What happened to Diplomacy?

[Farek]

I admire your champion attitude, Rakeesh, but we're all adults (or should at least be acting that way Smile ), so these people that left because of other people/groups treating them poorly should defend themselves or explain in their own words why they left, without targeting specific people

I simply got tired of fighting a battle that I couldn't win against the powers that be. I devoted my time as an official, and even more of my time as a dedicated player, but the constant clash with about a half-dozen people made all my work at getting 100 WoLs, officiating, and RPing seem a waste of time.

I've had an official refuse to call my duels, I've seen instant messaging logs of off-duty officials insulting me behind my back (stupidly enough, to my friends) and I've even had a direct, private confrontation with a RoH official where he e-mailed me one of the most vulgar, violent, profanity-laced tirades I've ever seen.

Still, I don't want to give the illusion that I was not part of the problem. Sometimes I enjoyed the clash against the administration. Sometimes I argued for the sake of arguing. In all honesty, I did not like the majority of the "clique", as it's been referred to, and I did not hide that fact.

To sum it up --they didn't like me, I didn't like them, and I had accomplished my personal dueling goals, so I left and chose to spend my time doing other things.

[Artemus Kurgen]

Seeing as the two topics are related, I think it may be best for us all to refer to another thread that's in Thoughts and bring that discussion to greater light.

http://www.ringsofhonor.org/forums/view ... hp?t=22236

Players leave for various reasons and those reasons belong to the individuals involved. Not anyone else. Sure we all want to know what drives our fellow players away, so that we are then aware of it, but the reasons are still their's and their's alone. Soerl's player tried to bring into focus the view of "what can we do as a community to reduce the risk of alienating the quieter members of the community?" At least this is the impression I got, if I'm wrong, please correct me.

Swim or sink, this forum/game/community sits on the shoulders of EVERYONE that interacts here. Not just the few on the administrative staff, volunteers, and Peer leaders in the community whom most of us turn to with our questions and answers. To help clarify some of this I'm going to use a few generalizations as I've seen them put out in the aether over the years:

Off and on the idea of "cliques" has been brought up, and yes they do exist, even if people are not aware. But EVERYONE is part of a clique in some manner. Cliques can be narrowed down to the vague answer of a circle of friends. If you consistently play with players A,B,C,and D, they become YOUR clique. You and your characters become associated with that group. We can say the DoD are a clique, CDR is a clique, the Wrecking Crew can be considered a clique.

As has been stated cliques are normally a circle of friends or a group with a set standard of similar interests. There are people who refuse to admit they're in one, or their friends being a clique is a misconception, but the fact remains you're still more than likely to play with that group over any other. Hence, you're in a clique.

In that idea this community is a giant clique with smaller sub-cliques. Like classes and labels in a High School; we have our Jocks, our Goths, our AV guys/gals, our hill billy rednecks, our preps, and never to be forgotten, the outcasts who don't really fit in with any of the others so they form their own consortium. Looking at the player base in terms of high school clusters makes things easier to put into perspective. Sure some things overlap and members of each group can get along with certain members of the others, but not everyone is able get along. It's the nature of this game and life. Everyone isn't able to be friends with everyone else all of the time.

Your "Class" i.e. Freshman, Sophomore etc. is defined by who came into the game at the same time as you. Vanion's player came in about 2 years before me, so in our yearbook he was a Junior when I joined that year's Freshman class of RoH players. This also helped my own perspectives of why he and I butted horns all the time.


I think that's the end of my ramblings for now.

[Lydia Loran]

I don't think cliques are a bad thing in of themselves. It's nice to find a place you feel you belong. When you're not a part of any one group, sometimes, it's a crummy feeling. You don't feel you belong. :\ You feel out of place. Before coming here, I was starting to feel like that, but since coming here, yeah, I guess you could say I've found a clique or two I fit in.

What I don't like or care to tolerate though, is certain groups thinking that just because they're in said group they have a sense of.. entitlement. Luckily, I've not encountered this here. From what I've seen, a good deal of people seem to get along, or at the very least if they don't like each other, they stay out of each other's ways or can at least be polite.

And to throw in my two cents, I'd like to see (as related to the other thread Artemus linked to) more suggestions on how to move *past* the.. well. The past. I don't really think it's doing much good trudging up past ill will and bad blood. The question is how to move beyond it. How to make things better for *now*. For everyone.

Or maybe I'm really really lost as far as the direction this thread has taken when compared to the original intents...

[Napoleon Bonarat]

Well, for me, I moved past negative things by not playing a controversial character as my "main."

I'm not happy with how I behaved at times when faced with difficult people. Today, whenever I get my hackles up when someone posts/RPs something irritating I just think "what would Napoleon do?" And that helps put it in perspective.

[Karen Wilder]

Well, for me, I moved past negative things by not playing a controversial character as my "main."

I'm not happy with how I behaved at times when faced with difficult people. Today, whenever I get my hackles up when someone posts/RPs something irritating I just think "what would Napoleon do?" And that helps put it in perspective.

You know, it's funny... That's exactly what I did.

I stopped playing the "face" that everyone knew... I spent most of my time playing Maetel and playing another character I had initially only created as an NPC part of Maetel's back-story.

In time, I grew past the problems I'd had before... I rebuilt another old character of mine (KW here) and got involved in things again.

So, I guess that sometimes walking completely away isn't the answer. Just try a different perspective, eh?

[Elijah]

Ditto what Napoleon and KW just replied saying.

If you play with attitude you will get attitude back. And more often than not that was the worse case of passive-aggressivess in blending IC and OOC with players here.

Most players know the mistakes I made with Elijah the character here. I did well with Baphe for a long time and I often hear how of all my characters that was everyone's favorite of mine, but even I messed that up by trying to associate him with Elijah.

I think the only character I've truly done reasonably right in terms of how I play him IC is Joku Shoyia.

I think we all started here wanting to run fresh with our favorite characters from offline experiences and of course stumble and make mistakes that sometimes ruin a character. And no matter how hard we hold on tight and try to right the wrongs, often the damage is irrepairable.

Cliques I think are bad in an RPG environment because often if they don't like some older player but a newer player comes around they like the newer player blacklists the non cliqued player because of what a group tells them. Its hard to play a new character often because it's hard to break into RP. But often you can tell they are trying to figure out if you are truly new or a ringer in disguise.

My best advice to anyone who has had the kind of issues I have had, or like Farek has described, and others with negative events in RoH is adapt your involvement to help advoid more of that if you can not change it.

I will always love the dueling community and I will always be around either very actively or infrequently depending on what goes on here and what goes on in life offline. I am sure others will too and some I am in good standing with and some are not, but I get out of this place just enough of what I put into it to make myself content with my hobby entertainment time.