Player Owned Town Exclusive Design Proposal (Dev+)

I read the entire thread, my opinion is the same, and I will say whatever the fuck I want to say, there and here.

If they ban me, so be it, I won't be playing the game anyway considering it is populated with "special snowflakes" like you who think that the rest of the PoT owners should stay quiet and wait to be contacted (like Port requested) while your money and facetime with the devs gets you special treatment and access to private discussions (held over a period of several months) about a subject that everybody else has been kept in the dark about!

I'm not Port and this isn't their forums. You can't buy me with your money, so I don't give two shit about what you do and don't appreciate.

Go back to your fellow cult members and enjoy the smell of your own hot air......

Port told people to wait until contacted. You essentially used your financial contributions to cut the line and put yourself above that request because it seems, in your mind, you believe you are justified in doing so. Apparently that means all the other PoT owners are just chopped liver then?

You put yourself above others, set yourself apart from others as being a special case who deserves consideration while they do not, and you still don't see a problem with your behavior? My hate towards you seems right on target, I'd wager.

Actions speak louder than words, chump.

BE CAREFUL YOU  MIGHT GET BANNNNNNNED OMFG NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

The response that I sent to support:

P.S. You all saw the three offending posts above that they used to justify my ban.

Now, consider this:





^I disagreed with this shit, but bought into it with the hopes that the financial support for the game would give them some breathing room (so they wouldn't have to nickel and dime so much). Even the stupid physical snake reward was intended as a gift for somebody like Rild (or Sir Frank) when the game went live.

Anyway, cya in hell, Port. You deserve financial ruin and much worse.

Sadly I'm overseas at the moment and I'm not able to stay up to date, I'm on a two month project which is why I am decently quiet.

I wasn't able to read the thread we're talking about here, so I'm not sure what Blackstone said thus can't comment directly. But I've read most of Blackstone's stuff in the forums in the past. While I am very uneasy about how much power these guys(like Blackstone) have keep in mind, it is Portalarium that has created the environment and power structure based on cold hard cash. It does make me very weary that Blake can do things like PM FireLotus and ask for stuff not to be deleted. Why? Because everyone else could PM FireLotus and demand that they be deleted. You can extrapolate the rest of the mess from there.

There should be areas where LotMs do have perks, but there should be the same rules and communication matrix for everyone. If I had known that my Dev+ account would basically be worthless and I'd need to spend 10K to get involved in Starr's ecosystem of crowdsourcing, then I wouldn't have bothered spending as much as I have, not even close.

That my friends, is a bait and switch.

Sorry to hear about your ban. I guess that angry snatch FireLotus is at is again. As soon as she smells a little bit of power it gets her tampon all in an uproar.

I said pretty much the same thing you said in my final mail to her. Unfortunately it will fall on deaf ears. Port has their heads so far up their asses, they couldn't hear a fighter jet coming right at them.

Wow, Blake Blackstone and Starr were talking about this for months? Well bartering about price, like Arab merchants over a two hump camel, I would believe.

Since Port is surly going broke, I think Starr should hold out for at least 20K, 10-15K sounds a little cheap to me, plus you know this fool has the money.

Welcome to Shark Tank of the Avatar. It will only get worse from here.


P.S. Sorry you got banned Kuno, these hucksters ain't worth it.

Man, even if you didn't have a legit reason for not being around that much, I don't blame anybody who has lost interest in this clustefuck of a game. I know that I certainly feel dirty every time I think about contributing so much money to such a pack of wolves, so I can hardly blame anybody who moves along to more interesting things. I only keep an eye on things to remind myself of my mistake and to innoculate myself against such boundless optimism in the future.

My apologies for not explaining the thread better, but I didn't want to divulge too much oh-so-precious dev+ content (which really amounts to little more than being able to read what Starr and Port have already decided to do after months of private conversations with Blackstone).

Though he probably won't believe it, because I *gasp* used some naughty words and didn't outright kiss his ass, but I actually think his website's design is good and the idea he has is great. The animated history section is right along the lines of what I had hoped Port could eventually do with their website as far as making it "feel" like one was entering the actual game world and becoming immersed in this place from the very first visit to the website. One of the very first posts/suggestions I ever made on the forums was calls for improving the website and its look/feel, because it didn't do much for really communicating what this new world and life in it would be like, and while I was arguing for more functionality (and less walls of text, despite my own tendency for writing them), in my heart of hearts, I felt SotA/Portalarium needed a site that felt like a real PORTAL to another place.

I even partly admire the work he's done on all of this and his persistence in seeing it made into a reality. I wouldn't give a crap about any of this if it weren't for the private back channeling over months (while other PoT owners were told "don't call us, we'll call you" after they started posting ideas and sketches of what they'd like in their towns). I mean, jeez... talk about a double standard! Plus, there are clear indications in that thread that he (or at least some of the people) want assets made for his exclusive town to be just that: exclusive (as in, not available for the rest of the PoT owners when they fill in their templates).

However, I really took offense to the tone in Starr's OP (which preemptively deflated people's hopes and dreams about PoT designs with his yammering on about templates, templates, bullet points, and filling in fields on a fucking form replacing consults with devs). Also, the asterisk added to the info about PoT's (and continual push to walk back from the wording about "consult with a dev" about the design) is just more of the same shit where they go back and quietly change things. Really grinds my gears too that I saw a lot of people post some cool ideas right at the start (Lord Baldrith's ice/mage-themed PoT is an example), only to be shot down by the devs asking people to wait until they were contacted before they continued to post this type of brainstorming.

As Sir Frank rightly pointed out, the people who followed the rules and abided by Port's smug "don't call us, we'll call you" attitude were punished for their patience, while the person who ignored the request for radio silence was rewarded for using his face to face interactions with the devs (and lots of pestering of them after that) to garner favor for his particular cause. Worse still, people like Silvanus (and presumably Blackstone and those who support him) blame the rule-followers for making a decision to listen to the devs (vs. being selfish pricks and ignoring those requests).

Anyway, as far as I know, my ban is temp at this point (*pending further investigation), but considering the things I've said here and in the Steam Review Request thread, I can't imagine I will be around that long anyway even if they reinstate my privileges (nor would I want to be). I just think it's disgusting that they consistently demonstrate a pattern of favoring the high dollar backers, ignoring MANY creative and wonderful people in their community, and then flipping us all the bird when we take umbrage with this artificial caste system and unbridled favoritism.

I agree it is troublesome how people like Winfield and Blackstone have leveraged their face-to-face time with devs to exert an unwarranted and unjust influence over the development of the game. Just as you said, IM... I didn't expect my Dev+ access to mean little more than having some advanced knowledge about what Port and their highest dollar backers have decided to do.

I was perfectly in control. I just don't believe in pussyfooting around when I see something that is wrong, and I'm from an online cultural background that is very different than you milquetoast brown-nosers who take great offense at every "profane" word said in your holy presence. Raph Koster, Rich Vogel, and Gordon Walton totally understand where I'm coming from (just listen for Raph's comments on "Put Yourself In Their Shoes" about "chan" culture during the GDC talk on community management found HERE), but FL, Port, and you prudish sycophants haven't a fucking clue.

It amazes me you even feel familiar enough with her, and buddy-buddy enough with them, to make a request like this. Just how much influence do you high dollar backers really have? I have a feeling it was you, or somebody in your backer range who saw to it that I was banned (because they couldn't bare to see anybody say ANYTHING remotely negative about their precious SotA).

^This is the problem that Port, you, and the rest of the elitist pricks don't grasp: WE ARE NOT OPPONENTS. We are both backing the same game, we both wanted a good game to be made. The oppositional climate comes only from YOU and those like you who contribute a lot of money, and take it upon themselves to get special treatment from the devs, when the rest of the community have been told by Port to fuck off.

Ultimately, IM is right that this is Port's fault for fostering an environment where the Blackstones and the Drocis' feel their financial contributions set them above others and beyond the scope and reach of the same rules that apply to the rest of us.

I don't know you from Cain, so why the fuck should I feel positive or negative towards you? However, I am not inclined to view you favorably when my first exposure to you is Starr talking about how he's been talking with you for months about things that other people were told long ago to leave alone. Then I read some big long post where you pat yourself on the back over and over again for overcoming Port's indifference at first (and ignoring their request to leave the matter alone until contacted), and you mention spending upwards of $50k-$60k, and then you tell me to read a website that talks about your PoT and reads more like an advertisement for what a great place your town is and what an awesome guy Blackstone is.


You somehow think pointing me to your site and telling me to reread your post about your first world problems, where you glorify yourself and show off a great idea (that will clearly attract a lot of players to your community, and feed your massive ego) will endear you to me? FUCKING GET REAL!

YOU ARE A DOUCHE WHO THOUGHT THE RULES DIDN'T APPLY TO YOU, and you act like what you are doing is for the community, but it's all about making YOU an important facet of that community and you just so happened to have the money, talent, and time to do this. There are many others who had great ideas though, who had started this very same kind of ball rolling several times, but they didn't have the benefit of spending $50k-$60k on all of this, so FUCK THEM, RIGHT!?


Anyway, FUCK YOU.

Who knows? It might only be temp ban, but they should just make it permanent, because I won't abide this kind of tomfoolery.

I simply don't want to play this shitty game, especially considering its "community" feels more like a personality cult than a group of like-minded gamers, so banning me is doing me a favor (I also refuse to sell this pledge because I want to own my mistake so I never forget what a fucking fool I was and make the same mistake again).

P.S. I'm also against shennanigans. And miscellaneous nonsense. Now get the fuck off my lawn, you RG-cultist freaks!

Even if people realized this, it won't matter to Port. After all....