An Oral History of Haven & Hearth: Part Deux

[fted]

Hello folks,

Allow me to introduce myself, my name's Ted Freeseman and I'm attempting to compile an oral history of Haven & Hearth. I'm a masters student in Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, and awhile back I thought it might be worth trying to get a history of H&H from day 1 to the last character/world wipe. This would be my thesis, actually, and I'd like to solicit your help to collect stories, and interviews. I could just mine the forum for all its worth, but I don't think it would be as good or as complete as it could be with your help. Though everyone enjoys politics, I'd have a difficult time getting the day-to-day experience without some contributions, and even the politics might benefit from some hindsight analysis.

I'm doing this because (aside from my program requirements), I think cool stuff happens on a regular basis in H&H. I'm not just flying over the game, getting what I want, and then leaving. I've been playing since last summer (though this spring has been hell for my free time), and it's been interesting to me to see how we've created our own social order, our own communities, and our own leaders without much of any prompting. It seems to have just happened that way, and I think that's worth looking at.

What I'd like to have, when I'm done, is a chronological history told through the player's perspective. What happened, when it happened, why it happened, and how it was regarded. So for example, even though I'd like to have some goon accounts of the raid on their first town, I'd like to have to other people's opinions as well. I know it's not possible to get everything, but I'm going to try and get as much as I can, and I'd be very appreciative of any help along the way. When it's all done, it'll be freely available on a number of scholarly online databases, and I'll still be around to criticize and what-have-you.

That said, in the here and now, you can email (or PM) if you are interested (doesn't have to be complex, an "i'm interested" would suffice), and in the coming weeks I can start arranging interviews in whatever way is most convenient for you, personally; PM, email, chat, vent, skype etc. If you want a chat interview that's your call, if you just want to correspond via PM or email, that's your call as well. All interviews and stories are your words, and you can represent yourself any way you like. I don't care if you go by dickbutt, or SSJGotenks, if that's what you want, it's your call. Don't think you don't have anything to say, I'm interested in everything; if all you ever did was farm dirt, tell me about it. Also, if you are so inclined, I'm interested in stories as well. Some people are better at thinking about events in terms of stories, and if that appeals to you, then go ahead and post in here along with any questions that are general enough enough to not be better emailed.

tl;dr: I'm compiling an oral history of H&H. Yes, I'm serious. email me, or leave a story.

Ted Freeseman
fted@bgsu.edu

[Phalene]

So those foxes used to be murder. In world one, where the grass was all green and there were apple trees every few feet with a near endless supply of apples. I was just learning how to play and Dondy and I built a safe little fenced in area of drying racks. But then a higher level player killed a fox and was carrying it over their head. So we made a big fuss about the mighty fox killer. I think he gave us bunny slippers and promised togas. Don't recall his name.

There was this player- JTG, who was pretty obsessive, good at macros who made it his mission to break the game or at least start an epic war. He had alts coming out of his ears. I don't know if he still plays. But me, and my fellow proto-villagers (because this was just as villages were being put into place) were mostly dirt farming. It was all about straw baskets, back then. You had to be careful because decay hadn't come into effect yet and people got very annoyed with 'basket spam', where people would overbuild baskets for the exp or for the extra, low level storage space. But anyway it was a patch near the old brodgar ring, and we called it "Dondyheim" after the player Dondy who did most of the work. But JTG was having enough fun he shared the game with the somethingawful forum and then we were knee deep in Goons. Not bad guys though- but rapidly Dondy-heim ended up becoming Goonheim and we went elsewhere.

I think that the first wave of forum immigration was the Bay 12-ers from Dwarf Fortress, but the Goons was the big one I remember because JTG was pretty contraversial. we didn't know if it would be more macros and breaking things or just lots of new people to play with. I bet it's good for the ego to be feared.

Also, a funny story about the toads- I had a running thing where I kept a toad in a basket, and called it "Froggy". But someone griefed the camp I was in and dumped Froggy out. I was a bit sad, so Dondy started filling up all the baskets in the camp with toads. So the joke was that Froggy was a lady-frog and multiplied. The joke was further carried out when a map glitch duplicated the toad I was carrying.

I don't keep a pet frog/toad anymore, but seeing them on the map still makes me smile.

(Is it really an 'oral' history if we write it down?)

[Loner]

(I have only been playing for about 2 months, but nonetheless, this is my part of the 'oral history')
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At first, I came to live near some people from my country of which I knew one irl.
Within days I had a basic grip of the game, and loved it.
I helped to cut some trees, build a bit and pave, and mainly hunt for rabbits.
Someday I got raided for the first time, while I was online, by, believe or not, a Russian. I could tell by the way he typed in Russian.
Anyway, he started to attack me after me saying hi and chased me a bit, then I stole his boat and made off with it, terrified but feeling victorious at the same time.
After a while I built my own cabin, and set up my own plot, but something felt out of place. The nearby village of my friends used more and more trees and I was simply a lone exposed newbie with a cabin, next to a river. Since I wanted to do stuff more my own way I decided to move, but I was too lazy to actually move and scout for a good spot, so I just made a new character and hoped the random place I would spawn would be nice. Full of enthusiasm I said my old friends goodbye, declaimed my cabin and went off.

So I made my new character, lived on some heath and forest on a fairly small island, maybe 6 minimaps in whole. After a while I decided this island was too small to set up something big, so I moved across the river. Here I cut some trees and built two cabins on my own, which seemed to me a great effort at that time. After a while some people joined me, amongst the first was a good friend of mine, luckily still active. I will refer to him as Dude, since I dont know if he wants me to expose his name. My village built up a bit, I hunted loads for my whole group of hungry noobies, we struggled for clay, found neighbours, convinced them to join us, got a farm, a pali, andsoforth.
Then, on a bad day, some keys got stolen by someone on purpose, and he lost them. Me and Dude tracked him down (I pretended to be a newb looking to join his new 'village'), walled him in with construction signs and sorely regretted we couldnt kill him. Still, we had some fun with our pet, and we threathened him out of the area. Afterall he was a kinda nice fellow, but we still didnt trust him to come back. Ah well.

At some part, Sarge contacted me via PM to basically become leader of what would later be CF, a town built around a copper mine he prospected. I had a great time there building stuff, making a nice layout for a huge city, with personal plots but regretfully no wall, helping people, eventually travelling there with my old account and hunting my first bears.

At some point we got griefed by some people, much of the players died, much quitted and the fun was kind of gone.
And here I am now, trolling and posting around on the forums, and trying to begin playing again when I feel like it.
------------------------------------
Sorry for the wall of text.
Btw, I am the same person as Thijss.nl, so consider this 'his' story actually. Couldnt get on that account :')

[KoE]

Stories? You want stories? I can give you stories! I find it hard to shut up about my fond experiences in World 1.

I'm gonna break these up into smaller chunks because I know I'll be here way too long if I cover it all at once.

I think I'll start, appropriately, with when I started.

This was early June - judging by my profile, probably the 9th or 10th (I didn't join the forums immediately). I believe I came across the topic on Bay12 and that's why I decided to try the game. I had gathered that there was a settlement right beside the newbie zone, and I was determined to set up camp there. I borrowed from this (actually abandoned) area - they had a lot of wheat and what looked like public storage. I had to go a long way just to find a rock for a stone axe, I remember - I was quite distressed about the matter.

I eventually realized that all the Bay12ers weren't here, they were far south. Someone had nicked the first iron I had ever made (and stored in a wicker basket by the drying frames that marked off my camp). I forget what I dragged with me, but I definitely took some of my worldly possessions with me, not realizing how easy stuff is to acquire. Somewhere along the line I punched a cow. lulz ensued. KO'd by a fox, I was sure I was going to face the Great Permadeath. I didn't, of course.

I arrived at Bottleneck's lake - mind you, there were about two lakes and a huge body of water we called a sea on this map. Having a lake was prestigious, in the sense nobody really cared because it took us a long time to realize how easy it was to get water out of the lake compared to wells. (More on this some other time.) There was a superhighway, nearly, or at least part of one, built by Malicus. Five tiles wide, and I missed the first part of it, but I had gotten back on it at some point. My first desire was to make a quiver and a backpack, and sure enough, there was a public leather stockpile.

I bought the skill, made the stuff, and reveled in my increased inventory space. I set out more skins to tan, too - I replace what I take. I wandered further south 'til I found the outskirts, and set myself up at the edge of a forest, just south of another player's homestead. My neighbor was named Adam-, and he greeted me, kinned me, and added me to the a party with Talvara.

Then he went batshit, screaming (textually of course) about thieves and leather. Naturally I was mortified, certain it was a killing offense, and said nothing. The silent justification of having set it up to be replaced was enough for me.

I believe the days after that were pretty quiet - the shockedfrog incident (I will let hands older and wiser than I recount that one) had passed and I was able to do my own thing. I'll pick up with the next big incident some other time.

[Bl1tzX]

Two weeks before the first apocalypse, world 1, I fished, farmed a little bit and made teapots from clay and dropping them to get 4000LP for Yeomanry. I managed to somehow find 2 apple trees that were unclaimed, so I went, claimed it and made my own little settlement.
Then I meet Darki at the RoB while doing something. Can't remember what. I let him live with me, and then the reset happened.
The area around the RoB was cleared of trees and anything natural really. But it was filled to the brim with abandoned homes, urns, kilns and other stuff.
I only went to the place to fish and get clay for teapots, as a clay pit was there. (I mainly fished in a little lake a minute's walk from the RoB. Remember, there was only shallow water at this time.) There was always a band of few people at the RoB, so I didn't feel so lonely most of the time...

After the reset, well, read this story I posted in 'The politics thread' by Sarge.

Well, if you're wondering around Brodgar, I can type about it in my perspective...

So after the first reset, I started building my home quite near the RoB. I believe Yolan and maybe a few others were working on Brodgar at this point.
When I finished the palisade of my home (this took about a week) Brodgar was up and running with a village idol.
So I join Brodgar even if I live 20 seconds away from it, help around a bit (not much, if I remember) and work on my own home. I lived with Darki at the time and met someone who's old name I've forgotten. His new name is in my Kin List currently though, I've just forgot. >.<

Skip about 2 weeks, I've moved. I lived about a few minute's walk away from Brodgar though. Darki and my friend who I mentioned earlier had moved here recently, and I decided to join them because I was pretty bored living alone, as Brodgar wasn't too active. At some point, Brodgar had a copper mine (Ithink it was copper) and I got a bar cause I helped out with linen cloth while I lived in my old home. After this, I pretty much lost contact with Brodgar as I moved again maybe a week and a half later to the village of Mudcrotch. (Which required me to go through like, maybe 1 and a half supergrids. I waded through rivers that connected from near Brodgar, a lake near Swampcrazed, and finally to the mudflats of Mudcrotch to get there. I didn't want to get hit by a bear, and there were no boats at this time.)

I had fun at Mudcrotch with Kzur Pendur and others I forgot, but the place pretty much died out and everyone went inactive while I left for about a month. (Actually, I believe someone who moved out into the wilderness to hunt was still active, but I didn't talk to him after I moved.) Soon after the boat update, I warped back to RoB with no intentions of going back. (I took the village's gate key. Heheh, I should've just left it, but the gatekeeper left it there on purpose because he must've quit.) So I go back, get Yolan to invite me back to the village and I settle in one of the abandoned plots. All I did was work on my plot and hunt level 1 boars and dear, if I remember correctly. Brodgar became a ghost town, as no one was active, Yolan didn't play much and Trav went on holiday at some point which made it more lonelier.

Maybe after a month of inactiveness, I log back in to find my walls have decayed and all of my stuff has been taken. Oh well. At this point, I saw Jfloyd's topic of wanting someone to partner up with his alt. I play on a new character and have the thrill of building a new home again, but get bored of it and stop playing. Jfloyd and someone with the in-game name 'Musician' if I remember stopped playing too I believe.

Then the reset is announced to happen to two weeks time. I didn't play because I just wanted the reset to happen before starting again. I saw the end of the world party thread though, and decided to join in with my Brodgarian character. We sit, chat, drink, watch a naked woman juggle lit torches, and go afk in our chairs. Somehow, I had died after leaving my character unattended for about an hour. I make a new character, inhereit my old guy and continue partying.
I went to sleep before the reset though, so I didn't get to see eagles or anything.

That's pretty much all I remember.

This is mainly supposed to be based on old 'Brodgar' and my absences. I'll write you a story for New Brodgar since you've got my opinion on old Brodgar.

So when I came back to H&H in world 3, I decided to join my fellow Brodgarians in New Brodgar in hopes it wouldn't end up like the last one. (Although, the only Brodgarian I remembered from the last world was Yolan. Actually, the only Brodgarian I knew from the old world.) So in the beginning, I just plowed a bit to get LP for the other skills, then went on to fish. Yup, it was all about fish in the beginning. Fish here, fish there, run out of fish, get more fish, trade for fish, eat fish...

It was a simple life, and we were just starting to distribute metal to everyone after having found mines. (We had a contract on one of the mines with another village I believe. I can't remember what village, and it might've been the tin mine. The other mine was a copper mine so we could get bronze.) People still fished, foraged, hunted, smelted and basically did what they wanted to. But after an incident where my meat grinder went missing (the guy who made it for me needed it to make sausages, so he took it back. I couldn't get into contact with him until after the next part.) This made me think of the insecurity of living in New Brodgar, and so I moved to greener pastures. (Literally, I moved to grasslands which were about 15 minutes of sailing and portaging from Brodgar, though I took about an hour to get there first.) During this period of time I lived in the grasslands, I met some neighbours who got griefed by Lagville, some village with an iron mine. (I was untouched, since my claim was very, very miniture and I didn't even have a container!) New Brodgar was also raided in this time period, by the some village, Lagville. They claimed some person from New Brodgar had insulted them, so they wanted uneccessary revenge. Brodgar turned into a ghost town after the raid, like it's ancestor.

Not much after this about New Brodgar. I live happily somewhere else now.
Hope this helps.

[eql]

dondy, i remember that dude

[fted]

UPDATE:

After a long summer, a short battle with the dreaded Human Subjects Review Board, a sudden attack of teaching responsibilities, and professional development projects... I'm back. This is to let everyone know that this project is live, and since being approved by the HSRB, ready to interview people. The project remains, essentially, unchanged. It's still all about you, your thoughts on playing a game where dramatic stuff happened whether you were involved or not. As before, you're welcome to share any stories you like in this thread, and since that's more "public" I don't have to deal with consent forms. However, I'd love to hear from as many people as possible, and get as whole of a picture as I can. So email me (address below), or PM me and we can get started with your interviews.

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Ted Freeseman. I am a graduate student at Bowling Green State University’s Department of Popular Culture. I am working on a thesis that attempts to make a sort of “People’s History” of Haven & Hearth while explaining the way players work with Virtual Worlds, and I’m looking for people who would like to share their thoughts about Haven & Hearth’s world, politics, players, and events. The project covers the life and times of the Hearthlings we created and played between Haven & Hearth first going online in the summer of 2009, and the character wipe that occurred in February 2010.
Over the short time that Haven & Hearth has been online, we’ve seen towns built from the ground up, egos inflate and deflate, and much more. If you’re interested in participating in my study, either through interviewing, responding to questions, or sending me a story, you can email me at fted@bgsu.edu, or contact me through private message via the forums. If you have any questions about this study and the university or the Department of Popular Culture, you may contact my thesis chair, Montana Miller via email, at montanm@bgsu.edu.

[Thurrok]

I like the idea (still). A thesis about HnH. Makes me want to cry for not choosing to study ...uhm, pop culture or whatever. Didn't know popular culture is already being taught at universities, heh...

As for the srs bzns part of my post, feel free to PM me about whatever you want to know, I've been around for a bit and could tell you some stories.

[p1geonman]

I am Jon. I played a lot in the Summer of '09. Haven't played too much since.

Once, I lived a modest distance north of the Ring of Brodgar. The game didn't have many features in its nascent stages, so the learning curve was a little lower. Back then, the placement of mines was arbitrary, and metalworking was a lot simpler. I shared a mine with a southern neighbor. I wish I remembered his name.

I remember when trespassing dealt HHP. That was awful as I would spam-click to travel and hurt myself quite a bit. When steel production was added to the smithing craft, I accidentally stumbled into Loftar's test forges. I stole a bunch of steel, back before scents could incriminate me. Sorry man.

Speaking of scents, Jorb and Loftar confronted me as the first person to use a hearth summon to kill a thief. I was a little nervous, but I'm also showing my age when I say I was immune to summons because I placed my hearth fire behind my cabin, and you could not see or interact with objects in the background.

Fast forward to me becoming a modestly powerful but very quiet hunter-farmer during the Goon expansion under JTG. They lived a bit south, between my farm and the RoB. They chopped down a lot of trees, and the animals stopped spawning. They stole from me. I confronted them in their town, and they tried to attack me. Only JTG had the skill to land a blow, so I ran.

I was mad. Count of Monte Cristo mad. But as far as I knew JTG had exploited long enough to become too powerful for me. Then I heard that some of the other power-players killed him. The remaining Goons were infants, suckling at their tree-macro exploits. I learned that they lived "north, at the end of the world." It was a gamble, but World 1 was small enough that I had a least a chance to successfully scout out their location. Patiently, I shifted my belief slider to 100% tradition, so I could do something brazen and still come back from it.

My attack was swift and certain, but the lack of resistance from afk-macroers made my revenge bittersweet. The fortress was cleverly built in a valley, turning the geography into two faces of the wall. If I had arrived any later, the brick wall guarding the inner sanctum would have been complete, depriving me of my attack on the axe-wielding Goon at its center. Again, an unresponsive macroer.

In a process that spanned 10 hours or more, until 7 in the morning, I struck down the naked Goons respawning and rushing back to their fortress. There was a brief phase that night where they vandalized my territory, but I cared not; the worst they could do was dig up my outlying land, as the game had since been patched to require players to train in the "black arts" such as theft or murder.

A medium-strength ranger tried to intervene at the fortress. I knocked him out, but I actually felt a twinge of sympathy and withdrew before the killing blow. I forgot his name, but we PM'd on the forum about it. He was grateful enough, but that mitigating factor did not prevent my inevitable punishment.

My biggest regret is communicating with the Goons and pitying them enough to return the gate key and allow them to salvage their stores and dignity. If I could go back, I would have tried harder to extinguish their presence in H&H before World 1 ended. They absorbed no lesson in civility, and exist to this day solely to bring misfortune to those players who don't pay $10 to join their forum.

I placed my hearth in the Goon's mine, expecting to be summoned and killed regardless. I logged off and fell asleep as the sunrise shined into my room. Raephire threatened me in PM's - something about turning me into red mush - but I didn't mind. If not him, one of the other power players would do it. I'm mostly certain that Blaze killed me. That makes me famous by proxy, like sucking Bill Clinton's dick.

Then World 2 came out and I lost my character by drowning. For what it's worth, I could have crossed the river if I wasn't interrupted by a claim. The end.

If you want to talk more I am available by PM.

P.S. I love that you're actually doing this.

[sabinati]

really jon, the goons are pretty civil these days... i'm actually kind of hurt. of course i wasn't with them back then, having gone off on my own and founding a little village called frogtown, and recruiting a few of my neighbors. i had a fun time. in world 2 i started out with those people but i guess they all lost interest, and eventually i moved to cakeport with kaka and rift. eventually i ended up joining the goons and taking over as it became clear that delamore's leadership was nothing but trouble. for the rest of world 2 we were pretty peaceful and i was one of the major merchants of haven.