You make some good points Lokar. But I do want to address some concerns below:

On the subject of tracking, I once again reiterate that I do not mind placing a client tracker into Mush-Z. I do mind, however, that no one ever told mush-z users about it. I understand that the developers' goal was a noble one, and I do hope they identified the rule breakers successfully. But it could have been handled so much more transparently, even if after the data were collected, it was announced after the fact.

About Draak and Shadowfax's coding, I have enormous respect for both of them, and I know it is difficult and time-consuming to learn a codebase they have never touched before, and when it comes to one as mammoth as Alter Aeon's the difficulty is only multiplied tenfold. I have seen the hours of effort they've put into content creation, and I laud them for it, but it does not change the fact that their efforts, whether it be areas or new game features, show a distinct lack of rigorous playtesting compared to the rest of the administration's work. A few hours of stress testing by a few hand-picked alpha testers for new features would help them enormously, as when bugs are brought to their attention the gods do fix them quickly, but why not handle them in a controlled environment instead? I am concerned that this pattern will dictate continued developments in Mush-Z.

You mention that only 24 players are higher level than you and thus affected by the level change right now. If you are using your total levels leaderboard ranking for that number, keep in mind that the leaderboard does not show players who have logged in in 30 days, nor does it show players who did not level convert. But it does get your point across that there are only a relative few players currently impacted by these level costs. But new players should feel able to attain the elite player status with a reasonable amount of work, and seeing the experience-cost shaped roadblock does not encourage them to set out on that long journey (see post 9 of this thread).

You mention that players such as Jonathon have discussed civilly with Dentin about the issues I have brought up. many players, including Jonathon, have tried in various ways to talk to Dentin, and waited patiently, for almost a year in fact, for a ray of hope. And the talking and the waiting has not resulted in much that will cut down on the 10-month estimate to level your fourth class from 36 to 37. I have Talked personally to many of these players and they feel shafted, even those whose heads are level. I do not even want to open the can of worms that is the level convert situation, but I know that also contributes to the discontent among these players.

I really do hope that Dentin does decide to make a character and play it so that he can better understand the complaints of his high-level players.

Thanks again for a civil discussion, and especially for telling me that I am charismatic.

There are good points on both sides here, and I won't be addressing too many of them because I would just be repeating what others have already said. However, let me just comment on the issue of discontent and civility.
I would agree that overall, the changes to soften the blow for high level players have been relatively minor, as in, not actually reducing the 10 months mathematical equation by much. This can lead some players to believe that their concerns aren't being taken seriously. The question then is how to act when you feel you are not being listened to. I am a pretty regular AA player, but there are also months where I only really log on sporadically to look at changelogs and such because I have no motivation to actually play the game. To me, that seems preferable over trolling and being bitter. Some players might argue that they still log on to chat, which can in fact still be done without spreading discontent over the whole game.
So, even if the players who are now banned felt like they weren't being listened to , they could've done two things. They could have stayed on the game, regardless of whether they actually played, and continue to voice their concerns in a civil manner. Or, they could have stopped logging in, found a way to contact their friends off the game, and still not be disruptive to the environment on AA itself. They chose neither, so I will not choose their side. It seems a little inappropriate to first spread around discontent, then cry foul when you bite off more than you can chew. I know the player Teros does write here that he thinks his ban was deserved, but this is not just about him, it's more general and also relating to Ignotus's case.

Part 2 - The Future of Mush-Z

Teros wrote:

> In the past, he has also asked  Weyoun, the chief developer,
> if Draak and Shadowfax may be allowed to work on coding Mush-Z.
> Weyoun has always refused the assistance.

Teros is ... confused, about this.  I had no plans to have either Draak or Shadowfax work directly on Mush-Z, and Weyoun has already worked with them in the past to ensure that Mush-Z releases work well with server side changes.

> My opinion: Now that Weyoun has stepped down, Draak and
> Shadowfax will probably be granted access to the git server.

There are no plans to do this.  Both Draak and Shadowfax have their hands full with server side work.  They're also not familiar with the codebase.

> Along with Kurek, they may continue releasing updates to
> Mush-Z. However, all three of them have a solid reputation
> for sloppy coding.

To be fair, if they did start working on it, I wouldn't expect them to break the code so badly that the server would throw a warning every time they logged in.

> Also, with two of the three coders firmly affiliated with Dentin
> and many of the more savvy users leaving, it will be much easier
> to slip other hidden bits of code, such as the afformentioned
> computer identifier, into future Mush-Z updates.

This is just flamebait intended to make people afraid for no good reason.

---

Part 3 - Dentin and change

TL/DR - Teros is upset because he doesn't like the recent game play changes.

No game lasts forever, but we intend to be around for a long time.

A game that doesn't plan for the long term, dies a long slow death.

No game can expect to keep players engaged forever, and a game that focuses purely on old players to keep them happy will die as surely as a game that focuses only on new players.

No game is perfect, and we know we have a lot of things to improve. We have been, and will continue to be working on it.

Yeah.  I'd really love to have more time to work on both of them.  Stellar Aeon hasn't had a significant update in months.  Stupid RL.

Thank you for responding Dentin, and for giving us your interpretation of the information in the first post. Responding to your posts in order:

post 30: If so many people knewabout the tracking ID, why was it never added to the manual or the change logs? I do admit that I knewI was told about it, but only a few days before being banned, and realizing that my client could be tracked that way, I countered it. And as I have said before (you seem to not have read anything but the first post, which I grant you was a long read), I did not know about the ID while I was a mush-z developer. In fact, Lokar just posted  (#26) that you and Weyoun did not tell anyone about it. So though you did not hide it from people, you certainly did not make it transparent. That audiogames.net uses tracking cookies is much more clear than Alter Aeon's tracking, since it is a given that many web sites track you with cookies, and the remember password option when logging in to the forum alerts you to at least one such cookie. You can also set up your browser to alert you before a website deposits any cookies on your computer or totally opt out of them if you want.

post 31: Thank you for clarifying that you do not intend to give Draak and Shadowfax access to Mush-Z. Of course, thanks to their access to the server code, they would be able to avoid coding Mush-Z in ways that would raise red flags to the server. I am glad that you recognize that the game needs improvement, and I also understand that you are leary of giving information to people about possible game improvements before they are implemented. But saying nothing makes the player base perceive you as a developer who is not listening and does not care, though you obviously feel differently.
You mention that a game that focuses only on newbies will die, as will one that focuses only on high levels. What I have seen for a year from Alter is a game that shafts high level players in favor of newbies, the inverse of what you say here. Is that not unhealthy for the game as well? If you disagree, I would like your input on the matter.
Finally, after not being transparent about the identifier, no matter how inconsequential it might have been, it is not unreasonable to wonder what else the code is sending or how the server handles it.

Post 32: It is of course your decision to ban people as you see fit and I'm sure the game is a happier place with us gone. Overall, your board post about Ignotus's banning would have been far more effective had it been short and to the point. I hope the more positive atmosphere will result in higher morale for you, and more motivation to address the complaints of more level-headed users than Teros, as you seem to love to call me.

I revise my opinion based on #26, #30, #31 and #32. My original post, #7, had only one side of the story, and now I have both. I don't play AA very much any more (I think the last time I logged in was a few months ago) and am considering transferring it to someone who can advance my char a bit better than I can now (I'm busy with college and other projects). I don't think I could explain this situation better than Dentin and Lokar have.

I feel like the only reason shadowfax wrote that post was to kiss denton's ass. so he's secure in his buider job.  as far as plaing. I play sometimes but find it boring for the most part.

@Dentin
You make it sound like everybody knew about the client tracking. However, as tiros said, why, then, was it not in the manual anywhere? I certainly didn't know about it until now, and i'm pretty sure many of the non builder or mortal players wouldn't or don't know about it either. I know that the mush-z manual is out of your control, but you mush-z developers should have thought to put it in. This site lets you know that it uses cookies to track you, why not the client?

Honestly?  Probably oversight.  I've never known anyone to update the manual except for me, and that was years ago.  There's likely hundreds of mush-z features that aren't in the manual, and this is just one of them.  Given the choice, most developers would rather add new features than update old docs.

It's not necessarily a good reason, but it's almost certainly the reason you're looking for.

@grryfindore and you wouldn't take staff of said game with a truck load of salt either? The difference between the banned players and the non-banned players, in our case or ... well at least for me. I always kept my asshole behavior reasonable but then I stopped caring because a game I once loved turned into something ... not as good.
I'm not even arguing for one side or another, I got done with Alter over a year ago and have moved on. But this topic really sparked my interest seeing as it's something I've myself experienced.
So I just want to chime in and give my POV although it's not even composed what so ever because I can't remember half of the issues.
One of the issues I had most problem with was that how there was no sanity checks for equipment anymore. Sure, Dentin claimbs that there's a composite limit, and there is, but one way or another it feels like the composite restrictions allow the builders to compete with one another for who can create the best and most amazing eq which leads to old eq being obscure and finally old areas stop mattering.
That is the only thing at the top of my head I can remember bugged me that never was addressed. I bet if I played Alter right now I could find myself a full all- artifact magecast set before level 20 with little effort. And when Dragonstrike first came out everyone was screaming about how insanely powerful it was and that no weapon should be more powerful than that.
It's a shame though Athlons gear got nuked, well, most of it. Terminator still has my necro equipment I hope! Golden stuff!
Well, back to reading articles of a more delicate matter.

@Dentin maybe we could turn this topic into something actually constructive where players that actually play the game and get the experience of the game can bring up their issues with the game in a well-constructed manner. See my small rant on equipment above for example.

Hi there,

In case my name failed to give it away, I am Ignotus, one of the aforementioned banned players. I was originally going to send an email to Dentin privately, but was encouraged by many who are intimately familiar with the case to respond to this forum topic. This said, I agree with most of the posters - namely Loxias, who made especially good points regarding the game's development and progress, as well as the recent changes.

Since I was banned, I haven't spoken about what exactly happened except to friends and acquaintences, but I fear that isnt enough; I have sat by for days, watching accusations fly, including some untrue or wildly exagerated ones. I'm going to attempt to explain my side of the story to the best of my ability, and I strongly encourage you to corroborate with others if necessary. I am a banned player, after all, and as Shadowfax says:

I have always been a casual Alter Aeon player. I often go months or even years without playing, but still logged into the game to chat. Only Dentin can say definitively, but I also think I've had something of a clean record in my time at AA. A lot of my friends play there, and the private channel system is extremely robust, which meant it was often the most convenient place to congregate. I recently had a 6 or 7 month long hiatus from Alter Aeon; I logged in occasionally, but for the most part I was completely inactive. I decided to change this roughly a month ago, which is where our story begins.

For a handful of weeks I occupied myself on Alter Aeon by chatting, hanging out with my fellow Dominion members, and occasionally grouping. I also created the Donald bot, which was a fun little side project to do in my free time. I won't lie and say that I didn't say anything about the level changes - because I did - but this was only on my clantell, usually chiming in when others were talking about it, or making my own observations.

The first notable incident arose when a fellow moderator took action against someone during a conversation on bovine (Dentin's private channel), but failed to acknowledge the other side of the dialog, who was instigating just as much. I've included this as a demonstration of one of the "fights with moderators" that Dentin eludes to in his post. Many of us did not stand by idly and let this happen; at least three of us called the moderator in question out on the avatar channel. For reference, Lexie is one of Lilmike's clan-mates, and Jonathon, Eldrin and I were the one's calling Lilmike out. Here is a log of what happened: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qwnb6gtnq66e1 … .txt?raw=1

The second incident was instigated directly by Lokar. My bot Donald, for those who don't know, is a chatbot designed to respond to commands with information. This information ranges from weather reports to song lyrics. One of the commands, humorously enough, was 'trump': this command queries the Tronald Dump API for Donald Trump quotes. People started using it on gossip, and Lokar said that it should be removed from the channel. Curious, I asked him why on gossip, because I wasn't exactly sure what rule he was breaking. I got the following in response:

The full avatar log can be viewed here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jj3cmuwayf2bk … .txt?raw=1

Morpheus also claimed the chatbots were spammy, but in the month Donald existed on Alter Aeon, he only sent a grand total of 46 messages to Gossip, according to altkeeper statistics given to me by another player.

The third incident occurred after Morpheus banned me from the XP channel for laughing. Log excerpt below (I have removed some private channel sends but have otherwise left most sends here):

For clarity, Sandman is Morpheus's mortal character. As you can see from this log, I was disconnected nearly a minute and a half after my single message. *TICK* markers appear roughly every 30 seconds. When I asked Sandman the reasoning, I got: (avatar) Sandman: it was spam clear and simple.

This log also demonstrates me leaking avatar-only information, clearly breaking a rule. This is entirely on me and later resulted in me losing my moderator flag for doing it repeatedly. It was inappropriate and the consequence fit the crime 100%.

After this, I got so exasperated with the way that things were being handled that I kind of gave up. The definition of spam was incredibly subjective, and I didn't feel it fair that one person could get removed from a channel because someone was overzealous about considering a single line as spam. I jokingly trolled Morpheus a number of times on XP, telling him that his messages were "spam." I only did this for a couple of days, not weeks. (As a point of reference this happened in the evening of November 4, and I was banned the morning of November 11.)

Between November 4 and my banning I lost my moderator flag at some point. Dentin gave pretty valid reasoning, and I supported the decision - although out of curiosity I did approach him and ask why.

On November 11, I woke up to a bevy of Skype chats telling me I had been banned. I had received no word from Dentin, no previous tells, and definitely hadn't done anything recently beyond what I described previously. There are many other players - Vivi, Tyrant  and Teros himself - that went far above and beyond what I did in the last two weeks of my Alter Aeon career. In fact, their behavior had been persistent, spanning several years.

Dentin's post follows, with my commentary included:

I gained a microlevel after several months of not leveling, only a week before being banned. This was after participating in the Halloween system events. Several other players consistently only log into the game to chat and haven't leveled in years.

Negative, yes. But this never went beyond clantell or private channels, and was often in heated discussions with clanmates that felt the same. I did not spread discontentment, beyond talking to people who already felt the same way. I'm not sure what "out of band" channels are, but I never communicated with Teros in game after his ban. All of my communication with him was outside of the game, which is what Dentin expressly asked us to do in his case law board post:

This is explained in the above paragraphs regarding the avatar channel.

Firstly, I should note that ChatMUD was never designed as a competitor to Alter Aeon. Many of my friends and I found ourselves only connecting to AA to chat. People in my clan liked the idea, and I preferred the channel system, so I took it upon myself to code something similar and make it available for people that no longer wanted to connect to AA. It is open source and people are able to peruse the code at their leisure, although the live copy is still in semi-closed beta. I never told people to quit and join ChatMUD, I never encouraged anyone to leave, and I definitely didn't advertise it on public channels. Many people were interested in the project, which resulted in me receiving a lot of messages in tells, ct, and on various private channels asking about the status - and I updated people as progress was made. If anything, people were the ones telling me to hurry up on development because they wanted to stop connecting.

Nothing to say here other than that the helping along I received was a ban without chance of defense. I was banned while I was sleeping. If Dentin had sent me a tell asking me to stop doing what I was doing, I would have, no question. Rather, a new rule was instituted while I wasn't present, then moments later I was removed from the game for breaking it. This wasn't a temporary freezing or silencing: This was a three year ban for some trolling and working on a ChatMUD that wasn't even designed to supplant Alter Aeon as a game. I'm potentially biased, but the punishment doesn't fit the crime, especially taking into consideration how troublesome others have been in the past. A precedent has been set over the years, and it feels slightly unfair that this position was suddenly and unexpectedly changed - without chance of me redeeming my behavior or being active to speak to Dentin about it.

I haven't evaded my ban, nor have I encouraged others to quit the game. I have watched events unfold from the sidelines, but feel like it's overdue that I defend myself. Hopefully this post helps shed some light on what really happened.