Settings is considering marking some guilds as "Approved."

Before we do this we are curious what you, the players, think about this.

What benefits should having an "Approved" guild grant?

Should those guilds get a sticky?

Dear community,

We have been watching a sizable cross-section of people for some time now. Unfortunately these people (one of which I consider a friend from when I was a newb, and one of whom was once a guildmate of mine) have been greedily exploiting a bug for well over a week.

As a result of our surveilance of this situation many players have been banned for a period of one year. We deeply regret that it should have to come to this.

Every player must be accountable for their actions, and must inform us when they find exploitable bugs. The fact that this has occurred has cost the gm and dev teams many hours of our volunteered time. Both personally, and in the name of those who have lost the time they would have given to the honest and decent players who populate our server, I want to express deep disappointment in those who conducted themselves with contempt for the players/devs/and gms; actions such as this devalue all of our efforts and the time it takes all of us to make a nice playing environment.

If any of you encounter such a bug it is incumbent upon you to report it immediately and NOT to make use of it or inform other players.

Roughly 20 accounts were banned and many of these made efforts to hide their shady transactions and transfer tria to alts/mules/or other accounts. There will be no defensible claim of "just testing the a bug." Over 100 million tria were made by the various parties and there is no doubt efforts were made to hide it.

We must offer thanks to the anonymous player who discovered this problem and Immediately informed us. The bug itself was fixed within one day of our discovery and time was left for us to discover the extent of the exploiters' impact on the community.

Any appeals about these bans are to be directed to Kerol via pm on this forum or over IRC (server:freenode) in channel #planeshift-gmtalk. Any further efforts on the part of those who were banned to make this worse for the developers/players/or gms will be met with forum or IRC bans as the situation merits.

There are several accounts that are still being monitored and we hope that there will be no further need to do so, nor to ban members of our community from our world.

Please enjoy PlaneShift fairly, and use the bug tracker to help the hard-working volunteers who deliver this game to make changes that benefit all of us.

Thank you and happy gaming.

Dev (a la XilliX):

   My castle stands upon the hill.       
   it shines of whitest bone.             
   when noobies came here noobies died.
   from them I make my home.             
   Their skulls adorn my throne.         

Noob:

   dude omfg
   wtf?
   you just pwnt my ass.
   I'm calling a ref.
   and where are the mounts?       
   and why can't I fly?           
   and which way is south?       
   and what if I die?             
Dev:

   once came nooby from nooby town, 
   the noobiest noob around.         
   he came and went in ignorance     
   until his bones I ground.         
   his cries were not profound.
   
Noob:   

   give me a longsword.             
   please give me some cash.
   I don't read a word,   
   please do a podcast.     
   and where are the mounts?
   and why can't I fly?   
   and which way is south?
   and what if I die?       

Dev:   
   
   the waypost here has warning:           
   "Dear noobies, Stay Away!"             
   and yet they tread on my dark path     
   a nooby game they play                 
   I make them rue the day!               

Noob:   
   
   Hey wanna cyber?
   where do I sell hides?
   hey, where do I mine?
   I hate reading guides.
   and where are the mounts?             
   and why can't I fly?                   
   and which way is south?                 
   and what if I die?

Dev:   
   
   Then hundreds upon thousands came     
   far too many to kill,                 
   I dug a pit to catch the lame.         
   My sign read "Blood will spill."         
   Alas the noobs came still .             

Noob:   
   
   Make me your buddy
   hey, check out my site.
   what is your email
   now where do i fight?
   and where are the mounts?           
   and why can't I fly?                 
   and which way is south?               
   and what if I die?                     

Dev:   
   
   As time wore on I wanted peace
   millions and millions dead.
   the flow of noobs would never cease
   many a forum thread
   where useless noobies said:

Noob:   
   
   Hey wanna cyber?
   where do I sell hides?
   hey, where do I mine?
   I hate reading guides.
   and where are the mounts?               
   and why can't I fly?                   
   and which way is south?               
   and what if I die?

Dev:   
   
   My noobskin coat it serves me well.
   as I make noobies cold.
   They are no aid to man or gods
   I waste no time to scold
   complaints make game devs old.

[Bridge then Primary speaker becomes secondary]

Dev:

I hate noobs too much
I pull out my hair.
This chorus won't end.
I start to despair.
No there are no mounts,
Jump this cliff to fly
and that way is south
and I'll help you die

Noob:

A pop-up came! I hit the X.
I have no one to blame.
now i'm lost. What do I do next?
this game is so hard
but i won't read a guide
I fell off a mountain
slipped and I died.

Dev:

When I lost patience for the noobs
I divined what to do.
3 letters newbies never know
placed on the hill below
my sign read FAQ

Dev:

My castle stands upon the hill.       
it shines of whitest bone.             
when noobies came here noobies died.   
from them I make my home.             
Their skulls adorn my throne. 
 
http://www.xordan.com/Nooby%20Song.mp3

We want to see how you feel since there seem to be some opposing viewpoints on this.

(if you are a rper try not to stereo-type yourself by saying platinum is destroying rp, please)

I have been troubling myself quite a bit about the fact that we have a small player base.

The fact that this is so makes little sense and I am ready say the community's approach to RP may be at least partly to blame.

To me one of two things must happen for us to have the new players we need (mind most devs come from players so my interest is larger than the simple lack of players)

Either we become more welcoming to people who cannot or will not rp OR we resolve to be a niche game and ask the players to find us more rpers.

I am fine with ps remaining a niche genre game, and in fact that makes a bit of sense, but if that is the case we need our players to draw on people who roleplay elsewhere and bring them back here.

as kerol has pointed out we do not have enough players to fill all the areas we already have in a meaningful way.

We need more people.

I am interested in what the community thinks on this issue. Post away!

What you do with NPC WILL have consequences.

Do NOT engage in actions your character would not engage in with npcs. If you want to explore do so with an alt. What a character does may well haunt them in subsequent releases.

You have been warned.

Unfortunately due to the enormous pressures related to working for this game and some professional needs of my own personally, I must quit as the settings leader. There have been some very stressful disagreements with that players base that I cannot reconcile myself with and there is just no way I can foresee my self continuing to be happy and grow as a person under the current conditions.

I hope sincerely that no one will take this as negative reflection on the dev team, or on themselves personally. It is not the fact that one or another of you have offended me, it is the aggregate of things that I can no longer deal with. I must now tend to my health and well being and work on continuing my education in a manner that moves me more toward a paying job that will find me in a better place.

If things settle down for me personally, or I gain some perspective I may well return to work on this great game.

It has been great knowing all of you and this is not a good bye I hope, just a "see you later."

Best of luck to PlaneShift.