Oh boy has this caused drama over the last few months, and I’m becoming a little sick of it, so I’m making this post to clear up a few things.

Concerning advertising:

Fact is; advertising is against the server rules. We have all seen that one player who joins our server, pretends to care, and then starts advertising his server whereby we ban him. There are few things that Godsy, staff (myself included), and the community despise more than advertising.

However…

This advertising applies both to people playing on Piratecraft, as well as people from our community going over to other servers and advertising the server. We know we have a nice little server going on here, but advertising is shameful. Please don’t advertise this server on other servers, or vice versa.

Concerning other players from these servers:

Staff know about all this ‘taking players from other servers’ thing that has been going on recently at an accelerated pace. We know the people who are involved, we know that they are a relatively tight knit community, we know how some of these communities are leaving a ‘lasting impression’ on the Piratecraft community.

However…

We can’t just go around banning people who came from other servers. They are players too after all, and we don’t know the exact circumstances of how or why they joined. So please don’t nag staff about banning or punishing these players (or the one who brought them here) just because they came from a different community. These players will be treated like the other players here; if they behave themselves; all is fine, if they don’t; they get punished. We don’t have ‘special rules’ for players who play on a different server, but we are aware of their records on these servers.

Concerning ‘raiding/pvp crews’ and the ‘toxic attitude’:

The big one I guess, and the main reason why I have made this post.

Anyone who is reasonably active on Teamspeak or discord, and has been on there within the last month or so will know exactly what I’m talking about with all of this. I’m not trying to cause more drama than there already is, I’m not trying to point fingers at certain individuals or groups, I’m trying to stick to the facts.

Firstly, the ‘raiding/pvp crews’: 

When I first joined over 2 years ago, things seemed simple to a lot of people; small-ish ‘pirate crews’ would attack and war with the larger ’empire crews’, and from time to time even the larger ’empire crews’ would have a bash at one another. Time passed, and as the ‘pirate crews’ started to become scarce, and eventually even the ’empire crews’ started to crumble, what seemed to be a new class of crews started to form: these ‘raining/pvp crews’. From personal experience from being on Teamspeak, it seems these new crews/communities have created quite a divide among many veteran members of our community.

I keep hearing people say things along the lines of “player1 was salty at player2, so player1 brought over all of his/her toxic pvp players onto Piratecraft to get revenge/piss off other players/take over the server”. For all those who agree with that statement, I’m sorry but for the most part that’s what communities do: they work together to achieve a common goal. Whether that goal is productive or beneficial to the server is debatable.

Of course not everyone enjoys being on the receiving end of one of these ‘raiding/pvp crews’. But its not against the server rules to create such a raid/pvp crew. Yes ok, you may struggle to call them pirates, let alone say they use things like ships or own a nice port as would be standard on a pirate-themed server, but these are not compulsory features of the server. We have plugins that people can choose to use, or not. Staff won’t go around with a stick beating those players who ‘never use boats because they only pvp’. I’d really like to see more and encourage the use of ships, cannons, brews, etc, but it’s these players’ choices whether they use them or not.

And don’t get me started on the “its unfair because they are all in discord working together in a big group and always win”. They’re organised. Without mentioning any names, those of us to do go on teamspeak and play together on other games are guilty of this too; we communicate and win a lot of games, I’d even go as far and say we win a good majority of games because we work together and communicate well. Sounds familiar? Yeah, it should. Are we exploiting things? Not really, no.

Secondly, the ‘toxicity’:

“That crew only play on here to annoy us” or “They’re just so toxic”.

I get it. They’re kids (mostly). They do what most kids do: be bold, be irritating, and be immature.

I know things get out of hand, I have witnessed things get out of hand with this immature attitude, and those involved are known and have been muted or warned about it in the past. But if you’re not a tolerant person, then why are you on the internet? We have a wonderful /ignore command on the server if somebody is annoying you, if they are still annoying, take screenshots or record it and send it to staff or post it on the forums. Its what we are here for. Not every offence will be punished, but that doesn’t mean we won’t do something later on. 

Also, I know people are being ‘targeted’ by other certain people in the community. We know which players are involved, and we are watching the situation very very carefully. Just because someone is good at pvp/raiding/working in a team, does not grant you the ‘lets be annoying’ badge (only Markus can grant you that).

A message to those ‘pvp/raiding crews’ or individuals:

Don’t be annoying, don’t be the ones whom the server frowns upon, and don’t ‘target’ people or crews just to annoy them and get a reaction out of them.

For those at the receiving end of this ‘targeting’; it exerts an enormous amount of pressure and stress on them. It may just be a game, but for some people it means more than that; it means being apart of a community that respects them. You probably don’t know the person in real life, they probably don’t know you. If these individuals/crews think they can get away with this, well they won’t. It’s not bullying, but it’s not far off it either. As for the language being used… some things are best kept to oneself. If you are being aggravating, staff will mute you.

Finally

At the end of the day, we are all here to have a good time. Whether this be building, creating a crew, raiding or whatnot. I can speak for the whole of staff when I say we do care about player feedback on things to do with the server, or pertaining to certain individuals. We do take notes ya know.

So please, if this post/topic does relate to you, please be considerate of other people already in the community, as well as staff who have to listen to this day in and day out, thanks.

Life isn’t fair, but you can be.