who'm i kidding

[alenxa_classic]

Changed my pirate picture because I'm actually playing this one. This has been the case for a couple of months now, as the crew belonging to the other character hasn't been online on a regular basis since about January. I've been reluctant to acknowledge the paradigm shift pictorially due to never having told the ocean at large that the two are the same player. Not that they'd probably care, but ye never know.

Anyway, this is the one what owns the sloop painted to match her outfit. It's a hoot when people first step aboard.....about half of them say "Whoa!!" or something to that effect. I shocked some folks a couple of blockades ago by showing up wearing aqua instead of violet. (So I bought a new outfit. Wheeee. What else are you going to do when the navy gives you pants?)

Oh yeah, and I finally got to full officer with this one. Not like I really had any reason not to, anymore. Bleh. I wants me crew back, and I wants to keep with me other crew too. There's got to be a way to resolve this without scuppering things up, but damned if I know what it is.

Comments

Confess!

[zehntaur.livejournal.com]

Well, first …

Yay purple!! ^_^

Second, I guess you could own up to your present and erstwhile crews that you are, after all, not exempt from the same problem the rest of us MORPers with more than one identity must struggle with: complementary distribution. Just tell them you’d like to have your cake and eat it too — you just can’t stuff more than one slice at a time into your mouth. ;-)

The ones with alts will understand.

The ones without alts don’t need to understand … they need to make alts and find out firsthook. Arr!

Re: Confess!

[alenxa.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the having of alts, but the affiliation thereof that has me up in arrrrrms. The crewmates of the current pictured pirate have alts, sometimes four and five of them, but they're all in affiliated crews. And the previously pictured pirate (PPP?) hasn't met anyone from her crew online in ages. See my answer below for more info. (I know you were first, but sekl's question sort of made me have to answer it.)

[sekl.livejournal.com]

What else are you going to do when the navy gives you pants?

Quote list.

Bleh. I wants me crew back, and I wants to keep with me other crew too.

Is it a matter of the time involved, or it's just hard to keep up two separate identities and remain in character?

[alenxa.livejournal.com]

Both, now. It's always been a matter of time, but it wasn't a hard thing when Z (previous pic) was my main and J (current) was my alt. I could be on with Z whenever there were any other crew members on and have fun, and if they were all offline, I was guaranteed to find someone on in the larger circle J is part of. Z's crew was made largely of people who knew each other in RL, or had left other crews specifically to be with friends, so it was pretty tight-knit and didn't take a whole lot of new members. Then, in the space of a month, Z's previous captain handed off the hat and disappeared, and two of the most active players had to take a holiday hiatus. About three of us were left, and we kept it going pretty well for a while until one of them disappeared (handing me the captaincy on the way out). I tried taking out boatfuls of jobbers, but it ended badly or indifferently more often than not. The hiatus people came back for about a week, then faded away along with everyone else. The people who left outright have never come back, and one has deleted his character. Essentially, the crew is now just Z, and quite frankly I have no incentive to keep it together for my own enjoyment, only as a sort of friends list should anyone have a change of heart and/or schedule.

So where I used to log on maybe once or twice weekly with J, since February or so I've been playing her at least 3 days a week, often more. And since I've been more active in that crew, I started getting nudged to finish the officer training I'd been stalling due to having Z. (Which was supposed to lead to almost instant promotion to senior officer, but it appears that's since been back-burnered.) So I finished it, and now the issue of identity and separation comes in. J's flag has a lot of politics brewing at the moment, and I'm worried that it wouldn't be prudent to reveal that she used to be an alt. The two characters have never had any real conflict of interest in terms of allies, and I know the flag won't mind, but I'm not sure how J's captain would react. It could be seen as a loyalty issue, a reason not to trust me. After all, I-the-pirate, no matter the alt, don't look so impressive when you realize that I-the-player have been getting double practice with just about everything since day twelve or so. On the other hand, it could be a mark in my favor that I took the officer training seriously rather than whining about being a captain on my alt so why did I have to do it.

I do have ideas on how to solve it, though. One of the senior officers in J's crew has an officer alt in another flag; I could ask her how that came about and how she deals. I could also just remove Z from her crew, thus leaving the friends list for others but removing the problematic "captain" title, and see if another crew in J's flag or an allied flag would be a good home. (Moving the crew wholesale into the flag isn't an option anymore since the implementation of fame; we need more than one active player in order to join a flag. Moreover, putting an inactive crew into an active flag hurts the flag's fame, not a good thing when the flag holds an island--if the island is taken, and the flag fame isn't high enough, they won't be able to take it back.) I've had the additional, slightly evil idea of jobbing Z with J's crew, as incognito as I can manage, and mentioning that I hardly play her anymore because her crew have all left, and what the heck do you do in that circumstance? This, of course, is the kind of sneaky that would really hurt me, so I'm not leaning toward it.

Any other suggestions are, obviously, welcome.