Illusions smashed

For many Gamers, those people that spend their days creating the worlds the Gamers wallow in are Gods. The Developers work hard with code, art assets and the eating of greasy carry-out. The Developers sit in Meetings to discuss the current direction the project is taking. The Gamers play the Games, sketch their favorite characters, eat crappy corndogs from the Mall's food-court, and endlessly talk about their favorite games and how they would do things differently. Despite these apparent similarities, the Dev's are often looked upon as other-worldly, beyond the Gamer's reach. As if the Dev walked around all day in a hazy, silver glow.

The closest a Gamer may ever get to a Dev is on the Official Forums at a Game's Website. Oft times, the screen names chosen by the Dev's will be a color that let's it stand out on the Member list, further adding to the Illusion that the Dev's are God-like.

And then, every so often, one of the Gods stumbles and rolls down the mountain side.

A representative of lotro.onlinewelten.com, a German website, posted they had some exclusive info regarding LOTRO, including this Screenshot. See how the guy is holding the bow and pulling back on it? Seems this irked Unthor:

The way the hunter is drawing the bow and arrow is wrong.

The arrow is riding too low (middle of the hand) and is on the wrong side of the bow.

The arrow, when drawn, should rest on the top of the hand on the left side of the bow.

Pulling out her Dev God Wand of Knowledge +1, Patience counters with:

All three archers here in my little space at Turbine, and I'm one of those three, say no: the arrow should be on the right side if you're pulling with your right hand; otherwise, the arrow is crossing the bowstring, you'll hurt your arm, and the arrow will go flying wildly into the sky, even if its fletching wasn't damaged as it crossed the string.

-Patience

Which elicited a

PWN3D!

J00 R T3H L337 4RCH3R!!!

from ep. (One of these days, I'm going to analyze how many threads in a given number of forums contain l33t-speak. Or maybe someone already did it for me. Yay Google!)

Synovis quickly jumped to Unthor's aid, provoking Patience to invoke her Dev God Spell of Call Familiars:

You should see us all here, drawing back our invisible bows and sighting down our invisible arrows.

We still say: The arrow is on the right side of the bow if you are drawing back with your right hand. The arrow's head is on the right side of the bow, which is being held in the left hand.

Keep this up and Saffron, Ramen, and I are going to pile into my car and run to the indoor archery range and settle this for good with photographs, since it's only 5 minutes away.

-Patience

But it was no good. Despite the wands and spells at her disposal, Patience was forced to admit that she was wrong.

I might have to stand sheepishly corrected. The more I practice with my invisible bow, the more I think I'm remembering incorrectly and the arrow does go on the left side. I was initially taught to hold in my right and draw with my left, but eventually switched because I shot better when holding with my left and drawing with my right. This may be why I'm confused - I keep picturing sighting down the arrow on the right side.

So, I think I'm due for some time at the archery range since it's obviously been too long.

-Patience, corrected, and back to work!

P.S. Catfisch, lead animator, just walked over to see the screenshot - he says they just went to the archery range last week, actually. He says they'll check it out and make sure it's correct. (Edited to add: That screenshot is old - so they're still working on stuff like that)

And now the Illusion has been broken. The Dev's are after all, mere mortals, prone to the same foibles as the rest of us. First hint should've been their predilection for Krispy Kreme's.