Where's Mick?

[Mirvam 485]

 

 

 

Where’s Mick?

 

 

 

 

On the 19th of September we heard that my friend was very suddenly banned. This came as a surprise because Mickaelhz was on vacation in Portugal at the time, and had been for two weeks. This means that it likely wasn’t anything he did in game, but what was it then? Well Mick didn’t have access to his computer and not a single member of administration reached out to him to let him know he was banned or why, so I had to wait until he returned from his trip to find out.

 

 

When he returned he sent me a screenshot of his ban message.
 

 

 

This doesn’t really give us any more information about what he did, so he went to the figurehead of this new rule, Squakhawk. He asked what he did wrong about 20 days ago, but hasn’t heard back from them yet. Naturally, we did some digging to find out why he really was banned. 

We quickly found out it had something to do with a private conversation he had with his friend Diphz, who leaked Mick’s messages to try to convince people to take up arms against Mickaelhz on the server. Both of them were banned, and Diphz was unbanned after he spoke to the administration. 

 

 

Mick was not given the benefit of the doubt, which is interesting since you’d think they’d think twice about someone who many people depend on. The dwarf players in Urguan especially suffer from this, Mick currently is their marshal and one of the few older players still around to teach younger players.

 

 

These two have an extremely long and interesting relationship, where they are extremely close friends but often play in opposing factions on server. 

These two would never try to get eachother banned. Even now, Mick is banned because Diphz leaked messages of him, yet he very adamantly refuses to believe it was done maliciously to get him banned. If that isn’t loyalty and trust in a friend, I don’t know what is.

 

 

This only leaves one option; someone got their hands on the messages between Diphz and Mick and saw an opportunity to get their opposition banned to benefit their shady minecraft politics. Is that not metaplay in itself? They interpreted the messages between two close friends who are able to communicate very bluntly with each other and spun a narrative decrepit enough to get Mick banned without warning. To our knowledge, the Balian community had some form of hand in this malicious ban report. They have much to gain from getting my friend banned and are not strangers to fighting wars in ban reports and discord dms.

 

 

Additionally, he is forum restricted so he wasn’t even given a way to defend himself. 

 

 

Only one admin was willing to have a simple conversation with Mick, Hogobojo. At this point Mick was already banned for 10 days. Hogo allowed Mick to shed some light on the messages and explain what really happened, and it quickly became clear whatever evidence was brought up to staff had been spoonfed in such a way that it made everything seem  way worse than it actually is. The goal was to get rid of Mick, and that intention should be kept in mind.

Hogobojo in any case, said he’d review the situation with the rest of the admin team to see if anything could be done. He has my respect for that.

 

 

To me it seems like everyone has this warped idea of Mick. He might mostly play villain characters, but that doesn’t make him an actual villain in real life. He has helped so many people on the server during times of conflict that everyone has been on his side at one point or the other. Ask any nation leader who has closely worked with Mickaelhz about the time they fought together and they’ll all have pleasant and fun stories to tell.

This of course has a flipside, people who openly hate Mick and always find themselves on the opposite side quickly come to believe the only way to deal with him is to prevent him from logging in. This isn’t the first time this has happened.

 

 

Anyways, we all know Mick. Out of anyone who claims to be a politics roleplayer you won’t find someone who will advocate for conflict to be on server rather than on discord more passionately than Mickaelhz. It doesn’t make much sense to use him to send a message about metaplaying, since his style of handling conflict is very similar to what you want to achieve with this new rule. If anything he’d probably benefit the most from this change in conflict.

 He will show up to all the rp meetings, he’ll take people to the city of your enemies and cause roleplay issues, he’ll ambush important people in rp, he’ll actually go from city to city on the server to try and gather allies. If you need a martyr for this new rule, you’ll find them in the palaces of the places who advocated for Mick’s ban.

 

 

Just unban him and say it was an oversight, it isn’t right and it doesn’t have to be a big bureaucratic issue. It’s already a bigger problem than it has to be. Without warning you banned one of the most well-liked people on the server, who many people depend on. There’s a reason he’s so loved, people really like working with him!

And even if you aren’t working with him, I’d much rather have to worry about Mickaelhz killing me on minecraft than any of the past faces of conflict DDoSing, doxxing, ordering pizzas and cabs to my house and calling my family members in the middle of the night. Mick doesn’t do that.

 

 

… so why are we trying to get rid of him instead of working with him?

 

 

[Gustando 1990]

 

[tadabug2000 4921]

So I'm not generally someone to comment on these posts and I don't know what happened that caused the ban, but I will at least say this.

 

I personally like Mick, I still remember when I first met him at 2 or 3am some years ago, he msg'd me and asked how I'd like to donate some organs. In my infinite wisdom, I thought he meant IRL and told him I'm already signed up for that, and we got along after that. I hear a lot about the guy, but he's a good guy overall. Yeah, he RPs a villain most of the time, but RP is RP.

 

He's only evil IRP, I promise!

 

Obviously I don't know what happened or the full context, but it's something I feel should be said.

[The Black Lubba 563]

Mick is a pretty good dude, when I was still NL of Lurin, he didn’t use ooc to initiate RP with me, he came to me in game, and actually role played with me. He was a good confidant during this time. Y’all should unban him.

[growingivy 3382]

As a former NL (Vortice) my interactions with Mick have always been from a role play perspective whether it was friendly with him or against him Irply. Later as a player in Myrine I have only found him to be a nice guy motivated by rp means. He don’t deserve this 

[subatomic 1498]

lightwork get that shit outta here

[wowj 9757]

 

[DancingZebra267 1626]

FREE MICKAEHLZ!!!!

When I joined this server, it was Mickaehlz who actually helped me out, he may not know nor remember. But anytime I've ever had a run in with this guy, it has been for the positive. He is genuinely a nice and pleasant person to be around.

[Crevel 7557]

Mick is the bodybuilder laying down a little below the red and white tent.

 

As for the topic at hand, I feel that these recent bans pertaining to metaplay have really caused some confusion. For bans whose only real victims would be roleplay disruption rather than for any safety reasons, it's strange that Administration won't clarify information to banned parties and essentially forcing them to find out what they did wrong themselves. How can players be expected to have any form of rehabilitation to the server's intended player culture and appeal if they're not being told what was wrong in the first place? While I don't know the context to this Mick and Diphz stuff, I sincerely believe that Mick is a well-meaning person. He's certainly got flaws like we all do, but I don't think he's a malicious guy from all my scattered interactions with him over the years. The stuff I've heard of other people makes me understand that there are players out there more deserving of metaplay infractions instead of Mick.

 

I think that Administration needs to be more transparent and make a clearer stance of where lines are drawn because the concept of metaplay is so vague that it can so easily be a weaponised tool in the hands of grudgeful players that can get an admin's ear.

[Xarkly 17299]

Admins should rly consider a sort of grace period where metaplay is given infractions instead of bans. Seems way too heavy handed to come out with really long bans as soon as the rule is introduced and people haven't adjusted.

[Epicethan4 948]

I've extensively interacted with Mick for the past couple months, and my assessment from these interactions is that he is indeed a very capable rp leader in the LOTC community and has a very strong and unique ability to bring people together to achieve an rp goal and build a narrative. I have found him pleaseant to interact with, and he has displayed himself as very capable and bringing in new players and maintaing their interest in the server. Overall, I'd say he is one of the key integral players on this server who fosters and developers the rp narrative, ESPECIALLY narrative in regards to conflict, and losing him would be to the detriment of the server overall.

 

Now, I'm not against metaplay rules, infact, I welcome any way to decrease metaplay, however I am deeply unsatisifed with the current specification of these rules, and the absolute miscommunication between staff and players in dealing with these rules. It's quite bad right now that there are no clear and specific guidelines on what constitutes as breaking the rules in regards to metaplay, save from one definition, from what I've seen.

Edited October 10, 2024 by Epicethan4

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

FREE MICKAEHLZ!!!!

[Malta 2811]

i refuse to glaze the belgian

but he is a good man and does not deserve this 

[The Tough Guy 4319]

Mickaelhz is a great guy.

 

He is not a supervillain, nor is he trying to oocly control the world.

[trinn 5146]