Dialog with the Owners

[Aragorn]

I was not getting any emails from any of you guys... So that can be stopped with accusations...
We are still trying to figure out where the wind goes and actually I already know the reason, probably some devs are afraid of me being pissed of what they did, but past is past and it can be solved and even forgotten by me...

We are not starting a dictatorship and we are not throwing things at any of you - we are figuring out who is breathing and what kind of air... Otherwise I would already shut the fuck all conversation it this topic... And as I stated I liked this convo I can see who is up with owners to move forward and who is up to the idea that owners should not exist unless they will do what everyone wants... And with that I cleared at once - owners are not slaves that will run after every opinion we have our vision on how things should be we see ideas, some of them we will implement others will have some changes and still be accepted etc. Talking with me in a style "Where the fuck were you, we cool you are a jerk" will not help anyone and will lead finally to the owner protecting his place, opinion and admins... I would not like even to remind about this rule but this rule has ever owner - wanna things up - put the strong control...

Once I will clear the position of each side to the end I will post a decision which I hope will help devs, players and owners to start moving this dead ship forward...

[Omri]

Thanks for the replies regarding what happened to Paruni. Seems like it became a neglected project but with the right team and setting up the right game servers it has the potentiel.

[Stefos]

- owners are not slaves that will run after every opinion we have our vision on how things should be we see ideas

No one is forcing you to do everything that is being said. It's an OPINION. You either accept it or decline it, not argue about it.

Once I will clear the position of each side to the end I will post a decision which I hope will help devs, players and owners to start moving this dead ship forward...

Everyone already did their best. Now since you're back, it's YOUR turn to help them.  Not "figuring out who is breathing what kind of air".

[Brian]

Of course I didn't email you, like I said, you were gone before I joined Argonath, I've had one interaction with you outside of this forum post (And excluding some group chats on Discord.) I was talking about Gandalf, I sent him a fair amount of emails asking for help, VMs that I was promised, access I was promised. All of them were ignored. Carbon became a CL and he became a direct contact line to Gandalf and Sauron, and while still slow, it was something we did not have for years, I was given access to some of the forum domains, I was actually able to fix some things.

And how can I be afraid of someone I barely know, you know nothing about me, you know nothing about my actions on this community, the parts of this community that I have been part of. If you were to remove me I'd be sad, of course, like I keep saying this community is part of me too. But at the end of the day all it'd mean for me is that a new chapter of my life is about to begin, where I am not longer handling Argonath affairs. And even if you did know of me, and my actions, the worst you'd probably find me doing is spawning myself 300k to hand out to some players after they provided the community with a great RP opportunity. Or maybe, after a stressful day and me dealing with assholes all day, I, admittedly in mistake, banned someone from the server when I shouldn't have, they were unbanned five minutes later and received a long apology from me, which they accepted.

You seem to think that we are not excited you are back, that we do not want to work with you, but its the opposite. I am excited to meet you for the first time, and I am excited for work with Gandalf, and Sauron. But I hope you also understand our skepticism. I am not blaming you here, but you were gone for a few years, while you were gone, many people have taken care of this community, we have made mistakes, but who cares, we're past that now, we should be looking towards the future, we can't change the past anyways.

The thing we are trying to say is, yes, this is your community, but there's experienced people, players, staff, hell, I even got DMs from people community banned asking if they can get another chance as they're excited to see you back, as are we. But If our positions, our experience, our motivation mean nothing to do, do you understand how this paints a very odd picture for us. We are uncertain on what is going on, we are uncertain of what the future is bringing, and sometimes it feels blame of things that can't be our fault is put in to our shoes, but there's no interest in the full story whatsoever.

[Sawyer]

It feels like everyone is on the same page here, at least most of.

Perhaps there have been misleading sentences from both parties as to what the said views truly meant but all I see is Owners, CLs, DVs, Veterans and Regulars as a whole agreeing on the same thing; trying to pull this community out of the mud again. And this by itself is very encouraging On Its Own (see what I did there?  ).

You guys should take this private and talk things out on a direct chatting platform before it gets needlessly worse in here. This topic has gotten quite salty due to everyone spitting out their part even if there's no actual need for it.

[Gandalf]

Brian, as soon as we gave Carbon the rights to CL, I have been busy with my job.
Carbon got all accounts, all access and direct contact to Sauron, which was a first in history for anyone not being us.
I still have to get my e-mail unlocked, probably it was too big and Dreamhost blocked it so even now I have not full access, I am using Sauron's account to post as the IP linked to forums has changed and I can no get the secure link.

Due to all posts lot of people get confused. We do not feel you were doing nothing or were purposely letting things go down. But it seems that nobody understood the freedom they had and instead kept to the idea that no changes are allowed in absence of owners.

Carbon asked through Sauron if it was ok to make changes the community wanted. My answer was he was in the lead and could do as the leadership thinks best. Does that sound to you like denying change?

The main difference with other servers has been that we are not a business. This because our philosophy is that in game possessions have no value in reality. That may be outdated, and if the community wishes we can monetize things better even if our economy does not require it. 

[Brian]

I should be able to fix your Dreamhost mail issues fairly quickly, Dreamhost changed a lot within their panel over the last year and a half, but I doubt your email size was the issue, Aragorn has about six times more data in his mailbox than you, Xcasio maybe ten times.
 I am also not blaming you for your inactivity, I have had my own periods where I was barely around, while you are correct Carbon has gotten a lot of details from you, some of those were severely outdated or had access issues, I have brought those up several times, and according to Carbon, he had forwarded this to you. I was also promised things for years without anything ever coming from it, but I kept pushing through.

I was never told I could implement changes if they were for the good of the community, until I became a CL, which I have been doing, I intended on changing the forum software to something more stable, I introduced a Minecraft server with the help of some dedicated players, I was working on a Rust server if we managed to get a VM for it. We were discussing a new dedicated server, as well as hosting options for the forums so that we could SSL secure it, but also have more individual control over the web domains. Between 2014 and 2017 I had sent 43 emails to either you or Sauron, 10 of them gotten a reply, 8 of which were in regards to either downtime issues or people having access to parts they shouldn't have had access to, most of my mails in regards to requests for the community were ignored. After 2017, Carbon was assigned as CL so all my communications went through him, I probably requested him to forward several dozen requests over the years.

The point I am trying to make is that I've only gotten permission to actually change things up for the past 3 months, and I've been trying, so have the others, that's why you are seeing the struggle you see now. You gave us the permission to do things, and now it seems that permission is retracted.

I was also told that you were fine with handing us access over the dedicated server so that we could manage things ourselves. But instead I've read in a post by Sauron that we do not need, access to the dedicated server, and that that will remain to go through him. That is fine with me, but I was promised several VMs for several services over the year, and never received one. As far as I know the GTA V server currently does not even have its own VM, and is sharing it with another game server.

And I know you are not a business, I've never treated Argonath as a business, its why I am so close with the other leaders and a fair amount of the players, Aragorn was the one that brought up the business aspect of things, and how he sees things as a business.

I know of myself that I really do not care what direction you want the community to head in, I think some of the other CLs see it the same way, but something I would like is to allow us to be a bit more involved in your vision, allow us to actually help you to get to where you want to go rather than making us feel we are just puppets in a show only the three of you seem to understand.

[Surena]

The main difference with other servers has been that we are not a business. This because our philosophy is that in game possessions have no value in reality. That may be outdated, and if the community wishes we can monetize things better even if our economy does not require it.

I will speak on behalf of IVMP. Currently I think IVMP is doing the worst of all contenders, not because it does not have any potential or interests (far from it, it is beloved by many) but the HQ is practically non-existent and development has stopped since the only dev pulled out of it after years of service. I think the dev is now active on V if I recall properly but don't quote me on that.

Basically what this means is that people are trying to temper their hopes for a living IVMP server because they are just not sure what to expect and what the IVMP fate will be (if the final nail isn't in the coffin yet). I see the people having the interest to play on IVMP again but it's development and administration is not up to stuff and really requires internal rework or building from scratch before it can release it's potential once again like in 2010.

I know the spotlight is currently on VMP and potential new games but I believe IVMP still has the potential to shine with the right care and attention, which it now desperately lacks.

[Brian]

The main difference with other servers has been that we are not a business. This because our philosophy is that in game possessions have no value in reality. That may be outdated, and if the community wishes we can monetize things better even if our economy does not require it.

I will speak on behalf of IVMP. Currently I think IVMP is doing the worst of all contenders, not because it does not have any potential or interests (far from it, it is beloved by many) but the HQ is practically non-existent and development has stopped since the only dev pulled out of it after years of service. I think the dev is now active on V if I recall properly but don't quote me on that.

Basically what this means is that people are trying to temper their hopes for a living IVMP server because they are just not sure what to expect and what the IVMP fate will be (if the final nail isn't in the coffin yet). I see the people having the interest to play on IVMP again but it's development and administration is not up to stuff and really requires internal rework or building from scratch before it can release it's potential once again like in 2010.

I know the spotlight is currently on VMP and potential new games but I believe IVMP still has the potential to shine with the right care and attention, which it now desperately lacks.

As the last remaining DL of IVMP I feel obligated to respond to this. I was requested to become a DL for the single reason of keeping things running, which I tried my best to do. Within 3 months of being an IVMP DL, I was unable to assist the developer with what he needed as I did not have the files he requested, and was unable to obtain them, I was informed IVMP (The actual platform we use) was going to close in a years time. While there is alternative solutions I  feel things are sadly not as straight forward as you believe them to be.

I do how ever agree that the current team could have done more, myself included.

[AK47]

If there is interest in Rust, me and Goobii can help run it since we used to run a Rust-community a few years ago with over 100 daily players and we both have deep knowledge of management both from there and from here since be both used to be higher administration here!

[Shokkoth]

Lol you even does not know what we can offer... While you are sitting and wanting Nutella for three years instead of taking it yourself from shop...

How can you buy your own nutella when the shopkeeper locked the door and barred the windows? You call him and ask for a key, but if he doesn't answer the phone all you can do is wait.

You are acting like Blizzard did a few years back during one of their conferences. Their customers told them what they want and asked if they will add it in. Their response was 'No. And you don't want us to do that. You think you do, but you don't'. Do you think it turned out good for them? It did not and they ended up introducing it eventually. You are doing the same thing. Don't tell your players what they want. They have brains and their own opinions, they know what they want. SHOW them why your 'vision' and the things you want to do/change/introduce are better than what they want. You keep saying that people are being rude towards you etcetra etcetra but so far everyone has been respectful, you are the only person who threw a tantrum for no reason, instead of having an actual, polite conversation. Brian speaks the truth and everyone here knows it, but not everyone is willing to speak up like he did. People like Brian, WDoyle and a bunch of others are the people who players contacted when stuff needed to be done. We contacted them, not you, because you weren't there. They gave up their time for the community. The least you can do is show them a little bit of respect that they deserve and gratitude for doing what they did for YOUR community. If you aren't willing to listen to your players and your staff, don't expect them to listen to you and agree with everything you say. Just because you are the owner doesn't mean the choices you make are correct and everyone is going to jump on the bandwagon and pretend to be excited. Let YOUR staff help you. They've been in charge of this community while you were nowhere to be seen. They know what they're doing. They aren't here to dig a hole under you, don't treat everyone like your enemy.

[Aragorn]

Are there any scripters in IV MP community?

[Aragorn]

Lol you even does not know what we can offer... While you are sitting and wanting Nutella for three years instead of taking it yourself from shop...

How can you buy your own nutella when the shopkeeper locked the door and barred the windows?

There were all doors opened - just needed to build new if needs... And now get lost and let me talk with players close to subject... Thanks...

[Mr. Goobii]

If there is interest in Rust, me and Goobii can help run it since we used to run a Rust-community a few years ago with over 100 daily players and we both have deep knowledge of management both from there and from here since be both used to be higher administration here!

You are right. We made the top 10th most popular Rust server out there in the world with 1400 unique players each month and when 300 player slot server wasn't enough. Good old memories! ))

[Aragorn]

If there is interest in Rust, me and Goobii can help run it since we used to run a Rust-community a few years ago with over 100 daily players and we both have deep knowledge of management both from there and from here since be both used to be higher administration here!

Wow wow wow easy guys we are not that fast... We can provide many possibilities just will fix things one by one...