You know, there's a real problem on the forums.

[Gambet]

Originally Posted by excaliber7388

The last part of my post states he had a purpose.
One I respect immensely

Yes, because if he deleted your computer NPC for the same reason you'd be thrilled about it, right?


Because apparently no matter what he may have done, you'd be perfectly fine with it since you 'respect' his 'purpose' 'immensely'.

[Lord Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by excaliber7388

The last part of my post states he had a purpose.
One I respect immensely

Once again you've wrongly perceived what "necessary" and "heroes" are. As Gambet just said, according to you, he could have hacked into your computer, stolen all your files from Dark Rival and uploaded them on Zodiac, and you wouldn't care because he had a good purpose?

[konidias]

lol... This is a privately run forum and game. There is nothing you can do but leave. They've made it pretty clear that they run things their own way. This is not a country. If they wanted you to put "I'm a stupid face" at the beginning of every post then you'd have two choices. Neither of them being "complain".

[Googi]

Originally Posted by konidias

lol... This is a privately run forum and game. There is nothing you can do but leave. They've made it pretty clear that they run things their own way. This is not a country. If they wanted you to put "I'm a stupid face" at the beginning of every post then you'd have two choices. Neither of them being "complain".

It's not like I posted this because I think it will actually result in a change in forum policy.

[Inspiration]

I completely agree with Googi in all aspects on this topic.

However, while I believe Googi attempted to avoid any blatent subjective views on the topic, I have a few I'd like to state.

When moderating a forum, it is your job to ensure the most enjoyable experience for the forum user base. The logic behind this is quite simple.

If you have 20 forum regulars who all enjoy your forum, this number will do nothing but increase.

Why? Well, there are a few major reasons.

First off, the active forum regulars will most likely advocate forum usage to their friends, and other people they meet.

Secondly, they themselves will more actively post, and be more inclined to debate and discuss any and all topics.

The position of moderator; especially a forum admin or a super moderator, should, in all ideals, be given to someone who represents the user base in the community and has an interest in the forum growing and prospering.

Clearly, on the Graal Online forums, this is not the case.

The moderation here believe it is their job only to enforce rules, delete and remove what they decide is either spam, off topic, or in appropriate, and punish users. They have very little interest in community development. They do not activly take parts in debates, they rarely start topics of interest, and they rarely post at all besides to tell us when we're wrong.

They represent a ghost community of posters who wish for a friendly forum without any debating, any disagreements, and heaven forbid, a little bit of playful namecalling here and there. They site this community as a majority.

This ghost community does not exist, needless to say, and yet it is catered to more than the few highly active posters left on this forum.

The ideal is maintained, while the reality is ignored.

Basically, the moderation here chooses to ignore the fundemental nature of any public forum, of any MMORPG userbase, and attempts to create a forum that would be more suited for a Christian Youth Group.

The result? The fourms lose users on a daily basis. People defect to other forums. Or they lose interest in the community in general, and thus in Graal Online in general.

Community is what keeps games like this together, yet the administration cares nothing for their community. They care for ghost players. Ghosts that will never come alive because they do nothing to actively draw players onto these forums and into the game.

There is no reason to use this forum besides habit.

People wish to be able to debate anything and everything.

People wish to be able to publically question moderation, and publically recieve respect for their questioning, and answers to their concerns.

People wish to have moderators that they view as peers, not as parents. They like feeling that they can forum PM a mod and have their concerns and issues listened to with compassion and truely cared about.

They recieve none of this here.

I've never seen a forum where so many people have strong dislike for the people who run it beyond this one.

As Googi pointed out, the people are so desperate for heros fighting the administration they will even rally behind a corrupt, immature kid crying out for attention, so long as his corruption is aganist the administrations wishes

[PrinceDark]

There is no reason to use this forum besides habit.

Very true. There are very little threads of interest. And the ones that are interesting get locked or deleted even when triggered by 1 random offtopic post. Too many times the idea of "oh the thread has served its purpose or the answer was given so now lets lock this thread". What if there is more information other users can provide to further help an individual or help other individuals.
For example. Lets say someone needs NPC help and a couple users post some tips. Do you just lock it because the individual has been helped? No, not a good idea, because what if others have better tips and suggestions. It helps not only that user, but others in the future that may search for similar problems.

Now I know the scripting section is not all like that because majority of mods know jack squat about development, but it would help in other sections of the forums if threads would be allowed to stay open longer where more users can participate in giving their input.

[zell12]

As for Yen, he was a good pal. Turned out a little this year asking to see everyone on a cam. Oh well. Any work uploaded to the server, is owned by Graal.

Who knows, maybe he deleted some stuff, maybe he didn't. I think we beat around the bush enough. ;/


As far as the forum administration goes, they need to lighten up. Get active with the community, as one of the previous posters said. Sadly, the activity on the forums is severely declining. Anyone that was here from the beginning knows this. I think it's related to the moderation of these boards, more so then anything else.


As the activity on these boards further decline, I hope at some point the majority of the administration realize, "Hey, maybe we should have listened to them."

[Inspiration]

Originally Posted by zell12

As the activity on these boards further decline, I hope at some point the majority of the administration realize, "Hey, maybe we should have listened to them."

The problem is they never want to admit to their shortcomings, which is rediculous.

Part of managing or running any business, forum, server, whatever, is having an open mind to the thoughts of the people who are your user base.

Moonie's major shortcoming is that she is zealous about her devotion to Unixmad's wishes.

I sometimes wonder if she fully supports all of the rules she enforces, simply because she often suggests people to bring issues to Unix that they disagree with, rather than justifying and explaining them herself.

The thing here is, she is in a position where she could argue the rules aganist Unix for the sake of the community that does still exist here, however, she either chooses not to, does so with little conviction, or believes in the lacking rules she enforces.

It all goes back to my overall feelings though:

Our moderation should represent the average members of our community, not some "shining ideal" that everyone should pretend to behave like, or else mommy and daddy are going to give us a timeout.

[Devil]

Fantastic post Googi, I'll come back and update what I have to say later.

[zell12]

I'm also a very active member on the WoW community forums. Even though their moderators don't really participate all that much (I can see why, the community is huge, and they also want to play the game ), there are hardly no complaints from the members (that I can visually see on the forums). They are half as strict, even with 200x the population this board has, and its fine.

I'm not good with words, and you won't see any of my posts with big ones in them either. Oh well, if people can't see my point (I know tomorrow when they wake up there will opposer's), pm me for ventrilo information.

[Crono]

Haha this thread made my morning well.

I love Googi's post, it's so well typed out. Also I personally never regarded Yen as a hero, I don't know why you guys did.

The biggest ownage in this thread had to be Kevin going "define logic" and then Googi goes "look it up".

[excaliber7388]

Originally Posted by Lord Sephiroth

The whole point you're supposed to be arguing was whether or not what Yen did was necessary or justified, despite anything he took down being his. There were more mature, respectable ways he could have handled himself.

There was?
...like...?

Originally Posted by Inspiration

As Googi pointed out, the people are so desperate for heros fighting the administration they will even rally behind a corrupt, immature kid crying out for attention, so long as his corruption is aganist the administrations wishes

I agree with your entire post, and this last part.
Just wanted to clear that up.

[konidias]

I think this thread makes it's point clear with the cherry picking since for some reason this thread is still not closed yet it's discussing bans and forum rules and all sorts of "illegal" things.

Yet someone makes a harmless joke towards somebody else and it ends up in 12 replies in a row being pruned. Are the mods afraid of closing this in fear that their forum reputation will sink even lower?

Do your jobs right. That's all anyone here is asking. If you're gonna go overkill on harmless threads then you better go overkill on everything (like this thread). But better yet, why don't you stop going overkill on threads all together and just deal with threads/posts that are ACTUALLY OFFENSIVE and breaking serious rules.

edit: basically just make up your minds already. I think most players here would agree with me when I say that we are tired of having the forums moderated differently every other day simple because a mod decides to have a different outlook on life for a day. None of this one day you're a free spirit and letting people get away with posts like this, and another day you're a hardened communist leader who isn't allowing the simplest of free speech.

[zell12]

I agree with Koni's point in his edit. Sometimes mods will delete a string of posts when there is spam or an argument, even their own when related some how. Yet, sometimes they won't delete them, and continue posting. Makes no sense.


Darlene deleted every thread that we created related to this issue Googi spawned again. Yet, it's still sitting here. Why? What makes this one different? He made a bigger post?


I know this thread again will probably not change anything, but just remember down the road, we were right. You don't want to give us a say in how these boards are moderated, fine. But you are furthering the gab between us.

[excaliber7388]

Originally Posted by zell12

He made a bigger post?

You got it bucko.
Lets look back.
When a thread goes off topic, why close the thread, or even delete it, when you could simply split it, allowing the discussions to go on elsewhere. Thats that was done with the Mac vs PC thread, and in that fashion, both discussions were kept alive. Moderators should push to keep threads open and alive as much as possible, it creates a healthy and welcoming atmosphere. You know, the kind a customer could get connected to.
You have to convince us it's worth it to renew out VIP or Gold. Is Graal going to cater to my needs as a customer? Do they care about what I think? If the answer is no, you're not going to get returning customers. Many of our active members here have only a classic account. In fact, some of the most active members of Graal are still using a classic account. Why pay for more if your dollar isn't a 'dollar vote'.
The idea of a 'dollar vote' is that in buying something from a company, you can influence what that company does, and how it handles its customers. It's the idea that the customer is always right that has kept capitalism alive. If you forget this basic principal for any longer, you're going to start to see some losses, and I'm sure that's something you don't want.

[Tom]

googi is like graals michael moore

[Darlene159]

Wow, it is true. Sam and I have to be here on top of this forum 24/7!
My god, what is it that you people don't understand? Unixmad specifically said not to make post discussing the rules, bans, infractions, etc...so what is done? This, right here, over and over, and over again! I have not been able to view the forums as closely the last few days because of personal issues in real life that need my attention, sue me!!

There is a support center for this stuff, it is there for a reason. STOP MAKING THESE KINDS OF THREADS, AND THEN BASHING THE MODS FOR NOT GOING AGAINST UNIXMAD, AND THEN BASHING US FOR NOT DELETING IT RIGHT AWAY!!

If people retaliate, and make more threads/posts, it will only result in a ban. If you have complaints, fine, but complain in the correct way by using the support center, forum PM's, email, etc...just not here because it breaks the rules!!!!!