Setting the record straight

[Spikedude]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

I've been hated for a long time by a good number of people. People have always opposed my style, my ideas, my updates. By all accounts, I've never been a saint, nor have I aspired to be one. My sole reason for leaving this message is because I want to clear up all the rumors floating around.

First of all, I want to explain the cross-server trading accusations by giving you the whole truth. I play Graal Kingdoms. TheJames plays Graal Kingdoms. The story starts here: a few weeks ago when I was holding PR applications, TheJames applied. Considering his extensive history with hacking, cross-server trading, and real money trading, I immediately discounted his application. On Kingdoms the next day he comes to me and says "follow me" and then drops an inferno sword (a valuable weapon) and winks at me before logging off. After picking up the item and logging on Era to see what that was about, he PMs me asking how his PR application is doing. My only assumption is that the inferno sword was meant to be some kind of bribe because he never answered any of my questions about it, and still hasn't to this day. After the PRs were hired (and not TheJames), he became furious with me and has told me multiple times he's going to "destroy me" and "kick my ass" when he "comes to Kentucky". I have never cross-server traded or given out/sold spawned items. The screenshots which have been presented are forged—PM history is easy enough to fake, and the AIM screenshots can be faked simply by changing the "display name" of a friend to "cbk1994". That's all I have to say on the topic.

Now, to the meat of it. Yes—I was fired, and on the day I planned to resign. In what I can only denounce as a cowardly show of power, TSAdmin fired me and my entire staff team about an hour after he knew I left for school. I received so many IMs to my phone that AIM stopped delivering them and I had 182 messages waiting for me on my return.

My resignation was planned for personal and selfish reasons. Managing Era had become a chore to me, and I simply didn't (don't) have the time or want to continue managing it. I was set to resign tonight.

I spoke with several potential managers but wasn't able to find anyone interested in the position—in fact, GC, the new manager, knew I was looking for a manager but made a comment to me that he didn't think he could be a manager. Sales, Squirt, and even TSA know that he was one of the people I considered long before the head of the PWA decided to take over Era.

My only guess as to my firing is that TSA wants to flaunt his newly-found power and show that he's going to "do something" about "abusive managers".

I apologize to every Era player for what I wasn't able to accomplish. I wanted to see it done it just as much as you. However, I am happy with some of the changes which have been made while I was manager: hotkeys, gun racks, gang point revisions, health leveling, and more. I hope these continue to make a positive impact on Era even while I'm gone.

I want to thank everyone who supported me as manager, and all of the great staff I've worked with over the past year and a half.

I wish GC the best of luck and harbor no bad feelings toward him or his staff. I extend the same hand to him I offered to everyone else I tried to get to replace me in the previous weeks—if there's anything I can help with, please ask. I'm happy to help you get the support center up and teach you the ropes.

Thanks for the fun and sorry for those I've let down through what I wasn't able to accomplish.

I skimmed through these 6 pages of comments, and didn't read all of them, but I hope I'm not the first person to be saying this.

From this moment onward, nobody is ever allowed to say that they miss "old Era" and how "fun and loosebased" it was, because if this is what happens for the extremely minor things Chris did in comparison to the amount of forward development he brought, the community has clearly changed too much for that time.

That said, to fix the problem of "corruption," a staff is immediately hired filled almost entirely with blacklisted people, including previous RC holders who have been banned for malicious use of rights, people involved in many spawning incidents over the years, and people who are known to abuse glitches in other ways, such as duping and scamming. Rather than doing it slowly and testing each individual staff member, the entire trusted staff was removed at once and replaced with a staff of untested members wielding RC rights.

Geo may have been a fine manager, but that was way too fast of a staff overhaul for a time when this much development was happening. You should have slowed your roll a little.

Chris, in my opinion you were great as manager, you had more forward development than we've had in the course of four years and God knows how many management teams. I hope this next-bus stops soon.

Best of luck to Kinetaro too, you've been helping on Era as long as anyone, and I doubt any of the current staff have nearly the amount of development wisdom as you do.