Ragnarok Travels ban and lies.

[Helirose]

I played on Ragnarok Travels for a good few months, and it was great.

Then a few friends got banned. I won't go into this, it's been covered and it's not my story to tell but sufficed to say I am certain these bans were unwarranted. Now, I'm not one to participate in drama or engage with other people's issues, but I questioned the stability of the leadership and whether this server was where I wanted to spend my time because of the likelihood of losing friends or worse, my own account, so I started browsing elsewhere. No problems at this point I'd simply lost faith in my current server and decided to try out other places - it happens, life goes on.

However.

After trying a few different ones, I started playing a new server with some of these banned friends. In fact, a lot of users felt a similar way and ended up through word of mouth on this server. This communication was private, had nothing to do with Ragnarok Travels and occured away from the Ragnarok Travels server and Discord server. All of a sudden, RO Travels disappears from my Discord list and it seems like I'm banned on there. Well, that's strange, isn't it? I haven't broken any rules, I haven't been advertising or indeed even mentioned a different server there or in the game. Then, lo and behold, my Ragnarok Travels game account is inaccessible and it seems I'm banned there too. Once again, no rules broken. There's also no evidence or indeed even any communication from the GM team at Travels to notify me of this.

Finally, I decide to make a Ratemyserver review. I made the review as honest as I could, crediting the server for it's game play and functionality but marking true to my findings and feelings of dealing with the administration in light of the events that happened. My review and the resulting comment from the GM is as follows:



Edit: added in plain text as image not working. It's available on RMS for all to see, though.

(click to show/hide)

BE WARNED. This server has great potentional as an honest, low-rate reproduction. The server itself is very stable but the leadership is far from it and indiscriminate bans are now a common occurance. Your crimes could include disagreeing (politely) with a GM on the Discord or simply playing on another server, even if you have never mentioned or advertised such a thing in game or out. Not woth investing time in. TLDR; Good server but unstable, tyrannical and illogical leadership.
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Rating: 44
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Comment #1
Owner's reply to this review:
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2022-01-17
This user was banned for blatant poaching of our users. We haven't had a single indiscriminate ban so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Unfortunately, the comment from the GM here is a lie and further, it is slander. I am not associated with any other server in a leadership or administrative capacity, I have not advertised for any other server and I have certainly not 'poached' any users. I simply made a personal decision to try elsewhere.

I would welcome any evidence the GM has (other than heresay and guesswork) to back up his claims of 'poaching' and to substantiate the reason for this ban because it's an utter falacy.

-----

NB: My hand has been forced on making this statement publicly as I am blocked from both the RO Travels game and Discord server and there is no other communication channels available via the website. I also wanted a chance to clear my name for the record as I am not in the habit of breaking rules or deliberately causing issues.

[Katakato]

I can't claim to know anything about the goings on of Travels, but I will say that I avoided the server as soon as I saw their website and spent a few minutes reading through it. I couldn't help but feel like the admin was just inflating his own ego to a massive degree. Like sure, it's cool that you have a Aegis server that you're running, and have the hardware for. Therefore you've got none of the emulation bugs that Athena or Hercules have. 

That doesn't mean you have to write a literal essay about how "bad" the emulators are. Some servers don't have the resources to run an Aegis server, money or otherwise. 

Either way, between that website and rumors I've heard about the admin there (J, I think they call him?), I made the decision to not try Travels. Seems like I made the right choice.....  All the copy pasta "X player has been banned for poaching, I dunno what they're talking about" replies are sus too...

Either way, I hope you're enjoying whatever other server you're on. I just wanted to let you know that I'm with you on calling out this nonsense (one random stranger though, not very strong right?  ).

Good luck in your future endeavors, maybe I'll see you around. 

[skyeang3l]

Unfortunately, all of this is true. I used to play Travels for a long while and really believed in the server(check my post history), but me and so many of my friends have been banned for basically nothing. Here is an accumulative list of reasons from all the Travel refugees I still talk to:

-Criticizing staff on PM in-game. Seriously, the Admin has been known to sit around in chat snooping on people's private convos.
-Criticizing random patches (such as increase in fwing prices and teleportation costing 100sp) on #dev in Discord
-Posting a negative review
-Joining another server's Discord server
-"Price Fixing" aka selling items for prices you think are fair
-Breaking your gear. Yep that's it. Admin got really mad at this one.
-Quitting. Admin has a child mentality of "You can't quit if I BAN you first!"
-Getting upset at people going on religious tirades on Discord. Some guy can be an extreme homophobe Islamic extremist and not get banned for it but if you question why the Staff isn't doing anything about it, BAN.

Of course this is all crazy and yep you can't prove anything because the Discord is so heavily moderated. J deletes everything to hide his tracks and bans you so you can't keep good record of all his abuse. It's a 1x server so you spend so much time only to get banned for dropping a pen on the ground.
Imagine you grind for all +7 gears on a 1x and spend hundreds of hours only for the GM to throw a tantrum and permaban you because you disagree with a change he's implemented. He doesn't even send you a warning or tell you the reason. Just bam, login and your account says incorrect password(not even a ban message). Only risk playing on Travels if you are certain you can abide by his completely arbitrary ruleset. 

It's a shame because so many of us loved and genuinely cared for the server, only for the GM to be completely self-destructive and hellbent on ruining his server all by himself.

[Sairek Ceareste]

I never played on the server before. I might have done so, before my friend and I decided "Screw it, we'll just make our own" because we couldn't find a 1x server exactly like we wanted, but regardless, everyone who's been unjustly banned has my sympathy. Hell, I remember when I was falsely banned on RO:Restart for botting... because my name was "very bot like" and that infuriated me to no end (and look what happened to there).


Honestly I hope J can reevaluate and pull it back together. Fair competition between server owners is healthy for the overall community in my opinion. It helps encourage server owners to innovate, and do their best for their players. More options for a community to choose from is only a good thing in my opinion. Ultimately, nobody wins if a server tears itself apart through drama and clout and these rumors of tyrannic administration and fake positive reviews is going to end up either being passed under the rug by people, or destroying the server's community.
And it doesn't matter how good a server is. You can have the best everything and most accurate server out there. If nobody's playing it because it's simply not fun or because they're scared that they have to walk on eggshells to play on it so they don't, then it's just dead weight in the water, because ultimately, a community is everything.

The thing I value most is honesty and transparency. If the community cannot trust the administration or the administration of a server frequently lies to them, then that can create a whole new can of worms and multiple symptoms that can affect a server extremely badly -- and that is especially true when the reason for those symptoms and distrust is literally bad administration. And, as I've learned extremely quickly, it's a hell of a lot harder to earn a community's trust than it is to lose it.

[Thibaud]

Hello,

i'll add my story to that as well.
Been playin' for about two months on Ragnarok Travels. Literally grinded out my life, every free minute i did spent into Travels.
It was fun, i enjoyed it. The server with his settings is pure nostalgic Ragnarok feelin', no multiclient.
Community is friendly, people want to group up. Everything feels just like a dream, the good old Ragnarok dream we all lived in our younger life.
I already read some topics here about the delusional personality of Lord J. Thought it was all overreacting by the people who created these reviews/topics.
Sadly i had to witness the exact same thing. There were some things happening, bans that were without any reason or warn.
I decided to not play on Travels anymore, as long there would be no clearance of Lord J about the things that happened.
That was all i did, held no discussion, did do no negative things that could damage Travels.
I just joined OathRO, and today i had to witness, that suddenly i was beein' banned out of the Travels Discord and well... my ingame Account is banned too!
Lord J is such a maniac, he won't allow you to even play or breathe in another server. Absolutely disgusting.
I even donated to Travels, cause i loved the project. Now that i knew who i gifted this money to, i regret everything i did. Spent 2 months of time for nothin' and even wasted money on a maniac.

So i did my review, honest review:


And look what answer/reply our maniac prepared. Sexist comments, Staff impersonation and poaching.
None of these things i obviously did, according to J, were warned or told me before.
I do get the ban for things, he can't even prove, and all suddenly after i switched to another server.

To all people who are or want to play on Travels:
Don't do the same fault as many of us did, spendin' time to live the old Ragnarok dream and suddenly everything you did for the server is gone.
And for what? For breathin' into another server.

@Lord J:
I know you will read this. And as soon you are reading all this, you probably will try everything to make us, who did get banned for nothing, look stupid and overreacting.
You can create as many accounts as you can to make good reviews, but please.
If your whole existence is build up on lies and tyrannical behavior, maybe you should stop leading a god damn server.

Greetings from OathRO,

Thibaud.

[Messidor]

Thibaud, I recognize you and you did make sexist comments. You are basically throwing tantrum because server staff did their job.

You are in toxic guild

[Messidor]

Travels is my favorite low rate and the administration is a reason why. This is the usual chorus of toxic guilds and abusers. They use auto hotkey, autopots, grf edit, use their guild to threaten GMs into making balance changes they want, cheat, bully, intimidate.

If staff stands up to them they will make fake negative reviews, try to server hop, start poaching player.

The only difference is Travels has an admin who is really good at catching these people and will not bend to them. I think this is why regular players like me love the server and the staff. It's also why these fake negative reviews come in "bursts", it's a guild sitting in a discord somewhere trying to coordinate revenge. But I dont think they realize that all it does is send more players to Travels. No such thing as bad publicity lol. Keep it up

[Eiponpon]

OP your story doesnt add up. you said you quit and stopped playing before this happened. if that were true why are you writing this rant and how did you know you got banned?

sounds like you got caught, and now pretending to be a victim. you and your “friends” 

[Thibaud]

Thibaud, I recognize you and you did make sexist comments. You are basically throwing tantrum because server staff did their job.

You are in toxic guild

Then please, Lord J, prove it. Give me screens of what i did. Or what others did that was banned due to your tyranny.
Every single rant about you, you accuse someone of something but you just can't prove anything.
By the way, why don't you just create a "Lord J" Account and reply with it.
Everyone with literally a brain in their head knows that you are creating new RMS-accounts all the time to make us look like fools.

[Helirose]

OP your story doesnt add up. you said you quit and stopped playing before this happened. if that were true why are you writing this rant and how did you know you got banned?

sounds like you got caught, and now pretending to be a victim. you and your “friends” 

Please let me know what exactly doesn't add up, and I'll clarify for you.
I attempted to log back into my account to continue to play (I had a thief that was about to get to Assassin and I was keen to at least reach that point and test out Assassin skills despite the issues) and found the password changed. This is how I knew. As I've stated previously, the server itself is very good and the game play on it is excellent.
Can't 'get caught' if you haven't done anything worthy of catching.

[Eiponpon]

Then please, Lord J, prove it. Give me screens of what i did. Or what others did that was banned due to your tyranny.
Every single rant about you, you accuse someone of something but you just can't prove anything.
By the way, why don't you just create a "Lord J" Account and reply with it.
Everyone with literally a brain in their head knows that you are creating new RMS-accounts all the time to make us look like fools.

Says the brand new account of the oath admin. literally everyone with a brain knows you or some of the guild that got caught has been creating new accounts. OP is a brand new acc just like you

[Savyon]

I was part of Ragnarok Travels staff for the first 8 months after launch, plus a couple months prior to launch. Advisory role and beta tester. I was a major contributor to what made the server at least decent, mainly because of the fact that J knew very little about the game, for a server owner.

Things went sour very quickly though. I was banned because I disagreed with him over a patch change. He loves to lie about everything and use multiple accounts to speak anonymously, and you can’t win with him. The best thing to do is stop listening to him and stop playing his server, and spread the word.

Anything he replies to these threads and to your reviews are nonsense. I’m telling you, just avoid.

[Helirose]

Yeah, I had to make an account to be able to provide accurate feedback and give my side of the story after a slanderous comment was left on my review.

Your point?

[Thibaud]

Says the brand new account of the oath admin. literally everyone with a brain knows you or some of the guild that got caught has been creating new accounts. OP is a brand new acc just like you

Yeah, i am literally the oath admin, who played for 2 months on Travels. 


Sadly for you i can still login to the Travels Control Panel, cause the login is still registered and Lord J only knows how to reset passwords, not to ban someone. 

And yeah, i created a new account on RMS. Cause i've never been here before to rant about a server, there was no need to before.
And also yeah, i know Helirose. Not personally, she/he is or more specifically was a player just like me on Travels.
Was not in the same guild as her/him, neither spoke to her/him in private.

[Eiponpon]

What's your point? People can create an account to post an experience, just because it's new doesn't prove anything, you do seem awfully defensive!

that he should stop calling people lord j when he loses an argument. its why no one takes whine threads seriously