When I said that there were unconfirmed reports that John Smedley had made the same speech of:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay elements – combat, exploration and character progression. In Everquest 2, we’ve added a fourth element to the equation; a story“
in 2004, I definitely should have done some more digging. In fact, after further research after I published the article, I found that the reports had come from, who else, Derek Smart. It was Mr. Smart himself posting on the Kill Ten Rats blog.
Apparently it didn’t come to mind to any of us (except for myself, despite what I imagine to be numerous restraining orders by John Smedley against me attempting to communicate with him and all of my phone calls to him being directed to the local county police office), to actually contact John Smedley and ask if he said that back in 2004. That is, all of us except our best friends (as of ten seconds before I got the idea for this article) at N3rfed. John Smedley’s answer? Never been to New Orleans.
“Um. I’ve never been to New Orleans. That was the one year I missed it for family reasons 😉
I have no idea of [sic] I ever said that. But given that he’s attributing it to me in new orleans I doubt it. Maybe I said it some other year.”
So not a confirmation that it wasn’t said, and there exists no transcription of events to prove it, so we’ll leave it at this question: How is plagiarizing a quote from 2004 any better than a quote from 2008?
We do have one confirmation, however, that the coincidental misspelling of “multiplier” and “everquest” were due to rogue spell checkers.
More on Alganon as it appears. I promise this is the last article I will run on this issue.
MMO Fallout 