When I was accosted in my LitRPG group on Facebook within the first fifteen minutes of posting my new book series by a group of trolls who then moved their attacks to Amazon in the form of nasty reviews, I thought for sure all the work I’d put into writing my series and getting it published would all be for nothing. I was sure that these bullies would manage to take away any chance of having people interested in reading my story.
Luckily to say, that is slowly proving to be not the case. As Dave’s group of friends do their best to libel me online and destroy any chance of sharing my work, the LitRPG community has responded to the growing controversy by reading my book and making their own determination. Even as Dave’s friends have upgrade their reviews from ‘Clear Plagiarism’ to ‘Blatant Plagiarism,’ the community in general disagrees and is letting their voice be heard as their own responses are slowly push my rating up along with their comments on how they don’t see the plagiarism within the story. If not for the community’s support, I probably would have written off writing any further LitRPG novels.
Reading everyone responses at the end of the first week has motivated me to put the outline to book 4 & 5 into words. I have some great ideas for the story with some fun dungeons and monsters for the group of friends to face as they try to get to the human lands to help Domenic against the up and coming religious war that will be a PVP bonanza! This should bring the entire group of friends together.
With the coming surgery for my cancerous tumor, I should have plenty of time to sit down and put my thoughts together. I’ll just have to see. The hospital is trying to up their costs by saying I’ll be in the hospital all week and we are pushing to just stay during the days they’re cutting into me and rebuilding my ear, but you know how doctors’ can be when they see a way to make extra money. If all goes well I plan to just be typing away in bed with my dogs laying out beside me.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for the support. Writers are very aware of the reviews left on their books, especially when their books are just released and especially when there is so much controversy being created over nothing. The positive reviews asking for more of the story had really motivated me to reorder the books I was going to write. I’ll hold off on my new Sci-Fi book The Rise of Omni-Force and instead write some more for The World.
To be perfectly honest, I was a little scared to see the feedback on my writing ability. Now-a-day when I read back over my first two novels, Flight and Destiny. I see all of the mistakes I made as a new writer, but it was these same two novels that gave me the experience to start on The World and write as good as I did. Due to my work in Germany, I don’t have a large group of friends to bounce ideas off of and to get feedback on my stories. Even the friends I have stateside who like Sci-Fi and Fantasy do not read LitRPG, so I was hard pressed on getting any type of feedback on my writing style or the story itself. This was the first time I put out a piece of work without knowing how people would respond. Yea, I know. I could have gotten a few beta readers. I have two or three fans from the first series who were interested, but by the time I finished all three books and got them as error free as possible for me, I figured I might as well just put the series out. It wasn’t like I was going to make any changes at the point in time. Luckily enough, the feedback on my writing of my story is probably the greatest part of the reviews, bring tears to my eyes and motivating me to write more.
A fan and now buddy of my Richard asked me why it was taking so long for the story to proceed out of the beginning area. He was like at this rate you’ll be on book twenty before they’re hitting end game. To be honest, that is part of the plan. For me, MMO gaming isn’t about rushing to the end game content. It’s about the journey. In World of Warcraft there were so many neat little storylines that really made the world something cool to wander around in and find the small gems that made the game that much more enjoyable. Following the storyline that interconnected all of the events made the world that much more real.
Now-a-days, WoW is quite different. Everyone rushes from one dungeon to the next. They don’t have to travel over land to find the dungeon and meet new people to group up. Instead they check a box to automatically be pulled into a group to run with a group of people they never had to build a relationship with. Their roles are already determined ahead of time, so again there is no discussion of group dynamics. Also, the majority of the content of the world is simply pasted by. People leap frog through the major points of the story and quickly get to the end of the game and wonder is that it? Typically they leave the game wondering what was so special and join another MMO trying to scratch that itch.
Unfortunately all of the MMOs are now cookie-cuttered into the same mold. None of the gaming companies want to make the games too difficult or challenging where players might fail and be forced to use their imagination and teamwork to overcome the challenges of a dungeon. For me that has made current day MMOs so boring I can’t even stand to play them, which is a travesty for a life-gamer like myself.
The World is basically the FIVR (aka MMO) that I’d love to actually play. Even though the MC is slightly overpowered. He was able to get to this point by being open to playing in new ways. He doesn’t have the specific class talents that an actual Warrior would have like intercept or a boost to his magic like an actual Frost Mage would receive. Also his build is spread out amongst a multi-character build, so he’s not the strongest at melee nor does he have the largest mana pool like a pure caster would if he met up with another player with the same Nightmare start. Instead he’s a Red Mage. A jack-of-all-trades. That type of flexibility is what gives him the power over his enemies and is the bug (if you’d call it that) he found within the game.
I’ll try to do better with getting these next two books out. Instead of waiting for both to be fully completed, I’ll publish them as soon as I can. Hopefully life won’t throw me another wrench like what occurred when I was finishing up my third novel when my wife was so ill. Also, once again, I want to thank all of you in the community that read my book with an open mind and then posted your thoughts online about the quality of my story and writing.
Luckily to say, that is slowly proving to be not the case. As Dave’s group of friends do their best to libel me online and destroy any chance of sharing my work, the LitRPG community has responded to the growing controversy by reading my book and making their own determination. Even as Dave’s friends have upgrade their reviews from ‘Clear Plagiarism’ to ‘Blatant Plagiarism,’ the community in general disagrees and is letting their voice be heard as their own responses are slowly push my rating up along with their comments on how they don’t see the plagiarism within the story. If not for the community’s support, I probably would have written off writing any further LitRPG novels.
Reading everyone responses at the end of the first week has motivated me to put the outline to book 4 & 5 into words. I have some great ideas for the story with some fun dungeons and monsters for the group of friends to face as they try to get to the human lands to help Domenic against the up and coming religious war that will be a PVP bonanza! This should bring the entire group of friends together.
With the coming surgery for my cancerous tumor, I should have plenty of time to sit down and put my thoughts together. I’ll just have to see. The hospital is trying to up their costs by saying I’ll be in the hospital all week and we are pushing to just stay during the days they’re cutting into me and rebuilding my ear, but you know how doctors’ can be when they see a way to make extra money. If all goes well I plan to just be typing away in bed with my dogs laying out beside me.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for the support. Writers are very aware of the reviews left on their books, especially when their books are just released and especially when there is so much controversy being created over nothing. The positive reviews asking for more of the story had really motivated me to reorder the books I was going to write. I’ll hold off on my new Sci-Fi book The Rise of Omni-Force and instead write some more for The World.
To be perfectly honest, I was a little scared to see the feedback on my writing ability. Now-a-day when I read back over my first two novels, Flight and Destiny. I see all of the mistakes I made as a new writer, but it was these same two novels that gave me the experience to start on The World and write as good as I did. Due to my work in Germany, I don’t have a large group of friends to bounce ideas off of and to get feedback on my stories. Even the friends I have stateside who like Sci-Fi and Fantasy do not read LitRPG, so I was hard pressed on getting any type of feedback on my writing style or the story itself. This was the first time I put out a piece of work without knowing how people would respond. Yea, I know. I could have gotten a few beta readers. I have two or three fans from the first series who were interested, but by the time I finished all three books and got them as error free as possible for me, I figured I might as well just put the series out. It wasn’t like I was going to make any changes at the point in time. Luckily enough, the feedback on my writing of my story is probably the greatest part of the reviews, bring tears to my eyes and motivating me to write more.
A fan and now buddy of my Richard asked me why it was taking so long for the story to proceed out of the beginning area. He was like at this rate you’ll be on book twenty before they’re hitting end game. To be honest, that is part of the plan. For me, MMO gaming isn’t about rushing to the end game content. It’s about the journey. In World of Warcraft there were so many neat little storylines that really made the world something cool to wander around in and find the small gems that made the game that much more enjoyable. Following the storyline that interconnected all of the events made the world that much more real.
Now-a-days, WoW is quite different. Everyone rushes from one dungeon to the next. They don’t have to travel over land to find the dungeon and meet new people to group up. Instead they check a box to automatically be pulled into a group to run with a group of people they never had to build a relationship with. Their roles are already determined ahead of time, so again there is no discussion of group dynamics. Also, the majority of the content of the world is simply pasted by. People leap frog through the major points of the story and quickly get to the end of the game and wonder is that it? Typically they leave the game wondering what was so special and join another MMO trying to scratch that itch.
Unfortunately all of the MMOs are now cookie-cuttered into the same mold. None of the gaming companies want to make the games too difficult or challenging where players might fail and be forced to use their imagination and teamwork to overcome the challenges of a dungeon. For me that has made current day MMOs so boring I can’t even stand to play them, which is a travesty for a life-gamer like myself.
The World is basically the FIVR (aka MMO) that I’d love to actually play. Even though the MC is slightly overpowered. He was able to get to this point by being open to playing in new ways. He doesn’t have the specific class talents that an actual Warrior would have like intercept or a boost to his magic like an actual Frost Mage would receive. Also his build is spread out amongst a multi-character build, so he’s not the strongest at melee nor does he have the largest mana pool like a pure caster would if he met up with another player with the same Nightmare start. Instead he’s a Red Mage. A jack-of-all-trades. That type of flexibility is what gives him the power over his enemies and is the bug (if you’d call it that) he found within the game.
I’ll try to do better with getting these next two books out. Instead of waiting for both to be fully completed, I’ll publish them as soon as I can. Hopefully life won’t throw me another wrench like what occurred when I was finishing up my third novel when my wife was so ill. Also, once again, I want to thank all of you in the community that read my book with an open mind and then posted your thoughts online about the quality of my story and writing.
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