User blog:Ckohrs0221/A Thank You of Epi(demi)c Proportion

Months and months ago, Echostar had Mary go out to Poland to help with some outbreak, and Ellie came to me and asked if this was an expansion in the making. I assured her that it was not and let the matter rest.

However… it got me thinking. What would an epidemic look like? I’ve always been a fan of the game Pandemic 2 (I play it when I’m sick to make myself feel better). What could that look like on the wiki? I wrote the roughest of outlines EVER and showed it to my AI team.

And they ran with it. We worked together to create the disease from what little the Harry Potter wiki had to offer (and a wikipedia article on tuberculosis) and customized all the logistics to fit the wiki and make it run in the smoothest, most realistic way as possible.

I said this multiple times in the lead-up to, and during the Expansion… this is the biggest undertaking of an expansion that I’ve ever done so far in my time as Crat, or even in my time on the wiki. And it really did take a TEAM to do it. And it didn’t take just one team to make it a success-- it took multiple, and I really want to highlight them, because they deserve every bit as much credit as I do.


 * To my AI team-- Ellie, Carn and Lilly.
 * You guys stepped up in such a huge way, and I’m so ridiculously grateful to have worked with all three of you. You all contributed amazing ideas, and you all worked so hard to make this a success. You guys helped create ideas, you created code, and you helped me owl everyone, updating over 70 characters in 3-4 levels of disease, plus all the owls that the disease was over. I can’t thank you enough for your hard work, and diligence to make this expansion a success.


 * To the St. Mungo’s team-- Ellie, Carn, Lilly, Bond, Catty, Soph, Frost and Soa.
 * I knew when I created this expansion that it would be the biggest thing to happen to St. Mungo’s in a really long time. And you all stepped up and played along with enthusiasm. It was a crazy ride, and I’m so grateful I had such an expansive team to help out with everything!


 * To the rest of the userbase:
 * Thank you for participating! Thank you for diving in enthusiastically, and RPing with such creativity! Whenever I create an expansion one of the first things I think is… “will people actually like this? Is this something everyone will want to do… or is it just me who finds this cool?” I had such a good time reading all of your RPs when you had someone getting sick. (Even if the sense of dread in the early RPs was so real, and not something I had anticipated) And all of the reunion RPs when patients got out of the hospital… those were really fun to stalk as well. So thank you for being enthusiastic and willing to try something new with me and the AI team.

If you have any comments or suggestions about what you experienced, please feel free to leave them here, shoot me an owl, or catch me in chat. I can’t promise another epidemic expansion soon (because let’s be real… I think St. Mungo’s would be on hyper alert right now), but I’d love to see your thoughts now that we’re all on the other side of things.

So… again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I could not have done this without all of you, and I’m so grateful to each and every one of you!