Ladies of Utopia Interviews: Deana
Ladies and gentlemen of the Utopia Community Forums, we are pleased to present to you the marvelous Lady of Utopia, Deana.
Enjoy!
Where do you play from?
Illinois, USA - not Chicago - in a little hick town, mostly on mobile in the bathroom or in bed.
What is your day job, when you’re not being a Utopian badass?
I work at a health clinic
What are some other hobbies you have?
Playing games on Steam and I have excessive cats.
What brought you into Utopia and what keeps you playing?
I played Earth 2025 back when I got my first computer back in 2000, then discovered Utopia - There must be reasons people keep playing - although most have left. How can you explain the adrenaline rush you get from playing a text based browser game? The excitement of tracking a soldier pool by watching the nw of provinces on the kingdom screen and then blowing the crap out of it. Sending every army in your kingdom out in the 1 minute before day change, having the bot count down the seconds so you dont screw up and hit after the tic. Both things that just can't happen anymore but I still get that feeling sometimes. Stealing horsies when they get home comes close and I love casting those meteor showers.
Why do you think the game is generally so unappealing to other females?
I don't. We are all getting older. I don't think many women in the 30-50 range are gamers much. Well, they play facebook games I guess. Maybe its because it's hard to discover the social side to Utopia. I'm not the brightest tool in the shed but I played utopia for like 5 years and didn't know what irc was. Us girls like attention, otherwise we would just pretend to be guys so we could get some respect. This is my 3rd Utopia interview and I make people call me Princess Deana. /me flips her hair and giggles
Do you remember which KD you first played in?
I don't remember much. I remember one monarch was named Annubis and we were trying to lose wars so we could get off battlefields.
Do you remember boats?
No
What’s your favorite memory from Utopia?
Warring sleepy - best was our end of age 2 week war - I was still helping run waves back then and coss would pm me on irc and we would talk about romanian poetry, Prince music, and FF7 - and we would do this During each others waves - I think we were both trying to distract the other person - I was Sanctuary's "cow" that war and at one point had multipke armies out and 120k def on like 20k acres and Sleepy had nothing home to hit me with - coss messaged me, nice def you got there and I was like, yep
Describe the most memorable age in your uto-experience.
So, lets talk about Genesis. I was on Sanctuary Council the age oyzar won Genesis - its all him a jdorje would talk about, all day, i would be like, hello wol time - I got little respect as much more than the kingdom facilitator of fun - I idled in an irc channel the whole age with oyzar and saw what he did and learned alot about exploring. So, the next age, I played genesis for just my province, I made the biggest, baddest, orc sheppard - I logged in every 1.9 hours and I scanned nw changes on every target - I hit for 907 acres my first round - I kept it up, every 1.9 hours, day or night. I whored past everyone. I would hit other attackers out of retal range after the explorer targets ran out. I was unstoppable. I was also in an alliance. Now there was this other alliance, V, and they started from the bottom and tore through allied provinces. My province was massive by this point and was easily on the way to being the biggest province ever. Free draft, I woke up every 1.9 to divy up sci, build, explore at the end and beginning of every hc. My alliance mates were pouting though, the V alliance was gang banging them one at a time and there I was free and clear. So, we decided that I should convert back into an attacker and start razing V from above. So, I did and in the end, when all my alliance was gone - V bounce waved my province down - It's pretty awesome though to see irc logs of people panicking when you log in, because they might be next, mwa ha ha ha - that age ended up being like 16 weeks long though - it would have been untouchable if i hadnt converted and huge
What was the worst/dumbest mistake you’ve made in the game?
I once razed all my acres to drop my networth in a ghetto retal war. Deserted and starved.
What is/was your favorite theme?
I love seeing the themes every age - didn't we use to have best theme votes every age? You know kids, way back when, we could make ascii themes. I think it was Monolith and some abs kd that made an ascii theme that was like a dual theme. A heart maybe??? And playboys had the playboy emblem? That was pretty awesome. In Sanctuary that was kinna my thing, making the themes. One of my favorites was our gunslinger theme, mostly because it was one me and my son worked on. Also memorable was our slang phrases for sex acts theme, I got to be Tossing the Salad. I also have to mention the Peg Boy theme in Cromulent Republic, I don't know how we all didn't get changed to Carebears for that one.
Which combination of race/personality is your favorite? Past or present.
Just hand me my Faery Mystic (or meteor casting heretic ftw).
What ranks and/or roles have you held in your uto-experience?
Finally! I knew I would get to say this one day! I am the former Eternal Spirit, Angel of Justice of United Angles, Last Guardian of Absalom, Co-Monarch of Sanctuary of Absalom, one of the best kingdoms in Utopia history.
Have you played in any alliances?
See above ^ my favorite alliance story I like to tell is that when i was playing in Sanctuary of Absalom I was leading the United Angels Alliance, UA's best kingdom was getting trashed by Project J Alliance and I couldn't do anything about it, so I took over another province in Sinners. Sinners was in the Nordic Alliance and they promised we could wave Project J. Are you still with me here? Now I believe we were fake tagged as a NoX kingdom and we were getting ingame messages from NeXt because Sinners was pretending to join there. So, if I'm counting right, I was in 5 alliances at the same time.
What is a weakness of yours? RL or in-game.
Spontaneity
What member of the utopia community would you most like to have a beer with/share a meal with and why?
zara, because she's awesome - I'm even doing this because she asked me to - and for the hair flipping
How do you handle interactions with a KDmate you have a disagreement with or your monarch when you disagree with an order?
Poor dax, I really gave him hell a few ages ago. I wanted his assurance I wasn't going to be playing in a lame kingdom before making my province. Me and Ryan and Proturd would fight like crazy in the council channel. Ryan would say something like my only contribution to Sanctuary was my international calling plan and it would set me off on a cuss frenzy - i called proteus a (expletive deleted) farmer over and over once until I'm pretty sure I made him cry - now that being said, it was my one of my jobs to settle problems in Sanctuary and make sure everyone got along and had fun and I think I did that very well.
Do you feel like your gender has been a barrier to being taken seriously in this game?
This is such a hard question. Lets take zara for an example, she is awesome at utopia, she can do the macro and the micro and she never stops learning (btw kiddies that's how you become awesome at this game - if you see a better way of doing something, you change how you do it) So, she was trying to help someone, a ghetto superstar, learn how to play - he starts cussing her and calling her a female dog and hurling personal insults - no way in hell that would have happened to a guy.
Now on the other hand, when I was recruiting for Sanctuary I avoided girls and normally would not take them. Girls are kingdom destroyers, they tee hee and flip their hair, and show their boobs, and they have to have that attention from their little boy clan. Then they start wanting to do stuff they are not capable of and if they don't get their way they flip their hair and tee hee to another kingdom with half your sheep. Girls are responsible for killing some of the best things about Utopia ie. AllianceRankings. So when a girl comes along that actually can do these things, it's just that much harder.
What about as leadership?
Before I was in Sanctuary, I would install a male monarch as a figurehead because it was easier that way. I think though there are guys who like to be ordered around by an older woman, you just have to be 'sexi' it's all just ridiculous but I did more than my fair share of stupid hair flipping to get what I needed. Now, I had a problem, I was not that 'sexi' irl. Social media was getting huge and so was I. So, I made the decision to out myself as fat. It was pretty liberating I guess. Some did not take it well - Seriously though people, I'm a middle-aged mother of three from the midwest, was this really a surprise? I really don't know how this has any effect on my utopia abilities, are you worried one of my pendulus breast will accidentally hit the keyboard and copy paste our secrets in irc? Bounce a hit? - I could go on and on about this.
In utopia, it's ok for girls to recruit, make themes, call people, be the forum organizer, and tee hee and flip their hair. When you start telling people how to run thier provinces though, you just might be a female dog.
How do the people in your RL react to your playing Utopia? (i.e. common knowledge, closely guarded secret?)
Everyone knows
Have you met any Utopians IRL?
Nope.
How many FB friends do you have from Utopia?
30-40?
What makes you want to rage quit?
People bad mouthing Sanctuary/absalom and pms :)
What do you do in RL to get yourself ready for war in-game?
Eat something, get a soda. Bathroom break. Try to instal mirc, try to register my nick, try to get on kd irc channel, realize there is no kd irc channel anymore, log into slack on laptop, download slack ap, try to figure out how to make slack have a darker background, cant, give up and war on my mobile phone with the laptop on my lap. Delete slack ap.
If you could create a race for the game, what would it be?
Not a race but Id make that zombie dragon that pops up randomly on the enemy war screen - get some adrenaline back in this game.
What other utopia-related projects have you worked on?
I've written news articles for utopia temple and the UA paper. Wrote a lot of scripts for irc bots, mostly just silly stuff but we need that stuff too.
If you could wave a magic wand, what’s the one change you’d make to Utopia?
50k players
What is something you hope to see in the future in this game?
50k players and that plague dragon.
Who do you think will take the iron throne?
John Snow
