Anyone penalized for being in Shadowboards?

Well. For a while they were trying to use tracking pixels in a signature or whatever to match IPs between this board and the GDB. So. That was a bit lame.

I thought i was being ignored by staff, that would be the most devestating treatment

lol more like their hands are fucking tied after all their slimy efforts to punish their own countrymen for daring to talk to outsiders about life in north korea somewhere that they cant control the narrative backfired and they cant do shit else now but smile nod and fucking take it if they dont want lose even more of their players and look shittier than they already do

I know several players who have been told to stop posting here. It's not officially against the rules, but they at least used to give people a mafiaesque "nice karma, it would be a shame if something happened to it" kind of deal. If you're known to be a shadowboarder, you will definitely be persona non grata. We've seen logs of staff having stern talks with players about coming here. You won't be banned outright, but it will land you in the black book.

I was banned years after I quit and publicly accused of supporting hacking for posting here. Red Ranger was too but his ban was lifted. I didn’t ask for mine to be lifted I just wanted producer confirmation about the cause. This is when Nergal was on staff. It used to be tracked on TMC but after redoing their site think it’s all gone.

In some ways, it reminds me a lot of the WoW Classic situation, except for the part where Blizzard actually ended up making Classic.

WoW used to be the definitive ruler of the MMORPG scene, much as Armageddon was the flagship of RPIs. Then Blizzard gradually changed the game over the years, generally for the worse. "Shadow" communities popped up and made their own illegal servers running earlier versions of the game, and Blizzard were staunchly against it. They tried to shut these projects down, sometimes succesfully. When prompted about making their own legacy version of the game to appeal to that crowd, executive producer J. Allen Brack said of the community's apparent desire for a return to the game's roots: "You think you do, but you don't." It has since turned into a meme as WoW: Classic is now the most populous subscription-based MMORPG on the market, featuring a bigger playerbase than the faltering modern version of the game.

Was every change made to WoW over the years objectively bad? Of course not; but overall, it steered things in a negative direction that alienated players and reduced the appeal of the game. Much the same has happened to Armageddon. In an effort to adapt to an aging playerbase, staff made a number of changes that led to an impoverished game (this is a generous assumption--one might also posit that these changes stem from staff laziness), resulting in a shadow of its former self as much of what made Armageddon what it was is now lost. The stories, the wide variety of character types, the unique and memorable accomplishments of individual characters, these things are just no longer really a thing. If you confront staff about this, they'll give you an answer similar to what J. Allen Brack gave to the WoW community; but if they actually did return to the way the game used to be run, I wonder if it wouldn't recapture at least some of the magic as players approach the game with renewed enthusiasm.

One thing is at least clear in my mind: I would rather play the Armageddon that existed fifteen years ago than the one we've got today.

I would be surprised if staff were still banning people for posting here. That's just a bad look, especially when you nail someone who happened to be using a VPN or something. I would assume they've shifted over to blacklisting people, shunning people, and leaving account notes for criticizing the game. If you want to punish people for disagreeing with you, it's much less embarrassing to do it quietly and with social pressure rather than just kicking people off your game. Especially when the player stats are the way they are, staff can't afford to lose many more of their longtime players.