Ripper's Majic Bus

Yes, it's me. The outspoken, quick-witted, yet resourceful comedian, fabricator and writer that the lingering gearheads of Crossroads Atlantic, refer to so affectionately as Runty; RuntyRebel.

Although it seems overwhelming to say this, it's been years (yes, years) now since we have had the opportunity, no, privelage, of logging on to the sound of Double D-MX, the "Monster of Motor City Radio". It seems like only yesterday we were sitting down at our computers; the kids ranting on about their paychecks, the city-scum offering server trades with a catch similar to: "Server Trade: $500,000; will scam you on the server of your choice", the racers snug quietly in a Formula Firebird at Hazard Hollow, and the veterans hiding from their peers (and wives) at Deasy's Bar & Grill, or some other undisclosed location.

Where has the time gone? From what I've learned to assume and accept, it's most likely found its way into the bank account of Electronic Arts, Inc (Although I'd like to say that it's managed to reside itself in the form of memories deep in the backwoods of Skoggit County). Yes, it seems as only yesterday that I was chasing down PigPen in a '40 Ford, bearing a plate reading "BACON". It seems as only yesterday I was mutely laughing about the appearance of the "Notre Dame Delight" (Irish Duster), or sitting in the seat of my convertible Corvette across from Joe Clutch preparing to endure a race of witt at Metro Garage.

Nonetheless, precious times such as these have managed (in the words of Paul Simon), to "slip, slide away". What once was a thriving community, prosperous in knowledge, abundant in euphoria, has now decreased down to the remaining, true "good ole boys" of what we knew as Motor City.

Ok, so you wake up in the morning. Before heading off to work, you check the "Classifieds" of the newspaper, pour a cup of coffee, and try to log in to Motor City (and yes, some of still bear a faded maroon "MC" button on their desktop) to scout Muscle Mikes, or the PHA's for a potential deal on a cherrished combination of metals. You realize, however, that you're faced with one major problem: connecting to a server that no longer exists.

So, where do we stand now? What is our future? Can it be told by the implementation of rumors (not that old Fleetwood Mac album you have stowed away in the closet) that fulfill every Motor City-related message board that has been created by a citizen lost in the depression and deprivation of the loss of such a damn good game? Perhaps, but not likely.

Where we stand now, is together. We abide by the same code we always have: morality (although we swear up and down as to what we'd do if we could only get our hands on someone).

If you've taken the time to read this, then you must understand and appreciate the importance of our community. If Motor City isn't revived, we'll still have one another. Sure, it will not quite be the same, but where we stand now is a lot better than our alternative.

-RuntyRebel

(Hope this was another good read... )

Good read! Well said!

You'd think that someone would have taken notice of our devotion and seen dollar signs by now. It's really too bad that EA backed out of the deal to sell MCO.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to write such a well thought out post.

Look how many people and have subscribed to Worlds of Warcraft so far.

That's a commercial success. Hundreds of thousands of copies flying out of stores as fast as they are stocked. Servers not only at capacity from their original volume, but even the added, backup servers are full...

Compare that to the 2000 players at any given time that were playing MCO.

MCO was a good game, and an even better concept and engine. But, the best thing about it ended up being the message board, and that's been nicely recreated here- without the TOS violations.

The best thing about MCO was NOT the message board.

Heh, I used to love being an auctioneer on Crossroads. I remember when Irish Dusters first came out, they were HOT. 2 weeks later, you couldnt sell one for more then a few thousand. 2 months later they were hot again.


It was a fun game though, you're right. I miss the old demo derby games the most.

I wish they would try it again without the message boards.
Just think if they could merge consoles and pc's all into the world of MCO.

A game like that involving economy, cars and clubs would have to work,
given a fair chance.

Last night I dreamed I woke up in 1969 with 100,000 cash.

I bought Yenko's, Cobra's, Hemi's. When I started that Z28, I woke up

Trying to go back to sleep. 8-)

Great post Runty!

Now looking back on it, I wish I'd spent more time in-game then on the boards

Such a great concept, it could have been so much better....

Gave me a place to hang out when I couldn't play the game.

But.... the best part was building the cars with real world parts.

NOTHING has come close to matching that experience. Add stage one parts, yawn. Even Porsche Unleashed My Favorite game up to that point paled ... I wonder what this camshaft and those heads would do?

Ah to me that was what the game was all about.

Da_Rev wrote:Gave me a place to hang out when I couldn't play the game.

But.... the best part was building the cars with real world parts.

NOTHING has come close to matching that experience. Add stage one parts, yawn. Even Porsche Unleashed My Favorite game up to that point paled ... I wonder what this camshaft and those heads would do?

Ah to me that was what the game was all about.

Me too!

Zardoz wrote:

Da_Rev wrote:Gave me a place to hang out when I couldn't play the game.

But.... the best part was building the cars with real world parts.

NOTHING has come close to matching that experience. Add stage one parts, yawn. Even Porsche Unleashed My Favorite game up to that point paled ... I wonder what this camshaft and those heads would do?

Ah to me that was what the game was all about.

Me too!

Yep that's exactly how I feel too. Until somebody makes a game extremely close to what MCO was I will never be satisfied with a driving game again.

I don't even try anymore.

I look at it like this:

Nobody built their cars in the style that I did, because I built them to fit my driving style. Anybody that ever tried one of my setups knows that. I had countless people calling my setups bullshit because when they put a car together like that they couldn't handle it the way they wanted to.

There were a bunch of people with exactly the same parts that followed setups (Skar's goose setup was probably on 100's of cars), but most of us just went our own way, and went what felt comfortable to us.

I'll admit I haven't played any racing games more than a day, because I don't see anything that comes close there. I really don't think I will buy another driving game until something in the same vein comes about.

If you just want to get on a game without having to think about anything, then get FlatOut! What I mean is, we have a chat lobby now and you just get in and race. It's no MCO and nobody is comparing it to that. But as far as just havig a great time racing against friends... FlatOut is the cure for that.

I was not going to get any more racing games until one came out with the depth that MCO did, but FlatOut helps us at least get together and race again.

And you're right about your setups Bats. I tried yours before and I couldn't see how you did it, just that your name was in lights every week so it worked for you!

If you just want to get on a game without having to think about anything,....

That's the problem for people like me, I want to think about it, plan set-ups build engines, swap trannies, springs, sway bars, etc.

Getting to do nothing is a huge disappointment and the mostly cryptic settings on other games do little to satisfy the wrench turner in me.

MCO did....sigh

That is the biggest thing in MCO was building the car from ground up not choosing stupid colors or the stupid vinyals like in NFSU 2, the tracks kicked ass, also the clubs and competition was great, u had so many choices in building that it took for ever which kept the game from becoming boring, people left due to EA's stupid 10 a month charge is what ultimately led to MCO down fall, such low numbers for EA only about 30k of people bought game but if it was no subscription it would have surpassed NFSU 2 number of copies with ease.

MCO showed me that i am a "tweaker". I loved to play with car setups. Until another comes out like it, well..... i would love to see another MMOG racing game. I got plenty of ideas, I just wish I had some $$$ to see if my ideas were any good.

Sonjeir wrote:

If you just want to get on a game without having to think about anything,....

That's the problem for people like me, I want to think about it, plan set-ups build engines, swap trannies, springs, sway bars, etc.

Getting to do nothing is a huge disappointment and the mostly cryptic settings on other games do little to satisfy the wrench turner in me.

MCO did....sigh

Ditto that Sonjeir!

I had a lot of fun racing with a group of regulars at BAGP and running with BCR in the weekly run event races. But I spent most of my time tweaking my Mach1 setup for BAGP or Goose. I loved tweaking the setup. I really loved smoking those Formulas with my Mach in the club races. I loved helping people with their setups too. MCO really filled a part of my life that I thought I'd never get back after I had to leave racing. In the pits at the local track people would help each other out but we all knew it was every man for himself once we hit the track and that's the kind of "brotherhood" I found in MCO.

people left due to EA's stupid 10 a month charge is what ultimately led to MCO down fall,

I'd have to disagree with that.

It wasn't the charge, which was inline with what most other online games cost. Problem was it was the first pay-to-play racing game, people just weren't used to that.

The unseen advantages to that kind of racing game made it more than worth the money.

First and foremost was the lack of cheating, while some exploits cropped up from time to time, they were stamped out quickly.

A promise of an ever-growing complement of cars, tracks, parts and racing modes made just the anticipation of new stuff enough to stick around.

To me the racing pits were much more "community" friendly, it was a breeze to run tourneys once you had your details together.

If I was at a friends house I could jump on an extra PC pull my account right up and race no need to tote save files or worry about incompatibilities (and vice versa).

I worry though that it is being used as too strict a gauge of public interest in a MMORG. Mainly because my belief in why MCO failed was poor advertising and bad product placement after launch.

Sonjeir wrote: it was a breeze to run tourneys once you had your details together.

With help from your friends I would've never gotten through the tourneys without you guys helping me.

Sonjeir wrote: I worry though that it is being used as too strict a gauge of public interest in a MMORG. Mainly because my belief in why MCO failed was poor advertising and bad product placement after launch.

I think it still goes back to it being the first pay to play racing game. TBH, I don't know if they really did enough to pull in the people that were used to the other games you could play online for free.

I had a student here at the school that I raced with constantly, and when we tried to recruit others to play, his selling point to them was "Every month we get an update, and we get new cars, new tracks, new parts. It's like a whole new game. For the $10 that's worth it." But for the kids that are used to copying cd's from their friends for games, and really not having to actually pay ANYTHING it's just too much. Not worth it.

I think for a MMORG to be truly successful, it's going to need to do something extra. Personally, having a cheat free environment was quite a selling point for me, but it won't be to others.

There's got to be that one extra thing that people say.... "That's worth paying for!" Maybe even real money in return? There's an idea. I know I've played backgammon and poker online for real money before.

Perhaps having part of your monthly fee going toward real money tournament entries would be a selling point for some? Take .25 or .50 of each persons monthly fee, and put it in a tourney pot. That could be enough to push some people to it. Maybe not, but hey... worth a shot, right? I know there are plenty of smaller software manufacturers running card games or backgammon games for real money and some have been doing it for years. Gamesgrid (where I used to play BG) has been charging monthly fees for years, and are still around. How many free board/card game sites are out there? Tons. If you aren't going to play for real money, the only real attraction to their backgammon game was that the top pro's played at GG.

I think it can be done again, but it's going to take one helluva salesman to convince a gaming company to take the risk.

With help from your friends I would've never gotten through the tourneys without you guys helping me.

You got that right !! I ran one tourney by myself, now granted by then I had written some PHP scripts to pull all the stats from the race results but it was still too hair pulling.

Piggy was alot of help in mine, and there was another guy, sadly I can't remember his name, that was tremendous amount of help. He wrote me several Excel spread sheets that made all the calculations almost brainlessly easy, I just punched in the race results and it churned out my leaders and winners.

Personally, having a cheat free environment was quite a selling point for me, but it won't be to others.

There's a sad reflection on todays generation of gamers, cheats are becoming expected in games. All the experiences I have had racing online and playing other games since MCO just proves to me most of the new generation of gamers just want a quick fix or quick win. They compete not to see who is best in the game, but who can think of the most creatuive way to cheat or use exploits.

i like the tourney pot idea, also the in game money could be given a real world dollar value. In game money could be bought and sold though an online kiosk. People could put real money in to get ahead or take fake money out for profit. Of course with that a completely fool-proof cash management interface would be as daunting and costly to produce as the game itself.

Sonjeir wrote: also the in game money could be given a real world dollar value. In game money could be bought and sold though an online kiosk. People could put real money in to get ahead or take fake money out for profit. Of course with that a completely fool-proof cash management interface would be as daunting and costly to produce as the game itself.

project entropia does that. you buy PE money for real money. You don't have to, but it helps. Otherwise, their game is free I think?

Sonjeir wrote: i like the tourney pot idea, also the in game money could be given a real world dollar value. In game money could be bought and sold though an online kiosk. People could put real money in to get ahead or take fake money out for profit. Of course with that a completely fool-proof cash management interface would be as daunting and costly to produce as the game itself.

Wasn't that Kiosk called Ebay?

I never bought money but when I first started I did buy a guide and some setups. Later I put out an easier guide. Some guys picked it up and one tried to sell it on ebay. I asked him not to and he pulled it. I think they did sell it in-game to some people though, it was available on the message boards, that's where I put it to begin with.

I look at all the shows about hotroddin' now. The Barrett-Jackson Auction that just went off. I can't believe that EA is not jumping on this wave and putting MCO back out there.

There must be some reason those shows are popin' up. I bet it would draw more now than when the first started.

Someone should wake up.

I just found this place. I miss MCO. Remember seeing the 8Ball for the first time? Remember wanting to build that huge big block that never worked? FOR SALE: SETUP TO UB3R WHEELIE POPPIN 32 500k!!11

The good times.

Welcome aboard JohnnyX!

Welcome aboard!

I remember haveing the very first 8-ball. :-P


:mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Derbys in the drive in,,,What a rush. The last minute rush to get the best club times posted for the week. Anyone got any clover leaf rims for sale?