Experiment Successful

[Boss]

This post will cause rage from a lot of people. However, I'm a bit past the caring stage at this point. This will probably look like a tl;dr at first, but please read the whole thing. I'll try to make it short. Also, don't comment on "Oh, Boss, this doesn't apply to me and you still wrote it in the second person!"

Cry some more.

The Problem

Discovery is a corpse.

It's a fun corpse at times, but when was the last time you logged in expecting to have oodles of fun? For me, it's been about three months. It became a game of internet politics, which I hate.

No matter what faction you're in, you've experienced it. Non-progression. Stasis. People saying "Oh, you can't do this" or "You can't have that". By "people" I mean "admins" and "devs".

Before you start with OMG KARLOTTA ALT!!!11!!...

I'm not against any of our admins, don't get me wrong here. They do a good job, considering that it could well be a full-time job in itself that they do of their own volition in their spare time. For that, I laud them. Every rose has its thorns, though. Our admin team has been static for more than three years. New blood was added periodically, but the most recent batch quit almost to a man, if I recall correctly. While this does keep the admin team with a lot of experience, it also provides ruts. Set in their ways, certain members of the community are granted virtually free reign to the detriment of everyone around them.

Interestingly enough, these people rage like none other when beaten at their own game.

Enough beating around the bush. I've been here for nearly three years, and I've come to a conclusion.

Discovery needs a reboot

I don't mean a player wipe. That would kill the serverbase and Discovery would die completely.

What we need is a new admin and moderator team. Why? If Discovery is a server, it's been running for five years without a defrag and antivirus scan. It's been infested with unsavory practices and principles. I saw a newbie in Pennsylvania last night who -just- arrived and logged in for the first time. I'd hate for that person to have to arrive on the forums and find 4chan Lite just because someone has an ego to feed.

Specific people

Yes, I'm going to call people out, both for good and for bad.

The Bad

JihadJoe
I'm sorry you're first, but you came to mind as I was writing this. You helped create some of the problem children of Discovery, and now seem blind to their tantrums. You've even set up a special division of the [LN] for them. Gold wing. I know not every member of said wing is a problem, but those characters provide a mask for blatant PvPwhoring without knowing who it really is.

Dab
Your ego has diminished somewhat since I got here, which is good. You still lock some threads for reasons I don't quite understand though. Possibly because they contain sound reasoning, perhaps not.

Dieter
The same set of obnoxious persons were accepted -- nay, headhunted -- for your band of merry men, the Mandalorians. While good for business, it ticks people off.

Zelot
It's been a long-running in-joke that everything is your fault, but it's not. You're usually pretty level-headed, if quick to edit people's posts with your signature orange.

Zeltak
El numero uno of the problem children. You relentlessly troll anyone and everyone for sh*ts and giggles. Yet somehow, this goes unnoticed and even encouraged by this mod's leadership. You're good at PvP, so the logical thing to do is go balls-out and do nothing but kill people, then log a different ship, and kill them again. Simply to see them rage. You've created groups with virtually every NPC faction there is, then abandoned them once found out.

enojado
From what I've seen, you work closely with Sina to cause mayhem. You're just less obvious about it.

Naukhel
I'm noticing a trend here.

The Good

Ench
The face that launched a thousand ships. Well, a thousand torpedos into a thousand ships. Which then exploded. You also have a disturbing fondness for BBcode. I used to despise you, for some odd reason, but you're pretty mrawr. :3

Doc Jameson
Thanks for listening to me, buddy.

Walker
No more eight-gunned Liberators, k? K.

Zapp
You've been my role model, did you know that?

Zoners
Zonerzonerzonerzonerzoner

Dusty
I miss the MC Hammer avatar.

Chris
Pick a Chris, there's several dozen to choose from. I approve of the Chris Collective account.

The Ugly

Forum politics have become the norm. Endless bickering, barely controlled anger, and thinly veiled trolling are the social artifacts of Discovery. We've forgotten how to be civil.

Whatever happened to the early days of 4.84?

The Solution

I'm going to recap here because a lot of people are going to tl;dr and just read the top paragraph and the bottom paragraph.

New mods, new admins, nerf Sabre, nerf Kraken, zonerzonerzoner, flame Q_Q rage, Sina pvpwhore, omg u suk, random cat pictures, TEH SERVAR IS DOWN!!111!!!1wunwun, World of Tanks.

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.