a derail started by a banned poster chastising banned players

Players, whom actively contribute to the game world and draw in other players by their presence, are not consumers in any sense or definition the word. I'm still not sure what point this terrible bar analogy is trying to even accomplish though. If we're really going to do mental gymnastics to compare this to something that it's not then why don't you compare it to that vegan co-op store where you have to service x hours per week in order to shop there but then visited a vegan co-op elsewhere that said wow those prices are terrible and the manager who's the woman from that 'college liberal' meme bans you from the store for having the audacity to communicate with other vegan co-ops and express displeasure in the direction the management is headed.

Copypasta from the last thread:




The amount of organization required to run a D&D campaign is negligible in comparison. It takes five guys, one with campaign books and another two to bring pretzels and mountain dew. Throw in an hour of preparation and you have a session. If that's all it took to build a mud, then you'd have one ready for us.




The only thing I'm trying to justify here is your lack of understanding. But you're right. They do effectively own the rights of the mud. Not in any legal sense (nobody is going to publish material based on armageddonMUD), they just operate and administrate it.




In this case, its more like: they own the house with the table and the chair you're sitting in, they own the paper you wrote your character on, they established ground rules for you to abide by, and if you don't, they kick you out.

Maybe the D&D analogy is apt after all. I've played games DM's I couldn't stand. So, I no longer play dungeons and dragons with them.

I would only buy into this analogy if administration was a requirement for playing. Many do, but most don't. I also find it hard to believe that staff would take issue with simply communicating with another mud and/or just complaining.



I actually don't care if you're grateful or not. I have no way of measuring it anyway. Hell, I've probably only ever sent out handful of player kudos but none to staff.



I have to admit that you might have hit the nail on the head here. It's the sense of entitlement that irritates me. Particularly, the notion that if they disagree with me, I'll just write nasty forum posts about them. Or out them for being x.

When really, what do they owe you for playing with their toys in the sandbox?

The things I miss when I don't visit for a few days....

Here's my thoughts on the matter, gonna be real, I can see both sides of the argument. On one side, it's a sandbox. Yes. The Staff's sandbox. They pay for it. They can turn every grain of sand into a big meaty horse butt if they want to. They make these decisions, including who does what, when, where, and why. If they say, "You're not welcome here ever again if you sneeze in Arkansas.", then well... Don't complain if you sneeze in Arkansas and aren't allowed back in-- and to an extent, you've gotta kinda respect that. Because again, it's their sandbox.

But then they open it up for public use and promise free fun for everybody. Naturally, all the cool kids flock there and start tearing ass on all the awesome-- until Aniah's fine example comes into play. Better toys go to the "favorites", and among the owners. It gives them an edge and spoils the fun lots of other people used to be having. People who have been playing for literally half their lives, in some cases, start to get fed up and leave. The very people that made the game what it is-- the people that brought it to life when the staff were to busy powdering the asses of the people that were better than you, and shame on you for making a move against them. I mean...

DoI really need to explain further how this might give rise to strong emotions and reactions? Their favorite past-time is turning to crap, who wants to see that?

Neither side is inherently wrong, it's just a matter of perspective of where the game stands on "staff's sandbox" and "the player's sandbox".

And seeing that the game still isn't invite-only, you've got your nudge towards the true answer.

Well put, Sinister.

Just because something is a codified rule doesn't make it justified, legitimate, or free from comment and complaint, especially when people are going to absurd lengths to 'detect' it and it's not being uniformly enforced. I'm getting kind of tired of seeing these dumb analogies though, so why don't we talk about the actual points instead of vague handwaving and relating how middle aged men spending their free time cross-referencing and scouring internet boards for 'evidence' to punish people is somehow relevant to owning a bar and business.

1)melonman was banned for posting here. His reason for banning was posting on this website. Where in the rules does it say players are not allowed to post on jcarter's internet forums or any 'unauthorized' forums?

2)Other posters here, who have unarguably posted worse IC info (you're going to have to take my word on this as I don't want to drop names), received only karma reductions. Obvious former staff members who have posted, such as bobo and Shaloooonsh, have not received any punishment at all to my knowledge for discussing information that they had while being staff members while @anaiah was banned from the game.

3)The "rules" are vague and undefined. Let me copy and paste the official list of rules from the website, taken from the 'Rules' section:



Whoops! Looks like 'no sharing IC info' isn't even a rule. In fact, there's not a peep about or consequences for it on the 'About Zalanthas', 'Communicating', or 'Roleplaying' pages. Now let's take a ride over to the forums, and look at the 'Rules' thread, which actually does mention it:



The only actual codified rule about posting IC-sensitive information is you're not allowed to do it on the GDB.

Of course, people who have played for many years know that we're not allowed to share IC info. We'll have to consider it an 'unofficial' rule because it's obviously not important enough to be mentioned in the same document that actually takes the time to talk about how any complaints regarding unfairness won't be dealt with.

Given this unofficial rule, let's actually try to figure out what IC info really is given that we can't even find a rule forbidding it, much less defining it. Clearly spilling plot details is IC info, but let's look at the more grey areas. Is putting up a warrior skill list IC info? The list hasn't changed in a decade and the skills are all mentioned on the help files. Is adding information about where the skill caps at IC info? Again, some of this is mentioned in the helpfiles. Here's an excerpt from the warrior page: "Every warrior possesses an aptitude for all weapons, and can learn to master them far beyond the meager abilities of other guilds." So is it IC info then for me to tell a player that warriors have the best weapon skills? Is it IC info for me to say it caps out at 'master level'?

These are all questions that are never actually answered or discussed, yet players can be frivolously punished for breaking rules that don't exist by sharing information that sometimes deserves a ban, other times deserves a karma reduction, with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

4)Grown men and women with families who spend the time to track down and punish hobbyist video game players for having critical views and sharing information about their volunteer video game is absolutely pathetic. It's a hobby video game, drop these dumb analogies and take a step back and look at it. It's a 20-year old game about pointy-eared men in the desert and based around having fun with other human beings.

I have no idea why people continue to stick up for the anti-social attitudes put on by the staff beyond Stockholm Syndrome. These are middle-aged men and women who want to come home from work and rather than toss a baseball around with their children or spend time with their loved ones actively log onto the internet and go into seek-and-destroy mode for gamers to have the audacity of talking about their warriors hit points while hiding behind the excuse that it's somehow harmful to other players. No. That's shameful that someone goes to those extents over something like a text-based video game.

Let's drop the bullshit pretense that staff like Nyr and nessalin are running this game out of the goodness of their hearts and are such Nice Guys who bend over backwards for a community that shits on them. They may not be getting paid, but people like Nyr thrive on actually having an iota of control and if you don't think the reason he spends god knows how many hours staffing the game and punishing players is to stoke his ego you're being delusional.