Best Of

Here yet again, I will reiterate that the above is a personal opinion. I quit in 2012/2013 (ish?)  I hear you all speak of these things I -didn't- get to see, or simply have forgotten with age. 

As with what has been a separate topic entirely, what is evident to one person is not always such to another. One side you see of a person isn't always the same side another sees. The same can be held true with complaints.  

We're all human, or as much as we can be sending little tid-bits of info through a computer. I understand that its a frustrating experience to be dealing with, and I do not evny you or any of the crew. 

I would like to preface this by saying I don't really care at this point if Ixion is TA, special or otherwise. IC, I have reasons to dislike it, but OOC he was once my father IC, and once my friend, so I rate it a big shrug from me.

Having said that...

I would like to suggest that people consider how much harm they are doing to the admins and paids with the vitriol being flung about and repeated. Aonia, Orael, all of the gods, even the ephemerals, every single one of them is a player who loved this game so much they gave up truly playing it. That is HARD to start with. The turnover rate before godhood is very high. The burnout rate as a god is pretty damn high too. 

Ascension must have eaten hundreds of hours of their collective time. Hundreds. Schedules tweaked so they could be available to help with the RPs, with the behind the scenes things. Looking on from above, hoping their favourites (yeah, we all know they have them) get what they're hoping for, commiserating from afar if they don't, cheering if they do. 

As upset as so many of you are, imagine how upset you would be if the game you gave up playing to help was throwing this at you personally. You can say it's not personal all you like - everyone who is feeling hateful, invalidated and ignored and posting here about it, you are pushing those same emotions to them too.

I wouldn't want to be one of them right now.

Yes, we knew that some people would be upset about our decision no matter which way we went. I'll say this again. We knew that people would be upset no matter what we did. If we chose to roll with the result, one side is alienated. If we went the other direction, the other side is alienated. So it boiled down to what do we think the best option is for the game as a whole, knowing that we will end up with upset players. We did consider alternative options and those alternatives were viewed as unviable or not enough for various reasons. 

We made the decision that we think is best for the game as a whole.

I will note here that I've had players from every org message me in one form or another saying they support our decision and which direction we've gone. I've had a few players message and say that they may not agree but they understand why we did it. I have had angry messages too. 

I can say that one of the reasons that we didn't consult players as a whole is that we didn't want to delay this decision longer than necessary and instead move past it. I also believe opening this kind of discussion up to the player base at large would be wildly unproductive, as you've seen both in this thread and in other places it has been discussed by both sides. There are times where a decision just needs to be made, and I think this is one of those times.

As a note, I will be heading off for the night - I will respond to things when I can, but please remain on topic. I don't really want to hop on and have to delete a bunch of posts come morning.

Thank you, Orael, for taking the time to write this for everyone.

I really can't find any reference to this in the original post; this is the first time that information was actually provided to us that I can see, and that is a step towards being open / transparent.  Something I don't understand: why it was decided to just not address it at all?  I think that decision, more than anything else, is what has thrown us all for a loop and is what makes it feel so one-sided.

Also do NOT harass either of the new TAs. They did their best, and whatever the outcome, have both contributed in their own ways to the game at large. THAT goes for as much 'my side' as it does the other. Emotions run high, but we can do better, and look forward to the next time yes?

Let's make sure we're staying on topic here.

edt; this is in response to Synl's and Maligorn's posts about alliances and friendship

Hehe yeah, like, I get that alliances are not about friendship, but you don't say it. It's like how you don't say that someone's baby is ugly. 

Wait, people are so upset about the player they supported being a "non-special ascendant" that they're relentlessly bombarding him with toxic rhetoric that's making (or made) him consider leaving the game?

Neat.

Eve said:

Do I feel that both sides should be compensated for putting up with a clear cut issue- yes. However, rewarding the side who did in fact "lose" with the grand prize while leaving the side that did indeed win here the same prize and a fist bump for doing so well doesn't seem fair or reasonable. As it was put (last night, was it?) it is a huge slap in the face, however unsurprising in the end. I mean, this is the same side who persistently remained calm in 4x2. This same side who took being told to "shut up and stop guilt tripping us" on the discs about it on their shoulders. We still won quakes, we still participated in villages, heck we did pretty alright given what we had. I mean, for heavens sake Glom's epic was bugged for how many months before it got noticed? What quest had been openly talked about being borked, but remained unnoticed until Glomdoring was able to benefit from it?

Synl said:

 Personally I think it's really naive for any one from Halifax or Celest, icly, to think the Glomdoring was supporting them for the sake of friendship. Mutual enemies etc is clearly the more obvious goal? But I'm also not Shadow Court, so just thinking out loud.

I just wanted to isolate this real quick. This attitude is how Glomdoring got into a 4v2 situation.