Staff Feedback Thread

[Semir Gerkhan]

I couldn't agree more with LuckyOne, Demonic and Mel's previous posts.

For several days now, I 've observed a sudden tendency among staff to enforce rule 1.4 in an absolutely strict manner, beyond what logic and common sense advise. In principle I agree with the rule. Currently I also don't like stupid names, memes or characters directly plagiarized from pop culture, because they generally break the immersion with the RP. However, I have always considered that rules, norms, laws in general, should not exist for the simple fact of existing, they don't justify themselves by their mere existence. On the contrary, their existence must serve the objective they pursued when they were created. In this case, rule 1.4 exists due to the need to protect the immersion of RP, which could be broken if people give themselves stupid names, or directly transfer characters from series, comics or whatever, to the server.

However, if the application of the rule not only doesn't meet the objective that was created (protect the RP), but also goes against some of the best expressions of RP characters that have been seen on this server since its inception, it's evident that either the rule is wrong, or it isn't being applied correctly. Trying to impose this rule, at this point, on characters who have existed on this server for many years, with absolutely enriching RP experiences, is truly crazy and completely meaningless.

Even in the case of Doc, which isn't only that he transferred the name of Doctor John Henry Holliday to his character, but it's suggested that he IS directly Doctor John Henry Holliday (as expressed in his personal description), he has been for no less than 15 years. In those 15 years that character has evolved and has had his own personal story, and has enriched those of many other people's characters, to such a point that today Doc Holliday is no longer a real character taken from History, but a completely new and original.

I don't understand how it's possible that a person who has been playing a character for 15 years can be required to suddenly, overnight, change his name because it goes against rule 1.4. I myself had a character called Semir Gerkhan 10 years ago, taken from a television series. He was my first character, and although he no longer exists, he gave the name to my main forum account. At that time no one told me that I couldn't use that character name. If I had continued RPing with him all this time and now I was suddenly told that I couldn't continue calling him that, I would be devastated, and it would make me want to leave and never come back.

Returning to the topic of Doc, first of all one might wonder if rule 1.4 existed in 2008, and if it did, what application was made of it. Secondly, what is the deadline for staff to pursue these "violations" of rule 1.4? Because there should be a statute of limitations so that these things don't happen. Not warning a player that his name is against the rules for 15 years, and doing it now, when he's a well-known character in the community and has thousands of hours of RP behind him, is an attack in itself against the RP.

And, I'm sorry, but hiding behind phrases like "the rules must be the same for everyone" isn't enough as an excuse. Of course they must be, but the application of the rules must also be governed by common sense. The strict and unreasonable application of the rules causes them to damage what they are intended to protect, and in doing so they become not only ineffective, but a danger. That is why there are judges in RL, to interpret the rules based on common sense and the purpose for which they were created. If everything were as easy as writing a rule on paper and applying it indiscriminately, we wouldn't need legal systems or judges. Judges exist because the rules must be interpreted when they are applied, also based on the context in which the events occur.

On the other hand, it seems that lately some of the staff have been very dedicated to reviewing the names of all the characters on the server, even doing active investigations to find even the slightest pop culture reference that could be among them. I would sincerely like to see that zeal, that dedication on the part of the staff, to try to mediate or speak out in the resolution of other problems related to the RP that we're having on the server. I will use the Kansas discussion as an example (I repeat, it's a mere example that I give because it has even reached this thread in previous posts). At this point, I personally care very little who is right in this topic, but since it's evident that there is a serious conflict in the interpretation of the rules on RP by the different parties and factions, I'm surprised that I haven't read any official statement from the staff on that subject, and yet be attending this kind of "witch hunt" about characters names, whose purpose I cannot understand.

And please, I hope that with this no one sees that I am joining the bandwagon of constant criticism to the staff. In general I believe that the staff does what they can with what they have, but if something seems stupid to me, I feel obliged to say so.


TL;DR: I don't agree with applying now rule 1.4 to characters with a long RP history on the server. They are established characters at this point. If in their day they were transfers of pop culture characters, now they are no longer, because what happened in RP on the server has turned them into original creations of their players. The time to ask them to change their name passed a long time ago. If it wasn't done at the time, now it makes no sense to do so, and forcing them to do so harms the RP.