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Twysta

Unknown

Sorry Nonce, you really got a raw deal. You did a great job.

Don't stop posting. I really enjoy your poll threads and mostly sane opinions.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Just as a note, I'm not going to stop discussion on this line of thought. I'd much rather have criticisms out in the open for everyone to take part in the discussion on it than to have it solely in PMs where everyone just trades rumors about evil Illuminati-esque things surrounding someone getting modded/de-modded. For what should be fairly obvious reasons, I'm not able to get into the exact reasonings behind the decision but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop discussion about it.

I take issue with the notion that you can't get into the reasoning behind this decision. And if not you, then someone else. Do we have to demand to speak to your manager? There needs to be more transparency around here not less, and someone should be accountable. If you're going to can someone who was in large part responsible for keeping this place even remotely functional when nobody on the payroll seemed to care in the slightest we deserve a better explanation, or actually any explanation at all would be a good start. The fact that there was no middle step, no warning or reprimand, just straight to termination effective immediately mas it seem all the more senseless. If we're wrong and there's more to it, let's hear it. But right now you look reactionary and more than a little foolish.

While I strongly disagree with how Nonce was treated, I did not have a problem with them choosing who can be a mod, and I do not feel they owe any one an explanation. They don't have to have a forum site. They don't have to allow negative comments concerning their product or company. I am grateful that they have a place where we as players can gather. I'm quite confident that mpq would not be nearly as fun or playable if not for this forum.

That said, do I wish they would have communicated better with us in the past several months? Yes. If you're going to have a site such as this, it's better to use it to the company's maximum benefit. Again. I take no issue with Nonce's removal. My complaint was the way he was treated. After all he did for the company (and us), I just feel there were better ways it could be handled given the totality of circumstances for over the last month on the forum.

Edits - because my phone I disagree what words I trying to type

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

And ... I'm no long a mod. Someone didn't like one of my complaint posts, and contacted the devs. Demiurge/D3 decided I couldn't be a mod any more.

I'm sure the new mods will do fine.

I'm very sorry and sad to read that. You've dedicated so much time to the forum, stats, polls, lists... You've gathered so much information for us.

I feel empty really...

That sucks. I hope you are OK and you will keep on dedicating time as you used to.

GuntherBlobel

benomoth wrote:

Sorry Nonce, you really got a raw deal. You did a great job.

Don't stop posting. I really enjoy your poll threads and mostly sane opinions.

Ditto. Many times over, Thank you, Nonce! Your posts were the major reason I came to the Forum. And your spam defense was the only reason this site didn't waste away. I really appreciated the constructive nature of your posts as moderator, particularly at a time where it was very easy to be negative. I hope you have more ideas to share with us (and the devs).

Twysta

Nonce Equitaur 2

I should be more transparent, so I'll post the full message IceIX sent me. But first, a timeline.
3 months ago, I sent Ice a list of actions he could take to lessen spam.
2 months ago, the spam got progressively worst, and most of the other mods gave up.
1 month ago, spam messages were being posted every minute from thousands of spam accounts. At the same time, Ice started a month long hiatus. I started this thread. After resigning, I came up with a cunning plan for mass-banning the spam accounts. Worst self-inflicted bad timing ever. But it worked, eliminating 99% of the spam traffic.
Yesterday, IceIX returned, un-modded me, then implemented some of the spam-lessening measures. They seem to be effective -- hurray!

IceIX wrote:

I'm afraid that I'm the bearer of bad news with this. It has been decided that we need to remove mod rights for your account despite the great help you've been on the forums, especially while I've been otherwise indisposed. This comes as a result of a series of comments made on these forums that a bunch of the higher ups across both D3 and Demiurge took to be in a very negative light, which occurred on their review of multiple threads after receiving complaints that a "D3 Employee" was disparaging his own company.

Examples:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11842&p=185467#p185467
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11842&p=185456#p185456
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11857&p=184897#p184897
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11816&p=184583#p184583

Now, we don't want people to not be able to speak up. And we do allow you to speak with your own voice for the most part. But these posts are examples (lesser or greater) of direct attacks on the developers of the game and their ability to do their work. I had pointed out the clauses that we insert that moderators use mod voices when "doing the job" and otherwise, but these particular posts, most specifically the first are pointers towards that concept of a direct attack on the development team. It was decided that these posts were too egregious of posts for someone "close enough to be mistaken" for a direct employee to be making.

I know this has to hit you hard and suddenly, given that there was no real warning of the change over. I also know that it's going to hit the forums in a hard way too since they're losing the moderation powers of by far the best mod we've got. I'm reaching out to locked and johnaaron at the least to see if they can take up some of the slack in general moderation that you will leave. If, after this, you choose to stay around on the forums (and in-game), great. I also completely understand if this sours you on the whole endeavor. After you've had a chance to absorb this, please feel free to message me about it if you want. I'm pretty bummed about the situation myself, but it's pretty well out of my hands unfortunately, so I just have to deal with the fallout and I'd like to keep open a line of communication with you if you would like.

Let me break down those posts.
Comparing Oct-Feb MPQ to Mar-July MPQ
The Polls/Buffs/Nerfs post I mentioned earlier
Breakroom fire with Ragnarok as the MPQ accountant
UnwiseOne and Clintman mentioning spam as they retire, and IceIX missing

I mostly just wanted spam gone from the boards. If my actions and requests worked to do that, hurray.

Unknown

Well if it took Nonce using his official status to elevate the complaints of the masses to get things back to 'normal' around here, then I say thank you good sir for poking them hard enough that they couldn't ignore you any longer.
Welcome back to being one of the mob, let be buy you a drink.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

While I strongly disagree with how Nonce was treated, I did not have a problem with them choosing who can be a mod, and I do not feel they owe any one an explanation. They don't have to have a forum site. They don't have to allow negative comments concerning their product or company. I am grateful that they have a place where we as players can gather. I'm quite confident that mpq would not be nearly as fun or playable if not for this forum.

They don't have to have an official forum, and they don't have to allow negative comments on it. But this is the internet. If this forum didn't exist for people to flock to you can be sure someone would have set up an unofficial forum where most of us would have wound up anyway. And you know what? It would probably be run better by people like Nonce. They don't have to do anything to have an online presence, but this is an online game in an online world. Better to have an official forum where they can try and control things to some degree.

It's called public relations, and they're very bad at it. Ice tries, but lately he's been give the unenviable task of taking pretty **** information to the torch and pitchfork wielding mob and trying to smile while doing it. So they're hiring a full time community manager, but as long as that person is given the same **** material and the decisions are made by the same people who don't seem to give a **** about trying to be a decent, respectable, and accountable company, we're going to get the same **** treatment. Do they owe us answers? No. Nobody is owed anything. But we represent a group of customers and potential customers, and we deserve to be treated fairly lest we take our business elsewhere. So when you remove power without so much as a warning from a popular member of the community who was doing thankless work as a volunteer to keep this place running and then hide behind the shield of "we're not going to talk about it", you look very bad.

john1620b

IceIX wrote:

I'm afraid that I'm the bearer of bad news with this...

IceIX's direct response to Nonce was way better than what the rest of the forum got, and makes a lot more sense when explained (even if I don't agree with it). Just to point out, IceIX: if you know the community will be upset, once again you could have saved a lot of outrage by just copying-and-pasting the text you sent to Nonce. We just want a little explanation of the decisions being made.

In any case, thanks for your hard work Nonce -- I'm impressed you haven't soured from the experience and have stuck around.

Nonce Equitaur 2

john1620b wrote:

IceIX: if you know the community will be upset, once again you could have saved a lot of outrage by just copying-and-pasting the text you sent to Nonce.

Naw.. he was respecting my privacy. It was up to me whether to post it or not.

Unknown

Nonce-
You got a Raw. Effing. Deal.
This is ridiculous. I always enjoy your posts, and FAR more often than not I agree whole-heartedly with your posts on the condition of this game.
This seriously reminds me of some sort of Castro-type dictatorship where detractors are shot.
I for one am now MORE angry at Demiurge with this action than any community post/mockery/complaint/etc has ever made me.
Again, Raw. Effing. Deal.

Unknown

user wanwano is spamming up the boards and needs to be removed.

MarvelMan

Ben Grimm wrote:

user wanwano is spamming up the boards and needs to be removed.

You actually think they will do something. Thats funny.

What do you mean that was serious?

Colognoisseur

For the first time I am very disappointed in the way D3/Demiurge handled this. As someone above just said every other controversial decision they've made has been to improve the game. i am one of those who thinks they've mostly gotten it right.
This is one of those decision which is completely not right.
Based on IceIX's pm to Nonce it seems like the devs didn't like Nonce's tone and have removed him. Not a complaint from someone on the forum. The devs made this decision because they felt his criticism could be misconstrued as coming from D3/Demiurge.
That is completely ridiculous and if they don't like being criticized for leaving the forum in a state where spammers run rampant and they can't be bothered to post then maybe they need to shut it down.
Since they haven't appointed new mods and even though they seem to have, finally, put spam countermeasures in to place. something else will finally go wrong and who will clean up the mess?
Guys you really need to re-think this. The message it sends is very poor.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

user wanwano is spamming up the boards and needs to be removed.

You actually think they will do something. Thats funny.

What do you mean that was serious?

I open standard tokens and hope for something useful, too.

Unknown

So, the one guy who was actually doing something useful in the forums is hit with the nerf bat because he was doing .... what we are, as regular players; offer suggestions about how to make the game better (with the occasional rant). Way to go. I dread the day no one will want to be a mod and the forums will be flooded by spam.

Unknown

At least someone at the company (ICEIX) realized how valuable an asset you are/were and tried to treat you correctly. Obviously, this was out of this hands, or things would have been done the right way.

Der_Lex

I now understand why Ice didn't want to share that publically. It makes his higher-ups seem like petty tyrants that, instead of using valid criticism to improve their game, try to stamp it out instead.

I'm starting to really question their decision and ability to get into social gaming. Sure, they can make a pretty good match 3 game (although the quality of their games has, in my opinion, been on a downward slide since the original Puzzle Quest), but their handling of the social aspects of MPQ has been abysmal. Communication is erratic, their handling if the forums is such a mess that an unofficial forum would probably do a better job than the official forums, player feedback seems to be disregarded or downright disapproved of, and one of the main social features of the game, Alliances, is still ridiculously bare-bones long after its initial implementation.

I have some hopes that a fulltime community manager can improve matters, but this whole affair makes me fear that he'll just end up in the sale situation Ice is in now: left to the whims of higher-ups who have no idea how to cultivate ab actual community and loyal fanbase, and spending all of his time making excuses for their mistakes.

I realize this is a rather harsh post, but it's not just rough to see a prominent and constructive member of the community get **** like this, but also to see, by reading between the lines, just how little our opinions here seem to matter when we're not being good little sheep that sing the game and the company's praises. Protip, D3: we're much more likely to do so when you actually give us some valid reasons to do so for a change.

user311

I have seen this thread on the first page of this forum for some time now. I never opened it other than the first time. I am posting now just to say that whoever is given mod rights going forward needs to get those rights as a separate account. I think now we have seen 2 moderators lose their rights because of "player posts". I think that if the development team wants to promote a player to moderator then they need to require this separate account requirement. Everything is about perception. There are a lot a of dim witted people out there and certainly one of them saw Nonce as a moderator and assumed he was on the development team.