AghartaRO

[Tande]

I think you're getting a lot of names mixed up.  Edgewood is the one to respond to this thread, not Hitura.  Perhaps I'm just getting my head wound up with mussed up details.

Regardless, it really does sound like people are taking things much too personally.  As I've repeated time and time again, regardless of how well a person writes, you shouldn't take incharacter things personally out-of-character.  It's just the way the roleplaying world works.  I'm not saying its nice, or PC, but generally its something you shouldn't get your jimmies rustled over because its the internet.  I'm sorry you didn't find Agharta appropriate for your expectations.

I'd also like to say, if you are not comfortable with a situation that is going on, such as a character's back story, or even what is going on in an active RP - drop it.  Just apologize, state what has caused your grief, and leave.  No one is going to force you to stay, especially if you explain your matters in an adult fashion.  No one will ream you for not being comfortable for the topic at hand.  No one is forcing you to stay within IRC or even in-game.

Again, I'm sorry Agharta wasn't an appropriate for yourself, your boyfriend, or your friend.  I hope you find a place that is more suitable to your roleplaying expectations.

[Uke]

I'm not getting names mixed up. Hitura posted in my departure topic on the Agharta forum with what I quoted at the end of my previous post. Hitura is staff; Edgewood, from what I know, is not. I'm disappointed in both of them, but especially appalled by what Hitura wrote because he's a staff member and as such, represents Agharta as a whole.

So let me make sure I understand - according to you, if I get offended by someone playing a twleve year old child sex slave (rather inaccurately, I may add), I'm taking it too "personally".

I'm not saying its nice, or PC, but generally its something you shouldn't get your jimmies rustled over because its the internet.

Is this a joke? Seriously? I shouldn't get upset over people incorrectly playing rape victims and being racist OOCly because it's the internet! Because apparently, people behind computers aren't living, sentient beings who come all sorts of backgrounds and have different experiences.

What a load of crap. You're lazy and you don't want to be responsible for actually monitoring player behavior and as such, you tell people not to have your "jimmies rustled" because it's the "internet".

I'd also like to mention that everything that happened to me WAS OUT OF CHARACTER. Calling Kassim a "sandbaby" was out of character. Making racist remarks in both the IRC and OOC room was out of character.

You make it sound so easy to simply opt / dismiss yourself from things, but you again, keep ignoring the rampant hazing that is avid in your community.

Keep your apology, Tande. No one wants it. You only started to care because this thread was posted and Agharta began to get very bad press. Prior to this, you gave not one damn to how any of the new members felt about this; after all, you don't even post in intros or departure topics.

To everyone else -

To sum it up, don't bother with this server. If you've read all the posts here, you can see the amount of crap that the admin and her clique spews out in an attempt to lure more members.

It is not a "newbie"-friendly community and with the rampant hazing, mistreatment, unprofessional staff, and unfriendly members, it's not worth it. Whilst the servers' features might be interesting, you will be singled out if you don't make a character that interests their member base/clique and will be left to roleplay with only yourself. Attempting to even go into the IRC will give you a headache.

I seriously hope no one else joins Agharta because it's simply best not to be bothered with such a server. The admin can't even own up to her faults and mistakes, let alone take responsibility for her inability to control and direct her staff and community; and frankly, she doesn't care, because she's close with all the members and doesn't see the need for improvement.

[Fruit Pie~]

Regardless, it really does sound like people are taking things much too personally.  As I've repeated time and time again, regardless of how well a person writes, you shouldn't take incharacter things personally out-of-character.  It's just the way the roleplaying world works.  I'm not saying its nice, or PC, but generally its something you shouldn't get your jimmies rustled over because its the internet.  I'm sorry you didn't find Agharta appropriate for your expectations.

You can't disconnect the work from the author, and their (lack of) skill with words translates directly into how badly they're gonna mess up something like rape. Like Tea said, it's all about not making yourself, as the writer, seem to everyone else like you're a giant creep and/or an over-privileged heterosexual white male, and I've yet to meet an amateur writer who doesn't.

And here you are, portraying the fact that your server allows and encourages people to write like they're in fanfic.net as a positive thing! As something that happens in all of RP! What ever happened to standards? Are you here to defend your server or to make it look WORSE?

Man, back in my day, we used to RP happy-go-lucky adventurers with broad personalities and ridiculous high school drama level romance. This is how far the RP community has come? This thread is depressing me. D:

if I get offended by someone playing a twleve year old child sex slave (rather inaccurately, I may add),

Question :

How do you know what an accurate twelve year old child sex slave would be like?

On second thought, I don't think I want to know.

[DeliciousItaly]

I thought about talking about the other stuff but I feel this thread has gotten serverely derailed. The only thing I'm going to talk about is, because Reevus(verasu) and the others are entitled to their opinion, is the line about favoritism. I heard through the grapevine that it was directed at me and I felt the need to address it.

I have been the sole writer of Agharta's events from August-January. It's not easy. It's actually really time consuming and a lot of effort and forethought needs to be put into it. The plotlines are generally planned from 2 to 3 months before they start and events are written anywhere form a month to a week in advance. In a way this does shaft new players, but it's the only way I can keep the storyline/plot organized enough to allow for the minimum amount of plotholes. I am a DM for tabletops, so that tends to effect the way I run events. I generally run the first event to see what characters are interested, and I run the bulk of the rest of the events with plot development for those characters/the characters that continue to show up in mind. I also run plotlines that will consist of several different parties so that while not everyone can be part of one thing, they can still contribute to the over all story another way without overloading my chat box faster than I can read and making every event so vague and general that it doesn't really resonate with any characters on a personal level. Keeping in mind that I have generally been doing this by myself so the things I can do are still limited to what I can see.

Granted as a GM in RO I can hide and watch roleplays for use in making storylines more personal this doesn't always work for various reasons: 1) I'm an adult. I have a job. I can't watch people all the time. 2) I don't get paid for this. Sometimes I'd like to draw a picture or read a book or play Guild Wars 2 or go outside. I have a limited amount of free time to chill out and de-stress. 3) Some people do not want me to watch them and I respect their right to privacy. Whenever people respond to the GM "stalking" negatively when it's mentioned, I make a mental note to not spy on them. They don't want me too. And truth be told... 4) Some characters are just really boring and a waste of time to watch. If the entire point of 90% of your roleplay is small talk and house-type activities, there's not much I can write into a storyline based off that.

I am around almost all the time I'm not at work and I tell people if they want more time with a quest giving NPC, if they want to ask questions about a quest, if they want this or that, that I can do, to PM me. I don't always respond right away, but I do respond when I get it. I have never snapped at someone for asking me a question. I have given people every opportunity to give me feedback and ask me questions I possibly could and Reevus, nor any of the other players in this thread have ever, ever contacted me about anything. I make it very, very clear that I do not play favorites and do everything in my power to make sure that my events are fair and everyone has a role and a chance to do something so I do take it as a bit of an insult that someone who never put in any effort at all has the gaul to say that I play favorites. He couldn't even drop by to say that an event was boring and he felt he didn't really have anything to do in it. Which wouldn't help me a lot without suggestions or specific examples, but I would at least be aware that there was a problem. He assumed I was playing favorites because I wrote things specifically for the characters that took initiative and contacted me repeatedly before the event to get the needed set up and investigation done. In fact I've tried to include him several times and he told me to go away, so I stopped bothering him.

And I just wanna put this out there that none of it included any of the s*** this thread got derailed to. I did not try to rape him with a pedophile while making racist remarks. I interrupted small talk in Prontera square/and random dungeons with Ninetails on a mission to save Moonlight. Or had really loud Chung E yelling in Public areas about their cheesy mission to save the world. When I was told to leave him alone, I left him alone.

So Tl;dr It's really hard to write a storyline that balances being small enough to be personal and large enough to provide the maximum amount of opportunities and I am forever needing feedback to get better at it. I am one person running series of large meta events by myself, so I'm going to need contributions from you, the player, if you want to get in on it. You're going to need to talk to me, I have a job so we have to plan interaction for my days off or it's just not going to happen. If you are dissatisfied with something I have to know or I cannot do anything about it.

Please note this applies only to the main, GM-ran Storylines. If I don't like a PC's personal storyline, I just don't roleplay with it. Also the pot's kind of calling the kettle black here, Reevus had a character with a child molestation backstory AND amnesia that was ALSO an orphan and had a cheating boyfriend (that was cheating with another one of his own characters). Just sayin. I didn't roleplay with that character on personal characters because I didn't like it. It's that easy.
(Also the term mudbaby was actually coined as the In Character slur for Mu by a former player. Who was a black woman that enjoyed playing racist elves.)

[Geckiji]

I suppose it is time for me to chime in once more, as this is already getting out of hand and I am, as has been established, relatively new, and I would like to think that I have a tendency not to stoke too many fires.


Edgewood can often come across as a surly person, and so I can understand fully where offense would be taken at his post. Why Tande -- who made an objectively more mild-mannered, more concise post with the intent of understanding and discussing these problems -- is suddenly receiving anger-filled posts in response is not wholly understood by me. It's fine to be upset, but this has very much become far more a "bash Agharta" topic than a discussion regarding its positives and negatives, and emotions have begun to bleed through the ink and muddle the message.


First of all, I have taken part in multiple RPI MUDs and RP boards throughout the years, and I will very much tell you that the initial stages require effort in very near any roleplay setting -- effort to understand, effort to create, and effort to actively get involved. The last bit is especially so in communities of relatively small numbers because the odds of stumbling across RP in progress is low, and there are objectively less options for RP at any given point of time simply because of the limited number of people (there is less opportunity for one person in a community of ten than there is in a community of one hundred). The people at Agharta are tightly knit because they have been roleplaying together for so long and understand what to expect from each other, but they are far from what I would consider insular; as I have stated earlier, I have taken part in satisfactory RP with a number of members and observed / taken part in two events. Questions that I have are answered, and each event has had a thread requesting feedback (to which a number of people have responded).

I do not consider myself an outlier for no reason, as I actively tried to take part in the community from the onset, and they were happy to involve me. While I neither harbor any ill feelings towards Uke nor wish to come across as condescending, the most memorable thing she said was "I always feel so lost when I enter the IRC". While I can understand how the IRC can come across as intimidating, in my long history with RP communities both small and large, I can claim that it is far less so than many others I have experienced... and there wasn't really anything I could say in response to what you said, as it is a statement that exists stand-alone and does not overtly provoke discussion.

There's also a lot of emphasis and criticism being placed on rape and adult subject matter in RP, but as far as I understand, it is merely an *option* and certainly not the norm so far as I have seen. I do believe Tande is arguing in favor of freedom in characters as opposed to strict moderation, and as of so far stating that if any singular members hold issue to such a character then they are freely allowed to OOCly break away without any ramifications so as to avoid interacting with such subject matter. Whether it is portrayed accurately -- or even in good taste -- is a matter of debate, but I would far rather have an admin relatively hands-off as opposed to enforcing their own view of what constitutes a "good", or "legitimate" character, so long as it follows the rules.


I see a lot of anger here, a good portion of it sensationalist. I am sorry if any one person feels slighted, disappointed, or even outright angry, but I do not feel such emotions remove the capability of holding a civil discussion.

[Fretless]

Hello folks, I am a member of Agharta myself. I started in Agharta three years ago personally. I had no trouble getting involved in RP (even though I had never met any of the users before), and that's because all I had to do was ask for someone to help me get going. Now I had to leave Agharta a few months after I joined because I was moving to another state, starting school, and my computer broke, so I had neither the means (until I got a new PC, but by then I was focused on a lot of other stuff) nor the time to do RP. I recently moved to Texas and found myself with a lot more time, so I decided to rejoin Agharta. I do not RP as much as I use to, but when ever I feel the desire to RP or to make a character that could be related to the plot some how I find it very easy to join in, and that is because like I stated before, you really just have to ask.

Now I will admit there are always problems in small communities, and to honestly even say a community as small as Agharta can have cliques is really quite mind numbing. With a very small community as it is everyone is tight knit, and yes it may be intimidating, but when new users such as Geck, decide to chime in on IRC a lot and get involved while actually trying to get to know us, they are able to find a place in the server much more easily.

In regards to adult content, I will make no comment as what people decide to RP about is their own business, and I have no reason to get involved there, but like it has been stated, you can choose to completely ignore that aspect if you so desire. The community as a whole is really quite fun to be around, and really once you get to know us you would find that we can be rather fun. Anyways that's my two cents. Have a good day :3

[Edgewood]

I might have found one you guys missed:

If you're done posting in your defensive lash-back attitude, it might be nice to get some actual discussion in.  I was interested in checking out AghartaRO but your post by itself is turning me off entirely.  Is that the sort of behavior and word use you're going  to use to represent the contrary opinion, the one to show the server is actually quite decent?

EDIT: By the way...No.  This should never, EVER be relevant to anything at all that's involved in this conversation.  There is not a single amateur-hour roleplayer (And yes, everyone in this thread, this is you.  You're not that great.) who is competent and capable enough at writing to use a theme like that for a roleplay character in a tasteful and adult way, as opposed to trivializing it to be a special-snowflake or "I need a tragedy for my backstory and I'm creatively bankrupt!" excuse.

I won't make any excuses for some of the shady things that people roleplay behind closed doors or even out in the open. Rape, racism and slavery do come up from time to time on the server, and I won't sugarcoat it. However, with your "amateur-hour" comment as found above it doesn't seem that you'd listen to the justifications. Granted, can anyone actually justify something like that? My answer is a resounding yes, so long as the author doesn't make the character a paper-thin caricature whose entire contribution to the setting revolves around their horrible past traumas. These horrible, dehumanizing things can act as the hurdle of adversity that sets the tone for a character arc, but frankly it doesn't matter to me because I don't write those kinds of stories and I don't like them either.

Now, your derisive comments about how we're not writers and we don't measure up to your own subjective standards? I don't speak for the others but my original rebuttal said absolutely nothing about writing quality, but rather Reevus's initiative. Quality and effort are not synonymous. I don't know what launched you into your brief, vitriolic snippets of elitist s*** but until you can show me your doctoral dissertation on post-Revolutionary literature then I invite you to kindly go f*** yourself. Casually browsing the contents of this flaming mess of a thread (I say, as I walk away from it holding a gas can), I don't see anyone trying to assert that their writing quality was the stuff of the Enlightenment. Thanks for throwing more wood into the hearth.

Now, as Uke said earlier, one can't simply "try harder" and magically overcome their discomfort. That's absolutely true, but that wasn't the crux of my rebuttal and it's nothing I even care about. My point remains the same as before: Reevus complains about being sidelined and not getting to do anything but he barely showed up to put in the work and in my book that pretty much bars him from leveraging criticism about any of the roleplay prospects. The bigger problem here is that he chooses to find fault with the community and to attribute many of the problems (not simply roleplay, we're talking fundamental attribution error out the donkey) to the community and in doing so he demonizes people who've done and said nothing to him. You want to prop me up under the umbrella of libel? Feel free, but don't expect me to feel sorry for the fact that someone failed to enjoy any success in their endeavors on Agharta if they're going to report on it like this. Reevus and Uke were the first to call out targets by name in this thread (calling him Reevus is not calling him out, it is addressing the original poster by name), and their continued comments have amounted to little more than an assault on a community which by and large did nothing to them. We've got our problem personalities, believe you me, but if they're going to complain about how we're such bad people than its counterproductive to harp on Cyanide for two or three paragraphs. If they accuse us all, then they accuse me by proxy and prior to this thread I have not said or done s*** to either Reevus or Uke.

The previous review posted by NERFs is a good example of how to voice a dissenting opinion; he spent well over six months with us, put forth a lot of effort and contributed to the community. He didn't name names and in doing so he chose not to start fights with the people he might not have gotten along. He had perspective, which is something the originating post of this thread was sorely lacking. It's like buying a bag of candy, having a single piece and then unceremoniously throwing the rest of it out because you got one bad taste. Rather than chock this up to what it is, that he didn't get along with the personalities of the server, he fails to admit that he didn't really participate much in the goings-on of the community in the first place. Just say you don't get along with us and go about your business.

And since this is a thread about our personal feelings (I said before, let's call a spade a spade), I don't need to be a member of the staff to reply to this thread. Uke is welcome to his or her disappointment in me, but I don't particularly care because they seem to like prefacing it with "but he's not even on the staff". If you're going to grasp at straws while you flail and whine ineffectively then don't expect me to come to table and humor your need for civil discourse.

[RoseTea]

Now, your derisive comments about how we're not writers and we don't measure up to your own subjective standards? I don't speak for the others but my original rebuttal said absolutely nothing about writing quality, but rather Reevus's initiative. Quality and effort are not synonymous. I don't know what launched you into your brief, vitriolic snippets of elitist s*** but until you can show me your doctoral dissertation on post-Revolutionary literature then I invite you to kindly go f*** yourself. Casually browsing the contents of this flaming mess of a thread (I say, as I walk away from it holding a gas can), I don't see anyone trying to assert that their writing quality was the stuff of the Enlightenment. Thanks for throwing more wood into the hearth.

I can tell you're a roleplayer because you spent 123 words to do the basic "Well let's see you do it better" argument with an extra dose of flaming, WHILE accusing everyone else including yourself of adding to the fire (So you play on AghartaRO then?  Nice sampling of the community).  I'm not sure how my stance is mind-boggling, hateful, or elitist in any way: they're delicate subjects and take an absolute mastery to play them tastefully and maturely.  Nobody involved in this thread is the next Vladimir Nabokov, and it's a subject that if it can't be approached correctly shouldn't be touched at all.

Agharta seems downright accepting of anyone's attempts at it.  Regardless of if I could OOCly excuse myself from it or not, that's not something I could put up with.  Seeing the toxicity of the community as a whole, though, this thread has been more of a turn-off than lemonparty.

[Fruit Pie~]

tl;dr

I can't help but appreciate this whole thread. Everyone's being so irrationally defensive, I've managed to go from thinking Agharta is an oldschool RP server with an insular community that someone didn't enjoy to thinking everyone involved in this whole thing is a toxic, intractable, bizarre-fetishist nerd, including the OP and the lady agreeing with the OP (she still owes me an explanation of what "proper child sex slavery roleplay" is).

So there's a lot of effort and posts and words put forth by geeks defending their indefensible positions that has merely made the sole two outsiders, the people you WANT to influence (players want to tell us the server is good, reviewers ORIGINALLY wanted to tell us the server is good but not without flaws) think Agharta is a disgusting nerdhive and everyone who plays or has played there a terrible person.

Time well spent! You'll look back on this and be proud of yourselves, I feel.

[Edgewood]

I can't help but appreciate this whole thread. Everyone's being so irrationally defensive, I've managed to go from thinking Agharta is an oldschool RP server with an insular community that someone didn't enjoy to thinking everyone involved in this whole thing is a toxic, intractable, bizarre-fetishist nerd, including the OP and the lady agreeing with the OP (she still owes me an explanation of what "proper child sex slavery roleplay" is).

So there's a lot of effort and posts and words put forth by geeks defending their indefensible positions that has merely made the sole two outsiders, the people you WANT to influence (players want to tell us the server is good, reviewers ORIGINALLY wanted to tell us the server is good but not without flaws) think Agharta is a disgusting nerdhive and everyone who plays or has played there a terrible person.

Time well spent! You'll look back on this and be proud of yourselves, I feel.

Well, at least you're demonizing all of us in the thread instead of just some of us so I guess I can't hold anything against you. Granted, I don't mean to actively shape your opinions of the community on Agharta, but at least do me the favor of disliking me for my own flaws rather than trying to shoehorn me into whatever picture you're painting of the group at large.

I can tell you're a roleplayer because you spent 123 words to do the basic "Well let's see you do it better" argument with an extra dose of flaming, WHILE accusing everyone else including yourself of adding to the fire (So you play on AghartaRO then?  Nice sampling of the community).  I'm not sure how my stance is mind-boggling, hateful, or elitist in any way: they're delicate subjects and take an absolute mastery to play them tastefully and maturely.  Nobody involved in this thread is the next Vladimir Nabokov, and it's a subject that if it can't be approached correctly shouldn't be touched at all.

Agharta seems downright accepting of anyone's attempts at it.  Regardless of if I could OOCly excuse myself from it or not, that's not something I could put up with.  Seeing the toxicity of the community as a whole, though, this thread has been more of a turn-off than lemonparty.

I wasn't referring to the hot button issue debate when I called you out. I'd prefer not to discuss it any further than the jibe I made about overcoming adversity since I actually agree with your position on how most people can't handle it respectfully. I don't defend it on Agharta, I just acknowledge it's there and go on about my business. Now, to put things in perspective there's only one character I can actively recall as having sexual abuse in their past so don't think this is a rampant phenomenon whereby we trivialize things like that.

Also, you've seen the toxicity of the community as a whole? You've seen me, and beyond that you haven't seen s***. Because Geck and Fretless and Hollow and Italy were so horribly offensive, right?

[Fruit Pie~]

Well, at least you're demonizing all of us in the thread instead of just some of us so I guess I can't hold anything against you. Granted, I don't mean to actively shape your opinions of the community on Agharta, but at least do me the favor of disliking me for my own flaws rather than trying to shoehorn me into whatever picture you're painting of the group at large.

Fair enough, you don't do that sort of roleplay, but man does it ever help to take a chill pill sometimes, especially before posting defending your server. If you want me to dislike you for your own flaws, the one flaw you fully displayed here for everyone to see is that you're unnecessarily angry at some dude's mildly critical review of your server. Even if you're not, your posts sure make it seem like you are.

[Bhollow]

I play at Agharta and this entire thread is just turning laughable.

Half the people yelling are yelling about how bad we are have never even played at the server, while they also yell at the one person who is trying to defend the server.


All your butts seem to be hurt. And perhaps before you attack a server you should actually play there, before attacking it, as it gives unfair criticism to the server.


Go find somewhere else to whine, this is a thread for reviews.

[Fruit Pie~]

Half the people yelling are yelling about how bad we are have never even played at the server

That's not true. We're yelling about how terrible the community is, because it's very, very clear from the posts in this very thread! We didn't even need to PLAY it to mock it, which is a first for me and Tea! For instance, here's a great example of the sort of a****** that populates Agharta :

I play at Agharta and this entire thread is just turning laughable.

Half the people yelling are yelling about how bad we are have never even played at the server, while they also yell at the one person who is trying to defend the server.


All your butts seem to be hurt. And perhaps before you attack a server you should actually play there, before attacking it, as it gives unfair criticism to the server.


Go find somewhere else to whine, this is a thread for reviews.

[yC]

*Warning Sign*

Okay, calm down please.  Those from Agharta RO I think your server will appreciate your effort in defending the server and by representing the server as a player here maybe you could try to show the positive side of the server.

To the others, a review should help you get an idea of what a server is like before playing it.  You can ask questions and you can have doubts but you are not going to be as clear as those that plays the server.  That means argument shouldn't happen between these two groups. Why turn someone's experience around when you haven't experienced it yourself.  There could be many faces to a server depending on who is talking or reviewing, don't have to lock up yourself to argue with just one representation.

[Lixel]

I've been reading for a while, and I'd like to just peek in and suggest that maybe saying EVERYONE on the server is a horrible person is factually incorrect.

Agharta has been my home for almost three years (do not apologize) and trust me when I say that if it was as bad as you are suggesting, I wouldn't still be there. It is a good server with a very fun and dynamic community. Yes, sometimes we do get an oddball, but who's to say what someone else writes or doesn't write?

Now, I haven't only roleplayed on Agharta; I've been to a few other servers as well. Eos, Vigrior (for a short amount of time), Advent, and another that wishes to be private. There aren't many people in the rp community, but they are all very nice, very friendly people, at least from what I've seen, and I've seen a lot.

I feel very insulted to hear that "everyone" is a "toxic, intractable, bizarre-fetishist nerd" because honestly, we're not. I'm not. Bhollow's not. Fretless is not. Edgewood is not. Please don't insinuate that these people "made us" look like this; they are just trying to defend what they have put endless amounts of work into just to be torn down by two people who haven't experienced Agharta.

Writing for characters does not have to reflect our own beliefs. It may, but in most cases, it does not. Please don't take this post as flaming, hating, etc., because it is not. I'm simply trying to stick up for myself and others who I believe do not deserve this kind of treatment for doing nothing wrong.