Over the past few years, but especially in the last two years, I (as well as other staff members and even some players) have noticed an ongoing increase in disrespect towards staff members. I was hoping this wouldn’t be required, but now we are at a point where it’s barely possible to join anymore.
Please take a few minutes to read this entire post, we, the staff team, also take hours of our free time to assist you.
I have talked to multiple staff members and the way we are being treated by some players, just isn’t acceptable.
One example is the Christmas Event. I thought I would do it, just for fun one time a few years ago as a player has held a similar smaller event like that a few years prior to the first one I’ve held.
It takes many hours to set up everything, then to assign partners (Note that for this, I have to make sure that everybody gets a partner they are able to fulfil the wishlist for, which takes a lot of time.). Then check if everything on the wishlists has been fulfilled and if not, try to get the player to fix it before the deadline. For those that didn’t get anything, replacements have to be made, which is really difficult if you have to find specific items for ~5-10 full wishlists.
All of this is fine and I did it because I enjoyed having an event where the community does something nice for each other and I love seeing players happy.
This year I didn’t have enough time for all of this, so I have decided to instead provide all gifts myself, whch isn’t exactly easy either.
Some players already started complaining about it, but I thought I’d still do it, if at least some players are happy about it.
So I’ve set up a little area again with a path from wilderness, instructions, the usual…
A lot more players actually signed up, which I really didn’t expect, but that’s great!
Now here’s where the issue is: In the last few days, I have gotten complaints from players about them not receiving their gift from me yet…
I did not set a date and I did mention a couple of times in chat that I will be very busy and it definitely won’t be before January.
It’s things like those, when you put hours of effort into something… Then people just complain.
Another things is general issues/tickets. A lot of players will not leave staff alone anymore until their ticket is done. They will sometimes start messaging us only 5 minutes or less after making the ticket. Be it in private chat or sometimes even on Discord. We get notified about tickets, there’s no need to message us about them. If you have something to add to a ticket, use /ticket reply .
We will do tickets when we have time.
Then I have noticed that there are some players trying to spread false information about bans as well as staff members’ actions. This definitely has to stop. It will only cause a lot of drama, which in the end, will be stressful for both, the staff and the players.
I have said it many times before, but here again for everyone to read: The staff team is not being paid, we are doing this because we enjoy helping others and I really hope we will continue to be able to do so. But as of right now, I’ve heard from multiple others that this is just making everybody lose the motivation.
I know there will be people saying I’m just nitpicking here. But I’m not. A few years ago, there was none of this. No player would’ve treated a staff member like that. But some players (some of which are banned, some of which aren’t) initiated this kind of disrespect. But it’s not that important how it happened, what’s important right now is that this doesn’t go on.
If you’ve wondered why a lot of staff isn’t very active, this is one of the main reasons. Another one is that some of us are really busy irl right now.
Please do not see this message as in insult personally or towards the community. It is a statement that was long overdue. Also don’t see this as an “I quit.”-message. I still enjoy helping players and I’m sure the other staff members would become more motivated and active as well when they see that things are returning to a better state again. This is fixable, but only together.
Also note that I do see that there are very young players who will make mistakes like that, I am not talking about those. This entire post is mainly about older players, some of which are even adults.
I’m not asking for players to be our slaves. But right now, a lot of players are treating staff like slaves.
- Thierry, the floating koala
First edit:
To the person who had the idea about making an official petition on change.org against me about a jailed player (who would’ve been permabanned by now anyway if it wasn’t for me), this is just going way too far! The discussion is still open and things like this will only make you look bad as well as stress out people.
PS: Note that I left out any names of staff I have talked to as well as players on purpose in order to protect them, as I know that there are some out there who absolutely love witch-hunting others.
PPS: I will update this post if anything has been left out or anything new comes up (let’s hope that won’t be the case). Also, I have decided to set this up as a single post, as something staff members (and also players, hopefully) are able to link to, should anything like that occur. If you feel like this should be discussed, please make a new thread.