Thank You.

[Children]

Recently, I've been seeing so many post bashing staff and honestly I'm tots my goats fed up! Quit your tunnel vision for half a second and understand that it is NOT a simple job. Quick to compare the current staff to the old...uhhh the game wasn't dead? They didn't have these issues to deal with? Beg my pard but, shut your fukin mouth up. The uppers aren't there to piss you off, they genuinely want the best for the game and if you consistently whine about the SAME THING OVER AND FKIN OVER you just annoy them. I won't name any names since I have integrity but you sound like a 7 year old girl on here.. izor.

You all don't seem the realize WHY the zone has declined over the years. It is VERY simple. How did you find out about the game? Many of you found out from a friend... that is how I found out (through Dome and fludd) and then I showed like 10 of my friends...this was in like grade 5. Fast forward to now. All of us who were CONSTANTLY sharing the game to all our friends have grown up. I wouldn't go up to my peers now and show them this... just doesn't make sense. The young kids who we need to share with their friends aren't with us... they are on their ipads/iphones/xboxs playing the new games. We are left with a bunch of 20/30/40/50 year olds. Take all the events of life into account as well.. we are legit rotting to the grave. So stop hating on staff

Diakka looks like a donkey

[squallFF8]

Ah-fkin-men , Children .

If the idiots that keep bitching and complaining about the state of the zone were running things it would have been dead ages ago. The old faces that give the game that nostalgic feel are 15 years older now. They're involved with school, work, marriage, kids etc. Yet alot of them still take the time to contribute.

You can't expect the game to ever be what it was, and staff can only do so much to coddle to the needs of these 30 yr old fk tards. If we want to change the state of the game, players need to make a contribution themselves. Scower pub/EG/other zones for new talent. Add them to your squadron, and let them play amongst vet players to show them the ropes . If they have potential , keep them, let them learn. If they lose games & diminish squad morale ? Axe them . With so many key players retiring, the only option is to bring new blood in.

Thank you staff for all the voluntary hours you put in during these stagnant times . <3

P.s diakka & children are extremely muscular & haf high degree of sex appeal irl . Nohomo

[Kane]

Your second paragraph is true but overall you're defending staff a bit too much. The battle between staff and the community itself is rather disgusting. Staff members are members of the community and the community has built this game. The game, im not sure if any of you have tried it but playing subspace by yourself in an arena really sucks. The fun and enjoyable part about this game is playing with others. Somehow a good majority of the community has forgotten what the game is, it is not a chat. We make such a big deal about the chat that it has become just important as the game itself to us. The blame will go around in circles, we blame whoever we don't like for the death of the game. In the end I hope you guys will notice that it doesn't matter what a person said or how someone acted, what matters is the time they put in actually playing the game. All of you is what has kept this zone running for so long by keeping the leagues competitive, keeping the arenas and events full. These vets with 10+ years played is just incredible, their impacted on the zone will dwarf everything else and all they did was play. Anyone who has invested a great amount of time into playing this game deserves the respect for it and thank you.

[Rab]

so... what game shall we play for the next 10 yrs?

[Crescent Seal]

SAME THING OVER AND FKIN OVER you just annoy them.

sort of like your youtube davidparody spam

[2pac]

yo children hop off staff dick you fuckin queer dickridin tw staff since you been born bitch

[the_paul]

what part of staff is not a simple job

[Shaddowknight]

what part of staff is not a simple job

Dealing with assholes can be trying sometimes. Also trying to make change happen is like trying to fuck a solid steel Wall.

[Ephemeral]

Many (but not all) of past and present staff have my respect but at varying degrees. Like any volunteer organization there are (and have been) some who joined for the wrong reasons, some who burned out, some who may care but are simply do not understand the ‘big picture’.

Staff structure is power-centric, in other words every staff position is tied closely to a zone permission. This is wrong on many levels but most obvious issue is the culture it has generated. This staff organization and culture is made up of a bunch of individuals (as opposed to teamwork), each of whom has their own perspective and no top-down direction. There is little delegation, teamwork is not emphasized, and communications (between staffers) are far from what they should be.

To be fair it is important to point out that running the zone is a 24/7 deal; it would take an extraordinary leadership to pull off good teamwork and resolve the communications challenges. Another huge current issue is that as the zone population has fallen the amount of staff work has not. Rather than cut back on zone ‘features’ it was deemed wise to increase the number of events, arenas, leagues and other changes in an effort to save the zone. Put another way, staff is being looked to for greater and greater levels of support from a smaller and smaller number of playing public.

You only have to look at the hiring/firing situation to best understand what has happened. Hiring is rarely done by seeking out those players who might make the best staffers. Instead players simply apply and are accepted (including those who have previously been banned for cheating). While player base has shrunk so has the pool of potentially good staffers, so they have little choice other than to accept ‘less-than-ideal’ candidates. Problems are also found in how staffers are promoted and replaced. Staff performance is measured by a system that allows ‘dead wood’ to exist, it is far too easy to simply put in your butt time on staff and never really care about the zone’s bigger picture.

None of the above is new, it is exactly what the population has been bitching about for years. It leaves many of us with ambivalent attitudes towards staff; this translates into apathy. We acknowledge the value that staff brings to the zone and glad that at least someone is willing to do it. But at the same time we grieve what could have been done and how it may have helped the zone. And most of all, we feel really bad for the rare handful of staffers who had the vision, the dedication, and the intelligence to do the right thing but have not been able to pull it off.
eph

[roxxkatt]

trying to make change happen is like trying to fuck a solid steel wall.

sounds sexy

are you as aroused as i am right now

[Shaddowknight]

sounds sexy

are you as aroused as i am right now

Maybe, can you penetrate a solid steel wall?

[Zeebu]

ha ha

needledik

[the_paul]

Dealing with assholes can be trying sometimes. Also trying to make change happen is like trying to fuck a solid steel Wall.

I was staff for awhile, its not a very complex job.

[Shaddowknight]

I was staff for awhile, its not a very complex job.

Basically no, but when you get into more things it will, of course, get more complicated. When you have ideas for certain change that you want to see done, you generally have to be prepared to fight tooth and nail walking through the snow uphill both ways.

[Ephemeral]

Since Shaddow brought up making changes…..

IMO TW staff, and the zone itself, is not solution orientated. In the time I have been playing I am not sure that I have ever seen a single real solution implemented. Rather TW staff and zone are ‘reaction’ orientated. An issue is identified and a reaction is formulated and applied.

There is a big difference between a solution and a reaction. A good example is SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome); the leading cause of death among infants 1 month to 1 year olds. There is no solution to this horrid problem but there is a reaction (reaction = that infants younger than 1 year old should be placed on their backs to sleep — never face-down on their stomachs). This seems to help reduce the issue but bottom-line is that no one knows what causes SIDS and there is no real solution. No one is any smarter and the issue is not resolved.

True solutions are always better that reactions. Solutions mean that a root cause is identified, a possible resolution devised for that root cause, and then tested for correctness. Never in the history of this zone has this ever happened. What we have instead is a bunch of reactions (usually from the bottom up) to issues. No one has ever gotten smarter from these reactions, no one can say for sure if the reactions really resolved any issues.

While it may seem that working towards real solutions takes more work and time but it is false economy to think that reactions are better. Not only do solutions it put to bed the real issue but it also removes all debate/whining over that issue for years to come. If anyone questions the results, they can simply repeat the testing used and/or develop new theories for consideration. Point is, there real quantified baselines to work with, not opinions, lip flapping, and uncertainty. (Imagine the value if this had been done for the last 15 years, 15 years worth of real data and understanding of the changes that had been made.)

So why didn’t this happen and why is this not being pursued now? Because it is ‘easier’ to just wing a reaction than to actually do it right. If I have an idea and have influence than I only have to find someone to do the dev work and I can get it implemented. No checks, no balances, no way to really understand if my idea has addressed the actual issue or not. I can rely on ‘casual observation’ to justify my idea (for example, vets feedback on this forum or some informal bullshit ‘poll’); basically allowing me to slide on ever proving that my idea was effective or not. A reaction approach is also ‘easier’ since it doesn’t require teamwork, I can go off into a corner and develop a reaction by myself and don’t need other to buy in.

In my opinion the lack of real solutions is has always been a upper TW leadership problem. They controlled the staff culture and had the empowerment to drive the zone to find real solutions. Lower staff had no real way to change the way things were getting done, it was up to someone like PL (who certainly was intelligent enough to know the difference between a solution and a reaction) to put the staff on the right track. A new issue should have been assigned an owner and that owner should have been required to assemble a team responsible for finding the solution. No delusion as to the possible root cause, no long winded debates from the playing population, no self-righteous idea owner who blows off all challenges to his idea with a wave of his hand. Only quantified and qualified data that can be used to explain and understand the solution with the ability for anyone to revisit the issue at any time.

This reaction culture has also prevented some people (like myself) from feeling like they can be productive on staff. If the zone is not going to benefit by getting wiser then I have a very hard time justifying investing my time in it. Even if the zone fails a person could feel good about their participation in a solution-orientated organization. But how can anyone feel good about their investment in a reactionary organization; the zone fails and they walk away with only speculation about having made a difference?

Is it too late to change to a solution orientated zone? IMO it is never too late to do things right. Dump the current dumbass staff organization and reorganize without the 1:1 relationship to zone permissions. Build teamwork, hire, fire, and promote based upon a single simple concept, is this person contributing to the improvement of the zone (and not the silly ‘if you host a lot than you are a good staffer mentality’). Only upper staff can do something like this, and there is no way to do this without drastic change (IMO Demonic’s style is to take things slowly and not make sweeping changes).
eph