Luxury
07-06-2005, 12:37 AM
I'm sure most of you have heard stories about what exactly transpired that led to the events causing the evacuation of our old website. I'd like to take this opportunity give a full summary of what happened:
Palewoe was once our friend. Back in the days when our peak online count was averaging 5 or so he would run 5-mans with me, pot, ado, auring, ada, lyd, ani and others. He was pleasant to be around and a great tank. He was generous enough to offer webspace for a website as we started to think about growing and doing bigger things.
As we started raiding LBRS for our UBRS key and eventually UBRS he started to lead many of the raids we went on. He was shortly promoted to officer and was a trusted voice in our officer's channel. Eventually as we began to venture into Molten Core he was a key component of our success, as he used his tanking expertise to bring about our victories over Lucifron, Magmadar, and Gehennas. At the time he was training our other tanks to prepare them for MC, but unfortunately none of them had experience in directly tanking bosses, as all the bosses were tanked by Pale, and their gear was woefully lacking compared to Pale's.
Unfortunately, despite his skills and his love for the guild, Pale had several critical flaws in his personality: He could not debate above a personal level, he could not handle stress well, and he had a tendency of pursuing unilateral action on important matters without communicating with anyone else. He would at times blow up on people with very rude remarks when he was stressed out, and direct various personal attacks and hate tells/PMs to people who disagreed with him. He once kicked a member for being associated with others who had left the guild without informing the member why he was removed or informing the other officers that he had done so. The first we heard about it was when the former member messaged us asking why he was removed and we didn't know what to tell him or who had removed him. Although Pale did apologize afterwards and assured us that he just needed to handle his stress better, the behavior had a pattern of continually reoccuring.
Eventually, Pale could not take the stress anymore. This, combined with the series of disagreements between him and Potensa on subjects such as raids and the direction of the guild, culminated in a heated argument in which his stubborn insistence on things being done the way he wanted brought out the worst of his temper. When his demands were not affirmed, he left the guild, while asserting to the officers that we will fail as a result of not following his wishes. This happened around a month ago. To his credit, he left on mostly friendly terms. He offered to transfer the website ownership to us, and Elil began the process soon thereafter with him. Obviously this was never completed.
With Pale gone, we scambled to gear up the rest of the tanks in the guild and get them up to speed on tanking in MC. Bendium took over and lead the efforts to do this. He did an amazing job and our transition could not have been smoother without his hard work. Under his leadership our tanks have allowed us to progress even further into Molten Core and eventually to Majordomo. Most importantly, the tanks were happy under Bendium and felt like they were a part of a team effort.
About 2 weeks or so ago, shortly after we defeated Baron Geddon, Pale approached us and expressed his desire to rejoin the guild. He seemed impatient and rushed to get a guild invite right away from me. We decided not to rush things and talk it over with him first. Potensa and I got together with Pale and we asked him why he wanted to come back, what makes him think that the guild will no longer fail by not following his wishes, and whether he will be able to curb his nastiness and deal with his stress properly. He told us that his leaving was "just a break" and that he's "good and rested now", that he'll "manage his stress" (as he said once before), and "we're all adults, we can work things out." He seemed genuine, and considering that he was our friend, we gave our support at the time to his return.
Then the subject of what level he will come back as came up. I told him that we don't feel it's appropriate for him to come back as an officer. He didn't seem happy about this, and argued that if we didn't want people asking questions we should give him the officer position. I told him that given his history with stress, giving him a position that's less stressful would only make sense. He accepted this, but still seemed unhappy about it. We ended the conversation with the assumption that he'll come back one step below officer (still able to read the officer channel) as soon as we talk it over with the officers and warders (one step below officer) and then announce it to the guild as a whole.
I posted to the officer forums about Pale's request to join and how Pot and I talked with him and felt comfortable about him joining as a warder. In fact I was fully expecting to post the notice to the guild forums and have Pale back in the guild at the end of the week. However, it very quickly became apparent that there was more to this, and the situation is not as simple as it seemed. There was the issue of who will be leading the tanks, and whether Bendium's efforts will now all be for nothing and Pale will now be tanking everything in MC again, Pot then had doubts about Pale's ability to remain civil, as he absolutely refuses to go through the abuse that Pale had inflicted upon him and others.
The officers and warders discussed this heavily over the next week or so, and gradually it became clear that with his return we will most definitely see a split within the guild over what role he is to take on, whether he should be an officer or not, and whether he should be leading the tanks or not. We took the time to talk to the tanks and Bendium, and they expressed that they were happy with the way things were and they would prefer not having Pale as their leader because Pale's leadership style didn't allow them to grow fully as tanks, and that the work they've put in would now have been for nothing. As the discussion continued and Pale's conversations with others started to come to light, it became increasingly apparent that Pale will settle for nothing short of a leadership position and lead the tanks, and at the very least be co-leader with someone else (which we saw as essentially leading if he's going to outrank the other tanks, none of which are warders or officers). We found out that he had a conversation with Bendium, and Pale made it clear that he absolutely refused to be under Bendium in any way.
It was at this point that the concern over Pale's mentioning of his powers over the website was brought up. Pot was worried that given Pale's desire to attain a leadership position through any means necessary and his affinity to insane outbursts of rage would at the very least tear the guild apart if he were to return to leadership in any capacity, and that at the worst, he may use the website against us in an extremely damaging manner. The other officers believed that this was too paranoid, and did not want to believe that Palewoe, our friend, was capable of something like this, even with the character flaws that he had. The officers started to push for a vote to resolve this quickly, but as the situation began to unravel itself, it became clear that Pale should not come back in any kind of leadership position.
At this point, I wondered that if Pale's motivation was purely to come back and hang out with his friends again, why is he so dead set on obtaining leadership? I was no longer comfortable with Pale coming back in a leadership role, and I announced that I will talk with him again, to find out if he can possibly come back under the leadership of Bendium. I talked to him that night, asking him the questions as I said I would. He told me that he was absolutely against being under Bendium, which I already knew. I asked him why, and he said point blank that it's because Bendium is Potensa's friend. I asked him if he would be able to get along with Potensa, to which his reply was "it's up to him."
Upon reading this, I knew then that Pale had not changed. Knowing the kinds of nasty things he sent Pot without any kind of provocation on Pot's side to deserve such treatment, I knew that given this attitude, in Pale's mind, he is not responsible for curbing his own violent outbursts, to him it is up to everyone else to accomodate him and take his side on every issue so that he doesn't explode. Palewoe was still incapable of taking disagreement on issues of guild policy as anything other than a personal attack. At that moment I knew when he said "we're all adults, things will work out" he really meant "you're all adults, you'll learn to see things my way...or else." I decided then that Pale should not return at all, and that the first thing we need to do is to get the website properly transferred as we had agreed, and let Pale know that it's just not going to work out.
We never got the chance to do that.
I woke up the very next morning by the repeated calls of Bellothusia, a RL friend in the guild, and quickly found out that Palewoe has made all of our private forums public, locked us out, deleted all of our news, deleted all of our raid signup sheets, deleted all of our applications, and given all of the officers who raised doubts about his return obscenely derogatory titles. This was his reaction after he abused his power to read the thread debating his return after telling several of us that he would not do so, and his way of getting revenge at not being able to attain the leadership he once had. He was ready to abandon us when he believed that we would fail, and now that we proved to be successful, he would seek to regain that which he mistakenly assessed to be worthless; if he couldn't have it, he decided he would destroy as much of it as he was able. This was precisely what Pot had predicted he would do.
I'm still amazed at just how calm and composed everyone in the guild was in dealing with the situation as it unfolded that day. Dracma immediately set up a temporary forums page for the members to use. Elil went and registered a new domain name and secured webhosting, and spent the rest of the day setting up the forums you now see, even through the Molten Core raid we had the very same day. Dergo secured the signup lists of the raids for the weekend through his browser cache, as those had been deleted by Pale. Thanks to him, the raids were able to proceed as planned, beautifully averting the sabotage attempted by Palewoe. Within 24 hours we had our new forums up and running. The rapid recovery was truly a testament to the resoucefulness of our people, and I am tremendously proud of them.
Unfortunately, Pale's attempts to disrupt did not end there. He proceeded to change the URL of Dracma's link to the temporary forums to a flash animation of a hypnotic satanic kitten hypnotizing you into killing your parents and then yourself, then later changed it to the pokemon official website. Lamian's attempts to post information in the application and raid signup sections to help guide people who may be lost were promptly deleted multiple times, and she was eventually locked out. It was clear that his intent was to damage the guild as much as possible, and to prevent recovery in any way he can. He posted that "Even in this, whats good for 11th is what I have in mind," but actions speak louder than words, and these actions clearly show that Pale's intentions were nothing short of malicious.
It's tragic that things had to come to this, but in the end, I believe even this would have been better than letting Palewoe back into the guild, and allowing him to cause this level of destruction from within. This despicable and juvenile act revealed his true nature to us before it had a chance to manifest itself in places that truly mattered. Yes our officer's forums may now be public, but we have nothing to hide, nothing to cover-up. Nothing in the officer forums was written with malicious intent by the current officers of the guild. We went in with the best of intentions for our friends and our guild, with no ill will for anyone else. We can proudly say that we're not going to falter, we're not going to stumble, but that we will rise up and overcome this, and become stronger in the process.
This is our finest hour. We'll still be here tomorrow.
I'd like to thank all of the great and wonderful people in The Eleventh Hour for all of your support, your ingenuity, your good-humor through all of this. It is from people like you that our guild derives its strength and resilience, and I'm immensely proud of all of you for the courage and fortitude that you have all displayed that day.
Lastly I want to thank all of the people on the server who have pledged their sympathy and support over the last few days. Your sentiments are greatly appreciated, and you all make me feel very fortunate to have Earthen Ring to call home.
If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact me in game or through PMs.
Thank you,
Luxury
Palewoe was once our friend. Back in the days when our peak online count was averaging 5 or so he would run 5-mans with me, pot, ado, auring, ada, lyd, ani and others. He was pleasant to be around and a great tank. He was generous enough to offer webspace for a website as we started to think about growing and doing bigger things.
As we started raiding LBRS for our UBRS key and eventually UBRS he started to lead many of the raids we went on. He was shortly promoted to officer and was a trusted voice in our officer's channel. Eventually as we began to venture into Molten Core he was a key component of our success, as he used his tanking expertise to bring about our victories over Lucifron, Magmadar, and Gehennas. At the time he was training our other tanks to prepare them for MC, but unfortunately none of them had experience in directly tanking bosses, as all the bosses were tanked by Pale, and their gear was woefully lacking compared to Pale's.
Unfortunately, despite his skills and his love for the guild, Pale had several critical flaws in his personality: He could not debate above a personal level, he could not handle stress well, and he had a tendency of pursuing unilateral action on important matters without communicating with anyone else. He would at times blow up on people with very rude remarks when he was stressed out, and direct various personal attacks and hate tells/PMs to people who disagreed with him. He once kicked a member for being associated with others who had left the guild without informing the member why he was removed or informing the other officers that he had done so. The first we heard about it was when the former member messaged us asking why he was removed and we didn't know what to tell him or who had removed him. Although Pale did apologize afterwards and assured us that he just needed to handle his stress better, the behavior had a pattern of continually reoccuring.
Eventually, Pale could not take the stress anymore. This, combined with the series of disagreements between him and Potensa on subjects such as raids and the direction of the guild, culminated in a heated argument in which his stubborn insistence on things being done the way he wanted brought out the worst of his temper. When his demands were not affirmed, he left the guild, while asserting to the officers that we will fail as a result of not following his wishes. This happened around a month ago. To his credit, he left on mostly friendly terms. He offered to transfer the website ownership to us, and Elil began the process soon thereafter with him. Obviously this was never completed.
With Pale gone, we scambled to gear up the rest of the tanks in the guild and get them up to speed on tanking in MC. Bendium took over and lead the efforts to do this. He did an amazing job and our transition could not have been smoother without his hard work. Under his leadership our tanks have allowed us to progress even further into Molten Core and eventually to Majordomo. Most importantly, the tanks were happy under Bendium and felt like they were a part of a team effort.
About 2 weeks or so ago, shortly after we defeated Baron Geddon, Pale approached us and expressed his desire to rejoin the guild. He seemed impatient and rushed to get a guild invite right away from me. We decided not to rush things and talk it over with him first. Potensa and I got together with Pale and we asked him why he wanted to come back, what makes him think that the guild will no longer fail by not following his wishes, and whether he will be able to curb his nastiness and deal with his stress properly. He told us that his leaving was "just a break" and that he's "good and rested now", that he'll "manage his stress" (as he said once before), and "we're all adults, we can work things out." He seemed genuine, and considering that he was our friend, we gave our support at the time to his return.
Then the subject of what level he will come back as came up. I told him that we don't feel it's appropriate for him to come back as an officer. He didn't seem happy about this, and argued that if we didn't want people asking questions we should give him the officer position. I told him that given his history with stress, giving him a position that's less stressful would only make sense. He accepted this, but still seemed unhappy about it. We ended the conversation with the assumption that he'll come back one step below officer (still able to read the officer channel) as soon as we talk it over with the officers and warders (one step below officer) and then announce it to the guild as a whole.
I posted to the officer forums about Pale's request to join and how Pot and I talked with him and felt comfortable about him joining as a warder. In fact I was fully expecting to post the notice to the guild forums and have Pale back in the guild at the end of the week. However, it very quickly became apparent that there was more to this, and the situation is not as simple as it seemed. There was the issue of who will be leading the tanks, and whether Bendium's efforts will now all be for nothing and Pale will now be tanking everything in MC again, Pot then had doubts about Pale's ability to remain civil, as he absolutely refuses to go through the abuse that Pale had inflicted upon him and others.
The officers and warders discussed this heavily over the next week or so, and gradually it became clear that with his return we will most definitely see a split within the guild over what role he is to take on, whether he should be an officer or not, and whether he should be leading the tanks or not. We took the time to talk to the tanks and Bendium, and they expressed that they were happy with the way things were and they would prefer not having Pale as their leader because Pale's leadership style didn't allow them to grow fully as tanks, and that the work they've put in would now have been for nothing. As the discussion continued and Pale's conversations with others started to come to light, it became increasingly apparent that Pale will settle for nothing short of a leadership position and lead the tanks, and at the very least be co-leader with someone else (which we saw as essentially leading if he's going to outrank the other tanks, none of which are warders or officers). We found out that he had a conversation with Bendium, and Pale made it clear that he absolutely refused to be under Bendium in any way.
It was at this point that the concern over Pale's mentioning of his powers over the website was brought up. Pot was worried that given Pale's desire to attain a leadership position through any means necessary and his affinity to insane outbursts of rage would at the very least tear the guild apart if he were to return to leadership in any capacity, and that at the worst, he may use the website against us in an extremely damaging manner. The other officers believed that this was too paranoid, and did not want to believe that Palewoe, our friend, was capable of something like this, even with the character flaws that he had. The officers started to push for a vote to resolve this quickly, but as the situation began to unravel itself, it became clear that Pale should not come back in any kind of leadership position.
At this point, I wondered that if Pale's motivation was purely to come back and hang out with his friends again, why is he so dead set on obtaining leadership? I was no longer comfortable with Pale coming back in a leadership role, and I announced that I will talk with him again, to find out if he can possibly come back under the leadership of Bendium. I talked to him that night, asking him the questions as I said I would. He told me that he was absolutely against being under Bendium, which I already knew. I asked him why, and he said point blank that it's because Bendium is Potensa's friend. I asked him if he would be able to get along with Potensa, to which his reply was "it's up to him."
Upon reading this, I knew then that Pale had not changed. Knowing the kinds of nasty things he sent Pot without any kind of provocation on Pot's side to deserve such treatment, I knew that given this attitude, in Pale's mind, he is not responsible for curbing his own violent outbursts, to him it is up to everyone else to accomodate him and take his side on every issue so that he doesn't explode. Palewoe was still incapable of taking disagreement on issues of guild policy as anything other than a personal attack. At that moment I knew when he said "we're all adults, things will work out" he really meant "you're all adults, you'll learn to see things my way...or else." I decided then that Pale should not return at all, and that the first thing we need to do is to get the website properly transferred as we had agreed, and let Pale know that it's just not going to work out.
We never got the chance to do that.
I woke up the very next morning by the repeated calls of Bellothusia, a RL friend in the guild, and quickly found out that Palewoe has made all of our private forums public, locked us out, deleted all of our news, deleted all of our raid signup sheets, deleted all of our applications, and given all of the officers who raised doubts about his return obscenely derogatory titles. This was his reaction after he abused his power to read the thread debating his return after telling several of us that he would not do so, and his way of getting revenge at not being able to attain the leadership he once had. He was ready to abandon us when he believed that we would fail, and now that we proved to be successful, he would seek to regain that which he mistakenly assessed to be worthless; if he couldn't have it, he decided he would destroy as much of it as he was able. This was precisely what Pot had predicted he would do.
I'm still amazed at just how calm and composed everyone in the guild was in dealing with the situation as it unfolded that day. Dracma immediately set up a temporary forums page for the members to use. Elil went and registered a new domain name and secured webhosting, and spent the rest of the day setting up the forums you now see, even through the Molten Core raid we had the very same day. Dergo secured the signup lists of the raids for the weekend through his browser cache, as those had been deleted by Pale. Thanks to him, the raids were able to proceed as planned, beautifully averting the sabotage attempted by Palewoe. Within 24 hours we had our new forums up and running. The rapid recovery was truly a testament to the resoucefulness of our people, and I am tremendously proud of them.
Unfortunately, Pale's attempts to disrupt did not end there. He proceeded to change the URL of Dracma's link to the temporary forums to a flash animation of a hypnotic satanic kitten hypnotizing you into killing your parents and then yourself, then later changed it to the pokemon official website. Lamian's attempts to post information in the application and raid signup sections to help guide people who may be lost were promptly deleted multiple times, and she was eventually locked out. It was clear that his intent was to damage the guild as much as possible, and to prevent recovery in any way he can. He posted that "Even in this, whats good for 11th is what I have in mind," but actions speak louder than words, and these actions clearly show that Pale's intentions were nothing short of malicious.
It's tragic that things had to come to this, but in the end, I believe even this would have been better than letting Palewoe back into the guild, and allowing him to cause this level of destruction from within. This despicable and juvenile act revealed his true nature to us before it had a chance to manifest itself in places that truly mattered. Yes our officer's forums may now be public, but we have nothing to hide, nothing to cover-up. Nothing in the officer forums was written with malicious intent by the current officers of the guild. We went in with the best of intentions for our friends and our guild, with no ill will for anyone else. We can proudly say that we're not going to falter, we're not going to stumble, but that we will rise up and overcome this, and become stronger in the process.
This is our finest hour. We'll still be here tomorrow.
I'd like to thank all of the great and wonderful people in The Eleventh Hour for all of your support, your ingenuity, your good-humor through all of this. It is from people like you that our guild derives its strength and resilience, and I'm immensely proud of all of you for the courage and fortitude that you have all displayed that day.
Lastly I want to thank all of the people on the server who have pledged their sympathy and support over the last few days. Your sentiments are greatly appreciated, and you all make me feel very fortunate to have Earthen Ring to call home.
If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact me in game or through PMs.
Thank you,
Luxury