Barry's Bar

[Agamemnon]

I don't know, why are you posting that query here?

[The Stig]

I even made a nice shiny thread for him to ask questions in.

[Dan the Man]

Why? Are you leaving?

I was Up North.

[Dave Strider]

Well, Guys, I got a message from the boss yesterday.

The head honcho, the big man upstairs.

Barry told me he's disappointed that the game is dying. He had high hopes for it. And he also assured me that in the future that he would take a hard line against the nonsense that's plagued some of our earlier games.

He told me he'll be back on the 8th or 9th. But for now, I think we owe it to him to keep CoE in a state of semi-life. If only so it has a chance of springing back when he returns.


I SPEAK FOR THE PEOPLE OF IH

[Watercress]

Heh, I must admit I haven't been doing much at all in the game Just kinda want to get out of the pickle that is the Great German War.

[Dan the Man]

As we've been discussing all week, we need new rules. The game is dying because IH has become too large over the years to support its own weight. What we need is an almost total rework if we're ever going to hope for successful games in the future.

[Dave Strider]

Also, I'm going to be gone until Monday night or Tuesday. My dad and stepmom have need of my "help-out-with-handling-the-nieces" services.

Dan, if you decide to mod the Dutch Civil War, then this is your chance for payback.

[Dan the Man]

Dan, if you decide to mod the Dutch Civil War, then this is your chance for payback.

?

[Barry Goldwater]

Well, Guys, I got a message from the boss yesterday.

The head honcho, the big man upstairs.

Barry told me he's disappointed that the game is dying. He had high hopes for it. And he also assured me that in the future that he would take a hard line against the nonsense that's plagued some of our earlier games.

He told me he'll be back on the 8th or 9th. But for now, I think we owe it to him to keep CoE in a state of semi-life. If only so it has a chance of springing back when he returns.


I SPEAK FOR THE PEOPLE OF IH

Yeah. So I've found a precious few minutes to finish catching up from a laptop, and I must say that 'disappointed' is quite the understatement for how I'm feeling about how CoE turned out. How can I put this in one word...

Un-ing-believable.

Honestly, I turn away for one week, just one week, just for a bit of peace, and the moment I chose to turn around - not even that full week in - everything's gone to hell? W. T. F.

I'd be lying if I were to say that Agg's departure, particularly the manner and reasons for which it was done, was also merely 'disappointing'. Dude, I asked you to handle the KoA not because I know you like the South or whatever, but because they were a major faction and one of the game's major wars can't function without them. And you up & left because...you were losing that war? Not even really losing actually, you won a clear-cut victory in the east and still held a numerical advantage to counter Dan's tech. Really now? Really? I ask certain players to take certain positions not b/c I think they'll like it or be good at it (at least that would never be the major reason) but b/c I think I can trust them to fill in that position and sustain the game. This was just...wow, man. Words really are failing me here. And of course flametastic explosions had to follow, just like with R93.

Seriously, this kind of behavior doesn't just wreck the environment for other players (let's face it, it can't be very fun to see people flip their even if it's entertaining the first few times), it also wrecks things for the host. Why should I bother investing minutes or hours of my life that I'll never get back into a game's backstory, character roster, rules etc. if you're just going to set it on fire and walk out the second things don't go the way you wanted them to? That amounts to not just a giant middle finger made of atomic fire being waved at the players and/or mods you were blasting, but at the host as well.

And for this to come right after the catastrophe at the tail end of R93 as well...yeah, no.

Rest assured that, as I said to Fred, I will be coming very hard on this type of behavior in the future, because between this & R93 I have had it with this BS. I don't particularly mind other hosts employing more lenient rules in their own IHs from this point onward, but as for myself, I'll have to come down with an iron fist. Complaints are to be taken to me, to the involved parties or to another moderator by PM only unless granted explicit permission for a public airing, said complaints can be dismissed immediately and without question if they turn out to be more ing, and most importantly flaming will be punished with an immediate kick from the game for the instigator combined with a deletion of the offending post(s) and a stern reprimand for the other participants, no questions asked and no answers given. Other hosts letting repeat offenders into their games I don't really care about, but they will be banned from mine in the event that they pull such a stunt more than once.

After R93 I still tried to be patient, but this has made it clear that the gloves have to come off and discipline really has to be enforced much more strictly. I had thought then 'oh so what, ppl flip their & flame each other now & then' but between these two episodes I'm suddenly reminded of the early days of IH just after Warman, when we had enough of such to fill two Augean Stables to near-bursting. A body can only suffer so many burns before it turns to ashes, and I am not about to let that happen.

That said, I'll be back on Wednesday or Thursday. I can't say I really hope for a turnaround at this point given the state of the game, and further given that all my past hopes for the game have been dashed by a stampeding herd of bison and then set on fire by a dragon, but it doesn't hurt to dream. The next game won't be Space (the IH Proposal thread held some very good points I think need to be addressed, which I will when I get back) but it definitely will be a return to character-based gaming, which I think has less potential to explode & collapse inwardly like faction-based games do (if only, as R93 showed, slightly less).

*sigh*

[Dan the Man]

Radio silence, huh? Let's not just stand here awkwardly people, let's do as the man says! We are IH and we will carry on!

[EmperorBatman999]

Yes, the best way to move on from a situation is to get back to doing something.

So guys, let's cary on with COE and start GWI.

[Agamemnon]

Ugh, well that's disappointing.

Ah well, what's next on the docket?

And Barry, I'm sorry. Again, what I said was wrong, but the sheer volume of around that war was just driving me insane and no matter what I tried to do more kept pouring on. So I ragequit for the sake of my sanity.

[Dan the Man]

What's next on the docket? You act like this is over. Clearly it's not.

Also, there was no except in your imagination. Let's not push our way back into old arguments.

[Dave Strider]

A lot of that was indirectly amplified by your own actions, Agg.

[Agamemnon]

And again, LET'S NOT GET INTO THIS.

[Dave Strider]

No, Aggy, we need to get into it. Barry himself has said so. We need to dig through this with our bare hands until we find whatever nasty truth lay at its source, and we need to crush it with our feces-covered palms.

[Dan the Man]

And again, LET'S NOT GET INTO THIS.

If you wanted to avoid, for future reference, a better tactic is an apology without an explanation.

No, Aggy, we need to get into it. Barry himself has said so. We need to dig through this with our bare hands until we find whatever nasty truth lay at its source, and we need to crush it with our feces-covered palms.

...gross...

[EmperorBatman999]

Now let's get back to the games we have going on right now.

Sheesh you guys sound like the Inquisition.

[Darth Roxas]

Don't make me use my awesome force powers on you guys. -_-

Even if we just do some random thread RP; let's get something done. I wouldn't mind one of Kip's character-based combat IH's or something till Barry is back.

[Dan the Man]

We have a lot of stickied threads. Should we cut down on that a little?