Recent Posts

Jeshin,

Emotions among staff were running high the last few days and I personally lost the patience I had given players who dissent to the point of harming our community up until recently. I know that others on staff did too. We had given certain players the benefit of the doubt for a long time, some of them over a year, and we felt personally betrayed by some who took the opportunity to use the leaks to sink to a new low. That being said, I apologize for lambasting you on Mud Connector's forum and have no plans to post in a Mud Connector thread related to Optional Realities, or edit posts I've already made as a means of attempting to hide what I did.

I still vehemently disagree with the stand you took in the moments after the wiki and game leak. I share the belief of others on staff that your primary interest lies in self-promotion and that you've used the wiki and game leak to take a position that emphasizes dubious means of pressuring staff to change their ways in an effort to convince people on jcarter's forum to join your website. It seems clear to us that the posts you've made both on Mud Connector and jcarter's forum reflect that effort.

The fact of the matter is that player-staff relations were better than ever up until the leak. The fact that you chose to support the information leak over the game was extremely disappointing and confirmed staff's belief that you are not a community leader, and that we had made the right choice in choosing not to associate with your website. Your ban reflects a continuation of that decision. We don't wish to be associated with you and we don't want you to be associated with us. I do not see that changing until your position and your means of promotion change.

But if you think that this event marks the beginning of a downturn in player-staff relations, then you are wrong. I will post staff's latest announcement for your benefit below, since I am aware it will be difficult to access it yourself.

---

Thank you all for your patience. We realize that the playerbase is waiting for a follow up to this original letter and apologize for the delay in getting back to you.

As previously stated the publishing of information that was contained on our staff website was not received well by our staffing team. We needed some time to consider this and to our players we would like to offer an apology - the last few days have seen staff take a step back from much of the day to day work of the MUD and this has meant that we haven't given our time and energy to supporting the MUD as it deserves.

The staffing team, as a whole, is ready to move forward and continue on with the work, stories and changes for this mud.

What this incident has forced us to do is take the time to consider our various repositories, the information that is contained in them and what we want or need to do with that information in the future.

We will be moving on with a number of initiatives including:

- Moving and/or deleting information that is no longer relevant or does not need to be retained in order to run the MUD.
- Changing how we track and record access to staff documents.
- Assessing our community forum, its purpose, how it is accessed and use of the forums.
- Assessing the rules and guidelines for our forums and the MUD itself.

We want to assure everyone that we have no intention of closing down the MUD. We have a number of projects that were underway and plans for some larger scale changes later in the year.

In the next month staff will be working on:

- Recruiting builders
Expect to see an announcement soon as we finalize the tools and process for taking on more player builders.
- Working on guilds
We will be rolling out our changes to main guilds in phases. We expect the first of these within the next couple of weeks. As we change the guilds we will be updating helpfiles. All guild helpfiles will eventually list skill selections as the subguild files now do.
- Holding a player staff meeting
We had previously been discussing other ways to make staff available for discussion with players. We will be looking also to hold a real time conversation with players. We have not at this time decided if that will be via voice chat or if we will go old school and hold it within the game.

Again, thank you to our players for your patience, please join us as we get on with the real purpose of the MUD - roleplay, fun and entertainment.

---

We have chosen to move on. We are open to the idea of a roleplaying MUD community that is genuinely established as such. If we need a community leader, it certainly will not be you, barring significant changes. Staff are loyal to the players that wish to give the game a chance and have fun.

Nergal
Administrator

Hey,

Thanks for contacting me and the apology regarding posting on TMC. It's surprising but I did have one question in my e-mails to <ARM GENERAL EMAIL> and <ADHIRA EMAIL> regarding whether you intend to ban users (http://i.imgur.com/BHFDUpJ.png). As to the other points it seems we'll have to disagree. For the sake of record I'll reply but keep it brief...

1. I took no stance at the time of the codebase release or the wiki leak. Nor did I advertise it. Nor did I host it. You can see the extent of Optional Realities commentary on Armageddon: www.optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=20.0 (I said a nice thing)

2. My posts on TMC were in direct response to you and have nothing to do with marketing. I have never brought any of my opinions about Armageddon onto that website as a community leader until you attacked me (nor have I as my posts have been neutral). I believe that it is better to show than to tell and thus I provided the links to the information and left it at that. You will note I didn't mention I was banned until someone claimed only 1 person had been banned. I then informed them in fact 2 more of us had been. I also updated it when RedRanger is unbanned.

3. I agree staff and player relations were doing a lot better than when I was a player, from what I saw prior to the leak. Likely things will improve going forward. This whole thing was disappointing to watch but it happened and it'll fade in time. I have no interest in continuing it after receiving this e-mail (and hopefully the reply to my question)

4. I never wanted to be Armageddon's community leader, that should probably go to a direct staffer. However if you are looking for a roleplay community you should consider having Armageddon itself lead it. Why? You are currently the largest running RPI with a player count on par or slightly above HavenRPGs and exceeding Harshlands (I'd need to look). Optional Realities lost 80% of its userbase in 2015 when we lost 8 months of discussion content which kind of hamstrung my attempt at it. Something to consider.

Not as brief as it should but it'll do. As I noted I am not appealing my ban you guys can enforce policy however you like and I did point out I have done bannable offenses in the past. All I'd like is my question answered. If the answer ends up being case by case basis that is fine too as that is the assumption we operated under in the original incarnation.

Thanks
Jeshin