First Press Release: Atonement RPI

The Creators and Storytellers of the Lost Tales of Beleriand, as well as Northlands and the Fall of Osgiliath on Shadows of Isildur, bring you the Next Generation of RPI and Science-Fiction Mystery: Atonement.

Release of ALPHA roughly slated for Early September 2009.



Just a Few of the Fresh Features and Gameplay

- Stellar MOB AI: be prepared to face enemies who know how to fight and are intelligent, are interactive, use strategies and formations, set traps and can use the environment around them to their advantage against you, and who grow in power as time goes on.

- Our next generation of automated event scripting allows for a more immersive and interactive world than ever seen before on an RPI.

- Our improved crafting system allows for a less confusing, more intuitive and powerful means to create within the world. On Atonement, crafts may not produce the same results in every room, allowing for a single craft to serve a multitude of potential purposes.

- Increased object interactivity. Food and drinks have tastes - and objects have scents. These may play an important part of survival as you look for clues to unravel the foreboding mystery of the game-world.

- Profession code means an easier learning curve for new players. The three starting professions for the "Survivor" race will be Soldiers, Scientists and Engineers. Soldiers will be combat-oriented, Scientists will be focused on medicine, research, experimentation and invention - and Engineers will be focused on repairing broken equipment, jury-rigging systems and computer science. This is not to say that your character cannot combine elements of multiple professions, however, and you do retain a plethora of customization options. Each Profession will have a solo-adventure that you may play through before character creation, so that you can get a taste of what you might expect from that play-style.

- Improved combat optimization and somatics. We are retaining the RPI Engine's wound system, but it is vastly improved to include racial-based severed limb capability, poison, broken bones, concussion, temporary blindness, disease and other, more mysterious somatic affects. For those of you who enjoy playing healers, you will find yourself a much more valuable commodity as you deal with a more realistic and diverse set of health challenges for the Universe's characters! For those of you who love to play combat characters, you will find that your optimization is increased, as is your ability to rise to a legendary level of skill in comparison with the average non-combatant.

- A setting that combines elements from wonderful pieces of literature, beloved cult films and classic Survival Horror games to create a unique and mysterious Universe to discover! Story-lines that demand in-character consequences for in-character action, exploration, teamwork and all of your wits for survival!



Predicted Opinion on Finished Work

- Story-lines for the first six months of play.
- Three "Preview" stories written to give glimpses into the Mystery.
- 1/5th of building for ALPHA
- 1/2 of re-vamping a vastly improved Gaming Engine
- 3/4 of World Design
- 1/5 of Starting Documentation
- Player Volunteer and Discussion Forums Open



While we work to improve our server, finish our website, and have the Guest Lounge for Atonement open for chatter, we would like to invite everyone to the temporary forum for General Discuss and Player Volunteering for Atonement RPI. If you are excited or curious about the game, or want to get involved in helping to create the Universe that you and others will play in, do click on the link below:

The Atonement Project

A special thanks to everyone who has sent us their best wishes or aid on this project. We are more excited than we can say to bring you what we believe could be a revolutionary new RPI, and we are honoured by all of the support that we have received.

Sincerely,
The Team of Atonement RPI
Songweaver, Phoenix, Bangarang, Hulk, Kodiak, Kithrater and Iaew.

Atonement RPI: Accepting Player Volunteers

I'll keep this simple and put a better version up onto the forum when it is breathing again; if you would like to volunteer to help with building or crafting purely as a player, please send me an email to let me know what sort of building you feel most inspired to do (and if there are any sorts that you do not want to have to do). Also, it will help if you provide me with some sort of sample of your writing. From there, I'll make use of those of you who I can, and co-ordinate with you to let you in on the process of helping us build this game from the ground up.

We are not yet hiring staff, beyond the group that we have established. We would rather players play our game without knowing its secrets than to immediately hire on a ton of staff, even though we've been had many very creative minds expressing that very interest! Once the game is up and we have an idea of how large the playerbase is, we will only hire on staff as needed to support the playerbase. However, we will continue to expand on our system of allowing for player volunteers to submit work to us in such a way that does not ruin their experience as players, but still allowing for them to take pride in having contributed to the gameworld as a whole. Every volunteer will be listed on a special thanks page, unless they do not wish to be.

Once again, thank you all for your positive energy; it took a group of us who were pretty bewildered, depressed or exhausted - and energized us to get right back to creating. Your support has been great, and I'm hoping that we can surprise even the cynics with what we're capable of.

To send in your application to be a Player Volunteer, please email the following to donathinfrye@gmail.com -

1) Your Name or Alias.
2) Your previous building experience.
3) Your proudest creative moment.
4) A sample(s) of your writing in the way descriptions for one room, one object and one MOB that you might find in this world (do not be afraid to take a shot in the dark on this one!)

To note is that if you would like to keep your previous identity from another MUD a secret, you may absolutely do so. As far as I am concerned, anyone wanting to get involved with Atonement RPI as a player, volunteer or otherwise has a clean slate. That does not mean that you cannot get a dirty slate again, however.

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Additionally, if you would be interested in being an Ethics and Policy Co-ordinator, or a Forum Moderator, you may also get in touch with me and explain why you think you'd be a fair fit for one of those roles. Transparency on your identity might be more important in this case, however.

Thank you, and hopefully both the free-form brainstorm forum and the new forum will be up this weekend! Keep your eye on the blog here for any new information or stories in the meantime.

Atonement RPI

Well, we have decided that, due to an overwhelming amount of support, that we are going to move forward on a new project. We have an engine, we have a server, we have a very detailed setting with storyline, we have a name, we have domain name, and we are preparing to move into the hiring and work phase. Hold tight and keep your eyes on the brainstorming forum at http://northlands.mudsite.com/ for more information about how you can contribute or take part in this. Below is the pitch, which is on a sci-fi mystery setting; of course, the theme is far beyond this, but this is all you need to know what to expect if you should start playing in the near future. I suspect that it will take us about two weeks to have the game up and running for applications and players wanting to immerse themselves, depending on the response that we receive; it should take less time for us to have a new forum for the game, a sleek website and a guest lounge to chat in while players wait for the Grand Opening.



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Atonement, Chapter One: Where the Hell are We?

I opened my eyes for the first time and nearly went blind. I was encased in metal and glass, and as my gaze came into focus through the flickering blue lights of the machines around me, a symbol injected itself into my mind that I would never forget; before me was a glass wall with the insignia '11' etched neatly (and backwards, I would later come to realize) into its sleek plane - and beyond that lay only darkness.

I coughed bile and fluid out of my lungs and tore apparatus from my balmy flesh. I tried to scream, but my cries were drowned out in the monotonous hum of my prison's computerized walls. As the ground quaked beneath my feet for a fleeting moment in time, I furiously beat my fists against the glass wall before me in a desperate attempt to escape from this Hell.

The glass shattered and its unforgiving fragments stuck into my skin like an old memory that refused to be silenced. Bloodied and weak from atrophy, I pushed away from that sickly, pale blue light - and into the darkness. Bent over and between deep breaths of glorious oxygen, I dry-heaved. I was impossibly hungry, as though I had never eaten before. My bare feet ached with each stumbling step further into the emptiness of the vast, black chamber. With the monstrous roar of a demon, the florescent lights of the room flickered on to exorcise the shadows with a dim and yellow glow. Lining the walls were an army of identical glass doors. Each door was illuminated from within by that hateful blue light, shadowed only by the sleeping bodies of other men and women - and each of those doors bore a number; I followed those numbers with my eyes, from Zero to Two Hundred. Only two numbers were missing - Eleven had been my prison, and Nine was dark and empty as well. I was not alone.

From behind me came a lilting, frightened voice. "Who are you?", she asked. I turned around to see the naked form of a woman leaning against a window to the outside world. Her arms were crossed over her shapely breasts protectively, and her hair was wild and tangled; despite this, she was beautiful, with a lean body and curves in all of the right places - and for the first time, I felt desire run through my veins with the flow of hungry, boiling blood.

I clenched my jaw to quiet the biological urge and swallowed hard, before I pondered her question. I did not know, then, who I was - or even where I was. I answered in a deep, husky voice that surprised myself, "I am Eleven. Who are you?"

She answered me with some managed amount of confidence, but her head turned to let her gaze drift back to the window she leaned against, "I do not know. But there is something that you should see, Eleven."

I shambled over the expanse of cold, metallic floor and empty space between myself and the beautiful woman before me; somewhere close to half-way, the entire room shook tremendously and I nearly collapsed. I-do-not-know seemed less bothered by it than I was. Of course, though, she was older than I was; this was my first birthday. When I drew close to the woman and the window, I could feel hunger for food and flesh creep back into my mind, but it was drowned by the confusion and fear that was gripping me. We did not speak then, but I forced myself to look away from her and through the panel of the window that she indicated to me. I almost wish that I had not. I almost wish that I had stayed in my Hell of blue lights and strange machines, that I had found the willpower to return to sleep.

Beyond the window was a black ocean of stars and Nothingness. An icy, blue rock the size of a ball, or a fist, floated lazily across the vast sea of space. I nearly choked. A streak of golden fire reflected against the glass, the sign of some unseen source of light. Debris in the form of floating and misshapen boulders drifted by at a speed much faster than the distant planet.

"Where the Hell are we?", I intoned, and my question came out in a dry rasp, as I looked back to the beautiful woman at my side.

"I do not know", she answered with wide-opened and frightened eyes, "But I think that we're going to die, Eleven."

The embrace happened naturally. I opened my arms and she opened hers, and I then wrapped myself around her to draw her close in a gesture of shared fear and compassion. Her cold breasts pushed tightly up against my pallid skin, and I could smell her hair; yet, I felt no desire for her now. My focus was lost through that open window, even with her head buried in my chest, and I gazed into the Void - the Unknown.

Somewhere behind me, glass shattered with a deafening crash, and another sibling was born into our inhospitable reality. There was a buzz of static, and from what seemed like all around me, a computerized voice spoke without passion or sympathy:

"Now entering target system. Engines off-line. Navigational targeting
system damaged, but operable. Life-support systems operable."

A moment of silence passed. My gaze stayed in awe at the hateful wonder that awaited me beyond the window. The beautiful woman in my arms began to sob with a quiet dignity, and I felt panicked tears begin to well up in the corners of my own eyes. And then, the cold, computerized voice spoke again:

"Destination set: Home."

I did not know where Home was.

The Future of This Blog

If you are just now reaching this blog in an attempt to understand what has happened recently, start with the oldest post first and work your way up. From here on out, the posts will be decisively more wistful and happy. I still have limited net access, especially during my work-week when finding lab-time is rare. My next post will most likely involve ruminating over some really great highlights within Northlands' first year thus far, and perhaps my thoughts on some of the themes that we really tried to hit on, as well as my hopes for the future and best wishes to the staff who will continue to work hard to make sure that the players are enjoying themselves as they have thus far.

Criticisms of Staff and SOI's Direction

So, here is where I somehow attempt to take all of the things that I know, all of the things that I feel, and all of the things that the players should know - and somehow present it in a clear manner. It is not an easy task, to be sure, so I will attempt to get on with it and be as organized as possible. I've contended with howmuch information I should share, how specific my examples should be, and I've finally decided that there is no reason for anything but transparency at this point. If you do not want to know specific examples, if you do not want to know secrets that would certainly see me banned (if I weren't banned for resigning, already), please do not read down further. You can get the same gyst of our reasoning from the earlier posts, and that may very well be enough for you. For those who disagree with the release of OOC information that involves IC topics, I must say that I agree with you and it is an unfortunate case here that unless players understand how OOC power translates into IC power (thus removing that barrier of purity in roleplay and immersion), then they will have to settle for vague answers. This will ... hopefully ... not be a vague post.


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1) Breaking Away from Canon

Well, in this case, there are a few rather large points to be made. Some players may not care if SOI follows canon or not, but who can deny that SOI exists in itself, and entirely, because of J.R.R. Tolkien.

When I joined staff, I was extremely enthusiastic and optimistic. Being a somewhat new player who had had extremely positive experiences on SOI in his small number of characters, I had experienced no reason to distrust the staff or think them anything less than incredible. Of course, they are, as we all are, human; but humanity spreads a wide range of archtypical egos and personas, and I do not believe that the excuse "they are only human" is any better of a riposte than to say that a con-artist or swindler is "only human". Time is money in this world, and howmany of the staff or players could claim that they could not take their beloved SOI time and turn it into some amount of financial gain? A small number, most likely. No, there is a level of responsibility towards integrity in the pursuit of exploring Tolkien's world and in running what is obviously an addictive and relatively long-lived virtual world.

The very first thing that ever happened once I was on staff that made me feel uneasy came in one of my earliest conversations with Kite. During a conversation about the Seven-Year "Plan", I questioned how the Battle of the Fields of Celebrant would fit into the bigger picture for the future. For those of you who do not know, or don't have text reference close to you, this is an event that takes place about three real life years in SOI's future where ten-to-twenty thousand orcs and Easterlings overrun Gondor's armies and defeat them in what is one of the two largest documented battles in Tolkien's Third Age. The significance of this battle is that it happens just a ways to the southeast of Angost (in an area that is mostly already built, as per Kite's orders); Gondor is defeated, and certainly there is nothing that stands in the way of a massive host of Dol Guldur and a successful invasion of Gondor. It is at this point where Eorl of the Eotheod rides down from the north, and beyond the odds, saves Gondor from being overrun and defeats the hosts of Mordor and Moria upon the Fields. The result of this victory is that a large section of northern Gondor is given to the Eotheod, who with it found the nation of Rohan. If you know well who comes to Gondor's aid during the War of the Ring, at the Battle of the Pelanor Fields, you realize that this is easily one of the most significant events in the entire Age, and certainly the most significant event that SOI would ever see in the likely future.

Kite told me very clearly that the Battle would not be taking place as it was set to, that Gondor would not be defeated, and that Rohan would not become a Nation (even off of the playable map). Of course, this disturbed me as I care about canon a lot, but in retrospect I believe that it fits into a grander theme of occurences ... having had the chance to play in Gondor, Gondor's army, Tur Edendor, Angost and even the Mines of Moria - having had the chance to help many players from spheres all across the world - I've come to understand that Gondor seems to rarely lose at all nowadays, even when it fails to reach goals that are set out. Another point for later.

The Haradrim situation. My suggestion to Kite, to clarify a point that he has brought up, was to consolidate the spheres in the following manner; move all of Gondor to a single region that constituted of Army, Fellowships and all of the major clans that exist now in perhaps slightly alterated situations. Additionally, FJ would close down and the Mines of Moria would potentially close down after a trial period to see if the players were able to maintain interest in such a unique setting. So you would have a consolidated Gondor, Angost and then a new Mordorian sphere set a short ways south of Mirkwood Forest and Dol Guldur (the Mordorian sphere is actually an idea that Kite shares and wants to pursue, though he does not believe we need to close down current human spheres to open a new one). This Mordorian sphere would be the Balchoth, the "Easterlings", a very over-populated village with strong influence (though not direct leadership) by the Black Numenorians. Very nearby would be a haradrim outpost, where they would be involved with the war effort and trading with the other Mordorians. After all, the Haradrim, like Easterlings, are of the Fourth House of Men, the "Dark Men", who have always served -Morgoth- and -Sauron- after him. This is blatantly documented, and never are the "Dark Men" presented to be anything less than pawns of the Dark Lords.

This brings me to my point. FJ was originally created before my tenure, and I can only speculate as to the "why". However, Kite told me that it was originally designed to offer a new instance of war with the Army of Gondor. It quickly became apparent that FJ's playerbase would be unable to support a war, and instead of following through with what was canon at this time (Corsairs from Haradwaith are documented to warring with Gondor at this very time), somehow the decision was made that to help keep Shadow's sphere alive, intersphere trade would be pushed despite the fact that there is indeed hostility and outright fighting between Gondor and Haradwaith at this time in history. This has grown and grown, and while perhaps it has presented interesting roleplay scenarios to a few characters, it is just a gross manipulation of Tolkien. Never would Gondor do what Gondor is doing now, and this is all in an effort to keep FJ alive. This brings me to my next point.

2) Cheating, Favored Clans & Staff Playing Spheres' Highest Powered PCs

I warned above that you should not read this if you did not need or desire specific examples and information that basically is ban-worthy of me to give. If anyone abuses this information, I can only express my disappointment in their judgment, but it is important to understand the situation as it is. I will try to wrap up (as best as I really can) my more specific complaints of cheating, lying and bullying that is ever-present at the Senior Staff level.

Kite plays Halathadir in Gondor for anyone who did not know. I didn't before I joined staff, but as I've noted elsewhere, I was likely naive and newb. Halathadir is fairly clean, honestly. He is, perhaps, more powerful than I believe a staff PC should be (certainly more powerful than other characters know him to be). Kite's sin isn't so much that he cheats himself, but that he is aware of other abuse and cheating, and defends his IRL wife Rhubarb and moreso his friends Shadow and Salahdin. To note is that myself and several others have caught Halathadir breaking Kite's own ROE rules on NPC allowances on occasions. Of course, when brought up, we were met with vehement words and were investigated ourselves for trying to "start shit". I can honestly say that, as a briefly lived member of Senior Staff, there are a disgusting number of occurences of the same handful of staff being investigated again and again, where their abuses are called "honest mistakes" and the investigators (myself included) are severely threatened and insulted for hurting their feelings (no matter how polite our investigations may have been handled, and mine were certainly polite).

Rhubarb, Kite's IRL wife, plays Katalyn in Gondor for any who did not know. Again, I didn't even learn that Rhubarb was Kite's wife for a while -after- I joined staff. I came in pretty fresh, and only nine months ago or so. Rhubarb was caught crafting on her admin character for her PC, and afterwards, Kite changed the rule - now, admins are able to craft (it takes no time for them to do so, all crafting is instantaneous and without timers) for their PCs to help out their clans. Beyond this, Katalyn was one of the characters that I discovered had been given too many "free RPP boosts"; she had received one too many "free point", which was chalked up to a mistake (and may possibly had been just that).

Shadow plays Nur in FJ (and TE previously). Shadow is the staff that players seem to complain about the most, and she is one of the oldest staff left on SOI. I, myself, have caught various instances of lying, cheating and shadiness, though I will only speak to what I have personally experienced and not things that I have read on the Senior Staff forums about the past. Nur received sixteen free points of stat-boosts that took her beyond the realm of possible stats for her race (Haradrim). She was only eligible for ten points at most, and there is no mathematical solution (though I attempted to find one) to possibly explain how bad math could have been the cause of such a huge mistake. In truth, there is even a log presented on the Senior Staff forum which shows her discussing the boosts in such a way that indicates that she was aware of this. Despite my findings on the boosts, Kite decided to inform the players that this was merely a mistake and there was no punishment or reproach beyond lowering her level of boosts to ten points; still, this does not account for the fact that is obscene that staff would be given ten points of boosts to their characters when players could certainly never afford that many. Was Nur a 12RPP-worthy character? I cannot personally say, as I’ve had little to no experience with her, but to note is that there is not a single player who has 12RPP in the game. Her boosts made her more powerful than a Noldo or Vanya Elf (the sort that are thousands of years old). Beyond this, her character was certainly the most powerful and influential in all of FJ, and arguably in Tur Edendor beforehand. Beyond this, Shadow has given the FJ clans awe-inspiringly high paydays with money that poofs out of thin air. When she was the brief lead of the Mines of Moria, and I was doing a lot of legwork for the sphere at the time to try to keep it alive, I witnessed and was made aware of many times when she would convince an orc player to retire and take some grand noble role in FJ; some of these players may have been unhappy with the struggling sphere, but to note is that all of the players that she “stole” (which is, in itself, unethical) ended up retiring their FJ characters. Needless to say that Shadow accomplished nothing by taking over the Mines of Moria, and it was made clearly evident then, later and even now, that Kite desires the Mines of Moria to be closed; whether or not the sphere should stay open has merits on both sides of the fence, but I have certainly seen very little lasting effort given to helping it. Also to note is the odd matter of Haradrim armor, which I have fixed several times (and apparently, so has Phoenix). There are three basic AC levels for human-made armor on Shadows of Isildur; considering that the highest level, steel, is AC3 … we continually found it upsetting to find entire suites of Brigandine or Haradun armor that was AC5, AC6, or even AC7. There were sets of armor that we fixed and were changed back and we had to fix again. When we asked about this, we were told that it was a “bug” and the matter was never looked into. Because Kite has changed the browser so that only he (and perhaps Shadow) can look up logs of staff activity, and because he has cut the memory of the browser down to two months, it was absolutely impossible for me to find what I knew to be true – someone was, and has been for a very long time, making Haradun armor at a level that is greater than mithril.

Farmer plays Mansur in FJ (and TE previously). Farmer, who to my witness has not done anything at all on SOI during my tenure, created Mansur on the same day that Shadow created Nur. Even though Shadow lied to Senior Staff (which I pointed out) and said that she had created Nur before she was on staff (Shadow pre-dates Nur by about a full year), it took very little research to realize that Mansur and Nur were both given some strange boosts very early on in Shadow’s career. All that I could prove on Mansur was that, like Nur, he received +16 boosts when at the most he should have received +10. Again, though ten points is beyond reason, even this was generous. Mansur has not been an active character in quite a long time, Farmer is not an active staffer, and the fact that he received boosts at all went against the policy that said that staff characters had to be active to receive boosts. To note is that every single “mistaken” boost given to a staff character or ex-staff character (no normal players had mistakenly high boosts) had been poorly documented by Shadow with one sentence, whereas the rules stated that specific reasoning and background needed to be applied to be considered for boosts at all. Mansur’s stat total was rectified as well, but again, this was chalked up to a mistake. The mistake was in letting staff characters get free boosts at all – and when I suggested that staff characters lose all of their boosts in an effort to instill some faith back into the playerbase, my plea was of course ignored. Mansur, like Nur and Halathadir and Katalyn is one of the most influential (if entirely inactive) characters in the gameworld. The argument has been made that because Shadow is so intensely attached to Nur and that Farmer is her friend, that FJ was created to keep their characters in the gameworld. This can only be speculation, but the resistance that I have seen towards the idea of intelligent consolidation (that is, consolidation that removes none of the playable races or large clans, but brings the world together) by Kite, Rhubarb and Shadow certainly increases my suspect of this being true. It is my finding that, though the rumor-mill certainly twists occurrences and causes them to be somewhat inaccurate, most of the complaints that I have seen come in from players have been true.

Salahdin (Rhino, for those of you who that name means more than it did to me) plays Geraint in Minas Tirith. Salahdin is an interesting addition to the collection of staff who most certainly work to protect one another and are admittedly friends. Salahdin is an old staffer who was punished many times, and eventually sacked, for being abusive to players (as Rhino). He also was the staffer who trained Kite, when Kite was but a Newbmin. Salahdin was the first staffer who really burned me on SOI; there was an instance where Shadow had proclaimed that there could be no more Haradrim or Corsairs as Earmhyde in Angost, because they were meant to be played in FJ and not in Northlands, and that we could not possibly know enough about Haradwaith culture to fit them into our sphere. And so we had a player, who I will not name, who applied as a common human from Haradwaith but specified that they were not a Haradun. We utilized them for a little plot, which we sometimes try to do with new players to sphere to help with immersion, and things proceeded nicely. My backup RPAs for an RPT involving a trio of trolls were missing, and Salahdin offered to help out. I gave him simple instructions on which direction to move and what the deal was, but when the RPT started he literally did the opposite of what I had asked him to (for instance, he literally moved in the opposite direction and attacked the opposite group of people that I asked for). However, I witnessed him continually attack this commoner with a Haradwaith background over and over again as his troll, going against my instructions and ruining the RPT (which was actually supposed to be a jaunt into the more comical side of trolls). He did not emote, he did not do anything but attack this singular character until he manage to give the character a mortal wound. This ultimately resulted, with the players own actions owning a part, in the character’s death. When the player complained that a staffer had attempted to assassinate him, he was given a permaban by Kite for questioning the staff. Now, I fully believed then and do now, that Salahdin was attempting to kill that character played by a player who had just retired his FJ character and stated that he was unhappy with the direction of the sphere. We now take Geraint, Salahdin’s character, who has been a Master Weaponsmith since before I even started playing SOI. Geraint has a low-to-mid level of Adroit skill in Metalsmithing, though he could potentially cap out at Master level; think closely about this, and any of you who have been metalsmiths know very well how easily the skill level raises. How could an extremely long-lived and insanely influential character create massive amounts of top-notch armor and weapons and have a skill-level in metalsmith that is lower than most Apprentices and even non-Fellowshipped smithers? How could Master Weaponsmith Geraint have a lower skill-level than newb orcs? How could it be possible for someone with such a low coded skill level make weapons that were the equal (and sometimes, the better) of magical weapons, dwarvish weapons, or elvish weapons? Creating that many things should have surely raised up his skill level, and though the ability of searching backlogs was removed from myself (and all of the staff besides Kite and possibly Shadow), I can only speculate. However, the only thing that could possibly explain it, in my mind of understanding the code pretty damn well, is that Salahdin loads armor and weapons for Geraint and that he is allowed to make weapons that break the barriers of our rules for a character who is (codely) not even a very good smith. Just branching his skill-sets alone should have raised him up beyond this level. Does this sound fair to the players who craft obsessively in hopes of branching new skills and raising their skill enough to be able to make solid pieces of equipment? Beyond this, since I’ve been on staff, I’ve seen Salahdin reprimanded quietly numerous times for attempting to steal players from other spheres, insulting and belittling players on the forums; currently, he is supposed to have been on a three month ban from the player-port, wiznet and the forums. Certainly, he has posted in the forums, certainly I have seen him logged onto the player-port, and constantly he is involved in talking over wiznet about how to screw over political opponents of his character with other staff (something that happens FAR too often in Gondor). When I raised these points, again, it was a “mistake” that he was never actually removed or banned like Kite claimed that he was. Certainly, they made no mistake in banning me for posting my resignation notice while Kite was asleep and unable to immediately remove it and blanket information from players. Salahdin is certainly one of the worst offenders on staff, and I could write pages upon pages of instances of him ruining crafts, cheating or acting poorly towards players if I had the inclination. However, your poor brains are likely hurting by now and need another break.

Hawk and Dove. This is the treasured clan of two Senior Staff, the married couple of Kite and Rhubarb. Without access, all that I can really say about it is that I have seen how they evade having to pay taxes (through a system that they have created), how they claim to be entirely self-sufficient but have paydays for the clan that would make Knights and Captains weep, and how Rhubarb has spent a lot of time on her admin avatar crafting for her clan and character . Additionally, it is Halathadir and Katalyn that I (and other staff) have found most often breaking Kite’s own ROE rules involving the number of NPCs one is allowed to take out with them for combat purposes. I have no inherent problem with the clan itself, beyond that it is evident that Kite and Rhubarb’s devotion to this clan is at least as great as their devotion to the game as a whole, and that that clan experiences a level of influence that does not really make sense. It is an “everyman” clan with high political power and influence, and it has the ability to force itself into anywhere that it wants to and do anything that it wants to. I believe that the clan likely started off well, but with the ever-increasing power of Kite and Rhubarb as Senior Staff, it is easy to watch the increase of power on Halathadir and Katalyn, and just as easy to watch the increase of influence of the Hawk and Dove Company. The fact that rules were changed to make allowances for Senior Staff characters sits poorly on me.

But these are just some of the instances of cheating and power-mongering. There are other staffers with high powered characters in Gondor, and I have watched them abuse OOC information and talk about exacting action against regular players who are in-game political opponents of them. You learn from who leads you, and right now, Gondor and FJ are unfortunately rotten at the level of leadership. This is not to say that we’ve not made mistakes in Northlands, which I will address later, but any of us who had influential characters in those spheres have found ways to kill off our characters in a plot once the clan that they were involved with was stable, or find other creative ways to continue to play our characters but remove them to a less prominent level of influence as soon as possible. This is because we truly believe that the players are the ones who should shape the gameworld. The Hundredmen in Angost, who are the most influential figures there, are played by new and/or previously unappreciated players who are excellent. The Knights, the Guild Foremen, the Elves – these are all players. It was always my goal that, in Year Five (next in-game year), we may be even to the point where we could toy with the idea of player Ealdormen. In the Mines, it was much the same; the fact of the matter is that the power in the game world should be in the hands of the players, and that the staff should be more than satisfied with the idea of playing prominent and immersive NPCs that bring life and energy to a region, insteading of wanting to hog the glory and power for themselves and their OOC friends.

3) Kite: Lying, Bullying and Backstabbing

This is perhaps the point that most personally offends me, though certainly I feel strongly about cheating. The truth of the matter is that many of the players seem to believe that Kite is a man of integrity who is honest with the players and the staff. This is unfortunately far from the truth. Though I’ve seen very little evidence of cheating directly from Kite (again, mostly he just vehemently defends his friends who DO cheat), no staffer has lied to me more than Kite has. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times that I have read Kite post something to the players on the forums that I know is not the truth, and that Kite and I have even spoken about! I cannot tell you the number of times that Kite has made promises which he had no ability (or perhaps, though it is speculation, intention) of keeping. I have spoken to Kite on issues involving storyline or policy plans on AIM, only to see him post something different on the staff forums or player forums. I have seen him blatantly claim to have no knowledge of things to other staff that I know that he and I have had long talks about. I have seen him mislead players and rob them of the ability to really be able to affect the gameworld around them. I will provide a few examples and then move on.

There was an instance where I was hiring for new RPAs for the Mines of Moria a couple of months back. I approached Kite on AIM about the idea of getting in touch with Jackrabbit and Shammat and finding out if either of them would want to come back to RPA once again; I had never spoken to Jackrabbit or Shammat before, but I had had positive experiences with both of them as a player, and respected their work and creativity. Kite told me that I could absolutely recruit them, but that Jackrabbit was unlikely to respond to me (which ended up being true) and that Shammat was unlikely to want to return because of past issues (which ended up being only half-true). Shammat I approached, and she gave the matter thought for a week and then decided that she would like to come on quietly, just to do animations and immersive stories and echoes for the Mines of Moria. She did not want to have a major impact, and she did not really want to come into conflict with other older staffers (a point which I did not fully understand at the time). I then had a second conversation with Kite on AIM, who told me that I should actually probably let him talk to the Senior Staff to get their input first. Of course, it was Shadow who stated outright that she would quit the game if Shammat was allowed back in any capacity. Kite wrote me what was to be the second of three PMs during my tenure where he threatened to sack me; he told me that he had never given me permission to speak to those staffers and that by doing so I had put him in an incredibly awkward position with his friend and Shammat’s boyfriend (who I will not name here, out of respect). I was somewhat indignant, and replied that we had spoken about the matter a week prior and even told him exactly what he had told me. And yet, at the Senior Staff level, Kite continues to threaten and bully me, and he has consistently lied about this matter to save face. It came down to me, of course, to apologize to the ex-staffer and let them know that, infact, they would not be able to return to help.

In a recent sub-plot in the Pel-Anor region, Kite had borrowed the concept for my warg spawn-nests that I use in Angost. He did not place a cap on how quickly or how many wargs were spawned, though I attempted to help and point out that they would grow at a wild rate unless things were changed; however, I was assured that the challenge was one that Gondor would step up to, or there would be "IC consequences". It was when I continued to follow the pattern of the Druadan wargs' growth and pointed out that there were over TWO HUNDRED high-powered wargs fashioned after the ones that we had designed for Northlands, that the staff came up with a plan. All of the wargs were purged and vNPC Marchwardens were said to have arrived and fought a massive battle and won. The last small number of wargs that were placed in a store-room for an RPT were defeated by a small number of PCs, including Kite and Rhubarb's. More than a couple of PCs died in the Druadan due to those wargs, including even a staff PC or two. All (or very, very nearly) of those PCs were given resurrections, and the players involved were told that the wargs were "bugged". This is, however, untrue; the truth is that Kite was aware of how the design worked, we had spoken about it, and when his poorly-built creation proved too much for Gondor, he bailed out PCs and entirely removed any chance of there being IC consequences. Truthfully, two hundred "uber" wargs could have overrun all of Milton, but this is yet another instance where Gondor never suffers ... even when it fails. The main sticking point of the entire thing is that Kite had no problem lying to the players, when infact, this is one of many such lies that cover up a failure on his part. This is very, very, very common.

Kite also told me that he is an ex-Professor of Psychology and has many degrees of it. I have, of course, found this out to be entirely false with very little googling effort (he is a Department Manager for Customer Phone Service at Sony, or something to that extent, and no noted degrees on any business portfolios or bios that I read about him). His willingness to lie about even mundane things just casts a very untrustworthy wash over him in my eyes.

So beyond my point, that I could continue to stretch on for a long time, that Kite double-talks and lies to players and staff constantly … there is the matter of bullying. Surely, a snippet of Kite’s temper tantrums have been seen on the players forum here and there; however, Kite is absolutely beyond horrible to his staff. So many staff have come to me extremely upset, because Kite has sent them a threatening PM, or a PM that insults them in very personal ways (their age, their gender, their ability to not wet themselves, their integrity, their intelligence, everything that you would expect from a standard schoolyard jackass). I, myself, have experienced it on many occasions, though it has less of an affect on me, because I learned long ago that bullies only have the power that you give to them. The truth of the matter here is that Kite will threaten to close down your sphere or sack you if you disagree with him, and that he will find any personal way to insult you if you argue with Rhubarb (his wife) or Shadow (his friend) and it “hurts them”. He is absolutely, absolutely horrid to staffers; and I have seen him work actively to deface ex-staff and lie about them in an attempt to move the public opinion away from any who would have a reason to speak out against him. Daffodil, for instance – despite what was said about Daffodil’s reasons for being fired, I was privy to the entire discussion of why Daffodil was sacked. Daffodil was sacked because Rhubarb gave him permission to make changes to the geography of Minas Tirith to be more hospitable, and Daffodil moved everything that was useful into the AB area of the city. Kite absolutely flipped at this, and he sent several disgusting PMs Daffodil’s way. Daffodil insisted that he only did as he thought best and was given permission by Rhubarb, which was of course called a lie despite his log showing thus, and the “abuse” that Daffodil committed was not even a much talked-on point in the lengthy bitchfest about him on the Senior Staff forum where they decided that he was out. This was a long time coming; they had bullied Daffodil (who is a young man, admittedly) and treated him awfully for months, and there were many staff who were aware of it. It was even worse for him than it was for myself and Nimrod and Frigga and some of the other staff who frequented being Kite’s targets for abuse. Surely, huge abuses towards players actually had been made recently by Bones and Salahdin (and the Senior Staff themselves), but they would point fingers at Daffodil and deface him because they knew that the work and effort that he put in made him popular with the players of Minas Tirith. Now, Kite will surely do the same for the Northlands staff, and he has claimed that he had no idea that our resignation was coming. This is, of course, absolute crap; Kite knew very specifically how we felt, and we were open with him about it.

Backstabbing. This one I will keep short, but you do not have to guess far to see how lying and bullying would be related to this one. In short, there are many instances where some staff will try to “set another staff up” to get in trouble; in one occasion, a player had contacted Kite about acquiring a single point statboost before the RPP-boost system went away. Kite, knowing that I strongly disagreed with a system that allowed something as OOC as RPP to be the affect of something as IC as stats, made a note at the Senior Staff level that the request should be sent to me so that they could punish me if I decided to tell the player that the boost system was no longer active (of course, we had made the decision to remove it before it was removed, but it was left in just long enough to allow a few key characters could acquire one last round of boosts). I must thank Phoenix, who warned me that they were trying to set me up, but it ended up being unnecessary. Unfortunately for that player, they were not eligible for any boosts because they had not been out of retirement for a long enough period of time that they could earn one. Still, this and many other key threads in the Senior Staff forum are frequently removed by Kite as part of his work at dis-information and misleading. When I became Senior Staff, I looked for a couple of these backstabbing threads that I had been warned of (and even shown, on occasion and admittedly against the rules), but Kite had already made sure that they were removed or edited. There is, unfortunately, no possible way to know howmuch damning information Kite has removed from the forums over time, but I gather that it is quite a lot.

The end result is that I’ve come to understand that Kite is a (perhaps compulsive) liar and completely untrustworthy. While some of the other staff may be more directly out for themselves and their characters, Kite retains the unique ability to literally make me feel sick to my stomach when I read what I know to be lies, or see how he treats other staff/players, or watch how he plots against people who disagree with him.

4) Donations and Other Oddities

This is an issue that Phoenix brought up to my attention right before I joined Senior Staff, though of course while looking into it, the threads that she had referenced for me had been deleted. There are a few issues here, and I will attempt to give you what small glimpses of information I have on them.

Phoenix referenced a thread (to which I had not access at the time) of some sort of Halo Site or such that existed on the SOI server. To my knowledge, the amount of money that it takes to run SOI seems absolutely ridiculous, because I have owned and ran MUDs that are larger in both hard-disk size and playerbase than SOI for far less. It is absolutely true that there are things shared on the SOI server that players are not aware of, and something like a Halo server would certainly take up a fair deal of space, necessitating a more expensive monthly output.

The website, www.angelpaths.com – which I found easily via google. With a simple WHOIS, as shown below, it was simple to find that this site is on the same server as SOI. This is the business site of Rhubarb, who is a tarot card reader/writer and something of a colour/energy healer. As Shadow controls the Paypal account that runs SOI’s donations, it is impossible for me to know clearly if SOI’s donations go towards running this site and Salahdin’s alleged Halo server. However, it does seem odd that these two things were merged together and certainly causes a lack of transparency on Kite’s part.

Moreover, it was unfortunate to find (and I do not intend to call out the players, who have likely done nothing wrong in themselves) that there are forum accounts with identical names on both SOI and the Angelpaths forum. Now, I’ve not claimed that Kite has recruited from IRL to SOI, however it is absolutely true that there are players who have extremely prominent positions of power in Rhubarb’s sphere who exist on the very active Angelpaths forum, and at least one or two that appear to be actual clients. Of course this is not damning in itself, but it creates an incredible conflict of interest. The entire website creates an incredible conflict of interest.

Players are also likely unaware that there was a discussion on the Senior Staff forum some time ago where Kite asked permission of the L5s to reimburse himself with some of the excess donations that SOI had received from players. Of course, many players may not have minded that Kite pocketed the money that they had donated, since he had himself paid (and so have I paid, and other admins) previously. However, he did not ask for player permissions to use their donations thus, and infact said to the players that any excess donations would be stored away for later use on advertising, upgrades (unnecessary ones, perhaps), and upkeep costs. This is not what happened, and when the donation well began to run dry recently, it was actually Traithe who stepped in and paid a large amount of SOI’s future costs. To me, this is an absolute breach in trust, and since Shadow has proven to be untrustworthy and is a good friend of Kite, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to know for sure where their donation money is going; is it going to Salahdin’s Halo site, or is it going to Rhubarb’s tarot business site, or is it reimbursing Kite who has proclaimed financial hardships recently, or is it going to pay for SOI in an entirely proper manner? Unfortunately, there is no way to tell, and it is a very sticky situation.

5) Northlands, Mistakes and a Sort of Summary

This is not to say that mistakes have not been made in Northlands. There was a time, for instance, where a staffer (Daffodil) was allowed to play a character with the Hex skill. Phoenix and I were both very hesitant about it, and we were ultimately let down (though it is typical of staff to want to try to play such roles). What we missed the boat on was, however, that the character had too low of an Aura to actually be able to use Hex. This was a messy and embarrassing situation, and it was gladly cleared up when the character was eaten by the Northlands Wilderness after a few days of existence.

Early on, we were far too kind to elves. Phoenix is an incredibly nice human being, but sometimes perhaps she is too nice (if I had to give a single criticism of her). Elves were allowed to start with top-notch unique gear, they had their own clan, and a couple of them were allowed to be “taught” psionic skills (in additions to the ones they had already started with via their role/race). It took some time (and many elf deaths) to fix this situation, though elves now start with standard (and less powerful) gear, and I’ve actually put a stop to new elf applications; we will see if the future staff of Northlands continue to dissuade elves. It is my opinion that elves are very hard to play over a long period of time (due to the difficulties of playing immortality and its very unique restrictions), and that while they can be wonderful and fragrant characters, that they add less to the world of Northlands than a northman or northwoman who lives within the village proper. I would have, personally, much rather had these wonderful high RPP players playing clanleaders or unique characters that breathed life into the every day setting of the village itself, but few would argue that some of the elves that we have seen in Northlands have been amongst the best portrayals of elves ever on SOI. It is a mixed bag, but looking back on it, I truly wish that we had channeled these players into wonderful human roles where they would likely stay active longer and offer more immediately to the gameworld around them.

Magic. There have been a few “magical” plots in Northlands and quite a few supernatural or superstition-based plots. I do not regret these, because I feel like they are a part of Tolkien’s world, and a very important part of this region of the world. What I do regret, however, are a few compromises that I had to make on certain plots. For instance, I knew very well the limitations of canon-magic, but to right a wrong of Sudo (an old staffer who never survived on SOI to see the opening of Angost), I had to incorporate teleportation into an early plot of mine. Now, teleportation is out of bounds in Tolkien, but rprogs had already established it; if I had had more time and more experience, I am sure that I could have found some sort of more canonical and creative solution to finish that plot (which was a beauty, otherwise) without diminishing its affect. There were a couple occurrences of this, particularly early on when I was a newb-RPA, where I was put in charge of tying up old and messy plots left by a generation that never even got to see the opening of Angost. It is a small regret of mine now, because I can see clearly how I could have made some very creative choices that might have been better. I am harder on myself than people know, and I certainly want to make it clear that everyone makes mistakes.

However, with that said, I want to return to the idea that there are mistakes … and there are wrongs. What is happening on SOI right now (and what has been happening, for a while) is wrong. Kite misleads the players and the game is feeling the affect of it. Our numbers are down and continue to drop, and staff PCs continue to become ever more rich and more powerful than the PCs of regular players. The group of staff that run the MUD continue to become more and more the same group of OOC friends (or married couples, in some cases) who are the very source of the abuse and cheating that they pawn off onto others and deny. However, when you look at the extreme turnover of staff in the past year on SOI, it brings to light two major problems:

1) Kite and the others do not seem to care if they chase away good staff volunteers, as long as the volunteers who support them and will not speak against them or accuse them of cheating and being dishonest may stay.

2) The Talent-Well is running dry. When we put out notices for applications, we often get no responses, or a single response. Recently, we have been lucky to get two responses. How can SOI possibly continue to maintain being spread out so far geographically with such a small staff roster, when it can barely find new staff and the turnover rate of good staff is greater than the ability to hire?

Ultimately, I struggled to stay on for as long as I could. The more that I got promoted, the more information was at my fingertips. The more information that I had, the more that I realized that there is something extremely wrong about SOI and the group that is leading it. There were times when Northlands and non-Northlands staff came to me and said that they wanted to resign, and I told them that we could work it out, that we could find a way to make things better, that they should stick with it. Right now, most of us are resigning not to make a point, but because a House-of-Cards is finally falling under the weight of knowing the truth and being driven miserable over it. The players, they are wonderful. Every plot that we were able to write, every time that we were able to help someone, those were great moments for us. But we are human, and we were volunteers; it got to a point where many staff were burnt out from all of the insanity, and those of us who are immune to burning out (like myself!) just knew that there was no way to reconcile with what is happening. In a recent PM to the staff, Kite veiled a threat to close down Northlands because some time ago we had proposed a plan of consolidation; in the same PM, he said that he would not defend rules to other staff (even if they exist entirely to server the staff PCs and not the player PCs), and that SOI was not the other staffs’ game or even the players’ game – but his game. He claimed that SOI was his game and that he wants to have fun, and he wants his friends to have fun. This is what he said. That is not the vision that I believe an RPI, let alone one steeped in a fantasy-world so beloved and respected as Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, should be. The game should be a place where the players have the power to affect and change the world, where there are IC consequences for IC actions, where there is failure and heroes and hardship and politics that are player-driven. If Kite wants to break his own rules, lie to players, threaten and insult staff, create policies to make legal things that once were cheating, allow cheating to happen, cover up the truth, and break Tolkien’s canon so that he and his friends can have fun … so be it. But, for me and the team that I work with, we would be happier creating our own world and RPI - we would be happier letting the players know the truth than being a part of the problem by trying to sacrifice our mental health to give players a region that is (hopefully relatively, at least) free of the corruption of other spheres without indicating what is the simple truth:

There is a big problem with SOI, and you have been lied to about it. What you do about it, I cannot tell you. I know that I wish the game the best, and I pray that the wonderful staffers who did not decide to resign can continue on with a tradition that we were proud of in Northlands. You players made us smile, sometimes cry (not myself or Hulk of course, because we’re men), and gave us a great time and joy while we volunteered for you. I’m very sorry that it came to this, but when it comes right down to it, we just weren’t paid enough to have to endure just how awful things are right now staff-side.

If you read this and you now wish that you hadn’t, you can join me at the club. I wish that I could be ignorant as well, because I was much happier then in regards to SOI.

Perhaps some of us might play our characters again in the future, if we are ever unbanned. Perhaps we will work on a new project (since only those who ‘do’ have a right to bitch, as they say). Perhaps we will write up some stories for Northlands and submit them here or elsewhere. Perhaps we will create a traveling circus troupe and you can pay fifteen bucks a ticket to come see Hulk walk the tight-rope. I could only speculate.

<3

Resignation Notices to Senior Staff

These resignation notices are written with varying degrees of passion, anger, sadness and all of the other emotions that come when you realize that you have sunk an enormous amount of energy into a project being led to ruin. I did not want to wage a sort of OOC war against Kite and the others, but I do feel like the players deserve to have the information and our reasoning at their fingertips. This is, certainly, the most fiery post that I have ever written in my somewhat brief tenure at Shadows of Isildur. And even yet, I feel so strongly about the level of corruption and lying that occurs, that I held back. In my next post, I will attempt to specify my complaints so that more of this makes sense to those who are reading and interested. I was intending to send my complaint directly to Senior Staff, but having been a Witchfinder General myself and having seen how the Senior Staff make excuses and cover things up firsthand, I decided that this would (unfortunately) be more effective as a vehicle.

If you do not want to feel potentially affected by this entire event, please and by all means, do not read further or read the next post; it may have little or no affect on you, but I truly have no idea of what its affect will be beyond transparency.

Within [brackets] are edits that I've made to fix hurried typos or add a few extra words of clarification since most people who read this will have little idea of the things that I am referencing below!

---


Songweaver wrote:

I've been pretty sure that I was going to do this for about a week. Having had a broken laptop for a week and a half gave me a lot of time to really sit down and think about the amount of heart, effort and time that I've put into SOI (which is to say, upwards of 80 hours a week in addition to having a somewhat active real life).

What I've come up with is that I need to resign, and I'll try to state my reasons politely, but make them clear. The honest truth is that I severely disagree with the direction of the game as a whole, and that I feel like no matter what I do with my area of influence, the over-arcing point is diminished by what's become evident ... that this is Kite's game (naturally, he is the owner), and that he wants it to be fun for his friends. I do not think that staff should hold high positions of power within spheres or should control large clans. This has led, and continues to lead, to what is an obviously high amount of corruption.

Before you tell me that I'm being influence[d] by others and blah-blah ... please, stop and consider what I am saying. I joined staff being an incredibly enthusiastic player and having an angelic opinion of the staff here. I'm not the type of person who lets other people affect his opinion - I've been around the block far too many times, on far too many games, and in far too [many] situations IRL. I've come to these conclusions all on my own. It is my belief that decisions are made to promote staff-pc-run clans, that entire spheres exist and resist change that would improve the game as a whole to keep staff PCs in high positions of power. I've fixed so many "mistakes" [that were actually instances of cheating] from the same groups of staff, who continue to have excuses made for them.

Gondor and FJ's relationship drives me nuts, and I really think it breaks foully away from canon. Why would FJ and Gondor be trading (why would there be embassies) if Corsairs from the same nation of Haradwaith are attacking Gondor at this time in history? It's my understanding that FJ was meant to provide war with the Army of Gondor, but that this idea was changed to trade. I can only assume that it was changed because FJ didn't really have the ability to wage a good war and the sphere was meant to be kept alive. Ask yourselves ... howmany players stop playing when a sphere['s playerbase] goes dead? Some retire and go elsewhere, but the majority of new players in MT who do not understand what it is they should even be doing, the majority of players in FJ who cannot find anyone to roleplay with (besides Gondorians who go down there to trade and frollick) just stop playing. We lose those players, and SOI is -losing- players. That's the fact, and you can look at the evidence posted that shows that our numbers were already down from last year and are dropping faster now.

The staff is spread too thin, and we are breaking away from canon in what I can only possibly explain as an attempt to protect the spheres that a lot of senior staff play their characters in; again, for instance, the idea that the Battle of Celebrant Fields will not be fought in three years (as it should be, according to Tolkien), where Gondor is defeated and the Eotheod gain part of Gondor and the nation of Rohan is born ... how can this even be conceivable? Beyond the War of the Ring, the birth of Rohan as a nation is probably (at least one of) the most significant event/s of the entire Third Age. I've tried to do what I can to maintain the connection to Tolkien's world, and I honestly have it easier since Northlands is the area that the majority of documented conflict happens in during the next many timelined years, but the game does not feel like Tolkien any longer. To me, seeing staff get away with breaking their own rules (NPC rules [on group-sizes and limitations] that they've written, stat-boosting their characters far beyond what is legal, let alone REASONABLE), changing their [sphere's] armors' AC, watching the awful attitude that you, Kite, present to the other staff ... I mean, you are quite honestly a bully to staff and players (when you get moody). You're not the only one with management experience, and really it's beyond degrading [to have to watch how awfully you insult other staff].

Finally, you (Kite) come out with promises and you come out with PMs to say that you've been a jerk and will be changing, and you write these complex plans that always fail. Even in a recent General Staff discussion, you admit to the fact that so many things that you've attempted have failed. At some point down the line, I've lost my faith in the abilities of a lot of the staff here to be fair to players, to not be selfish towards their own characters and clans, to stay true to Tolkien and his writings, and I can no longer in good conscience stay. What you say to players on the forums is different than what you tell staff. What you say on AIM to staffers is different than what you say on the forum to staff. You lie, and you do it often, and it -really- bothers me.

I enjoyed the work that I did here, the stories that I was able to help tell, and the creativity that I really opened up and poured out of myself. I enjoyed working with a large number of the staff who are wonderful and talented people. I've seen too many [good] staff resign or be fired, and I've seen how few people apply to become staff here [currently]. It's my belief that the talent well will dry up, because staff turnover is so ridiculous, and that SOI will shrink and potentially die if large changes aren't made. With these above points being how I honestly feel, can you blame me for wanting to resign? When you threatened to sack me some months ago, Kite (a time where you lied [to the other Senior Staff] about me having asked you [and given the go-ahead] about an ex-staff rejoining, and continue to lie about even now), I told you that I'd have already resigned if I didn't care so much about the players and their fun.

I've come to realize that I can't maintain that sort of sacrifice indefinitely, when I fully believe that this game is being led to ruin (through my own observations), and so I regret to announce me retirement. My announcements elsewhere will be far simpler, and I will work on a more specific letter of complaint to send you all when I'm not racing against my precious internet-lab time.

I told the Northlands team about this a few days ago. I did not encourage any of them to resign, and despite what you've said and thought, I've been the one to keep MANY of them from resigning MANY times in the past months. They also have their own strong feelings about things, and not a one of them is happy with the way things are going. Some will try to stay to keep Northlands afloat, and thank God for them, because the players deserve that. Beyond my resignation, here are the resignations of other staffers who emailed me to let me know that they would not be staying around if I left.

Good luck. My mad rush to finish this has probably caused it to sound insanely chaotic. The truth is that I feel very calm (if rushed) while writing it. This is the right thing to do. The way things are going are wrong, and I believe that it will become more and more evident over time. My best wishes, because assuredly I have had some amazing experiences with SOI. If you need to reach me through something beyond the forums, you can email me at [XXX]. I hope that you will listen to what people have to say.

-Songweaver


PHOENIX

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To everyone: I think it's about time for me to officially step down. I've been on leave due to real life business preventing me from hanging around and doing much, but with the leaving of some of my other friends and fellow staffers, I've decided to retire as well. As a staffer, it was truly a great pleasure to support, encourage, and watch other players and clans grow under my nurturing. Honestly, I don't think I've ever done anything so rewarding as building up a sphere and watching players enjoy the work that I put into it so much that they too wanted to contribute. Or to run a plot, write a story, help -you- write a story. Even just the petitions of thanks I got from you players for a job well done made me feel like all the hours I put into doing something for this game was truly well worth the effort. You can't imagine how much my heart would swell watching a plot unfold. Watching a newb get excited because I gave them something to do on a boring day. Watching a clan I helped support grow and take in a large number of players to become a force of it's own. And it still does.

However, as it stands now, though my opinions of the players have not changed one bit, my opinion of the game, staff, and the game's overall direction has greatly changed. No longer do I serve a game who's direction and future do I cherish. Not to say that I don't worry about what's going to happen to the game or the community, but with the current administration and policies, I don't feel like it's something that I can support. I'm tired of defending staff or staff policies that I don't believe in any longer. I'm tired of demanding that people adhere to rules only to see bias or some other forces make allowances for things that should never have happened or been allowed in the first place. And most of all, I'm tired of having to stand up to some staffers to defend players or other staffers who have been abused or looked down upon simply because of a dislike of their character, PC, or just personality. It wears me down.

I hate the abuse. I hate the cheating. I hate all of the lying and backstabbing. It's not what I came onto staff to do. I came to serve the community. And though every single player and staffer that I love will still hold a place in my heart, I can't serve the SoI community any longer. Not right now. Maybe, in the future, if things change and if the future generation of administrators will accept me back, I can volunteer and build again in a place that was my virtual home for years. But right now, I need to say my farewells.

Since I won't be on staff any longer, I will actually extend my personal AIM to you or other staffers that do not have it already, so that if any of you wish, we can keep in contact. It is: [XXX]. Keep in touch. Because honestly, I really do care for each and every one of you.

- Phoenix

Kodiak

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To the Staff and Players of SoI -


Though I've been an Administrator here for an amount of time shorter than most, it is my hope that my work and ethics have helped to make this gameworld a more enjoyable for you to play or work within. Myself, I've had the opportunity to work alongside some excellent staff members during my tenure here who have shown themselves time and time again to be dedicated towards the well-being of the playerbase. Likewise, I've had the opportunity to witness, work with, and enjoy many of the excellent players and characters existing in the gameworld, and have found myself impressed with the creativity and imagination which seems all-too-often to be forgotten in many areas of life, but which flourishes here.

Despite this, real life commitments and a growing discontent with the direction of the game has led me to resign alongside the others mentioned. I do this not as an expression of bedgrudgement against the players, but due to the feeling that the vision I and the other resigning administrators share cannot be made a reality in the current environment.

I have volunteered my efforts to help any new staff members transition into my realm of responsibility within the Northlands sphere, and to ensure existing plots are continued on and not forgotten and will offer forth my services in this capacity until August 5th; however, as of this moment I do tender my resignation from the Administrative staff of SoI and any official capacity therein pertaining.


I wish all of you nothing but the best in Life,

-Kodiak

BANGARANG

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It's been a while coming, and with Phoenix not only going on 'leave' but putting in her retirement fully, I am out too. Phoenix and I probably agree on the same points, along with whoever else ends up leaving but they should be be said. I feel bad on a couple levels, mainly that you Kite, believe that because you 'own' something in a legal sense that it isn't just as much everyone elses. We all pour our energy into the game, some more than others, some differntly than others, but we all at one point wanted to make a difference. I feel strongly that your newfound desire for us all being friends is nothing more than an attempt to see who will become your 'yes man'. The veiled threat to close down spheres if people don't stop questioning why spheres remain open is getting you exactly what you want. It isn't what the needs, but it is what you want. Isn't that your anthem? What you want?

You asked me if I believed you could run the game, and of course anyone can run a game. The real question that I never answered is if I thought keeping you in charge would /improve/ the game. I'll reference myself and say that I told you if I didn't like what was going on and where it was going, I was well aware of where the door is. Well, I find myself in front of it right now. I have this philosophy. People who volunteer their time only have one real obligation to themselves, that by volunteering they accept whatever rules exist -and- use whatever tools are available to them to change whatever rules they don't agree with. It's simple. I have tremendous respect for volunteers and the work they do. I think to myself, how can I, a person who is not volunteering, be critical of those who do? It was a rhetorical question until lately. The answer is, by using whatever criteria they accept to become a volunteer - in our example, a staffer.

You see kite, you've removed my tools to be any kind of influential force in the game. We only have what you give us, and because what I can only figure is that you feel so threatened by success elsewhere, you've removed them from your own admins. How can I even suggest that something change when your response is that you won't be defending rules that have been in place for too long that everyone agrees with? Do you not want any of your staffers to have an opinion different than yours?

I'm never going to attack you personally, but the dynamics of running a small handful of contacts in the business world is nothing similar to a volunteer group of gamers beyond being a group of people. How can you take the past success you've had in RL and compare it to the -documented- unsuccessfulness of volunteer help at SoI? Here's a hint, people who volunteer only have my philosophy above to worry about, if they even care about that, not things like how to pay their next bills. We only have to put up with the administration until it because more of a problem than it is worth. Sadly, some staffers will stick around because this is all they have. I would say that you're sorely mistaken if anyone is having a good time right now had they actually thought about it and had any real purpose for being on staff.

So I am using the only option I have left. Leaving. Again. It is a shame because in theory I believe in what you say, Kite. I've just watched you fail too many times to believe that your unwillingness to accept and change what is so clearly broken will change, especially now that you feel SoI is somehow 'yours' and not the players.

- Bangarang.

HULK

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I’m done. I’m done with the bullcrap that is the old admins of SoI. You’re all sad people who make rules which you force others to abide by but have no intention of following yourselves. I’m tired of this mud being run to the ground. I have no faith in any of you apart from the nlands staff and those that are brand new. It’s sort of sad, I trust Sindre more then I do the experienced admins these days. Kite I respect you as an admin, but you’re not a good leader. I wish you’d just go back to being an admin, that’s where you outdo us all.

Please return [XXX] to my player account and try to forget that I was ever an admin. I don’t ever want to be reminded of it again, I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to be treated like I used to be one. Forget I ever did anything else then play [XXX]. I am to retire [XXX] for now ‘cause I’m unsure you all who stay can remain unbiased after this. But I will be copying down what he has, and I expect every piece of it back when I decide to unretire.

A Brief Introduction and Apology

This blog will start out as a somber, but necessary note, for the players of Shadows of Isildur who have questions regarding the departure of the majority of the Northlands staff from the game as of last night. I will attempt to clear up misconceptions, make clear our complaints, and show with a more level head than I would have been capable of last night things that the players should question.

From there, the blog will hopefully transition to a more fond look-back at some of the unique things that we attempted, with mixed success, and present the idea that there were some really special things that happened in Northlands in the past year; these are things worth celebrating, no matter what your feelings about the future of the game as a whole may be.

A few quick notes:

1) I will begin my showing the resignation letters of the staff, of which they've given me permission. Some are more fiery than others, and my own was a chaotic race to finish what was a lot of opinion and feeling in the close time restraints left to me via computer lab (and no working personal computer, at the moment).
2) From there, I will go more detail into complaints. Specifically, all complaints really can be sub-categorized into the three major points below --
a) Disagreement with the break from Tolkien and canon, some of which players were aware of, some of which players were not aware of, and some of which most players could care less about.
b) Disagreement over staff policies that make it impossible to achieve reconciliation with an inner OOC circle that exists at the higher echilons of SOI staff, where a primary and re-occuring theme is to pursue policies that benefit extremely high-power-positioned staff PCs and the clans that they run.
c) A damning level of lying, backstabbing and general dishonesty. When you reach a level where most information is at your fingertips and keyboard, and you come to realize that there is a lot of blatant lying and cheating occuring, watching many of the players blindly follow what I would call a wolf in sheep's clothing became overwhelmingly depressing for me.


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Despite all of this, there will be claims that we abandoned our post and let our players in the Northlands down. This could not be more wrong. The truth was that the staff that left, and myself included, had stretched ourselves far beyond the point where we felt healthy putting an extreme amount of time and effort into something that has increasingly proven rotten at its core. The truth is that we suffered frequent threats against us, against Northlands - frequent and crude insults - warnings to not investigate so hard and not to side with the players. Looking back at it, it is almost unbelievable that we were able to keep the team together for as long as we did; and I do take some small pride in that, because there have been many times where staffers have wanted to resign and I was able to talk them out of it.

With all of this said, before I move on to attempting to answer some of the players' questions as best as I may (and before I move on to trying to remember some moments and times that I really enjoyed as an RPA and Lead), I wanted to apologize to the players never-the-less. This undoubtedly puts what has been an explosively successful region of the gameworld into an uncertain future. We will do what we can to help transition, as much as we are able to, as we have obviously been banned (and our player characters banned as well, for that matter); but certainly, the Year Four Finale which I have envisioned for so many months now is thrust into a precarious future. You all have my best wishes.