Shattered Kingdoms

Thank you for the complement! As I wasn't around for Thuban's ban-crusade, I'll need to take your word for what happened.



It would be great to have vets return, I won't disagree with that. That being said, Algorab had a good point, too.



Maybe it's time to start working with the fountain RPers and seeing if you can't encourage them to start taking some risks, get involved in some activity, and teach them to be PKers and/or drivers of activity. Maybe it's time to start growing the next generation (however small right now) of vets.



But there's a catch here: in order to have a healthy IC community, you also need to have a healthy OOC community. The two are flip sides of the same coin. Because the character's don't exist without the players, and players (at least it's been my experience) don't want to play a game where there's a toxic or unhealthy OOC community. A lot of players prefer to play with their friends and people they know. It's why word-of-mouth advertising is so powerful, but I digress. In order to bring SK back to a healthy state of existence with a solid, active playerbase that isn't in the single digits both the IC and OOC communities need tending and attention.



I agree with this statement 100%.

I thought about explaining some issues but decided not to. I feel the post would simply disappear much like OAs conversation with thuban and the reply he got. It was very telling.

If you are going to ban someone because you feel like they are trolls, that's fine, just own it. So far I like what I see from the new rm because we are back to handling punishments objectively, but I see no clear path for people permanently banned for posting things on 3rd party sites. Thanks for the replies and thank you for trying, trosis.

I don't think that a lack of staff positions is anything but a secondary factor to SK's player-count drop. I think the biggest contributing factors from the staff's standpoint were/are twofold.

A) A set of game balance changes put PK in the gutter by removing all ways that reliably secured kills, giving even more reward to those who would turtle until they outnumbered their enemies on the who list. I saw this reflected in the fact that in my brief returns to the game, the overwhelming number of the 'veterans' would only fight with superior numbers, and virtually every inexperienced player I encountered followed suit. Those same inexperienced players would also express genuine OOC frustration about how their opponents were too cowardly to go on the offensive while outnumbered. It was like living in the twilight zone.

B) A lack of transparency and reasonable justification behind multiple punishments, some of which were direct bans and others which caused the players to leave permanently as a result of the punishments. This caused a ripple effect where other players would also leave who knew them well. In many of these cases, the punishments did not seem consistent with prior punishments and/or seemed to involve Thuban inferring the motive of the player without providing proof of it. Here's the four biggest examples that stand to me in my best recollection.

1. Erog/Gann's punishments for supposedly mentoring the same re-rolled character an extremely large number of times. Not only was it unclear as to whether this would have even benefited them, as Erog and Gann were extremely prolific and would have been very likely to earn mentor points regardless of whether the charges were true, but according to Gann and Erog, Erog only trained the offending re-rolled character once total. The punishments in these cases caused both of these players to lose hero status, 2 attribute points, and revocation of mentor privileges. This permanently crippled those very established characters. These players quit and never returned, as did at least one prolific character who played with them.

2. The 'take' command abuse. No one argued that the player in question hadn't committed multiple violations. Despite that, however, the vast majority of the playerbase did not feel that using 'take' to determine whether a zombie was carrying a specific item should have been viewed as abuse. This was a circumstance where Thuban explicitly invoked 'past bad behavior' as justification for whether or not the accused was guilty. I hope that the cause for concern here is self-evident.

3. At one point a deep-elf Harlequin (Suvilivus) was instantly helled for camping in the Taslamaran inn and petrifying a griffon peacekeeper without any interaction before-hand. After this happened, the rules about 'what's allowable PK' were yet again changed to reflect that tribunal members were fair game at all times. This did not have any effect on the deep-elf harlequin's punishment, as he was still required to apologize for playing a deep-elf that killed a griffon peacekeeper without RP first.

4. A player was hit with a multiplaying violation for logging onto a dead character before logging onto their main, the justification being not that scanning the who list was wrong, but that scanning the who list with a dead character (and thus granting access to spirit sight) was wrong.

Not to get into too much detail, but since this is one of the more common conspiracy theories rolling around I figured I would address it. No, there was no forums rollback because of the content of a single thread. Frankly, if the staff really thought a thread needed to go we would just delete the thread and save ourselves the headache involved in making a pretend server failure that the people who would care about the thread removal wouldn't believe anyway. I know you're a long term player, so I ask you with all sincerity possible, do you not remember the plethora of threads that have been removed over the years? Even when General Discussion was a thing? I can tell you from personal knowledge, and prior experience as a player, there has never really been a time that anyone with the ability to do a server "rollback" would have done one just to possibly avoid hurting someone's feelings. Also, is there anyone that uses the internet these days that doesn't realize that anything posted to the internet is basically there forever? Whole lot of work for what would have to be assumed would be a negative payoff. I'm not upset that you think it might have happened, just disappointed that anyone who has seen how the staff operates logically thinks we would go to those lengths and waste that much time for nothing. We have locked and removed threads before, I am quite sure we will again at some point in the future if it is warranted.

No real access to a computer at the moment, so please forgive any spelling errors and the upcoming double post.

That seems plausible but I suppose my disposition may come from having my posts removed for simply asking if there was an appeals process and the fact that when OA received threats on a 3rd party site directed at his children, his posts 'here' were deleted and he was told that because it was a separate site, it was not relevant. Fast forward to 2017 and people are now getting banned for things posted on 3rd party sites. I suppose times have changed though and I'm not really worried about it.

A): We actually spoke as staff at length about this the last time you brought it up, I'm not in a position right now to be able to pull my records to tell you exactly what the sentiments were, but you're describing something that I personally believe has become progressively worse over more than a decade. What a lot of people refer to as the "Golden Age" involved almost every class having access to one-hit kill abilities, combat that would often end in death in under a single bash lag, and some charms and controls that could basically wipe an unprepared group by their lonesome. While a whole lot of people had a lot of fun back then, I can't say I'm unhappy with ALL of those changes, but I can absolute agree it has become harder to secure kills over time even if there was still lots of group v solo PK even back then.

B): I appreciate you not using names for some of these, as I feel slightly more comfortable speaking about them, but I am going to refer to some you mentioned, and some you didn't so as to allow at least some plausible deniability for the players involved.

The reason for a punishment related to spirit sight was the main character had no ability to gain access to spirit sight ever. That means using another character to approximate those effects was much more of a problem than it might be otherwise, but no ban was levied for this incident. Personally? I probably would have went with a warning for that level of infraction, and the esoteric nature of the violation, but a minor curse isn't exactly beyond comprehension.

A player was allowed to play after an initial PvP infraction that they apologized for, but they were later banned for racist behavior, and a refusal to respond to staff appropriately when I attempted to give the person a chance to explain things to me.

A player was banned for continuous abuse of both staff members and other players.

A player was banned for other reasons than mentioned related to player behavior, but was later unbanned after resolving those issues and continues to play today.

Mentor abuse is serious, and while some things don't receive a ton of active scrutiny unless a problem arises, mentor usage is not one of them. The only individual with access to server logs is the same one who runs the game, Dulrik, and if you don't trust him to do the right thing when verifying issues with mentoring then I can't do a whole lot for you. However, the mentor abuse in the situation you mentioned extended beyond what you described, and I'll leave it at that.

I'm not Thuban, nor am I any of the people who were banned, but I can tell you that both recently, and in the past, mistakes have been made by both staff and players at different times. Some of those incidents have been apologized for directly with the people involved, but I think it's important to recognize that justification of mistakes can only help illuminate the underlying problems to be addressed, it can't actually fix the mistake itself. Staff and players, the entire playerbase, is all some form of human and we are all going to continue to make mistakes as is our nature, but handling things rationally and with empathy on all sides can definitely make things end in a more positive manner for everyone involved.

To provide a really minor example, there has been a long-term shortcut to access a higher-level leveling area within a major Imperial zone. Personally, I think whoever built this specific short cut did so in a way that could have easily led to accusations of multi-playing, bug abuse, and hurt feelings all around. My mistake was not being aware of the issue as KD of the Empire, and I did my best to improve that by legitimizing the shortcut for now so that most anyone in the game can find said shortcut via simple IC methods. If the shortcut being within a Imperial zone proves to be too unbalancing, I'll either remove it altogether or move it to a more generic location. If that's the case, that's obviously another mistake on my part of miscalculating the impact, but for now I've done what I've thought was best for the health of the game.

As long as we're all operating from the mindset of doing what we can to improve and maintain the health of the game, I think these kinds of discussions are highly productive and positive. Part of that though really is understanding that even if you or I don't like a specific decision, that it was still a decision made from that mindset. No person, staff or player, within the playerbase is some kind of supernatural devil, we are all just flawed people looking to have or facilitate having a good time. That doesn't mean their actions are going to be allowed, or that a person is going to be welcome to play here if they are currently banned, but what it does mean is that people who aren't operating within that mindset are probably going to run into more problems than those that do.

I apologize this doesn't address all your concerns, and I know that Rome wasn't built in a day, but I do hope this helps in some way clear the air. I won't be discussing any specific bans further in this thread, but I'd be happy to speak more generally if that's useful to anyone.

It probably doesn't need to be said, but I still want to say that any threats made on another person, let alone their children, is deplorable and someone willing to make them probably isn't someone we would want to welcome as a member of our community here. We never wanted to police third-party sites due to a plethora of issues involving verification of offense, and at a earlier time some of the third-party sites were much less toxic. I don't mean to throw any kind of shade upon any of the people who run the third-party sites, it's just a reflection of the emotions and actions of people using those sites changing, but over time it simply became more and more obvious that this was a problem of our own creation in part by creating an environment where third-party sites were felt necessary to many players. We are looking at trying to alleviate that need by improving our own content offerings, and communication platforms.

We still aren't going to be moderating someone else's forums, but we are more open to addressing issues impacting our players no matter where the issues are originating. Of course, addressing them may include telling people to just cease communication with the people or places causing a problem, and it may lead to enforcement actions here. Every situation is somewhat unique and should be looked at individually.

The punishment in question was for multiplaying, which involves deleting all but one character and penalizing the remaining one. That's not a minor curse. In addition, going by Thuban's tendency to say "Well, you wouldn't be punished at all if you had never broken any rules, but since you're a repeat offender not only are you guilty, but the punishment is going to be more severe this time" that punishment also carried with it a potential for heavier punishments in the future for other infractions that would have otherwise been overlooked.

Getting punished for scanning the who list with a dead character, getting punished for using the 'take' command to see if an ungeared zombie is carrying an item in its inventory, and getting punished for petrifying a griffon Peacekeeper as a deep-elf Harlequin are all examples of punishments that relied on extremely dodgy justification, and at least one case involved Thuban openly admitting that had another player committed those exact same actions, they wouldn't have been punished at all.

That's fundamentally not fair and it widened the divide between players and staff.

My point being that if you're going to bring the claim that the primary problem of SK's playercount is not reaching out to new players enough, you're missing the elephant in the room that a great deal of existing players felt like the staff were being unfair and left for those reasons, and many of them are absolutely justified in that thinking.

It isn't a dodgy explanation to curse someone for logging onto another character to look for dead players since they couldn't do it on their current character due to the advantages/disadvantages of their chosen build. I explained how I would probably handle the situation, but if you think it wasn't an issue at all, we'll have to agree to disagree. Same thing for PvP without RP, there is no enmity help file for griffons that provides extra leeway, but seeing as how I wasn't a party to the situation I'll leave it at that.

Basically, it seems like you're trying to use disliking the way a situation was handled to completely excuse the action itself that led to the situation. I can agree that sometimes things aren't handled in the best possible way, but I can't agree that handling something in a less than ideal fashion excuses the action.

Also, it's not fundamentally unfair to consider previous violations when deciding a punishment for a current infraction. No offense, but this is something that weighs into sentencing in the US legal system every day and if you're expecting something more than that you are probably expecting too much. Even modern MMOs with a plethora of paid staffers consider escalating punishments for repeat offenders.

So yes, if you think it is unfair to consider someone's prior behavior when deciding a punishment, you should either prepare yourself to accept something you personally think is unfair, or find another way to spend your time. I will add though, I do prefer to offer players a pretty clean slate after a sufficient period of good behavior, but there is a big difference between a history of minor offenses long past and more recent serious violations.

And this outlook is simply what I don't understand. As having being directly involved in the situation, I can probably shed some light on this. There are many ways to find out if someone is dead. Ask a friend on yim who was currently the knightlord and priest with access to detections, log onto my other alt and get a precise location via locate wands and look for recalls etc. That particular dead character was initiate or apprentice and was an age dead giant well past venerable age. Why? Because I had been logging in to check who lists and hitting quit from my phone for over a year prior to this incident. Check the records with 'Korg'. I did explain this to the RM and it can be viewed in a log.

But I get it though, because my past offenses being: setting up a trigger to make my character blink upon elemental fading, killing a light aura NPC as a light aura character in tlaxcala before they were color-coded and posting info on om-gspider regarding upcoming changes to MC splitting into two factions( Legion/Midnight ) would technically put me on the repeat offenders list. I've admitted to things I've done in the past, but I'm telling you that this was not one of those times where I cheated or was trying to game the system. The timing of the incident seemed strange too because the day prior we had killed a few keepers, I can't remember who exactly Aesovious, Gredson etc.

All in the past though and this has gotten derailed. I've seen what I need to see and I wish you all the best with your game, but I likely won't be coming back and this will probably be my last post. Thanks for the replies everyone and yeah I do blame how thuban handled all this and if he wants, he is welcome to frame this next to OA's post. wp.