Hello, everybody!

As the war between Bloodloch and Spinesreach has reached a conclusion, we feel now is the best time to once more set expectations about the war system and player attitudes in relation to it and conflict in general.

It has been our policy since the inception of the war system to not make hasty changes, nor do we make changes during an active war. Our reasoning for the former is that we always want to ensure we're making an effective change rather than a fast one. The latter is much more controversial, but our reasoning for this is that it hardly seems fair for players to enter a conflict with a certain set of expectations, intentions, or planning and then completely throw a wrench into it by making a crucial systems change halfway through.

If a city enters into a war with an intent to achieve victory a certain way, we would like to leave that open if we can help it and then we can address any abuses afterwards. Additionally, it is inherently unfair if one side gets to benefit from utilising something perceived as 'questionable' without the other side having an opportunity to employ it in turn as retaliation. Refusal to address these things in the middle of war is not a sign of bias, nor is it a sign of negligence. We try our hardest to be thoughtful about the overall management of the war system.

The much more difficult topic to tackle here is the mindsets we have seen throughout the last few wars, as well as other conflict avenues such as the city identity systems, bounties in general, et cetera. We have seen overwhelmingly negative sentiments from some members of our community and, in one case, this was so prevalent and hostile towards the administration and players both that we felt it necessary to remove them from the game entirely. While we understand that tempers can run hot when victory is on the line, it is never alright to utilise abusive language towards players, volunteers, or members of the staff, nor is it alright to openly speculate about bias where our newest players can hear about it and thus develop a damaging impression of the game or its players.

This behaviour also has the effect of harming the morale and overall atmosphere of your organisations, driving players to different cities or even other games entirely. If you are a leader, you should take it upon yourself to disabuse your fellows of these notions or, at the very least, encourage them to open a dialogue with us rather than continue down that path.

In addition to the above, we would also like to take a moment to discuss issues and the mentality surrounding them. Issues are your method of requesting that the administration arbitrate a situation that you no longer feel capable of managing or a scenario in which you feel the rules have been broken in some manner. They should not be utilised as a method to intentionally get someone in trouble and it is frowned upon to encourage mass issuing of one person for the same situation.

We are always glad to clarify the rules of a situation currently in progress if you file an issue and allow the other parties in that situation to provide their own side of events and, in these cases, we often will not issue warnings or punishments. As well, if we perceive an honest mistake as opposed to intentional abuses or rule breaking, we will often choose to be lenient about most topics. It is a recipe for frustration to compare your issue resolutions to someone else's for a similar situation, as no two issues or courses of events are the same and thus they all call for different solutions. Lastly, we would like to remind you that we do not rule on hypotheticals - the reason for this is because we were noticing that players had a tendency to pre-screen their issues with us via ISSUE SELF and then they would proceed to issue the player in question once receiving confirmation of the rules.

If you have concerns or feedback, it is our hope that you will engage with us in good faith privately - either via issues or messages - and allow us a chance to resolve or explain things, rather than taking it as proof that there is a hidden agenda or vendetta aimed at you or your organisations. It serves neither you nor us for that to be true or even be considered true and we would prefer that you enjoy your time in Aetolia rather than worry about a plot or rumour with absolutely no basis in fact.

Have an excellent day!

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 23rd of Niuran, in the year 510 MA.