Shalooonsh please come post here

You're adorable.

I came here to speak my mind, I'm speaking it. You don't like the words I say, don't read them, but you'd be making a pretty vast mistake to think that I don't know what I'm talking about.

To get back to the original point, I am not laying everything completely on the playerbase. I understand that, at its core, EVERYONE involved in the shift from "How things were" to "how things are" thought they were doing A: what was right and B: what was in the best interests of the game.

The players who spread the knowledge they had wanted to "even the playing field" against the staff who were abusing their powers (note the lack of quotes, I am acknowledging the abuse.) The staff who were abusing their powers were doing so because, yes, they wanted to play sandbox games and build godcastles... but they ALSO wanted to have an arena to test out some totally bitching new code in a live-fire situation as well as breaking the monotony of the game. They wanted to spice things up, and see how the things they were building could go wrong.

This escalation caused problems, just like a cold war. It created a very, very distinct "Us vs. Them" mentality on both sides of the battlefield. The players couldn't trust the staff because they'd been burnt... the staff couldn't trust the players because they'd been burnt. This degraded communication, fostered resentment, and created a massive wall between Those Who Want To Speak and Those Who Once Listened. The truly sad thing is that BOTH sides can own both names I just listed.

And to respond to your point, jcarter, yes, you can build awesome plots without uber powers. You can build massive plots around new gem deposits, new mines, building something out in the wastes, destroying something in the wastes, breeding new animals, all sorts of awesome shit can go down. These things used to be a lot more prevalent than they are now. Why? Because the playerbase felt a lot more comfortable approaching the staff with ideas, and the staff were more likely to respond positively to at least letting the player "give it a shot."

In short, everyone has been jilted, everyone has been wronged, everyone was trying their best to do their best as they saw it. There are no villains in this.

Nyr is not a cackling maniac throwing lightning down from his cloud castle. He's a guy who's got a tough job, who's trying to keep things orderly, and improve processes as he sees them.

Delerak is not someone sitting in his mother's basement drawing up elaborate plans to destroy Armageddon while he wears a tinfoil hat and soils his shorts. He's a guy who's trying to have fun and who doesn't want someone else telling him how to have fun.

Those are just two examples, I could go on for hours about who isn't what and who is what. I picked two polar opposites to give an example that most people can grab on to.

I am not going to cite even a rough ratio of how many problems were 'owned' by either side. How many shots were fired. That would solve nothing, and though I have a very good perspective on how things went down, I also recognize that there is absolutely no way to fix things right now.

The hatred runs too deep, the blood is too bad, and the Hatchetman's axe can not be buried with a palmful of sand.

It has gotten to the point where the staff no longer say thank you to the players. They don't give a shit about kicking back any appreciation to the people who actually breathe life into the game. They don't give shout outs to the people that design items. They don't give shout outs to the people that create and run plots. They flat out don't give a shit in showing any modicum of thanks whatsoever.

They take players who have been there for years, for over a decade, and treat them like Joe Newbie off the street. They treat people who have quite literally bled to show their appreciation for the game and treat them like dirt, sometimes when they are in full knowledge that the player is going through some SERIOUS real life shit and may need some empathy. Do they show it? No. They don't care, and they don't want to appear weak.

The era of caring storytellers, caring admins, is dead. And it won't be resurrected. The current staff view of players is pretty fucking grim, as is the player view of staff, and for good reason.

Nyr is trying to do what he thinks is best, but he still comes off as a massive dick. He doesn't give a fuck about thanking the players, or showing they're appreciated. He gives a fuck about being thought of as a cold-as-ice hardass.

Sanvean couldn't give less of a care in the world about the game, but she wants to sell her florid and pointless prose while parading around with a retinue of players who actually treat her like she's worth a damn. She doesn't do anything for the game, she comes back to generate hype and try to sell product while garnishing undeserved compliments.

Don't get me started on Vanth.

There were still a lot of staff who cared during the inception of Arm 2. They wanted to do what was best. They got beaten down, by both sides, they had their efforts expunged, their ideas ridiculed, their efforts ignored. They left. Some of them tried coming back, but they just couldn't hack it. The concepts behind Arm 2, some of the code they came up with, was mindblowingly awesome. Seriously top-notch incredible shit. It will probably never get used.

Now we're left with a pack of storytellers who were never raised or trained to care about the people who live the game. We're left with Admins who care more about rules and systems than fun. We're left with three Producers who I know have a deep love in their hearts for the game, a deep and true love, and who really do try their best... but they all have lives, they all have so many things they have to do, that more and more power gets delegated down the chain. Morgenes, Adhira, and Nessalin all have a lot going on, and can not focus on the roots of the problem.

More and more power gets put in the hands of the people who don't give a shit for anything more than just having power.

This cycle began because of good intentions. It continued because people kept fighting the fight they wanted to fight, instead of trying to share ideas and compare notes. And now we're staring dead-eyed into the face of an idea we all love as it coughs out its last bloody breaths, and we're unable to save it.

Maybe if some of the storytellers who gave a shit came back, things might change. Maybe if some of them stood up and said the things that needed to be said into the ears that needed to hear them, things might change.

But I doubt it.

Great fucking post man. I had you all wrong.

Since I have nothing noteworthy to retort. Fuckin' awesome post dude.

Furthermore, not true. The majority of chronic abusers a. never coded, and b. did nothing but perpetuate monotony. If you have more specific examples, feel free to talk about them, regurgitating Shal's point in a more targeted manner sans examples is simply regurgitation.

Who could have guessed that an effeminate noodle-armed man that weighs 130 pounds soaking wet irl would feel a compulsion to act as a badass on the internet.

also was Vanth the one who wrote that Mary Sue book and tried to plug it on the GDB? She had a blog about sex workers and romanticized the shit out of them on it, down to basically saying that women weren't actually ever forced to be sex workers by pimps and that if they didn't like it they would just not do it. Her book was like this awful thing where in the first chapter she let you know the protagonist was a high class escort ( NOT A CRACK WHORE she had an iphone and an expensive lawyer on retainer!) and the antagonist was a white male (the patriarchy) that was trying to slut shame her or something. Someone even called her out on it on the GDB and got shouted down by the denizens of it who declared this 1.99 e-book to be the next great American novel or something.

That would be Vanth, yes.

That being said, I removed the assholishness from the post.