Metaplay enforcement is a JOKE, just like the story team - THE 2025 COMMUNITY UPDATE

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

THE 2025 COMMUNITY UPDATE

METAPLAY IS A JOKE

JUST LIKE THE STORY TEAM

Before metaplay was even officially defined by the admin team, it was already being enforced and bans were being issued, leaving the community in fear. After many months of enforcement, did it actually improve our community?

 

The news are in: metaplay enforcement hasn’t improved Lord of The Craft. Instead, it has been used as a tool to target certain player groups and issue mass bans against them. Most of the people engaging in that behavior have simply become more secretive about using OOC to alter the server’s roleplay storyline. Many of the bans are laughed at, as they are often based on weak reasons. It simply creates fear and drives people to quit the server.

 

While most of the admin and moderation team have characters that are Adunians or roleplay within its circle, it certainly looks like they have not taken any mass bans or even any bans for that type of conduct. It’s certainly a shocker, nobody is holding them accountable but a few years ago they did the worst of it.

 

While the story team wants us to roleplay trading our beloved story items, they will shamelessly give minas to skinners and artists, creating a false economy. It also allowed some people to become rich and lead communities by their character but when they face a global conflict, they create drama because they didn’t earn their place. 

 

While we enforce metaplay rules really hard, skins for minas, for the most part, doesn’t offer anything to the general story of the server, instead, it creates a false economy where a lot of characters are rich for absolutely no roleplay reason.

Most skinners do not create a “shop” or use roleplay means to sell their skins, most of the sales are handled on discord, and accepted in an ooc way. We look harshly on the sale of in-game items for money, even banning certain people for it. The story team also wants us to do roleplay to sell roleplay/ST tagged items/materials. Why are we such hypocrites ? 

Metaplay was defined as this new concept but in reality, it’s just how metagaming should have been enforced since the start of the server. It hasn’t improved our community in the slightest way. Some of the communities within Lord of the Craft don’t include themselves in the world story and do it their way, mass banning Elves will not improve the experience in the caves of Urguan or the one time we have a world meeting.

Enforcing metaplay doesn’t improve the fact that over the years, we are at a point where most people do not leave their main city, they refuse to travel in the world and would rather roleplay with their friends locally. Instead, it creates fear of going out as a group because it seems like any talk of discord will get us banned.

 

How did harsh metaplay enforcement stop the war from turning into a metaplay festival ? A certain player group and past members of that group have been trying to create wars within the server for years and have been successful at it, and the bans that those people receive expire, and the same story starts again. It’s not cool to wait for people to commit offenses and to clean up after, that’s literally janitor behavior, which is laughable, being active is 10 times better.

While we do not allow the usage of memes and we regularly ban people that do not contribute, it has become a trend to wear a different skin than you currently use such as IRL video game characters in warclaims, people use those skins hours before the warclaim in the story world before any enforcement, where’s the times where people who wore those skins would get banned right away ? You could also reach and say it’s textbook usage of OOC information in RP.

In 2025, the forums are broken, most of the functionalities are not working. The roleplay world is just a massive mess of terrible roleplay stories that have destroyed kingdoms that shouldn’t have been. 

What the hell is going on ? 

[NightcastorKitty 2779]

Hmmm. Artists and skinners are hit by Mods to my knowledge in regards to IC to OOC Trade when it's outfits made IG or sold. 

 

Though to my knowledge, any skins ST obtain or art. (Minus personal things cause that's between player to player, not a tag). It's been for events or lore pieces. And artists/skinners are generally paid for their work. Why would they constantly do it for free? Idk what this apples to oranges comparison is really. 

 

ST materials are IG, moved IG, sold or made IG. So do the barebones roleplay of such. Skinning it be pretty damn weird having this person saying in IC 'hey. I got a monster skin for ya'. Or saying IC with art 'hey. This would look great on this x piece that is about to drop.' 

 

 

[Mescaffier 6197]

As one of the first three to get banned for Metaplay: there are legitimate cases where the rule has worked (our case), and then there a lot that just seem like the definition was stretched incredibly thin to fit the player into it. I do really think it was done with only good intentions, on paper its an amazing idea. Why should we tolerate OOC muck politics on here? But in practice even with the proper definitions it becomes more vague.

 

After I was banned I had a slew of people in my DMs to bother & harass me about it. Whatever, expected, it was just namecalling and "never come back, scum !!!!". But when you're a roleplay leader yourself, you'd think you'd uphold the same RP leadership rules you're using to mock ppl: and then several of the people that did this got metaplay banned themselves. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

Since then ppl have been at eachothers throats, trying to find ways they can ask staff to audit people for suspected meta. I was sent a few SS's of people trying to accuse me & a friend of metaplay because our characters that hated eachother got married ?? And I know other silly things have happened to other folk as well. I've seen waaay too many friendships destroyed recently from all of this (between "leakers"/bans/etc). It's good in theory, but when you give anyone a chance to admin ban people they don't like, they're going to take it.  And even then, like you said and many ppl predicted, it hasn't even really lessened the amt of metaplay that takes place: people are just more secretive about it now.

[lemonke 6014]

@ RALLY THE TEMPLARS TONIGHT. This is NOT METAPLAY, BUT WE'LL NEED YOU ALL.

 

*raids [Redacted]'s town 

[𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖚𝖘𝖍 2451]

ST bozos need to stay in their lane and leave role-play moderating to the game moderators

[Drew2_dude 2636]

It is neat that the NL of Numendil convinces admin friends who play in Numendil to ban the NL of the opposing nation (Haense) for a nonsensical reason that's never very well expressed, being in discords with banned players or some lame excuse like that simply because they're the opps, while others including I'd wager the NL of Numendil and of almost every other nation does the same thing! Double standards and bias would never exists in Ba Sing Se though!

Edited May 4, 2025 by Drew2_dude

[garentoft 9265]

5 hours ago, Charles The Bald said:

thank you for not doing a good ol' fashioned charles THE BALD assassination on me six years ago.

[Mikes Rhino 451]

1 hour ago, Drew2_dude said:

It is neat that the NL of Numendil convinces admin friends who play in Numendil to ban the NL of the opposing nation (Haense) for a nonsensical reason that's never very well expressed, being in discords with banned players or some lame excuse like that simply because they're the opps, while others including I'd wager the NL of Numendil and of almost every other nation does the same thing! Double standards and bias would never exists in Ba Sing Se though!

Outing yourself as someone who isn't read-up, but wants to complain for the sake of it because surely everything is a 'both sides' issue.

 

Won't explicitly say what the NL did/did not see/do, because frankly I don't want to catch a slander ban if I'm wrong, but the metagaming ban wave in question was far from 'nonsensical'. Certain people did things that other people did not, I won't speak to the then-NL particularly, but a majority of the stuff people in the ban wave did was pretty brazen, I mean they really didn't try to hide it. Such examples include how-to metagame guides posted in announcement channels (including explaining the concept of persona swapping, with the stated goal of avoiding RP repercussions/grounding for Haense), and 'who wants to write whitelist applications', amongst others.

 

If you dig around for five or so minutes on any LOTC-adjacent discords you can probably find most of the evidence in the form of speech bubble reaction gifs. Not sure why they didn't just lead with those in the forum post.

Edited May 4, 2025 by Mikes Rhino

[Treshure 5817]

"Metaplay" and metagaming enforcement probably wasn't a big deal way back when because the culture of the server was different. I'd get hazed for trying to orchestrate things OOCly, power structures shamed people. It's been a steady erosion. Sure there's instances like Mog buying people steam games for IC loyalty, but it just felt different back then. I have never ******* heard of people actually trying to buy IC items with OOC cash, not even as an Admin, that's for sure.

 

Cat's out of the bag on this.

[Clone_Fives 75]

1 hour ago, Drew2_dude said:

It is neat that the NL of Numendil convinces admin friends who play in Numendil to ban the NL of the opposing nation (Haense) for a nonsensical reason that's never very well expressed, being in discords with banned players or some lame excuse like that simply because they're the opps, while others including I'd wager the NL of Numendil and of almost every other nation does the same thing! Double standards and bias would never exists in Ba Sing Se though!

Okay so there are a few things wrong here. First only one admin "plays" in Numendil, tech admin doesn't play in Numendil, story admin doesn't play in Numendil, and community team admin didn't not play in Numendil. Second, and as someone else said above, the metaplay ban wave was anything but nonsensical. This has been stated better by Mikes Rhino's comment. Third is the "Everyone else is doing" just conjecture and an age old excuse for many bad this in the past so a bad argument. So I have three question as well to present you. Why did Numendil NL not do the same during the war to any of the other NL's at all? Are you a reditor? And do you have a fedora?

Also on another note entirely which I will quickly point out a few things on the skinners being payed mina for skins. Getting a mineman skin has significantly fewer affects on the server than what the metaplay stuff is for. There are also skinners who play seamstress and tailors and treat the skin commission as irp. And to humor the idea of just saying that skinners being paid mina became illegal, I guarantee you that overall skin quality on the server would decrease. Mainly because most people will go and say "No I will not pay actual money for a minecraft skin" and most skinners won't make skins for free because that is stupid. So overall I can understand the point and idea but at the end of the day it is comparing apples and oranges.

[Fleeperpriest 1484]

2 hours ago, Drew2_dude said:

A LOT OF NONSENSE (peanuts noises)

 

THAT IS CRAZY MY FRIEND SIGMAR JOREN BARUCH THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO NOBODY ELSE NEVER. ACTUALLY WAIT WTF. WAIT WTF. DID THIS HAPPEN TO SOMEBODY ELSE? MAYBE THEY R OUT TO GET US ALL. MAYBE THE REAL OPPS WERE THE ADMODS THE WHOLE TIME! THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN UNDER ENLIGHTENED HAENSEMODS. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO STOP THIS TIM AND JERRY CAT SMOKING GUY. - SIGNED YOUR RIVAL NL (BANNED LIKE U BY KGB ADMIN ABUSE RAEVIR TEAM (NOW CIA ADMIN REDEEMERSQUAD ADUNIARASTA RHUNCULT REDSTONE-DIVISON AFTER SILENT CHURCH-DWARF METAALLIANCE REGIME CHANGE)) P.S. EVERYONE WHO IS NOT ON MY TEAM IS ABUSE-CONSPIRACIST GOOD THING I WON THE CONSPIRACY AND DONT GET BANNED. AHAHA YOU LOOSE! ADMINS PLEASE OPEN A POLL TO SHOW HOW MANY ARE VICTIM OF POLITICIZED ADMIN ABUSE THE NUBMERS WILL SHOCK YOU (YOU WILL RESIGN, PK, QUIT SERVER ECT)

[Epicethan4 948]

To be utterly honest, I think playing meme-skins for warclaims and leading up to it should be prohibited completely. You've got people with superhero skins in their capital for over an hour, talk about a complete collapse of immersion.

[Nooblius 7965]

 

52 minutes ago, Fleeperpriest said:

THAT IS CRAZY MY FRIEND SIGMAR JOREN BARUCH THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO NOBODY ELSE NEVER. ACTUALLY WAIT WTF. WAIT WTF. DID THIS HAPPEN TO SOMEBODY ELSE? MAYBE THEY R OUT TO GET US ALL. MAYBE THE REAL OPPS WERE THE ADMODS THE WHOLE TIME! THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN UNDER ENLIGHTENED HAENSEMODS. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO STOP THIS TIM AND JERRY CAT SMOKING GUY. - SIGNED YOUR RIVAL NL (BANNED LIKE U BY KGB ADMIN ABUSE RAEVIR TEAM (NOW CIA ADMIN REDEEMERSQUAD ADUNIARASTA RHUNCULT REDSTONE-DIVISON AFTER SILENT CHURCH-DWARF METAALLIANCE REGIME CHANGE)) P.S. EVERYONE WHO IS NOT ON MY TEAM IS ABUSE-CONSPIRACIST GOOD THING I WON THE CONSPIRACY AND DONT GET BANNED. AHAHA YOU LOOSE! ADMINS PLEASE OPEN A POLL TO SHOW HOW MANY ARE VICTIM OF POLITICIZED ADMIN ABUSE THE NUBMERS WILL SHOCK YOU (YOU WILL RESIGN, PK, QUIT SERVER ECT)

sorry guys wrong account meant to say this on my main. plz void

 

 

3 hours ago, Drew2_dude said:

Snip!

 

To be honest, I actually feel a great deal of shame that so many people think so lowly of my conduct. I used to take great pride of how I conducted myself on server, and that I could prosecute a war without really feeling at odds with any side OOCly but that has become less true since I entered humanity. Maybe the expectations were different, maybe I changed how I acted, I'm not really sure.

 

I definitely have a temper at times and can get resentful over folks who I know are bad-talking me, and I bad talk back (which isn't justified). I can get very upset if I perceive someone to be a hypocrite, even if that perception is wrong. I've MALDed before, certainly. I am genuinely sorry that there are people that feel like I hate them and their community, or target them, or anything like that. I really don't take the game THAT seriously, and would much rather be friends with folks I argue with (unless they're a creep or militantly hateful person, obviously). My DMs are open if anyone ever has criticisms or concerns.

 

What I do know is that every action my character took is rooted in RP, and wasn't coordinated OOCly.Frankly, every conspiracy and scheme had an hour where it was orchestrated IRP. I think quite a few folks in Numendil can attest to fact they had been witness to much of that Roleplay, especially those in Anorhil's closer government circle. 

 

Yes, there are OOC conversations about RP. There are theories about what will work, paranoia about what we think other people might be doing. This always gets heightened in the buildup to a war; but I think what people misunderstand is that isn't what's against the rules. Nobody is prosecuted for discussing in their group chat how to promote activity, or what odds they think they have for winning a war. People aren't even prosecuted for discussing what they think increases the chances of winning, even if frowned upon. All bans have been for the reason of people orchestrating OOC plots to predetermine RP, avoid RP, exploit OOC connections, otherwise undermine RP or being in the know about a scheme of such nature and keeping it under wraps. 

 

 

 

I agree there should be written out guidelines on Metaplay, and I am frustrated there aren't. I had approached an admin asking if it would be a good idea for NLs to meet to discuss that and maybe even help draft up something after I read Toffee's excellent post, and that admin told me that the administration had already started on a draft of elaborated guidelines. I guess it falls by the wayside when dealing with next map, banning creeps, etc; which is understandable, but still frustrating. I really wish that we had initiatives for NLs + RP leaders to communicate with eachother more and keep things a little less heated. Maybe players can take this initiative ourselves.

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

2 hours ago, garentoft said:

thank you for not doing a good ol' fashioned charles THE BALD assassination on me six years ago.

METAPLAYING has never been in my blood, I would never

[extragamer53 226]