Given Nocturnis's reputation, I would say that transparency, or fairness at the very, very least, should go without saying. To my knowledge, Nocturnis has never screwed anyone over, so this sort of flagging is an awfully unfortunate first response.

NO worries, Jayde.  I actually already received that kind of response on AA itself.  We're trying to reach out to Dentin in hopes that he too will give us a bit of support.  We're willing to be held accountable by whatever means necessary.  This kind of reaction is quite understandable, but I do appreciate the vote of confidence in post 3 and thank you kindly for it.  Honestly, I suspect others will come forth and vouch for me within time.  Thumbs up as a way of saying thank you, too!

@Loxias:
1.  Morpheus has already stated it's alright, which conflicts with your statement.
2.  The mechanics for exchanging/gifting/giving credits from one char to another actually exist.  Why code something into a game that you consider against the rules?
If you would do us a favor and refer us to the rules section you are concerned with, I would certainly be willing to remain open to your warning and revise the prizes and or lottery or whatever as necessary.

Understood, and thank you for the concern.  For what it's worth we will not be using a bot of any kind; everything will be done manually.  I"m not sure if that'll make a difference, so as I said previously we have in fact tried getting ahold of Dentin, though I dare say he might be busy with holiday related stuff, so we're patiently waiting.

Aha, yeah I guess since the actual tickets are being bought off game, it isn't the same as it being handled with in-game currency. There's still a chance Dentin may not approve, but there's a limit to what he can do with anything outside of the server. Still, can't hurt to run it by him.

See, that doesn't work though. Haven't you ever heard of benefit of the doubt?
Nobody's making you spend money on this. Don't if you're not comfy with it, that's totally your jam and no one should shame you for abstaining if that's the call you go with. I sure as hell wouldn't.
But what you did, saying that you hope it's aboveboard because some might suspect foul play/favouritism or whatever, is a lot like walking into a restaurant and saying, loudly enough to hear, "I hope this place cooks their chicken properly and doesn't make people sick". Yes, that's a perfectly reasonable concern to have; nobody wants to get sick from undercooked chicken. But feeling the need to voice that concern in a public forum like this goes back to that bad-faith thing I keep nipping at. Why cast even a little indirect shade on someone when you have absolutely nothing but a blank slate? Why not just assume that if Nocturnis is going through all this legwork, and has generally appeared to be an upstanding member of at least one community (ours) before now, he's extremely unlikely to screw anyone over? If you aren't going to walk into a store openly talking about your worry of potentially  shoddy merchandise, and you aren't going to waltz into a restaurant and vocalize your baseless concern that their food might not be cooked properly, then for heaven's sake don't walk into a topic only to essentially say "You guys are using protection, right? I mean I'm not saying you'd screw anyone over, but hey, you might, and we don't want anyone else to say so". Because guess what? In a very real sense, you...pretty much just said so.

Always, every time. I am often firm on first glance because I feel that I have to be. I'm sometimes dead wrong about that, which is why it was such a shit-show when I first showed up.
Anyway, definitely don't want to derail the thread. Nocturnis, I am financially pretty tight up against it right now or I'd try and send a few bucks. The situation outlined in the page you linked to is unfortunate and I wish you the very best of luck.

@16, thank you for the understanding.  Our idea was to give something in return, or to try to, so people didn't feel like we weren't doing our part and just hoping someone else was going to put forth the bill.  We've already managed to pay out about 2000 dollars, but it is tough to do when you're not exactly made of money.  We were also aware that something like this could go completely bust.  Ten tickets purchased would come out to 10 dollars, meaning that if only those 10 tickets were purchased we would lose all the way around, but that's a risk we were willing to take all the same in the spirit of Christmas and generosity and all that.
I hold to what we wrote above, even if only one ticket were purchased, someone would walk off with 10000 credits.  We just thought it might be fun to start something like this and might work out for more people than just ourselves.

Update:
It will be necessary to disclose a bit of information before going any further on our end.  When you do something of this nature it is hard to determine what someone's response is going to be. All you can do is, particularly if you are attempting to do it with good intentions is to go forward as carefully and with as much transparency as possible.  When we first considered this idea we knew only that we wanted to get as much of the AA team involved as possible, if at all possible.  As such, we did our best to contact Dentin on multiple occasions throughout the last week.  It was our belief he had not responded owing to real life events; perhaps he was with family on the holidays.  We went ahead with our plans, thinking that the worst that might happen would be that Dentin would say he would not back us in any way, at which point we ourselves would probably have scrapped it all together, as it really wouldn't have made any sense to continue if there were no one in place who could have held us accountable.
Moments after the message was posted on board 7 concerning the lottery Morpheus sent at least one message over gosip as it had, obviously, generated his interest.  Through tells he commmunicated that he didn't believe there was anything wrong with the contest, but advised us to get in touch with Dentin for his support.  We assured him that we had but would continue trying to do so.  A message was sent to the bovine channel last night where most of the AA staff seems to hang out, kindly asking that if anyone knew where Dentin was that he please be notified that he had mudmail from us waiting for him.  Today, we received the following mudmail from Shadowfax.
I have removed your message from board 7 regarding the credit lottery
for violating rules 4.6 and 4.7. Do not repost it or attempt to
otherwise advertise any such lottery again.
4.6  - Thou shalt not run financial scams
This includes any kind of scam where a player asks other players for
loans of money, gold, or credits in-game with a promise to pay it back
with interest in a short time period.
Dentin does not screw around with money.  If you run financial scams,
you will be removed from the game and your account may be auctioned to
try to recover the debt.
4.7  - Thou shalt not beg for credits, gold, or money
Panhandling might not be illegal in the real world, but it is here on
Alter Aeon.  If you aggressively panhandle, you will be aggressively
removed from the game and have all your stuff auctioned off.
IN addition, our post on board 7 was deleted and the following put in its place:
Please do not use this board to solicit real life money for any purpose.
Not only can it be annoying, it can get us in trouble for legal reasons.
And so, it is for all of the above that we must discontinue our lottery and offer our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience our posting it on this forum, on AA or elsewhere may have resulted in.  We can honestly say that we weren't trying to scam anyone out of anything, and that this had never been our intention.  to further illustrate this, we must point out that the majority of the money in question would have, in fact, gone to AA itself, which is why we didn't interpret the above mentioned rules as such and find it surprising that they were taken as they were.  Furthermore, it was our hope to receive Dentin's support in full so that we could then broaden our horizons, posting it on any social media platforms where gaming groups might converse and exchange information so as to bring AA to more people's attention who might not altogether no about it, possibly resulting in more financial success for it.
In closure, I'd like to offer my thanks to Jayde here on the forum for his support in favor of what we were doing and his willingness to give us the benefit of a doubt.  If there's anything this experience has allowed me to rediscover, however, it's that we, each and every single one of us, cannot expect the same from everyone else and probably shouldn't, but that there is no sense in hurting about it when you don't get it, particularly if you meant wel to begin with.  I'd also like to thank anyone else who might have read this topic and had their reason, good or bad, for believing we might be up to something malicious but who held off on any public judgment.  Thank you all for your attention, time and patience.  IT is appreciated more than words will ever be able to convey.

I am thoroughly disgusted by Shadowfax's response here, especially in light of what Dentin said in the post above yours. It appeared that Dentin was playing cautious but was not slamming the door on anything, so to be dealt with in such a cavalier fashion by a staff member says a lot of things about AA in general, and staff conduct in specific, and most of it is not good.

I was not associated with this lottery, and am not particularly close to Nocturnis, but this pretty much just nailed AA's coffin shut as far as i'm concerned. I have no desire to return to an environment where that level of toxicity is the norm from staff, and can only hope that a public apology for the heavy-handed treatment is eventually offered to you.
Referring to this sort of thing, when it's been made clear of the nature of the lottery, as panhandling is just incredibly insensitive. It speaks to privilege, and I don't know about the rest of you, but when the self-proclaimed "voice of Alter Aeon" wants to be this much of a jerk, I don't really want to support it.

Seriously. This didn't even happen to me, and I'm pissed on your behalf, Nocturnis. If attempts were being made to contact Dentin, and Dentin owns the game, shouldn't the matter have been left to him to handle, as he began to do here on the forum?
God, what an operational mess. I am so glad I never actually became a builder there. I strongly suspect I would have seen some sort of idiocy up close and personal, spoken up about it, told somebody what's what, and gotten my ass shoved in the freezer.

Gah.

Jayde:  Shadowfax couldn't get in touch with me either, and he felt like he needed to do something, even if it was wrong.  He tried to find the best set of rules he could, and made a decision based on it.  Shadowfax sent the takedown quite a while before my post; it's no different than deciding to proceed with the lottery prior to getting approvals.

Please don't assume malice here.  As far as I can tell, everyone involved made decisions that made sense at the time, there were just communication problems.