Yeah it is time for a clean up. Portalarium running inspections on DoD again to see what we got hidden in our Lots. ;)
Seems like they found a lore book I wrote which received quite some praise in the community, besides from a few guys who apparently still suffer from the Kekistan troll that was pulled of on 4 chan.
I seriously do not want to go over that whole issue again. Kek came from World of Warcraft where the opposing sides couldn't talk to each other and LOL translated as KEK and keke is a common term for lol in asia since Ultima Online.
Since then topkek, kek or keke have been used by gamers forever and since our lore was about collecting lols from trash talking newbies we killed I found it quite fitting. If you are interested in reading the lore, surprisingly it hasn't been deleted from their official forums yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We also waybacked it all here in case they change that after reading my blog.
We even acknowledged going away from the usage of a frog to make it clear we only mean the egyptian god and distance us further from the 4chan prank. And no one really cared about it anymore, until some of our guildmembers called Portalarium out for placing unobtainable items in the charity auction called "Masters of the Forge".
Collecting money for a good cause is one thing... risking your game's public reputation for placing items in a charity is nuts. Even though the players advantage with that item is not as high as the rarity of the item (approx. couple hundred troll weapons or more needed), it is still a boundary that has been shattered and promptly found attention in gaming media.
I warned about this issue when Darkstarr entered items in the auction that he made with crafting skilled set to 200. This mistake he immediately corrected. I heard from that other item only through reddit, where someone asked me if I had seen the auction and the items, days later.
After our concerns on the forums were deleted, me and a guild mate received an email stating this would be a last warning before a permanent ban. There wasn't even a reason given besides being called "combative" and not even a mention of what rule or regulation we violated by stating our opinion. We both decided to answer as formal as the email that was sent to us.
The day after that, my friends lot appeared to have been searched. To do this Portalarium apparently logged into his account and deleted the lore books mentioned before on his property. My personal stuff stayed untouched however, and the lore book is still in their forums.
Being threatened to be permanently removed from the game, we said that it is fine and we can agree to remove it. My question on the forums to get a list of approved words to not give them a chance to ban me for using a "bad" word was answered here.
So my only chance to avoid getting banned or warned by violating rules that get changed after we do something, is to let them read it before publishing I guess.
"SotA has become a game for sore losers. Portalarium changes all rules towards them:
Thiefing, Decay, Community Guidelines etc. etc. and in the end no one normal wants to play this game anymore."
This has to change, as this is pushing away customers. Ultima Online vets and other sandbox gamers are still their main audience, even though you can hardly find them in game anymore.. No wonder there is no content for them, yet (hopefully). But google stats don''t lie and everyone can do a simple search for "Shroud of the Avatar"and see what kind of games are shown as "people also looked for".
Until the community management changes their target audience from 40+ people looking to replace social life, to a broader audience and GAMERS, we might not see the numbers needed to make SotA a success story after all.
I have observed changes lately that gave me some faith in the company again, however this whole issues put things back to zero. I probably start a lot more writing here now and in german on some other sites I am currently in contact with. All depends on my free time though as I am a very very busy man.
So long.
Vallo
P.S.: Oh yeah violins... very offensive as they are used by the Vienna Philharmonics which say its a white european thing... we do not want to enable nazis, do we?!
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