28 replies to this topic

[Soulstrom]

So I would like to share this with time MWO community at large. We are in the final push to get people to register for a tournament that will take place in October. That is not what this thread is about at all. It is a thread that attempts to inform you on the trials and trepidation's on what it is like to try and run a MWO tournament and the time that it takes to put into a successful one. I have a whole new respect for the PGI team and you should too. They work hard to bring us great tournaments and all everyone does is rage. I can understand that to a point and I really hope they don't receive death threats like I have over the past month, but still be nice. This is a great community and a small few it seems are killing it. If we really and I mean really want this community to expand and grow we need to learn to relax and just not be so aggressive towards others. In the past month I have seen more anger and people cussing each other out on VOIP that we are no better than a blizzard game. And no one wants that.

Sorry that should have been #1 but here goes:

0. Sincerest Apologies
For whatever has happened in the past month I am sorry. I am not trying to dredge up anything. This is a blanket apology. I AM SORRY. If my behavior on reddit, MWO, the game, twitter, facebook, etc...has offended you in anyway; anyway at all. I am sorry. Sincerely.

0.1. Please stop sending me death threats.
I have so many and my wife is soooo angry that she has tried putting the kibosh on this tournament on 4 separate occasions. All is good and it is still going to take place, but please stop sending them. I don't need anymore chickens getting decapitated or WWII execution shots sent to my inbox. Please...I am literally begging at this point.

0.2. Apparently Children don't deserve charity.
I don't really have a reflection here, but I am just surprised at some of the e-mails I have received.

1. "Dammed if you do. Yep that it."

I have had more complaints, screaming, yelling, more complaints, accusations, personal attacks, and threats of violence, bodily harm, and death come my way in the past 30 days then I have ever received in my entire life. My e-mail for this tournament has exploded not with kind remarks but with outright anger.

2. Was it worth it?
I will tell you after the tournament takes place. Going back to the threats I am now receiving them while I play MWO. I have such a distaste from the game that I am considering taking a leave and stepping down as my units commander. I have always said that if this stopped being fun then I would stop playing. I do love this game and the community that I play with, but some people in our little community have made my [internet] life a living hell for the past month and I have really had enough. Please stop sending me death threats and gifs of sharks getting their heads cut off and saying "that is going to be you."

3. Running these are a lot of work.
It has been a haul. Not violating CoC's trying to get the word out and help promote the tournament, keeping a smile on peoples faces and my own. But I have put countless hours for free into this charity event and I intend to see it through.

4. Will the tournament take place?
Yes. I can't promise that it will be as-is unless we get the 10 additional people to register, but Yes. No matter what this will take place.

5. (M)any regrets.
Getting onto reddit. Granted we have had more people register since the reddit announcements, but the death threats really began when those posts went live and I do regret getting onto reddit. I am not ever going to post on reddit ever again once this tournament is completed. Well maybe here one more time, but outside of that never again.

6. Will you run another tournament?
Yes. But my wife has made it clear that I can't do it again until after March so look for another in May of 2016. Although I am formally enlisting in the US Coast Guard (delayed enlistment, my choice) in April of 2016 so maybe a bit longer then that.

7. Any apologies?
Yes. I am sorry about all the turmoil that has been going on on reddit with my handle. I really and truly am.

8. Promotion is Hell!
Trying to promote an event to this community is like taking a drill to your brain and thinking that you will be able to do it with no repercussions. More of a rant on this one, but I want you all to know that this part of the whole gig is quite hard.

9. Avoid r/mwo/ subreddit at all costs. Just trust me they are an angry group over there. No idea why...and I don't care to know but seriously they are just angry.

10. Final Thoughts on the Final Thoughts
It has been a pleasure trying to bring you this tournament over the past month and it has been a distinct honor working with some of the greatest and nicest people I have ever met on MWO. I have truly appreciated the support from Ms. Benoit, Catalina Steiner, El Bandito, CainenEX, McGruberr and Scout Derek. You are all saints and I have you to thank for keeping me sane through this entire process. I look forward to seeing everyone at the tournament. I hope that we can raise a good chunk for the children's hospital for cancer research.

Edit: I changed the title because I have calmed down a lot and the title doesn't need to be so drastic and dire.

Edited by Soulstrom, 29 September 2015 - 07:18 PM.

[CDLord HHGD]

Wow, that's some pretty batshit crazy stuff you got... Death threats? REALLY??

Good luck with your tournament. I do not plan to participate because of the meta, but good luck to you and your participants.

[Davers]

Death threats over a player run charity tournament?

[Soulstrom]

Yes. I have thanks to reddit [primarily] I have received 42 threats of bodily harm in the past 7 days.

My personal favorite in a masochistic way was the one sent by [No Name and Shame] where Jaws came up and ate the person off the boat and at the end of the gif the person wrote "That should be you...[expletive]"

My biggest regret will be ever going to reddit. I wish there was some way PGI could annihilate it or control it because it is doing them so much harm. But I have learned the hard way that reddit is the wild-wild-west and no one can control it.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Death threats? Well, I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not. It's the same ****** mindset that makes some people think SWATting is funny and calling in bombthreats on a plane an exec of a game publisher is on would in any way be acceptable. In short, these are people with major malfunctions and if it was up to me they would have the book thrown at them when/if they got caught. No ifs, ands, buts or "aaaw, but he's just a juvenile, he didn't know what he was doing". This **** is unacceptable, no matter how old or young you are. No excuse is good enough.

Fortunately most of these wet skidmarks on the stinky underpants of life only go so far as to be odious little embarrasments for the human race in words, and not in deeds because that would be more likely to have consequences, but unfortunately you never know which one of them is so damaged they'll actually take it that step beyond the pale.

My sympathies to you and your family, and hopefully you won't let these utter wastes of oxygen get to you too much.

[C E Dwyer]

I think these people need to be account banned, clearly living in the cellar, playing computer games, has caused them to regress into neanderthals

[Soulstrom]

Steinar Bergstol, on 29 September 2015 - 08:41 AM, said:

My sympathies to you and your family, and hopefully you won't let these utter wastes of oxygen get to you too much.

Thank you for the kind words. Unfortunately too late. My wife is close to e-mailing MWO on my behalf and having my own account banned so I can't get on. She won't but still, pretty crafty on her part.


*Note: Sorry to Catalina Steiner or the other volunteer moderator managing the GD today if this was supposed to be in another forum of MWO. Really, really sorry if that is the case. Please feel free to move it to where it should be if not here.

Edited by Soulstrom, 29 September 2015 - 08:54 AM.

[MechWarrior5152251]

I think you are lying. Who the eff is stupid enough to make death threats with the NSA recording everything?

[Soulstrom]

MechWarrior5152251, on 29 September 2015 - 08:54 AM, said:

Who the eff is stupid enough to make death threats with the NSA recording everything?

Okay so I just want to address that comment. I am a digital curation and preservation specialist by profession. I am the former President of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance [NDSA] student organization at ....[I am not giving away the institution]. Recently in 2014 at the NDSA national conference I met with an employee of the NSA archival divisions discussing the principles behind long-term data storage. As it stand they have the capability to record up to XXXXX [not giving the real number] zettabytes of data. The information is processed and then stored and then after X amount of time purged from the system. There is to much traffic on the internet to be able to store all of it. It is a concern of digital archivist and we are struggling to keep up with the amount of data. I recently published a paper on "digital dissemination of XXX rated materials across the digital landscape" and without going into to much detail the findings showed that on average there are over 1.2 million XXX sites on the internet daily with roughly 200,000 being taken off daily. This means that to preserve that data we would need to capture it at the point of creation and then at the point of deletion for archival accuracy. What I learned from the NSA employee that the amount of storage needed to store all of that data would output so much heat that the building would melt. It isn't a matter of how much they can capture but how much they can actually store and the costs associated with that. This would probably not even hit the radar.

Yes. I agree this would be stupid to announce to the entire MWO community if it were a lie. So stupid that I have the feeling that I would get banned and it would be right of them to do so. Clearly I hope that you can see that I am not stupid. Naive yes, stupid no...well I hope not.

[Nightmare1]

Who would complain about a tourney that's designed to benefit kids in need?
Death threats? Really?

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world we live in...

[Soulstrom]

I can give you a list of names but that would violate Name & Shame and I am not about to do that. Lets just say it was some people spamming my e-mail on a semi-regular basis. This post is really a plea to get those threats to stop. I never would have posted this information to the forums, reddit, anywhere but the last one was quite scary and the attacks need to stop, please.

Edited by Soulstrom, 29 September 2015 - 09:33 AM.

[CDLord HHGD]

Soulstrom, on 29 September 2015 - 09:27 AM, said:

I can give you a list of names but that would violate Name & Shame and I am not about to do that. Lets just say it was some people spamming my e-mail on a semi-regular basis. This post is really a plea to get those threats to stop. I never would have posted this information to the forums, reddit, anywhere but the last one was quite scary and the attacks need to stop, please.

Yeah, don't name and shame. I would report them and the evidence to moderation@mwomercs.com.

[Soulstrom]

Didn't happen here. So I am not sure they can do anything.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Soulstrom, on 29 September 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

Didn't happen here. So I am not sure they can do anything.

The staff at MW:O can make administrative decisions as they see fit. They can ban people for posting cheats on Reddit, so you can go from there. Just send them the email addresses and messages you received, and they can crossref against current MWO accounts.

[C E Dwyer]

Soulstrom, on 29 September 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

Didn't happen here. So I am not sure they can do anything.

Death threats in any medium are against the law, the accounts can be banned by reddit, complain to Rediit, you have crazies in your community, it makes your company look bad..in the eyes of the public as a place of mentally unstable people.

Same as P.G.I will want to look good in the eyes of the public, if they run accounts on reddit, under the same name P.G.I will take action, or risk being considered a haven for the socially unstable in the gaming community, and micro soft will take a dim view of that when it comes around to license renewal

Edited by Cathy, 29 September 2015 - 10:45 AM.

[Victorion]

Soulstrom, on 29 September 2015 - 08:28 AM, said:

0.1. Please stop sending me death threats.
I have so many and my wife is soooo angry that she has tried putting the kibosh on this tournament on 4 separate occasions. All is good and it is still going to take place, but please stop sending them. I don't need anymore chickens getting decapitated or WWII execution shots sent to my inbox. Please...I am literally begging at this point.

Aaaand this is why this is easily the most repulsive and disgusting community of video gamer's I've been a part of.

[Alek Ituin]

Victorion, on 29 September 2015 - 10:47 AM, said:

Aaaand this is why this is easily the most repulsive and disgusting community of video gamer's I've been a part of.

You're fairly naive if you honestly believe this the only community to experience that, let alone the worst for it.

[Victorion]

Alek Ituin, on 29 September 2015 - 10:55 AM, said:

You're fairly naive if you honestly believe this the only community to experience that, let alone the worst for it.

So, I've been a part of more then a dozen internet gaming communities. Ranging from the obscure (The Matrix: Online) to the gangbuster (World of Warcraft, etc)

I've been playing this game for about 2 months now, and other MW/BattleTech games before this one.

I've been a member of the forums for about...mmm, a week?

In that span of a week, I have seen and sensed more inter-player vitriol, incessent nagging, violent outbursts, then I ever have in such a short amount of time in any of the other gaming communities I've been a part of.

You think I'm naive?

I think you haven't been around the block a few times and don't have the same perspective I do.

[Soulstrom]

Prosperity Park, on 29 September 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

The staff at MW:O can make administrative decisions as they see fit. They can ban people for posting cheats on Reddit, so you can go from there. Just send them the email addresses and messages you received, and they can crossref against current MWO accounts.

I am NOT trying to get anyone in trouble or cause any issues. I have no proof that the people sending me the e-mails are actually them. None at all. In a world of digital sabotage it could be anyone. This is really a plea for the threats to stop. People are entitled to their opinions but threats. Come on.

[Alek Ituin]

Victorion, on 29 September 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

So, I've been a part of more then a dozen internet gaming communities. Ranging from the obscure (The Matrix: Online) to the gangbuster (World of Warcraft, etc)

I've been playing this game for about 2 months now, and other MW/BattleTech games before this one.

I've been a member of the forums for about...mmm, a week?

In that span of a week, I have seen and sensed more inter-player vitriol, incessent nagging, violent outbursts, then I ever have in such a short amount of time in any of the other gaming communities I've been a part of.

You think I'm naive?

I think you haven't been around the block a few times and don't have the same perspective I do.

I do think you're being naive.

But maybe I've been immersed in this community for so long I just don't notice it. Or maybe I've seen just how foul people can be on the internet, and find these forums to be annoying at worst, and mildly amusing at best. Maybe it's because this forum in and of itself used to be several orders of magnitude less hospitable than it is now.

If there's one thing I can assure you of however, it's that whatever blocks you've been around were far from the bottom of the barrel. One incidence of death threats and you decry MWO as the foulest community in decades? Please.

These people are, if anything, a normal mixture of attitudes amplified by years of mistreatment.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 29 September 2015 - 11:23 AM.