[OORP] Aegis Official Statement regarding the expanded scope of Rule 1.0

[Millie Paige]

Recently, the Staff team has set a controversial precedent, where going forward, any instances of "ganking" will be considered a violation of rule 1.0, and offenders of such instances may be reported, and subsequently punished.

While the HC team of Aegis considers ganking to not be particularly exceptional behavior, nor conducive to the longevity of the server environment, and frequently encourages our members to balance fights by joining opposing sides through prior planning and the use of our internal channels, we strongly condemn the use of the rules as a sword and shield to punish players that play well within the confines of what is clearly outlined by the rules, but do not display conduct that is deemed acceptable by the subjective standards of players in the community who may merely be upset over the outcome of a fight and resort to reports.

We strongly believe that it is up to the discretion and efforts of the community to balance fights, not the threat of punishment by the Staff. We also believe that due to the extremely subjective and complex nature of ganking because of factors such as skill level, fleet compositions, coordination abilities, and fog of war regarding who the opposing players are, players are likely to make on-the-fly misjudgments that Staff may deem unacceptable, and Staff is likely to make mis-steps when handling reports of this nature, especially when, at the time of this writing, there are no clear and concrete guidelines or protocols visible to the community regarding what is acceptable or not.

Moving forward, Aegis declares up front that while it will step up its efforts to comply with the expanded scope of rule 1.0, it will forfeit its right to report any such instances of ganking. Members that do not comply with this, and continues to report any faction, individual or group over this issue, may have their membership revoked.

We emphasise that it must be solely the wider community's responsibility to create a fun and engaging environment within the server, and that it is by desire and not obligation towards staff-enforced rules to do so. We encourage groups within the community to coordinate and communicate with other to ensure a balanced playing experience, but we do not encourage and will not resort to punitive measures against other members of the community for misjudgments or possible violations of this part of 1.0. We wish to avoid situations where other members of the community are intimidated by the rules into walking on eggshells when interacting with our faction.