And my box is all over this place. Now, before I begin, based on what I've heard and seen over the past few days it's likely that this thread will be locked/removed before anyone has a chance to give it a proper read. However, I hope that the few of you that do get to see it will draw some valuable conclusions from it. On Christmas Day, I was contacted by Catface over Steam. He asked me to talk to Mrdie and agree to whatever he writes, so that his conciliatory plan could go into effect. Without giving it proper thought (I was doing several things at a time - streaming, two separate conversations, Wurm - and, as it turns out, failing most of them quite badly), I agreed and went on to have an awkward history lesson which, even though I had minimal knowledge of the times it concerned, struck me as heavily biased towards one side's point of view. Still, as per Catface's request, I kept a polite and conciliatory tone throughout the conversation. After the initial catch-up on ancient drama, the big question of bringing the Black Hole back to the Empires forums came back. I answered as I felt on the matter (which lined up with the expectations of Catface) - the Black Hole, as a subforum, had no right of being part of the main forums. Now now, I know this isn't very important, but I wanted to come clean on this subject. Shortly after the conversation with Mrdie came to an end, a quick announcement about the Three-Phase Plan was made in the mod section, and the famous (now locked) reconciliation thread was posted. Now, I don't know about the rest of the developers' stance on the matter since I haven't seen any word from them on the matter, but at that point, I was still willing to give the plan a try, even though I was aware that it'd either be great, or the biggest community disaster I've had the chance to witness. The first few responses made me realise that it was the latter. I chose to remain silent for the first few days to see how the situation would develop. It didn't develop very well. People caught wind of what happened and dropped by after months or years of inactivity to express their disapproval of the actions taken. Paradox was among the most vocal users about it, posting many threads and actively looking for proof supporting the theory that James is just Mrdie's alter-ego, dubbed harassment. That, among others, earned him a ban, in accordance with the enforced rules - for harassing and "shitstirring". Said stirring supposedly also included getting more ancient users to post words of disapproval, and having DocRabbit write his goodbye thread. I don't have any proof for or against this, of course, but it does feel rather silly to blame Paradox for other people's posts. Other things, sure - I myself am not a huge fan of his past actions - but not for spreading the word. And yet, that was the only real action to be taken - other than banning the source of the leaked IP address of James, who had logged into Mrdie's account at one (or more, I don't know) point - even though relentlessly using the terms 'deeism', 'deeist', and other various ways of harassing Dee (among others) was apparently completely fine, and the main perpetrator was banned upon his own request, 2006 style. This duality is something that I can't continue to tolerate. Anyway, DocRabbit's thread got hard-deleted by someone with admin powers, and later Catface brought it back after an alleged apology (I wasn't present wherever that took place). Things seemed to be dying down, with people still being upset (albeit less openly, in fear of retribution), until today, when the eRegime link was added to the hotbar at the top of the forum. Location aside, the way by which it was announced was the final straw for me. Now, some of you may not have even noticed by now, because the announcement post in the reconciliation was very quickly buried under a slew of seemingly normal posts. You can see it at the bottom of the column in the picture, and it was gone from there shortly afterwards. Additionally, the thread was promptly locked, preventing any and all further discussion in it. I also received this PM, encouraging me to actively support this blatant censorship. A quick talk with Neoony also gave me the information that posts about the matter are actively being hard-deleted, and again, messages encouraging shutting your mouth are delivered. Therefore, I don't expect much from it, but hey, maybe the censor themselves will reflect upon their actions. All this put together leads me to my main point. I no longer wish to be part of this concert of lies, the shady actions of the admin body over the past week disgust me. I hereby renounce my moderator powers and any other priviledges I may have obtained over my time in this place. I also request that the map I have created, emp_nuclear, be not used anywhere other than NUBS, TheCreeper's own server. If you got this far with your reading, I wish you'll never have to blame yourself for creating, or even helping to create, a rift within your community. To the skimmers, I'm done with this place. Farewell. EDIT: Upon request, this is signed both by me and Z!000000M.
First of all, without doubt, I owe an explanation to everyone. The last few days have been terrible for practicallyy everyone. What was intended as a mere end to the drama has instead created an atmosphere of animosity, hostility and withered away trust among people. It's also time to dispel the rumors, accusations and doomsday scenarios that have been brewing for the past days. Why? Let's start with the original reason why this decision was taken in the last few days. Many know that there has been an issue in this community that has been going for a very long time. One that has produced numerous bans, its own namefilter and spawned countless instances of at times silly but often unnerving, frustrating and/or cringeworthy drama. An issue that most people - including the key players - do not care about, but which some - including our most valued members - feel very strongly about. For a long time it was felt that this issue negatively influenced the community and the development. Even before today it has resulted in numerous members (including devs) leaving the community. Noting how this couldn't go on indefinitely a plan was devised. To end this nonsense once and for all. While I had informed some beforehand, this proved to be far from sufficient. This is also one of the origins of the distrust and animosity these last few days have fomented. But these haven't been the only mistakes made. From the lack of openness, to wrongful post deletions: what has transpired in less than a week is nothing short of a train wreck. Many people have been alienated, and the worst is that it includes the very people that this agreement was devised for: Devs, moderators, community contributors and server owners. This was supposed to be an end note, and not an overture to more drama. It's obvious that contrary to initial intentions things can't just return to "normalcy" no matter how much we wish or try to force it. In the perception of many this has been anything but closure. While fears of a split were previously dismissed, this is exactly what is fomenting at this moment. In short. It's been a disaster. The "Blackhole" I think it is important to state to everyone that the Blackhole is - contrary to popular fears - not coming back in Empires. The solution devised involved moving the blackhole off-site thus ending the drama. Other issues had also been resolved. eRegime would serve as the new location of the blackhole. In conjunction with many other communities that aren't even vaguely related to it. Furthermore, I would be financially supporting the eRegime community as whole (rather than the Blackhole) and acting as both the owner of the domain and its server(s). It would also become a portal of forum games (rather, expand on it) and host its own webgame(s) not dissimilar from other counterparts across the net. Also contrary to the concerns of many. The person who is at the centre of this would not become a moderator, admin or developer and himself agreed to leave the community alone. After all, there was nothing left to do. However, It's obvious that people are not satisfied nor able to reconcile with this. Whether it is the result of ill communication or second thoughts doesn't matter. These last few days have been extremely divisive. It's never been, nor is my intention to split the community. For this reason I am stepping down as an (active) administrator and am open to handing over the forum administration to others. Beerdude and others once said to me (feel free to correct me) that lead developers shouldn't be posting on the forums, and should stay on the background. While I disagreed at the time, I finally agree now. I'd like to end my my post with an apology to every single person that has been negatively affected by this in the last few days. While I cannot undo what has happened, I hope this will at least allow some to feel a bit better.
This whole thing is so dumb. Please guys, Please! Firstly; There is no such thing as the black hole, simply it doesn't exist & therefore should be ignored. It only exists in the mind of a crazy dude who should also be ignored, all problems solved as they have been for a very long time. Given that no-one has any interest in MrDie, the imaginary black hole or weird political role play I've no idea why you thought that anything needed to be mended here - except perhaps you've been listening far to much to the shambolic ramblings of a certain internet troll. Anyway, lets see if we can't all put on our big boy/girl pants and forget this unfortunate mess shall we. Don't delete posts though, thats bad.
Empires news highlights of 2015: Catface ressurects the old forgotten dramamaker MrDie... If you dont want drama, why create/ressurect it in the first place?
Can everyone please just forget about this ? i don't think anyone really gives a shit about the silly drama involved with the empires forums/mrdie/blackhole etc etc etc. Then someone has to go create another stupid thread that makes more drama please lock this thread and lets just forget about it before more people leave.
I don't know why you are so obsessed with Mr Die and his community. I don't believe anything you say anymore and its apparent you care more about appeasing those others than the empires community. Your actions speak louder than your words. I lsot all trust and faith in you as dev and forum admin. The second you became dev you divided the community with that "official crap" and told me all the devs and "official admins" agreed to your plan, when I spoke to them all no one even heard of what you were doing and thought it was a stupid idea. You are doing the same with this issue. You made a point of telling us you spoke with all the devs and admins about this, well none of them agreed with bringing Mr Die back to these forums and you don't seem to care what the empires community wants. You get in some position of power and make unilateral decisions and pretend you have the backing of the dev team and admins when you don't. No one trusts you anymore, no one believes what you say, you have done more damage to this community than anyone else. If you delete my post, its just more proof how you are clueless how to lead a forums or dev team or a community. Censorship breeds contempt, unilateral decisions breeds mistrust. PS spike stop kissing ass to get your scripters status again, a brown nose does not suit you.
I can confirm everything Destroyer has said; I was in pretty much the same situation, very much distracted I said to Catface that I thought it was worth a try, and that he should ask the other devs. Later, I wanted to also add that we ask old devs and moderators, but by the time I got back to the forum, Catface had decided and the whole drama had started. Had he made clear what he was going to post; in the rhetoric of MrDie - which was the main problem - and with the "three phase plan" by Gnaeus appended, we would all have told Catface "this is insane, don't post that". But that's the problem. Throughout all of these events, Catface has taken a lot of decisions very quickly without consulting - nay, without even informing! At one point, there was a bit of panic amongst the devs because it seemed that we needed to find which moderator was hard deleting and stop him before he deleted more. I've been thinking of speaking out, but it seems to me that Catface has rectified the situation by realising he is not fit to be a moderator. However, it is extremely unfortunate to hear that Destroyer will no longer be moderating - his level-headed demeanor was much valued. And the map - really? You would be that petty? C'mon So yea, everything is fine now. Incidentally, we are discussing with the moderators (well, minus 2 now) what to do with Paradox's breach of the forum rules, but I don't want people to take Destroyer's, Catface's or my words as speaking for all the moderators, as we do not have a definitive answer ourselves yet.
tama everything is not fine, read cf's new stunt of linking mr dies userbase with ours and paying for mr dies stuff. whats fine about that????
As much as I hate to paste any of his stuff. That and the quote just dont go together. NEWS: MrDie claims to be an empires veteran. hurr durr
Well, the fact that he isn't calling my grandmother is pretty sweet. The fact is, banning people for posting about political make-belief in off-topic doesn't make much sense. Off-topic is for discussing non-empires related stuff in a tasteful manner. Hmmm, looks like eregime is for sale. Who cares?
Supporting a community of people who apparently hijack other games, as Mrdie has shown us. Great. Apparently "eRegime is a forum based around forum games (mostly political or geopolitical in nature) created by the users themselves." And if all the related sites are about the same thing, they go around forums and destroy them for fun, with all the political nonsense as a game. Fucking retards.
If I was to quote comments on some sites that are related to eRegime. Its all about the same thing. Its all fucking nuts.
There's sixteen people in game, and there are several devs working on bugfixes as we speak. None of this matters in the scale of things.
MrDie is a mentally individual that has an extreme obsession with this game/community (he has not ever played the game). Normal/sane people do not do the things he has done over the years neither do they obsess over a game/community they have being excluded from for nearly 10 years. It should of being clear from day one that this is not a person that you should be talking to. MrDie needs professional help not "reconciliation". MrDie should never have being unbanned. He has never played the game and so has no place in this community. Entire situation is ridiculous to the point of insanity.
