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His Grace

Constructive Criticism of the Community

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To begin with, I'll introduce myself, explain my experiences, and then give my ten cents on the community and why I believe many new players are likely to be turned off.

 

Introduction and Experience

I'm a guy who spent a literal full week trying to discover new mmorpgs that I would love to play, one that met all my requirements. The issue with this is that there are two spectrums I'm dealing with here. The first spectrum is what I'm looking for in the actual game being met and the second is how toxic the community is. The closer I get to finding everything I want, the more difficult it becomes to find a community that isn't toxic. The reason for this has to do with the nature of a kind of game I'd like, which is one that offers plenty of freedom to the players over their own characters progression, rewarding more intelligent players and rightfully punishing players who made bad choices as to correct the choices they've made or get mad and go play something else. The best game I'v found out of every single game on the market that gets remotely close to this, is none other than this game. I have plenty of experience with other games and communities, so I know exactly what happens in the long run of a community moderated game, especially one as small as this.

 

My Ten Cents

Immediately I was struck with two types of attacks on other players who use a form of dog whistling to attempt to attack new players. The first form is "falsely relation". By accusing me of being someone that use to play the game, it implies that the person who you're accusing me was either not liked to the point that they had to use a new alt just to replay the game or that they were banned from the game meaning they were someone who did things that weren't desirable. Think about this, do you really expect me if I was someone pretending to be someone else, to admit who I am if that was a true accusation you're making? Of course not, therefore not only would you be disrespecting my choices as someone who made a new character, but, you're also psychologically influencing the other players who hear you make the accusations to believe that I'm a bad person by default. This is a dog whistle toward newer players and an actual attack which causes hostility from newer players relative to older players.

 

To give an example of this, as most of you who will call me a liar are also people who've never experienced any of this yourselves or who has brown nosed the community so much that they've been convinced otherwise while still not actually caring themselves, let me explain my action versus the reaction I'v gained from the community toward the behavior of falsely relating me to someone else. I decided to ignore people for one of three reasons in order to prevent being harassed by the community through a dog whistle tactic commonly used by small communities that have created a high concentration of people that live in a bubble.

 

  1. Falsely accusing me of being or possibly being someones alt
  2. Feigning ignorance toward a comment I'v made
  3. Outright told me to just quit the game since I don't like the community

 

In a matter of three days in the invasion channel of the game, I'v put a total of twenty three players on my ignore list and the list seems to keep growing. I'm not going to list the players here as I believe that will be a sign of flaming. I actually realize one hundred percent that this thread will get flamed and trolled by people feigning ignorance and ignored themselves for breaking forum rules by staff who will "patiently" wait out of the fire to hold a double standard against me, as this is a theme I find very common in small communities like this. See, I play this game because I like the game itself, not because I like you. Socialization is a crucial part of the game and as such those who feign ignorance manage to, through prior dog whistling, convince others that I'm somehow the worse person in the world despite the fact that before I came here, I'm sure this community probably sorted through hundreds or thousands of new players who suffered similar treatments and from your perspective, "they're just all the same person" from your psychological stand point which was manipulated by members of the community. Don't get me started on scamming being allowed and the implications I can make from that (tricking people into breaking rules).

 

I put twenty three players on my ignore list, not the other way around. Think about it. If I'm such a troll then what stops you from putting me on your ignore list? Why is it that every time I post a comment in game, people who aren't on my ignore list clearly are talking to someone on my ignore list followed by myself getting called a troll. I merely asked today if I should take the skeptic perk due to the nature of a lack of unpredictability it has. I was called by a moderator, a "troll" merely for asking this question. That same moderator will also come to this thread and try to convince others with very little effort, that out of all the 86,400 seconds in a day, you chose those few seconds to just randomly decide to say "don't feed the trolls" and somehow it's not insane to believe you were merely giving others advise at that moment.

 

Why I'm Posting This Message

Nine times out of ten in every game with this kind of community, it doesn't matter if I completely ironman mode the community or not. I will eventually have to be put under fire for merely deciding to play the game in a tightly nit community that has developed such an ego that they've blinded themselves from small things each other do and if you point this out to them, they have an identity crisis of sorts which they have to absolutely deny their behavior because they've been convinced they're not in the wrong. This eventually leads to newer players getting treated worse by staff. I have yet to have a bad "personal" run in with staff members which accuse me of doing something against the rules or to have a staff member tell me to shut up yet, but, I know it will happen eventually due to the fact this community has developed too much identity toward each other and expectations that come with those identities.

 

I leave you with this last message. Don't hold double standards for trolling and flaming accusations and if you can't handle that, then consider removing trolling and flaming from the rules the way you remove scamming from the rules to prevent such controversy. That is all.

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One of the reason many players are not in the Invasion Channel 6 is that it is a channel where you get flamed. The game has lots of nice helpful people, many of whom got burned by a few players who repeatably come back with new chars. The only way to get past that is to play your game talk with people in local chat, and start on this way your connections.

One of the reasons why people ask new players if they are an alt, is that most new chars that get made are in one way or the other one and one reason people make them is to use the friendly players who would give new players advice and sometimes gifts. when you get burned there you stop eventually helping more and more. which is sadly somethign that happens here a lot

 

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I strongly suspect the root of your problem is that you entered the game in ch 6 and not in ch 1, which is the proper channel for TRULY NEW players and which generally has TRULY HELPFUL players in it. If you start out in ch 6, and show playing prowess but lack of knowledge, the obvious assumption is that you are a returnee who has come back after several years. Considering your post, this does not apply, but as a former moderator, I can assure you that you are a very very rare exception to that rule then.

Channel 6 is the way it is because anyone who doesn't like the chat in there and still plays, and this includes the majority of players In know actually, are in a guild or other channel, so only the antisocial rabble are left in there.

Your comment on scamming demonstrates you are indeed a new player, otherwise you would have realized this was an immediate consequence of the personality of the game owner, radu (entropy in forum). The game, and sadly the community in ch 6, mostly reflects his attitude and not that of the majority of the players. 

 

I have worked in ch 1 trying to welcome and educate new players for years, sat countless hours on IP trying to teach android players how to talk. I used to run contests and invasion for new players, only to find that most of them were alts taking advantage of my efforts to collect stuff, especially after the rule banning players to have their alts interact was removed.  I eventually gave up on being a moderator, because of the nature of how the game is run, which is not fair but preferential; a few of radu's favorites, some of them whales, rule the game. The rest of us get muted or worse for speaking out mind, so we stopped giving feedback and trying to improve the game. 

In spite of this, I am still here, playing my char and sometimes even chatting in ch 6. I have made many friends, from all over the world. 

 

I am sorry you got burned like this, since EL, in spite of all its faults, is the only game of its kind I know that I can play on low end Win, Mac, Linux, and Android devices. It also has a very nice community, hidden away in guilds and some language-specific channels. 

 

I hope you have found a place. 

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