I used to really love Outbreak. I had some cool stories going on, and great character development that I have never had the opportunity to have in other sims I’ve been it. Though I’ve had my gripes with the HUD, I tried my best to accept it for what it was. However, for various reasons, I got extremely upset, and quit sim. I thought maybe I could go back and give things a second go, but simply thinking about Outbreak made me angry. The frustration and pain is apparently still lingering. I don’t feel like I was listened to or taken into consideration, and I felt abandoned by sim staff. Even after the amount of time that has passed, I still have a hard time emotionally writing this. However, I feel like I have to. Even if I never come back to Outbreak, I want to make sure the staff, and other people who read this, know how it made me feel as a dedicated RPer in the sim to suddenly go from being a part of something, to being completely lost.

By now, I think most people know about Epsilon and Deimos, and that the building they used to have is now gone, and seemingly pretty much never existed now that the ranger station is there. (Which, that’s one thing that really bugs me, but I’ll get to that later). I’m not mad that these two groups failed it was what it was. Despite all that me and the lead of Deimos tried, we could not get people to join, and we felt Sim staff wasn’t helping us out in that department either. Sim staff has a lot to do I know, but it seemed like it took us forever to get events or plans organized. When we did get a date set in place, Something would go wrong. The earthquake RP was on the same day as our raid to clear out the water treatment plant. We were told repeatedly that we were supposed to have our build worked on (at least to my understanding) but that never played out. It felt as if they were more interested in other groups, so we got shoved aside. Whether this was the reason that things failed or not, I don’t know. I think it was a variety of things. However, It wasn’t that the group failed that made me so upset, it was how the whole fallout of Deimos and Epsilon was dealt with.

Naturally, when I realized the Deimos building was gone, I tried to get in contact with someone. This took up to a MONTH or more to actually get a response. I had to talk to people, who’d direct me to talk to someone else. The person who’d sent the last group notice saying that Deimos was going to be restructured had actually quit being in that lead position, and I was none the wiser as I spent a lot of time trying to get a hold of them. When I did get a hold of a mod, they basically told me we would be getting another building… which really never happened. What frustrated me the most, was simply the fact that it seemed staff just assumed everyone in Deimos and Epsilon was gone. They told me I was likely the only Deimos person who still even cared. I doubt I was the only person, but a notice or something would have been nice. If someone has simply had the courtesy to let the group know that things likely weren’t going to continue with Deimos, I could have accepted that.

I also would have been a lot less upset if staff could have given me a reasoning or alternative for my characters. The only advice I was given was to make a new character, and for me that was not something I was interested in doing. When I make a character, I put time into crafting them, usually making my own shapes even. The lindens I use to dress my characters are limited because unlike some people, I can’t afford to buy lindens. Therefore, with 2 characters that i’d already made for outbreak, starting over on a 3rd character just seemed like a chore. I made the characters I did because I wanted to play that specific character. They each had their own story lines too. Peter had been working to see if there was any possible way to get the water treatment plant going once again, he’d also been very invested in the bacteria that plagued the water for some time before the sim decided that all of a sudden no more water, and no more electricity would be automatically available. He was working on setting up phage therapy, so that bacteria could be killed without having to use the thinning resource of anti-biotics. The other character of mine, was pregnant, and often inspired others that she ran into. They were surprised she was ready to deal with raising twins in the outbreak. When Deimos stopped, I still had very active, and real story lines on both of my characters. I got super upset that no alternative was given to me by staff except to make a new character. Deimos had been a thing on sim, and then suddenly it wasn’t with no explanation. No one could tell me what I should RP out happened, and it just made both of my characters impossible to play. What happened to Deimos and the research we were doing? I didn’t want to just say that everyone disappeared or anything because our old building was also gone. It was as if we never had a place in Arklay, and that upset me. It was as if the Sim Staff didn’t care, and just assumed everyone was inactive. From then on, I couldn’t even go to outbreak without feeling upset. I felt like all my RP, all the time I put into my characters meant nothing to the community.

I know by writing this, I can’t change what happened. I know that by writing this, I probably won’t get anything in return. I just wanted to say, to Staff, to anyone who’s reading, that even an apology would have meant a lot to me as not only an Rper of Deimos, but as a human being on the other side of a computer screen. An apology or notice would have been better then the nothing I got as being a member of Deimos. Maybe the majority had given up on the group, but I had found some of my best RP in Deimos, and was very ready to continue being a part of it. Even now, I really wish I could come back to sim, and that my emotions weren’t so high strung on this. However, if other groups can just go down without notice, and people forgotten about or left to deal with the broken story-lines made by staff decisions, then that is not a sim I want to take part of. RP should be fun. It shouldn’t be so frustrating. Whether a group doesn’t work out and has to be dropped, or sim wide story plots go in different directions than expected, I would like to feel supported by Sim staff. I didn’t, and still don’t. If you’re still reading at this point, I want to thank you, and I hope you never have to go through the emotions that I have.

Some people may say it’s just a game, and that it’s no big deal. They believe that people should just let it go, and not care about these sort of things. It’s not real life, so it doesn’t matter. However, these were my characters, and the time I put into them as well as my time on sim I can’t get back. Had I known things were going to go like this, I wouldn’t have joined Deimos, and I would have put my energy into characters and sims I still play in. Behind every avatar is a person with emotions, a life outside of RP, and really I don’t believe people think about that. Though it’s a game, every interaction made in RP is made with a real life person. These aren’t just NPC’s that won’t care if drastic changes are made, and unfortunately I’ve been effected more than I’d like to admit. It’s just upsetting, and I wish the best for those that still play in Outbreak. Maybe some day I can come back, but right now, I don't know how to help myself enjoy the sim again.

Farewell for now, we’ll see if I come back

Rick Zebendein (A.K.A, Peter Perkins)