Arelith

That reminded me of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=30067

Aside from real life being crazy, the whole Discord experience was one of the main reasons why I found it harder and harder to stay commited to playing on Arelith for the past year or two. It was discouraging and disheartening. In many ways, it reminded me of the chaotic, silly, and at times outright concerning things one would see in the gamespy chat in between server resets or crashes. Only now it is more organized, easier to access and with prettier makeup.

Specially seeing how often it bleeds into the in game experience, and how painfully obvious that can be.

Now, I am aware that I am an old fart, and that a lot of what I hold dear in regards to Arelith, I am likely looking at it through rose tinted glasses.
But that doesn't change the fact that, with far more limited resources and tools IG, people were still able to organize, plan, communicate and enjoy all manner of factions, settlements and events, without ever having to do more than sending a tell to clarify timezone shenanigans.

Yet amazing stories were told.

I'd even go so far as making the herectic statement that, sometimes, the fact that it was a bit difficult to do, made everything all the more rewarding and worthwhile.
That's not to say that I think people should be breaking their backs trying to just have fun with their friends while playing a video game.

But I do think that the more Arelith becomes similar to any other mmo, both in its content and its community, the more it loses what made it special to begin with. What still makes it special.

Many people have described already the many issues with faction/settlement/region discords, but it can be easily summed up to this:
Despite the best intentions of the people in them (or, sometimes, because of their worst intentions), they naturally and almost invariably foster an us vs them mentality and a play to win mentality, and nothing could be more opposite to what Arelith is meant to be.

I don't want to log in and be asked my discord after a few, slow and absent minded lines of rp.
I don't want to enter a settlement and find that its main message board has nearly no activity in it, because everything is being said oocly.
I don't want to open my quarter and have no messages waiting for me, because someone already told me everything through pms on Discord.


I want to log in and learn things as I pretend to be a pixelated dwarf. Meet people as my ugly bearded avatar does. Stumble into things randomly.
Walk into a town, find by chance a pixelated half-elf that my short avatar knows, and see what happens from there.
Or read something in a board about a dryad dance party happening in a few days and go and check it out for myself. Perhaps I'll miss it, and that'll suck, but I can still go and ask about it after the fact.

The options are endless.

OOC communication has its place.

But that place is, and should remain, extremely small.

Borin Drakkmurl wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:31 pm
I don't want to log in and be asked my discord after a few, slow and absent minded lines of rp.
I don't want to enter a settlement and find that its main message board has nearly no activity in it, because everything is being said oocly.
I don't want to open my quarter and have no messages waiting for me, because someone already told me everything through pms on Discord.

+1

Let me just begin by saying we are not naïve, and are well aware that Discord channels are very much the norm for gamers in 2021, and that little we can do on our side can control which ones players may choose to create.

With that being said, let us move on to the specific issues we are faced with as Arelith, one that has not only come to concern staff, but has also been the subject of a number of reports by players, asking that we review our policy on.

Increasingly it is the case that actual Arelith settlements are being represented in private Discords, which while they appear official, are not. Players who join these settlements are invited to join them, while those that run them often assume an authority over that specific location. For many of our players this is not done maliciously, but out of a genuine wish to help coordinate the player base and strengthen the community. Nevertheless, there are some serious issues.

Let's look at them.

As mentioned above many of these are run by admins who are not the elected leaders of those settlements, and they thus exercise an OOC authority over the location that is not warrented by the in-game situation. This direclty feeds into a clique mentality, can actively discourage change, and can be used to unfairly apply pressure to new characters. If there is to be an admin of a Discord for our settlements, it should be run by the elected leader.

Our official Discord is moderated, to ensure there is no bullying, that content is kept within our 'T' rating policy, and that players are treated resepectfully within our community. On these servers this simply isn't the case. There are frequent reports of 'shit talking', and with at least one of these having a NSFW channel.

Metagaming – this is should be self explanatory, and something that, again, our moderators can control, but is continues on many of these private Discords.


Now, as we mentioned at the outset; we cannot control what Discord our players set up, or the standards to which they run then, but we do ask, that players no longer set these up, and name them, to operate as semi-official Discords for actual Arelith settlements and locations.

Those that already exist have three options.

Rename, migrate, or integrate.

Rename speaks for itself – do not name these after Arelith settlements – it gives a false impression that they are official by using a name which is clearly part of our server architecture.

To migrate, means shutting such Discords down, and asking us to set up a private channel on our official server. We will grant a leadership role to the current elected leader, and allow them to control who is able to view it. We can also do this for existing factions. Please send a PM to the active DMs in order to do this.

To integrate means bringing your already existing settlement Discord under the umbrella of the Arelith Official with appropriate Arelith moderation. We would ask that you abide by our rules of conduct, do not include adult content, and have your admin set up as whoever is the currently elected leader, or a person appointed by them. In return we will ask any participating DM to join the group, in order to answer questions, act a contact person for staff and serve in a moderating role. Disclaimer: This works to help keep existing content such as useful links, discussions in tact while aiding in removing the consistent problems with private Discords.

We sincerely hope that out community members understand why we are taking the above steps. Discord can be a huge enabler of a cohesive and supportive community, but it can also be misued, and in the case of Arelith settlement wielded to apply a degree of control that is not founded on the actual in-game situation.

We will, from this point on, moderate discord invitations placed on our Official Discord, or sent via tells in game, and ask that when appropriate, players emphasise when these are to UNOFFICIAL and UNMODERATED Arelith communities.

Any player that feels they have been subject to abuse or witness to bullying or rule breaches on unofficial Arelith Disords can report it to the Arelith Staff, and where approriate we may take action against those involved.