Cleaver interview/Part 7

In May 2005, Cleaver agreed to be interviewed in a Ventrilo chat session hosted by Bluetta. Questions were posed by a variety of guests, who either contributed to winning Cleaver in the auction, or won a ticket in three events Bluetta hosted. Llama recorded the interview. Part seven is transcribed below.

Cleaver sings, Llama sings, trial subscriptions

Stevedave:	I have a song suggestion which is suitably piratey, and actually rather easy. What about "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum"? As in "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest."
(?):	Does that actually have a tune?
Stevedave:	I would assume so, it's kind of a shanty.
Cleaver:	Yeah, it kind of has a tune. (sings) Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. Well, this is very long, but I'll give it a little go. Yeah, this is not a particularly nice song, actually, it's not really my kind of tune, but we'll give it a quick go. So. Here we go. (sings) Fifteen men on a dead man's chest Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike The bosun brained with a marlinespike And cookey's throat was marked belike It had been gripped by fingers ten And there they lay, all good dead men Like break o'day in a boozing ken Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! (cheering)
(?):	Definitely a bass.
Cleaver:	Maybe when I'm talking piratey, yeah.
Cleaver:	Anyone else going to sing for us?
(?):	Yeah, I was about to suggest that. Llama, can you do us all a favor and sing that Scotsman song.
Randall:	He cannot speak while he is recording.
(?):	He doesn't need to record himself.
(?):	He says he'll try.
(?):	I'm trying to think if I know anything appropriate but I don't know if I do.
(?):	Well that's the problem is so much of it is inappropriate. (sings) Aboard the good ship Venus, you really shoulda seen us...
(?):	What's Llama singing again?
(?):	"The Drunken Scotsman"
(?):	The drunken Scotsman.
(?):	Yeah I just have one question before you start, Llama. Cleaver, would you ever consider coming back now that you've seen how horrible we can be here?
Cleaver:	Sure, I'd come back. I think the whole voice-chat thing's a little bit weird, but you're all nice, so, I wouldn't rule it out.
(?):	(Various crosstalk) You should probably subject somebody else to the torture first, though.
Cleaver:	Yeah, I'm definitely sending Nemo in here.
(?):	He'll get the tough questions.
(?):	Alright Llama, you can sing?
Llama:	Yeah, I just need to find the lyrics. Why am I singing this again?
(?):	Because we like it.
(?):	Peer pressure.
Llama:	He's never going to come back after this, you know that.
(?):	Yeah he will.
Llama:	(sings) Well a Scotsman clad in kilt left a bar one evening fair, And one could tell by how he walked he’d drunk more than his share. He fumbled ‘round until he could no longer keep his feet, And he stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street. Ring-ding-diddle-iddle-adi-o Ring-da-diddly-ai-o He stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street. About that time two young and lovely girls just happened by, One says to the other with a twinkle in her eye, “See yon sleeping Scotsman, so strong and handsome built, I wonder if it’s true what they don’t wear beneath the kilt?” Ring-ding-diddle-iddle-adi-o Ring-da-diddly-ai-o I wonder if it’s true what they don’t wear beneath the kilt? She crept up on that sleeping Scotsman, quiet as could be, Lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see. And there, behold, for them to view beneath his Scottish shirt, Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth. Ring-ding-diddle-iddle-adi-o Ring-da-diddly-ai-o Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth. They marveled for a moment than one said, “we must be gone, Let’s leave a present for our friend before we move along.” As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon tied into a bow, Around the bonny-star the Scot’s kilt did lift and show. Ring-ding-diddle-iddle-adi-o Ring-da-diddly-ai-o Around the bonny-star the Scot’s kilt did lift and show. Now the Scotsman woke to nature’s call and stumbled towards a tree, Behind the bush he lifts his kilt and gawks at what he sees. And in a startled voice he says to what’s before his eyes, “Lad I don’t know where ya been but I see you won first prize.” Ring-ding-diddle-iddle-adi-o Ring-da-diddly-ai-o Lad I don’t know where ya been but I see you won first prize. And I'm never singing that again. (general cheers)
Cleaver:	That was great. That was excellent. Well done, sir. I'm very impressed
(?):	Llama, I love when you do that. I'm crying again.
(?):	Especially because you're not Scottish in any way, shape, or form. [5:32]
Cleaver:	Yeah, quality work, that.
Llama:	Ah, we try, thank you.
(?):	Madam's comment says Rubby wants Cleaver to pronounce Leushite.
(?):	I think Cleaver should go through each of the Midnight islands and settle for us- is it [Xi] "Zee" or "zeye"?
Cleaver:	Kai. It's pronounced "kai", yeah.
(?):	He's just saying that to throw us all off.
Cleaver:	It's true, it's Greek!
(?):	Actually, it's "k-see" actually.
Cleaver:	It's "key"?
(?):	Ksi. It's a "kuh" and a "see." Ksi.
Cleaver:	There you go. I'm so wrong. But I knew it was a "kuh"!
(?):	What about leushite, then?
Cleaver:	I think leushite's pretty good, yeah. I always sort of think it "lay-oo-shite", but that's not right.
(?):	It does make it easier to spell if you remember it that way, though.
Cleaver:	Indeed, yeah. I have trouble with the spelling of many of the minerals.
(?):	I've got a question. Are there more oceans in the works, depending on more subscribers and Ubi-deals and whatnot?
Cleaver:	Yeah, yeah. There's one actually pretty much done and waiting to go out. That should be exciting. And it's kind of cool, it's very different from the other ones. So, yeah. More oceans, pending more pirates.
(?):	Are you guys going to focus on subscriber or doubloon servers? Has Viridian been working out, as far as the doubloon system?
Cleaver:	You know, we haven't really decided yet. We're still looking at it. It's definitely doing something. As you guys well know, the usage there is much higher than it is on the other two servers. Yeah, it's an interesting business. It's kind of weird, and I'm not comfortable with it in some ways, but in other ways it's better than subscription. It doesn't have the cut-off where you have to tell people to go away. I like that part of it- it doesn't require the $10/month commitment and I like that too. So I think we're probably going to stick with it a while but we're definitely not going to move everything over to doubloons. We may move all the Miniclip kids over to doubloons, because they don't convert very well into subscribers. I mean, they don't convert very well into doubloon purchases either, but it seems to be a more sensible place for them to hang out. We may have to open a new doubloon ocean just because Viridian is filling up. I think 1350 was the reason peak there, so we're not quite sure how many we can fit on the server and we're actually going to try and find out with Viridian. We may be able to get nearer 2,000 before we start to see a severe problem. At that point in the not-too-distant future we'll have to open another doubloon server. So we're definitely sticking with it for the meantime, but we haven't- maybe in a few months we'll do more of an analysis. It's kind of a hard thing to tell.
(?):	I was just going to ask, I don't think it was asked yet: Are Adventure Islands really what we're looking for? Are those on their way any time in the near future?
Cleaver:	They may be what you're looking for. I'm not going to comment on their way-ness (?) or otherwise. But The List is mighty, right? But then again, we are actually making our way through The List. I think it's a question of what gets the most for new development time. We were talking about Adventure Islands just the other day at lunch, saying, "It would be so great." But there would be lots of things that would be so great, and we have very limited resources. It's just a question of what we can do that we think will be the most fun. And that would be one of them, but some other fun stuff to be a variation when you're out pillaging might be more interesting in the immediate time. But they are what you're looking for. Whatever it is that you're looking for- that's on Adventure Islands.
(?):	Has there been any thought to a kind of in-between subscriber and doubloon, sort of like set-up a subscriber ocean but if your account expires, you still can log in your character, but without the same abilities, sort of you can only be a cabin person and things like that.
Cleaver :	You mean like an indefinite free trial kind of thing?
(?):	Yeah, sort of. You only have some of the abilities a full pirate would have.
Cleaver:	Yeah. We could do something like that. It's sort of worth considering. For existing subscribers, I'd be much more inclined to do something like that. In some ways, I'm inclined to put more of a barrier on the subscription oceans if we're going to push forward with doubloons, because one of the problems with subscription oceans is if you get tons and tons of greenies who're never going to subscribe, every time you try and train them up, it's sort of like wasting your time with it. Which is frustrating. So if you knew that everyone who was a greenie on the subscription ocean, for example, had already put their credit card in, they're on a free trial, but they have seven days before they have to cancel otherwise they get billed. Then you'd know that they were very much more likely to stick around. So I'm kind of more tempted to try that on the subscription side and actually tighten it down a bit more, now that we have the doubloons thing. But we could definitely try something like that, and we could consider it before we do the doubloons thing. But it's tough if you have the indefinite free trial without ever subscribing, then it's tough to say- you probably have to take more away then you do now- just the things you get access to now might not be enough to make people come over and be subscribers, but maybe it would. We should probably try more of these things, frankly. That's the bottom line. You don't really know until you try.