Mercenaries Guild

First off, let me start by saying this is not supposed to be some gloom and doom rant about why Tremulous and its community sucks. As is obvious to anyone who has talked to me, I love Tremulous (the only "game" I play) and I love its community (which is why I try to do as much as I can for it.)

As of late, the mood, demeanor, and quality of posts in the forums (www.tremulous.net/phpBB2) and in IRC (#tremulous@irc.quakenet.org) have been rapidly changing. What was once in my experience a great, open, fun environment to hang around in, has become a veritable battlefield of opinions and spammers. If it's not "old" players versus "new" players, its "good" players vs. "n--b" players. That or it's some 12 year old kid spamming utter idiocy.

None of this appeals to me, and I'm sure it doesn't appeal to you either.

What once was

I don't want to make it sound like some sort of utopia, but when I first entered this community it was a really great place. "Old" players helped me out, showed me the ropes in-game, and I was able to chat with like-minded people in IRC on all sorts of tremulous-related (and unrelated) topics. Chat was quick and fun, with no real disrespect coming from any direction. As long as you didn't spam or directly insult anybody, everyone was cordial and willing to answer any questions or requests one had. I still recall my first run-in with Lava Croft, who is infamous for his attitude and method of talking to newbs, or anyone with "dumb" ideas. After getting over the initial shock of his statements, I understood a lot of what he was saying (he's really not bad) and now am pretty good friends with the guy. Discussions on the forums were relevant and pointed. Someone would make a well-thought-out suggestion, and there would be a flurry of replies from competent people with answers and comments. Spammers and Lamers were either ignored, or quickly dealt with. Almost everyone SEEMED to be an adult, or at least mature enough to respect each other enough that even when someone did insult another, it did not result in vulgarities and horrible phrases being thrown around. One of the main reasons I became addicted to Tremulous (Hi, my name is Khalsa and I'm a tremaholic) was because of all these reasons.

What is now and never should be

Today and what seems like will be tomorrow, everything is reversed! "Old" players sit in-game kill whoring (just sitting around, camping, racking up kills with no intention of winning the match) and either making rude, insulting posts and comments, or not being helpful at all. The IRC channel has become caustic - full of spam, insults, and idlers. Questions go unanswered or worse - people asking questions are insulted for their "stupidity." 12 year old kids (or what seems like, and I hope, could only be coming from a 12 year old) flood the channel with useless banter and pointless comments. The forums are even worse! Maturity has been thrown out the window - insults, spam, two-word replies, and idiocy rule supreme. While the moderators sometimes try to clean things up, they have basically lost control, and often don't try at all. Vulgar images and comments flood every thread. What once was a kid-friendly place has become a kiddie place. The feedback forum is only good for comic relief, and troubleshooting consists mainly of 1) basic stupid questions 2) replies consisting of "STFU", "SEARCH!", or "IDIOT." Large-scale flame wars span the rest of the boards, with the Clan section being the worst. Only 1 out of 50 threads contain anything useful, which is quickly buried under the steaming pile that is the replies. I login sometimes and feel like I'm sitting in a 90's era AOL chatroom - YES, it's really THAT bad.

What happened?

Who knows? Maybe trem has been flooded by a significant amount of younger people, maybe the old people have moved on or given up. Maybe banning Poland caused such a huge rift in the community that we have now been invaded by Poland. Maybe the lack of direct support to the community from the devs has allowed this to happen? Maybe this is just what happens when Open Source communities grow? Where did this huge shift occur? What caused it? One can only guess. (Post your thoughts in the comments please.)

What can we do about it?

While many of us at }MG{ have discussed the problems (especially recently) we have not really touched upon the solutions. I think I'll mull this one over a bit more and create another post about what we at MG can do, and what we can do as a community on the whole. I would love to see some of you post replies stating what you think we can do. Hopefully we can come up with a solution.

Khalsa