An Actual Open Discussion On The Culture Killing Armageddon

I remember the one time I recall knowingly playing with Reiloth (because his PC ended up in a clan I had been in and I rejoined the Byn to keep an eye on him and try to use what little influence I had to protect his PC, no OOC collaboration involved, just a bit of a shock to look at the clan forums) it was a blast. I won't give too many details, out of respect for him as a player, but I ended up with a good deal of respect for his RP and character depth. I remember there was a long string of the most open-minded and sensible posts I'd seen on the GDB from him, if Nergal pissed on his leg that seriously upsets me, and I'd hope Nergal would think twice and revize his stance.

I've been told by a reliable source he was Euronomous.

Nomos! Sweet, thought I was maybe having a craycray moment with memory. Did Nergal chase him off too? 

Having been on the receiving end of one of Nergal's "realistic world responses", I'm actually kind of surprised I wasn't raped by elephants before the mul showed up.

Let's bring this back to the topic at hand, though. A Girl did something that was not against the rules or contrary to the setting. The cliquey retards didn't care for someone slumming because she liked the company, so their response was to drop a world response on her that was utterly ridiculous in the setting.

Allanak is a police state. Openly, loudly, robbing someone in the middle of a public place is tantamount to waving your dick at the templarate. Doing it as a third-class citizen (dwarf) against a second-class citizen (human) who works for a first-class citizen (noble human) should have been suicide. There's no backstory that makes that make sense, even if someone hired the dwarf, because Allanak isn't fucking Tuluk where (briefly) Nyr made it canon that "Shadow Artists" could perform all sorts of bizarre, even un-Tuluki behaviors if hired to do so because the entire templarate was behind it.

In Allanak the public isn't conditioned with theatrics. They're conditioned to obey with constant reminders that stepping out of line means swift, terrible violence handed down from Tek on high. It's not that a dwarf trying to rob you in the Gaj is ridiculous, it's that the robbery went uninterrupted for so long. If staff noticed a player doing what the dwarf did, they would have dropped a world response on him in less than a minute and he'd be sent to die in the arena to remind everyone Tek is law. I really challenge anyone to reasonably contradict that.

So why did this happen? Staff didn't like what you (the player) were doing because you weren't playing the game in a manner they preferred, so they chose to punish you (the player) in the game using a drawn out and frankly insulting approach that doesn't even fit the setting. This is where the real experience gap is between people attacking the game culture and people defending it. If what you do goes unnoticed or fits the whim of cliquey retards, you're not subjected to OOC harassment. Likewise, the person harassing you may choose forms you don't recognize as harassment.

Perfect example of subtle OOC harassment: Your staffer lies to you that if you do X, Y, and Z in game you'll get to do/have what you asked for, then claiming a superior turned you down after you've done them. This is a way to passive-aggressively exhaust you into not asking for things they're not already doing. Though sometimes, it's the superior who has actually lied to the storyteller about you doing X, Y,and Z, and the superior is the one harassing you through them. (To those of you warming up a "He's talking about perks!!!" argument, the correct way to handle refusing to let someone have a thing is telling them "no" and explaining why like you're both adults. Even if the person asking you about a thing is another staffer.)

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A Girl: Am I right in thinking you're a newer player? Your handle and account look totally unfamiliar to me.

The reason I ask is because of something I've noticed while reading this thread's sister over on the alt-shadowboard. Their entire thread is about losing veterans. It's quite shocking that none of the people defending Arm, particularly Nergal with his bullshit "people are quitting because the game's as fair to noobs as to oldbies" argument, that nobody's touched the topic of new player retention. I opened with that for a reason.

Going off the old numbers, if Arm was keeping even 2% of the new people who were trying it they'd have net growth. It's not. Why isn't anyone over there discussing that?

Bardlyone is Anaiah who is former staff.