Forums » General

In-game moderation and Vendetta's Guide

Dec 02, 2003 incarnate link
In light of recent complaints, I'd like to reiterate my position on guide activity.

Whistler (Sherpa / Forum Moderator) is one of our original players (since the early 2.x era) and has for some time had the thankless position of being our in-game "Guide". The nature of the "Guide" position has been pretty nebulous from day one. I gave him some basic guidelines and let him do what he could. He has always acted with great patience and I have never disagreed with his actions. The position of in-game "Guide" is kind of unenviable in a lot of ways: a combat-driven game like ours tends to have frequent occurances of players acting immature or abusive, and commonly directing their frustrations towards any perceived authority figure. It's a volunteer position that requires a lot of patience and brings with it a major headache. Whistler didn't even ask to be a Guide, I actually asked him if he would (before we had even implemented the system) as he was about the most levelheaded, mature player I knew. And, frankly, I think he's done a great job under less-than-ideal circumstances.

That said, we do monitor all the guide activity that transpires on the server (there's a weekly email sent to me by the server), and I do go back and further check the logs if anyone complains. If anyone feels they've been wronged in some way, they're welcome to submit a web bug report, or email me directly, and I will look into it. There have been some "technical" failures within the guide system, such as the lack of timeouts on "mutes" and such. I'm happy to clear up these problems and I'll listen to any complaints. In general, however, Whistler has my full confidence and support.

The entire guide system is really a bit of a hack, and not intended for the final game. But it has provided us with a lot of valuable feedback about how such a system should be implemented.