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I'm furious. I am absolutely ready to blow. My blood is pulsing through my veins at am amazingly fast pace, due to the fact that my heart beat is still racing. I've just been in an intense hour of Meet the Makers, in which I've gotten myself into some positions that I'm not sure I'm proud of . . . but at this point, I don't care. I've spat at City Workers, rampaged with my friends, and broken a piece off the back of my keyboard. And I don't care. Because Whyville, I'm afraid, is making some major mistakes.
Meet the Makers (or MTM) for those of you who don't know, is a once monthly "chat session", you could say, between Club Why members and City Workers. It's very un-formal, and open to any CW or Club Why member who wishes to attend. We discuss topics that we believe are currently important to Whyville and its citizens, and the City Workers are supposed to listen to our ideas and comments.
This MTM has just topped all previous ones, however. With the recent addition of Raven's Island and WhyTunes, along with many people (myself included) still upset about how the new layout has turned out, tension filled the room when the first City Worker, syllaCat, arrived. SyllaCat was immediately bombarded by about 30 angry Whyvillians with questions about everything from Lifetime WhyPasses to sponsors of Whyville. The biggest concern of everyone in the room, though, was the upcoming Pearls system.
Launching last Friday, Pearls are meant to be an allowance system that parents can set up for their children "for as little as five dollars a month". Now, I don't know about you, but around my house, money isn't flowing. And now, even with the whole economy-in-crisis thing, Whyville has decided to launch this program, which I believe supports the idea that money will get you what you want, whether in the real world, or right here in our virtual community. I REALLY don't like that.
This supposedly simple Pearls system brought about, in a word, concern at the meeting. Yes, Whyville citizens were very concerned, not to mention very angry and frustrated. Common questions included:
"Will Pearls let us renew our face parts?" (Yes.)
"Are WhyPasses getting replaced by Pearls?" (Yes.)
"Will I still be able to use my WhyPass even with Pearls?" (Yes, until it expires.)
"Will WhyPasses still be for sale?" (No, starting the day Pearls are launched.)
And even though the answers to these questions often disappointed me, that's not what really got me in this foul mood. It was the City Workers' complete lack of knowledge and concern to the subject. Every single CW I talked to had many of his/her own questions about the Pearls, and although they are launching in 3 DAYS, no one seemed to be worried the least bit about this chaos. Also, some citizen's questions were ignored completely, and in the words of a friend, "I'm taking your complete lack of a response to be a no." NO, we can't just forget about WhyPasses, NO, we can't really believe that this is going to improve Whyville, and NO, we don't have any clue what we'll do if this doesn't work out.
My prediction is that the effect the Pearls has on Whyville will be a very negative one that will drastically drag Whyville down, but hey, I'm still a raging madwoman with a broken keyboard at this point, so who knows?
-Soap
Author's Note: I just want to say that I'm not trying to put down any particular City Worker or Whyville citizen in this article, and I wrote this article solely to "let my opinion be known", as a City Worker suggested.
Editor's Note: Thank you, LowOnSoap, for sharing your opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and so I ask that everyone please remain respectful in the BBS while discussing this issue.
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