Games - Lum the Mad

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Scott Jennings, more widely known as Lum the Mad, was a well-known MMORPG commentator whose site, The Rantings of Lum The Mad, existed from 1998 to 2001. Prior to the explosion of blog sites, Lum's website played host to a long series of rants about the MMORPG community of the time. Until recently he was an employee of Mythic Entertainment, makers of Dark Age of Camelot, but left to work on as as-yet unrevealed project at NCsoft. He also has a blog, , which is updated infrequently (and sometimes about games, too).

Scott's nom de plume of Lum the Mad was his Ultima Online character's name; the original Lum the Mad was a character in the Greyhawk campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons and has been featured in Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, as the creator of Watcher's Keep.

A Brief History

Archives of Scott's early writings are sparse, especially things before his rise to notoriety. He has some copies of his old articles available .

Before The Fame

Scott's foray into the internet began with a web site about Daggerfall, where he dispensed helpful tips and tricks. His focus eventually shifted to a game called Ultima Online(UO), where a lot of his initial rantings began.

His writing style was brash, but creative, and his posts garnered the attention of many fans and critics of the game. They would eventually grab the attention of the UO developers, further increasing his popularity as well as his bandwidth bill.

He was beaten in his attempt to register lumthemad.com by a competing ranter known as Dr. Twister. In a case of cybersquatting, Twister announced he would only relinquish the domain for a substantial amount of money. Instead, Scott settled for a .net extension.

The Golden Days

As more MMORPGs came to the scene, so did Lum's rants focus on them. His dabbling in Everquest presented a disturbing picture of where MMORPGs were going, a prediction which has largely come to pass. He had some good words for Asheron's Call, but it too had its foibles. His later works became even more elaborate, such as a mock-up event for Shadowbane done entirely with Warcraft 2 sprites. Instead of the usual review article for World War II Online, he posted a long, profane and hilarious of him testing the game offline, in which he uttered the famous words, "I WILL TAXI TO VICTORY!"

He attracted many well-known MMORPG staff and developers to his site for discussions on his forums, such as Richard Garriott, Raph Koster, and Mark Jacobs. Discussions often centered around the very virtual worlds they built, with lots of interesting comments from the community.

Later additions included Wikipedia editor Bruce Rolston (BruceR) and some other Wikipedia editor (Snowspinner).

He wasn't always there to write every day, however. He gathered together a team of writers to fill in with whatever he couldn't cover. The LumCorp staff, as they were called, consisted of quite a few people over time. Arcadian Del Sol, , , (who worked for NetDevil), Lietgardis (who now works for Wolfpack Studios), Myschyf, Riprend, (who until 2004 worked for Themis Group), and Lum's Other Half (his wife).

Lum Sells Out For A Bagel

Keeping up the immense bandwidth bills was tedious. Being at the fall of the dot com bubble, finding a host with cheap prices and reliable service was tough. It also didn't help that banner ad revenues were beginning to fail miserably, which eventually led to the end of one of his favorite hosts and sponsor, the Crossroads gaming network.

He began asking for donations, of which the community provided him with a large amount. It's estimated over $2,000 was donated before the falling out. He kept the site going for quite some time on the money, even keeping a page updated as to how he spent it.

Unfortunately, as with many of the tech positions at the time, Lum lost his job. However, it wasn't long after being laid-off that he was approached by Mythic Entertainment for a job opening. He was hired to work on the back-end parts of Dark Age of Camelot and developed the .

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Lum the Mad ]

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