 3:07 am
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