Over the past few months, whilst Aldarion was absent, the Bust party feature had almost died out. However, in the past two weeks we have noticed a huge surge in the number of Bust parties formed by players and the large amounts of in game cash which was donated to various parties. We at this Buzz sought out some of the prolific busters to find out what was going on! Is busting back for good? Or is this just a temporary lift?
The first person we spoke to was ThunderGuyIsBusting who, as the name suggests, is quite a big Buster. He has hosted several events in the last few weeks. We asked him why, in his opinion, the bust feature was back. He told us, “This all started about a week ago, the bust party I started on Sunday. I convinced Barbrady to donate an amount of cash and all of a sudden Aldarion started donating as well. Both State Dons and Bergorama helped out and there was a pot of twenty million created! This convinced people to start busting and busting fast! Aldarion probably saw that by doing this bust parties can become more popular so he organised two parties himself! He donated smaller but still decent amounts to a lot of bust party's! Then came Prince's biggest bust party ever, I think, and by that it all became fun again to organise bust party's! Also the State Dons helped a lot: LKParadoxia and Barbrady. Jail Break Paradise on the other hand had their problems with a few players and were not as active to bust anymore as the old days, got shot again and I think they will not continue to bust a lot these days… But I hope by that first bust party I started and people donated to a lot there has been a chain reaction that will continue for a long while!”
Very interesting answers. The next person we spoke to was TheCatWasInTheHat who is on the list of top ten busters alive and has donated various amounts of cash to this feature! We asked him why he thought the bust parties had started up again and he told us (amongst other things), “I think LKParadoxia is doing the bust parties to try to make players love him so he ranks up to Nation don.” He went on to explain that his reasons for thinking that were, “I mean think about it man spending 3 mill at least a day? That was my plan if I ever make it that high on the rank scale.” An interesting thought that it was largely attributed to the State Don LKParadoxia.
That’s two players who had mentioned LKParadoxia's name to us, so next we tracked down the man himself! We asked him directly what he thought about the return of the parties. His reply, “I noticed a significant lack of bust parties a little while ago due to a lot of high ranked busters being killed. Illinois and busting were once synonymous with each other, so I vowed that once I became State Don I would do all that I could to try and encourage bust parties again. I'd like to think that we're steadily getting back on track but this is only the beginning, the jails of Illinois are always in need of active busters. It's an excellent opportunity for everyone to get involved, often with cash rewards it's a nice incentive to earn a couple dollars as well!”
We then mentioned that someone had said it was a secret way for him to live long enough to reach Nation Don. He told us, “That is a fair assumption to be honest. I've been hosting these competitions before I was a Respectable Don, let alone accepting the State Don invite so people are inclined to believe whatever they want. I'm not here to make friends with everyone, I enjoy busting and people are continuing to do it when I'm not even hosting the competitions. In my eyes that's all that matters.” We also asked him if he had big plans for the future, “The idea is to spread the wealth amongst the players and hopefully they will want to host bust competitions themselves. It will in theory encourage others to get a bit more involved and hands on, as you can see for yourself Illinois has not been lacking in competitions lately.”
Finally we tracked down Aldarion who had donated well over forty million to bust competitions by this point. He gave us some very detailed answers! We first asked him if he had any comments about the donations and recent bust parties. He said, “When I got back the game was a lot less alive than it was before, particularly the forums (as number of users is still roughly the same, possibly even a bit better). I figured busting could liven things up a bit so hence I did some donations. I always used to host bust competitions and still enjoy doing them so that's where part of my money went to as well.”
We then asked him if he thought this trend would continue, and he explained, “Things aren't looking bad. If I'm not mistaken the number of bust parties has increased as well as the number of participants. LKParadoxa has hosted a number of great parties, as well as donating significant amounts of money to keep the busting going (which he's been doing for a long time).” We also asked him if his donations would continue, to which he told us, “Yeah I figured I'd get it going in the early stages but I obviously don't want to get too much money into the game, which I already did within a week of getting back. I may have something to celebrate this week so I'll do a big event. However, prizes may not necessarily be money. I'm not yet sure. With regards to the big donations, I do not plan on continuing those.”
Since this interview he has organised his Graduation Activities which include bonus prizes for busting. The experience for busting has been doubled and prizes were given out, such as extra cash and booze for busts. The number of busts parties during this time period spilled over onto each other and it was common to see two, or even at one point three, bust parties running at once! As well as this both Sky and Aldarion hosted a big competition of their own!
The final information we have to share with you is a chart that Aldarion gave up his spare time to create (thanks again!):
This graph clearly shows the rate at which bust parties stopped and then dramatically increased over the few months. It is very interesting and shows that bust parties are almost back on track. Hopefully we will continue to see this feature used and that bust parties will grow from strength to strength with many investors out there happy to donate lose change for everyone’s enjoyment! As always, good luck and happy ranking.
