Community Team, Please Fix This!

[Keldrith 717]

So about 2 years ago I led the Wilven Sanctuary Monks. I would like to ask the Community Team to stop using my Guild without my permission, as I still have a character who technically leads it. It was a player run organization, and was disbanded back in Vailor I believe. The Temple Monks are a different (Non-Playable) group that we used for the lore of revival, after our ability to do so was taken away. When I eventually left the Wilven Sanctuary to take a lotc break, I had made it clear to those in charge of the Community Team that our organization (Wilven Sanctuary) was strictly player-based. Not staff owned. I knew they had intentions on playing Temple Monks, but I never thought I would be unable to make Wilven Monk Items, even though I led the Guild for about a year or more. I got a notice after putting some Monk Items on the market, saying I was ‘falsifying’ them. I found this pretty strange, considering I helped manage the lore for the organization for years. If there are any monks left, I would be the last Wilven Monk around. So saying I can not make items that are clearly labeled Wilven Sanctuary Monk items, is very strange and I feel very wrong. Please contact me if you have any questions, Keldrith#4510. If this does not get fixed, I will try my best to work my way up the totem pole until it is fixed. It’s blatant plagiarism to use our guild name and lore without any given permission.

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

“ By sharing, posting, or otherwise uploading content that is protected by intellectual property rights to LOTC service(s) you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content. “

 

Read the terms of service

[Keldrith 717]

3 minutes ago, Charles The Bald said:

“ By sharing, posting, or otherwise uploading content that is protected by intellectual property rights to LOTC service(s) you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content. “

 

Read the terms of service

 

Okay, but what about being human beings? They could have used any other name. Why are they using Wilven Sanctuary when we gave them Temple Monks. My friends and I worked hard to create, and manage that lore for many years. Not to mention the Community Team rarely plays monks anyway. Would it really be so bad to write their OWN lore for the unique (non Wilven) monks that they play? Blatant plagiarism should still be frowned upon.

[frill 2277]

Quote

 

While we talked about a number of ways to potentially improve this such as fast travels or improved soulstones we eventually always hit a stall - if a new player gets lost or finds themselves in an empty city for the first few hours of gameplay chances are we’ll never see them again. It is for this purpose that we believe the most effective form of assistance is a personal, intimate assistance that only our community can provide - and it is this role that the Wilven Monks will fulfill.

 

We understand however that this will be a controversial change and one that may not be so rapidly accepted. For this purpose however our goal is simple - we’re running a trial phase on the Monk project. As we now have a better way to physically measure retention we can map noticeable improvements over time - such as improvements made by a joint staff/player monk organization. As such the goal is fairly simple - give this project three months to take off on its feet to see how retention improves. If it doesn’t then it’ll be sent off to the farm post-haste.

 

Some of the concerns around the previous order of monks will likely be a concern around this point. The order will not have any magic to start out, instead focusing it’s daily on assisting new players to get to nations and groups ready to accept them. This will be something of a joint project between these nations and the monks, aiming to try to coordinate new player “drop offs” where players are brought to the gates and passed off to a steward or some such. This should help decently with retention and give every nation and group a good chance to prove their ability to retain players.

 

[here]

 

I think the idea of Wilven monks as player helping-hands from the Wilven Sanctuary and crypt monks as reviving-NPCs of the cloud temple has just been lost by the Community Team coming into existence and co-opting the “player-ran” “personal, intimate assistance” aspect into a staff responsibility for a team that just didn’t exist back then. 

 

[rukio 8924]

6 minutes ago, Keldrith said:

 

Okay, but what about being human beings? They could have used any other name. Why are they using Wilven Sanctuary when we gave them Temple Monks. My friends and I worked hard to create, and manage that lore for many years. Not to mention the Community Team rarely plays monks anyway. Would it really be so bad to write their OWN lore for the unique (non Wilven) monks that they play? Blatant plagiarism should still be frowned upon.

Very true and agreeable. Only time I’ve seen the monks RP’d two of the four were digging up worms and declaring that they had a jar of dirt. 😬Feels bad.

[Keldrith 717]

@LotsOfMuffins Please read this post. I think it’s genuienly wrong that you guys are doing this to the legacy my old friends and I created and maintained. Wilven Monks are Player-Run. And always will be. You can’t just steal a guild name and use it for staff, that’s not right. Please change the name, and write your own lore for WHY your monks are connected to the Triumvirate. Wilven Monks have Wilven Adonnan. Temple Monks can have whoever they want but you guys can’t just rip our lore for it. It may not be against LoTC policy, but it is still very wrong. You guys can deny applications all day for plagiarism, but when you steal lore for your staff monks it’s totally fine. I hope you can agree how ridiculous that is. I doubt you knew about player-monks, or about the structure that was laid out years ago for CT Monks, but this is truly tarnishing all of my friends and my own hard work over the years. Our guild is our own, not Staffs.

[monkeypoacher 8055]

just change the name and let the dude have wilven monks for roleplay/posterity reasons; no reason there can’t be another sect of cloud temple monks  

[Aengoth 2890]

I don’t see why they cannot continue the legacy of the Wilven Monks as long as they act to help new players.  Things will naturally evolve and move past where they were many years ago. We see this most commonly with family names on the server that go beyond the original owner of it.

 

Sidenote, a staff member should toss this into feedback

[Callum 1009]

SHUT UP KELDRITH STOP INSULTING THE MIGHTY EGIRL ARMY OF THE CT THEY WILL DESTROY U. I HATE U

[Keldrith 717]

9 hours ago, Aengoth said:

I don’t see why they cannot continue the legacy of the Wilven Monks as long as they act to help new players.  Things will naturally evolve and move past where they were many years ago. We see this most commonly with family names on the server that go beyond the original owner of it.

 

Sidenote, a staff member should toss this into feedback

Because Wilven monks have been, and always will be strictly player run. 

[frill 2277]

@LotsOfMuffins when I brought this up in the meeting today why did you say “it’s been over a year so we can use the lore” and then kick me from the Discord? You told me to check the terms of service but that doesn’t have some statute of limitations for plagiarism.

 

 

pathetic

[Lojo613 1882]

On 7/1/2020 at 9:57 PM, Charles The Bald said:

By sharing, posting, or otherwise uploading content that is protected by intellectual property rights to LOTC service(s) you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.

Okay it is a good thing the individual in question isn’t suing LOTC and is instead requesting that the poor practice of the Staff be corrected

[VonAulus 2082]

On 7/1/2020 at 10:33 PM, Keldrith said:

So about 2 years ago I led the Wilven Sanctuary Monks. I would like to ask the Community Team to stop using my Guild without my permission, as I still have a character who technically leads it. It was a player run organization, and was disbanded back in Vailor I believe. The Temple Monks are a different (Non-Playable) group that we used for the lore of revival, after our ability to do so was taken away. When I eventually left the Wilven Sanctuary to take a lotc break, I had made it clear to those in charge of the Community Team that our organization (Wilven Sanctuary) was strictly player-based. Not staff owned. I knew they had intentions on playing Temple Monks, but I never thought I would be unable to make Wilven Monk Items, even though I led the Guild for about a year or more. I got a notice after putting some Monk Items on the market, saying I was ‘falsifying’ them. I found this pretty strange, considering I helped manage the lore for the organization for years. If there are any monks left, I would be the last Wilven Monk around. So saying I can not make items that are clearly labeled Wilven Sanctuary Monk items, is very strange and I feel very wrong. Please contact me if you have any questions, Keldrith#4510. If this does not get fixed, I will try my best to work my way up the totem pole until it is fixed. It’s blatant plagiarism to use our guild name and lore without any given permission.

There are two separate issues you are wanting addressed here:

 

1. That Community Team has taken player run organization and is now using it.
2. You Own the Wilven Monks idea and LotC Staff is plagiarizing you. 

 

First, the Wilven Monks are part of the collective of LotC since the creation and the project was contributed to by players and staff, some around, some gone. 

If anyone has ownership to the name, it is @shiftnative

 

Here is an early lore piece, building on top of Native’s idea and group:

It appears players have in the past been allowed to participate in the organization, which was created by an Admin of the server, and have had special perks such as having homes and a base at the Cloud Temple to help new players. I agree with you that this has been the case in the past and it may be a good idea to take it back that direction in the future. 

 

This doc I found seems to be from 2016.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qka8JHMr1TxA1CsJKK65BjoobKh_mGhhm_i5I1JXjkc/edit#heading=h.oz78tctpxlu6

 

This is 4 years after the order was founded by Native and naturally formed into something else. Since 2012 there have been multiple versions of staff monks, new player guides, roleplay mentors, and various other devices to attempt to help new players. The Wilven Monks are apart of that history and that is why Community Team took something that was inactive and attempted to use it to help the server. 

 

To take from my own brief example of submitting lore of the server. I helped Boogerbuster with finishing off the witch doctor shamanism lore back in the day. Once it was accepted I took a break and came back. It was completely different when I came back and they told me I had to reapply because things has changed in the magic system and shamanism. I realized that since I was gone, I was out of the loop and others who were actively using it had co-opted it. There is nothing wrong with that and it is part of being in a culture. People will take something you make and do something else with it. 

 

Another example would come more from my career as a builder. Many times I have built something for someone and they have left it abandoned and someone else moved in. The classic example would be the old city of Ves this map. The people I built it for let it go and someone else stepped in to use it. I might have bad feelings about that and not want them to use it, but there is no route or reason for me to take it away from them. They also evicted me from my own city I built but that is life. They were more proactive in taking hold of it and actively using it then I was and they are more then welcome to use the build or tear it down once I had vacated. 

 

A third example I will give is Carrion/Ruskan culture. The people who created Carrion/Kralta/Raevir do not condone the usage of the culture by all the different groups. The same could be said about the founding of Horen, Malinor, Krugmar, or the lore/culture of any player group. Once you create something it is out there to create off of. You don’t get to say, “No thats mine and only mine.”

 

I think there is an argument to allowing players to participate in the order and to have Wilven Monk Characters. That seems to be another discussion then the one we are having about who owns the lore. Insert meme about ToS but this is why that clause is important. The Wilven Monks were not your idea and you have no claim to any ownership in any sort of plagiarism case. The Monks are a central aspect to the lore and culture of the server and live in the collective. I personally see no issue in the Community Team using this IC representation as a front to their activities because it adds to the immersion. Why use a different group of monks when this one has been doing the same job for years, off and on? Now if you want to have a Monk civil war story line, sign me up for that warclaim. 

 

I would prefer to shift the conversation towards how the Monks could better integrate the player base and work from their current base of operations to offer the best experience to new players the server can provide. New ideas for content and positive steps is definitely where the Admins’ focus lies, not in the gerrymandering of the past. I can not comment on items being taken away from you but that has happened to me before and seems like a conversation to have the with Story Team on how to balance the current iteration of the monks and in returning your Lore Items. 

 

 

[Keldrith 717]

On 7/7/2020 at 6:43 PM, VonAulus said:

There are two separate issues you are wanting addressed here:

 

1. That Community Team has taken player run organization and is now using it.
2. You Own the Wilven Monks idea and LotC Staff is plagiarizing you. 

 

First, the Wilven Monks are part of the collective of LotC since the creation and the project was contributed to by players and staff, some around, some gone. 

If anyone has ownership to the name, it is @shiftnative

 

Here is an early lore piece, building on top of Native’s idea and group:

It appears players have in the past been allowed to participate in the organization, which was created by an Admin of the server, and have had special perks such as having homes and a base at the Cloud Temple to help new players. I agree with you that this has been the case in the past and it may be a good idea to take it back that direction in the future. 

 

This doc I found seems to be from 2016.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qka8JHMr1TxA1CsJKK65BjoobKh_mGhhm_i5I1JXjkc/edit#heading=h.oz78tctpxlu6

 

This is 4 years after the order was founded by Native and naturally formed into something else. Since 2012 there have been multiple versions of staff monks, new player guides, roleplay mentors, and various other devices to attempt to help new players. The Wilven Monks are apart of that history and that is why Community Team took something that was inactive and attempted to use it to help the server. 

 

To take from my own brief example of submitting lore of the server. I helped Boogerbuster with finishing off the witch doctor shamanism lore back in the day. Once it was accepted I took a break and came back. It was completely different when I came back and they told me I had to reapply because things has changed in the magic system and shamanism. I realized that since I was gone, I was out of the loop and others who were actively using it had co-opted it. There is nothing wrong with that and it is part of being in a culture. People will take something you make and do something else with it. 

 

Another example would come more from my career as a builder. Many times I have built something for someone and they have left it abandoned and someone else moved in. The classic example would be the old city of Ves this map. The people I built it for let it go and someone else stepped in to use it. I might have bad feelings about that and not want them to use it, but there is no route or reason for me to take it away from them. They also evicted me from my own city I built but that is life. They were more proactive in taking hold of it and actively using it then I was and they are more then welcome to use the build or tear it down once I had vacated. 

 

A third example I will give is Carrion/Ruskan culture. The people who created Carrion/Kralta/Raevir do not condone the usage of the culture by all the different groups. The same could be said about the founding of Horen, Malinor, Krugmar, or the lore/culture of any player group. Once you create something it is out there to create off of. You don’t get to say, “No thats mine and only mine.”

 

I think there is an argument to allowing players to participate in the order and to have Wilven Monk Characters. That seems to be another discussion then the one we are having about who owns the lore. Insert meme about ToS but this is why that clause is important. The Wilven Monks were not your idea and you have no claim to any ownership in any sort of plagiarism case. The Monks are a central aspect to the lore and culture of the server and live in the collective. I personally see no issue in the Community Team using this IC representation as a front to their activities because it adds to the immersion. Why use a different group of monks when this one has been doing the same job for years, off and on? Now if you want to have a Monk civil war story line, sign me up for that warclaim. 

 

I would prefer to shift the conversation towards how the Monks could better integrate the player base and work from their current base of operations to offer the best experience to new players the server can provide. New ideas for content and positive steps is definitely where the Admins’ focus lies, not in the gerrymandering of the past. I can not comment on items being taken away from you but that has happened to me before and seems like a conversation to have the with Story Team on how to balance the current iteration of the monks and in returning your Lore Items. 

 

 

It’s about preserving what once was. At the end of the day, the guild was given to the players who ran it, and was taken out of shiftnatives hands. The player group managed the lore, infact Zane (an old friend of mine) actually wrote it all. For 6 years the group was fully player-run, it’s only after being pressured by Fireheart and other staff to let them be monks, infact we weren’t given a choice back in 2016. It was forced upon us, even though none of us felt it was a good idea. But I had the understanding that the player-run edition was to remain ‘Wilven Sanctuary’ while the staff version was to be called something like ‘Crypt Monks’, to keep the name of Wilven, a player based organization, which it is. Staff should not be taking over player-run guilds, regardless of their origins. I don’t care if Tythus made it originally, at the end of the day Zane is the one who wrote the lore, Spike edited it, and I managed it. We were all players who had a passion to be monks, not Admins looking to make a mockery of the guild name, by allowing anyone to be a monk without the proper IC training. I hear so many complaints on today’s monks, partly a reason why I decided to invest my time into a post/ argument like this. I only wish for them to change the name, so the player-run guild’s history can be salvaged, and maintained again by players who may want to do it, not staff. They should use different lore, and a different name, instead of piggy backing off of our hard work over the many years we all invested into the guild. 

 

An example I would use to explain your argument would be this; “Bill gates created microsoft, therefore all programs created on microsoft are owned by Bill Gates, and he should get full credit and control over them rather than the people who invested the time and effort into the programs they made. And he can kick the real owners off the program any time he wants.” YES The monks wouldn’t be a thing without Shiftnative. But Shift handed the reigns to Zacc, Zacc handed them to Zane, then Zane to Spike, then Spike to me. Shift was the first, but I was the last. I never handed over the control to Muffins, or Fireheart. Infact my monk is still around, and I am waiting until I get some more time to bring the guild back. But first this needs to be sorted out so I can do that in the future. I always knew the Application Team (now Community Team) wanted control over it, and we fought with them about it for the entire time the guild was player run. But I was young, and gave into the pressure from Fireheart. They pushed for our magic to get removed, and inevitably we were pushed out of the temple too because of his influence. Looking back as an adult now, it was incredibly unprofessional, and frankly it was just a grab for power on his part, to make himself look good. That’s all it was, he didn’t have the passion for the monks that I did, I’d argue that nobody ever has except for those who came before me. Wilven Sanctuary Monks will always be Player Run, I won’t have some admin thinking she has power over something my friends and I took years and years to build, just for her to take the credit and control for herself. I was a Monk for three times as long as Muffins has been on the server. I’ll be damned if I let her use our guild’s likeness for herself, to make her look like a productive admin. In a way, I’m doing this for Spike. He left the server because he too was pressured by those in power to give the guild over, but he didn’t. He trusted me, and I see now that I let him down. This needs to be fixed, it’s wrong.

[ScreamingDingo 20568]

On 7/8/2020 at 9:43 AM, VonAulus said:

I would prefer to shift the conversation towards how the Monks could better integrate the player base and work from their current base of operations to offer the best experience to new players the server can provide. New ideas for content and positive steps is definitely where the Admins’ focus lies, not in the gerrymandering of the past. I can not comment on items being taken away from you but that has happened to me before and seems like a conversation to have the with Story Team on how to balance the current iteration of the monks and in returning your Lore Items. 

 

 

 

The items being taken away were by moderators and community team complaining that no other former characters or players could have been Wilven Monks. The issue is that Keldrith has felt like that the Community Team aren't just trying to repurpose the lore, but completely invalidate its history and the players that did contribute to it.  The Wilven Monks were inevitably hijacked by 501 to be utilised as a ‘proper’ staff run mentoring guild, prior to that was The_Blind_Seer and various other players having staff influence, but never being ran by an admin or a staff team all together. Like changing the name from Wilven isn’t an issue at all, especially with how the Wilven history is barely known by people and considering we’ve jumped like, 6 maps since the Wilven area was found, it should just be made into something that represents the CT better. It’s alot better to honestly have them build a proper monk guild that is unique in itself than trying to retcon players pasts.