Reintroductions and reflections.

[Feru]

Some years ago i got an experience i want to share
Created an account in a "wow fun server", the toon come at maximum lvl, just move a few steps to best equipment seller and "fun" for 2 or 3 hours! ... and never come back or played another "fun-changed-"move to balance discussion stuff" except ror.
Then I found a server called nostalrius where everything was recreated in the original form (vanilla), took a few months to reach 60 but it was worth it, I think it was not the only one there was around 10,000 more players online on average.
Why all this ppl wana play with unbalanced toons so many hours is the question!

[Azarael]

appealing

I'm not providing a general amnesty, I'm dealing with cases of overreach. Those who, prior to all of this, were sanctioned for being constant irritations on the forum or elsewhere will remain sanctioned. I never stated in my OP that everything that the team, or that I, did was wrong, only some of it.

[Prague]

appealing

I'm not providing a general amnesty, I'm dealing with cases of overreach. Those who, prior to all of this, were sanctioned for being constant irritations on the forum or elsewhere will remain sanctioned. I never stated in my OP that everything that the team, or that I, did was wrong, only some of it.

I'm dealing with cases of overreach.

Exactly.


The reason for myself being a 'constant irritation' to you doesn't exist anymore, all of my stuff is now permanently OFF of your forum.

I simply wish for you to review my appeal and consider my guilds and my wb leading and FORGIVE me in light of all of that.

I only need now what anyone else needs from the forum and i need normal access to the forum via my 'Dresden' account to do it.

Also what of this account? may i keep it and post with it?

[Azarael]

I didn't overreach with you, though. That's my point. I'm not here to lift every deserved annoyance ban ever made on Return of Reckoning and allow people who were a constant pain back into the community. I'm here to deal with the people who were banned for what they did off our forums, for their dissent against oppressive management, etc. You presumably believe you were the victim of oppressive management, but I'm afraid I don't agree - you were removed because you simply didn't know when to stop.

[catholicism198]

Some years ago i got an experience i want to share
Created an account in a "wow fun server", the toon come at maximum lvl, just move a few steps to best equipment seller and "fun" for 2 or 3 hours! ... and never come back or played another "fun-changed-"move to balance discussion stuff" except ror.
Then I found a server called nostalrius where everything was recreated in the original form (vanilla), took a few months to reach 60 but it was worth it, I think it was not the only one there was around 10,000 more players online on average.
Why all this ppl wana play with unbalanced toons so many hours is the question!

Nostalgia.
I played on a few of those servers, and they were fun, but then I remembered what I hated so much about WoW.
Those servers, unlike this one, have a lot of mid level content and WoW has always been about the journey to the finish line and not a race to it....but that's not the fault of these devs. War lacks content in general. It's a niche game that does not have the broad appeal that WoW has...and 10,000 players is nothing when you take into account the number of players live had at that time.

[Prague]

I didn't overreach with you, though. That's my point. I'm not here to lift every deserved annoyance ban ever made on Return of Reckoning and allow people who were a constant pain back into the community. I'm here to deal with the people who were banned for what they did off our forums, for their dissent against oppressive management, etc. You presumably believe you were the victim of oppressive management, but I'm afraid I don't agree - you were removed because you simply didn't know when to stop.

Oh no, i don't mean you, no Azarael i am happy you are back, genuinely, any staff change always brings refreshment to this project.

I respect (but disagree with) the positions you took concerning me and scenario's, i just want us to be in reconciliation about them and i WANT to be able, in spite of what i disagree with, to SUPPORT and give a care for the ROR staff again, my self respect currently stands in the way of that.

No i mean Penril and Wargrimnir, my issues with both of them are uncountable but now UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.

I just want to play with normal access to the forum, i keep all of my stuff OFF of your forum, i simply do not care enough about development issues to complain about ANYTHING anymore, if i can go days or weeks or months without posting ANYTHING on this forum then that would be FANTASTIC.

PLEASE FORGIVE ME, I JUST WANT TO PLAY AND BE HAPPY, PLEASE.


addendum: My ten months off of the forum has taught me to be patient and read and not ask anything more than anyone else would.

[dur3al]

Outside of Event and Experimental Chars I have not yet seen someone modify renown or exp for their chars. All staff commands are logged and if a person of staff is to get himself some new dyes or a fancy appearance item these things have to be stated in the dedicated forum thread.Cheating yourself Items that increase your power is against the rules as far as I can tell. However, I cant say if these rules existed while you were still GM.

Source devs during my time were allowed to do this. I don't apologise for it and I'm very surprised Ade is mentioning it as if it is some dirty secret. This was done so that source devs would not spend their time grinding and leveling up, and would have the equipment required to make better judgements about the state of classes and the game. After an internal scandal involving secret vendors in dead zones, all usage of staff power to advance a character was logged internally.

My statement is not just for the little island of vendors, which btw would have continued if I didn't call it out and match people at there own game, and it was far more than just source devs. It may have been logged internally but it was still very much abused. I don't think of it as a dirty secret since I always openly talked about it with people anyway, and most people are probably already aware of it. The point was made to show that it goes on regardless, with very little punishment most of the time. It also went on without you being active.

Even back when I was an active player, I never really cared whether you guys would gear yourself characters or obtain items through your staff position instead of the regular playing the game path. Never really bothered me one bit - I would assume that perhaps you were testing something and needed a fully out geared char to test it, or hell, even that you guys did not had the time to level because you were busy coding or something.

But see, this is what I don't understand the most. Why a regular player who wanted to power level grinding rats were shat on so much? You guys removed that possibility and also removed any other way someone could power level when it is pretty much common mind that leveling/grinding in this game is a pain when we're all here for the PvP. I even suggested back then to make PQs/quests give 10x more exp to level out with rat grinding, or perhaps change some quests to instead of being kill 12x of these, kill 5x of these - making it much less of a grind and also enabling content to be seen. Now I do get it that you guys want people to see all of the content and stuff you've worked on and what not, but couldn't it be handled being less dicks about it? Trowing bans/infractions to anyone who wouldn't agree with you and/or argue back?

The whole thing that gets to me is hypocrisy - you don't like attitude from players while you guys had it yourselves.
You don't like easy power-leveling missing content while you guys (some of you) did it. Trust me when I say that I can see both sides of the coin here (YEARS ago I was a GM in a WoW private server) and I guarantee to you most of this could be avoided.. all you had to do was to take a more relaxed stance on things and on players in general (Github comes to mind). I'm sure I've told Aza at some point in my walls-of-texts that so much energy was being spent in persecution and demanding a very rigid stance from the players with a bunch of strict rules and telling us how the game should be played (balance wise) that it just ruined it for most us - after all we're to have fun and relax playing a game.

You can tell me that there has to be someone in charge as much as you wish, but it's simply not possible. This is a project of volunteers, some of whom have the source code. It is not a company.

If you cannot have a hierarchy & accountability for your own's actions then don't punish your player-base for doing their own thing and playing the game as they want or saying what they want & think, except in extreme cases.

For example the guy above me:

PLEASE FORGIVE ME, I JUST WANT TO PLAY AND BE HAPPY, PLEASE.

I don't even know him (I think) and I already feel bad for him even saying that. I'd just let the poor bastard play, I haven't seen what he did or read any of what he wrote to deserve the ban but if it was up to me I'd think "hell, **** it - let the bastard play" and be done with it without any "OH BUT THAT CLOUDY DAY ON OCTOBER 25 of 1986 YOU SAID THAT THING WHICH I SHALL NEVER FORGET" type of thing.

I didn't overreach with you, though. That's my point. I'm not here to lift every deserved annoyance ban ever made on Return of Reckoning and allow people who were a constant pain back into the community. I'm here to deal with the people who were banned for what they did off our forums, for their dissent against oppressive management, etc. You presumably believe you were the victim of oppressive management, but I'm afraid I don't agree - you were removed because you simply didn't know when to stop.

Like this, as part of the community I've never seen anyone who were a constant pain back into the community, ever. And I've played with and against some tough cookies personalities, both here and on live. The only one that comes to mind, unfortunately, its part of the staff, and its not even because of what he thinks that is differently then me, but due to the fact that he could threaten me at a whim and I had to literally watch anything I said in chat because it would be used against me.
If its a guy calling me retarded or any other racial slur to my Brazilian heritage non-stop in pms i'd just mute him and be done with it, simple & easy - and I get the advantage of keep killing him and irritating him even more in future (instead of getting him banned).

[adei]

Spoiler:

Source devs during my time were allowed to do this. I don't apologise for it and I'm very surprised Ade is mentioning it as if it is some dirty secret. This was done so that source devs would not spend their time grinding and leveling up, and would have the equipment required to make better judgements about the state of classes and the game. After an internal scandal involving secret vendors in dead zones, all usage of staff power to advance a character was logged internally.

My statement is not just for the little island of vendors, which btw would have continued if I didn't call it out and match people at there own game, and it was far more than just source devs. It may have been logged internally but it was still very much abused. I don't think of it as a dirty secret since I always openly talked about it with people anyway, and most people are probably already aware of it. The point was made to show that it goes on regardless, with very little punishment most of the time. It also went on without you being active.

Even back when I was an active player, I never really cared whether you guys would gear yourself characters or obtain items through your staff position instead of the regular playing the game path. Never really bothered me one bit - I would assume that perhaps you were testing something and needed a fully out geared char to test it, or hell, even that you guys did not had time to level because you were busy coding or something.

But see this is what I don't understand the most. Why a regular playing who wanted to power level grinding rats were shat on so much then? You guys removed that and also removed any other way someone could power level when it is pretty much in common mind that leveling/grinding in this game is a pain when we're all here for PvP. I even suggested back then to make PQs/quests give 10x more exp to level out with rat grinds, or perhaps change some quests to not be kill 12x of these, and instead be kill 5x of these - making it much less of a grind and also enabling content to be seen. Now I do get it you guys want people to see all of the content and what not, but couldn't it be handled by being less dicks about it trowing bans/infractions to anyone who wouldn't agree with you and/or argue back?

The whole thing that gets to me is hypocrisy - you don't like attitude from the players while you guys had it yourselves.
You don't like easy power-leveling missing content while you guys (some of you) did it. Trust me when I say that I can see both sides of the coin here (YEARS ago I was a GM in a WoW private server) and I guarantee to you most of this could be avoided.. all you had to do was to take a more relaxed stance on things and on players in general (Github comes to mind). I'm sure I've told Aza at some point in my walls-of-texts that so much energy was being spent in persecution and demanding a very rigid stance from the players with a bunch of strict rules and telling us how the game should be played (balance wise) that it just ruined it for most us - after all we're to have fun and relax playing the game.

You can tell me that there has to be someone in charge as much as you wish, but it's simply not possible. This is a project of volunteers, some of whom have the source code. It is not a company.

If you cannot have a hierarchy & accountability for your own's actions then don't punish your player-base for doing their own thing and playing the game as they want or saying what they want & think, except in extreme cases.

For example the guy above me:

PLEASE FORGIVE ME, I JUST WANT TO PLAY AND BE HAPPY, PLEASE.

I don't even know him (I think) and feel bad for him even saying that. I'd just let the poor bastard play, I haven't seen what he did or read any of what he wrote to deserve the ban but if it was up to me I'd think "hell **** it, let the bastard play" and be done with it without any "OH BUT DAY ON OCTOBER 25 of 1986 YOU SAID THAT THING WHICH I SHALL NEVER FORGET" type of thing.

I didn't overreach with you, though. That's my point. I'm not here to lift every deserved annoyance ban ever made on Return of Reckoning and allow people who were a constant pain back into the community. I'm here to deal with the people who were banned for what they did off our forums, for their dissent against oppressive management, etc. You presumably believe you were the victim of oppressive management, but I'm afraid I don't agree - you were removed because you simply didn't know when to stop.

Like this, as part of the community I've never seen anyone who were a constant pain back into the community, ever. And I've played with and against some tough cookies personalities, both here and on live. The only one that comes to mind, unfortunately, its part of the staff, and its not even because of what he thinks differently then me, but due to the fact that he could threaten me at a whim and I had to literally watch anything I said in chat because it would be used against me.
If its a guy calling me retarded or any other racial slur to my Brazilian heritage non-stop in pms i'd just mute him and be done with it, simple & easy - and I get the advantage of keep killing him and irritating him even more in future (instead of getting him banned).

I am well aware that people don't care about it, my point was that most of the staff doesn't fully understand the 'hardships' of most players given that they have a much easier time doing things, whether it be gear, flying around, leveling etc etc.

[GodlessCrom]

dureal: For what its worth, Dresden (the poster above you) was a bit of a nuisance on the forums, and was genuinely toxic and entitled in many of his interactions that I saw. Some of his content was helpful, but the very odd and obsessive behavior outweighed the good. His in-game behavior was relatively harmless, but I think keeping him off the forums is better for everyone involved (including himself.)

Agreed on most other points though. A more relaxed stance benefits all. Cannot dictate player behavior, and I think the past year has demonstrated that aptly.

[Prague]

I'm not here to... allow people who were a constant pain back into the community.

If that is true then i should stop constantly handing out gold to people for no reason other than that they want it and i should shut down my two guilds that are open to everyone purely for THEIR convenience and are set up to allow them to invite anyone THEY want in my guilds even if I absolutely HATE them.

You should also tell everyone to stop putting me in charge of warbands (that happened in three different warbands i joined yesterday) and you should tell the pro warband leaders to stop asking me to take charge of the campaign when all else fails.