Not too long ago Bootleggers was going downhill. The tunnel it was going through became darker and darker, until there wasn’t even the slightest source of light to be seen. Just when everyone expected Bootleggers to come to an end, it changed. All of the sudden the tunnel ended, and Bootleggers slowly crawled out of it and looked up. The sky was glowing green.
A short time ago Sky put Bootleggers in the sunlight again, bringing various updates to the game. These very updates were the reason for some people to continue playing. Several times a week a new feature or bug fix was introduced to the game, which led to lots of good reactions coming from the players. When Sky had been given permission to code minor features and bug fixes, it somewhat made up for the inactivity of BSF2000.
Unfortunately Sky had to announce his inactivity due to a busy real life. In an interview with the Buzz he apologized for his inactivity. When we asked him how he felt about BSF2000 missing his deadlines, he responded: “BSF2000 I'm not sure about. I've not spoken to him for about a month now, so I've no idea what's going on with him. It is a little annoying that we don't have the answers when people ask what the hold up is but there's nothing that can be done about it.” BSF2000 didn’t find it necessary to inform the staff about his broken promises, ‘much to the disappointment of both the rest of the Elite Guard and myself’ as Mika stated.
Obviously it is not the first time BSF2000 failed to make a deadline. Of course there were some ‘expected’ unexpected delays. A huge part of the Bootleggers’ community was already expecting him to fail. Why should we trust the man in red any longer? This very question the Buzz asked Sky. “Because it's really our only choice. We can be confident that he's working for the betterment of the game. And the rest of the Elite Guard are encouraging him to be more confident in his deadlines, such as setting a deadline once the a feature is ready to be released rather than setting a deadline then trying to get the feature ready in time. Our only choice is to sit tight and wait” he responded. “He's obviously got a good reason. We know he'll have another 2000 characters for us in next week's Buzz, so we'll have an update then.” The last update that was given by BSF2000 was a short note on his profile which stated nothing more than the obvious. Instead of an explanation or a new deadline, it only said that he was unable to make the deadline and he apologized. Since then the administrator remained silent.
Sky on the other hand got back to his workshop and created a new update: Uno! After expecting, and waiting for the big updates BSF2000 promised in Issue #53, the yellow colored ‘updates’ page could turn into a disappointment. We asked Sky why he brought us this rather small update. “Well I've not really got any bugs to fix (though I'm willing to be informed of some) and I can't think of any more minor tweaks that need to be made to make the game more fun to play, so I was trying to find something - anything - to do. Anyone who used to frequent the IRC network will remember there was an Uno bot active which people would spend hours playing with, it was tremendous fun. I wanted to bring that back to Bootleggers. The obvious home for it would be under the Casino section of menu but the key element of Uno when it was in IRC was the socializing. You'd be playing with people with whom you'd never spoken, and could chat in between each play. That means the more natural home for what I was trying to revive was the forum. I just hope whatever enjoyment or nostalgia people can derive from it will make up for my lack of activity.” Although this is only a small feature, the Bootleggers’ community seems to enjoy it. Right after the feature had been introduced, the Off Topic Forum was being filled with Uno games, making the forum active again.
Nevertheless, we are still waiting for the Achievements and Black Jack updates. Seeing these have already been delayed for a long while, the crew update probably will be released later as well. At last Mika wanted to add: “The rest of the Elite Guard is just as eager to see updates and changes as everyone else, maybe even a little more given the changes that have been planned for the future. If they are not delivered then we will do what we can to try and find out why.”
