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Geoff, It’s terribly disappointing to read that wrote such a slanted article regarding 3rd party forums, a wasted opportunity.
Mr. Snook has engaged in a “attack dog” policy concerning posters for the past year and his use is escalating. Nearly free reign has been given to several very high profile posters on the DDO forums, and these individuals will preemptively attack and belittle any new players or posters who ask questions in good faith. Anyone who takes the time to read the forum during the last month will see it writ large that anyone who disagrees with the group-think or fanboi narrative will be mercilessly bullied, trolled, and outright insulted until the quit or take the bait and post a response that allows them to be infracted. Mr. Snook is not just complicit in this activity, he actively encourages it by removing entire threads where his bully-boys have broken a new poster/player but have broken the ToS themselves in the process. When this happens Cordovan pulls the thread with the incriminating posts to spare his pet-trolls the exposure.
This practice has created a large brigade of Trollbois that become more and more blatant with every week.
Now before you try to discount me as someone who was banned and just has sour grapes, I’m not. I have been playing for 4 years, and only began posting on the forums in the past few months, and I am still “not banned” but not for lack of trying.
My forum name is Hammertop, I’m right there on the forums, and I have been subjected to over 180 ToS breaking attacks/trolls/insults in just the past month. While I have been active I have had to spend more and more time trying to craft my posts so carefully just to avoid a infraction but at the same time refusing to allow this Turbine sponsored bullies to silence me. The correspondence I have had to compile and constantly refer to with Turbine to avoid a ban is enormous and ridiculous, scratch that, it’s absurd. I have had to endure the kind of abuse that has seen scores of my new guildmates, and Khyber players just toss the game and leave.
It’s a vicious cycle, start playing the game, fall in love, want to know more, start researching, begin mastering content, look forward to updates, look for updates, then post questions about content and updates, be ridiculed for start date, try to ask more questions, be ridiculed for post count, defend you questions, be accused of being a sock, defend and invite Turbine to vet account, be trolled, become exasperated and post, be infracted, become more exasperated, Be trolled by the same 5-6 posters over multiple threads, waste time reporting dozens of posts for harassment, get trolled even harder by the very posters you reported for abuse, try to defend yourself calmly, be called passive aggressive and holier than thou, watch your mates get even more abuse, see them baited, see them banned, see the Cordovan’s bully-boys take a victory lap, defend yourself, get trolled, get infracted, and eventually give up.
You have to put up with all that, just to support a game you have found and fallen in love with, all that abuse because you are new, all that abuse because you don’t agree with the attack dogs.
None of this is a secret, it is acted out daily week after week and it drives new players and posters like me and my friends away again and again. But you didn’t even mention it, not one word, instead you attacked the vault and tried to paint Mr. Snook as a victim.
Well for the record, the vault is a pack of juvenile half-wits more interested in cheating than actually playing the game, I find very little useful information there, and most time spent there is wasted trying to figure out all the stupid inside jokes. But as obnoxious as they are you miss the point, they are powerless, all they can do is make noise in their tiny little sandbox, a sandbox easily avoided.
The only power the Vault has, is as a strawman the Mr. Snook uses to defend his questionable performance as community manager. Every time Cordovan makes a mistake that he gets taken to task for, like the instulting “wing-nut, tinfoil hat” comments on the DDOtwitch he uses the Vault as a excuse and blames unrest on the vault. This gives the Vault what little power it has, it is just a boogeyman that Cordovan drags out when he needs cover or wants to discredit dissenting opinion.
How ironic that the all the scumbags on the vault who think they have some effect on Cordovan are actually just a handy tool for him to use as the situation might require.
Anyone objective, who took a few hours to read the DDO forums in a detached manner can see that, and when it was time for you to write this article you should have done that. Instead you produced some puff piece that gave Mr. Snook and his trained pack of trolls cover. You ignore the alienation of the new players and posters.
Who do you want to help? the game or your apparent friend Cordovan?
In closing I have avoided using other posters name here to avoid giving you a excuse to delete my comments, or engage in the type of public shaming I and my friends have been subjected to on the forums.
But if you would like to have them. or if you are thinking about trying to dismiss my facts and experience in service of Cordovan, let me assure you that I have all the names, the incidents, archived versions of removed threads, and the extensive and surreal correspondence I have had to have with Turbine since I began posting just a few months ago.
Being able to have access to Turbine and report and support the game as you do is not just a privilege, it is also a responsibility, a responsibility to the game and it’s community. And right now the community and the game are in danger, danger of chasing away all the new players and posters who will replace the players who eventually leave, we are the future of the game, we will be the ones who pay for content and fill pug LFM’s.
Mr. Cordovan and his pack of favorites run the risk of chasing us off and strangling the game if they continue as they have. So now you have to choose whether you will help them do that, or really be a fan of the game instead.
It's fun!
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Standing up for Hammertime (Read 2105 times)
