I know a lot of people have wanted to hear from me since all of this stuff started. I wanted to avoid it if I could, because it's kind of impossible to say exactly what happened from my perspective without naming names. I'm going to do my best to hide the identities of those involved, because I can't say for sure what their intentions were. If logs of this are/have been posted without being edited or cherry-picked, they should back me up, but I can't post any of my own.
This all started a little while ago, maybe a couple of weeks, I'm not completely sure. Me and Kali were on in the early mornings, saw not many people were online, and we thought running a trivia game could be fun. So we went into one of her pirates rooms, featured it (put it to the top of the guest room list and gave it the mickey mouse staff icon you see on events), and played. It was fun, the players liked it, we liked it, and it gave them something to do when hardly anyone was online. I was in a Skype call with Kali and some friends (who I will not name, but if I mention "some friends" again it's probably the same people) the whole time.
We did the trivia event a few times over the next few days, I didn't mention the trivia events to the other staff. In retrospect, I should have, but I can't change the past. I honestly didn't think they were significant so I just didn't think about it. After one of the events, Kali had the idea for a gameshow type event. This is the big "secret event" that everyone is talking about. She set it up, we played it, it was fun. In the trivia, the first person to answer a question won. In the gameshow event, I think almost everyone got a chance to play. Kali was using the same commands I made for dreams month to randomly pick players. If someone had already played, the command would let her know, and she would skip them. The events went on for hours, and only some big prizes were given out (funny side note actually, I wanted to play so I asked to be next, so I played and won the ONLY firewall given out in that event. Me, Amy, not Amy's clone, Amy. Players who were there were laughing over it). The odds of winning something were so small, that the events that lasted hours upon hours only gave out some (I'm not sure on the exact number, but I don't think any event had more than one won... I could be wrong though).
Oh just a side note I added after I wrote a lot of this, I realised I forgot to mention the Stitch Hat auction. It was not in one of these events, it was at a time when I think a couple of hundred players were online, in the most popular room on the guest rooms list, it was an auction room, and it had a queue. A lot of people bid on it, one of my friends just happened to be the one who won. I probably shouldn't have done it, but again, it's in the past now and I can't change that.
After we played this event twice I think, the other staff noticed. I didn't think it was a huge deal again, but I realised we should have mentioned it, and I remember apologizing for that. But... that wasn't enough for them. Kali was involved, so it must have been something treacherous, right? In order to give context for this next part, I always considered most of the people on the staff my friend. I thought they trusted me, but I was wrong apparently.
It started when it was first brought up (I think in a HOST-only chat... which was odd because Kali was involved and wasn't there to defend herself...). Someone asked about it, because a player posted a thread on the forums. I told them it was nothing to worry about, I was there, I was involved in making it, no cheating was going on. They didn't listen, which is fine, they don't have to trust me... it just hurt because I thought after all of this time they would... and it was all over something so tiny. There was an argument about it for a while, and eventually someone said something along the lines of "so sad [redacted] is involved with this, i know she's a wonderful person". My heart sank reading that. This person was supposed to by my friend, yet they don't consider me a good person? They still consider it "shady" (a word I learned the old staff loved)?
Here's the thing that bothered me about it all. If we wanted to hide the events, why would we send game alerts? Why would we feature the rooms? Why would we do all of that? It's obvious that one of the players would post about it, and it's silly to assume we would try to cover it up somehow. The trivia events were spur of the moment, and the gameshow events wouldn't work if it was announced (it took hours and hours to get through every player... all 20-30 of them, and you would understand why if you saw it, it wasn't like the other events at all).
At some point, and again I'm sorry but I can't remember exactly where in the timeline this fits in, but it was before I knew the others knew about it or were talking about it, I saw that a certain staff member had been looking up my logs in the housekeeping. So, I looked into it, and saw he was looking up everything from that event, all of my friends, and players that were there... I asked him why. It turned out, instead of asking me, he decided he would just assume something bad was going on and look everything up. Again, a huge lack of trust there, and I don't know why.
So, the staff continue to argue for a long time. I had left the staff chats by this point because I was so hurt from things they had said. Kali said something (and she regrets it, and apoligized to the people involved later), they got upset, and that was it. Later on, one of the staff started speaking to me in a private chat. They told me they do trust me, but that's not the impression I got from what they were saying. It seemed like they completely turned on me because of my involvement with Kali, and that spoke much louder than what this person was saying. Eventually, they said they were going to leave. I think they expected me to try to convince them to stay. I decided not to, for the first time ever. They said it was because I wasn't going to punish Kali for what she said. I was in tears the whole time, every time I saw a message from this person, this person who I always loved (as a friend, and still do...) for so long, because I knew what was going to happen, I was going to lose two of my closest friends, and I did. They left. I said something I didn't mean, I wasn't in the state of mind to think about it much.
After that, the person I was talking to left, along with the person who I knew would follow them (for good reason, but I'm trying to not name names so I can't go into detail). I was distraught. After this, another staff (the one who was looking up our logs earlier) said he was going to leave, but wanted to help us with something one last time (I can't say what without it being clear who this person is.. but that had told be a couple of weeks before all of this that they were already considering leaving due to lack of time). During this time, he looked up more logs of my friends (the same friends). I ignored it for the time being. Later on, we received reports that someone was talking about the events in the staff chat (a big fight). This was... alarming, because at this point Tink (I'm naming her here because she was the first to post, and well, you all know that) had not posted her leaving post on tumblr so noone could have possibly known besides a leak (and by the way, we didn't find out about this by looking through chat logs, someone reported it). So, we investigated after we heard this, and we found a certain staff member (who I will refer to as Z, but you all know who they are) was the most likely to be involved.
At this point, knowing Grizzly was leaving, I had already decided Absolem was going to be an admin. She had looked into it and thought we had enough evidence to remove Z (it was mostly some chatlogs, and the people who were involved). I felt this was inconclusive, so I said no. Then later on, Absolem managed to get into contact with one of the people who was saying the stuff that got reported. So, she asked them. I won't reveal any of what was said, but all I can say is it was pretty clear who they were talking about. We removed Z from the staff chat, and I stated it was a measure just in case Z was leaking so we could prevent anything else from being leaked. If Z was present at the time, I would not have removed Z.
Not too long later, Z came back, after receiving a text message from one of the staff. I wasn't really sure what to say or do, I'm not good with that kind of confrentation and I'll be the first to admit it (and that's part of the reason I picked Absolem and Kali to be admins). I felt there was enough evidence to keep Z removed until further notice, but I didn't want to fire Z, I wanted to give them another chance.
Z started cursing at me, not a one time thing but she insulted me and cursed at me multiple times. I wasn't sure what to say. Not saying anything to Z was a huge huge mistake and I am sorry to Z, and the other people involved, for that. At this point, the staff who was mentioned earlier, who said they were leaving but that they wanted to help do one last thing, decided it would be a good idea to look up everything to do with the Z situation... take pictures of every single log... including the names of the person who was giving us information, and to give them to Z. That was wrong. I don't care how anyone else feels about it, if someone is giving us information and we promise confidentiality to them, you DONT just throw the informant (for lack of a better word) into the lions pit by giving the accused everything they said including their identity. The next day, this staff member was removed from the chat, after all permissions were cleared from EVERYONE the night before. They were already planning on quitting, so I don't consider it being fired, but I felt awful because they had been around for so long.
Z got mad, obviously. We ended up talking to the informant again, and let's just say we heard more than we bargained for. I won't go into detail, but we were told they had received threats and they were scared for their safety. I can't vouch for this persons legitamacy, but this information combined with how she cursed me and Absolem out, and insulted us. We decided Z couldn't come back. At this point, Absolem still wasn't announced as an admin if I remember rightly. I was in tears, I didn't want to be the one to tell Z they couldn't come back. It was a mistake not telling Z, but I always liked Z and felt terrible. So I went to sleep, and woke up to people spamming my Skype with calls because Z had blocked everyone on Skype, and threatened to release the entire staff chat (not just what Z has released so far, everything). I didn't want that, so I apologized to Z, at this point I couldn't tell her we had already made up our minds, but I genuinely was sorry for the way it was handled. Even the ex-staff were begging me to talk to Z.
After that, Z posted anyway because Z got banned from the forums. Z didn't post what we thought Z was going to post though, and Z had told people they were going to post things, the other staff just assumed the forums and banned Z from them for that reason alone.
After this, other staff left for a variety of reasons. This post is already long enough, and there's something I need to do right now that I'm late for (a personal thing), so I won't go into detail for this.
I completely stand by my decision to make Absolem and Kali administrators. They proved to me they would be able to do it, and they are doing a great job. We have the entire month planned out already, and we also know what we're doing next month. The staff chat has a much nicer atmosphere than it has in a long time, the people in there are talking, we have great people in there who stepped up at our time of need. To them, and especially to the staff who stayed with us throughout this whole ordeal, I thank you. The old staff group had a lot of anger under the surface, it felt like half of the people in the group hated eachother. A lot of them felt they had no say, like what they thought didn't matter, and that if they spoke up they would get attacked for it. I don't think that was anyones fault, but that's how it felt. If I hurt anyone over the course of these events, I am truely sorry.
What will happen next? Well, we want to continue with the plans we have! There's a new custom magic being released soon, and we have some plans for some special things coming up. I'm planning on testing a new type of event soon where there are no queues and everyone gets to play at once!
Beyond everything else, I hope you will give Absolem and Kali a chance. Some of you think I made the wrong decision, but their dedication to the game really shows to me, and they stepped up at a VERY painful and stressful time to help me. With everyone who is saying things about them, they are staying strong. I believe in them, and I hope you will at least wait to see how they do before making judgements.
Thank you for reading, if you have any questions (because I'm sure I left a lot out...), or if I made any mistakes, please let me know.
This all started a little while ago, maybe a couple of weeks, I'm not completely sure. Me and Kali were on in the early mornings, saw not many people were online, and we thought running a trivia game could be fun. So we went into one of her pirates rooms, featured it (put it to the top of the guest room list and gave it the mickey mouse staff icon you see on events), and played. It was fun, the players liked it, we liked it, and it gave them something to do when hardly anyone was online. I was in a Skype call with Kali and some friends (who I will not name, but if I mention "some friends" again it's probably the same people) the whole time.
We did the trivia event a few times over the next few days, I didn't mention the trivia events to the other staff. In retrospect, I should have, but I can't change the past. I honestly didn't think they were significant so I just didn't think about it. After one of the events, Kali had the idea for a gameshow type event. This is the big "secret event" that everyone is talking about. She set it up, we played it, it was fun. In the trivia, the first person to answer a question won. In the gameshow event, I think almost everyone got a chance to play. Kali was using the same commands I made for dreams month to randomly pick players. If someone had already played, the command would let her know, and she would skip them. The events went on for hours, and only some big prizes were given out (funny side note actually, I wanted to play so I asked to be next, so I played and won the ONLY firewall given out in that event. Me, Amy, not Amy's clone, Amy. Players who were there were laughing over it). The odds of winning something were so small, that the events that lasted hours upon hours only gave out some (I'm not sure on the exact number, but I don't think any event had more than one won... I could be wrong though).
Oh just a side note I added after I wrote a lot of this, I realised I forgot to mention the Stitch Hat auction. It was not in one of these events, it was at a time when I think a couple of hundred players were online, in the most popular room on the guest rooms list, it was an auction room, and it had a queue. A lot of people bid on it, one of my friends just happened to be the one who won. I probably shouldn't have done it, but again, it's in the past now and I can't change that.
After we played this event twice I think, the other staff noticed. I didn't think it was a huge deal again, but I realised we should have mentioned it, and I remember apologizing for that. But... that wasn't enough for them. Kali was involved, so it must have been something treacherous, right? In order to give context for this next part, I always considered most of the people on the staff my friend. I thought they trusted me, but I was wrong apparently.
It started when it was first brought up (I think in a HOST-only chat... which was odd because Kali was involved and wasn't there to defend herself...). Someone asked about it, because a player posted a thread on the forums. I told them it was nothing to worry about, I was there, I was involved in making it, no cheating was going on. They didn't listen, which is fine, they don't have to trust me... it just hurt because I thought after all of this time they would... and it was all over something so tiny. There was an argument about it for a while, and eventually someone said something along the lines of "so sad [redacted] is involved with this, i know she's a wonderful person". My heart sank reading that. This person was supposed to by my friend, yet they don't consider me a good person? They still consider it "shady" (a word I learned the old staff loved)?
Here's the thing that bothered me about it all. If we wanted to hide the events, why would we send game alerts? Why would we feature the rooms? Why would we do all of that? It's obvious that one of the players would post about it, and it's silly to assume we would try to cover it up somehow. The trivia events were spur of the moment, and the gameshow events wouldn't work if it was announced (it took hours and hours to get through every player... all 20-30 of them, and you would understand why if you saw it, it wasn't like the other events at all).
At some point, and again I'm sorry but I can't remember exactly where in the timeline this fits in, but it was before I knew the others knew about it or were talking about it, I saw that a certain staff member had been looking up my logs in the housekeeping. So, I looked into it, and saw he was looking up everything from that event, all of my friends, and players that were there... I asked him why. It turned out, instead of asking me, he decided he would just assume something bad was going on and look everything up. Again, a huge lack of trust there, and I don't know why.
So, the staff continue to argue for a long time. I had left the staff chats by this point because I was so hurt from things they had said. Kali said something (and she regrets it, and apoligized to the people involved later), they got upset, and that was it. Later on, one of the staff started speaking to me in a private chat. They told me they do trust me, but that's not the impression I got from what they were saying. It seemed like they completely turned on me because of my involvement with Kali, and that spoke much louder than what this person was saying. Eventually, they said they were going to leave. I think they expected me to try to convince them to stay. I decided not to, for the first time ever. They said it was because I wasn't going to punish Kali for what she said. I was in tears the whole time, every time I saw a message from this person, this person who I always loved (as a friend, and still do...) for so long, because I knew what was going to happen, I was going to lose two of my closest friends, and I did. They left. I said something I didn't mean, I wasn't in the state of mind to think about it much.
After that, the person I was talking to left, along with the person who I knew would follow them (for good reason, but I'm trying to not name names so I can't go into detail). I was distraught. After this, another staff (the one who was looking up our logs earlier) said he was going to leave, but wanted to help us with something one last time (I can't say what without it being clear who this person is.. but that had told be a couple of weeks before all of this that they were already considering leaving due to lack of time). During this time, he looked up more logs of my friends (the same friends). I ignored it for the time being. Later on, we received reports that someone was talking about the events in the staff chat (a big fight). This was... alarming, because at this point Tink (I'm naming her here because she was the first to post, and well, you all know that) had not posted her leaving post on tumblr so noone could have possibly known besides a leak (and by the way, we didn't find out about this by looking through chat logs, someone reported it). So, we investigated after we heard this, and we found a certain staff member (who I will refer to as Z, but you all know who they are) was the most likely to be involved.
At this point, knowing Grizzly was leaving, I had already decided Absolem was going to be an admin. She had looked into it and thought we had enough evidence to remove Z (it was mostly some chatlogs, and the people who were involved). I felt this was inconclusive, so I said no. Then later on, Absolem managed to get into contact with one of the people who was saying the stuff that got reported. So, she asked them. I won't reveal any of what was said, but all I can say is it was pretty clear who they were talking about. We removed Z from the staff chat, and I stated it was a measure just in case Z was leaking so we could prevent anything else from being leaked. If Z was present at the time, I would not have removed Z.
Not too long later, Z came back, after receiving a text message from one of the staff. I wasn't really sure what to say or do, I'm not good with that kind of confrentation and I'll be the first to admit it (and that's part of the reason I picked Absolem and Kali to be admins). I felt there was enough evidence to keep Z removed until further notice, but I didn't want to fire Z, I wanted to give them another chance.
Z started cursing at me, not a one time thing but she insulted me and cursed at me multiple times. I wasn't sure what to say. Not saying anything to Z was a huge huge mistake and I am sorry to Z, and the other people involved, for that. At this point, the staff who was mentioned earlier, who said they were leaving but that they wanted to help do one last thing, decided it would be a good idea to look up everything to do with the Z situation... take pictures of every single log... including the names of the person who was giving us information, and to give them to Z. That was wrong. I don't care how anyone else feels about it, if someone is giving us information and we promise confidentiality to them, you DONT just throw the informant (for lack of a better word) into the lions pit by giving the accused everything they said including their identity. The next day, this staff member was removed from the chat, after all permissions were cleared from EVERYONE the night before. They were already planning on quitting, so I don't consider it being fired, but I felt awful because they had been around for so long.
Z got mad, obviously. We ended up talking to the informant again, and let's just say we heard more than we bargained for. I won't go into detail, but we were told they had received threats and they were scared for their safety. I can't vouch for this persons legitamacy, but this information combined with how she cursed me and Absolem out, and insulted us. We decided Z couldn't come back. At this point, Absolem still wasn't announced as an admin if I remember rightly. I was in tears, I didn't want to be the one to tell Z they couldn't come back. It was a mistake not telling Z, but I always liked Z and felt terrible. So I went to sleep, and woke up to people spamming my Skype with calls because Z had blocked everyone on Skype, and threatened to release the entire staff chat (not just what Z has released so far, everything). I didn't want that, so I apologized to Z, at this point I couldn't tell her we had already made up our minds, but I genuinely was sorry for the way it was handled. Even the ex-staff were begging me to talk to Z.
After that, Z posted anyway because Z got banned from the forums. Z didn't post what we thought Z was going to post though, and Z had told people they were going to post things, the other staff just assumed the forums and banned Z from them for that reason alone.
After this, other staff left for a variety of reasons. This post is already long enough, and there's something I need to do right now that I'm late for (a personal thing), so I won't go into detail for this.
I completely stand by my decision to make Absolem and Kali administrators. They proved to me they would be able to do it, and they are doing a great job. We have the entire month planned out already, and we also know what we're doing next month. The staff chat has a much nicer atmosphere than it has in a long time, the people in there are talking, we have great people in there who stepped up at our time of need. To them, and especially to the staff who stayed with us throughout this whole ordeal, I thank you. The old staff group had a lot of anger under the surface, it felt like half of the people in the group hated eachother. A lot of them felt they had no say, like what they thought didn't matter, and that if they spoke up they would get attacked for it. I don't think that was anyones fault, but that's how it felt. If I hurt anyone over the course of these events, I am truely sorry.
What will happen next? Well, we want to continue with the plans we have! There's a new custom magic being released soon, and we have some plans for some special things coming up. I'm planning on testing a new type of event soon where there are no queues and everyone gets to play at once!
Beyond everything else, I hope you will give Absolem and Kali a chance. Some of you think I made the wrong decision, but their dedication to the game really shows to me, and they stepped up at a VERY painful and stressful time to help me. With everyone who is saying things about them, they are staying strong. I believe in them, and I hope you will at least wait to see how they do before making judgements.
Thank you for reading, if you have any questions (because I'm sure I left a lot out...), or if I made any mistakes, please let me know.
