Holy Moly. If I had the time I would spin this into a prime-time drama series.
From my perspective, this is actually what occurred, I swear it.
I got a complaint from Dairy stating that he had been banned. By his account, he was banned for telling Sero off. There was no mention of Booya or Asha. I checked the ban list and noted that he was indeed banned by Styo the night before. There was no reason listed. I unbanned Dairy for the time being, and told him that I would ask Styo what happened.
I asked Styo, and received this reply:
There is a player named Asha in game. Hes nothing but trouble. Everyone hates him. I mean Everyone. So Dairy and booya are taking his side and are making alot and i mean a lot of drama. So i banned dairy and booya i left him for now. Vent is supposed to be for fun and playing not drama..thats how i see it...if you want you can unban him..but you will have an empty vent
Not five minutes later, this illogical message from Styo followed:
and i cant it im banned? nice... take care bud.
To which I replied:
Wait a minute. Who said you were banned? I just wanted to know what happened.
Nothing came in return. From there on, I received various reports of Asha being an abusive player. Several individuals have conceded that this issue started and should have ended with him, considered the fact that he was never on Vent. Two of those stated that Dairy deserved to be banned, but not permanently so.
My interest is only in having a freely available, widely known, and easily accessible voice server until it is obsoleted by in-game services or lack of interest. I can handle making the server free and accessible by my efforts. In no small part has Dairy helped in making it widely known; hardly the behavior of your typical griefer. Since I had such little additional information, please, someone explain how anything I did was unreasonable.
Styo's admin privileges have indeed been removed only because he has not communicated his intentions to me. For all I know, he'll take down the server and offer his as alternative. In my shoes, who wouldn't do the same? The only entry on the ban list at this time is the tyler_scot identity, which is completely unrelated.
On the matter of a secondary server I offer this:
Given my knowledge of the beta community (which I'll admit is somewhat limited of late) and the application of a little insight, I have concluded that this all stems from the apparent divide that exists between the casual and competitive testers. He may correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that Styo has been itching to form his own competitive group for some time. All that he lacked was the number of people to keep it interesting. With the augmentation of new testers that I, myself, clamored for, perhaps some are best served by apportioning their flocks away to wherever they will go.
I have now specified that the server which I am running is public; that is, usable by anyone that is not circumventing others from its use. If space is an issue (which I have not heard), the subject is restricted to the Warband Beta Test. Otherwise, prepare yourself for off topic conversation and general foolery in the lobby. It's the freaking Internets for love of God, and it will be what it is unless someone is intentionally bothering the others. If that doesn't suit you, you can go to a game channel, where subject is restricted to related game at hand. And if you're so concerned that someone might eavesdrop on your plans to take the field of honor in a video game (which is unranked, at that), well then perhaps you should grab yourself on a private server and that requires user registration. I have neither the time or the will to concern myself with that.
One last thing. I've posted this only because I'm getting a steady flow of comments in my inbox about the previous two subjects; nearly all of them originating from comments in this forum topic. I don't mind the email, but I'm through with the questions about such an ridiculous affair.
I gain nothing but the same as any other user: a handy group of people I can Warband with. I hope we can all continue to play nice with each other.