It's uncommon that I stumble on to a game like Promo and even more uncommon that I end up becoming staff and trying to help the game out. Initially this looked like a fun game, all be it with a few issues here and there, so I got farther in. I was quickly struck by the sheer tedium of playing at times; for example mining vehicles are all manually operated until level 20 at which point you qualify for all mining upgrades. You literally need to excevate, repair if you take damage, move to the next mineral, wash rinse repeat. At level 20, you only need to type excavate after you've purchased the requisite upgrades and you're free to go make coffee or do whatever you want to do. If your miner takes damage you repair but that's most of the intervention required before you return to offload your material and return to mine.

I also liked the atmosphere with the players which was what kept me as a member of staff for the time I was there. The players connect well, everyone seems to get along most of the time and there's a really cool family-like environment that most have established. People feel comfortable sharing their accomplishments outside of the game and many players provide encouragement and good discussion.

My issues start appearing as a player when dealing with staff and as a staff member watching how people are treated and the game is ran. Travis Baker was and continues to be a rather prominent staff member on Promo, which gives him a lot of power to veto and/or accept suggestions and changes as he sees fit. Generally there's nothing wrong with a setup like this as someone needs to be in charge of triage. This becomes a problem when players come into contact with his caustic abrasive attitude. My first dealings with him was when I reported a bug; typing c (for coords) outside of a ship gives you the message that the starship is not powered. My report was deleted less than a minute after I sent it, with the response that typing c was just stupid when you weren't in a ship and thus that message was to be expected. While I was a staff member, we had a player who reported issues with vehicle bays, which are rooms in which your vehicles are stored in individual ships. A player had added a vehicle bay to a ship which apparently didn't accept it. When she requested assistance because she was essentially stuck with no way from her vehicle bay to another room in her ship, Travis berated her for doing something as stupid as putting a vehicle bay in that ship. Yet another common talking point with players and mostly a laughing point is someone saying "I should just disable the help command" when players look for something Travis believes to be in help files and ask questions, or ask questions without looking. To be clear, the help files are many times nonexistent or inaccurate. While there does exist some documentation, many times it's fairly hard to find and takes someone looking a few times to find it, which should not be the case.

I write this not to shed a bad light on the game itself, because the game and staff do this all by themselves, but to tell people that I recommend staying away. While I'll not go into many internal details, players are able to donate for items which until fairly recently was backlogged for multiple months, so this is as much to tell players who do decide to give this a try to verify that their donation will be received and awarded as required.

I left as player and as staff member despite the atmosphere of good players due to many of these issues. My final straw was watching Travis ridicule and belittle a player on public channels and on Twitter for not agreeing with his stance on a policy which he thought up and implemented without any logic or reason. While I myself have been snappy at times (I think everyone has from time to time), I believe that players should be treated professionally and not belittled or berated when they report bugs. Only with bug reports and suggestions from players in the trenches playing the game will the game get better and refusing to fix something as minimal as the c command returning a message about an unpowered spaceship from any room in the game does not begin down the proper path. While staff members do put in a lot of time and effort in presumably almost every game, there is a tradeoff which needs to be acknowledged; for only with players will there be a game worth playing, and only with staff will the game continue to grow. I am sad that the mud is going the direction it is and that the owner has not seemed to acknowledge any of these issues; Travis is just the tip of the dungheap so to speak.

I also want to note that none of this is a personal attack on Travis himself. I get along with him outside of the game (although he might not think so highly of me after this), and I think he's a great person and does care a lot about the game. I refuse however, to continue to work in an atmosphere where players are treated as they are, especially given the numerous vast issues which currently exist in game, such as ships randomly being located on objects (babies, fountains, tables) which prevent them from launching, an entire shipclass magically vanishing and other issues which I am honestly surprised the players continue to put up with. Couple this with frequent hours of downtime while the game crashes every 2 or 3 days and you've got yourselves a lovely place to play. Add to that a caustic staff member and I recommend everyone run for the hills.