A Plea for Sanity

[Kergan]

To my fellow R99ers,

I am writing this in the hope that we can have a civil and rational discussion on what is happening on the server we've also chosen to devote hours of our free time on. This will not be a short post, but my hope is that if you care about the future of R99 that you'll spend a few minutes of your day to hear me out.

There is a lot of animosity between the two main guilds of R99 right now, Red Dawn and Nihilum. As many of you know I am currently a tagged applicant to Nihilum but it is the honest truth I am doing everything I can to see both sides of this. I am speaking not as a member or representative of Nihilum but as a member of the R99 community.

Let me start by saying what I believe to be true about the institution of the PVP PNP on R99: the staff is concerned about the long term viability of this server. It is not an easy task to recruit a player base to an emu server for a 12 year old game, and even a more dire one to recruit them to a red server. Losing players for any reason is a very legitimate concern. It is also my belief that they feel the stranglehold Nihilum has had on R99 is a barrier for the sustainability of a long term healthy population. I also do not believe that the timing of the introduction of the PNP was coincidence, relative to the recent CC'ing episodes on Red Dawn (which were allowed by rule at the time).

But most importantly, I believe that no matter what rules are put in place and how they are enforced, none of it will mean a thing if the top guilds are not going to treat each other with basic respect and decency. If the conditions of victory in this battle are going to be massive account banning and players quitting in frustration it is not a victory for the server.

I believe there have been mistakes and errors on both sides. Nihilum feels like they are being treated unfairly by staff and being made an example of. Red Dawn feels like Nihilum is not treating them with respect and relishes the opportunity to make their life hell. In a lot of ways, I think, both sides have a fair argument.

What I see right now is a group on one side trying to get away with whatever they can to keep down their opponent, and people on the other side trying to do whatever they can to rise up. Unfortunately, we are not staying within the confines and means of the game mechanics. People are losing hundreds of hours of work on characters to bans and suspensions on BOTH sides. People are more concerned with getting fraps going in preparation for PVP then making sure they have buffs up.

What I am asking for is civil discourse between the leadership of Azrael, Red Dawn and Nihilum. We're sitting on a time bomb that has been ticking for years. People have battled each other for so long they are very much struggling to get past it. It will not be easy but I think if you guys could get together for an hour privately and come up with a means in which we can treat each other as human beings with huge amounts of time invested in our characters it would be beneficial to everyone. Come in with open minds, forgive the past and plan the future of this server. We can have some truly epic and great battles, especially with new content and a lot of returning players just around the corner with Velious.

Nizzar, Heartbrand, Lite...how 'bout it? Can we try to put an end to the lawyering, forumquesting and venom in ooc?