Viper3X

I ride moose in Canada.

Death to the those filthy GM peasants!

I will paraphrase what I stated in the GM chat yesterday night. Anyone could have easily removed me for inactivity during the time I was gone. I stated that I would be inactive for a few months, so the staff knew I would be gone. It's not like I disappeared and they were waiting for me to randomly pop up just in case. Nonetheless, I was not demoted. Would you prefer I wait until someone else steps up to the plate and fixes things? I can do that if you want, but I guarantee things won't get better. I would rather take the initiative myself and ensure that something happens, but it seems that some would disagree. Shiftnative has been working tirelessly on 4.0 and Rittsy has been managing many aspects of LotC in my absence, so I would not expect either of them to take the reigns and I would not want them to be forced to either. It's true I was sick for a few weeks, but that's not the entire reason as to why I was gone (though it was a contributing factor). I was working towards wrapping up my studies and working over 30 hours per week while doing so, and thus I had barely any spare time on my hands for LotC or even video games. The timing was bad, that was all. My personal life is my own; I don't need to go on the forums to advertise that I am ill and ask that the community feel sorry for me. I do not need to be transparent with my personal life; the staff (myself included) needs to be transparent with their intentions for this server and community and how we intend to move forward and improve it. Brandnewkitten was referring to my previous situation, not my current one. In summary, I plan on making a difference. If you would prefer to request that I step back due to my previous defined inactivity and wait until someone else steps up then be my guest.

Greetings Lord of the Craft community! Today I would like to share some changes and things you can expect within the upcoming weeks during the month of July. It appears that communication has been a bit scarce during the past few weeks, so I would like to help bridge the gap between the staff and players for this very important month. While there are many important things happening this month, in favor of keeping this list manageable I will only include the most meaningful news. The main points in this list will be expanded upon in their own dedicated threads once we make some progress toward enacting them. Let's get started! First up, we plan to finalize all of our progress on 4.0 this month. This might not mean much (seeing how we have continuously pushed the final date back as each month goes by), but I will be putting all hands on deck to ensure that we finish all outstanding projects on the 4.0 world by the end of this month. I cannot guarantee that the world will be up and running within this month, but we will hopefully have the map finished as soon as possible. I have not yet had a chance to delve into what is still a work-in-progress on the new map, but as soon as I get settled back in I assure you I will keep everyone up to date. Next on our list is the controversial (?) state of the GM team. Within the next few days I will be focusing much of my efforts toward reforming the moderator team into a highly motivated, active and effective team. I will begin by clearing out inactive (or unable to be that active) moderators, and then I will move on to promoting new members into the moderator ranks. As we flesh the roster out and organize the team, we will then work towards proper training (and a proper trainer), regulations and guidelines. In addition to the GM team, I will also be performing a full evaluation of all of the other staff teams on LotC and their respective team leaders. Anyone found to be under-performing will be properly replaced and relieved. Each team will be performing at utmost efficiency by the end of this month. Finally, I will be taking back up my role as Head Administrator here at Lord of the Craft. I will be continuing any of the previous projects that I had planned (so long as they are still relevant), which includes an overhaul to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and improvements to the overall functions of the staff and admin teams. Once the primary concerns listed in this thread are addressed, I will begin focusing on matters regarding the overall health and quality of our community, roleplay, and server direction. While I cannot guarantee that this list will not be expanded upon as I continue to get rid of my cobwebs and communicate with my fellow administrators, I can guarantee that you can expect the list to be tackled without delay. Have a great week everyone and a fantastic morning, evening or night!

I'm glad to see that you are leaving on a good note and with a positive experience to remember us by. I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and I hope that you have heaps of fun learning how to fly -- it's definitely not something that I could do. If it interests you, I too have learned many lifetime skills that will benefit me greatly in my future career from my time here on LotC (such as management, administration, planning, and organization skills). It warms my heart to see that someone benefited so much from an online community that I had a part in, and I truly wish the best for you. Have fun out there!

Congratulations guys!

Forum groups updated.

Yes, but you still require sufficient RP and an OOC warning. If killing gets out of control, however, things may be changed (though it should be handled IG). I live in Canada. =P

Your friend, Rissing, has been unbanned from the forums. We'll be addressing the pugsying change soon.

The removal of VAs isn't irreversible. Nothing is!

Hey guys! We're already ready to release a fresh new batch of changes to the server! Included in this thread are some (questionably) controversial changes, but please read them and understand why we are making these changes to the server. I'll spare you the semantics and get right to the important changes that you are waiting to read. Change #1: Villain applications and the Villain Application Team (rank) are being removed from the Lord of the Craft. You will no longer require a VA in order to perform villainous actions in roleplay on the server. With that said, however, we will be modifying a few noteworthy VA rules and adding them to the official server rules. If attempting to falsify an identity and take up a mock 'position' of importance or value (such as a guard), your name cannot simply be changed in order to perfectly emulate the role (such as "Guard_Jeff"). Instead, it should be through deceptive roleplay and not simply a /setname change. You are not to return items upon killing someone, even if asked by the player you killed. This effectively falls under meta-gaming. Not only does it make absolutely no RP sense to return items, it ends up becoming an expectation that upon death people will have their items reimbursed. If an RP situation you are in is making you feel uncomfortable, request an alternative way of RPing it or even just drop it and pretend it never happened. If another player is being too descriptive (during murder, torture, gory situations, etc) and you find it disturbing, you have the right to tell them, and they must comply and tone it down. However, this does not allow you to avoid certain situations (such as robbery, murder, etc) simply because it does not benefit you in-character. Instead, a shortcut can be made so that the uncomfortable details are avoided. A modification to a current rule: The 30 minute death timer functions different now during wars, battles and events. Instead of the timer starting as soon as you die, the timer now begins when the war, battle or event ends. If you are unsure if the occurrence has ended, play it safe and simply avoid the area for at least an hour. (The current 30 minute death rule will be modified but worded differently than presented in this thread. More information can be found here). Now you might be asking why we have decided to go through with this change. To be completely honest with you all, VAs have been debated and discussed over many, many months within the LotC staff teams. We have modified VAs, added and removed VA rules and evils, and made countless efforts towards improving them. While villain applications have numerous pros and cons alike, their removal was inevitable. I won't reiterate the entire argument surrounding keeping or removing VAs, but I will summarize why we decided to remove them in the end. In short, VAs were yet another OOC barrier that players had to overcome in order to expand their roleplay. We want to focus on keeping things as IG as possible, and VAs were preventing that. In addition to this, it was yet another regulation that new players had to learn -- we don't want that either. We want the learning curve to be as small and easy as possible. VAs were also causing numerous problems within the community. I'll finish this paragraph with an example. Some players thought that removing VAs would create dozens of poor villain RP'ers that wouldn't know how to roleplay villains correctly. While part of this may be true, it will only occur on a small scale. In fact, we created the title (or "trophy") of being a villain ourselves by creating the VA system. We made it a trophy that players had to earn, which resulted in many of the villain problems that we see today. When we simplified the VA system and the villain problem grew worse, many people thought that this was proof that allowing more people to become villains led to detrimental effects to the server. In reality, however, it just allowed more people to attain the villain application trophy. To a majority of people, becoming a villain is like achieving an award, and their attitudes and actions often reflect this. By removing VAs, not only will we remove the idea of villains being a separate aspect of roleplay altogether, but villain roleplay as a whole will approve. The wave of new villain RP'ers is expected within the first few weeks (much like what happened when we removed magic applications) following these changes, but afterwards the numbers will deteriorate as the idea of being a special villain deteriorates (as it won't be special anymore). I personally believe that making villain RP exclusive is what created these villain problems, not bad roleplayers. It's our job as a community to teach the new roleplayers how to roleplay better, not force them to prove that they can write an application in order to have more roleplaying options. Change #2: There has been a slight modification to our ToS (Terms of Service). The changes are outlined below (you may also find them in the Site Disclaimer section within our ToS at the bottom). Lord of the Craft is not liable for any actions that users commit while interacting with any of our services, including, but not limited to, unlawful actions or content. If you are under the legal age of adulthood, it is recommended that you ask your parental guardian(s) for permission to use and interact with our LotC-related services. Essentially, we are not accountable or held responsible for your actions that occur on this server or our various other outlets law-wise. Why have we made these changes? You'll understand why when you read change #3. This change is a placeholder, as I intend on rewriting our entire ToS from scratch and basing it off an online template in the very near future. Change #3: Many of you likely thought that the so called controversial changes that I hinted to earlier was the removal of VAs, but it was not. We are making a modification to our cybering policy. Yes, you read that right. Our stance on cybering is still the same -- it is a punishable offense that we do not tolerate or condone here on LotC. The rule is also still the same. However, our banning policy is now modified (this also applies to those currently banned for cybering). From here on out, players found to be cybering will only be banned for 1-3 months on their first offense, depending on the severity of the situation (borderline cybering 1-2 months, blatant cybering 3 months). The second offense, however, will be permanent (and by permanent I mean indefinitely, forever, for an infinite amount of time). Wow Viper! You just opened up the server to a bunch of cyberers! No, no I have not. You're likely face-palming right now and wondering what is going on inside the crazy heads of the administration team. Well, the simple fact is that many people cyber due to foolishness and immaturity (young kids like to fool around, you know?). Whether it's ignorance of the rules, a joke, or a little kid who's giggling behind his keyboard because he thinks what's happening is funny. Many good roleplayers have been banned for cybering even though they realize what they did was a mistake. On the other hand, some players decide to quit the server and cyber in order to get permanently banned rather than pugsying. However, we have decided to make it possible to appeal on the first offense in order for us to allow those genuinely good players to return. Is there a chance that some players will appeal even if they haven't learned from their past mistakes? Of course there is. However, if they do it again then they are permanently banned for good. We only want the players back that realize what they did was wrong and intend to never do it again. Keep in mind that cybering is one of the easiest rules that we can catch you breaking, and finding offenders isn't hard at all. It's easily discovered through various methods, which makes it easy to control. I hope you guys understand the core concept behind making this change, even if you think it's a poor choice. We aren't inviting cyberers back onto the server to allow them to repeat their actions again. We're giving them the chance to show us that they truly learned from their mistakes. I'm sure many questions will arise from this, and we will do our best to answer them. I will be rewriting the guidelines on how to avoid breaking the cybering rule as well (tip: just don't do it at all!), so stay tuned for that in the near future as well! Edit: If you would like your cybering appeal to be private, feel free to PM an administrator or the moderator that banned you. Have fun LotC, and remember, it's just a game! We're meant to have fun here, and we want to give everyone the chance to enjoy what LotC has to offer equally. Don't trouble yourself with the problems that the staff teams have to deal with too much -- that's what we're here for! Stay safe, -Viper3X, Head Administrator -The rest of the Administration Team

[ I accept your terms in their current state if you agree to mine. 1. No OP magic - Harbinger magic is far from OP. It is on the same level as the magic plugin, and the magic plugin will be equally as strong (when you get to a high enough tier/skill level). The Breath of the North spell is easily dodged if you are paying attention, doing 4 1/2 hearts of damage and applying the wither effect if you are hit. Is it strong? For sure. However, it has a cooldown of roughly 5 seconds and the Harbinger is helpless during this time. You have plenty of time to get to safety and regen your health. Play strategically and you can kill a Harbinger easily (I'm not going to give everything away, that's no fun). Cultists will be present at the battle as well, however, so you will be fighting some melee characters. 2. No withers - Going by your exact words that's perfectly fine. We have never used withers before and we do not intend to. Wither skeletons, on the other hand? Yes, we do use them. Not using them (along with magic) would completely break RP. We have no RP reason not to use wither skeletons or magic to fight you. It seems to me that you are trying to make this battle as easy as possible for you, but that isn't going to happen. You far outnumber us, and I hardly think you want to finish the battle in under a few minutes. 3. No OP enchantments - This is perfectly fine with me as well. We do not use enchants and do not intend to. I can't say the same for the cultists, however, as they will likely be using non-OP enchantments. Cultists are not considered main antagonists, though -- that's the Harbingers. Nonetheless, we are allowed to bring allies, just as you are. ]

A couple of new changes have been added to the original post.

Everyone's forum groups should now be set accordingly.