Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

Meg

No, I did not know staff before this game. I have not had your experience with staff, not that I am saying it is any less valid. I know I did have apprehension approaching them in the beginning, because that is just how it is for me in approaching new, unknown staff and asking for things. I am sure I have been misunderstood, but I can't think of an incident off the top of my head. I know I have had my disagreements with Apos, at least, and I can think of multiple times.

I do think transparency would help in most situations, certainly. Definitely in this one.

I am sorry for what you are feeling right now.

EMDA

The treatment of thralls and the whole Thrax dynamic has always seemed to come across awfully flat to me.They seem like points intentionally added to the game in order to provide more contrast between the characters but my impression is that mostly they've been used for people to show just how downright good their characters are instead. Before I say anything more I'll really heavily qualify that impression with the fact that I more or less only track the news of the game as it goes along, since actually playing MUSHes is scary, so it easily could be the case that I'm not getting an accurate feel for things.

I think every or almost every bit of news/announcement I've seen involving thralls has either been someone from another house denouncing the practice or Thraxian characters liberating swaths of the near-slave workers they use to stay... afloat, lore-wise. The whole rules of the Compact that Arx has been built upon for generations makes it really weird for people to take exception to how Thrax does things, too:

Almost everyone should believe that there's a 'divine right' for a lord to run things his way in his kingdom. If you're a commoner suffering under that you might be a little less enthusiastic about it, but the game's religion (sans Redrain) and the quasi-Constitution tell everyone that people are in their place for a reason and it's not your business to tell other people how to run their shows. I think it'd be fairly taboo for most people, nobles especially, to go past muttering to their companions in private about stuff like that.
The other houses aren't peaches & sunshine. House Valardin might be the group of extreme chivalry/etc, but a lesser lord could fabricate a reason to execute one of his serfs and no one (except the grieving family and other potential victims) is going to bat an eye. There's room for a few nobles concerned for their vassals and wanting to improve things for people, definitely, but I think every house is principally founded on the labor and poverty of their commoners and serfs. It's a feudal-ish society.
Thralls are almost always in the Saffron Chain. There's a strong chance that any brought to Arx aren't going home with their owners due to the same rules about domain above, so they're only brought rarely. When people make a stir about the issue, they're more or less forcing their attention on something that's realistically a pretty distant concern for them at best.

There are other issues too, like there probably being bigger fish to fry than social reform when however many dozen thousands of enemies are marching to your city while supernatural forces try to rip your society to pieces, or the fact that every time Thrax liberates thralls they should probably lose a portion of whatever their big noble income is. But it's a game, and not everything is going to be accounted for, and you can't always be focused on that threat looming on the horizon.

I know this is tangential to the administration/banning stuff but it's kinda relevant, probably. A bit.

Shayd

I guess my view is that you can have one of two things: (a) PvP or (b) make the OBVIOUS baddies all NPCs (e.g. slavers). That's definitely binary, mind you, and there are probably individuals or small groups that can be more nuanced, but MU* aren't small groups of reasonable people.

WTFE

@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

In the end, your audience can be stupid.

This, in and of itself, is a strong indicator of your thought processes, now, isn't it?

WTFE

@icanbeyourmuse said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

This is why I try not to bring what I think of a person on one game to another, regardless if they seem repeat offenders.

VASpider and Custodius both, among others, thank you for your service in keeping them staining the undershorts of the hobby brown.

3543thrh67

@WTFE How does deciding not to judge people by past actions? I don't judge you each time you post to being an asshole. I decide you're going to be a decent person each time you post.

WTFE

@icanbeyourmuse said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

How does deciding not to judge people by past actions?

This sentence is missing something key: actual meaning. Please rewrite it as a complete thought, not something left hanging vaguely in space.

I don't judge you each time you post to being an asshole. I decide you're going to be a decent person each time you post.

That would be a HUGE error. Kind of like giving VASpider or Custodius (among many others) another chance to fuck up the hobby.

yourmamasayswhat

@WTFE Really don't know why they let C into Arx. He showed up and several of my friends rostered their characters for safer pastures without even giving a fuck. If a person has so foul a reputation as to garner that kind of response, that good people would rather up and leave an MU as intriguing as Arx, they are not worth that kind of ~~fourth fifth sixth~~ seventh chance.

Catsmeow

Custodius stays -- Victus and other good people are shown the door.

Okay, I really need to stop commenting. Enjoy your game.

Monogram

This all just makes me think of Star Crusade and I start having violent tremors.

Misadventure

@WTFE said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

In the end, your audience can be stupid.

This, in and of itself, is a strong indicator of your thought processes, now, isn't it?

Yes, but not likely in how you seem to be implying. Are you saying I frame everything in a way that it serves my preset agenda? Like you?

No need to answer. You should know that I know you think I already think I know the answer, and so exchange would be pointless.

For those in the viewer audience, I framed things in the form that it will occur to you to underline that no matter how frustrated you are, there is a less troubled truth under there if you can get past all participants monocular vision of how people communicate.

Ominous

Wow this thread has meandered. We have gone from 'was this an out of the blue banning?' to 'thralls seem thematically out of place' to 'Custodious is evil, huh?'

Misadventure

Those who can't do, teach.

Badly.

Tinuviel

@Misadventure As a teacher, I object to that characterisation.

As a human being, you're too damn right.

Misadventure

@Tinuviel you actually point out something that should be.

I have had bad professional teachers in my lifetime, mostly at the college level. However, I have had a ton of teachers who were great at teacher, taking care of students, and passing on their love of their topic. They do not deserve to be maligned. Even dorky Canadians teaching English.

However, here, well its funny to admit we aren't so great at passing on the wisdom.

Tinuviel

@Misadventure Teaching is a job like any other. You'll find people that are truly, deeply, and inspiringly passionate about their choice of vocation. You'll find people that suck the life out of everything they touch.

Everyone remembers the teachers that they hated. Everyone remembers the teacher (almost always singular) that they loved. Nobody remembers the average joe that did their best.

Thenomain

@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

However, here, well its funny to admit we aren't so great at passing on the wisdom.

I'm a firm believer that wisdom cannot be taught; it can only be learned.

WTFE

@Ominous said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Wow this thread has meandered. We have gone from 'was this an out of the blue banning?' to 'thralls seem thematically out of place' to 'Custodious is evil, huh?'

On that last point, Custodius is active on Arx. I've got the popcorn ready.

WTFE

@yourmamasayswhat said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@WTFE Really don't know why they let C into Arx.

Well, the penny dropped for me when I found out that Arx's staff also used to staff on Firan. Firan is one of the many, many places Custodius stank up and did more than his fair share to destroy. (Not that Firan wasn't kind of self-destructing by that point anyway.)

There are two possible scenarios:

The staff on Arx were the people in cahoots with Custodius while he as gleefully fucking over everybody not on his list of OOC friends there. In this scenario the staff on Arx need to be avoided like you'd avoid Ebola.
The staff on Arx are doing the hubristic "but he'll be different with us--he says he's changed!" thing. Just like staff on every other game before Arx that Custodius infected and killed.

Whichever of these two it is, the meltdown will be funny. And the fact that they're driving off decent players while keeping Custodius on the game is a strong indicator which way the wind is blowing of my two scenarios…