Shattered Kingdoms

Let's just stop using gameplay, and all other forums but GD, so that we can communicate without being censored.

This is the only message I have read tonight that actually bothers me. Everyone else that is posting knows how the forum game is played and has chosen their role to play. I've been laughing out loud at a lot of it, because its just funny, even when its idiotic.

Momo, I have no idea who you have played or what admin treatment you received to "scare" you. For one, I am pretty cold in game and do not normally get involved in the RPs, but I do try to take serious complaints seriously. If you have an idea, feel free to voice it to the staff. The worse that will happen is that nothing will come of it. If you have bought into the idea that the staff are a bunch of manipulative psychos based on what you've read here, its a sad day.

Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that you do things like put "scare" in quotes when confessing you know nothing about the situation might, in fact, be part of what's scary about you in the first place?

This is an extreme example, but it makes the point clear: it's like putting "rape" in quotes when you don't know anything about what's involved when someone's started to get comfortable enough to talk to you about it.

The feeling I and several other community members often get is that, without knowing anything about the situation, you're more inclined to trust unsupervised administrators, or at least to distrust complaints about those not already on some poo list. The fact that this was pretty much blatantly documented when Arkex hid in Kytar doesn't help me view what you've said -- and more importantly, how you've said it -- in a manner that regards everyone as equal in potential value to the game experience. Chuckle at believing we're just playing to forum game if you'd like, but the cost of that is being suspected of little more than that, yourself.

If we're all going to rabble-rouse about Syn's personality flaws, it's probably more than fair to suggest that what's going on here is a consequence of your own personality flaws, too, Dulrik. Does that mean it's hopeless? Hardly. But I think it does mean you could have replied to that a little more tactfully, and you may well owe at least one user an apology for (perhaps unintentionally) belittling feelings.

I think I should clarify that I've never been punished by the staff or told outright that I was wasting their time. This is mostly a feeling I've gotten from reading the forums (and ignoring people that are obvious outliers like Syn that thinks the staff holds ritualistic sacrifices of baby kittens) and especially reading staff posts. I'd also like to mention that I -have- had some positive staff interactions like mine with Sadal who was both professional and nice in their dealings with me.

As for characters I've played, I think the only ones people might know are Paulina, Liirdistra, and Yemi. Like I said, I'm not a veteran player by any means.

Thanks for that feedback, Momo. I hope that my quotes did not put you off as much as grep would lead me to believe.

Grep: Regarding unsupervised administrators, I've said in the past that administrators are logged 100% of the time and they know that they are logged, which is a lot more supervision than your average player. If you have a specific accusation to make, go ahead and send it in. Assuming enough details are provided (please include time ranges and any commands or keywords you believe were used inappropriately), I absolutely can and will check out the story.

If you don't believe I'll do anything about cheating admins, then I suppose I should go get back up on the cross that you put me on.