Staff Changes

[Oleris]

Welcome back Sirken.

[Artaenc]

Originally Posted by Fragged [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Heya Rogean.

Thank you very much for your time, and giving us a place to have fun day after day, year after year.

I think the reason that people didn't bring this up with staff is that they were simply afraid. People didn't know how deep the rabbit hole went and thus chose to tread with caution.

In regards to some of the forum bans. Please take into account that some of the comments were made by people who are simply passionate about this project. They felt unjustly treated (timers given to the opposition and so on) and felt powerless to do anything about it and thus started to vent some of their frustrations in an unproductive maner.

There have been some very good people banned like Naethyn and Aalpha/Bbeta, and I am very happy to read that you guys will be looking into things.

Again. Thank you very much for your time and thank you very much for letting us all know whats going on.

<3

It will take a while to go back and take a second look at things, I really like the possible future tri GM setup so that there is more people that can analyze events and more checks and balances. Sirken must have been extremely overwhelmed with all the tasks, all my encounters with Sirken have always been fair and positive. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that deserves a second look. One of those things that I keep thinking about is when Alarti was trying to cross Kael for the first time when velious came out and was just legitimately trying to get to WL and accidentally did something with Tormax when it was getting pulled to a zone by a guild and got banned. Alarti is one of those people that we shouldn't lose in the community because of something like that. I don't think he's toxic at all but that's my two copper pieces.

If you guys truly care about this server go donate some cash to help keep the lights on. Don't be one of those guys that take everything and give nothing back.

[Triangle]

Originally Posted by Artaenc [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It will take a while to go back and take a second look at things, I really like the possible future tri GM setup so that there is more people that can analyze events and more checks and balances. Sirken must have been extremely overwhelmed with all the tasks, all my encounters with Sirken have always been fair and positive. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that deserves a second look. One of those things that I keep thinking about is when Alarti was trying to cross Kael for the first time when velious came out and was just legitimately trying to get to WL and accidentally did something with Tormax when it was getting pulled to a zone by a guild and got banned. Alarti is one of those people that we shouldn't lose in the community because of something like that. I don't think he's toxic at all but that's my two copper pieces.

If you guys truly care about this server go donate some cash to help keep the lights on. Don't be one of those guys that take everything and give nothing back.

This can't be a serious post. Alarti was one of the more toxic members. Total dbag. Of all the examples you could have chosen, you pick Alarti? LOL

P.S.: give my best to our girl <3

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by Triangle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Alarti was one of the more toxic members.

Prove it.

Interestingly his name was also Greek for 'salt'.

[Sonderbeast]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I would also like to address the method that this situation came to be. Personally, I'm quite pissed off that I have to find out things like this from a post on an external website. As if nobody actually thought to themself, hmm I think it would be a good idea for Rogean or Nilbog to take a look at these screenshots. For 2 years it was sit on, and instead of coming to us at any point, I stumble across them on an offsite thread. The method to report such behavior is and always has been a Forum PM to myself and/or nilbog. Do not send it on a communication medium that I haven't used for over a year, and don't bury it within a 50 page essay of all the other opinionated circumstantial disputes as if it's some surprise at the end. There's a distinctive difference between opinionated disputes ("Soandso ruled against my guild and is only banning my players") and definitive evidence of a misuse of access ("Here's proof Soandso gave away information and summoned Prismatic Weapons for someone"). The latter needs to be reported immediately and unfiltered. I don't ever want to hear that someone didn't report a serious breach of policy because "We reported raid dispute favoritism and nothing was done, why would you do something about this". I've made a lot of changes over the years to keep staff members accountable to each other, including command logs viewable on Discord for all Senior+ Guides (Even my own commands, you can see an example here). Commands alone sometimes do not show us the true intention, and for that we will always rely on the community to report suspicious behavior.

Let me preface this that I genuinely am responding in a spirit of constructive criticism in order to help you see our (the players) perspective.

When you say that you are 'pissed' that you found this from an external website and that no one notified you about it, I don't really think anyone thought you would care, and that the result of doing so would be a perma-ban. Consider the atmosphere players have been under for the past six months to a year.

Awakened was banned for two months (more? it was a really long time) which lead to its death. Shortly after that, Core was banned for another significant portion of time (2 months? 3?). I watched as related forum accounts were banned for negligible reasons, like expressing opinions or frustrations over decisions made - not 'bashing staff'.

I'm a part of neither party above, but I can tell you that this sort of thing creates fear. Even players who 'should have nothing to fear' are afraid of saying GM's names because the heavy handed approach has made you into boogeymen - even though a majority of us have no beef with GM's and appreciate you. We're afraid of getting years of playtime and effort erased in a sweeping ban because someone 'bashed the staff'.

When GM's are set up precedent to be de-facto infallible, you can't blame us (all players) for being afraid to bring even a legitimate criticism of a staff member, especially with such a Senior Guide who has done so much and who has invested so much time into this server. I hope that you can see from our (or maybe just primarily my) perspective that keeping our accounts are more important to us than a GM bending the rules a bit.

btw hi Llandris <3

[isiah]

Originally Posted by Fragged [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Heya Rogean.

Thank you very much for your time, and giving us a place to have fun day after day, year after year.

I think the reason that people didn't bring this up with staff is that they were simply afraid. People didn't know how deep the rabbit hole went and thus chose to tread with caution.

In regards to some of the forum bans. Please take into account that some of the comments were made by people who are simply passionate about this project. They felt unjustly treated (timers given to the opposition and so on) and felt powerless to do anything about it and thus started to vent some of their frustrations in an unproductive maner.

There have been some very good people banned like Naethyn and Aalpha/Bbeta, and I am very happy to read that you guys will be looking into things.

Again. Thank you very much for your time and thank you very much for letting us all know whats going on.

<3

+1.

Good post, Aikons.

[dussle27]

Core members on suicide watch.

Come on over to Red Boys, the water's fine.

[Lanzellot]

WB Sirken ![You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Menden]

Originally Posted by Sonderbeast [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Let me preface this that I genuinely am responding in a spirit of constructive criticism in order to help you see our (the players) perspective.

When you say that you are 'pissed' that you found this from an external website and that no one notified you about it, I don't really think anyone thought you would care, and that the result of doing so would be a perma-ban. Consider the atmosphere players have been under for the past six months to a year.

My personal opinion is, when you have evidence that one of us is corrupt or made a bad call, it's only fair to give the Senior Staff a chance to handle it. If for some reason you don't get a response within a couple weeks, do what you will but at least give them a chance. The other thing is, unless you PM us some vulgar obscenity, I can't see you getting banned or suspended. There has been many, many players that have tested my patience that I could of easily justified a suspension, and I know other staff have been in the same situation. In our roles there's accusations of favoritism every god damn day... there's so much you guys don't see. I didn't learn about true crazy till I started volunteering to help run this server. If Rogean would let me, I'd love to have a forum dedicated to "crazies" posts. Much like Maddox's hate mail, so good.

I deal with camp disputes every day, but those on such a small scale that people calm down after a couple hours or I give them a 12 hour break to chill out and I never hear anything about it after. Raid petitions suck because it affects so many people so the hate machine can grow much faster.

Just give management a chance to deal with situations, I'm just trying to show you these accusations are daily. But you must have evidence of some kind.

Awakened was banned for two months (more? it was a really long time) which lead to its death. Shortly after that, Core was banned for another significant portion of time (2 months? 3?). I watched as related forum accounts were banned for negligible reasons, like expressing opinions or frustrations over decisions made - not 'bashing staff'.

There's a few petitions in our queue about these flagged for Rogean. It's his place to review the evidence and decide what to do case by case. As he stated he's working 85 hour weeks right now, so it'll take time. We have also had a flux of players thinking this is an opportunity to try getting unbanned/suspended for completely unrelated stuff, stop it.


<3

[Comoc1]

Thank you for the detailed update Roegan.

Please pardon all offending forum posters who have been banned, filed under time served!

#FreeAalpha/Bbeta
#FreeNaethtyn