Okay, I think both sides kind of need to take a step back from this.
I'd kind of like to think I'm a semi-neutral party to this whole debate. Or, perhaps, a moderate, between the extremes? In any case, people know me, I'm not one of the original .500's, the only complaint I've heard about me is that I am 'too serious'. I don't like racism, homophobia, misogyny, trolling, or glitching, which for some reason makes me disliked by some people. But I don't think I've ever been accused of elitism.
First off, the tyler thing, I was there at the time, I actually was the one to ask for the ban, in fact. He came in once, and was using...sound clips, or something, from...Beavis and Butthead, I think? And after that, he was just whistling into his microphone continuously. He got a kick for an hour, I believe, and came back after that, after which, I asked he be banned. I don't know anything about his age, if there was a separate incident with him or this is another tyler, then...I don't know.
I think this current scenario, is sort of a kneejerk reaction to recent events. Everyone who's been playing much lately is no doubt familiar with the infamous 'Asha'. For those who aren't, this individual has taken to rather extreme unpleasantness in in-game-chat, belittling other players, constant use of homophobic slurs, and griefing by intentional use of exploits, among other annoying, but not really 'objectionable' behavior. A couple of Vent users, Dairyproduct and Booya, whom I don't really know but have seen on before and never really stood out to me, started to display similar behaviors, if to a lesser degree, and seem to be the originators of the 'KoFag' clan-tag floating around at present, which Asha seems to have adopted, along with a few others. (An intended insult at the KoD clan, which quite a lot of vent is a part of or loosely associated with, the basic theme of which being, well, trying to minimize people like Asha's ability to ruin the game for others, being my guess). They've been less vocal than Asha, but still acting similar, and defending Asha in vent, as well as joining her in the glitch-exploiting.
It's kind of an awkward situation because they weren't being overtly offensive and disruptive like Asha, but kind of passive aggressive about it. It's easy to decide to ban someone mic-spamming or otherwise being actively offensive, less so when they're just passively collaborating with those who are. This has been so divisive, I think, to our little community, because prior to this, who cares if you're not all on the same team? They're all people you know, or at least have seen around, so we all trust each other not to be telling your team what vent-users on the other team are planning.
It's a difficult problem to solve. I think Styo may have spoken rashly at times, misarticulating his desire for the camaraderie of the past as objecting to new players. On the other hand, I think Darkness may be being unfair to Styo by accusing him of elitism.
Maybe separate ventrilo servers is a good idea, but I really have to ask everyone just to ditch the hate. We're attempting to preserve our community, and that means things will need to change, but disagreements over how best to change are inevitable and the only sure thing is that raging at each other is going to ruin that more surely than any other course of action.
We need a way to ensure reasonable standards of behavior, in game and in vent, from people on ventrilo, while keeping the community from stagnating from lack of growth or stratifying into elitism. This is going to mean some sort of standard for gaining entry, I suspect, or higher levels of administration on the vent server. One attempts to prevent problems from forming, the other focuses on fixing them after the fact.
I incline toward the former. I'd like to have vent users have a vent and an in-game name that are clearly related, so, say, Asha can't lurk on vent with some random name. I honestly, also don't think there's anything wrong with, say, a passworded channel, or something, for people who are really interested in close coordination and winning, rather than just casual gaming and palling around. The casual channel will stay populated by casual players and when there aren't enough people for heavy coordination, those who have been on the vent server a few times and participated in playing with the group, send them a PM or something, giving them the password to the other channel, or something. I dunno. I'm open to input from everyone else, obviously I don't make any decisions on this matter, it's just my input on the whole thing as a hopefully more neutral party.
And so thats what I did on your vent, no offense was meant.
