atWar 2022 and beyond.

A new novel by Dave.

"Splendid." -- New York Times

"Incroyable! Un vrai tour de force." -- Le Monde

"Didn't read, way too f***ing long." -- Random atWar User





Introduction

I enjoy reading "year in review" posts from others, but I never seem to find time to write my own. Nevertheless, atWar has been in my thoughts a lot lately, so I've decided to give it a try. Consider this my tardy report on the last 3 years of atWar, what I've been working on, and what my plans are for the future.


Origins of my ownership of atWar

To begin, I think I must recap the story of how I came to own atWar, since I realize there are many new faces around here who may not be aware of it.

I first became aware of atWar's existence when I read a post advertising it for sale, on one of the sites I follow. Over the past 6 years I have expanded my business, in part, by acquiring other small software businesses and adding them to my own. Initially my interest in atWar was purely along these lines -- that is, purely commercial. I was merely doing my due diligence when I signed up for an account and began playing a few games.

I immediately fell in love with the game, however. It was unavoidable. History and war are great interests of mine. I love strategy games in general, and Risk in particular. Suddenly I found my interest in atWar was no longer commercial at all -- I wanted to own atWar simply to guarantee it would continue to exist, and to be able to develop it in the direction I thought it ought to go.

That was in November 2018. By December, I was in negotiations with the original developers, Amok and Ivan. We agreed on a fair price and, next thing I knew, I was the proud owner of atWar -- including all the good and bad that that would entail! Thus it was, in 2019, that the "era of Dave" (if you will) began.


Early days

atWar was in a bad state when I bought it. It had (and still has) a lot of serious problems. Despite my occasional jokes about it (e.g. being "scammed by 2 Estonians", which was not actually said by me but I thought it was hilarious), the fact is, I was not under any illusions. I knew there was an angry, toxic community. I knew the game had been neglected for a long time. I knew there were bugs (although, to be fair, I underestimated just how many).

I had seen the player activity numbers, and I knew that atWar had been steadily declining since 2014. There is a saying in the investment world: "never try to catch a falling knife". In simple terms, don't invest in a failing business. I deliberately violated this rule in buying atWar, but again my interest was to keep it going, not make a profit. I knew it would be an uphill battle.

At any rate, I laid out these issues in my introductory post, atWar 2019 and Beyond. Essentially I stated three goals: 1) fix the toxic community, 2) fix the bugs, and 3) fix the declining activity problem. Everything I have done on atWar since then has been focused on these 3 problems, and more or less in that same order of priority. To be frank, I think we've made good progress on the first problem; only moderate progress on the second; and little to no progress on the third. Herein I will go into each of these in a bit more detail.

(Side note: I tend to use "we" a lot in talking about atWar, since it really is a group effort, but please don't think that I am avoiding responsibility for anything by so doing. Ultimately whichever decisions occur on my watch, good or bad, I am responsible for. Or, as I like to joke, I simply get blamed for everything. )


Fixing the toxic community

One of my very first thoughts about atWar, back when I was just doing my due diligence in late 2018, was "whoa! there are some crazy angry people here." I was shocked at the level of vitriol. There was a lot of anger against the original owners, which manifested itself in terrible forum flamewars, and once even an infamous player "strike". The anger spilled-over into other areas too. Players behaved absolutely rotten to each other. Vicious trolls were, apparently, largely tolerated. Despite the best efforts of the moderators, there was often little they could do about it. I've articulated all this before in other posts, so suffice to say, atWar in my view was a pretty wild place -- and not in a good way.

When you've got a problem with falling player numbers, as had been the case for several years in a row, it certainly doesn't help when you've got an environment that actively drives away new users. Clique-ish circles of high-rank players had formed, the members of which actively discouraged and drove away anyone who was not one of them. (I'm not accusing all high-ranks of doing this, but just stating it as an overall fact.) Moreover, bad behavior in general had been allowed to spiral out of control -- largely a result of the prolonged neglect of atWar by the original owners. (Again, I don't wish to blame Amok & Ivan too harshly as I can certainly sympathize with their predicament, but I think even they would be the first to admit that atWar had been neglected for too long.)

To deal with all this, I knew I was going to have to impose "law and order" on atWar. I knew that some section of atWar users would not like this very much (i.e. the troublemakers), and, to be honest, I was okay with that.

One of the very first things I did as owner was get to know the moderator team. This was important because they are the ones there in the trenches. They know what's going on better than anyone else. I was (and still remain) acutely interested to hear what our moderators thought, what they needed to do their jobs, and how I could help them. This led to me creating better tools for them, such as stronger banning systems, more and better logging to help root out hackers and cheaters, and in general anything I could do to make their quality of life better.

Our present moderator team is a fantastic group of people, and I respect every single one of them. I appreciate all the work they do -- completely as volunteers, and often while under intense criticism and scrutiny. It's a tough job. Lies and rumors have a way of flying around atWar with great rapidity, and the moderators are a favorite target it seems.

Nevertheless, despite many months of progressively stricter enforcement, some people just weren't getting the hint that we were trying to clean things up around here. There was a very small, but very loud group of troublemakers, whose long histories of mutes and bans had done nothing to improve their behavior. We reached the point where I had to ask myself, do we look the other way and let them continue ruining things for everyone else? No, that was not an acceptable option. What else could we do then? In the end, the only option left was to remove them from the game completely -- that is, to delete a few accounts. You may think this was harsh, and it was, but I am convinced it was the right decision. I do not regret it in the slightest.

I refer of course to the events of last November, where a few troublemakers stirred up an unusually intense drama, even by atWar standards. To be clear, the number of accounts that we actually deleted was a tiny number -- I think 4 in total (if I've forgotten someone, please correct me). These were people with long histories of bans, who nevertheless were actively continuing their bad behavior. These were people who were sending rude and insulting messages, even sometimes death threats, to various staff; defacing maps; and one guy even "nuked" (deleted and defaced) our official atWar Discord server, as well as another atWar server to which he had access, resulting in years of conversations being permanently and irretrievably lost.

By far the majority of accounts that got deleted, however, were deleted by the owners of those accounts themselves. In a nutshell, the pattern of escalation was this: we ban someone for quite legitimate reasons; they respond by telling their friends we "banned them for no reason" (a lie, obviously); the friends believe this and start acting out in retaliation; we ban them too; and so the cycle repeats. Eventually it went up to a new level when certain players started deleting their own accounts "in protest". After deleting themselves, they went around on Discord and other places falsely claiming that WE were the ones who deleted them -- another lie which stirred up even more anger. It should be obvious and go without saying, but we don't punish anybody unless we have very good reasons to do so. Sadly though, people are going to believe their friends even when they're lying, and nobody would bother to ask us what really happened.

So while in that dramatic week there was a great outpouring of hostility, the end result was that we finally were able to get a few people, who needed to go, out of the community for good. I am quite happy about this. I know that will sound controversial to some of you, especially those of you who feel it has made our activity problems worse. From my perspective, however, we can't move atWar forward until we've dealt with the community problem; we've been dealing with it for 3 years already, getting progressively stricter; finally we had no choice but to force the bad apples out. The last few months since have been the most calm and peaceful I have yet experienced on atWar, and I consider that a significant accomplishment.



Interestingly enough, it does not seem to have hurt our overall activity numbers at all -- in fact, they have improved. One of the metrics I watch daily is the "players active within last 30 days" number. You can see it on the atWar home page in the Battlefield Report section. By late October/early November, just before the drama, that number was down into the low 7000's. Today, as I write this, it has grown back up to about 9500, completely organically. I'm NOT saying that 9500 is a great number (it's not), nor am I saying that every problem is solved -- but I do take it as a small encouraging sign that we are doing the right thing.


Fixing the bugs

This is a delicate topic because I have the utmost respect for Amok & Ivan, and I sincerely do not wish to offend them. After all, they created atWar out of nothing. The concept of the game was solid, and they had great ideas. They saved the game from disappearing completely after Silverlight was killed off, by rewriting it as HTML5. They deserve credit for all of these things.

At the same time, however, I feel the need to be honest, and, if I'm being honest, the state of atWar's code as I received it -- was poor. I'm sorry, but as a programmer myself, it has been very frustrating to work on. Things that should be "5 minute fixes" regularly turn into multi-hour or even entire-weekend projects. Sometimes atWar code reminds me of a rotten onion -- what I think is a small surface defect ends up requiring me to peel away layer upon layer.

There are many reasons for this. I'll spare you the technical explanations (I'll keep those rants confined to my Developer's Corner), but the net result is that nothing ever quite works as you would expect it to. For example, tweaking a small, seemingly harmless UI element in one place, often ends up breaking some unrelated feature in some totally random other place. And, with everything being organized haphazardly, it takes forever sometimes just to *find* the bloody thing you're looking for, much less fix it.

And then, there are the security problems. There's no way to sugarcoat it: the atWar codebase is incredibly vulnerable to attack.

When I first started, there were so many glaring security holes it wasn't even funny. I'm not talking about theoretical problems here. I mean that literally any high school kid with a tiny bit of programming knowledge could hack us with little to no difficulty. Those of you who have been around atWar long enough have all seen this in some ways, like with people who used IE exploits to hack games, but this is just the easy stuff. There are far more dangerous problems just under the surface. If one knew exactly where to look, an experienced attacker could easily have done extensive, and permanent damage. (And it would have been permanent, seeing as atWar had no reliable backup system in place at the time.)

When I began seeing such obvious vulnerabilities in the atWar code, I had to do a double-take out of disbelief. Then I started testing a few different kinds of attacks and, just from what I could do casually in my browser, I was shocked to discover what the system let me get away with. The only thing keeping us safe was the fact that nobody else had access to the full source code, and therefore they simply didn't know where to go and what they could have gotten away with if they had. (In other words, our primary defense was "security by obscurity" -- and that's scary as hell.)

Clearly Amok & Ivan started becoming aware of these problems at some point, but by then I think the code was already riddled with literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of vulnerable points. Being far too much to deal with, especially given the limited time they had available, it is evident they tried to fix atWar with a few small, top-level patches. These helped, but were not 100% solutions. The only sure solution is to find and fix every single vulnerability at its source, and this is one of the projects I am still working on, bit by bit, even today. I have fixed a lot of the worst ones, but more still remain. (Forgive me for being deliberately vague here, but for obvious reasons I don't want to give away anything to those who would hack us -- we've had enough problems already.)

This is the reason why I've guarded the atWar code so protectively. Various members of the community have offered to help out with coding, and I have always turned them down, not because of them, but because I can't take any chance of the atWar source code getting out. I have been totally unbending in this regard, but I think you can understand my reasons -- if the complete source code ever got out, we would be hacked and shut down in no time.

With all it's many problems, I realized long ago that almost all of atWar's code needs a rewrite. From a programming perspective, it would almost certainly have been easier to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch. However, if I had decided to spend all my time writing "atWar 2.0", then atWar 1.0 would have continued to be neglected for a long while, and the community would have continued to deteriorate. And, after all, the most valuable asset of atWar is not the code, but rather it's user database and community. (Anybody with some programming skill could go out and code a game like atWar tomorrow -- but to build up a community starting from zero? That is INCREDIBLY hard. As someone who has personally spent countless hours creating SaaS apps from scratch and trying to get them off the ground, believe me, coding is the easy part.)

So, I made the decision to fix atWar little by little, and to rewrite and improve things gradually as we went along. It's a bit like trying to replace the wheels of a car while it's moving and you can't stop, but I felt it was the best choice given the circumstances.

How much progress has been made so far? In short, not as much as I'd like, but still more than most people realize. It's difficult to measure precisely, because some tasks may take 5 minutes, while others may take an entire weekend or, in some cases, months. But just for amusement (and because I like data) I counted up the number of commits and the number of bugs that have been fixed so far. (For you non-programmers out there, think of 1 commit as 1 coding task completed.)



Since I took over, a total of 713 commits have been made to atWar's main code repositories. 683 of these are from me; 30 are from Clovis when he was helping out. Among my 683 commits, I've fixed at least 112 distinct bugs which had existed since before my time. (I did not count any bugs I caused myself and later fixed.) That works out to an average of about 1 bug fixed each week. If only I knew exactly how many bugs were still remaining I could give a percentage of progress, but unfortunately the final number remains unknown.

Some of the bugs I've fixed include ones you may remember: the broken "map preview" function; the infamous ignored spectators bug; various problems on mobile like not being able to scroll; being unable to start CWs on custom maps/scenarios; many IE exploits, like the unlimited starting funds exploit, and others; General images not updating; maps not cloning correctly; and lots of forum bugs, security problems, misc. website bugs, map editor bugs, etc. (You can read about these and other changes on the atWar updates log.

Each time I work on a particular area of the code, I rewrite chunks of it and do whatever I can to untangle the old mess a bit. Even so, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. There is still so much more to go.


Fixing the activity problem

I now turn to the third, and most important, of the goals I outlined. Except for the spike in 2020 thanks to Coronavirus-induced lockdowns, atWar's activity has been gradually declining since 2014. From the very beginning, I knew I must find a way to reverse this trend. So far, however, nothing I've done has made much of a difference.



The first two topics I've discussed -- the toxic community and bugs -- were certainly contributing to the decline in various ways, and solving those problems has been important. Putting those aside however for the moment, the activity problem can be divided into two parts: getting new users, and keeping those users around once they arrive.

To get new users, we look at the topic of marketing. Early on I started testing the waters for different ways of advertising atWar, to see what would give us the best result. One after the other I put money into Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Bing ads, Twitter ads, YouTube ads, and yes, even PornHub ads. I even tried sponsoring a video from a well-known YouTube channel (Kings and Generals), which cost thousands of dollars. All of these efforts can be summed up -- as one big waste of money. (Which is why I laugh whenever I see someone saying things like "why doesn't Dave advertise? If I owned atWar I would just spend $10K on [pick your favorite type of advertising here] and solve all our problems." Yeah, sure bud.)

But why has our marketing been so unsuccessful? Is it that I don't know how to market software products? No, since I've had good success growing my other software products, I don't think lack of knowledge or experience is the problem. Is it possible that atWar is too much of a special niche to be successful? No, some of my other software products are in even smaller niches, and that hasn't been a problem for them. Is it that browser games are simply past their time? Maybe, but considering how well other browser games have done (for example, Krunker), this can't explain everything. What else can it be?

The answer, I believe, has to do with user retention. atWar has plenty of traffic coming in the door. We have plenty of new users signing up each month -- typically at least 4000 new accounts (excluding guests) register every month. (I know, half of those are probably alts, but we'll ignore that for the moment.) During the peak of the Coronavirus, that number reached as high as almost 17,000 in one month (March 2020). If we retained even just a fraction of those accounts as active users, atWar would be hopping with activity. Unfortunately, this is not the case. About 80% of new users are gone within the first 24 hours, never to return again. Only about 5% stay active for 30 days or more. That means we are, on average, adding about 200 new active players each month, but this is not quite enough to offset what we usually lose per month from normal churn.

(For what it's worth, even though I've been transparent and have explained atWar's user numbers like this before, there is always someone shocked to hear we have this many new users coming through. I've even been accused of fabricating crazy numbers out of my ass -- as if lying would accomplish anything? Well, the numbers are what they are. The people who make these accusations have myopic vision when it comes to anyone NOT in the competitive scene -- for them, anyone who doesn't play competitive might as well not exist. That really sucks for all of those who circulate through the beginners and casual lobbies, who could be reached out to and trained, rather than simply ignored.)

The future of atWar relies on finding new, active users to grow our userbase with. I have therefore been intensely interested in finding out exactly where and when we lose new players. The are many potential loss points in the lifespan of a user -- starting with the account registration form itself, getting through the tutorial, playing their first game, reaching ranks 1, 2, 3, and beyond. The probability of leaving is the highest at the very start, and decreases with each successive step. In other words, the more steps they get through, the more likely they will stay as an active user. So it is VERY important to me to focus on what happens in those earliest stages, from signup to reaching, say, rank 4.

In the early days I spent a lot of time lurking on alts in the beginners lobbies, trying to see where things went wrong. I also recruited help from friends who had never played atWar in their life, putting them through the tutorial and getting their feedback (which led me to re-writing almost all the text of the beginner's tutorial). All of that was helpful, but it was largely anecdotal evidence. That is, it's easy for people (myself included) to point to this or that and say "here's a problem", but what I really need to know is, "how much of a problem?" To focus my efforts in the right direction, I look to data to guide me, but in the early days of atWar, useful data was hard to come by.

Since day-1 I have used two analytics platforms on atWar -- Google Analytics and Piwik. These give me good info about overall traffic numbers and patterns, but nothing about what users were doing within the game itself. Ordinarily I could integrate one or both of those platforms' tagging systems to get down to that level of detail, but in the case of atWar code and everything being so messy and disorganized, I just didn't think the normal way of doing things was going to work the way I wanted. I made the decision, then, to build a custom analytics system for atWar.

AtWar's analytics tool went live last October. It's nothing fancy, but it allows me to find where the problems are, to test out possible solutions using A/B tests, and, using real data as my guide, to make decisions. Its first use was to examine the user registration process in close detail, which has already led to a revamp of the entire signup page. For example, too many potential new users who tried to sign up but faced needless difficulties, like solving the stupid captcha, simply gave up and went away. (The captcha, which I've gotten rid of, was truly worthless anyway -- I long ago installed better ways of detecting and weeding out the bots.)

From there, I look at the tutorial. As I said before, my human "test group" gave me valuable feedback here, which I used to re-write much of the content. Now the analytics tool is allowing to make further adjustments based on data. (As an aside: the intermediate and advanced tutorials I've created placeholders for are being worked on by various staff members, but there is less urgency here. It's the beginner's tutorial that's by far the most important. Whether or not a new user makes it through the beginner's tutorial is a huge predictor of whether they will stay and become active players, so it's critical we solve as much as we can at that level.)

This is also why I created the Supporter's /help system, which as you may recall never existed before. This is an important piece of the puzzle, giving new players a way to get help in real time, rather than being alone and ending up quitting in frustration.

If a player makes it all the way into their first game, another common point at which they fall off and disappear is while waiting for turns to end. That 2-3 minute wait with nothing to do but stare at the screen is often the kiss of death for new players who haven't yet decided if atWar is worth the wait. (Besides often losing players at this stage, it's also annoying to the other players who had waited so long for their game to fill, only to see people disconnecting so soon.) I'm working on a possible solution for this -- its a "side game" people can play to keep themselves entertained while waiting for the turn to end. (I don't want to say much else about this project yet, it will be a surprise.)

Speaking of filling games, this is another problem which is felt by players of all ranks. The addition of AI players, as I plan to do, would help relieve this situation, but unfortunately for the moment this project is still a long way off. Creating the AI is not the problem... it's integrating it into the existing atWar code that I haven't yet figured out how to do. (I will figure it out, but for now my initial investigations have just told me "it's gonna be a bitch", and I haven't had a prolonged period of free time to deal with it further.)

I do try to keep our old-timers and high ranks engaged as well but, to be blunt, it has been a lessor priority. For the most part I have tried just to do easy things which take very little of my time but show that progress is being made. Things like rolling out the buildings update, strategy updates, and running the CW season are very, very minor things, but since high ranks are not likely to know about the things I'm working on behind-the-scenes, or that are focused at new users, it's important there are at least *some* visible changes for them too. (I point this out because I've heard the line many times, "why is Dave wasting time with strategies nobody cares about, instead of [whatever thing you think is more important]?" The truth is, I hardly spend any time at all on strategies and such.)

So far I've spent a lot of time talking about user retention, or keeping users. Let me go back to the topic of getting new users in the first place. As I said before, we get on average about 4000 new accounts per month. Roughly speaking, about 50% of that traffic comes to us from Google searches; about 25% is from Kongregate; and everything else (social media, other search engines, blogs, etc.) comprises the rest. Excepting the big Coronavirus spike, these numbers have stayed basically the same over the last 3 years.

Now, supposing we could increase our traffic coming in, even knowing that our user retention is so low, could we increase our numbers? Absolutely, yes. Advertising is the easiest way to do this -- and from the ads we've run I can definitely say that people click on them, and they do lead to increased traffic. The problem is that advertising has a cost. As I've already described, our advertising efforts have been a huge waste of money -- roughly speaking, for every $1000 I spend on advertising, I'll get back at most $50 in new activity. I'd be better off digging a hole in the backyard and dumping my cash in it. With my other software products I get tremendously better results, but not with atWar. Our terrible user retention numbers, combined with how poorly the game is monetized, make advertising a waste of time. Until that situation changes, I don't intend to waste any further significant amounts of money on it. (The only advertising I keep going is about $100/month of Google ads, just to keep tracking their ROI.)

Another way of increasing traffic, theoretically for "free" (well, excepting the cost of my own time), is SEO. If we can improve our SEO and get more free traffic from Google, so much the better. Nevertheless, SEO is a frustrating topic. If you ask 10 different "SEO Experts" for their opinions, you'll get 10 different answers, and none of them will give you any hard data to back up their claims. They may all be correct, but if I'm going to invest hours of my time tweaking our site for SEO purposes, I need some way of measuring the impact. I'm not going to just roll the dice and hope for the best. I need to know what worked and what didn't, so that I'm not just wasting my time.

Last summer (around May/June 2021) I did notice a significant dropoff in our traffic from Google, apparently the result of one of their algorithm updates. I decided I needed to take the "SEO project" a bit more seriously, and invest more time in it personally. I signed atWar up for a Semrush account (a popular, albeit expensive, SEO tool) and have been using that to measure the results of my progress. There are so many different metrics one might look at, but just for one example I've been looking at our Domain Authority score. After Google's algorithm update, our DA dropped from 41 (where it had been steady for a long time) down to 32. After making some improvements, our DA reached as high as 55 last December. (Last month it dropped again to 46, indicating further work is needed, but we're still better off than we were before.) At any rate, our Google traffic levels are back to where they were before the algorithm change, so I think we are on the right track. (But, as with everything, it's an ongoing project...)

Another idea that's been suggested is to expand atWar onto other platforms, like Steam, or creating a mobile app. These would have the effect of potentially driving a lot of new users to us, but for various reasons I have been dragging my feet on this. I am concerned, for example, that putting ourselves on Steam or in the app stores given atWar's current condition would just lead to tons of bad reviews and ruin our chances of success. Perhaps I am being too cautious -- perhaps I should just do it anyway and see what happens. I do plan to do both Steam and mobile apps at some point. Maybe I should just do it now? These are questions I still ask myself.

I would feel much more confident about Steam and mobile if I could see some improvement in our user retention numbers first. This is the biggest thing I focus on. So far, it seems like nothing I've done has moved the needle. But as I've just outlined we have several projects in progress and perhaps it is just a matter of time until I find the right combination of things to bring our numbers up. I definitely would prefer to improve our user retention rate so that, when we do open up on Steam and mobile, it won't be a wasted effort.


Lessons learned

I have now discussed at length the problems facing atWar, and the things we're doing about them. I now want to turn to a few of my own personal experiences with running atWar for the last 3 years.

Owning atWar has been a fascinating experience for me. I've met some really good, decent, like-minded people here, for which I'm grateful. There are also plenty of morons around here, for which I'm not so grateful, except that it has been a learning experience for sure.

It has been fascinating to watch first-hand how conspiracy theories form and spread around. It's a strange feeling when someone makes up a conspiracy theory about you, and you find yourself accused of something you KNOW you haven't done. No matter how false it is, convincing the other guy of the truth is impossible. The more you try to say the truth and defend yourself, the more the other person believes you're guilty. It's a fucked up aspect of human psychology. Once people believe something, no facts in the world will change their mind. It makes me have a little sympathy for public figures who, I realize now, must endure these kinds of problems all the time.

For example, I remember one guy claimed I was using atWar to mine Dogecoins. I never have. The basis of his claim was this: he went poking around in his browser console looking at atWar's scripts, even though he wasn't a programmer and didn't understand what he was looking at, he found the word "doge" somewhere, and concluded I must therefore be mining Dogecoins. The script he was looking at was actually Piwik, one of the analytics platforms I use, and it had nothing to do with Dogecoins. The Piwik source code is open-source and he could easily verify that fact for himself if had wanted to. Well, I explained all these facts to him, and he agreed that it all seemed fine and logical. He then continued to spread the same rumor for months regardless. I had told him the truth, and he refused to believe it.

Another guy once claimed that I rigged a CW season to earn some ProtoCoins. This was the first season in which I had introduced betting. The funny thing is, the guy who made this claim was THE VERY GUY WHO SET THE ODDS for the bets! We had been communicating regularly and, so I thought, building a good rapport. I, and everyone else, had expected a certain clan to win, based on the way the games had been going for the whole season up to that point. The community largely felt the same way, judging from the fact most people had bet on that clan too -- so many bets, in fact, that I was set to "lose" when the inevitable payout would have to be done. Of course I wasn't really bothered by this, since ProtoCoins don't actually "cost" me anything! Well anyway, on the last day of the season, I went to bed expecting the payout would be the first thing I'd have to do the following morning. When I awoke, I was as surprised as anybody to see that a different clan had come in at the last minute and won the season. Suddenly this guy started accusing me of arranging it on purpose! The truth is it was a fluke -- and I was literally asleep when it happened! Nevertheless, he quit in protest of my apparent "corruption".

Another odd thing is when I've seen people claiming "Dave said [this]" or "Dave said [that]", when I had neither said this nor that, nor even spoken to the person making the claim! And then there are some people who ascribe evil intentions to everything I *do* say. No matter how much I try to be careful and accurate with my words, no matter how much I try to be frank and honest, there are people who will read this post and twist my words into things I never even thought of. Even though I put a lot of effort into making sure the facts I state are correct, some people will accuse me of lying. Its offensive, but I can only imagine that the people who do it are projecting their own difficulties with the truth.

I will share a personal story here -- I hesitate to do so, because I know it's yet another thing someone will twist and use against me somehow, but I don't care anymore. When I was growing up, my father was one of those guys who had to be an expert about everything. Even when he knew nothing about a particular topic, rather than admit it and use that as an opportunity to maybe learn something, he would bluff his way through. He could make sweeping pronouncements on just about any topic. Nobody knew more about anything than he did. It might have been a remarkable skill, were he not totally full of shit.

Why do I share this? Because I think that's the reason why I'm so concerned with being honest. If I don't know something, I say it. How many times have people asked me about how something works on atWar and my reply is "I have no idea"? That doesn't mean I don't care (as some people may construe it to mean), or that I'm too stupid to find out, but simply that, at that particular moment, I don't know. If it's important, I'll find out about it.

Sometimes though, the brain plays tricks and I think I know the answer, but I end up being wrong. When that happens, I go out of my way to go back and correct myself. Sometimes even if I was off only by a small amount, I still have to go back and fix it. For example (just hypothetically) if somebody asked me when was the last time I went to San Francisco, and I answered off the top of my head "January 15th", then later I look at my calendar and happen to realize it was actually January 18th, I will call that person back and correct myself! "Hey, sorry, I gave you bad information, it was actually January 18th". Even if it doesn't really matter, I just can't stand lying, whether intentional or not.

This is also why I end up using a lot of "hedging language". You may have noticed it in this writing. I refer to numbers "roughly speaking", "on average", or "about" a certain amount. That way I can give you the general facts without getting hung up if I'm off a little bit one way or the other. For example, I could say that atWar had 4372 new users in November, 4292 in December, and 4504 in January. These are all the true, exact numbers, but I had to look them up just now. Or, I can just say atWar gets "on average 4000 new users" each month, and carry on with my life, my conscience being clear. Maybe some people interpret my hedging language as an attempt to manipulate the truth -- it's not.

All these things are things I had never really thought about prior to atWar -- i.e. before I had to interact with people who dissect and analyze my words, looking for anything they can use against me. (No, I don't think everyone does that... it's really just a tiny percentage of the people I hear from, but it still makes me think so carefully about my words now.)

I'll share one more personal story. It's something I actually shared once before, a couple years ago when I did an AMA post here on atWar. At the time, I was trying to raise money for something I wanted to do to expand my business. Even though my business was doing well, I didn't have piles of cash sitting around at that moment. I mentioned that I was planning to get a job as a programmer again for a while, so I could earn the money I needed for my business. It takes money to make money, as they say, so unless you are independently wealthy (which I was not, having started my business from zero), building a business is tough. I thought that being willing to do whatever I had to do to build my business was a good thing.

Not so, apparently, in the eyes of some. I remember one guy who thought it was funny I was such a "loser" for being "poor" and having to go back to work. (Strictly speaking I was not "poor" and did not "have to" go back to work -- I would have been fine without it, but it was just that I wanted to raise some extra cash.) Anyway, that guy didn't like me very much already (and, frankly, I didn't like him much either -- he was an asshole), so the fact he would try to insult me was not surprising at all. The lesson I learned from that was rather about how something I saw as a virtue could be twisted around and thrown back at me as a weakness. It's yet another reminder to me to be so careful with my words.

As an aside, just to tie up that story, here's what happened: I did get a programmer job, which I worked for about 6 months. I got the money I needed, and then in March 2020 I quit. This was as the Coronavirus lockdowns were happening; atWar and the rest of my businesses were all taking off, and I wanted to pour my maximum energy into taking advantage of the spiking activity. I haven't worked for another client since, and I don't plan to. My business has grown enough that finally I am able to accumulate savings on my own now, without any outside work.

One of the things I'm NOT good at, I admit, is keeping up with communications. As I get older, I rely on my staff more and more to help me with this. I do answer as many as I can personally, but I often need a little reminding not to forget. That's because if I don't do something immediately, weeks may go by until I get back to it again. I'm sure I've offended many people by my late replies, without ever intending it. (If so, I'm sorry!)

Speaking of communications... somebody recently asked me if I "could live off the income atWar makes, or no way?" -- my answer, after a hearty belly laugh, was "no way!". Not even remotely close. I'm happy it pays for itself most of the time, but I don't count on any income from atWar in my monthly budget.

No, atWar continues to be a labor of love. I won't even try to calculate the value of my time that I've invested in it. Despite the drama, I do enjoy working on it. I often end up working on atWar whenever I need to take a break from the significantly less interesting work I have to deal with for my other software products.

So there you have it, a summary of all the main things which have happened and are happening on atWar. If you have made it this far, I thank you, from the heart. I hope my comments have helped explain why certain things are happening, and what you can expect in the coming year. I hope I can do another "year in review" post at the end of 2022 with some bit of good news, for a change. *fingers crossed*

Best wishes,
Dave

P.S. If you wish to contact me -- please note I am not reading my PMs anymore, nor am I reading the forums, apart from occasionally checking the Bugs forum. The atWar staff know what they are doing and they can help you with any issues you may have. However if you want to talk with ME specifically about anything, the best way to reach me now is the Contact form. My corporate staff check these messages Monday-Friday, and anything that needs my personal attention will be forwarded to me. I respond to as many as I can. (Except rude or spammy messages, which are filtered out by my staff and never reach my eyes. So keep it respectful if you want me to see it.) Thanks for your understanding.

P.P.S. How did I ever find the time to write such a long post? In a word: insomnia. This project started about a week ago when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep, as often happens. I decided to try something different for a change, so I grabbed my tablet and just started typing. I apologize in advance for any bad grammar or misspellings which may have resulted.

  |

Comentários

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Comentários: 103   Visitado por: 1327 users
06.02.2022 - 05:58
 Dave (Administrador)
----
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
--Sun Tzu

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06.02.2022 - 06:29
Once we get those AIs in the game, I do hope we have Veteran difficulty kekekek
----
Tender is the Night...
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06.02.2022 - 07:19
Not being here for 2-3 years I saw lot of changes we were wishing for years, too bad things went the way they did. Anyways I presume this message will be read so before writing it I did not want to sounds ungrateful, but to clarify that I write it because I care:

Regarding toxicity, when certain mods took it as their personal project to fight toxicity I supported them and rooted for them, especially before you bought the game. It's too easy to see that picking on new players you don't know, or constantly haressing people is bad for the game is bad, especially when people are making their first step and are not sure if they understand anything about the game (which will be a subject for later).

However, you have to realize that the only people who become part of this game are those who spend hours aday/week at it, because there is no other way (the level peaked and those who do not try to learn simply never win a game unless they play rp - which is DEAD). When you leave people for hours it's obvious they will fee; meed to communicate with each other. We all do make fun of each other, sometimes it ends up badly.

In our times, when the goal is to reach complete freedom one naturally asks himself - when does the line pass? I think (as you mentioned) that there should be a reasonable borderline: making fun of each other is fine. making fun of new players should not be fine, constantly haressing other players should not be fine. Sending mesages/pictures to people you don't know should not be fine,

THE THING IS - most of us are here for years, and afterwind/AtWar has been with us during our worst crisis and our best times (though when you have a good period you usually are not here). We care even about the people who hate and have done terrible things to us. If, for example, a muslim Isis-sympatizer from detroited who cheated and cursed for years will be sick tomorrow it is safe to assume you'll see some KKK-supporters neo-nazis from here sending him money for medicines. Why? Because when a community served you for so long you see your presence there as an achievement and a goal. deep inside even if you do not bluntly feel it or talking about it.

Why does it matter? because when you ban people for being toxic. you have to be very clear with your policy and careful with your words, becuase it might be interrupted as attack on the right to speak/communicate. and therefore attack against the community/personal identity here.

You did say you want less toxic community, but according to evidence I saw some of the mods here acted like a bullies, made fun of and disrespected people when they were trying to defend the way they speak, which, as I explained before, was percieved as much bigger of a deal. Therefore a simple act of trying to enforce a simple rules has almost killed the vetrean community,

I believe we could uphold the community and do better if we'll be more respectful, I think it was a good cause to try and reduce it. But it was done shamefully. I don't like to tell people how to do their job. But in my opinion the best way is to unban everyone who was banned in November, get the toxic mods to apoligize for the way to behave and try over. this time with less hate and toxicity,

Regarding new players - it's tricky, due to rise in farmer skills and high rank monopolies team game does not work for them, and you until you learn both strategy and tactics you can not even understand what you did wrong, for sure not to beat an alliance of 3 rank 14s. so I believe you should promote more simple maps - maps of many small cities near each other. like ancient - to learn tactics. and RP maps / small scenarios to learn strategy.

I really wish the game will be more successful and no matter what happens I wish everyone good luck, It has been a pleasure to play and communicate with all of you, and if I hurt you I apology
----


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06.02.2022 - 07:28
I too have insomnia now, if I'm lucky I'll be able to get a few hours of light sleep without a major sedative. I need to start channelling my awake time into longer posts

Edit: This is really well-written. I just finished reading all 7500 words, and what stood out to me most was your point about player retention. Staring at a blank screen when starting a game: problem? Yes. Biggest problem? Most likely. It is good to see that there is a concrete solution in the works. Your point about the utility of the "/help" command made me think about how useful it actually is: supporters have almost no incentive to be on 24/7 or even help people, for that matter, when they are online. Plus, most players literally have no idea that in-game commands exist. I think it would be a better idea to have something like BlockFi's live help tool:



You could use your company's primary support staff to respond to these inquiries live, or maybe incentivize supporters with with protocoins to respond (with happy conduct) 24/7 to any inquiry in the chatbox. There could also, obviously, be a bot function in the chat box. Live support should be a last resort option for the player since there are many helpful links he can go to to solve his issue, instead, most of the time.

I also think that other kinks should be worked out as far as player retention goes in later stages (around rank 1-2, after tutorial) that are far less obvious. For example, when I joined back in 2015 with a few friends, I almost quit out of frustration because I had no freaking idea how to select a country... I kept double clicking and it wouldn't work. I didn't go through the tutorial, but I never go through tutorials—and that's another important point. A lot of players don't waste time going through tutorials. There needs to be an in-game function that recognizes a new player and helps them outside of the tutorial until they're rank 2 or something. This is especially important for the BASIC stuff like selecting a country, which I struggled with. If a 15-year-old or even an older person can't figure out some of the most fundamental aspects of this game without a full-blown tutorial, then that's a problem. And until it is worked out, I don't see player retention ever increasing.

As for mobile app and steam, I think their implementation should depend on how and when these retention mechanics are implemented. "How" as in, when implemented, whether or not they're successful in raising player retention, and "when" as in how important it is to have these features out to please the current community at the expense of harming the prospect our future community.
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Happiness = reality - expectations
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06.02.2022 - 08:19
 NicK
O atwarian cuties and IQ above 164 darlings. Even I as neutral side ( sexy secretary which never played this ) and completely random person, can just watch and enjoy this magnificent META, situation into this game.

Polishing and removing unneeded trolls, maded this site shine like 3 suns combined together. Bravissimo, belissimo, adorable, charming, stunning, everything exactly opposite of some zappa guy and his gameplay.

There's message from MP he wanted me to publish here. I'm his sexy secretary... So this is it:

Enjoy in what you menaged and done. You wanted this to happen. Now be happy, dance with: kaska, sid, croat and smile. Make big party to celebrate cleaning this game from nuclear waste aka waffel, lao or similar morons/toxic fags. Waiter's on that party should be: wd and gypsoyer.

Game is now clean, full of order. IA bots replaced old, outdated week players like Hrcak, Mecoy, Alois, lao, Trollvis, Spx, MP and many rest. New IA is superior cuz it's maded by us ( Meta-giga team ) and we can't be wrong, so everything we touch we convert into gold. Bots doing multiple jobs, doesn't complain, doesn't this doesn't that...

No one said Dave fixed cw season. Cuz that would be really sad. He just ignored some things. In the past we had cases with farm. Clan which got caught in these things would got punished. in that period when I wanted to do fun, interested season with something extra like betting. Dave declined to add supervisor for fair play, he were scared of how kaska gonna react or croat or this or be or she. He wanted to be supreme leader here but always care what anyone could think/say/do. So our dear, big boss, game owner, almost father let everyone do whatever they want. But with triple standards. Like who can stop Pavle from playing cw when he want and how he want. Monday 4 am, Pavle t1, zero walls. Cw 15 mins after, Pavle t3, 3 units left. 5 more clans decides to play css in 5 am first time in aw history. Everything is fine. But if Sean decide to play 50 css in that period it's farm. Both cases are farm. Next season all members from one clans went into... Guess where. So we here had 50 staffs for what? So some autistic Kaska jump into my head, and then got defended by big boss, magnificent owner and our almost father...

That situation proves there's zero order and triple standards.

Then mutes, bans, abuses.

Waffel said to Sid that he's incompetent. Sid used powers and removed waffel.
Lao said new strat changes and upgrades are shit and done just to be monkey friendly. Lao Perma baned or deleted by big boss.
I said something to Sid. Hes responded: "We having all powers, you can just fuck off, who need you".

Now enjoy in your saharisation of this games. Talking about some toxic players and their behavior, but aw admins behave like kids which are stronger compered to another kids. So they just pick to beat them. You two would start ww3 with ez. You can't mute, ban, delete, unban, unmute when you want and then expect positive response from another side.

What you wanted, you menaged to get. Field is opet, bring new players, bring more bots.

No one from ratwar discord group won't ever come back to play this game again. Well done dear aw staffs, be cool.

Mauzeri Panterei.
Carregando...
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06.02.2022 - 08:22
Escrito por NicK, 06.02.2022 at 08:19

O atwarian cuties and IQ above 164 darlings. Even I as neutral side ( sexy secretary which never played this ) and completely random person, can just watch and enjoy this magnificent META, situation into this game.

Polishing and removing unneeded trolls, maded this site shine like 3 suns combined together. Bravissimo, belissimo, adorable, charming, stunning, everything exactly opposite of some zappa guy and his gameplay.

There's message from MP he wanted me to publish here. I'm his sexy secretary... So this is it:

Enjoy in what you menaged and done. You wanted this to happen. Now be happy, dance with: kaska, sid, croat and smile. Make big party to celebrate cleaning this game from nuclear waste aka waffel, lao or similar morons/toxic fags. Waiter's on that party should be: wd and gypsoyer.

Game is now clean, full of order. IA bots replaced old, outdated week players like Hrcak, Mecoy, Alois, lao, Trollvis, Spx, MP and many rest. New IA is superior cuz it's maded by us ( Meta-giga team ) and we can't be wrong, so everything we touch we convert into gold. Bots doing multiple jobs, doesn't complain, doesn't this doesn't that...

No one said Dave fixed cw season. Cuz that would be really sad. He just ignored some things. In the past we had cases with farm. Clan which got caught in these things would got punished. in that period when I wanted to do fun, interested season with something extra like betting. Dave declined to add supervisor for fair play, he were scared of how kaska gonna react or croat or this or be or she. He wanted to be supreme leader here but always care what anyone could think/say/do. So our deal, big boss, game owner, almost father let everyone do whatever they want. But with triple standards. Like who can stop Pavle from playing cw when he want and how he want. Monday 4 am, Pavle t1, zero wans. Cw 15 mins after, Pavle t3, 3 units left. 5 more clans decides to play css in 5 am first time in aw history. Everything is fine. But if Sean decide to play 50 css in that period it's farm. Both cases are farm. Next season all members from one clans went into... Guess where. So we here had 50 staffs for what? So some autistic Kaska jump into my head, and then got defended by big boss, magnificent owner and our almost father...

That situation proves there's zero order and triple standards.

Then mutes, bans, abuses.

Waffel said to Sid that he's incompetent. Sid used powers and removed waffel.
Lao said new strat changes and upgrades are shit and done just to be monkey friendly. Lao Perma baned or deleted by big boss.
I said something to Sid. He responded: We having all powers, you can just fuck off, who need you.

Now enjoy in your saharisation of this games. Talking about some toxic players and their behavior, but aw admins behavi like kids which are stronger compered to another kids. So they just pick to beat them. You two would start was with ez. You can't mute, ban, delete, unban, unmute when you want and then expect positive response from another side.

What you wanted, you menaged to get. Field is opet, bring new players, bring more bots.

No one from ratwar discord group won't ever come back to play this game again. Well done dear aw staffs, be cool.

Mauzeri Panterei.

no one cares lol
----
hi
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06.02.2022 - 08:25
Escrito por NicK, 06.02.2022 at 08:19

O atwarian cuties and IQ above 164 darlings. Even I as neutral side ( sexy secretary which never played this ) and completely random person, can just watch and enjoy this magnificent META, situation into this game.

Polishing and removing unneeded trolls, maded this site shine like 3 suns combined together. Bravissimo, belissimo, adorable, charming, stunning, everything exactly opposite of some zappa guy and his gameplay.

There's message from MP he wanted me to publish here. I'm his sexy secretary... So this is it:

Enjoy in what you menaged and done. You wanted this to happen. Now be happy, dance with: kaska, sid, croat and smile. Make big party to celebrate cleaning this game from nuclear waste aka waffel, lao or similar morons/toxic fags. Waiter's on that party should be: wd and gypsoyer.

Game is now clean, full of order. IA bots replaced old, outdated week players like Hrcak, Mecoy, Alois, lao, Trollvis, Spx, MP and many rest. New IA is superior cuz it's maded by us ( Meta-giga team ) and we can't be wrong, so everything we touch we convert into gold. Bots doing multiple jobs, doesn't complain, doesn't this doesn't that...

No one said Dave fixed cw season. Cuz that would be really sad. He just ignored some things. In the past we had cases with farm. Clan which got caught in these things would got punished. in that period when I wanted to do fun, interested season with something extra like betting. Dave declined to add supervisor for fair play, he were scared of how kaska gonna react or croat or this or be or she. He wanted to be supreme leader here but always care what anyone could think/say/do. So our deal, big boss, game owner, almost father let everyone do whatever they want. But with triple standards. Like who can stop Pavle from playing cw when he want and how he want. Monday 4 am, Pavle t1, zero wans. Cw 15 mins after, Pavle t3, 3 units left. 5 more clans decides to play css in 5 am first time in aw history. Everything is fine. But if Sean decide to play 50 css in that period it's farm. Both cases are farm. Next season all members from one clans went into... Guess where. So we here had 50 staffs for what? So some autistic Kaska jump into my head, and then got defended by big boss, magnificent owner and our almost father...

That situation proves there's zero order and triple standards.

Then mutes, bans, abuses.

Waffel said to Sid that he's incompetent. Sid used powers and removed waffel.
Lao said new strat changes and upgrades are shit and done just to be monkey friendly. Lao Perma baned or deleted by big boss.
I said something to Sid. He responded: We having all powers, you can just fuck off, who need you.

Now enjoy in your saharisation of this games. Talking about some toxic players and their behavior, but aw admins behavi like kids which are stronger compered to another kids. So they just pick to beat them. You two would start was with ez. You can't mute, ban, delete, unban, unmute when you want and then expect positive response from another side.

What you wanted, you menaged to get. Field is opet, bring new players, bring more bots.

No one from ratwar discord group won't ever come back to play this game again. Well done dear aw staffs, be cool.

Mauzeri Panterei.

I don't understand the point of this message
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06.02.2022 - 08:25
 NicK
And then you quoted me. Another triple standards guy.
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06.02.2022 - 08:30
Nice to see Dave learned nothing from the November fiasco, at least.

>Completely legitimate reasons
>"Thanks, Croat!"

>A few troublemakers
>Literally the entire active community aside from Sid telling Dave his banning policy is wrong

>"We only deleted some 4 accounts!"
>Yeah, ignore all the baseless temporary bans and mutes

>People vandalising maps!
>Yeah, maybe they could just take the map down instead of vandalising, if they could, but they can't, because scenarios originally made in silverlight are not even editable anymore.

But why bother, this is the same repeated song we had to hear throughout November. Extra funny is how you go to great lengths talking about people who refuse to acknowledge the truth; Ever looked at a mirror lately?

November fiasco aside, you cannot unironically tell me that the tutorial improvements are proportionate to the time spent on it, the tutorial that doesn't tell you about picking strats, turnblocks, custom maps or scenarios, leaving and wallfucks, and SHOWS A SQUARE CITY WALL INSTEAD OF A TRIANGLE ONE AS A WALL EXAMPLE, literally teaching people how to be noobs, is of acceptable quality. Literally all the tutorial tells you is how to pick a country. recruit units, move units, transport units, and "walling", as in, the fact that walls are a function.

As for Steam and whatnot I agree you're better off finishing the tutorial at the least before publishing it on any store.

On the "players staring at a map for 3 minutes" thing, now if only there was a certain game mode in atWar that allowed you to start off the game with an entire empire instead of just 1 province, and if only there were hundreds of maps dedicated to that exact game type, and if only you could start such a game simply by clicking "new game" in the lobby instead of going into the maps tab... Sadly the "new game" button is the privilege of the blank map.

And finally, as for mapmaking (it wasn't mentioned in the post but that is the problem), the staff has literally no contact with mapmakers. It's been 3 years and the event limit is still here while silverlight-made scenarios are uneditable. When clovis was still admin he'd talk with mapmakers at least and ask what they have problems with, ever since he got off the team there is no communication.
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Someone Better Than You
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06.02.2022 - 10:11
 Lelouch. (Mod)
Escrito por Dave, 06.02.2022 at 05:58

Another guy once claimed that I rigged a CW season to earn some ProtoCoins. This was the first season in which I had introduced betting. The funny thing is, the guy who made this claim was THE VERY GUY WHO SET THE ODDS for the bets! We had been communicating regularly and, so I thought, building a good rapport. I, and everyone else, had expected a certain clan to win, based on the way the games had been going for the whole season up to that point. The community largely felt the same way, judging from the fact most people had bet on that clan too -- so many bets, in fact, that I was set to "lose" when the inevitable payout would have to be done. Of course I wasn't really bothered by this, since ProtoCoins don't actually "cost" me anything! Well anyway, on the last day of the season, I went to bed expecting the payout would be the first thing I'd have to do the following morning. When I awoke, I was as surprised as anybody to see that a different clan had come in at the last minute and won the season. Suddenly this guy started accusing me of arranging it on purpose! The truth is it was a fluke -- and I was literally asleep when it happened! Nevertheless, he quit in protest of my apparent "corruption".

:/
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06.02.2022 - 10:30
 Lelouch. (Mod)
Escrito por Dave, 06.02.2022 at 05:58

It should be obvious and go without saying, but we don't punish anybody unless we have very good reasons to do so. Sadly though, people are going to believe their friends even when they're lying, and nobody would bother to ask us what really happened.


It would be nice every now and then to get an official statement on these things. I've tried asking mods before on what actually happened, but the mods sometimes refrain from giving details. Even today, I don't know exactly why some people got banned. I'm sure there must be a reason for this ambiguity, but it is still inconvenient. I know it's not your job to justify your actions as the owner of the game to anyone, but it might be helpful, at least to those players who are willing to listen, if you did so more officially. I think having a need for this is a result of how small the atWar community is. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody finds out when their friend or someone they know gets banned, and they wanna know why.

I have remained faithful to whatever decisions you made in November, despite being bombarded by different versions of the story. And I personally had to deal with backlash from the people who didn't agree with your decisions. It makes me look like a dick to tell to someone that what you did was probably fair and justified, to say that the people who deleted their accounts are idiots, that their protest probably won't amount to anything.
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06.02.2022 - 13:29
Will you make the picture size for cities and units bigger? It would be more helpful for custom units and buildings so people can see what they are.
----
Planet Howdy Prison = 152/89.
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06.02.2022 - 14:59
Better to be quit here, i dont think you can handle everything i would like to say .... only thing i can say, you fucking destroyed this game, good job well done, thank you dave
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06.02.2022 - 15:20
You have to be a fucking retard to think "thank you croat" comment is a reasson to be banned and deleted, no matter what someone done before. You started this everything and now you try to justify your doing by this bullshit you wrote, be a man and say what we all know, its your game and you want to be a God here and do as you like no matter what the community think about it (the community show you what their think was, as a supporter destroyed discord channel, Lion who never had done anything bad before, he did not done it just like that ) and no matter how many people you will lose.

You are a bad person and a worse bussinessman, a bad person because you are not able to admit that you have done something wrong ( In my country we say only God does not make mistakes, if a person try to act like he never make mistakes he is a psychopath, after all i seen, there are 2 options, you are God or the second one ), and a bad bussinessman because you put your emotions over your profit and the good for your bussiness(atwar) .
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06.02.2022 - 16:23
All this reminds me of the movie The Downfall, you still believe in the Endsieg and the Steiners attack while the Soviets have already taken half of Berlin ( in your case there arent even 15 people in the main lobby at peak times, but you pretend like its 15000 ). Maybe you will realize what you have done, when there are less then 10 or 5 people at peak times, but it will be to late.
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06.02.2022 - 18:24
 Lelouch. (Mod)
Escrito por ok1111, 06.02.2022 at 15:20

You have to be a fucking retard to think "thank you croat" comment is a reasson to be banned and deleted, no matter what someone done before. You started this everything and now you try to justify your doing by this bullshit you wrote, be a man and say what we all know, its your game and you want to be a God here and do as you like no matter what the community think about it (the community show you what their think was, as a supporter destroyed discord channel, Lion who never had done anything bad before, he did not done it just like that ) and no matter how many people you will lose.

You are a bad person and a worse bussinessman, a bad person because you are not able to admit that you have done something wrong ( In my country we say only God does not make mistakes, if a person try to act like he never make mistakes he is a psychopath, after all i seen, there are 2 options, you are God or the second one ), and a bad bussinessman because you put your emotions over your profit and the good for your bussiness(atwar) .


I didn't like Trystane anyways
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06.02.2022 - 18:37
Message deleted by atWar_Official. Reason: banned player evading on alts
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06.02.2022 - 19:18
Literally cannot be fucked to read this, I assume it's playerbase gaslighting, some fake out of context numbers and a pity party or something, you and your staff killed the game, no one cares, also calling your staff corporate is weird and cringey.

Thanks croat
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A Lion does not lose sleep over the opinions of sheep
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06.02.2022 - 19:44
Escrito por Tribune Aquila, 06.02.2022 at 07:28

I too have insomnia now, if I'm lucky I'll be able to get a few hours of light sleep without a major sedative. I need to start channelling my awake time into longer posts




You have insomnia because the Earth's magnetic fields are at some of the lowest points https://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/display/RT_t.cgi . Don't worry, it will pass in the beginning of May when Jupiter and Uranus leave their direct position.
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06.02.2022 - 21:35
Escrito por The Sphinx, 06.02.2022 at 19:18

Literally cannot be fucked to read this, I assume it's playerbase gaslighting, some fake out of context numbers and a pity party or something, you and your staff killed the game, no one cares, also calling your staff corporate is weird and cringey.

Thanks croat

When the developer of this game had too many toxic people, you're one of them and not helping the situation with other toxic people. Why would you tap the link the this if your gonna comment something rude?
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07.02.2022 - 00:42
Dave should thanks them for adding more numbers on his stats jddjdjdjdjjd so many alt to spam the same shit for months dkdkdkdkdkkd.
If it didn't work once it won't work the next time, anyway I already told lao and waff what I think about them, they're not here to play/help the game (not anymore at least), they're here to make drama, we don't need players that won't play, it's a game we're here to play.
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07.02.2022 - 01:10
..ewwz party of forsaken bugs

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07.02.2022 - 04:19
Having fun yet guys??? Skewed averages of bot accounts and alts cant fool your fragile player base, we're not gullible shareholders, this is just my SMALL friends list and enemy list

Having fun tho right..?









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A Lion does not lose sleep over the opinions of sheep
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07.02.2022 - 04:24
I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players
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07.02.2022 - 07:28
Escrito por The Sphinx, 07.02.2022 at 04:19


Why would anyone have Freeman on his enemy list? He is the most kind person here.
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07.02.2022 - 07:35
Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 04:24

I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players

Remember when you were a low rank that picks on others every minute for attention? Did any of the people you call pathetic and laugh at make fun of you back then? I think when they had power over you they were much nice than you are to them now.
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07.02.2022 - 07:36
Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 07:35

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 04:24

I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players

Remember when you were a low rank that picks on others every minute for attention? Did any of the people you call pathetic and laugh at make fun of you back then? I think when they had power over you they were much nice than you are to them now.


No I wasn't nicer, I'm nice to nice people and some people never change, like you for example, fucking boring as ever

I wasn't seeking attention either as a low rank, since I actually joined the forum discussions at rank 10, so I don't know what you're talking about..
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07.02.2022 - 07:41
Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 07:36

I wasn't seeking attention

Brb calling Acqui
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07.02.2022 - 07:48
Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 07:41

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 07:36

I wasn't seeking attention

Brb calling Acqui


Acquiesce and I were making jokes about American psycho, how is that attention seeking ? Is bounding with someone attention seeking? Strange vision...

Beside that you clearly don't know what you're talking about, so stop trying to be relevant, I'm not here to argue.

I just think that Lao has been giving shit for a long time, and, if I think he's been treating too harshly (I've actually lifted his punishments several times), he should move on, it's pathetic to wish the game misfortune just to make a point.
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07.02.2022 - 08:20
Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 07:48

Acquiesce and I were making jokes about American psycho, how is that attention seeking ? Is bounding with someone attention seeking? Strange vision...

Beside that you clearly don't know what you're talking about, so stop trying to be relevant, I'm not here to argue.

I just think that Lao has been giving shit for a long time, and, if I think he's been treating too harshly (I've actually lifted his punishments several times), he should move on, it's pathetic to wish the game misfortune just to make a point.

Nah I remember this Gallerious guy spamming chat all day, but it does not matter now.

Until this very moment, I never talked to you. Because we ran in different circles and honestly it never bothered me what is your opinion, let alone if you think I'm relevant.

Why now? Because now you have destructive powers. In a topic about rebuilding the community, after seniorods admitted disrespective attitude from stuff have pushed other people away. When everyone tries to figure out how to fix thing you come and tell everybody who disagrees with you that they do it because they have no achievments. Way to go.

Being a keyboard warrior does not makw you interesting. Being disrespectful does not make you interesting. I never got along with Laochra but he is not the issue here. You are the problem.
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07.02.2022 - 08:34
Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 08:20

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 07:48



Nah I remember this Gallerious guy spamming chat all day, but it does not matter now.

Until this very moment, I never talked to you. Because we ran in different circles and honestly it never bothered me what is your opinion, let alone if you think I'm relevant.

Why now? Because now you have destructive powers. In a topic about rebuilding the community, after seniorods admitted disrespective attitude from stuff have pushed other people away. When everyone tries to figure out how to fix thing you come and tell everybody who disagrees with you that they do it because they have no achievments. Way to go.

Being a keyboard warrior does not makw you interesting. Being disrespectful does not make you interesting. I never got along with Laochra but he is not the issue here. You are the problem.


OK listen to me my irrelevant friend, you're making up shit for a reason that I ignore, I think you're attention whoring, but you talk without any idea of what you're talking about. You just came from " I try to seek attention from people with a powerful position", to " you were spamming chat all day long". Both are false, but that's just underline how shitty your argumentation is.

About my destructive power, again, you don't know shit, you just come to the forum from time to time, spreading your useless comments and unfunny jokes.

Do I have a destructive power, really? The answer is, the only person I've ever vouched for a permanent ban was 006. Even MP, I was for a permanent mute, but no ban. Indeed I have a big mouth, and I might have been out of line from time to time, I aknowledged that already, but the thing is, as Dave perfectly underlined, some people give the mod team shit for no reason but personal quarrels. I don't take it, and I fight back. Is it the right way of doing things? Maybe not, but there is a big difference between that and actually damaging the game. I'm disrespectful toward morons and retards, and when someone act in a retarded way, despite whoever thzt person is, I call it like it is, I even do thzt with Dave. Again, you have no idea of my activity as a mod, what I think or what I tell to the rest of the staff.

In all fairness this all November drama wasn't even a legit complaint in the first place, it was mostly some people complaining about the fact that they weren't heard anymore, whom got butthurt cause they were muted or banned, being paranoid about how they were being abused by the staff. This argumentation has been used for years. They then made a all thread in which some valid point were pointed out, but mostly it was a way to clean the dirty clothes in public.

Now,as I said, im not here to argue, I'm not even involved anymore, I just hope the game is gonna have plenty of new players cause Dave is a good guy and I want it to survive and florish. Period, now if we could both shut up and stop spamming that would be great.

Sidenote : I actually said to Dave thzt, if in order to solve the situation it was necessary to demote me I would gladly accept, and since I wasn't OK with the way that all situation was dealt with I decided to withdraw in order to cool things down, so how am I the problem? Just stop talking when you don't know shit...
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07.02.2022 - 08:52
Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 08:34


I am not your friend, and with the way you speak I promise you, once this arguement is over we'll never speak or play together again.

Having mods shittalking on forum is way more destructive than mutes and bans. Laochra got banned in the past too but the effect never reached such magnitude. Why?

Because saying over 100 upvoters were bitter just because they lost influence is the exactly same disrespectful attitude you show people. Do you really think people will feel comfortable here being treated like that by people who mute and ban them for toxicity? Or you are just trying to deny the fact you have responsability?

Knowing you for years it does not even matter if people are bitter and having no accomplishment. It does not matter if their arguements are honest. You'd continue to shittalk and finding execuses for your behaviour either way. See? It's very easy to cancel people.
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07.02.2022 - 09:06
Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 08:52

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 08:34





Figure of speech.

You don't read me, I said thzt at the beginning it was a way to solve personal issues, but later on actual valid concerns were pointed out, hence I don't blame the people who upvoted it. If you think like that, I'm not surprised by the rest of your argumentation on how I have a responsability. Does driving away people by banning them cause they break the rule, disrespect the staff is the mod team fault. Isn't it the player own fault instead?

You said that before today we never spoke, but you then say you've known me for years? Without talking to me? Lol. Stop digging pal.

Those who know me know I'm a very nice person, and I'm very welcoming to a lot of people, I've helped a LOT of new players to improve and understand the game, giving them advices, probably more than you know. Instead of giving me (and the staff) credit for what we do under the table, you just bark with the other wolves without having any idea of what you're talking about, and saying I damage the game just cause you listen to some people who say we spoke poorly to them (while they shit on us on a daily basis, harassing us both on game and on discord). Here is the duble standard : the staff actually try his best to improve the game, being fair, and all those efforts are ruined by a bunch of people who blame us for everything, and some people like you agree with them without any idea how much time and effort we put on the table behind the scene.

Now let's stop derailing shall we? It's really not the topic, and im the bad guy if you want, I don't care.
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07.02.2022 - 09:11
Escrito por The Sphinx, 07.02.2022 at 04:19

Having fun yet guys??? Skewed averages of bot accounts and alts cant fool your fragile player base, we're not gullible shareholders, this is just my SMALL friends list and enemy list

Having fun tho right..?











Less than 10 players got banned from that list and they weren't even active players bahahahhahah, 80% of the list you sent aren't active for years. Your list proves that atwar needs more new players because old players quit for real life things. The only argument we can make from that list is that without old players new players won't stay because they can't play anymore.
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07.02.2022 - 09:46
Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 09:06


I don't have to talk to you to know you from your messages. Anyways, I don't think you are bad person.

There are literally only 4 people in this world which I consider to be 'bad' because I know they knowingly chose to be selfish no matter how horrendous the impact was (none of them are from the internet). You are not one of them. I know lot of people feel like playing boss is a virtue, but you have responsability and should be patient to those who look up for you. When you look bad the whole system looks bad.

Anyways, I am sorry if I misjudged you, and I wish you good luck
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07.02.2022 - 11:48
Dave: "We have improved the tutorial"
The tutorial:
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Someone Better Than You
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07.02.2022 - 12:52
Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 07:35

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 04:24

I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players

Remember when you were a low rank that picks on others every minute for attention? Did any of the people you call pathetic and laugh at make fun of you back then? I think when they had power over you they were much nice than you are to them now.




And here is the big problem with dave wanting the staff to be untouchables, players will always treat other players the same even if they get a different color emblem one day due to the the long history they have playing atwar. Kaska for example is the same toxic player we all have seen get into degrading arguments with any kid possible yet dave thinks the playerbase will respect him because he got a blue shield now..

Just looking at kaska argueing with one of the most reasonable and calm players (rocklee) makes you wanna facepalm Xaxaxaxaxa.
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07.02.2022 - 14:01
 NicK
Nice words from: Zep, ROI, Siri.

After defending people's like Croat, WD and Kaska are...

Guess who lost every kind of authority and respect.
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07.02.2022 - 14:08
Escrito por sirivann, 07.02.2022 at 12:52

Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 07:35

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 04:24

I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players

Remember when you were a low rank that picks on others every minute for attention? Did any of the people you call pathetic and laugh at make fun of you back then? I think when they had power over you they were much nice than you are to them now.




And here is the big problem with dave wanting the staff to be untouchables, players will always treat other players the same even if they get a different color emblem one day due to the the long history they have playing atwar. Kaska for example is the same toxic player we all have seen get into degrading arguments with any kid possible yet dave thinks the playerbase will respect him because he got a blue shield now..

Just looking at kaska argueing with one of the most reasonable and calm players (rocklee) makes you wanna facepalm Xaxaxaxaxa.

Agreed if mods weren't players but from outside the game I would understand to have untouchable staff.
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07.02.2022 - 14:44
Escrito por Froyer, 07.02.2022 at 14:08

Escrito por sirivann, 07.02.2022 at 12:52

Escrito por Rock Lee, 07.02.2022 at 07:35

Escrito por Kaska, 07.02.2022 at 04:24

I'm not really active anymore, but thanks to you the game is still running. A lot of people have forgotten how bad the situation was when you purchased atwar, so just for that we should all be grateful.

Many kids here with no accomplishments on their own, still having a big ego (like Lao pathetical comment, full of bitterness, get a life bro lol)

Good luck, I hope you'll succeed in increasing the number of players

Remember when you were a low rank that picks on others every minute for attention? Did any of the people you call pathetic and laugh at make fun of you back then? I think when they had power over you they were much nice than you are to them now.




And here is the big problem with dave wanting the staff to be untouchables, players will always treat other players the same even if they get a different color emblem one day due to the the long history they have playing atwar. Kaska for example is the same toxic player we all have seen get into degrading arguments with any kid possible yet dave thinks the playerbase will respect him because he got a blue shield now..

Just looking at kaska argueing with one of the most reasonable and calm players (rocklee) makes you wanna facepalm Xaxaxaxaxa.

Agreed if mods weren't players but from outside the game I would understand to have untouchable staff.

The best idea in this thread
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A Lion does not lose sleep over the opinions of sheep
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07.02.2022 - 16:49
Message deleted by atWar_Official. Reason: Moftah Abaid payment fraud
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07.02.2022 - 21:08
Escrito por NicK, 07.02.2022 at 14:01

After defending people's like Croat, WD and Kaska are...



I literally said no word here.
I didn't even want to include myself into here, neither I have read most of the stuff from this topic, but seems you don't want me to remain out. Firstly, Sphinx was calling me out all around in forums for using some alts here (do I look as someone who would use alt, especailly with names Mclaren or Dung Beetle lol). Now Mauzer is all of a sudden turning around for 180 degrees and starting again. I've solved out with Sphinx, but Mauzer...

So, after our normal and friendly longer talk from last few days, your awful micro braincells with constant short-circuits are again stretching my name around.
At the end of these quite nice talks within us, you told me that you are willing to possibly come back, but that you have firstly to, I'll quote you now, 'feel the pulse' of the others from your shit discord server and that you will inform me about it. That it mustn't be done rashly, but step by step.
And I told you that if you guys decide to announce your comeback, that I can help with whatever so you 'adapt' back as smooth as possible and I would be the first one to eat any kind of 'pride' and step out saying welcoming words and supporting the new paper with all of us together (again). You were fine with that, joking that maybe Dave should start, quoting you again, 'setting a red carpet' if other people from your discord agree on comeback.

I have nothing to hide about that. I just had a big heart for you and for everyone, independently of side from that bs crisis.
This is literally what I sent to one staff member (no, it's not Dave), who I am in contact with, right after talk between you and me which I mentioned above:



And today - a miracle.
Your atrophied brain is again spitting my name around in such way, like we didn't even talk literally few days ago about everything. You fucking miserable sunflower. You rotate your shithead and your opinions as the wind blows. From a day to a day. I just feel mad on myself for trying to understand your side and trying to achieve anything with such an untrustful piece of unintelligent human as you are.
It's so easy to do what you did to me, so from now on, I will close my eyes and turn off my heart.

You and your miserable groupie of cockroaches, who have countless failed and desparate attempts to invoke karma on atWar, go choke in your own complexes of lesser value, no one (besides idiot Croat until now) gives a god damn single shit about you, no one fucking cares about you. You can keep having your little club meetings to do your standard, always same, agonizing cockroach attacks on atWar forums and you can all keep lurking in-game while hiding behind countless alt accounts. That is the only remaining food for your touched egos and fallacy that this game will stop without you. Or at least that you will be even mentioned. Keep choking in bitterness. Fucking dummies.
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08.02.2022 - 02:31
(verse)
aint nothin to keep just threw my last feelins in bins
aint nothin to heed, this shit just aint reelin in kings
thinkin back i seen this same fiend
leaving the game in this scene
tried to be there to intervene
but i think this just aint chief
the only thing i'll keep be memories
light up the keef, this one for the kings
one tear for my n*ggas who left in pieces
two tears for my n*ggas who left in peace
no tears for the n*ggas who beat his meat (yuh)
no tears for the n*ggas who stayed to feast (yuh)

(hook)
never look back and i've been better yuh
never look back and i've been better yuh
never look back and i've been better yuh
never look back and i've been better yuh
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08.02.2022 - 16:19
Escrito por Lelouch., 06.02.2022 at 10:30

Escrito por Dave, 06.02.2022 at 05:58

It should be obvious and go without saying, but we don't punish anybody unless we have very good reasons to do so. Sadly though, people are going to believe their friends even when they're lying, and nobody would bother to ask us what really happened.


It would be nice every now and then to get an official statement on these things. I've tried asking mods before on what actually happened, but the mods sometimes refrain from giving details. Even today, I don't know exactly why some people got banned. I'm sure there must be a reason for this ambiguity, but it is still inconvenient. I know it's not your job to justify your actions as the owner of the game to anyone, but it might be helpful, at least to those players who are willing to listen, if you did so more officially. I think having a need for this is a result of how small the atWar community is. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody finds out when their friend or someone they know gets banned, and they wanna know why.

I have remained faithful to whatever decisions you made in November, despite being bombarded by different versions of the story. And I personally had to deal with backlash from the people who didn't agree with your decisions. It makes me look like a dick to tell to someone that what you did was probably fair and justified, to say that the people who deleted their accounts are idiots, that their protest probably won't amount to anything.


Nice to see someone in this game remaining neutral.
These days, when I read a post from dave, all I hear is complaints. MAYBE ALL YOU PEOPLE who complain, listen to the other side. Yeah. NEWS FLASH! Dave was there too......

Something to keep in mind. Be a little nice to dave too. He's not a "new account" but he IS a person.

Politeness is a thing you know
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08.02.2022 - 16:25
Im literally crying right now. People are so mean. I read Dave's article, and I sit and nod. It makes sense. Then I read all the comments. I understand his comment about toxicity. People blame each other for it and it gets out of control. In reality, I know 3! accounts that have never been toxic. 2 are alts. REALLY GUYS?
( and to all the other people out there who don't blame anyone and are also crying when they read this.... sorry I missed ur account in the above sentence)
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08.02.2022 - 17:58
Atwar forum > atwar game last 3 years gG also dont blame croat hes only cool admin ever
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Cuva BOG Srbina svog!
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08.02.2022 - 18:47
Clearly croat was secretly the most toxic one of us all !!



xaxaxaxaxaxa
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08.02.2022 - 23:38
Escrito por sirivann, 08.02.2022 at 18:47

Clearly croat was secretly the most toxic one of us all !!



xaxaxaxaxaxa


Yes. Croat is toxic. Lots of my friends left and inactive for 4years. Because of bias mods
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09.02.2022 - 02:49
First post i have ever read in full....or ever felt was worth reading to completion. I am to ignorant to argue with my brothers but am intelligent enough to agree with Dave!
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Humans are only a suicidal sub species of Chimps running a muck on this planet.
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09.02.2022 - 02:51
Escrito por Dragon Spirit, 08.02.2022 at 23:38

Yes. Croat is toxic. Lots of my friends left and inactive for 4years. Because of bias mods

Date registered: 15 August 2020
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