Interview with John (TibiaCast Creator)

Interview with the creator and administrator of Tibiacast: John!
Have a great read and enjoy!

www.TibiaCast.com

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Hello, John! From Tibiamisterios we are very happy to interview an important person for nowadays tibian community. Feel free to answer just what you want to answer.

John: Righto, happy to be of service. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: When you started playing Tibia and how you end up playing it?

John: I half-started some time around 2002, a friend of mine on Diablo II was playing it a lot and kept nagging me to start. I didn't really like it much at the time, but I got more into it in early 2003 when a few new worlds were started.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: So, you prefer Tibia nowadays than Tibia on 2003, right? 

John: Not really, I haven't played it actively since 2007.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: I can imagine that it would be complicated to do it anyway, you must have a lot of work with Tibiacast. How Tibiacast has influenced your gameplay? Do you get KS, lures or random pking for that? 

John: Well, considering that my main character is a level 22 on rookgaard, nope. I had a few others in the past, but my last days in Tibia were spent on rook, away from all the power abusing. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Hehe, that's something good. Now, let's talk about Tibiacast, but first, what is your opinion about Tibiacast ancestors, like Tibiacam? 

John: They were alright, I suppose. I didn't really use them much, myself, so I don't really have a well-formed opinion on them.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: How Tibiacast was created and when did you decide to do it? 

John: The first version of it was a quick 3-day duct-taped proof-of-concept that I made after Alexander (the other half of Tibiacast) thought it would be a cool idea this was back in 2005 and looked nothing like what we have now. You had to log out for each new viewer. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Completely different of what it is nowadays. When did Tibiacast become popular? 

John: Yeah, but after a few months it started to resemble what we have now, with a chat channel and such.
September 2009.

It had been largely on the shelf between 2005 and 2008, we released a few new versions every now and then but nobody seemed to be interested in it back then.

We didn't start putting concentrated effort into it until early 2009, when I found myself unemployed and in a dire need of money. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: I can imagine that an update or something happened to make it the big success Tibiacast is nowadays. 

John: Well, not really.

What happened was that the administrator of TibiaBR suddenly got wind of it, and thought it was awesome enough to put it on the front page of TibiaBR.

After that, we went from having about a dozen broadcasts online during primetime, to about two hundred overnight. So, no big update. Just a stroke of luck. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: It is good to read that you have a good relation with a Promoted Fansite administrator.

What is your opinion about fansites and what kind of fansite you prefer the most? Statics? Fun? Mysteries? 

John: It's generally positive, fansites keep the "fair" part of the game alive and breathing to a great extent; there's more to Tibia than just levels and power.

Personally, I prefer fansites with a living community, regardless of what the fansite itself is about. 

TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Hmm, okay. Good to read your opinion about fansites.

How many people work with you on Tibiacast? 

John: It's just me and Alexander, I'm not ever going to trust anyone else with it. Not even a tiny part.

Alexander was active the first year, then he went to school and dropped off the map for about four years (excluding the summers), so it's been just me for the most part.

I've made it a point to never take on any "helpers" as I consider the risk of them abusing their power to be far worse than any potential benefit, you only need to look so far as Cipsoft to see why; their gamemasters were a rather corrupt bunch. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: I understand. Tibiacast most of the times works great for everyone.

It is a hard work to do? How you and Alexander had deal with troubles on Tibiacast? Troubles like random problems with connection, etc? 

John: Very hard work, not the difficult kind, but hard nonetheless.

Connection issues are often next to impossible to deal with directly, as  practically all of it is out of our hands.

We don't exactly own all the cables between us and your house, and any problem between those points results in connection issues.

So as far as those go, the most we can do is to *headdesk* a few times.

Aside from that, customer support isn't always easy, especially keeping things civil. There's always some war on some world that gets out of hand and people start posting indecent stuff about each other in the recordings section.

Everything ranging from petty racism to naked pictures and addresses of the victims.
It gets fairly depressing to deal with all that after a while. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: I can imagine that it takes a lot of time and effort to deal with that. 

John: It does, most of the time they choose to do it here because they'd be reported (and then deleted) if they did it in Tibia. They try to use Tibiacast as a safe haven for their bad behavior. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Do you expect in the future to have a closer relation with Cipsoft and with the help of Tibiacast find botters or any kind of people doing things against Tibia Rules?

As user of Tibiacast you can record botters, for example.

John: I'd like to, but they've given no indication that they're interested in anything like that.

As for botters, they most likely know who they are already. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Well, we've talked a lot of Tibiacast. Let's talk a bit of John in real life now. Where were you born and how old are you, John?

John: Sure. I grew up in Umeå, a small-ish town in northern Sweden, and I'm 25.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: What are you studying or what did you study in the past?

John: I started working as a programmer straight out of highschool and I've been doing that ever since.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: How that interest for being a programmer appeared?

John: The answer to that question is lost to time now, I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. I can't imagine myself doing anything else.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: I can imagine you had some favourites games before Tibia? What games inspired you in the past?

John: Like I mentioned earlier in passing, I played a lot of Diablo II.

I practically lived in that game for a few years.

But that's about it as far as online games go. I'm more of a single-player guy, whether it be turn-based-strategy or plain RPGs.

I'm currently trying to get through Age of Wonders 3 in the little spare time I have.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Hehe an RPG lover. Do you have any hobby, John? Do you like any particular sport?

Badminton!

John: I don't really have any time left after work these days, but I used to play badminton competitively.

Might take it up again if my work situation improves, assuming I still remember how to hold a racket.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Haha, we really hope that. Who will win Brazil World Cup?

John: I have no idea.

I haven't followed football in years, but I suppose it could be any of the "top" nations of yesteryear.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Hehe, its ok. John, we have had a wonderful time in this interview. To end I'll ask the last questions.

John: Alrighty.

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: What is your favourite Tibian mistery? Warlord sword maybe?

John: The pick-hole in Shadowthorn.

You know that room with a cyclops in Shadowthorn?

In the passage above it, there's a pick hole. I never once managed to figure out why it's there.

Oh, nah, it probably doesn't have anything to do with the warlord sword.

It's just a pick-hole above a seemingly normal spawn.

Perhaps not the most exciting of mysteries, but it's stuck with me for quite a while.

Most of the other "mysteries" are a bit too obvious, in a way.

I mean, take the blessed shield in Hellgate or the Great Shield in MoLS -- we already know the reward, and mostly that there's no way to get them.

The same goes for Serpentine tower, it's all there in plain view.

The pick-hole just is. It's there, and that's all it is. Who put it there? Why did they put it there?

Were they drunk?

Was it a joke?

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: What do you expect for Tibiacast in the future? Maybe you are planning to make it a bigger company or you are happy with this and plan to keep it this way in the future. 

John: I'm more or less happy with it as it is.

It's not particularly exciting to hear, but Tibians don't like change.

Everytime Cipsoft does something, doesn't matter how small, it's automatically bad.

Everytime I do something, doesn't matter how small, it's automatically bad.

Not that I'd let public opinion dictate what I do, there's a certain point to keeping things as they are.

If nothing else, I know that I can maintain the current level of customer support and stability well into the future and that's fairly important. 

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Totally agree. 

John: I'm not about to throw away everything I've built up for the past five years on a gamble

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: What advice can you give for tibians that will read this interview? 

John: That's a fairly broad question.

To give a broad answer; fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches

[TibiaMisterios]David Stardust: Thank you for giving us this opportunity to make this interview, John. We hope the best for you and for Tibiacast!

John: No problem, and likewise. Take care!