We are now live with the Developer Q'n'A #1 2018!

[Zealote]

Spoiler:

@Wargrim

I personally believe that you, primarily through your attitude towards and treatment of players, hold almost as much responsibility as Torque for the immense damage that's been done to RoR's community and reputation.

Your call for 'peace' comes across as completely disingenuous, as does your rapid and rather drastic change in tone and approach upon Aza's recent return.

And I'd like to point out that I never once, to my knowledge, received any warnings or sanctions on my account while active on the server; my deleting my chars and stopping playing (and once again after a brief return) was in large part due to the two of you, even though I was never negatively affected personally. It seemed quite clear to me (and I imagine to many others—it wasn't that subtle) a long time ago that staff-community relations could only deteriorate irreparably if two such arrogant, closed and inflexible individuals (at least in their roles in this project) were at the forefront.

My entire job is to damage the people that shouldn't be here. I'm expected to go through that. 99% of the time I have absolutely no regrets about the moderation and bans that I've handed out, or the manner that I've gone through them. It is exceedingly rare that I need to lift a ban appeal due to the process that my GM's follow and the evidence we collect. Of the 202,000-ish accounts active, we have 1493 GM reports open. Some of them duplicates or notes. That's not a bad margin.

If you don't like playing in a moderated space with active GM's, I can totally understand your position.

Since Aza came back and wanted to lift a bunch of bans over staff disrespect or general dissent, I was cool with that. We relaxed a bit after some discussions in lead, at least on the forums. I don't think things have gotten particularly better, and we've had to slap a few people since then, but it hasn't particularly gotten worse either.

The Q&A has been a big shift into "worse" territory. Now we have to deal with hilarious drama all over again, and the stamping of feet and demanding of heads, that we as a team had moved on from.

I appreciate your measured response.

I don't think a public toing and froing is going to be helpful, but I'd like to clarify one point: I wasn't referring specifically to the sanctions/bans that you have applied; I don't feel certain enough at the moment to state an opinion either way, especially since I haven't been part of the community for a while. I am also not anti-moderation or anti-authority—as anyone who can be bothered to look through my post history could probably deduce. I am, however, antiauthoritarian, which is the approach that has/had been taken on RoR for a significant amount of time, in my opinion. At least by staff at the forefront. Though if nothing is done to change this by those with more authority then the responsibility for any negative consequences lies with them also. We obviously might disagree on whether that has actually been the nature of the staff-players relationship; all I can do is state how I see it.

I had only positive interactions with Wargrimnir and never saw him acting unreasonably. He has all my respect.

As I said in my previous post, I never had any -ve interactions with either Torq or Wargrim that I can recall. But one's personal interactions with someone aren't a particularly good indicator of whether there are problems with the system that they form part of as a whole. "I'm treated well so everything's fine"—on its own—is not a well-founded argument and indeed is one of the many things that allow corrupt systems (as many would('ve) describe(d) RoR) to remain in place.

[tazdingo]

people seem to be jumping to conclusions before watching the whole thing. aza didn't quit and actually had a lot of good to say about torque towards the end of the rant. it really did just seem like a lot of blowing off steam

for those posting just to doubt ror's future, i don't see the point. you have to be positive. you have to have faith in the devs. anything else is just sabotage. it may be better to say nothing at all, this really doesn't seem that apocalyptic (no pun intended)

[Rynocerous]

I'm pretty sure telling people who are spending time , effort and their own money that they suck because you don't like how they banned someone is not going to make anything 'better'.

Regardless of what else he said, if Az had serious concerns and issues with any of the staff, the proper place to discuss it shouldn't be a public Q&A chat about the future of the game. It should be discussed in private. If he was ignored then there are other avenues. But drama for the sake of drama is not in any way 'professional' -- anyone who thinks it is shows themselves as a whining petulant child.

I'm pretty disappointed at the community itself at this point. This is exactly what those code thieving cretins at APOC want, the devs fighting one another and the community taking sides. Focus on the game.

[Darosh]

I hope that this situation clears up soon, But looking at it, Most likely not.
I do agree, Torque was a bad GM or dev.
Back when the huge server crash that made the server go down for a couple months was a blow to ror, but this..
This is a substantial blow to ROR.

It's unfortunate, he's a great coder. But we've been without him for quite a while. If this was his goal coming back onto the team, then all of our hopes have been shattered. There's no way we can trust someone that would plot for months the best way to destroy a current team member.

To say I'm shocked and bewildered this is the path he chose would be an understatement.

It's cute and all that you try yourself in PR speak, but that train has left the station a long time ago.

Can we get someone to comment on this matter that actually matters?
Like, I don't know, the person that funds this project? ...or some of the folks that setup the fancy copyright at the bottom of the page?
I'd also settle for the folks that built the server from scratch, but, iirc, most of them have left since or been purged.

Now, seriously, if Yali and Max have any sense whatsoever they'll strip access to the server and all that is remotely related to it until this shitshow has been properly resolved ~

In essence we've learned today that players have been harrassed by staff and nothing has been done about it - but covering it up, of course -, people that are beyond unstable have access to all sorts of data and that the project is nothing short of a sad excuse for people to carve out little kingdoms for themselves; act out their lack of basic manners and empathy.

It was absolutely a setup. We discussed the content of the Q&A beforehand. We were assured it wouldn't go on like that. The idea was a brief explanation, not a witch hunt. Acknowledge, address, move on.

On the note of 'setup' and 'lies', why in god's name should anyone take your word at face value? Care to explain why you didn't intervene when Torque went about harrassing players (and staff members alike)? You are Mr.Oh-So-Virtuous, aren't you?
How come you didn't step in before someone felt the **** need to prod and poke you until you halfheartedly did what you were meant to do?

Lemme stretch it a little further, grab yer tinfoil hats everybody, what if there was indeed a setup ~ what if you did setup Aza to 'fail' like that to craft a nice little narrative to remove him from the team? Considering Aza's mental health - your knowledge of it, having dealt with him in the past -, and your very particular schtick, I feel like that isn't too far fetched afterall. Then again, I might just be overestimating the bunch of you.

The only thing missing is some sort of fraud and we have come full circle as far as private servers are concerned.

It is beyond infurating to see that people choose to ignore the information and instead indulge in the drama surrounding it.
Did Aza mess up in the way he tackled the situation? Yes. So **** what. If that is what you take away from this, you cannot be helped. You listen to the equivalent of self-immolation in protest of wrongdoing and all you care about is the height of the flames, for how long he burned, the mess he - quite literally involuntarily - leaves behind and the time you've 'lost'. Congratulations, we've hit rock bottom.

Abbd.:
Tell me again how ANY of this comes as surprise for you? At all. One does not 'react' as methodically as this to a **** surprise. Probably the worst feigned shock I've had the misfortune to witness to this date ~ how quickly certain staff members were to go about shouting betrayel and manipulation is beyond me.
Anyone with a shred of empathy will have had no choice but to acknowledge genuine shaking of Aza's voice ~ tell me again what there is to gain for a individual with a mental health in such a dire state from talking to literally hundreds of strangers?

Tell me, how did he 'plot' against Torque? By being approached by people that were harrassed by him? By being sent evidence of Torques wrongdoing? By being placed in this terrible place by no fault of his own? Oh, how dare he **** try to moderate and help the situation.

See Wargrimnir, this is the difference between acting virtous and being virtuous.

[Dragonkillerx]

Aza needs to stay. Get torque out

[criollo]

Tzeentch approves.

[Fallenkezef]

What the hell is happening to RoR?

[Samejima]

It is beyond infurating to see that people choose to ignore the information and instead indulge in the drama surrounding it.

+1. Well stated, everything you said really. I've never crossed with the staff, but I left RoR several months ago (just came back) largely because of Torque's attitudes towards the playerbase, particularly with regards to balance issues. As much as I enjoyed WAR I didn't want to be a part of a community that propped someone like him up.

If Aza's claims are accurate, and Torque's been flagrantly abusing his powers and harassing players and staff, it's absolutely unfathomable to me that he's been allowed to remain in charge.

[Yaliskah]

Since the begining of this project my wish is to make this game alive.

And anyone active in this project has my total trust. ANYONE.

We can stir the **** for ages OR we can do what we are supposed to do in a game : Play.

We have bad relationships with community? Really? Which community exatly?

[lefze]

Since the begining of this project my wish is to make this game alive.

And anyone active in this project has my total trust.

ANYONE.

Then for the love of god trust Aza on this.