Black Serpent

Today there was a series of events in the guild that caused me to take drastic action. Recently I have uncovered that one of our members was not who they appeared to be. I have since removed them from the guild.

The former guild member ignored /say chat, ignored guild chat, ignored tells from me, dropped out of our guild grind group to form up a PUG and then engage in PVP with our group.

I was contacted by the real guild member through the forums who explained their actions. The reasons given to me by our former member I sympathize with however I stand by my decision. Our former guild member was paying someone else to level their character.

Let me make this perfectly clear. If you are found to be paying someone else to be leveling your character you will be immediately removed from the guild. No questions asked. No second chance.

This is a community. If you need help, you seek the help of the guild. If you are struggling you seek the help of the guild. By paying a person or company to level your character you are violating the trust and integrity of our guild and our community and I will not tolerate this in our guild.

All of us have lives. Some of us own businesses. Some of us are parents. Some of us have busy jobs, school, lifestyles etc. That's why this guild is committed to adapting to your normal life. Whether "hardcore" or "casual" you earn your level, you earn your rank, you earn your character with hard work. By resorting to paying someone to level your character you not only mock those of us who spend our time doing so, but you risk the integrity of our guild's reputation on the server.

Some of you may know the name of the former guild member. I make one request as a favor to me, on my own behalf not even theirs. The former guild member's name is not something we will communicate to the server. This is not something we will use to tarnish the name of the player. I have conversed with our former guild member and feel our former guild member has learned from their mistake and paid a devastating price by not being a member of this guild, however I cannot take the risk and allow them back into our guild.

I need to know who our guild members are. I need to know that I can trust every member of the guild. The second we don't know our community is the second it falls apart. The implication is too great and the risk is too severe. Imagine being in a raid and a guildee rolling need on something and it turns out to be someone paying to have their toon leveled and you just lost out on your loot roll.

This is the prescient I am setting for the guild. If you are not satisfied with this decision than you may leave the guild. I won't tolerate it.

I do this for the good of this guild and the good of this community, but this only serves a greater point. Ensure you are helping our guild members when they need it. Help our community to grow. Get to know one another. This situation could have been avoided entirely if we all took a more active role in our guild. What we've built is something solid and strong. No one can refute that, but we've just laid the foundation on what this guild can be and now it's time to start building.

I strive to get to know each and every one of you as co-leader of the guild. You are not a faceless member of this guild unless you choose to be one. You can speak to me any time about anything even if it's just to say hi. I will make time for any of you that ask. Never be afraid to approach me, Aarkin, Nesiral, or one of the officers. Notify me immediately if you are feeling any dissatisfaction with members or officers. It was a few guild members pointing out some strange behavior in our former guild member that led to this decision.

It is an unfortunate series of events, but we will only grow stronger from this experience as a guild and a community.

I am saddened to lose our former guild member, but for the good of the guild I have to stand by my decision.

Sometimes I read things, take a step back and just think about it. This is one of those times. There are many perspectives on things as well as opinions as to what is right or wrong. In everyday life many, I'd even go out on a limb and say most of us, directly hire others to do our bidding. I hire people to do things for me that will help me in real life. I contract services all the time. Why? It's because I drive a long distance to work, work long hours and try to maintain a social life. I have someone that comes in my house to clean for me. Cleaning my house is my responsibility and my house is clean, not because I earned it, but because I paid someone to do it for me. My car gets washed because I pay someone else to do it. I would argue that everyone has paid for a service somewhere along the line that they could have done for themselves.

Further, in my professional life I spend my working hours purchasing goods and services. Many times my Company contracts others to do things for us. We contract janitorial services, Engineering design services, assembly, and numerous other services. Many of the things we sell are not of our own hard work, yet our product is marked and looked upon as my companies product. This is common and accepted without question. It's actually a desire operating method. Concentrate on your core competencies and farm out the rest.

Of course every time you hire services there is a risk associated and things can go badly. When we hire someone we don't expect failure, but it happens and sometimes the price for making a bad choice can go beyond ourselves, and we unintentionally hurt others. Here's where we make choices about our friends. Do we judge our friends, and turn our backs on them, or, communicate with them for better understanding, redefine our expectations and forgive. Especially if our friend admits the error and sincerely apologizes for what has happened.

I respect Sardoni's position and understand it. The point of this is to just try to add some perspective to this situation.

I know the person that was removed from the guild. I've played games with him for years, and can tell you his intent was not to hurt this guild. He's a great person that made a really bad choice. If this guild prides itself on knowing the character of its players, then I challenge any of you to tell me who I am. I've grouped with some of you, but I will tell you that there is no way in this world that you can know who I really am. I would venture to say that we know very little about each other. I don't mean this in a negative way, it's just the nature of online activities. Many of us choose to stay fairly anonymous for many reasons. That in combination of the number of members (112) make it very difficult to know people.

If you want to judge him by hiring someone to play his character, then judge me too, because I hire people all the time to do things that I either don't have time to do or just don't want to do. I have never hired anyone to level a character for me, but in light of the contracting I do for many other things I'm not sure I'm in a position to judge those that do

My final observation from Sardoni's post is the frequency of the word 'I'. My life experience has taught me that organizations run better when the word 'we' is used more often. There is no 'I' in Team.

There are always other points of view and we will not always agree. We all make mistakes and although it's disappointing when our friends make mistakes, what's most important is how we treat the error and how we move on.

Age of Conan is a computer game...nothing more. The person that made the mistake is sincerely sorry for what happened and I will not turn my back on him. He made a bad decision in a computer game.

I'm sure Sardoni will not tolerate any of its members continuing association with the member that was removed, so, if I choose to continue my friendship and gaming association with this 'evil' person, then it appears I have come to a gaming crossroad.

Alanya / Alsora

I do not want you to shun the member in the least. Not at all. I would never ask you to sacrifice real life ties. I am conflicted in this decision, but yes "I" have to consider the guild. Many thoughts and actions passed my mind last night.

What occured with his character and our guild tag we don't even know. He put the guild at risk. He put our players at risk. He was a founding member. While I reserve the right to make this descision solely I consulted every online member impacted. I even reached out to the officers that I knew I could reach outside the play times. I went to extremes but came to this descision.

You're right. I do not know you that well. I do not know anyone that well, but I have to take things at face value. How else can I take things? When he PVPs against our members and he doesn't respond to our guildees how should I take that? Ignoring the fact that the member was having his account controlled by someone else. Personally, I would have kicked him for not responding to tells and PVPing againt guild members alone after dropping our grouop to form his own. The pay for play item is not the sole reason. He trusted somebody to control his character and who knows the full reprecussions to the guild. Who truly knows that that player did?

In response to the word "I" that you mentioned. This was my decision for the guild. There comes a point where a leader has to make a stance and stick by that stance. The players that were online last night in guild and in vent were highly disappointed and vocal as to the actions of our former guild member. They were all screaming his name in guild chat to get his attention. Assuming his UI was bugged and maybe he wasn't getting tells. Speaking different languages to try and get him to respond. Also our ranger tracked him down in the zone to try and talk in /say to our former member. The extremes we went to in order to try and get in touch with this member were excessive.

The fact that the guild came together out of concern for our guild member speaks volumes. The outcome was what it was and I find it disappointing.

I hold no personal emnity against him. I make no judgement on him as a player. I have to consider the guild. Perhaps there is a time that we can welcome hime back.

Your post implies that somehow the person you kicked did all the terrible things you list. It was not him, it was someone he hired to help him get to 80 so he could raid and participate in the guild events. Some of us can't commit as much time as others and he simply wanted to be able to participate. Grinding in Khesh is bad, I've done it. The grind ends up being pvp and the lag is almost unplayable. I'm not justifying what he did as I uncertain as to the right or wrong of the issue, I'm just trying to express the other point of view.

You cannot say you did not judge him, you did. You judged, convicted and penalized him.

As for grouping with him, if I do, and the guild runs into us, how will they react? Will the KOS him because of this event?

What he did just went bad, and the guild has decided it to be unforgiveable, even with admission and full apology.

I guess when you know the real person you have more understanding. At least you have admitted that you made the decision on face value. I see your view, but since I know the person I will never agree.

Alanya / Alsora

Just because we contract services, and everyone does, it is society, does not give a blanket excuse to the activity. I am too lazy to find romance, so should I contract a whore? I am want to get a promotion, but my rival might get it before me, do I contract a hitman?

There is a difference between honest services and dishonest. The point you make is that this is a game, and that is exactly it. Part of the rules of the game are that you don't contract some guy in China to play your toon for you because you are tired of grinding or the lag. A high level is the reward for putting your time, not your money, into the game. We, the officers and leaders of Black Serpent, stand by the policy to not abide by people who pay for powerleveling. It shows something of character when you contract the dishonest services, a lapse of judgement. That we are not smearing the removed guild members name across the server is our forgiveness, so that he can make a new start. But he has lost our trust.

And as Sardoni said, by no means do we mean for anyone to shun him. Friendship is a very pivotal part of any social game such as this, and we are not the business of telling who you can and cannot be friends with. Maybe who you can and cannot kill, but not who can and cannot be friends with Said member will still be welcome in PUGs and other open ended events, and I wish said member well on his way.

Uh hmmmm.... I have an opinion now I do not know all the details of this situation nor the name of the character/person that was kicked from the guild, and granted I am fairly new to the guild I feel I should say what I have to say. I don not view this person's actions as immoral or a tell that this person is deceptive or even has any bad characteristics, but in response to alsora's post contracting someont to do a job is not against the rules fo business, that being said I will share a specific incident that I was solely in charge of.

My father and I have a custom wood stair shop. I was asked by a builder to manufacturer a "colossal" circular stair that would have cost in the neighborhood of 100K , more than a years pay for most people and it would have taken us monhs to construct and install. Now my posistion would not allow me to take on this task because it would consume my production capabilities and put everything else on hold but there are people in our industry that are generally only known to us "stair" people that specialize in these large stairs. I had talked with one of these people and they where willing to arrive in my trucks and where my uniforms in order to do this job. I as a very upfront business person do not like to be deceptive in any way what I did might not have been the best business decision it was the most honest decision I approached my perspective new customer, who BTW only builds houses that are 2 mil and up, and proposed that i broker this project for him and that I would only receive a supervisory fee as his local contact and I would coordinate and see that his job ran smoothly. I felt it was necessary to be upfront about the fact that I would be subbing his project out.

Now after all this they weren't goin for that, i suppose the moral of my story is that this individual (that got kicked from the guild)new that this sort of behavior would be frowned upon in guild . I personally am not sure who side i choose to stand on after all this is only a game,, but one that alot of people have alot invested in and the honor of the guild is at stake If Sardoni was to allow this action to simply be swept under the rug and word got out to the server it could be harmful to our reputation. Well Sardoni good luck with this one I am sure glad i'm not the big cheese. Just thought i would share my two cents here and I really do see both sides fo the argument but i would have to agree with the "cheese" on this one.

In response to Nesiral's post (they been flyin up here pretty fast) with all do respect your comments about the whore and hitman are a little out of perspective here, he did not break any laws but he did however cross a "boundary" that I believe our guild doesn't want people to cross,it is just a game and I am sure that there is a bit of sarcasm to those statements Nesiral made and that is percisely what I believe we do not want here. I do agree with the cheese's (read my first post here) actions this quite possibly could have been put up for a vote. Again just my nickel brother-inflation

My opinion, if anyone cares, agrees with both sardoni and nesiral. From what i can see from my brief experiences is this guild is very helpful with anything you could ask...both leadership and regular members. I havent seen anyone forcing people to play, or level to 80 in a rush. I have no idea who the person is, or their reasons behind what they did, i just do not agree with it. Games are meant to be fun and if you dont enjoy playing your character enough to level it to max level by yourself? well then find a new game.

Not to mention i would take it as a kick in the balls if i was a guild leader. These actions basically portray that the guild is not helpful enough and/or forcing people to level at a pace they are not comfortable with. I think its safe to say our guild does not want our guild to portray such an image.

The end!

Focusing only on the comments I have made in this thread I will summarize: The character of the true owner of the player is not in question. The actions of the person controlling the player last night are. The owner of the character is responsible for those actions by allowing the player last night to control their toon.

My sole argument at this point is the action and lack of action of the person controlling the player last night caused unrest in the online guild members. That is a violation of trust. I'm not going to entertain notions of acceptable vs unacceptable means of paying for services.

I am not attacking your friend's dignity or well being. I'm not calling anything about the true player into question. We are who we claim to be in this game. A error in judgment was made. There are consequences for actions. I am not going to discuss theoritical situations and real life applications of outsourcing (as I happen to also be in the outsourcing industry).

Sardoni is me period. If anyone else was controlling my character they would be me. I have built a reputation with my character and with this guild that we all built together. I would expect repercussions if the actions of the person controlling my character were contradictory toward guild conduct. This is why no one will ever have my password.

Bottom line: I have to look out for the guild. Yes, I. I can never be sure if this member is who they claim to be after last nights events. I care more about this guild's reputation on the server and the progression of the guild as a whole.

Well, I will admit I haven't read the EULA competely though, but if it is anything like every other EULA of every other mainstream payforplay MMO, then it strictly prohibits contracting third parties to play for you, or paying real money for in game currency. So, in that capacity, the person did break the law (of the game). That is what I was getting at. I was not the slightest bit being sarcastic.

Anyway, this is thread has served its purpose, I believe, in getting our, the leaderships, intent across. This is against the game rules, and there is a tacit rule in our guild that the games rules are ours also.

If you have further questions, take it to PMs or Tells.