We were not given that choice Caska, there was a demand that we fire a staff member for doing his job. We declined. We did however speak about the situation and how to handle it better in the future. Our warnings in IRC are not demands to "shut up or else" They are simply a nudge towards keeping the conversation on topic. When darkwing came online, he saw offtopic conversation, and he did as he does most days and issues a light warning. He encouraged the players to make their own channel to continue the discussion. This whole situation would have been a non issue if everyone would have been patient. If the player in question had not attacked the staff, I would have popped in, indicated that due to world events we were allowing a bit of off topic conversation and everything would have continued just fine. Instead this happened. I will never demand our players treat the staff like gods, or their overlords, but as volunteers I do expect you to have a bit of respect for them. Read the logs posted by Cynic and the statements below and judge for yourselves. Our volunteers do a thankless job here, as indicated by a players post above using a racial slur against a volunteer for simply asking players to keep the conversation civil. [20:44] <Redacted> You are truly a fucking piece of shit. [20:44] <Redacted> You are completely out of line. [20:44] <DarkWing> 24 hours then [20:44] <Redacted> Burn in hell you fucking asshole. [20:44] <Redacted> Sure, ban the GM of the biggest guild on the server for telling you that you're fucked up. [20:44] <Redacted> Act like a power hungry ass. [20:44] <Redacted> Prove everything i'm saying. Darkwing has volunteered here for 3+ years without reward and he does a fantastic job. Will he frustrate you sometimes? Sure. But his job is to keep the channel in order, not to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. If you feel disrespected or rubbed the wrong way all you have to do is speak to me directly. We are always sad to see any players leave, and I hope Lightshade reconsiders in time. When something in UO frustrates you it is always a good idea to take a 24 hour break and think about it. It will never seem as dramatic a day later. Deeding your houses, deleting a whole guild, ruining a community inhabited by other players to make a point will never seem worth it in retrospect.
I purposely did all the discussing in PM's with you, Chris, so as to not make a public spectacle of the issues I have with things. I even refrained from hopping back in IRC and spouting off. That your friends and yourself wanted to make a spectacle of it here on the forums without talking about the other 99% of what I had issue with is disappointing at best. I could go on and on slinging mud right now, but after seeing how Chris and his cohorts handled this, I am just disappointed and don't think its worth the effort of fighting through all the hate and vitriol. I wanted what was best for this server and put in countless hours helping countless people. I see problems and I want things fixed. The staff disagrees with me on these issues. If I do nothing, I am just rubber stamping my approval. I guess I hit my limit on what I will tolerate. Chris and Cynic, thank you for making this an easy choice for me. I was having second thoughts, but seeing how you handled this I know that it is best if I no longer donate so much of my time helping others. I will be retiring from gaming altogether. Best of Luck, ~ L / S P.S. Remember, I left the drama aspect of this out of the forums because the shard does not benefit from any of this. Everyone else brought it in and forced the issue to be discussed. It should also be noted that I PM'd Chris the conversations he posted, so its not like I was hiding it from him. I was completely upfront about it. This is what I did, this is what I think. He disagreed, life goes on.
That "keep topic to UO" rule thing needs to go. I see the staff ranting off topic all the time. A week ago Telamon even went *gasp* political and quite frankly if there was a best time for Darkwing to give a warning, that was probably it. HOW STAFF SEES/SELLS IT: Our warnings in IRC are not demands to "shut up or else" They are simply a nudge towards keeping the conversation on topic. HOW MANY OF US SEE IT: We can say what we want whenever we want. Our server, our rules. You can say whatever you want too, and we'll even participate, unless we don't like the subject or don't agree with your point or we're just bored. Trump2020.
Disappointed to see you go I have many funny retorts but Ill refrain (you aren't even going to Poke Go?!!) ****I cant find that screenshot outside Vesp of the Fight Nites you hosted many years ago when we met****
Sad to see you go and sad to hear about all stupid drama that led up to this. It was fun to be in KoS even though I didn't have much time to play. It feels odd not to be "Confuzzled" anymore. Best of luck Lightshade and hope you'll find real life enjoyable!
All we want is players to keep the off topic conversation down to a point that new players get the assistance that they need. We are as nice as possible with our moderation, and it is unreasonable to treat the staff like tyrants for wanting a new player assistance channel. Going forward the staff and volunteers have been instructed to moderate their speech and avoiding engaging with players in conversation unrelated to helping new players to avoid any more confusion about the rules. However, we will not fire our staff because they were doing their job. This situation could have been resolved with a single player contacting me to say "Hey can darkwing let us keep talking about Turkey?" The answer would have been yes. The "Off Topic" conversation rule in IRC is to make sure player conversation does not move so fast and furious that new players cannot get the help they need. Its not about the subject, its relevance or anything else. Its simply about keeping the chat from going crazy. Go watch a youtube/twitch livestream with 1000+ people watching sometime and tell me how easy it is to follow along and ask questions.
As the leader of the biggest guild on the shard (KoS) I would've expected you to act with more class, not like a child who attempts to use his power or authority to get his way. Even tho you were right in this given situation, and had you waited just a little while Darkwing would of had to deal with Telamon proverbially rubbing his nose in 'it' by telling Darkwing to proverbially 'Shut Up'. Which I'm sure can't be easy for Darkwing to deal with on a daily basis, but he does...for free....without compensation... As a leader it is up to you to set an example for all those around you. Now would be a good time to show them how to be humble. Wish you the best in all of your future endeavours. Losing you is not something anyone wants, not Telamon, not Darkwing, not anyone.
over reaction on both sides Maybe? because a well known player lives in Turkey , people were curious and it's a serious real world situation , the stay on topic rule , while it makes sense in a lot of cases, there probably should have been an exception here , as Chris did state . I don't know LS well , or if there was already bad blood between these two , but LS helped me get in contact with one of his guild mates who had a house I wanted and seemed like a cool guy . We all love this game and sometimes passion boils hot , here's hoping you guys can hug it out
My understanding is that the short term consequences of this are: 1) Massive Idoc Battle 2) Huge land rush resulting in profits for anyone that manages a placement during aforementioned massive idoc battle
Lightshade, I hate to see you go and I think you were one of the best helpers UOR had. The guild you created helped players get started and established here on UOR. For the 2 years I have been here I saw your guild create long term players. Saying that I am confused as to why you didn't pass the guild down to Ducky, or someone else. I understand your frustrations but why would you collapse the guild? I'm sorry to see you go and like others here I hope you reconsider. -Steely Dan
Take it easy there, chief, all I did was post the chat logs. I never injected my opinion on the matter into this thread, or anywhere for that matter.
Darkwing's job could be done by a bot. The only reason it's not is because there is a belief that a person can exercise good judgement and differentiate when the right time is to enforce the rules.
This is my understanding of what happened based on the logs I have seen and some other stuff: Lightshade gets a 15m ban for essentially telling a moderator to fuck off while they're trying to enforce channel rules. Lightshade decides the correct action in response to this is to pm Darkwing to insult him and shit all over him. Lightshade then goes to the server owner to have Darkwing removed as channel mod because the channel mod gave someone a 15m time-out for telling the mod to fuck off. When this fails, Lightshade tries to extort the server owner by threatening to do harm to the server if Lightshade doesn't get his way. After all, how dare the GM of the largest guild on the server be wrist-slapped for telling a channel mod to fuck off?! Server owner correctly rejects that ridiculous demand. Lightshade then goes about trying to harm the server (and harming all the people he's played with in KoS) by booting everyone from the stone (and I'm sure keeping the guildhouse they've all donated to). Lightshade doesn't drop his house, doesn't give his stuff away, doesn't delete his characters. He kicks everyone from the stone, keeps his stuff, doesn't drop any houses, doesn't delete any characters. These are not the actions of a person who is "done," they are the actions of a child who is throwing a tantrum because he's not getting his way. @Lightshade, you're totally out of line and have let your hurt ego drive you to silly actions. If you don't like channel rules, you can work to have the channel rules changed. Sometimes, people disagree with you and you won't get your way. That's life. Staff likes those rules because they want the main channel to be focused on helping new players and answering questions about Ultima Online. Remember, we're all more than welcome to use #uorpvp to carry on pretty much any discussion about any topic we like. Lightshade wasn't booted for off-topic discussion, he was given a 15m time-out for telling a channel mod to fuck off. I'm sad to see @Lightshade go, but this was definitely not the hill to die on. You're not being righteous, you're not giving the good fight for the people, you look like a child throwing a tantrum because they didn't get the proper respect they think they deserve. I hope you reconsider Lightshade. @DarkWing does stuff I disagree with or doesn't do stuff which I think he should, but the level of attacks and criticism against him and other staff is ridiculous. Thanks for all your work Darkwing, I know it's a thankless job where you only get mentioned when people are upset. People can disagree about topics without it being a personal matter. Relax guys, step back and think about this for a while.