Shattered Kingdoms

The player of Damakos has received a warning for inappropriate use of the prayer channel and transferring of items. For the item in question, a "twisted white stick," enough time had passed I felt a warning was merited, but this should serve as a reminder to remain vigilant when playing multiple characters. Further offenses will be punishable by full extent of the rules as written.

Felben has been retired for transferring of items, two limited staves, between two characters belonging to the same player. The player was given a choice of which character to keep following this incident.

After a thorough discussion with the player known as Syn, who took responsibility for their past actions and showed a willingness to return to make a positive contribution to the game, we've decided to lift Syn's ban and welcome their return to the game with the following restrictions:

1. One character limit
2. No tribunal or cabal leadership
3. Welcomed back to the forums under moderation (forumid: TacoRobot)
4. No Harlequin characters

Syn understands that a return to previous behavior will result in the reinstatement of the previous ban.

The player of Damakos and Taran has received a warning for his use of the dark star pendant as well as summoning reavers. Both the creature summoned by the pendant and reavers summoned by Damakos were being left behind in places Taran has frequented.

As doing so could allow both characters to benefit from the item/action of one, the player was advised to destroy the mote and move any reavers Damakos summoned before revisiting the same location on Taran to avoid suspicion of multiplay.

The next multiplay related violation for this player will result in all characters involved being retired and a one-character limit being imposed.

Sterhul was retired due to a case of item transfer. The player chose to keep Holion, who was de-looted, and retire their other characters in accordance with the rules.

Amir and Brax were retired following the transfer of a container and other items (read: HELP MULTIPLAY) between Amir and Orik. The player involved chose to keep Orik who was de-looted according to the rules.

Moorb and Orik both received penalties yesterday.

Moorb received a small penalty in violation of Rule #2. No RP was initially given following the recent PK of Jomino, with an insufficient attempt being made only after staff involvement.

Orik received a small penalty for violation of a combination of Rules #1 and #2 for using OOC motivation as the impetus for IC conflict. Initially I intended to issue a medium penalty, but after a thorough and respectful discussion with the player I decided a small penalty was sufficient.

Opey's forum ban is being reinstated after he showed a consistent inability to post within the rules including but not limited to violation of the following:

The Kangzen character and all other characters from this player have been forfeit, and no further characters will be accepted from this player. We do not take this action lightly, and I will briefly provide the reason for this decision, as well as some free advice for all other players.

This action was taken primarily for a violation of the Terms of Service of Shattered Kingdoms, specifically sections 5b and 5l, as well as general violation of Rule One, and help conduct. For those unfamiliar with the Terms of Service, I implore you to read over it in its entirety, but the specific sections at hand are as follow.



In many cases it serves no one to get into the details of why exactly someone was punished beyond referencing the rules broken, but due to the severity of the punishment, as well as the nature of the infraction, it was decided that this would be better served as a lesson to others to avoid such situations in the future.

Kangzen was a character that appeared to be created as nothing more than a racist caricature meant to spread hate and objectionable content in the game, and harass other players by forcing them to witness it, and in some cases directly interact with it, hiding under the guise of "role-play". This includes numerous different singularly questionable decisions, including choosing a description and adjective meant to be negative/disparaging, making real-life stereotypical jokes ICly, pretending to throw up "gang signs" under the guise of thieves cant, using somewhat unintelligible speech solely in an attempt to mimic some form of outside racial/location-based dialect, and overall offensive behavior.

These fulfill almost every criteria under 5b and when the player was given the OOC opportunity to clarify the situation by a member of the staff instead of taking that offered opportunity to: defend, clarify, apologize, offer concession, or just discuss the matter respectfully, they instead chose not to respond to the matter appropriately and continued to speak in the dialect ICly to the staff member in question. While most of the previous paragraph would fall under Rule One in addition to the Terms of Service violations, this also falls under Rule One as well as help conduct.

The reason I'm providing this additional detail over and above the normal standard is because I want to stress that context is important, and that while any one of the above mentioned actions would not be looked upon favorably as far as role-play quality is concerned, and some may result in adjective changes and other minor punishments, it is, and always will be the context in which they are used that takes them from poor role-play to racist behavior that will never be tolerated. It is important to ensure that if you're going to be emphasizing a racial component to your character with a real world corollary that you are still playing a character, and not a caricature.

I say this with the utmost sincerity; we don't enjoy punishing players and specifically don't enjoy showing players the door on a permanent basis. However, if a staff member comes to you to speak about something out-of-character, I urge you to take it seriously because that interaction may be the difference between clearing up a misunderstanding or confirming a willful violation, and while you may change your mind and want to cooperate at a later time, first impressions are everything in these types of situations. Heartfelt honest explanations and mea culpa just don't hold as much weight when they come after you have chosen to actively antagonize the staff about the issue and had a serious punishment levied against you.

To everyone still with me, thank you very much for choosing to spend your time with us at Shattered Kingdoms, and I hope this player's behavior did not ruin anyone's enjoyment of the game before it was dealt with.

The player of Arkaad, known to most of the community as Opey, has had their provisional reinstatement revoked and site-ban reapplied for violations of rules one and two, as well as terms of service violations including, but not limited to, 5b, 5g, and 5l.

Despite this most recent incident, we wish nothing but the best for the player of Arkaad and apologize to the rest of the community for any disruption this may cause.