Our story begins about six years ago with a post by Barzelene, consoling a player on the GDB whom had never gotten karma. She made a statement to the effect of “pretty much only playing Red Shirts” or something, but boy did this have an effect on me. Hitherto I had always assumed Barzelene to be A-listed, always assumed her to be part of the It-Crowd, and so this caused me to see her in a new light. I had never liked her before but now, I found her inspiring. I began to look up to her, and aspired to do the same thing. I wanted to be the first person to get eight karma without ever really playing any of the overpowered characters that the staff seem to dote on so much.
Karma had never been a problem for me. But as I reached midway of the ladder, I was caught with this subconscious suspicion that I'd be caught midway. There was a chasm I was about to try to jump, and I'd never seen any indication that the staff actually liked me.
Boy was I surprised about ten months ago when my special app for a Drovian was approved. I wanted to hug Talia. Did the staff really trust me? We were about to find out. Some of you may remember I had a shift in the tone of my posts at the time. Previously Armageddon had only been something I'd play when I was bored, but for the first time this ten-year man was beginning to view the game as something I'd want to play into my golden years.
The Drovian died, as did a couple of other characters, and so I turned my attention to strengthening family role-play. People, staff especially, misunderstand my interest in extending the family system. It's not an attempt to build a cadre of loyal operatives, it's the opposite. Think about it, if you asked your real-life siblings to help you assassinate a Templar, would they? Of course they wouldn't, unless your last name is Hatfield or McCoy. But someone would bail you out of jail if you needed it, right? This is what I was trying to get out of my game family.
In writing this I want to stick to facts, and avoid conjecture. The truth is I don't *know* that my family had nothing to do with my account locking, so I'll leave any detective work as an exercise to the reader. Moreover, the staff seemed to quite like the idea, had spent considerable time scraping resources to see if they could provide any of the support that I wasn't really requesting. It's the thought that counts. Nyr of all people collaborated closely with me. I grew to kind of like the big lug, had rare glimpses of whom he really is. It turns out that his problems stem largely from communication non-abilities. He's not actually sadistic, simply lacking in empathy. One can hardly fail to notice the changes that have come over him now that he's married. The guy who needed for a decade to get laid, finally got laid.
I was really happy with the family because of surprise interest from a couple of persons. Synthesis. Yes, THE Synthesis. While he and I hadn't gotten along for my first few years playing, I had developed a begrudging respect for the man. Outside of the GDB, he's Cool and the Gang. I'd often looked up to him as well. In real life he's big and bad-assed and smart and heroic, and I'm fat and nerdy. Total bromance.
Also, FantasyWriter. I actually taught FantasyWriter how to play about a decade ago. We lost touch for a few years, but he's really the nicest guy. I'm very proud of him. He's gone on to get more karma than I have, which is terrific. He's accomplished a lot, in game and out. It was fun for him and I to have a couple of characters as sort of a reunion tour.
Complaints about paperwork aside, I don't perceive that there were any issues with the family situation. I'm not a power gamer, and I'm not sure why pretty much everyone doesn't understand that. I fall under suspicion of power gaming quite a bit which lasts promptly until people remember who they're talking to: Mr. Red shirt.
I had gotten karma in the past year. Was having special apps approved like it was nothing. Turned in character reports like it was going out of style. My family was approved for play. Was receiving real life advice from both Taijan and Eurynomous. The first sign of trouble was this post by Jave:
(cut and paste, don't click) gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50153.msg913224.html#msg913224
New staff are always a concern. They were players once, and they already like your or hate you based upon past interactions with them, but they now have access to information that they don't. And boy was Jave sending every signal that they're a loose cannon. So I ignored her.
About a month later, Jave started to rant somewhere (possibly even the same thread, I can't remember) that they were unpaid volunteers.
I'm sorry, I had to pause in my typing to laugh out loud. Unpaid volunteers.
*another pause*
Anyways, I went ahead and did Jave the favor of posting in the complaints thread that staff really shouldn't do that. It's like having toilet paper stuck to your shoe – you look ridiculous like this and a true friend will point it out to you, no matter how unhappy you are to hear it at the time. Of course a few staff members publicly overreacted. After this, I stopped having positive interactions with staff.
Meanwhile, my current character is Umar, a Ranger/Armormaker Junior Hunter in House Kadius, serving under Merchant Zhaka Kadius, played by Malifaxis.
After more than a decade of not liking Malifaxis, it was nice to see how cool Malifaxis has become. He's got a grip on his insanity and has gone from being bad crazy to good crazy. He gets it. And his character is pretty awesome. I'll stop posting details about his character because, surprise! I actually do respect the game rules and I'm really not here to ruin other people's fun.
But Malifaxis and I are having minor problems in game. We'd had several character-specific conflicts which had been resolved in character, but we'd stumbled into a conflict that I really felt was 90% about OOC disagreement. It was all the sort of stuff that I think could have been resolved over coffee or something, but this being the internet I didn't see any good way to go about this.
I bounced a couple of ideas off of staff, but got snarky responses, first from Seidhr and next from Eurynomous. If I had to give the douchebag award to someone, it would be Seidhr. He seems to have gone beyond what was necessary to make the point to me that he is unhappy with me. Eurynomous I'll vouch for – he has a good side to him.
Obviously, I choose to ignore this and to not log on for a bit. Any of several things were likely to happen to improve the situation, and time was on my side. Staff attrition. Player attrition. Character attrition. In all likelihood, any number of things could have contributed to my rehabilitation and keeping my mouth shut seemed the smartest course. Minimally, I'd have liked to have defined the rules of engagement for any intracharacter conflict and have rallied both of my PC family members, both of whom were suffering from scheduling vagaries.
I didn't even post on the boards, I just monitored them. As many of you know, things had gotten a bit dreary for a while...I'd gotten fired from my job in California, didn't get the job breaking horses on the Ranch...drifted back to the East Coast….things weren't going well with my girl when I got back. Ramen noodles and bread.
I took a job in another city and was living in a hotel room, usually one without bed bugs. Clicking on the GDB a couple of times a day to monitor announcements and see how my friends were doing was genuinely cheering me up.
One afternoon I noticed a couple of posts that caught my notice. One was a post by the Turkish kid pointing out how most of the players are too sensitive, and how this sensitivity shuts down discussion. Another post was by Delerium of all people, chastising Seidhr for being openly snarky with players on the GDB. In both cases I privately sent these users a thank you note.
About an hour later when I refreshed the GDB, a curious looking note was at the top of my page, mentioning that my account had been locked and that I needed to email in if I wanted to play again.
Why was the account locked? I haven't bothered to check. I'd feel pusillanimous emailing the staff. I don't feel that I've done anything wrong. Even taken all together, none of what I've done, if it's wrong at all, amounts to anything more than a misdemeanor. It's all stuff that an apology should get me out of, at worst.
Locking my account is not the way to get my attention. A metered response would make much more sense, and in any regards locking my account simply makes further communication efforts more difficult. It practically begs a public confrontation. I'd think that most of the players understand that I'm not a cheater, so doing something like this is hardly likely to win player sympathy.
I don't want to run my mouth because in all likelihood I will be back to the game one day, and I don't want to burn any bridges that I'll be needing later. That being said, locking the account of a known karma-player is unlikely to produce a positive change in that player's behavior.
Thank you guys for hearing me out, and thanks to (Jcarter?) for providing a forum for people who have been bullied by staff. The game is currently in a retention crisis, and speaking from the perspective of someone with recent playing experience, the game has only improved since you have started doing this.
