Sterling Archers offical apology thread

As usual my time is pulled away from shard development and advertising to address yet another fake controversy by players unable to handle a 15 minute private conversation.

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Recently the server made a decision to try to run more overworld events. This Sunday we attempted to run our 3rd event where a certain town was invaded by waves of monsters with the task of defending the town, and defeating the boss of each wave of enemies. This was a complex event with a new type of reward system, a clever story, 20+ spawners, over 100 way points and was expected to last 2 hours.

This event took 5-6 hours of staff time to design, test and prepare. From writing content, creating spawners, creating the rewards, etc. The event started around 8pm (cst). Within a minute of the event starting a group of players showed up and began to mercilessly kill anyone and everyone that showed up to the event. I monitored this behavior for 10 minutes before deciding that the progression of the event was broken and the event would not operate as designed with players being tasked with defending against this type of attack from monsters and other players.

The players involved in the rampant murder were jailed so we could have a conversation about their behavior and future events. This is the only way the staff can have a conversation with 5-6 players who are constantly moving in a safe setting. Once they were jailed the event was cancelled and all event resources were stopped.

This event was designed to be challenging for the players who attended. It was designed to be difficult and rewarding. It was not designed to function properly should a group of players, in a voice channel, decide to murder everyone who attempted to attend the event.

It was explained to the players in question that the staff on Renaissance do not spend 5-6 hours designing an event so that you can have a target rich environment for "PvP" activities. If the Renaissance players abuse the events that we run in this manner, they will not be punished. We will simply adjust future events to be enjoyable for all of our players, not just a select few.

Each player was made to verify that they had read the rules on the Renaissance server and they were allowed to leave jail. No children were murdered. No hands were cut off. No one was banned. Pvp'ers were simply told that there can be consequences for their conduct.

If you truly enjoy this server then you make a choice when you log in. If you see that there is a worldwide event in progress. You can decide to come have fun with the rest of the players, or you can set out to discourage the staff from bothering to offer these type of events in the future.

So were these players punished? No.
Is it wrong that they engaged in Felucca behavior in Felucca? No.
Will the staff run additional events that encourage this type of behavior? No.
Will this type of player complain about "Trammel" in future forum posts? Yes.

The only person who was punished in this situation was the staff, for having the audacity to spend 5 hours developing an interesting event for our players, only for it to be seen by some of the players as a way to get payback on certain groups of players for past perceived mistreatment..... By killing people completely unrelated to those players...

Do we live in a world where a 15 minute conversation is considered punishment? When people start getting banned or blacklisted from the server, players are welcome to come complain about unfair treatment. Players were warned that their actions have consequences and that the staff are volunteers here. The staff can choose how we spend our time, and if players discourage the staff from preparing and running events. Then we will simply do other things. It comes down to respecting the server, and realizing that we have a diverse group of players who enjoy a variety of different things. Sometimes it is ok to allow the players a chance to enjoy an event for the good of the server.



This thread is now closed. Players are welcome to continue the discussion regarding staff mistreatment of murderers in the trash talk forum.

http://uorforum.com/forums/trash-talk.23/