I'm not much of a blogger, most blogs are too much about the author for my tastes but I don't know how else to present this so my apologies in advance if this is terribly uninteresting. First a little background that most of you are all too aware of. Zero Hour has a niche community that plays team games on Twilight Flame and a lot of those players hack. When I first got reinvolved in the Zero Hour community I was pretty appalled at that. To me, cheating is cheating and none of it should be tolerated. I also realized that the community is much larger than my thoughts and wishes so I asked around a bit and sat back.
And came to realize that fighting this was the wrong thing to do. So we've not waged war on those players to any degree unless they widen their net and start cheating in more traditional games.
Sometimes ugly things spin out of that subset to the Zero Hour community. This is one of those instances. I noticed a topic in
General Discussion about a particular player doing some things that violate
EA's Terms of Service so as the GameSpy Ladder Administrator for all Command & Conquer games I decided to look into it.
The author of that topic was Carl-Guardian. I've known Carl gaming wise for some time, he's a community member of note, so I reached out for him. He told me that a particular player was harassing some of his clan mates and spamming the lobbies. As I investigated I came across the player he was complaining about. His nickname is red death. He tells me that he, Carl and a third player I've not been able to talk to (johnytherapist) as of yet were playing a game. red on one side, Carl and johnytherapist on the opposite side and the game was one of those TF games where anything goes.
Something happened, I'm not really sure what. The game went poorly for Carl's side, someone got angry, things were said, stuff that happens every day in Zero Hour online. And this is where the stories diverge. I've mentioned what Carl said happened already. red says that Carl and johnytherapist got a hold of some of his real life information and that johnytherapist1 began to spam that in the lobby so he reciprocated and did the same.
I'm not taking sides here there is enough wrong on both sides that doing so would be pointless. There are two sides to every story and this situation is no different. Life is rarely black and white simple, most of us live in the gray areas in between. I've talked to both sides and both feel wronged. On my request red has stopped spamming. Hopefully johnytherapist has done the same. If he has not I will take steps to stop him myself it is not okay from either side. Spamming is not okay. Sharing people's personal information is not okay. Everyone has "enemies" online that is part of gaming. Play with them and bash them. Ignore them. But don't involve the entire community in your dispute it is simply not okay. At the end of the day everyone just wants to get a game in or two and have some fun. So please don't do anything to screw that up.
That's enough from me today.
methuselah out!
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