wtf is going on in Bloodloch?

Tetchta

Omei said:

Although the Bloodloch Situation is important, it's not one of our immediate priorities. We agree that there's a need to consider it, and we have plans to do so in the first quarter of 2021, once holiday madness has slowed down a little bit and we have breathing room.

This doesn't mean we'll be sitting down prepared to hash it out on the midnight of January 1st. We're a limited team with limited resources, and we have priorities we've set for December that might spill over into 2021. If you don't hear from us by February, it might be worth making another topic on the subject.

Hi. I know it's not February yet, but since Abhorash doesn't seem to answer messages in-game, the city is essentially leaderless and superduper stagnant. What's going on? What's the plan? Is there a plan? Is there a timeline for the plan? Taking stuff over with Abhorash is great and all but I'm not sure gutting the organization so that it's utterly useless and then going AFK (we have several ministry heads who haven't logged in for weeks) for weeks is really enough.

Gavramel

Hmm.
I still vote for removing Dominion auto-seat and adding a cap of max 2 people from the same guild.

Mjoll

Screw it, NPC ruler forever.

Ehtias

I'm in charge of bloodloch now.

Rhyot

Ya'll made your bed. Now lie in it. Leave Abby in forever. VIVA LA RESISTANCE!!

Tetchta

edit: nvm I don't wanna fight in the forums I just want to know wtf is going on and whether the admin care at all about fixing it and whether that fix is even on a schedule at all

Xavin

If nothing else, the things that actually effect the rest of the game need to be resolved. Areas that are currently cut off need to be reconnected. Especially considering y'all just released a new minigame that cannot be accessed by any method other than wormholes at the moment. I get that this is part of the event but it's been a few months now and things need to be sorted out.

Tetchta

There's nothing really pivotal in those areas aside from one popular quest and one commodity shop. Although the Giovani thing should probably be moved outside of El'jazira lol.

Nonatea

Tetchta said:

There's nothing really pivotal in those areas aside from one popular quest and one commodity shop. Although the Giovani thing should probably be moved outside of El'jazira lol.

I can think of one milestones for us non-endgamers and at least four good paying quests, as well as good hunting grounds. Didn't know about Giovani, so make that two milestones, I suppose. So yeah... probably should try to set those areas free again.

Alela

inb4 @Severn comes back to Bloodloch to finish what he started with the Indorani >:)

Tetchta

Nonatea said:

I can think of one milestones for us non-endgamers and at least four good paying quests, as well as good hunting grounds. Didn't know about Giovani, so make that two milestones, I suppose. So yeah... probably should try to set those areas free again.

Roleplay consequences impact stuff like that all the time and they're really not nearly as important as one of the most active organizations in the game that's had structural and cultural problems for years being completely neglected by the administration for months. There are other quests, other bashing spots, and other milestones to do.

Nonatea

@Tetchta Just correcting your wrong, that's all. Not saying the rest isn't more important, just that there's more than one quest and one commodity shop.

Tetchta

Hey @Tiur what's going on with this?

Tetchta

bump

Brax

We are aware that the situation has not yet reached its conclusion.

Continued tags, bumps, discord comments, emails, or other miscellaneous pings unfortunately will not speed up the resolution process.

The volunteer playing the role of Abhorash has run into some issues in the real world (common trend for most of us in the pools lately between family cancer diagnoses, injuries, death in the family, and numerous other unfortunate occurrences) which has slowed progression of the event.

We're working with them to pick up the pieces and arrange for a faster resolution.

Tetchta

It's actually perfectly reasonable to ask for updates when updates have not been given. At all. For months. And gets repeatedly ignored by the paid staff.

Brax

Tetchta said:

It's actually perfectly reasonable to ask for updates when updates have not been given. At all. For months.

Sure, agreed! Not discounting that at all. It's more a matter of tone than anything.

Rest assured, none of us secretly get enjoyment out of Bloodloch having no player leadership. We want it to be resolved as well in a way that isn't hand-wavey and dismissive of roleplay established thus far.

Tetchta

I get that, but this, again, was never a criticism of the Celani behind Abhorash or the volunteers or even the slowness of the resolution per se. I don't even know how many times this needs to be outright stated before the miscommunication stops becoming my fault and starts to become someone else's, honestly. @Tiur is paid to run the game, and has been completely silent on this, and if there's some problem with Celani being unable to do something, there's other ways things can be handled. I have no acrimony for Abhorash or his Celani, but it is not asking a lot that the person in charge of the game actually communicate with us about what's going on (especially when we're more or less told to wait until a deadline and then the deadline lapses with no update). It is not an absurd overreach to be like "hey wtf is going on" when all we get when we don't speak up is radio silence. Nobody's asking unpaid volunteers to fall on grenades for anybody.

Tetchta

Hey @Tiur can we get, like, anything? At all? Any statement? Any timeline? Any hint of anything? Literally anything?

Ehtias

We've been over this. I'm the king now.

Rhyot

Why not just sit back and chill? Nothing serious is going on that requires player leadership. It's not like BL is lively enough anyway to warrant immediate attention. Even when there was player leadership, it wasn't that lively. 

Sit back, sip on a beer/coffee/water, relax, and just be patient. Brax already kinda answered what was going on, so I mean... your questions have already been answered. 

Tetchta

Rhyot said:

Why not just sit back and chill? Nothing serious is going on that requires player leadership. It's not like BL is lively enough anyway to warrant immediate attention. Even when there was player leadership, it wasn't that lively. 

Sit back, sip on a beer/coffee/water, relax, and just be patient. Brax already kinda answered what was going on, so I mean... your questions have already been answered. 

????? how is sitting for months saying nothing not being patient? Honestly it doesn't reflect great on you as the ex-Keeper that you:

• think the city being entirely dead right now (with decreasing activity and participation daily and ministers who don't log in) is a good thing
  
• that you think there's little-to-no difference between how the city is now versus how it was when we had active leadership. I get that you were a little disconnected from things going on within the city, but come on man.
  

I'm not dragging Brax back into this. Enough Celani/volunteers have been thrown in front of trains for the paid staff already over this. That wasn't an answer at all. It wasn't a timeframe at all, it wasn't anything other than "sometime something may be done" and a guilt trip for asking for answers when we were promised answers.

We've sat back and chilled for months and months and months while the city got neglected. I'm glad you're satisfied that nobody's asking you to do any work in the org right now, but that doesn't mean we should be celebrating that one of the biggest organizations in the game is stagnant, neglected, and dying due to negligence from the paid administration.

Brax

Tetchta said:

That wasn't an answer at all. It wasn't a timeframe at all, it wasn't anything other than "sometime something may be done" and a guilt trip for asking for answers when we were promised answers.

Just to clarify, I absolutely was not trying to guilt trip anyone. That was not at all the intention. What I was trying to do was provide some context; I've got no idea what's going on, maybe it's 2020 lingering, but most of us in the pools right now have had some sort of dramatic life change or disaster happen within the last month of the aforementioned variety. This, as you might expect, throws wrenches into things such as efforts (like this event) conceptualized and carried out by volunteers. If you consider that context guilt tripping, I'm sorry, but that wasn't at all what I meant it as.

I'm not sure who's being thrown in front of trains here (the comment was entirely of my own accord, as is this one) but I think the issue isn't so much that it wasn't an answer, and more that it wasn't an answer you liked. Which is totally fine and reasonable! You're totally valid and justified there to not like the answer.

But at the end of the day, that is the answer. We thought the person leading the event would be back sooner, they were not. Because we thought they'd be back sooner, nobody wanted to jump in and usurp their plans and take over their event. It's clearly gone on for longer than intended, so we're working on it now. This has our attention and we're working on it.

Tetchta

Brax said:

But at the end of the day, that is the answer. We thought the person leading the event would be back sooner, they were not. Because we thought they'd be back sooner, nobody wanted to jump in and usurp their plans and take over their event. It's clearly gone on for longer than intended, so we're working on it now. This has our attention and we're working on it.

That certainly feels like more of an answer than we've been previously given. It read a lot more like "the Celani running it had life stuff happen, so stop expecting things to happen with this." So hearing that it's at least, to some degree, beign dealt with in Ted's absense is good news.

Brax said:

Just to clarify, I absolutely was not trying to guilt trip anyone. That was not at all the intention. What I was trying to do was provide some context; I've got no idea what's going on, maybe it's 2020 lingering, but most of us in the pools right now have had some sort of dramatic life change or disaster happen within the last month of the aforementioned variety. This, as you might expect, throws wrenches into things such as efforts (like this event) conceptualized and carried out by volunteers. If you consider that context guilt tripping, I'm sorry, but that wasn't at all what I meant it as.

"Continued tags, bumps, discord comments, emails, or other miscellaneous pings unfortunately will not speed up the resolution process." certainly felt like a form of guilt tripping to me. I kinda already knew that the Celani that was generally heading this up had stuff happen, but that doesn't erase the material reality of the city currently having a leader who doesn't do anything. Regardless of the reason, this is a thing that is happening to one of the biggest orgs in the game, and is a problem--and it's not a problem that can't be solved by someone, if that makes sense. The context of what's going on in the pools is helpful, but doesn't change the situation. And I resubmit that asking for answers within a timeframe where we were told there would be answers, and then asking again when they don't show up, isn't outside of the scope of reason.

As for this:

Brax said:

I'm not sure who's being thrown in front of trains here (the comment was entirely of my own accord, as is this one) but I think the issue isn't so much that it wasn't an answer, and more that it wasn't an answer you liked. Which is totally fine and reasonable! You're totally valid and justified there to not like the answer.

I don't think what you posted before was really an answer to anything anybody asked (although the most recent one was). And while I appreciate your initiative, @Tiur and the other paid staff being entirely silent (except for this one instance, where someone hurt Tiur's feelings and he showed up to ban them) until tempers flare out of control until a volunteer feels compelled to step in to diffuse the situation is a form of the administration using the volunteers as a way to dodge responsibility, culpability, and this conversation. We get answers for classleads, we get answers for mirror classes, we get answers for mining, but the paid staff's silence on this issue, one that's arguably as important as all the others given how central Cities have become to the mechanics and roleplay of the game, is not helping things, and definitely sends a message that they aren't taking it as seriously as they should.