An Open Letter to the Meepcraft Staff

If I may comment here, I think there's something that should be said that a lot of people are missing, and its absolutely no ones fault. I'm not disagreeing with you by any means, I think a lot of what you said was correct. But there's something many of the "veteran" players are not seeing. When you guys played, the server was a certain way. A bit more toxic, a bit more lenient, and under completely different ownership. I also played during this time, and it was fun, the server thrived under this. Then as many players grew up, stopped playing, and the player count plummeted, those of us who stayed saw a massive shift. Toxicity on the server literally went to near 0, rules were broken far less, and a new kind of community came out of that.

That community is what I wanted to talk about. From 2018-2020 (give or take a year), the server became less divided and more of a family. As @Fangdragon1998 put it, there were different groups of people, from the "just want to build" group to the hardcore pvpers to a bunch of others. But once the player count went down, most of the players kind of morphed together. Sure, we obviously had our interests and ways of playing, that should be expected. But, we all loved the server and were willing to go along with it through whatever. In this time, many new players joined, and played actively, and were involved in the community. Whenever someone started problems, they were quickly warned or muted or temped and it was over. And when I say problems, I mean provoking fights in global or being a nuisance, things many of you would likely see as normal.

And this is where I think a lot of the controversy originates from. Over the past two years, both the players and staff alike became used to having few problems and leaving global to be an actually pleasant place. Everyone knew everyone, and while we may not have all been buddy-buddy, there were no real problems amongst players. This, is my opinion, is the largest difference from the "old Meep" many people have joined back from. Global many years ago was so different than how it was right before revamp that if you compare them side by side, the results would be jarring. This change happened gradually, after years of player count fluctuations, different players joining and leaving, and updates to the server as a whole. And as the community evolved, and the server with it, we all adjusted to the "new Meep." It was a wonderful, non-toxic, lovely place, that I had no problem investing hundreds of hours into. In honesty, I preferred these years over years past, although many old players would likely disagree.

Now, fast forward to 2020. Extreme/Meepcraft ReImagined is released, with the main hope of attracting older players back to up the player count and save the server from death. And, by some miracle, people actually start playing again. So many old players have returned, if even for just an hour to say hello or check out the update, that it's honestly astonishing. I've talked to so many people that I haven't seen in years, and I think most of us share that same experience. But, with this influx of players, comes something no one could have predicted or expect. Old players returning, expecting to find the server the same way they left it. Not gameplay-wise, no, but community wise. The server suddenly saw a bunch of players who were more "toxic" than the past two years had seen, and it was a shock. And the reason I put toxic in quotation marks is because a lot of you players are considered toxic by the new community standards. Old standards this was just how people acted, but in this new community we've created, there's a noticeable personality shift. But this new community, built off of years of, for the most part, positivity and unity, was met with the polar opposite. And this is where the problems began.

Many players began to act and do things that years ago would have been fine, but in our server today, are seen as pretty outrageous things. The whole problem with the bug exploits: we all got used to these bug exploits being taken extra seriously, and we all reported them to Clue as soon as we found them. I, myself, have been involved with plenty of game-breaking bugs that I've reported to Clue as soon as I found them. Those who didn't were permed, and we were all okay with that. Old players don't know to do this, so they take advantage of these "exploits" then are surprised they got banned, because they genuinely did not see anything wrong with their actions. And this, it's no one's fault. It's two different eras of players clashing because neither realize how much the server has changed. The exploits are just one example of many instances were there was a massive disconnect between the two sets of players.

So with that, I'd like to kind of sum some stuff up:
Old players are returning to a server that has changed a lot more than any of them realized.
New players who played just before revamp are seeing old players they've probably never met and are shocked at how different they are, having no idea how different the server once was.
Neither of these players have done anything explicitly wrong. They both just acted the way they always have. And these conflicting/contradictory actions have been the cause of the past nearly two weeks of confusion, frustration and insanity.

And to address the whole "Legion is biased" debate: This is a symptom of the problem. Many of the players who played before revamp, the "new players" as I've been referring to them as, joined Legion. Most other towns are just friend groups of old players. So when people see few Legion players getting banned, and many other towns getting banned, it is purely because most of us are used to the new way the server is run, and understand certain things are not allowed, while to old players they may seem perfectly legal. So no, no one is biased, we are just used to a different kind of server. Also, many of the other problems came out of the Extreme rules being extremely confusing and unstated, and some players (on both sides) taking advantage of staff confusion.

For now, this is all I'd like to say. There is SO much more than just this to discuss, but I think this post is long enough. I'd once again like to say that I'm not really on either side here. Both sides love this server, and they show that in different ways. There's a massive miscommunication, brought on by nothing but time. There is no right side, there is no wrong side, there is just two main groups of people who have grown up on two different versions of the same thing. So, as a PSA to everyone, old and new: please don't target any staff or players for things that are either out of their control or not their fault. Everyone hears each other, and all just want the best for the server.

I hope I got my point across. I completely hear where you are coming from and you made plenty of valid points. I just think there's something no one's really acknowledged or realized that should be said. Thank you for reading, sorry for making it so long.

 

Well that's what you have to expect from a server that went down from literally thousands of players online to just a small friend group right? Because for the past two years that's all the server playerbase has been. Of course its going to be less "toxic" when everybody is friends with each other and there aren't nearly as many players online.

Even at that, it's not like we just came in when Meepcraft was at thousands of players a day and expecting it to be the same, we knew the server shrank and all that fun stuff. You have to understand that a lot of us saw the rise of the server. I remember joining the server before a 100 players were on consistently, and watching the server rise to the first time when there were over a thousand players online. We know what it is like to be in such a small tight-knit community and watch it literally explode to a massive server full of people. We understand, trust us we do.

I think that this is an issue on its own in the fact that this current staff team doesn't know how to moderate a playerbase of this size. That's the honest truth. This playerbase we have right now is in a very unique position. Sure it's full of players, but the numbers are very fragile and we are here because we love the community and of course the fact that we are in a worldwide pandemic. If you want players to stay after the pandemic, staff must understand that what they do right now requires immense amount of discretion and common sense. You are right, things changed between meep then and now and for them to assume that we would follow the rules as they are now compared to what they were then, especially when they are unwritten, is crazy. The current mod team is used to having that small tight-knit group of players where everybody is their friend, they don't know how to moderate with such a big and now vocal playerbase.

 

I won't let this thread get buried, partly because Qazini is the only moderator that's replied and also because I really want some kind of explanation from @CluelessKlutz

 

The administrators have already met in Discord with the authors of the thread, changes will be publicly announced soon.