History of MTE / YOUR story <:o)

[tinwoman]

As a fairly new player to MTE, I would love to see an area where people can talk about the history of the game. Not just the game, but the players. I know there are lots of players out there who have been around forEVER and share connections in so many ways. Perhaps a place where they can come and reminisce about the good old days and where newer players can come and listen to the tales. Where you can put stories with the cyber names, so people can become more "human" as tales are shared. What does anyone else think about this?

[Marilyn]

TW I moved your post here so it would be in the MTE area and people could start telling stories right away.
GREAT idea!
Thanks for coming up with it!
Karma hug for ya!

[tinwoman]

Yay! Karma good... me like karma... ;D

[Marilyn]

Pile on that Karma!

[tinwoman]

Well, I;'m not an old-timer (at least not n the game!) ... but I recall the first tiime I started to play MTE - I thought all that was available in the way of layouts was what was shown in my favorites list (which is generally a randomly created list your first time in the game). I played them all, then I thought - now what? LOL... I finally saw the "get more layouts" button and it was on! I used to be so excited when I could work a large layout at 8,500 points. The first time I attempted one at 10,000 points, I believe it was one of rammie's - and if you've ever attempted one by her/him -wow! So I went back to being content with the larger ones at 8,500! I started to message people about their layouts and MTE friendships began. I sure would like to hear what it was like kin the early days, when MTE was first put out as a game - is there anyone here who was around then?

[madeleine]

I bought my cd of the game by chance on a visit to the States - Christmas 2006. I was on Fort Bragg staying with daughter and son-in-law. I wandered into a video games shop in the PX and spotted the one and only copy on the shelf. I used to play Mahjong Towers online, and Mahjong Towers Master 3, so was already an addict.

I remember being all British and shocked when I first played because I suddenly realized people were somehow increasing the layout points. They were CHEATING!
I even made a layout with the subtitle "cheating sucks".

I lightened up though and started grabbing those 10000 pointers.
Then came my first nasty in-game message! from java rose I think I think it was.

Then a message from the wonderful Tia. Encouraging, sock it to them messages from Tina Marie and Marilyn.

My first triumphant cracking of a *heather*. As far as I'm concerned, the best layout designer in the game, along with Kimky. Why? because - their layouts are a challenge, but artistic, clever, solveable. I enjoy them.

Wonderful, lovely Piet also helped me by sending me hundreds of offline layouts by email. He is responsible for me getting to RLP - thanks Piet. Knuffles!

[tinwoman]

Wonderful story, Madeleine. I also enjoy Heather's LOs. I also like Juanita and Gerda's and for a challenge, Damien Krosz has some very simple-looking ones but are very very hard to solve - most are still at 10,000 ooints. They are deceptively easy looking, but extremely difficult to solve.

[madeleine]

I don't do Damien's on the grounds that he's the resident MTE nut - Daniel, Jason etc,etc talks to himself, uses aggressive, sexist language, he's the antichrist! Masquerades under so many names and clutters up the new layouts board with same old crap layouts. He's the bore of the world.

[doodlefritz]

I'm an old timer- I think. I've played under numerous names...that was in the old days when MTE would gobble up your player and we didn't know about backing up players and player lists. Some of my more memorable names- ahem, drum roll please- Czareena, Dingo, Spunkee and now, in honor of this wonderful forum, I've started from scratch as Doodlefritz. I'm not a speedie type and don't really go for the star thing. Iperfer and make layouts that are between 200-300 tiles, they are somewhat challenging- usually points averaging 7500-8000 points, but yu can go out and get points. My pet peave is the 750 tile layouts. They aren't really hard, just long and with only 1 shuffle- well lets say Las Vegas odds of winnig big are better than going out. I too enjoy Heather's layouts- very neat and almost mathematical. Some of the stuff out there now is so messy- I call them mouse turds as they take the mouse and just drop tiles at will-tee hee.

[Marilyn]

Very good stories everyone!
Thanks for telling them! This is going to be fun!

How I got my first player that made it to 90 stars name:
I'm not an an old timer, been around only since Oct of 05. I think the game came out in June or July of 05. I've been a "gamer" for a long time and used to subscribe to PC Gamer among other game mags. There was this article about this new BFG that was selling like hotcakes at $29.99. Well, there was NO WAY I was going to pay that much for a BFG game so played the trial with my first Marilyn player and figured I'd wait for the price to drop. So, actually I guess I have been around since the beginning if we count my first two players. ;D
Soooooooo the price finally dropped and I bought it and created my 2nd marilyn player. Yup, for some reason BFG let me have another marilyn player, check the player list and you'll see two, one w/a capital M and one w/a small m. Both me.
Back then I was going through a major lemon puter phase and my puter crashed. Soooooooo, I got a new puter and installed the game. Imagine my SHOCK when the game kept telling me I already existed when I was sitting there looking at my game being the only one there!! And at that point there were NO players in that silly game! How the heck could I be being told there was already a Marilyn player!!! If you have not figure out by now, I had NOT discovered there was an online community and I did not play games online so had no clue that my info was stored on any mystery BFG server, I'd never heard of that.
Sooooooooo, I had just gotten married and did NOT take my husbands last name. Independent little witch that I am, so since this stupid game (I thought it was stupid, there were NO players in that game!!) would not let me be Marilyn I created a player called Ms Haines and told my hubby that I had taken his name.
I'm still clueless as to the fact any of this info is going anywhere. I'm sitting there clicking, watching my favorites list grow, and I'd groan when I'd see I'd have to get what 180,000 points til the next rank? How the heck are you suppose to fit all those LOs into your game? I thought if I deleted any LOs, I'd lose the points I had earned. I couldn't even read the bottom of my favorites list! I was playing in classic, 500 point LOs, when I ran across one for 2500 I thought I'd hit the jack pot!
Then from time to time the game would give me this really really easy looking LO for 8500 points!!! I'd sit there staring at the layout wondering why this easy looking LO was worth so many points. Where was the catch? What was I missing? (REALLY need that ka-bonk smiley here that I keep talking about) ;D
I was playing layouts made by "Eskies Rule" and there was this spot that said I could send a message, so I thought OK, and I VERY NERVOUSLY sent this "Eskies Rule" a message that I liked their layouts. There was another player, Frank, he is back now and I can't remember what his name was at the time, but I messaged him as well as his LOs would be worth in the 4500-6500 range! OMG!!!Well, eventually, "Eskies Rule" who I later became friends with and know as Candy and then Frank messaged me back. What was this? They actually wrote back!!!
Keep in mind I STILL DO NOT KNOW THERE IS AN ONLINE COMMUNITY!!!
Sooooooooo, to end this section of my story, that is how I became known as "MH" and everyone thinks my last name is Haines and my first two initials are MS, when in fact it was me making a joke about taking my hubbys name.

[doodlefritz]

Great story and oh so true. Iknew about the online community cuz I got mahjong towers first edition. I didn't know how you could get a layout submitted- it was very complicated and I kept on freezing my 'puter. Soon after they put out mahjong towers eternity and I got it -for the 29$ price. I remeber making my first layout and submitting it and screaming to my husband to "get in here and look- people are actually playing my layout! Then, I noticed some folks got 7,8,9,10,000 for their layouts. I wondered who decided what points got assigned and by whom. All mine were only 2500. I figured the more poeple that played the higher the score-duh! My next duh was -OMG- what if the layout is too hard or-perish the thought- unsolveable. So, I kept on playing mine till I solved it and then shared it..duh! Antz clued me in on how to bump up layouts, but I did figure out getting max points by playing in concentration for the speedies. I thought I was pretty smart , until Antz told me everyone was doing it- that was the whole point of speedies...again-duh! Do you remeber who invented the speedie. I remember when Rimmerworld, Georgia and Marjette were all jockying for first place, Antz fatal crash and everyone putting out tons of speedies to help him get back and the crash of MTE when it couldn't keep up with all the speeders and people disappearing after what?19 stars. Thats when they went to colored stars- I think.Pshew..this is making my brain hurt...

[Marilyn]

Hi DOODLE!
I actually missed all that cause I had no clue you were all out there! Somehow I saw the link to the "Unofficial (at that time, was not official yet) MTE forum and I did eventually get brave enough to go there. I've since deleted my membership there, but maybe I could search my name and see if any of my old posts come up because that would give me the timing of when I first started to discover there was an online community.
I'd never been a member of a forum before.
I remember one of my first questions was how to get more LOs from one player, and they would tell me to click the arrow key, and I'd keep saying I'd get 20 of the players LOs but no more, I went round and round and round with this and never got an answer. It wasn't until about May of 06, I had become friends with a player named Mandi and we would IM while playing, so just while chatting I brought this up, and she said you actually had to HOLD the green down arrow key for a couple of seconds sometimes to get addtional LOs. Up until that point, I'd never get more than 20 LOs per player that I knew of. ;D

[doodlefritz]

This one night, I wanted to see how many layouts, in the random list-I think- there were so I kept on pulling and pulling until I jammed up my computer, and had to un-install the game and then do a restore- With all thoses layouts, my computer was running sooooooo slow. My husband was pretty P*ssed at me! I remember joining mte forum and getting into a fight with someone- she was really mad at me cuz I suggested we bombard mte with emails during the weekend and holiday can't get online crisis. That was when you could take away karma. Well she took away a karma from me, so for the next week, every hour, I was taking away her karma, till she only had 2 left. Guess that's why my hubbie calls me Spunkee!

[Marilyn]

I got curious and looked up my first player that made it to 90 stars.
Here is my very first LO ever I made: my 1st try
Feb 18, '06
I didn't know how to bump. ;D

[barb]

Well, I guess I have been around for awhile too, since Sept 05, much like most of us I didn't have a clue to bumping, speedies or anything, did figure out that I could get more layouts, so would play them and then delete and go find some more..One day I came across some speedies, also made by Eskies Rule aka Candi...so that's when I started doing speedies, but still didn't know anything about the bumping, and wondered how my layouts would get up to 8500 pts, so dumb..So one day Candi wrote me about how she liked my speedies, and replied and told her couldn't figure out how the point value when up so high, and she explained about bumping..Boy was I hooked then, had already figured out the concentration part on my own LOL
Soon after that my first player crashed, and I was so close of just throwing in the towel, didn't know about the online layout index or stars until later, think Marilyn is the one that told me about that, so my new player became barbara010, and still worried about all those crashes, and loosing my player again, and about the time I would have probably lost this player, here comes the fix...but even after all these years I am still learning new things...and I have made some of the best of friends on the forums..okay so now I wanna thank all of those people who have helped me along and thanks for all of the wonderful people I have met, may we be around for along time ))
Karma Hugs
Barb