Ok, a quick note before we start. Sorry I forgot about you Jason when I said it was about time someone I actually knew made a post. I know you posted a comment a long time ago. What I meant to say was someone I knew and actually liked.... I kid, I kid. You are the best dyslexic friend I have (take that Patty! You are #2 in my dyslexic friend list; also known as last place). Jason caring about my scrabble exploits even though some of his synapses were installed backwards or whatever is like me giving him feedback on his photography even though he doesn't know I am colorblind. Whoops... I mean, umm, differently sighted which allows me to offer a unique artistic perspective on what I am pretty sure are beautiful trees changing colors and sunrises and rainbows...
So the I.S.C.... As a wildly popular game (scrabble is in 1 out of 3 houses in the U.S.) backed by the financial might of Hasbro Industries, you would think there would be a easy and fun way to play online. You would be right. Its called scrabbulous, its on FaceBook and they are currently being sued by Hasbro http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/hasbro-seeking-to-shut-down-scrabulous
The legal issue at stake seems to be that someone actually made scrabble cool enough for people between the traditional demographics of under 16 and over 60. This is apparently not part of Hasbro's business plan... Or copyright infringement or something. Whatever the justification, instead of trying to work together with people who actually care about Scrabble, its owners have chosen once again one of their two tried and true (thats fun to say, try it) responses: ignoring them or taking them to court. Must...Get...Train...Back...On....Tracks...(wheres that conductor guy when you need him?)
Ok, we now return you to your regularly scheduled diatribe. I will come back to Hasbro and their (non)support of their game some time/post soon. So the "best" option out there for playing scrabble online that is not currently going to court is the I.S.C. or the Internet Scrabble Club. They are also unlicensed and oddly hard to find. Google searches for both ISC and I.S.C. do not turn up anything scrabble related on the first ten pages of links. Is the international shogi club really that much better than us? Ignatian Spirituality Conference? Even the Irvine Strikers Soccer Club beat us and they are I.S.S.C. and a youth soccer team! (they do have cooler uniforms than us though) So maybe that is the ISC's strategy: keep off the radar and appear as "ghetto" as possible. Check out their home page http://www.isc.ro/ Note the ro at the end of that address. Thats right, the program that everyone from world champions to scrubs like me use is made in Romania by people who speak Romanian instead of English. Fun facts about Romania courtesy of the the infallible Wikipedia:
1) Romanians make up 89.5 percent of those who live in Romania. (Did I miss something in Social Studies class or don't all the people who live in a country on a long term basis "belong" to that country?) Also why is it "those" instead of people? Are there non-people living in Romania also formerly known as Transylvania? Argh! My scrabble game is run by vampires! ( insert your own "sucks" joke here)
2) Romania has four different seasons. (What they don't get to experience the beauty of spinter the fifth and best season that the rest of the world enjoys?)
3) The oldest human remains were discovered in Romania in a place named "Cave with Bones" I kid you not. (Reports that there was a stake in the ribcage of these remains has not been confirmed though...)
4) The official logo used to encourage tourism (as in they designed it themselves to get people to come there) is the word Romania in blood red letters except for the "m" which appears to have been turned into two moss covered teeth, with the sun setting over the whole thing.
5) Famous son, Vlad the Impaler, is viewed by Romanians as an excellent ruler with a strong sense of justice who defended their religious and political beliefs from outsiders. (I could really use whoever is his publicist right about now)
So the ISC is owned and operated by a mysterious figure in Romania that no one has ever seen in person. There is no known way to contact him (her/it/them?!?). If you have a problem with the interface or your membership or keeping all your blood to yourself then you have to take it up with one of the "helpers". At some point in the distant past applications were accepted for the position of assisting players with whatever difficulties they had with the finest interface that 100 blood stained gold coins could buy. Its unclear how many helpers (or evil minions as I think of them) there are. There is no convenient list of who is and is not a helper. The best you can do is add them to your "friends list" (which has a limited capacity) whenever you discover one. There is a feature where you can talk directly to another person who is online at the time, but if you try this with a minion they will ignore you at best or more likely punish you in some way such as preventing you from talking with anyone else or deleting your account entirely. Instead you are advised to place your question into a queue with some ungodly amount of other backed up unanswered questions. A lovely feature of the program is that once you ask one question, you cannot ask another one until the first is answered officially. It does not matter if you have already found the answer, or if you log off and back on or if it has been thirty days, you are stuck waiting for one the minions to decide that "answering" your question would amuse them in some fashion. Indeed, they go out of their way to find questions that can serve as set ups. A real example : "Can someone tell me a good way to get better quickly please?"
"Get a brain transplant." That's hilarious if you are a 7 year old (or maybe an Igor lab assistant..)
but is in no way helpful which, theoretically, is what a "helper" should be. Players have their accounts terminated for very mild curse words used while talking with a helper (not at them necessarily, just while talking with them) but I have seen helpers curse on multiple occasions. If one player is vulgar to another or cyber stalks them or does anything to another player, the helpers don't care and just tell the victim to "noplay them" which makes it harder (though not impossible) for the offending party to continue their offensive actions. The double standard is simply ridiculous. All this anger has got me hungry so I will cut this post short so I can refuel and prepare myself for part two of this piece of investigative journalism.
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