Honest opinion incoming- might receive flack for it but if what is said in the post is true, hopefully this goes over fine. I would like to preface this by saying that these are in no way indicative of anyone else's thoughts and feelings, and just a run down of how I view things. I was upset by what I heard of how Axelu was treated, whether or not people believe what he says to be true, as it was unfair to him as a member of our community to have to endure that. Anywho-
I joined Haense in July after returning from a ban, and have been highly active in the community since, so almost six months at this point. I hope that gives me a little bit of room and credibility to speak on matters, but that is up to the reader to decide. At first, stuff was great! I was moving up through the Brotherhood, participating events and PVPing back in the days the server wasn’t a hellhole of lag. Everything was going splendid, until about October with the War starting. I was away visiting family when Sambech left, and so even though I was not around for the initial fallout, I wasn’t fully happy with how Sambech was treated. Though I will not deny, some things he did in going about achieving his charter were frustrating to say the least, the response he received wasn’t merited. A strictly roleplay based occurence turned into an OOC firestorm being sent the way of Sambech. I spoke with him during this time, and he immediately was hesitant in speaking to me, due to DMs he had been receiving. Though both Sambech and our DMs are gone, I believe he might still be active on the server had he not been met with that reaction. I understand that it sucks, and I wasn’t fully happy, but there comes a time that we as a player base just let him do his own thing, instead of driving him towards leaving, though people in his charter turning on him may have been the catalyst for him leaving.
Soon after this, I started to get fed up with how the war was going. PvP was a mess in voice chat, with different people yelling constantly, and… certain individuals outside our community being allowed to lead fights, at the expense of our own players and enjoyment. Though I definitely didn’t see eye to eye with many people on the strategies we used during the initial stages of war during fights, I will fully admit- I could be a jerk when talking to people, and generally was not in the best of mentalities at the time. I like to PvP, and though others were frustrated at losing fights and such, I was frustrated that we weren’t just fighting to improve. As a result, I would snap at certain players. I started to notice over time that the general mentality towards me changed amongst leadership. Though there were still some who talked to me and worked with me on things, and I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate that, I found others were completely different from when I first joined. Though I cannot claim it was no fault of my own, it seemed as if instead of being a fellow member of the community, I was an enemy within the community. During this time, @MadOne was removed from the position of Lord Marshal, seemingly for not much reason other than OOC tension with leadership.
November was a rougher month, and overall my relationship with members of Leadership became more and more frayed, to the point where apart from a few select members, LOOC and discord were oftentimes battlegrounds for OOC verbal confrontations. Quickly I started noticing things a little interesting in roleplay, some of which still continue now- characters I either barely knew or had never met inherently disliking my character, assassination attempts on my character, etc. Embellishing on the last point- It was about last Friday or Thursday I believe, and after making a decision both oocly and irply, I went to go play some good ol’ Haenseni chess! While playing and chilling in a voice chat, two masked men suddenly made an attempt on my characters life. Now, no need to name who, the people there know full well who it was. Though IRP reasons could be provided, I have yet to see those, so the initial reaction was the belief of ooc motivation. It frustrated me- I remember a time two months ago in which I did some dumb stuff, broke into a house and caused a player some strife. I apologized and acknowledged what I had done, and still feel bad about it, and received some flack for it. It made me wonder why what I did was horrendous, yet members of the same community attempting to kill one another was okay. After this encounter, I wasn’t the most happy camper to say the least, and messaged a few people on discord. One user I spoke to, who was the one who had drawn issue with me oocly frequently, informed me that I was immature and incapable of acting serious. Okay, that is fine. I cannot convince you to like me or not. However, the individual then told me to message the NL (Andrew) if I had any more issues, which frustrated me. We should be able to work out our own issues without dragging in people who honestly don’t need to be there, yet it was blown aside in an almost childlike manner.
All in all, this post is getting a little lengthy, so I’ll try to wrap it up succinctly. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: As a community, we need to improve. We need to remove OOC from Roleplay, and find ways to get rid of negativity in our discords and interactions, or we will not improve. Simply surviving as a community is not okay. Oftentimes we draw issue with the concept of killing our community, ideas held by our opponents in the war, and become upset with them wishing to do that, yet then we turn around and give them more reasons to wish to do so. We need to stop giving them reasons, stop pushing away members of our community, and work the hell together to improve. As for me, I want it to be clear that I love Haense. I really enjoy this community, and besides many frustrations, I still want to see it thrive. I understand I may have acted wrongly in the past, but that is, well, the past- and I look forward to the future. Thank you to @Eddywilson2 for making this post, and I hope we can all adopt it and improve how we all behave.