[Traithe]

Hi all,

I managed to restrain myself from writing a response after this guy's first review, but the second was really the straw that broke the camel's back... so, my sincere apologies for adding another primarily useless post to this already-crowded forum, and my thanks for tolerating it - it's really a way to vent my own irritation rather than add anything particularly constructive, although if this manages to convince other RPI MUD admins out there to watch out for this guy at least some good will have come of it.

Before I go any further I should also mention that this fellow really gets under my skin like few others can, and so this will likely be less than objective, although I'll try my hardest to keep it so.

Onto to the first "review", written by Karnak/Donta:

Originally Posted by One must say survival on this mud is very limited and the economy is very horrible. I say this because very few items are resalable, most crafted items cost more to make than to sell, and the crafts you do start out with even to none guilded players make survival near impossible when it comes to acquiring money.

Mm. So, his first character was a military recruit, belonging to a highly dangerous post called the Eastern Garrison. It's dangerous because it sits on our human civilization's eastern border, essentially serving as the first line of defense to the hordes of orcs and worse things to the east. Now, since he had just recently joined the group, he was a Recruit.

Turns out that he was leading groups of other low-ranking soldiers out east to go "orc hunting". Not only was this in violation of direct orders given to him by his superiors, but it was also in blatant violation of the continuity of the gameworld - ICly it's supposed to be pretty much certain death to go to certain areas to the east. I hadn't bothered actually creating mechanisms to ensure that code-wise, as I prefer to spend my time creating more constructive things as opposed to enforcement systems. However, once I learned of the twinkery that was going on, I took a day to set things up to reflect the in-character danger level of that region. I also had additional orders posted as one of the Garrison commanders, warning folks again to not to to that region out in the east.

Sure enough, the next morning, his character's name, along with the names of four other soldiers, were on the death logs. As you can probably guess, he was bitter about that for quite awhile; had he simply played within the theme of the gameworld and avoided the temptation to twink (e.g. pick off the lone orc scouts that we had set up, and loot their gear), this would not have happened.

His third character was an attempt at a crafter. We had some trouble there, as well. The way our system works, if you have "role play points" to spend, you can purchase certain roles and have your character set up with them before you enter the game the first time. Otherwise, you start the game with a standard character and you'll need to go about obtaining your positions during play.

So, he wanted to be a timberwright. We didn't really have the infrastructure up and running for those yet, but we thought: why not? If he wants to play one, we'll try to accomodate him. So, we accept him, with the caveat that he can't be officially guilded since he wasn't able to spend any points on his character application.

He gets set up and dropped into the game, and everything seems fine. Turns out he's missing a couple crafts that he needs to actually cut trees - duh - and so he writes in about it. At first I assumed we didn't have the necessary crafts, but it turns out we did; so I had to find out why they weren't attaching correctly to his pfile.

I consult with the crafts admin in between preparing for law exams, adding in about 500 other pieces of code, and generally trying to keep the place afloat. Total time it takes us to resolve the issue, get back to him, and fix his situation: about 24 hours.

Meanwhile, he apparently is out writing this "review".

Originally Posted by Even when you wish to join a clan that requires admin assistance it requires what they call Rpp just to do so, secondly if you attempt this in-game without a Rpp a person will be very lucky to find a admin.

You'll see my explanation of our system above. It doesn't actually require points to do anything; however, if you want to start in certain positions it does. I won't go into a detailed discussion of the virtues of the setup here, but I will mention that it's a sign of trust the admins have in the ability of certain players to play advanced roles, and it is a system of incentive for people to play well, knowing that the "rewards" will extend beyond the death of their current PC.

Apparently, he missed that.

Regarding "not being able to find an admin": as those of you who are involved on the staff side of any RPI know, it's a very time-intensive endeavour. Each PC tends to require things that at some point in time will need admin intervention. Top that off with the fact that we have an application-only character approval system, and that each of us is responsible as well for other things, be it building, coding, or writing crafts - and you have people with a lot on their plate. That isn't even mentioning, of course, that we have everything from students to attorneys to homemakers on staff here; we all have busy lives, even if the holiday season weren't right around the corner.

Needless to say, while we do our best, there are certain times of the day when a player won't be able to find us. That is why we provide numerous other methods of getting in contact to set up requests: email, mudmail, the forum, or private messages.

Did he actually use any of these to make a request?

No.

Originally Posted by Speaking about the staff, the staff themselves is far from friendly people, and borderline power mongering.

"Borderline power mongering." I guess I just fail to see how a group of people intent on devoting hours of their lives and in my case hundreds if not thousands of dollars to provide a fee, high quality game for folks can be "power mongering." Believe me, this is far too punishing a "hobby" to justify any sort of a power-high people might be looking for in creating a MUD.

I suspect that his somewhat distorted view of reality might label us as "power mongering" simply because we cut him down when he did things that were blatantly out-of-theme: e.g. the orc twinking episode. Sorry, but this is an RPI, and a themed one at that: we stick to our theme, and we ensure that actions have realistic and logically consistent consquences. If that makes us power mongers, so be it, I guess. Maybe he should go try a freeform chatroom if he's looking for admin-intervention-free roleplay.

Originally Posted by New players should look else ware for the staff can be very defensive towards any topic even to those asking for simple aid.

If anyone's read this far I'm not going to waste your time refuting this with more point-by-point examples; all I'll mention is that if you're looking for a more objective assessment, feel free to check out our forums and see for yourself.

Those are about all the points I wanted to address from the first "review". The second one is what really prompted this outburst on my part.

Originally Posted by I myself wrote a none biased review of this mud not to long ago and for my post the staff and the allied friends of the staff banished myself from the mud.

This made me chuckle a bit, when I could see straight again. The thing is, ever since he started making all this noise, players have continually asked me: "Why don't you just ban this guy? You all don't deserve to work this hard on something for free for us, and then get raked over the coals for it." What did I tell them? I told them that as much as we might not like him, that isn't grounds for a ban from the mud. He can write all the nasty reviews he likes, but until he actually violates one of our policies he's free to play here just like everybody else. Heck, we (the staff) even stepped in and defended this guy when one of our players saw his "review" and made an angry post because of it.

He logged in this morning and deleted his account. So, clearly, his "banishment" was self-imposed: we've been nothing but civil to him, and we most certainly did not stop him from playing our game, because of a couple poorly-written "reviews".

One last part I wanted to point out:

Originally Posted by Even to the length of down right spite by forbidding me to even e-mailing the staff with work I was doing for them earlier.

To understand the full context of this, you'll need a little background information first.

This guy is well known within the Harshlands-based RPI community for harrassing people OOCly over in-game roleplay. Particularly, women: his characters will pretty much latch onto the first female PC they meet, every time, and attempt to ingratiate themselves. He'll obtain some form of OOC contact, such as AIM, ICQ, email, what have you. For the first little while, things are fine; however, once the female does something that annoys him OOCly, he'll immediately begin bombarding her with messages and emails - to the point of being borderline if not over-the-line obsessive. I've been told by a couple different women now that it was really rather frightening; and I saw this happen both on Harshlands, where I coded for about a year, and SoI, where I code now.

The woman in this particular instance happened to one of our administrators. Ever since he started a character here he began submitting "craft ideas" to her; most were as incoherent and as poorly written as those two "reviews" of his, but out of sheer politeness she weathered all the spam, occasionally salvaging one or two ideas to make the poor guy feel appreciated.

Over time, the frequency of the emails started to increase. She came to me, and told me that they were beginning to make her feel distinctly uncomfortable, especially given this fellow's history. So, I told her: you need to quit being subtle, because he just doesn't pick up on those things. Tell him flat out that you don't want to hear from him anymore about ANYTHING, because he makes you uncomfortable. She asked me if I would volunteer to be his "staff contact point" in case he actually needed anything legitimate; I agreed.

So, after sending him this politely-worded but firm and straightforward email, he indeed leaves her alone.

The next day he terminates his account and posts his second "review" on topmudsites, and likely other sites as well.

It's a bit maddening that you can force yourself to be nothing but civil to people, even those who deserve it the least, and you still manage to get kicked in the teeth for it - you know?

At any rate, this concludes my "response". Again, I apologize for cluttering up the public forum - I just needed a place to vent a bit.

Thanks to anybody who actually read this far.

[Riga]

I'm pretty sure he's banned from Armageddon as well for similar actions.

[Pris]

That review response was enought to get me to want to try out your Mud. That was an excellent response.

Pris

[Geras]

I wouldn't worry too much... reviews like this tend to be on the better MUDs, and generally make me want to try the MUD instead of driving me away.

I suspect the same guy has hit a couple of other RPI muds with reviews like this. Interesting how the same people dislike so many MUDs. They should realize the problem might be with them, not 10 sets of admins.

[Jessara]

I agree with everything Traithe said about this guy. I have a very close friend who fell under his spell in an RPI I used to play constantly before it closed. My friend was only a newbie to muds and the internet so I was looking out for her. Her character met his character, within a few real life days he had her in love with him...couldn't keep his hands off her IC. A short time later he got her contact with her on messenger, which lead to a relationship and him actually propsing to her and saying he was coming to Australia to be with her. I knew from the start that this man was bad news, I've seen his kind around many times and have been tricked by someone like him myself. This whole thing left my friend heartbroken after I convinced her to ditch him. So yeah he does go after the women, so be very wary of him.

- Jessara.

[lckychrmsrr]

As for the guys character I know nothing.  The reviews however weren't that horrible.  He had opinions based on how he was treated in the game.  I don't agree with everything he had to say about the mud but some of what he said was warranted, and some was just him not spending enough time to calm down before writing a review.  I tried out the mud before it was even in the Top 40 on the lists and can attest to the fact that it is very hard to get involved in the game.  The existing cliques are hard to break into and because of the unique battle and crafts system it is very frustrating to try and get started.  Especially at times when there are less than 10 players logged on and you are a new character (not new player).  Over all I find the mud to be fairly well run and the Imm staff does stick to their theme quite well.  If you are not a patient person do not play this mud.  Even with an application system you are not always able to weed out bad players or players who wouldn't work well in your environment.  

As for the imm responses I had very good results and they were polite and helpful.  I fully understand them being busy but some people are still too immature to think about things like that (and not all of them are under 18).  Like I said, it is a very unique mud that has many good aspects and some things that are less desirable depending on your tastes.  

Although this guy sounds like a complete jerk his review really was that viscious.