I take Chapters 1-14 as cannon, and I really like the Oligarchy story. Ultimately, though, what can be considered "cannon" will come down to individual opinion.

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Seriously if an official storyline were to continue it should be set a couple years from now, a while after the whole Oligarch story arc, long after they're gone.  And the whole "Two Matrixes" idea in Ch. 14 should be scrapped.

Either that, or we all go back to Ch. 1, and everyone wakes up and says, "Oh, it was all a crazy dream!"

It would be so easy to jump over this little hump that is the Oligarch story. I'm not going into specifics without turning this into the kind of thread the OP warned against, but suffice it to say there are very simplistic ways to quickly end a storyline and start a new one (see: Unlimit, but this time the remnants stick around a little longer).

 

Let's say, though, for the sake of the overpowering stench of negativity rotting these boards to the core, that we don't get a new storyline director for a while or ever. Thusly, the developers left over would be remiss if they didn't at least set up our current situation so that it at least sits well.

Let's say... okay, we have a pair of Oligarchs permanently hunting the BIP. We have Cypherites permanently seeking anti-Override weapons. We have Zion searching both for a way to be rid of the Oligarchs and have some advantage over the Machines, and we have Machines doing pretty much the same thing against Zion. Now, I don't know about you, but that smells of Collector potential to me. I don't really know what to  do about the Merv or EPN, but for the sake of argument, let's say the Merv is trying to ally with the Oligarchs and EPN is obsessed with either finding the Oracle, Mauser, recruting the Morpheus Sim, or finding an answer to the Oracle codes, or whatever the hell you want!

If I wanted to say, hypothetically, that we'll never see a good storyline update again, let's set up PvP/PvE/Mish Collectors based on the story we're stuck in now.

Oligarch collector(s) giving away Override codes for doing things,

Cypherite collector giving away anti-Override codes,

EPN collector giving away, hell, I don't know... EPN-themed items like specialised code bombs or synthesised Oracle codes like cookies and s***;

Zion/Machine clothing collectors (think Area K-esque) that are generally opposite each other,

And... Merv does something too, I guess... Override abilities or special Override sims or ... whatever, brain's fizzliez right now.

Oh Hell to the No.    Being stuck forever at 12.1 would be like being stuck forever in 5.2.

The best part about Rare leaving?  No more World of MatrixCraft mindless, pointless quests for crappy clothes with crappy buffs that do nothing besides (in rare cases) look sorta interesting (like Executable Mask or Female Blood Noble Shirt); or just clog up inventory/email space.

Not that I'm opposed to collectors; just not linked to the story.  Especially the middle of the Override story.   And not used as a substitute for dynamic content.  This is what got Rare into trouble IMHO.

Love the guy, hate the direction things took after Nov 2008.

I say move forward on move on beyond Chapter 14.  Let the Oligarchs die off.

So it looks like theres 3 main suggestions popping up:

• Chapter 8, perpetual war, before the Oligarchs.
• Chapter 12.1, perpetual limbo with the current situation.
• Chapter 15, post-Rarebit's outlines.

Now the question is which one should "the devs" mark as "official", because lets be honest, we'll never agree among ourselves.

cloudwolf wrote:

• Chapter 15, post-Rarebit's outlines.

I like this idea

Fen wrote:

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Fen wrote:

I've personally written off the entire Oligarch story, as it was utter trash in my opinion.

Sucks to be you. It's there, deal with it.

It sucks to be me because I don't buy into a ridiculous plotline?  I'm sorry if it takes a little more than all-powerful bubblegum and wireframe people who are chasing a resurrected glowing code woman to interest me.

I mean, have you actually watched and enjoyed the Matrix films?  Or are you one of these people that want transforming mecha in the Mega City and vampires in the Real?  Come on.

yes. yes i have. The Movies ended.

Did you miss the part where the Bro's approved of this overall storyline? Get over it. Just because it doesn't interest YOU, doesn't mean it isn't interesting.

That being said, to return to the thread point, I think the discussion so far should answer your question.

There is and will be NO CONCENSUS on what the story situation is. It sucks, but the story is officially limbo'd. It has been dropped dead, at least IN GAME, and there will likely be noone to officially take it over.

I say that people just deal. It happens. Everyone can make up their own ending, and live their happy little dream. In many ways, those people that didn't like the Official story can now make up whatever they want, and this should make them, well, less unhappy I hope. If the story had actually continued thru the proposed chapters, all kinds of people would be griping on and on, about how "da story isn't Matrix-y to meh."

Maybe now we can all move on? It actually sucks more for people like me, because I liked the story overall, and we will not get any of it as content.

So yeah, to sum up, I'll add choice four to Cloud's list:

• The story has no official anything regarding this abrupt transition. It is what it is, and let eveyone make up their own d**n minds what it means and what happens.

I don't think anyone is going to be able to erase what has already passed.  I think the best way to move forward is from 12.1 with Rarebit's notes in mind as 'an alternate future which never happened' or at least hasn't happened yet.  The structure of the world as written by Rarebit is sound enough and there's no point in saying 'oh, it sounds silly, let's make up something else'. 

Chapter 15 FTW.  Set long after the events of Ch. 14, when Oligarchs and Unlimits are a distant memory.    A return to the balance of power back in Chaper 1.  An uneasy stalemate.  With many of the main characters gone or in hiding.   A fresh start.  A new beginning.

cloudwolf wrote:

• Chapter 15, post-Rarebit's outlines.

As Villemar said, a fresh start.

Tough to say where I would personally like things to go from this point as I was generally enjoying the Oligarch storyline and had Rare not decided to leave, I think it would have been quite epic to play through the storyline as he imagined it.  That's not to say that I loved every aspect of the Oligarchs, of course, but the story was set in motion and it was moving well towards an interesting conclusion.

The biggest problem right now is that things are frozen mid action and that may never change. 

In any case, I would like to see the Oligarchs removed from the storyline if not the game world (for several reasons, first of which Chapter 12.1 would break and second it would remove a cool challenge to tackle).  It would be perhaps too difficult to go back in time and pretend the Oligarchs never happened, so we could cook up a quick end to this story arc that doesn't end anywhere near as definitely as Rare's story did.

Another option would be to simply start all over again, or at least go far enough back to avoid all of the Real world stuff that has taken over the storyline for quite some time.

Either way, we'd be left in essentially the same place.. a relatively static world braced by the tension of a cold war (or recently broken truce) with the Merv trying to profit as he best see's fit.

- Everything that happened before and leading up to 12.1, has actually happened (whether we like it or not).

- Everything that happens beginning at and following 12.2 hasn't happened, and therefore has not been written in stone.  What Rarebit posted was essentially an "Alternate Ending" to what could happen now... which could very well be much more epic, for all we know.

- Discussion settled.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Oh Hell to the No.    Being stuck forever at 12.1 would be like being stuck forever in 5.2.

Caution: wall of text below. See tl;dr version below.

What are you going to do about it? Tell me, what? What the f*** are you going to do about it?! What can you do about it?

If we are officially told that there will be no official or recognized continuation of the story, we will always be left at 12.1, there's not a f***ing thing you can do to change that, so being a whiny little b**** isn't going to solve anyone's problems.

You can go ahead and dream that things are peachy and that the story has magically leaped and flew away from its current stopping point, but when you wake up, and trust me, you will wake up, and it will be a crashing sort of feeling, it'll still be there, and then what?

Tell me what you are going to do.

All this bull**** about *mockingly*"let's move on, drag out a bunch of silly little plot holes and just sit somewhere else" is just plain re*****d, and I'm going to start treating everyone who keeps making these stupid little comments and trying to *mockingly* live off in their little happy place as such until you pull your head out of the clouds, take that rusty jack, shove it back into your neck, and go back to this nightmare.

.......

I'm sorry I'm being so rash, but I... can't stand trying to keep a positive outlook on everything when everyone else is intent on throwing all sense and optimism out the window just because we had a little stronger downpour than before.

[instert "this is just a game" comment, random jokes, laughing kitty, etc.]

We need to work through this, not just ignore it. (Now remember that I'm speaking on the hypothetical that we'll never see another story Dev again) We can't just erase the Oligarch stories and jump backwards in time to a forever war, because it's unbelievable. What happened happened, and can't unhappen.

Likewise, we can't pretend that everyone blacked out for a year and all the Oligarch mess has been resolved and we're back into a shaky Cold War truce, because it's also extremely unbelievable, and there's too many plot holes that cannot be resolved by a thin recap.

And, if we can say that there's not going to be a new story developer, but we still have access to the others, we should work to their strengths and what they can do for us. I'm not bashing any developer, but I don't know how extensive their abilities on story telling are, or what exactly they do for the game, so my suggestions are to simply create updateable collectors that rely on Update Patched new mobs or missions that give pretty little awards that make you look special, can do special things, or help you in PvP.

Do what you can, with what you have, and stop dreaming about what you should have, or what you could do. There's too many "If if ifs" flying about. Until something tangible happens, I'm gonna work with what "is is is."

tl;dr: I strongly disapprove of your attitude regarding handling the storyline and respectfully assert that we need to work with what we have, not what we don't or should.

EDIT:

cloudwolf wrote:

So it looks like theres 3 main suggestions popping up:

• Chapter 8, perpetual war, before the Oligarchs.
• Chapter 12.1, perpetual limbo with the current situation. *shifty eyes*
  
• Chapter 15, post-Rarebit's outlines.

Now the question is which one should "the devs" mark as "official", because lets be honest, we'll never agree among ourselves.

Essentially this, he says with a chuckle.

Phrack wrote:

- Everything that happened before and leading up to 12.1, has actually happened (whether we like it or not).

- Everything that happens beginning at and following 12.2 hasn't happened, and therefore has not been written in stone.  What Rarebit posted was essentially an "Alternate Ending" to what could happen now... which could very well be much more epic, for all we know.

- Discussion settled.

This pretty much sums up what I was trying to say.

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Likewise, we can't pretend that everyone blacked out for a year and all the Oligarch mess has been resolved and we're back into a shaky Cold War truce, because it's also extremely unbelievable, and there's too many plot holes that cannot be resolved by a thin recap.

Says who? Rare's notes on the end of the Oligarchy story seem pretty conclusive to me. With that whole issue out of the way, everybody could get back to the fighting they were doing beforehand.

monkeymanx8 wrote:

ZippyTheSquirrel wrote:

Likewise, we can't pretend that everyone blacked out for a year and all the Oligarch mess has been resolved and we're back into a shaky Cold War truce, because it's also extremely unbelievable, and there's too many plot holes that cannot be resolved by a thin recap.

Says who? Rare's notes on the end of the Oligarchy story seem pretty conclusive to me. With that whole issue out of the way, everybody could get back to the fighting they were doing beforehand.

You cannot just dump the storyline we're in now and skip ahead. You just can't. Few people are gonna go for it. Jacking in one day to see a MOTD "Welcome to Chapter 15. It's been several months since blah blah blah and this has happened and now we're doing this" will definitely p*ss people off. Or is it just me? Am I the only one who wouldn't want to see this thing brought to an end in its entirety?

It just seems stupid to me. But hey, if I'm the only one thinking this, I'll back off, completely.