My Unholy Nation Experience
 

I've played Graal for a little under 10 years, and had been pretty steadfast in my avoidance of Unholy Nation. I don't know why I hated it, I just did, probably because the rest of Classic's/Graal the Adventure's players did. So I would rarely log on to UN in an attempt to stir up some trouble for laughs and log off within 5 minutes or so. However, I got permanently banned from Unholy Nation sometime, I believe, in 2007 for my disruptive behavior. Early in 2010, feeling burned out on the games I had been playing after departing Graal after being banned on Classic, I found out that one of the few Graal players I had remained in contact with was at the very least friendly with UN's GP Chief and soon to be manager, Backdraft. Through Mystic, I began to lobby for my unban on Unholy Nation, which Backdraft was not receptive to. Eventually after getting Bell involved, it was decided that I would be given another chance.

So sometime in March of this year, I was unbanned and my second chance began. Being entirely new to the server, I had to begin completing quests to gain hearts, level 3 sword, and level 3 shield. To be quite honest, in reflection I am amazed I even stuck around to do this because of how awful the quest design is from start to finish. I had no idea where to go to start a quest, no idea what to do in some of the quests, and none of them were very exciting to complete anyway. Most of them were downright boring and in such arbitrary locations that there was no real desire to finish them. However, since I did already know people on the server, I was able to get through them with their assistance. At the time, FAQs seemed to just ignore questions entirely.

After reaching maximum hearts, sword, and shield power, I began participating in Unholy Nation's events and found out pretty quickly that they were virtually the entire focus of the server. Some people also tried trading hats and items, but it is virtually impossible for someone who just started on Unholy Nation to enter the existing economy at all. The only way I was really able to obtain any items was to get them through friends and cheat. Yes, I admit that I exploited a bug and spawned some several thousand EP. I have not tried to conceal it since it was found out, and tried my best to undo some of the significant damage I had done by giving away literally everything I had acquired, whether I obtained it through legitimate or illegitimate means. I am not saying that what I did here was ok, but am merely trying to illustrate that with the prices of items how they are, it is literally impossible for a new player to enter the economy as it is and nothing has been done to improve or fix this, as the management has seemed exclusively focused on satisfying the old players rather than doing anything to draw new players in.

Not long after I had been unbanned on Unholy Nation, I decided to offer my services as a scripter to the management. Backdraft informed me that the current Scripting Admin was AWOL, so I should contact Luca about being hired on Unholy Nation. So I tried. And tried. And tried some more. Luca seemed to be very elusive and not willing to really communicate with anyone, and it took an inordinate amount of time for me to find out what he would even like to see to hire me. I figured with the scripting of things I'd seen on Unholy Nation to this point, my past credentials working on other servers would have been more than suitable for a hire, but I was mistaken. I was asked to make an improved hat trading system for my application, but I decided to do him one better and create full out trading to involve hats, WNPCs, Gralats, and EP. I completed the backend about 2 hours after finally starting (I waited about a week to actually begin on it) and had hastily made a not so good looking GUI to go along with it for a demonstration. I showed Luca the mechanics of it that very night, but got no word on whether I would be hired or not until the next day, and not until I told him I would appreciate being told what his decision was as I had been offered positions to work elsewhere. It was not until I told where I had been offered positions that he told me he would hire me, and even then it seems to have been inspired by some grudge he had with a staff member where I had an offer.

I was assigned to one project along with Downsider, and I never completed it. It was a really boring project to be honest, and I had no inspiration to complete it. After sort of dragging my feet for a month and not completing any work on it, or any other sort of project, I ended up telling a LAT who was close with Luca that I didn't really intend to work on it. I would have told Luca himself, but contacting him was challenging at best.

I think it is pretty indicative of the Management on Unholy Nation that after this, I was never given another assignment. I can't say the same for every development staff member, but it seems to me as though there have literally been zero development assignments from the management in my entire time as a staff member on Unholy Nation, and it seems as though this trend hasn't changed at all.

My next job on Unholy Nation was sort of found by accident when early one morning, Allona asked if I could help script an event for her. Apparently the Events Team Development team had been entirely gutted and no one worked on events any more, despite events being the clear focus of the server. I scripted her event for her, and told her I would be glad to help her if she had any other events to be scripted. This is how my shift to Events Team Development came about. I believe that Gamerkid had taken over as manager by this point, and after Allona and I discussed it with him, I was moved to ET Dev. It was in this job that I really began a workhorse effort to bring about changes to Unholy Nation, even if it was only in Events. With the help of some creative and observant players, especially Rufus, I was able to locate and fix bugs that had been ignored for years, and improve the aesthetics and quality of several existing events. I spent a great deal of time rescripting many old events that used GS1 to use GS2, and I can only say I believe Gamerkid noticed, because not long after my move to Events Team Dev, I became the Events Team Dev Admin so that I could hire some people to assist me with my work.

I regret to say that I never really managed to find someone who was skilled or dedicated enough to help me with event creation and revamp, and pretty much continued to work alone with assistance from Rufus in GANI creation, suggestions, and bug reports.

Near the end of Gamerkid's term as manager, Rufus had suggested that trials be allowed to participate in events as long as they had free time remaining. Gamerkid agreed that this was a good idea, so I implemented it. Absolut_Cron took over as manager during the implementation of this, and as I added some finishing touches (mainly to tell trials that they must upgrade if free time is over and provide a link to the GraalOnline Store to purchase gold time), Absolut_Cron took issue with the whole idea. He spouted some nonsense about how trials shouldn't be allowed to play events, but then switched to the reason trials were blocked were because they didn't have 13 hearts, level 3 sword, and level 3 shield and might enter observer. Rufus and I explained to him that trials wouldn't be at risk of entering observer mode since they would require free time to play in events to begin with, and that if he felt that having a trial who did not have all the hearts, and maximum shield and sword power were at a disadvantage in events, and also a liability in team events, then perhaps paid players who had not completed quests should also be barred. He tried to tell us that that somehow did not make sense, and asked me to create a poll asking if trial players without 13 hearts and level 3 shield and sword should be allowed to play in events. This question seemed ridiculously long winded and intended to create bias, so I simply made the poll: "Should trial players be allowed to play in events?"

"Yes" won by an overwhelming margin, but Absolut_Cron felt I had somehow fixed the poll and introduced bias somehow by asking a straightforward question. I offered to create a second poll asking if "Should players without full hearts, shield power, and sword power be able to play in events?" but this never ended up happening.

So trials were now able to play in events, which I would have thought would have been a decision made by myself and the Events Team Admin to begin with. I believe Absolut_Cron was still unsatisfied with this change but I point-blank refused to undo the changes, and it is likely he was unable to find another scripter willing to do it since scripter activity was very low.

I have seen several trials come to Unholy Nation and play in events and decide to upgrade, but this could be undone by the whim of the current Manager, who feels Trials should not play in events, the only thing there is really to do on the server. If the Manager is unable to make a good decision on whether Trials should be able to participate in events or not, I can't understand why anyone would believe he'd be able to make a good decision elsewhere.

Near the end of Gamerkid's term as manager, I was also given full NC control, and I guess by things Gamerkid has said ex post facto, he intended for me to end up with full level rights as well.

I began to make changes to fix things beyond the realm of Events Team related scripts, and a good number of players began to come to me first whenever they had a concern with something that needed fixing, which I took pride in. At the very least, it made me feel that players felt I was actively working and felt that I was as good a contact as any if they felt something needed to be done.

I won't even begin to list the changes I made because there were a lot of changes, and I can't even begin to remember what all of them were. However, I remember making a few changes to the forums that players had been requesting for a fairly long time, namely the ability to disable or create their own hotkey for opening the forums, and disable the forums from opening every single time a player logged on.

These changes were met with open hostility from the Manager, who had in the past publicly questioned why I had made certain changes, why I had certain rights (as if I had somehow assigned them to myself and was able to answer that question), and why I was doing anything beyond Events Team related work.

He even went so far as to post in an in game forum thread, questioning why I had made a change and claiming it didn't work. His claim about it not working was valid for three people - Luca, Rage, and himself. As I only had a limited view of the additional moderation tabs and such, I had not realized that the width of the GuiTabCtrl was expanding over the options button and preventing it from being clicked.

This incident alone tremendously shook my faith in the current manager of Unholy Nation. He told me he expected me to personally report any changes I made to him, but felt it was acceptable for him to publicly question my ability and decisions rather than taking his concerns straight to me. He questioned me in front of staff, and worse yet, in front of players for everyone to see.

I had always conducted myself with quite a bit more professionalism than the majority of Unholy Nation's staff. Nearly every night, there would be another argument about who should be fired, who isn't doing enough work, who was being corrupt.

I found these conversations ridiculous because over the past 3 months, there had been literally 2 people who had done any sort of development work that had made it into player's hands - Gamerkid and Myself. I didn't bother to jump into these conversations to remind the people pointing the fingers that they also were just as useless, just as lazy as the people they wanted removed. The entire driving force of Unholy Nation seemed to be participating in political issues on Unholy Nation, which Absolut_Cron allowed to build and did nothing to prevent during his time as PR Manager, and Manager.

I quit within days of the forum changes, and since then have made no attempt to stay out of Unholy Nation's political issues, openly pointing out to players and staff alike what problems there are with Unholy Nation, and informing players who submitted bugs precisely how long it would take for their problems to be fixed.

At this point I can only hope the PWA will make sort of serious effort into reviewing Unholy Nation. There is literally no guiding direction to Unholy Nation from the top-down. There are very few self-motivated workers remaining on Unholy Nation who will find work to be done on their own, and they aren't even development staff. I know Unholy Nation's management team is actively a turn off to many high caliber developers in Graal's community, and I am hoping the PWA will do something to change that. Unholy Nation still has a (relatively) high playercount, but I can only see the playercount continuing to lower if things continue as they are.

cool story, but why are you posting it(stopped reading after the first post)?

Maybe read before posting?

They won't.

UN has players and along with Zodiac (also plagued with mediocrity) and Era (look what happened last time with PWAs), it doesn't need to be fixed as far as any authority figures are concerned. It's much more productive to egg on a server that's behind and threaten them by pointing out they're not contributing than to try to fix something that is broken below the surface, where potential customers don't see.

as i was forced onto UN a couple years ahead of you after delteria, babylon, and doomsday all fell, i can verify that you're experience is not just limited to the management mentioned. even as far back as when NJ was manager, there has been a nonstop power-struggle between friends and groups of friends for staff-rights on the server. i say staff-rights because it isn't like their focus is to help UN out, or develop something they want released to UN's public. these are groups of friends whom have enjoyed the positions of staff for a very long time, to the point where them being staff on UN is directly correlated to whether or not they'll continue to play the server, much less work on it

now we're having a clash of groups of friends, those rooted in UN's staff and those forced to come onto UN as it's the only "functional" classic server. our current manager is worried about the influence of other groups, the same as any manager has ever been worried about it. the succession of friends-hiring-friends for the reason of them simply being friends is what perpetuates this mediocirty - there is no harmony within UN's staff, and never has been. all projects that have been released onto UN have been created by one or two people, at the most. all "major" projects that are trying to be released are being plagued with political friendship - in your own post you relate to a boring project luca asked you to accomplish, and having strained communications combined with a complete indifference towards both the project and perhaps some resentment from both managers, the development never took place

and i believe this is what happens to most projects that UN tries to accomplish. having no harmony within the staff itself, all updates typically come from one person who releases very sporadically, and without much public mention (the last publicly announced project that had any fruition was the achievements, which i'm pretty certain was created almost entirely by gamerkid) with leads many to think that it was just the whim of the scripter - hence why i can see crono taking issue with trial accounts playing events; it most likely seemed to him as if a staff member was just changing things without asking the man in charge first

and when the PWA steps in, as it did on era, the clashing of friends just becomes even more strained as one friend get's removed allowing a different group of friends to step in and slowly replace all the staff - the first manager the PWA selected for era, from what i hear, instantly hired a multitude of friends as staff members, even though they had histories of unstable staff behavior

so, honestly, the problem lies with the manager - because who else but the manager is supposed to try and get the team to work together? unless you want to change the staff-dynamics that have ruled over UN since it's conception, the manager has to get his **** in gear and and thus get his staff in gear

I agree with what Kevin has said, for the most part at least. Not because I have any bias, but because of my own experiences that ended horribly. Unholy Nation, internally (and externally too), is a huge mess. After playing Unholy Nation for 6-7 years, and seeing it decline in recent years, I decided to help out and apply for the Levels Team.

Note: I don't mean to threadcop, but I decided it would be beneficial if provided another point of view by a former member of staff, instead of just making a new thread. I don't really care if you don't care to read it.

I was assigned to a large-scale project, new Castlewars, that, at the time, I believed to be the only decent thing that was coming to the players, as I saw nothing else (that was significant) for the current players after Gamerkid released the achievements system. The development manager, Luca, probably posessed no sort of care for the project, and never offered his help at all. Didn't seek out to find any scripting help for me, nor cared to look into the project comments when I told him I spent a great deal of time compiling a comment sheet to explain Castlewars and track progress back in may-June. He found scripters for whatever he or his girlfriend was doing. It was only until gamerkid took manager, that I was finally given a scripter.

Me and this scripter, Jumb0, did a lot for the time being, but he soon disappeared near the end of August, and I was left unmotivated to finish it, although I was working on it at a very slow pace. There was literally nothing else presented by the Dev Manager that I really felt could be of great use to the current players, aside from decently made quests, which have been in the talks way before I was even staff. In hindsight, the amount of time I had to create the levels was a very long time, but I literally saw nothing else to do, and told Tooty, a former Levels Admin, that I was up for any other assignment I could do in the meantime, so long as it had a proper use. I was given really none, beside an auction house that was never used.

When Gamerkid left management, and Cron-Star took over, he gave me levels admin after removing Khyber of that title for a good reason (was gone for over a month to visit her boyfriend, and immediately given Levels Admin upon returning), and giving me Levels Admin. She quit staff because of that action. I decided to vacate my admin position, and step down, and argued with Cron-Star to give her her position back, as she acted horribly to him because of her demotion, and he reluctantly did. Nobody told me to give it back, and in fact, told me to keep it, while the rest congratulated me. I decided to do this being frightened that Luca would also quit, and that would hinder development a lot. But I was wrong, dead wrong. In fact, dev could have been in a better shape had I stayed as Levels Admin, looking in retrospect. For my day as Levels Admin though, I did foresee a lot of change I could of done in retrospect to what is being done now, but whatever. I let Khyber decide what she wanted to do with the team, since she wanted the position very bad, and decided to focus on my project, while being an asst levels admin.

Less than 2 weeks after doing this, I was getting the feeling that both Khyber and Luca were attempting to have me removed, for which I found out after I was fired they were doing it at that time. It was sort of hurtful as I gave back her position. I felt like it was more vengeance than actual ethics, as it has been known that I don't exactly agree with what Luca has done in the past. About 2 weeks after I had that feeling, I was fired, and apparently blacklisted for not finishing a project. Kind of surprised me they fired me then as I was to finish the CastleWar levels completely by the end of September, which was about a couple weeks away, and was planning to work on things for Halloween. (I would show pm logs, but I cannot do it here) Castlewars was never really my fault with the scripting difficulties I had. Jumb0, the assigned scripter, had disappeared in mid august, so I was unable to do it. I also was experiencing several computer issues, where my PC crashed very frequently during the course of the summer. Apparently everything was overlooked, and I was somehow to blame completely, everything else ignored.

I was also cited for refusing to work on anything else or with other people when I was fired, to which I find ridiculous. The only thing I refused to work on was a noobie course Khyber/Luca were working on because it wasn't entirely necessary nor anything interesting for the current players, the ones who need content the most, nor was I comfortable working with Luca because of how he treated me.

I realize I haven't been working much near the last few months of me being staff, but there really wasn't much planned out with the entire dev team. If the entire dev team was producing, when I was not, then only would I have understood my removal. But I don't, and still don't. I could have fought for my job back, but being fired the way I was by those 2 people, I don't want anything to do with them, and wouldn't want to come back until Luca is demoted from Development Manager. I don't see why this hasn't happened yet, but I guess the commonly cited reason is lack of a "replacement", which is laughable. Luca has done a ton of illegal stuff in the past, such as giving out free items, or giving his girlfriend extra rights that she didn't need. But time and again, it is overlooked by the Manager.

I intended on quitting graal in light of what happened to me, but only for a few days, until I decided to reinstall (but not really playing), and just watch UN fall to its doom, until PWA decides to act.

Luca, in his term of Co-Manager/development manager, which spans about 6 months and going, has literally stressed nothing beneficial for the server besides a noobie course, and quests, which you can refer to my above point for. He didn't look at Castlewars as anything important to him, and even excluded that whenever asked about future things coming to UN. Only Cron-Star really mentioned it, when asked. I could go on about Luca's antics, but that would be far too much to write out.

The source of the problem I see with development is Luca. For any Classic players, you could consider him Master Storm v2. Prior to the load of BS you see him posting in the news forum on UN, he has done nothing to promote dev unity or any large-scale projects, and I only feel he is acting because his position is in danger. At the very least, PWA should look into the antics of Luca, and act on it, but I doubt they will as several complaints were sent about Luca from several people over the course of his term as co-manager (6 months). Management altogether could be a different story since Manager has went to about 4 different people this year, but my primary focus is really how development has went.

This thread may be deleted/closed, but I hope for somebody to read this at least.

actually read the whole thing

appreciate the "absolut_cron" to prevent confusion <3

Ever since I quit UN, my creativity and determination has exploded to epic proportions in school, sports, and my own programming projects. Love it. Might log in soon to see how things are moving along, but I don't plan on making frequent visits like I used to.

I think everyone should stop playing Graal; it's great.

I didn't intend to stop, but I keep forgetting about it lately o.O

Kevin, I admire your honesty.

I think UN is at a loss of you not Developing anymore, because unlike most developers I have seen, you actually gave two ****s about the server's scripts.


That being said, I hope wherever you may go next if you do, you work just as hard as you did on here. (Unholy Nation)

I read the whole thing, you did a really good job on the forum options. The "disable" option had been needed for such a long time. I was really happy to see it and I've had the forums disabled since.

I think this has a lot less to do with friendship groups more-so a lack of enthusiasm and direction given with projects. If you believe in your project (and are motivated about the direction you're aiming towards) I see no reason why people wouldn't stay engaged by that. If you're assigning people monotonous crap and expecting them to just do it then there's little going to come out of it, unless that person is motivated elsewhere. On this server it seems that Graal politics is the only kind of motivation that is employed. Attitudes are infectious, drama-free, and project-leaders really need to take advantage of that.

tbh this wasn't a very complex/time consuming/etc addition and I consider it minor among the things I did.

However, the players continuously requested it so I decided to take the tiny bit of time required for this, which seems to be something the majority of other staff aren't interested in doing.

Wow this was great. My first impression when I saw the large walls of text was to print it out and read it on the toilet. After finishing the first paragraph I couldn't stop reading.

I hope this gets made into a movie.

*edit : BTW Kevinbo, thanks for applying that option to disable forums on login <3

i was only staff for a little while, but every day i went on RC and saw so many arguments between people. luca was the co-manager but he never said anything to try and stop it, even though he made it a point in the server ops to not argue. instead he began talking to khyber and like two weeks later went to visit her for god knows how long. it's a shame they made kevin feel so un-wanted, because in my two or three months as ET he did more work then anyone. i don't see why they don't just fire luca and make kevin developer. they don't even need a dev admin since they have vicious to give rights.

plus luca is way... odd. he's literally stalked a person from graal before (i have proof), IP sniffs me and then gets his (her?) girlfriend to harass me and make stuff up on skype. and made a blacklist to blacklist me/my friends from staff, which i have saved before crono managed to delete it. forum PM me if you want to see it.

As a side-note about Luca's and Khyber's long disappearance, I can understand perfectly well while people would want to take a break from their volunteer job on Graal, but what I can never understand is why some of the people wanting to take a break insist on being a nuisance or otherwise hindering the work of those who are willing to work.

The same thing happened with Master Storm and countless others on Classic and I could never understand why people would hold a server hostage to their whims.

I'm curious to ask what you mean specifically by staff being a nuisance. Because if it's simple ****-talk than you should be able to simply ignore it. But if it goes further than that than yeah I have no idea why.

Thread of soap opera proportions.

Unrelated note: I miss Delteria.

as in directly or indirectly preventing the completion of projects

Kevin and Mystic,

Both of your "short stories" on Unholy Nation and Unholy Nation staff have easily grasped my attention. I was astounded as I read the first few sentences and was easily dragged in to reading it all and left in awe as I finished them both. You both hold valid points that I agree with 100%.

Firstly, in the past year we have gone through an amazing amount of Managers, whether they get removed for various reasons, step down, or even quit in total. I know that Unholy Nation has work to be done, but take some steps forward and press people to get things done instead of quitting/stepping down, which shows people that you don't want to be on Unholy Nation staff, at least in my eyes that's what I see.

Second, I have seen Luca develop many things along side the infinite amount of particle emitters I have seen from him. Sadly I was staff when he decided to take this 2 month "vacation" it was called, to visit his girlfriend. Among this all he kept talking to staff to change his away note in server ops, being gone for a grand total of a month and a half to two months.

As was stated ahead by Mystic, Khyber was away for 3 months with no activity, how she was able to come back and get LAT Admin in an instant is just surprising, I don't think Mystic, that you should have stepped down, you should have kept the spot, honestly more things would have been done, and more things would have been takin' into consideration!

Kevin, I have heard this story from many people, most people leaving out a s*** load of detail, this is the first that I was able to read and understand the WHOLE story behind your quitting of Unholy Nation. I was only told half of it, by guess who... Luca.

I can see that, "Luca has done a lot lets keep him," but I don't see it, Luca fixes things here and there, and makes emitters, ooooh how fun.. Where is the real development, oh wait that's right, in a project him and Khyber are working on... alone.. wtf?

Luca needs to either pick up the game, or be removed from Dev Manager, we are in too much need to have a Dev Manager that screws off and doesn't do what is needed. Our server isn't one of the best, mainly because of the lack of Dev's that are prepared to work AND stay with the current Management.

Not bagging on all the staff on UN, just that I don't see UN moving forward ANY time soon with the current Management. We need to get someone to straighten things out OR get new Management under way, someone that will take matters and get things done, press to get things done, and want things done. Not someone that will sit around, horse around on RC all day then not come on for a good week or so.

Unholy Nation needs more devoted people like Kevin and Mystic on staff, and I hope one day they think about returning because I know I never said anything, but Kevin you did a smashing job, I loved the updated to the Events you did, including the tips for the Events, looks great. Mystic I knew you were always hard at work and willing to get things done, why you were fired for lack of coders help is just dumb, I don't see why they don't want to keep staff that WORKS and does things they should be doing. Unholy Nation staff keeps the abusers and fires the hard workers?!? What is wrong with this, we need to get that fixed!

Thanks for reading the whole rant if you did :)
-Joker

Me too bro :cry:

inalac si acul : pit-orp spends all time making emitters, other boring things, pretty obvious (near exact behavior on Zodiac around the time Yen was going insane)

And the plot thickens.

lol particle emitters

I was going to say that :I

lol, a lot of people already knew that.

I am really enjoying the amount of support this thread has gained. Hopefully it comes to some avail.

Thanks, Joker. I can't really say I was productive though, due to a lot of difficulties UN had with management and direction. I can only say I was willing to work, but didn't see projects aimed at the current players. I wanted to release Castlewars, but saw no motivation to finish it since no scripter was available after Jumb0 disappeared, and Luca didn't see to get a replacement scripter, and instead, fired me. The only project Luca put focus into was his own noobie course, and nothing else. UN doesn't even need an extensive noobie course IMO. Until you restructure the server to be somewhat consistent (laff), that project should have been kept on the backburner, or not as extensive as it was made.

DownSider you think I'm kidding, most of the things I see from Luca are emitters -_-

*floating hearts*

No problem Mystic, but put it this way, why were you not productive? No assignments assigned to you? Nothing was being planned, nothing was getting released that was benefiting anyone BUT the staff. Castlewars was about finished I believe just no one was motivated to code it for the players. I mean come on everytime we have something FOR the players it never gets released, but the moment staff make something for themselves or staff beneficial IT'S RELEASED INSTANTANEOUSLY! This "noobie course and GMAP" that has been in the makes shouldn't have even been started in the first place, mainly because we need to get other things fixed, we need to focus on changing and fixing a majority of scripts on UN. There is sooo many scripts that are GS1 and a handful that are NOT working and need some structure.
Where will this mayhem end and the restructure and new beginning start -_-???

Castlewars was actually close to completion, both leveling and scripting. It won't be finished now though lol. As for assignments, aside from the noob course, I was asked about the thought of some redone tcpk with additional features, that didn't seem really necessary when first presented to me, but said I would be willing to do it if made proper, as she(Khyber) was still sorting some ideas out with Nullify, who was a former LAT on UN. He can fill in the blanks of that idea. I could go on with what Luca 'wanted' to do that he hasn't done, but I already explained myself enough. One was trying to rescript UN's sytems on dev, which has 'started' months ago.

I know that Castlewars was pretty much done, just needed some finishing touches, why you were fired for "not working on it" when it was technically finished is a mystery. A new TCPK?!?! Didn't we just get a new one? I believe we did not too long ago, that can wait, that is the LAST thing we need right now. We need to focus on player needs, and getting things fixed, it would benefit more to do that, then put that aside and make pointless crap and NPCs.
But like Mystic said, I've explained myself enough here, lets just hope that someone sees this and acts on it, because this is getting outrageous of the lack of concern on UN!

Haha, can't believe how long it took to get an option to hide forums on login. So ****ing ridiculous.

Wouldn't It make more sense to be the voice for the server's players and say something to someone who can?

global staff read these forums, so essentially this is a good representation.

the attitude is what i was also speaking of. if you play favoritism in terms of freedom to develop towards your friends, and treat others as mere robots to complete mundane tasks, then naturally you won't stay engaged, and the development won't take place

I wont address everything in this thread, as much of it would be arguing over hearsay. What I will answer are a few inaccuracies and misrepresented opinions. Kevin, your claims are not completely accurate. I did in fact not want trials to play in events, as that was a talked about metric for removing observer mode. Allowing trials to play in events was thus counterproductive. As far as the poll is concerned, I did not believe there was a way in which you could make the poll biased, nor did I think you could fix the poll. I only told you from the beginning the poll asked about people with 13 hearts, and not trials specifically. The only issue I had about people with 13 hearts was that trials were less likely to have all hearts and swords/shields, which is what I explained to you at the time. Regardless, the decision on something which could impact the server in a large magnitude such as this, would not go to the ETA nor ET Dev Admin, it would go to the Manager. You even state yourself you asked Gamerkid, so to say you thought it should be up to you and Allona was contradictory to that fact. However, as this was being worked on before I became Manager, I was unaware of the plan to remove observer mode. As PR Manager I was never consulted by Gamerkid, and thusly was never informed. Also, I never attempted to get the ban put back on trials, this is misrepresentation.

As for the forums, I have told you more than once, you should have asked before unilaterally deciding to change such an important system. As I told you at the time, the forums are how we spread server news to the players, and you should have at the minimum, asked if it was ok before implementing the change. Not doing so left me questioning how you attained those rights. I see nothing wrong with that, though, as I am the Manager, and should know how you attained them. As Hiro said, UN has been plagued with friends giving rights to friends for no reason since long before you played here, and it was a earnest concern. Anyhow, our issues go deeper than that. You had a valid reason to be upset when you quit the first time, but quitting because Luca took your rights to levels was not the correct way to handle the issue. As soon as I would have logged on I would have corrected the issue and spoken to Luca about it. When I spoke to you again, you were set in your demands.

I consulted the other Admins, and we came to an agreement that it would be counterproductive to hire you again, especially after quitting over something minor like Luca removing your level rights for 1 day. This being said, if you had any issues, or have any issues, you could always come to me. Instead, you choose not to speak to me unless you are directing something my way in masses or in the forums. I was not made aware you felt alienated on RC until long after you quit, and it wasn't even you who let me know, it was Door. I had been joking with you on RC, and was unaware you were taking me seriously, and thus I am at fault. It's something that I have been working on.

I don't want to make excuses. I have no reason to, I just want to inform you guys why things have been slow as of late. When I took over from Gamerkid, about half of the active staff members quit UN. This was the first of many hurdles I have been working on in this last month and a half. Yes, it has only been about a month and a half since I became Manager, especially when factoring in I had to leave for a wedding shortly after. I have been working hard to get the team in order since coming back. When Kevin quit, a lot of animosity was left on RC. I think a lot of people forgot that Kevin quit of his own accord, and was not fired. This was only one of many large disputes I dealt with since becoming Manager.

When I made Mystic LAT Admin, it was solely because Khyber had been inactive for a month. I felt that not only was Mystic more active, but that he could lead the team better. This lead to Khyber starting a fight with me, and later Mystic about why I should hire her back. My entire time as Manager has been full of these arguments. Every decision I made, I had 5 or 6 people tell me it was wrong. I was not used to that at the time. I have adjusted since then, and know better how to deal with situations like that. It was a trial and error process. When I was nice to everyone, people did not work. When I threatened people, they did not work, and were angry. Nobody walks into the Management position knowing exactly what to expect, that I can attest to.

In my time as Manager I have learned quite a bit already. I learned from our most recent hiring that there is a lack of interest in developing for Unholy Nation currently. This is something that I have to change as Manager, and I promise I will be working on. If we have developers, we can create new things.

This leads me to my next point. What is it exactly that the players of Unholy Nation wish to see? I have my own ideas, of course, but that is only 1 players idea. We all play this game, and should all have a say in it. That was my purpose in creating the UN Suggestions Thread "Idea of the Month". Unfortunately, it did not fill up with tons of lovely ideas. Regardless, I challenge each and every one of you to really think of what you would like to see on UN, and suggest it. I am always open to suggestion, criticism or even a 'Hey what's up?'. You can PM me, you can send me a forum message here or on the in-game forums. I do not ignore PMs, nor do I ignore messages, and I will respond to you as soon as I see the message there. I want you guys to suggest meaningful things though. If you say 'content', say what kind you think would be fun. I am a player, same as you, and would love to see new and interesting things going on to make this game even better than it has ever been before.

This is actually the second time I typed this message, so I may have forgotten some things. I would like to finish this with this though:
I feel that our team has gotten stronger. There is less bickering on RC than when Kevin and Mystic were staff, and I hope that it only gets better from here. I promise I will work on the things I feel are necessary, but I also implore you to take an active part in this as well. I feel as though miscommunication, and lack of communication are 2 of the things that have caused much of the server's issues as of late. I am increasing communication with the staff, and now need to do the same with the players.

I know I am not perfect, and I am working on myself to become a better Manager. I need help in knowing what it is you want as players, though. If I fill the server up with nothing but my own ideas, I wont be doing anything better than past managements have done. I want to set measurable goals, and attain them. This wont be a process that will fix itself in only a month, though, so please bear with me. In the meantime, we have some projects going on while I try and attract more development staff. I hope you all look forward to the new Halloween content that should be released within the next 2 weeks, in order to allow Halloween to last a few days, in classic UN fashion.

And when I said why not prevent all players without 13 hearts and level 3 shield and sword from playing, you said no, only prevent Trials who meet that criteria from playing.

Please do not pretend to understand everything that occurred that lead me to decide to leave.

I have already introduced other reasons behind why I chose to left in this thread that I did not share with you upon departure, E.G. Your general lack of professionalism in publicly critiquing staff members in front of other staff and players.

Correlation does not imply causation. It would be ridiculous to imply that my presence or departure would have a significant impact on bickering considering I rarely participated in any RC chat up until around the time of my departure.

As I said, preventing trials from playing events was part of removing Observer mode. It would not matter how many hearts they had.


I would not even attempt to act as though I understand everything that caused you to quit. The only things I know are things you personally presented to me, and things told to me that you supposedly said.

I did not intend imply that you and mystic not being on RC would have anything to do with RC being less hostile, only that the both of you would not know the current state of RC, only the state at your departures.

I can't believe this idea would even be entertained, since the removal of observer mode and being unable to play events would practically make the server pointless. The server has much of its game play value invested in events, and if players can't experience those events, there is little left to do.

What I told you and how I told you you could bring about my return was intended to be a concise list that would have, for the most part, solved the issues I had with your managerial style.

You chose not to accept my proposal and that is your prerogative, but I would prefer you not try to tell people I left Unholy Nation simply because I was not given a developer tag. I can't imagine any prospective worker on Unholy Nation would be appreciative of the idea that should they choose to no longer work for the server, the management will try to fudge both their intentions and reasons for departure.

Even if you did not intend it, your vague wording implied it.

I also do not appreciate this misrepresentation because we are both fully aware that this was not a one day thing. This occurred several times over several days on what I can only assume was pure whim or to satisfy some political issue, since the past 3 management reigns seem to have been dominated by politicking rather than actually working.