A Thorough Explanation (Very Long Post)

[Moot 1719]

Warning: there is no TL;DR, read thoroughly!

 

Recently I’ve gotten very sick, quite suddenly, making me bedridden and unable to officially make any statement on this Halfling situation.. During my disappearance, I’ve had to lightly handle this Halfling fiasco when I had the time, and it seems to have gradually been blown out of proportion. A lot of false information and skewed truths are being tossed about, and I have grown quite disappointed at this stage. I will try to promptly explain the timeline of these events, to perhaps offer a more broad understanding of how this issue has arisen.

- Halflings were gonna get land in 5.0. Yes 5.0, not 4.5. There was originally a 5.0, however the project hadn’t progressed as we had hoped. It was later canceled.

- 5.0 was clearly not an actuality, and so I asked permission to lead dev for 4.5. Feelings changed, we wanted land ownership to be more rare(we can talk about why we made this decision at the community meeting), and so the Halflings were taken off the list, along with others. Salvus and the Caliphate were not active, so we decided to give them a deal: We would give them land, they needed to keep active on 4.5, or we turn their city into an event ruin, and essentially evict them.

- Release comes, that night when we’re doing the event, Read comes to me asking to give halflings land, I was originally apprehensive, but she suggested the same deal for the Halflings, which we gave to Salvus and the Caliphate. I agreed regardless of what the GMs had decided, and we went ahead.

- I’m unsure as to why, but apparently the Halflings never heard of this deal (or this is what they express). I presume that maybe the leader which was told, didn’t express it to the others, and eventually left. However I’m simply guessing.

- Recently in a GM meeting, we spoke about the Halflings, we agreed the city wasn’t being used at all, so we decided to warn them that the time was soon if they didn’t pick it up. Ricky was simply the bearer of bad news.

- Time passes, no change, not even a word of concern. We presume the message was clearly received, and so we warned that their stuff needed to be moved out before the due date

- Sudden outrage, and anger. A lot of slander, and other nonsense. As this all began, I knew where the confusion sprouted from, and I could understand the irritation. I was more than open to finding a new plot of land for the Halflings (a more suitable size, maybe closer to spawn). I was then put in the Halfling chat, and essentially ganged up on. I asked for a calmer disposition, and a relaxed means of conversation, in turn Dalek told Heff “just kick him” and then I was given a several paragraphs, and kicked without the time to remotely respond.

- I was rightly confused for the sudden hostile nature, and messaged Heff. I told him I’m not up for the petty nonsense, and told him a different suggestion on how to resolve the Halfling land issue. I also offered to talk about it on TS later, to try to find a more suitable spot of land. Later on TS (when speaking to another Halfling, not Heff) I offered to World Edit out their homes to their new land, so they didn’t have to struggle with rebuilding.

- Later that night, I had heard what happened to me, happened with several GMs. They were added to chats, yelled at, and ganged up on, in an attempt to persuade them. Many of the GMs had gotten very frustrated at this point, as no clear hand was reached out to the Staff, and only harsh words. Normally I can understand the irritation, but all of it seemed so premeditated, it was very clear some of these players didn’t mind being so rude.

- I had gotten far more sick, and was bedridden for a few days, and upon my return found Ura had overturned the GM Teams decision regarding the Halfling land. I had explained why the GMs felt the way they did, and we held a final vote, and it was almost unanimous, finally bringing us to Ura’s post, and the further confusion.

So now we’re here. I have heard some pretty deplorable things regarding this entire situation as it has progressed. “Moot is trying to take the land for himself and his necromancers(I’ve never roleplayed a necromancer)”, “The Staff are targeting us”, “They lied about [blank]”. The fact that anyone could possibly think the Staff are out to get them, just makes me sigh.

I’m by no means averse to resolving this issue, but I need the Halflings to take a deep breathe, and come talk to me instead of blowing this up needlessly on the forums. This doesn’t need to be such an issue it has been made out to be.

With that explained, and once again our hand offered to help the Halflings, I have another topic I wanted to bring up to the community.
 

-=-
 

While writing this, I knew I wanted to bring up an important topic regarding the moderation teams. I’m unsure of how it’ll be received, but I hope it will offer a unique perspective for some.

The GMs, FMs, and any other moderation team get it really rough, generally undeservingly. They try their best to make people happy, but what makes one person happy, often times makes others angry. There is often no right answer, and sometimes the right answer is difficult to make. They are expected to stay active(modreq’s, forum work, ect), to act professional, approachable, and be role models for the server.

Moderators will get shit for being professional, not being professional enough, making the “wrong” decision, or just enforcing the rules they’re supposed to enforce. More often than not, being Staff is largely thankless, aside from the few rare times. Regardless of what the they do, they will be given a hassle and will be largely disliked for whatever they do. Yet, they continue to do it anyways.

I hope this offers some perspective.

[Destroyer_Bravo 1054]

explanation spelt wrong

 

hey i'm first, pretty cool.

[CheekyNolan 5420]

Well they did ask for an explanation.

[Treshure 5817]

I liked the post, though it only outlined the severe issue of communication between staff teams and playerbases (Of due dates, halfling warnings, etc). Perhaps that is something to be remedied before another fiasco like this lights up again.

[xenenxnennxnx 99]

Thank you for clearing this up.

 

Please treat GMs, and any staff, with respect. They volunteer to make your experience better!

[cmack1028 549]

That's your point of view. Here's mine:

 

-Rumors 3 weeks ago saying Ricky wants to take halfling land, rumor that plots were being made

-iMattyz, a nice fellow pops into the halfling chat and says don't worry folks, everything's good

-Ricky informs Uracow, an inactive halfling and not an RP leader, of the halfling probation period where we supposedly received a week to bolster activity. Uracow did not tell any other halfling of this until AFTER the week was gone.

-Ricky comes to us at the end of the week and explains all of this to us, we're sitting here like wtf

-Ricky gives us two options, join any far away nation and lose the land, or join Oren or High Elves and keep land

-We join Oren, still lose land

-We go berserk

-Urasept and iMattyz pop in and say "all good man" again, give us our land back

-We lose land once more from "GM vote"

-We go really berserk

-fin

 

And to those that haven't ever played a halfling and don't understand, burrowing (making hobbit holes) is one of the most irritating and difficult things to do in survival. Halflings built their whole village from scratch, burrows and everything, and then get it ripped from them. Three halflings know how to properly make burrows, that being myself, Matt011011 and Dalek348. After this fiasco, none of us have any desire to continue burrowing in survival on the server. We lost a village once for OOC reasons, we're not going to put effort in again on this map. Sorry.

[CheekyNolan 5420]

is this yours to decide? i've been using it with my new halflings friends and having a great time

Um, yeah it is their decision.

[_Jandy_ 3519]

Glad to see your side of things. When we share ours though it usually gets torn down.

[Heff 2460]

You were kicked because you weren't doing anything to help us, just moaning and complaining that we were "ganging up on you" and generally being annoying by not listening to our points.

[Kaiser 2347]

 

-Ricky informs Uracow, an inactive halfling and not an RP leader, of the halfling probation period where we supposedly received a week to bolster activity. Uracow did not tell any other halfling of this until AFTER the week was gone.

 

 

I'll, take this legit. I haven't been a leader since early 4.0 and haven't really been active minus a few squirts here and there where I make a topic or help out. When I heard the news I assumed I was just being informed as everyone else, so I sorta shrugged it off as 'Stoopeed GMs thinkin' me still 'round 'em parts hehe'. 

 

Only until after the **** hit the fan did I realize I was apparently supposed to be Moses and was supposed to bring the news to 'my people'. Except I didn't. Woops.

 

Seriously though, 5 seconds in the halfling section or just ASKING WHO THE LEADER IS could have removed this issue.

[Picklerage 7]

Cmack's (FreeTheHalflings) explanation truly represents how I am most of our group feels. While I'm sorry that GMs and Admins were verbally abused, I have to say that that was a very small majority, and mostly one person (you know who that is). While it's probably something to bring up in the community TS meeting, it's hard to feel like anything you say matters when we constantly are left in the dark only to receive a message that our community is going to be, for lack of a better term, thrown around, due to a decision in a secret "GM meeting." It's unfortunate that this all happened, but this really is only going to destroy the only remnants of Halfling activity.

 

Also, get well soon Moot.

[Moot 1719]

You were kicked because you weren't doing anything to help us, just moaning and complaining that we were "ganging up on you" and generally being annoying by not listening to our points.

I had refered to "ganging up on staff" once. Previous to that, we were discussing the issue, up until Dalek demanded I was removed from the chat when you "made your point".

 

 

Stomping your feet, shouting when things aren't going your way isn't any way to resolve the issue. You asked me to talk about it, I agreed, and I was added to a chat and yelled at. Although I understand why you would be upset, and I don't blame you for being upset, I expect you to be able to act rationally while in a discussion.

I don't even hold the banter against you, I undertsand why you're mad. But this is a fine example of why its been difficult to resolve anything. There's a clear unwillingness to do anything but get ones own way.

 

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Everytime the playerbase blows up because the staff does something stupid, theres always a "we work really hard and we're so ganged up on! Feel bad!" post that goes up that offers only vague solutions at best, and doesn't acknowledge any faults on the staff team end of the problem.

 

Now I don't disagree with any of what the OP says. No one deserves to be the victim of angry pack mentality and I'm sure the halflings (and whoever else was salty) could have carried themselves more professionally.

 

But, unless you want to just incite more anger and frustration,

 

1) acknowledge your faults.

2) Fix the problem, dont go on about how targetted you are.

[Wendigo 786]

Unfortunately things seem to roll uphill in this community, defying physics...

[cmack1028 549]

Stomping your feet, shouting when things aren't going your way isn't any way to resolve the issue.

 

And taking the village we've been working on since the start of Vailor is the way to resolve the issue? What bothers me most is that no staff member will acknowledge that telling us to start over isn't the right course of action. Sure, it's the rules, but why are the rules there in the first place if they only piss people off and complicate RP for OOC reasons?

 

If it wasn't clear enough in my first reply on this thread, then hopefully this will be. The halfling crisis of Vailor has killed motivation to be a halfling. Inactivity was bad enough, now we're inactive and our veteran players no longer want to be a part of the race. No village = no halflings, and we're not rebuilding. Regardless of World Edit or not. Enjoy our ghost town, hope some dope events happen in the smallest region on the biggest map we've ever had.