Iceman wrote:
Take a moment to reflect. You said yourself we hit a dangerous low in the past. Before this happened, AoP was heavy handed on deletion (which is implied)... so now that a good player base returns... we go to the old ways again? Did they work? It doesn't appear so, and I'm using the evidence you gave me in this line of debate already. I don't know the whole story- not even close. However, I do know that the last two notes on the common board. You're making it hard to talk to people out of character, and giving the AOP team some serious power that makes me want to barf. For instance: I'm making an alt by the name of Icemann. LET IT BE KNOWN. Everyone who now shares the link to this forum (by what I've heard as far as rules) gets deleted.
I'd just like to comment on this, and my time as AoP, and some more about the history. The year was 2014 (I think) when Gorboth asked me to become AoP. At the time I had just returned to being a (semi) active wizard after a looong break from the wizard world. As Gorboth said, before I became AoP he held the positions of Keeper, AoD and AoP, and both wizard numbers and player numbers were at an all time low, and Gorboth hired me to take some of the workload from him. I quickly hired Mirandus and Varian (and later Nerull) to help me out, and for I think two years we had a team that swiftly replied and dealt with most issues, both when players needed help, and when they broke the rules. Then Mirandus took over with his team. So for the last years we HAVE had the workforce and ability to deal with issues in a timely manner. And we did. And this is what most of you "new generation players" have known.
What Gorboth talked about in his post was the time before this, when you could login and see under 10 players awake, and the wizard world consisted of a handful admins who tried to keep the game running. During this time many rules also changed from "harsh" to "nice", and since I wasn't a wizard then I did not know why, so I can't comment on that, but Gorboth explained a lot of it in his earlier post in this thread.
So if we go back 10 or more years we had much harsher rules than we have today, especially when it came to out of game communication, which even said you could not even decide to team up outside the game. So a lot of people would decide to team up iRL, or on ICQ (The Skype of the time), but then still send each other a mail in-game, just so they would not get punished for out of game communication. Oh and quest solutions were not allowed. And all sorts of things. The rules in general were much harsher, and where then made more forgiving. I inherited the "nice" rules, and the only rule I changed was some minor adjustments to botting rules. Everything else remained as it was, and me and my team tried to make sure players followed the rules as written, and I think we did a good job at that. Now Mirandus is AoP, and Gorboth is back again after a break from Genesis (that we all need sometimes), so it's up to them how to move forward, and to decide if rules need adjustments, based on Genesis 2017. Which is much different from Genesis 2010. Or even Genesis 2014 when I became AoP. Things have changed quickly lately with way more players and lots of thing going on in and outside the game.
Are we moving towards harsher rules again? I don't know. I am no longer the AoP, and I am no longer in the Admin. However, so far ONE rule has changed, or rather a part of a rule regarding out of game communication. We're nowhere near the old rules, but for you "new" players this obviously seems extremely harsh, but put into perspective in Genesis history, it's not. When we had the most strict rules of all time Genesis thrived with peaks at 130 players, and probably more if the game hardware could have supported it. So we can't say that nicer rules makes a more successful game. But we can't really say the opposite either, since there are so many variables that determines if players enjoy Genesis it's hard to know if the rules affect player numbers at all. Maybe we would have had even more players back in the days with nicer rules? Or the opposite? Who knows. In the end it's up the the current Admin/AoP to make up rules that they believe in, and that will of course change depending on who is in charge, and also what players do, and which year it is. A lot of things has happened in the world between 1997 and 2017, and so also in Genesis. Rules changes isn't uncommon at all historically. Tons of rules have changed in the last 20 years.
This rule change seems to have divided people, just as most rule changes have in the past. Some think it's crazy to try to control what people say outside the game. Other believe the rule is good but the punishment too hard, and some feel revealing alts is the lowest thing you can do and you deserve whatever you get. I can understand all sides.
Anyway, just wanted to provide some history about Genesis rules, and my time as AoP.