Talk:Kingdom of Loathing

Questionable citations...

I was looking at the citations for the Kingdom of Loathing page and found that a good number of them are:

• Forum messages
• Chat messages
• Blog messages
• Game site reviews
• fan site pages ie. "KOL Wiki"

I mention this because one of the pages I was trying to unprotect Marapets a little while back was denied unprotection because a lot of the citations I provided had some of THAT content as well. I could only find one Magazine citation where it was mentioned that the economy of the United States was indeed affected somewhat by people spending money on sites like Marapets. This is the page which clearly mentions Marapets: http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/25/amazon-google-facebook-ent-tech-cx_kw_0725whartonwebpreneur.html

I also included the Quantcast ranking for Marapets (9,130): http://www.quantcast.com/marapets.com

The Alexa ranking for Marapets (13,957): http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/marapets.com

I want to know WHY I was denied to re-create the Marapets page yet, a similar game site like KOL is still here with rankings MUCH lower than Marapets:

Kingdom of Loathing Alexa Ranking (22,423): http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kingdomofloathing.com

Kingdom of Loathing Quantcast Ranking (24,763): http://www.quantcast.com/kingdomofloathing.com

I want to know if Wikipedia chooses to take preference for certain games, and why would that be? I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be BOLD and NEUTRAL. It is a good thing I decided to look these things up. I also DO NOT agree with the Marapets article deleted in the first place. I do not consider the choice a good OR FAIR one.

--Molokaicreeper (talk) 01:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

A few reasons.

• Forum messages

-The forum messages linked are official statements from the game's creators.

• Chat messages

-ibid

• Blog messages

-Such blogs link to interviews with gamestaff, etc.

• Game site reviews

-Plenty of pages link to game reviews... it's standard Wiki practice.

• fan site pages ie. "KOL Wiki"

-The KoL Wiki (and KoL Coldfront) are not unofficial. They are linked directly on the Kingdom of Loathing homepage and have received the official blessing from the gamestaff.

The references are sound and within the Wiki's standards. I would bring the Marapets article to a Wikiadmin's attention if you feel the page should be restored.--LordHuffnPuff (talk) 02:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'll grant you that some of the sources cited on this page are weak, but there are also good third-party sources here, like Wired, The Escapist, and Jay Is Games and EuroGamer. If you can cite articles about "Marapets" that appear on similar sites, then I'm sure your page wouldn't get deleted. --Cornprone (talk) 06:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• Well, it wasn't my page. I just so happen to be working in a Marapets Game guide recently and was upset not to find the entry which used to be here a couple of years ago. Looking for citations can be really hard. I myself didn't want to get into that task as a matter of fact. But the site has reached 2 million users, it is an independent game site that has gathered enough users to be notable. So it hasn't generated enough status to be in more newspaper sources or magazines; perhaps its because 75% of people who play in it are female? Does that make it less important? I sure hope not. I don't want to be a pain or sound paranoid but I am beginning to believe that. --Maradan Chronicles Wiki (talk) 01:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

• If the article was deleted, it was because it was a poorly written article that went through review and was deemed not worthy of continuing to be an article, not because of some evil sexist Wikipedia anti-female propaganda. If you want there to be an article on this game, write it, make sure that you cite good sources, and chances are that you won't have a problem.--LordHuffnPuff (talk) 19:40, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

DIY Gamer Interview

For anyone still interestede in updating this article theres a relatively recent interview at http://www.diygamer.com/2010/05/years-kingdom-loathing-interview/ that looks like it could be useful. Danie Tei (talk) 21:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

History

Hasn't been much movement on this page in a while I'm hoping to change that.

The history section in particular is a problem for me. There is NO good reason for the grey plague to be in the article, there have been numerous similar in game events since and quite frankly I didn't think it was that notable when it was one of the few events the game had.

Black Sunday and White Wednesday may actually warrant mentions given that had a serious effect on the games design as well as a non ingame reson for their implementation but I don't think it's enough to warrant their own headings and in-depth explanation.

Unless I hear a good reason not to or a large number of people disagreeing I'm looking to cut most of it in the next few days.Danie Tei (talk) 12:36, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I recall several years ago arguing that the history section was helpful because it provided examples of the game's narrative style and the motivations of its designers. It is also -- simply put -- interesting, at least to me. What I would ask you is, why do you want to delete it? Would it be considered "fancruft"? Perhaps so, although Wikipedia does not have a policy that actually demands the removal of all fancruft. Instead, we should ask whether this information falls under the category of Wikipedia:NOT. Is this an indiscriminate collection of information? Is its length impeding the readability of the article? Not really, in my opinion, but I can see both sides of that argument. Since you're pressing the point, I would support the section being made more succinct with some minor details stripped out. I also think subheadings and the Grey Plague section can be removed, but I would still like to see the basic information on the other events remain on the page. --Cornprone (talk) 19:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The issue I have with the history section is mostly that these events lack notability. The grey plague had no real discernable long term effect on the game, and White Wednesday only a minimal effect. While I agree that these events are a good example of the games play style and narrative but that seems more of an argument to move it to the gameplay or plot and setting sections. The reason that I want to cut this down is that it was a problem when the article was last submitted for a GA review. The history should more be about how the game has evolved over time rather than a few mentions of named in game events. Danie Tei (talk) 01:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I just read the second GA assessment. It sounded like the real problem was that the history section lacks enough real sourced information on the creation and development of the game. It seems that there are very few reliable third party sources you can cite for that, except perhaps that nice Escapist article. That, coupled with all the other little persnickety details the GA guy criticized, makes it look like GA is an annoying process I wouldn't want to delve into. But I do honestly commend you for wanting to. --Cornprone (talk) 07:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Ascensions

The article manages to describe the Ascension feature without explaining what it is. I'd add this in myself, but I don't play the game.-Zyrath (talk) 22:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Kingdom of Loathing/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Astrocog (talk · contribs) 22:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   • Mostly good, except for being somewhat choppy with small paragraphs. Combine one- and two-sentence paragraphs into larger bits. Avoid language such as this: "...is said to have influenced..." (in the lead). Who has said this? See my comments below about this particular claim.

   Several short paragraphs combined, weaselish language removed. --Cerebellum (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

   • Fix the disambiguated links.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   • Plenty of citations to blogs which don't seem particularly noteworthy, except for having commentary on this game.

   In general, I've tried to use blogs only when they are a) an interview with one of the game's creators, which is likely to be reliable if an editorial on the same blog would not be or b) a review, which is someone's opinion anyway, so reliability is less of an issue. Even an unreliable source is unlikely to lie about whether it liked a game or not. If there are any specific sources you don't like, I can remove them. --Cerebellum (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

   • See comments below about un-sourced and weakly-supported claims.
   • Some issues with a couple external links. Check those out. I HIGHLY recommend fixing the citations with more information (author, date, publisher, etc) and using archived versions of the websites when possible.

   I've added archived versions of everything I could find on the way-back machine. Not sure what to do for pages that are not listed there. --Cerebellum (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   Covers the broad details well. Not sure why the radio bit deserves its own subsection. It's just two sentences, so just merge into the main section.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   • Article contains little in the way of negative criticism. What else has been said about it? As it stands, the reviews seems to mainly be from blogs of little notability. Has the game been noticed by the major game reviewers and media outlets? They should be featured prominently.

   I've added a little more negative criticism. Unfortunately, though, the reviews listed are the only ones I could find. The game has not been reviewed in the mainstream gaming media.

   • The leads says "...and is said to have influenced several other online games." This doesn't seem well supported in the article, or even in the accompanying references. A barely-notable game being called a KoL "clone" and a blog reference that Mafia Wars fights are similar to KoL gameplay is VERY weak to make this somewhat grandiose claim.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   Seems pretty stable.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   • Both images need appropriate captions and alt-text. The logo has an un-sourced explanation of the slogan. It's OR until it's referenced.
   • The second image seems to have a warning about it needing to be a smaller size. Check into that.

7. Overall: Article needs some work to get up to GA status. I'll put it on hold for 7 days. Improvements made. Article promoted.

   Pass/Fail:

Thank you for your review! I'll try to fix these issues in the next couple of days. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've made several changes in accordance with your review. Let me know if I have missed anything. --Cerebellum (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Good job on the improvements. I don't really see what else needs to be addressed here for GA, so I'm promoting it. AstroCog (talk) 12:56, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Business Model

Due to a lack of player donations, the creators of the game have implemented advertising (rather poorly too). All the mentions to the donation only model need to be changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.167.80.65 (talk) 15:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Advertising has since been removed. Score one for lazy editing. --JohnDoe244 (talk) 22:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Are there still or are there not ads? I used to play this 2003-2005 and never saw ads. I'll try to dig up my account on their forums and ask, if the account still works. They probably went and disabled it because it was a moderator account. Are you ready for IPv6? (talk) 20:35, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I found my account and searched their forums. They used to have Google ads http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=207997 but they switched KoL-style ads http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=208240 . 20:38, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Josh Nite

Josh Nite was fired from Asymmetric Publications on the 15th of November 2014. As one of the main designers of KoL, I'm unsure how to edit this article accordingly (but it is fair to say he is no longer operating the game). --JohnDoe244 (talk) 22:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

@JohnDoe244: I've added a line to the "Development" section about Skully leaving, sourced to his forum post. Is that ok? I also removed mentions that the site has eight employees, which were sourced to a 2010 interview. Do you know how many there are now? I'm not even sure who the eight were - the only ones I can think of are Jick, Riff, HotStuff, Multi Czar, CDMoyer, and Xenophobe in the past. Unless we can find an up-to-date source I'll just leave the employee number out of the article.

I'll work on finding sources for other stuff that needs updating, like Skully's comics. Let me know if you are aware of any recent interviews or reviews! --Cerebellum (talk) 08:10, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Fascist totalitarianism - the game

game is a good example for fascist totalitarianism in an online community. voice any opinion to the regime or even towards/against/about anything randomly decided by moderators who don't have to report to any superior and you will immediately (and even perma-)banned - no appeal is possible. quite often you just get banned randomly (I was once banned temporarily for wanting to do a giveaway - no joke!). and the large majority of players absolutely supports and advocates this behavior. since speaking openly will lead to bans, people disagreeing with the way asymmetric runs the game have to literally converse in secret with only each other. the culture of fear that is enforced in KoL is something you would never expect to see in an online video game and deserves being noted in the article.

asymmetric quite literally stole 3 years of my playing time and 1000$ in donations from me and are with a huge margin the worst video game developer I have ever experienced, if not the worst company itself.--User:193.170.86.132, 15:16, :17, & :19, 22 October 2018‎

Your rant does not help us to improve the article. And that's what we're here for. Creating good articles. Kind regards, Grueslayer 15:37, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

   Yah, GroozeLayer, sock it to dem Noobs!!! ....

   Ooohh, so sorry, witnessing fits of rage sometimes throws my character into a fugue state... But normally I do try to tone down self-described colleagues who rant against the personal attacks of editors who feel burned by predatious commercial sites. Of course, this sounds a lot like the predatious hooker who, as soon as the mark fronts some earnest-simmoleans, bolts with the wad without having provided the proffered services! But it's hard to judge.
--JerzyA (talk) 03:40, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Kingdom of Loathing/GA4. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

Hello, I was the editor that nominated this for GA back in 2011. I haven't updated it since, and I don't play the game anymore so I don't know if it is still accurate. Four citation needed tags and some questionable sources (kickstarter, the Radio KoL website). Does anybody object to me delisting the article? I'll give it a week or so and then proceed. --Cerebellum (talk) 10:58, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Closing, and delisting. --Cerebellum (talk) 10:15, 15 June 2022 (UTC)