So... uh... wth happened to my user title?

[Sighter Tnailog]

I would also like to say that I have no idea what you mean that in Tanthanas established folks didn't roleplay with other folks. When I joined Tanthanas, the first person to actually post in one of my roleplaying threads was none other than Santhalas himself.

Honestly, I think we have more a problem now with folks who don't RP with new folks than we ever had at Tanthanas. I'm just as culpable in that as anyone else, but I was around starting two months after Tanthanas got started, and I never saw the problems you describe. Half the time on Tanthanas, I was judging the new folks' writing, and I saw Silence Sei Orlouge going out of his way to help out Yari Rafanas, who then went out of his way to help Ter-Thok. I saw Treslizn helping out Ciancth, and Devon roleplaying with Manda (metallica) before anyone knew who Metallica was. The "legends" of Tanthanas were far more active than any of our current players are with helping new folks, and this is speaking as a judge who has more experience judging quests than probably anyone except Damon -- and who has been judging for a longer time than most anyone else on Althanas, save maybe Dirks.

[Zieg dil' Tulfried]

I'd have to agree with Finny on this one. My first thread as a level 0 on Tanthanas all those years ago was with one HybridHeero, who was the precursor to Damon and Yari as the EXP monger. At that time he was level 8, the highest on Althanas, and he jumped right into a fight with me and we tied at 82.5, yes in my first thread.

[Sighter Tnailog]

I have heard through various channels, too, that I am a blind man with my nostalgic ass up my head when it comes to Tanthanas.

But what I did on Tanthanas and on Althanas today was serve as a judge. I read threads. I explored writing from a wide variety of folks, anyone who PMed me or submitted a judging request. I have a frame of reference from which I can compare the various incarnations of Althanas across a significant time frame and make an unbiased judgment of quality. Often, those who criticize Tanthanas tend to speak of it as if it was a cogent reality -- a sort of small-scale Orientalism that collapses a very vibrant time period into a singular entity without difference among its constituent parts.

Tanthanas had its moments of elitism and its moments of openness, but on balance openness was the watchword of the day. If nothing else, new people were helped along by the very system we have developed -- the rubric. That, at least, is applied to everyone, regardless of whether you did your thread with a newbie or with someone else.

[LordLeopold]

Tanthalas was better than the new Althanas because people were more excited about roleplaying.

[Sighter Tnailog]

I will say that we could all work better about elitism. I'm definitely sometimes guilty of thinking the old ways are better, but I honestly don't. I think Althanas is better now, just in terms of content and talent, than it was on Tanthanas. The culture may be different, and maybe people are less excited about roleplaying, but I don't think anything will be made better by trying to make everything exactly like Tanthanas was.

There were good and bad elements of the past. I just don't think elitism was a problem we had. A lack of content, however, was. Now we have fewer content problems (although those still exist). The true problem we have now, though, may be that our content is too dense to be quickly accessible to folks, so people leave before they get a chance to find out what we've worked to build.

[Jasmine]

And Althanas is a mature forum, if you have a problem with a mod, you say something to that mod, who by the way does not have the ability to block or ban you. Only admins have that and they cannot do it without good reason.

Then explain to me why last year when we were first recovering from the big crash, I got a ban on this account and to my knowledge, had done NOTHING wrong. No one said anything to me, I went to bed one night, and the next day, couldn’t log in cause I was banned. I asked the only Admin I could get in touch with (Serilliant) about it and got told that I wasn’t going to be given a reason. It took me pestering Matt over AIM to get that ban lifted, and I still don't know why it ever happened. Matt said that no reason was put on the account so other mods/admins would know the reason.

I think we as the moderators and admins thought you guys would be more mature about a simple thing such as user titles and just trust us as a team to formulate something.

We probably would have been if there had been some prior communication before hand. As it stands, it’s not so much the titles themselves that tick me off about this, but that it was a right to make up whatever title we wanted, and now all of sudden it’s been yanked away with no reason given. Only to be continually told “You’re making a big deal out of nothing” and “Trust us, we’ll tell you the reason eventually, but in the meantime, just trust us”

It means nothing.

It did to me. My titles “Althana’s ONLY Alaskan” was the only way I connected my various accounts and it showed something unique about myself, without wasting sig space.

we'd probably get fired.

Not if we couldn’t prove it. I had a thread that didn’t do so well because the other people in it bailed out on me. It was before the big crash, so I don’t have it anymore. Anyway, I really needed a specific spoil, but as per normal, the mod wouldn’t let me have it as I needed it. Despite how I described it as being fine silver, it was knocked down several pegs. After like 4 PMs back and forth Serilliant stuck his head in it, and told me that the ONLY way I could POSSIBLY get the spoil I needed, was to have it rejudged and that I would have to take whatever that second score was, regardless of whether it was better or worse. Well, I REALLY needed that spoil, so I let Seri rejudge it (he’d also told me that HE was the ONLY one that could rejudge things), and I got such a worse score than the first time that even the original judge said that Seri had been too harsh. And it was all because I dared to keep asking about something I had a question about, that I did not feel had been answered yet. If the mod in question had explained to me better why he was so limited in what he could do, I could have changed my request to not be so specific about the quality of the spoil and done a quest later in which the quality was proved. But he didn’t, so I wound up getting an unfairly harsh judging because I THOUGHT that the Admin would be professional in his judging, but once again, I was wrong.

My point is, if you're going to have your account banned, there's going to be a very obvious reason for it.

BULL! You’ve banned me before and when I asked for a reason, you flat REFUSED to give me a reason of any sort.


Now that my primary things I saw are answered, I really don’t like the idea of having to earn the use of a custom title. I really don’t. It’s a darn good thing that IC things like Tournies and JCs won’t be the primary ways of earning titles, because I’d be flat outta luck. I don’t ever participate in tournies because I don’t like the very short amount of time we’re given to complete the stuff for them and I’m a terrible battler and have no intention of bettering that aspect of my characters. They weren’t designed to go around battling all the time, so I don’t worry about it. I would still like to know some details about how this is supposedly going to make it more fun for everyone, cause right now I have some serious doubts that it will be.

[Sighter Tnailog]

I can't speak to your individual situation, Jasmine, as I wasn't involved, but I can speak to this.

I don’t ever participate in tournies because I don’t like the very short amount of time we’re given to complete the stuff for them and I’m a terrible battler and have no intention of bettering that aspect of my characters.

This is the sort of attitude that I'm seeing from a number of people, and frankly, I don't like it. If you have no intention of bettering an aspect of your character, then perhaps your lack of a custom title is warranted.

I am currently competing in the Althanaversary Tournament with a character who has never wielded a weapon in his life. The second-place finisher in the original LCC was a team of two whose entire point was that they couldn't win a battle physically. Battling is not about the character winning or even holding his or her own. It's about good writing.

And honestly, everything on Althanas is geared towards helping people write better, and it is rare that I notice someone truly getting a bad rap. Since, once again, I don't know your situation with Serilliant, I can't comment on it, but I think most judges are working hard to help people improve their writing. But, in the end, we can't do it for you, and if what you're looking for is a therapeutic self-help group I would suggest the classifieds.

EDIT: Also, everyone should notice that the "Location" field is now underneath your user statistics, not your character. If you want people to get a sense of your quirkiness or to know you are from, say, Alaska, that field seems available.

[Jasmine]

If you have no intention of bettering an aspect of your character, then perhaps your lack of a custom title is warranted.

So what you're saying is that because I don't like to battle at all both because I can seem to be good enough and I just flat don't like it, and therefore have no interest in developing that particular aspect, I don't deserve to use a custom title? Cause that's EXACTLY what I just got out of what you said.

[Serilliant]

It was my assumption that, by this time, the issue introduced with this thread had been resolved. Clearly from of Jasmine's post, it has not.

I apologize to any member interested in sharing their opinions, but this thread has now degenerated into something that runs contrary to the spirit of this forum. If you'd like to give further input on this discussion, please direct a PM to me. Further, if you have year-old grievances unrelated to this thread, Jasmine, also feel free to direct a PM to me.

I'd like to thank everyone for their input and assure you that everyone's comments have been and will continue to be taken into consideration.