You've been unbanned. We hope to see a new side of you.

Hi Reef,

We have discussed this appeal at great length. To many of us, it was quite surprising to see you appeal. You had made such a point and statement about not ever wanting to return to the server. It was clear that this server, in your earlier days and memory, was something entirely different than how it was being ran by the time you were banned. Things change, evidently so.

You claim to have changed as well. You claim to have matured and grown. You claim to have learned and I dare read between the lines to say you might have become a nicer person. However, we don't have any insight in these claims. Your appeal shows no real reflection, it shows no real insight in the actual things you have said and done. Of course, you could have reflected on all of this silently and on your own. We have however no clue about that.

Naturally, it's been a minute and things could have slipped your mind as well. So in short, let me remind you of the primary reasons for your ban:

- Disrespect towards the Staff team in a general sense, ensuring you do not cooperate in any interaction and specifically doing your best to make it as hard and bothersome as possible for the staff team. Quotes like "I'm glad I made you work for it" come to mind here.

- Breaking Lore Item rules. Why? 'Because staff has no right to be so deep into the business of players.' This ties to so many other anti-rules, anti-staff, and anarchy-server statements. I hope by now it is clear we are not an anarchy server.

- World downloading and attempted distribution of said download, under an invalid defense of "I didn't know it was a rule" despite it being specifically discussed prior with you.

- Attempting to use your alt to evade the ban.

- Beyond this and the rule breaches I have mentioned; after being banned you also took the liberty to admit to various other breaches of the rules over the past years, quoting directly atleast 8 rules that you claim to have broken. Including but not limited to griefing, hacking/exploiting, and stealing event items.

- You also have prior punishments which do get taken into account for the appeal process.

Hereby I am not even taking into account the endless repeating discussions various staff members have had with you. In these discussions you would again be extremely disrespectful, at times even discriminate based on nationality, and learn exactly nothing by the end of it.

You were met with endless patience by me personally and too many of my staff, that's not something one can just chalk off by saying that things were said out of frustration. For the reasons mentioned and the lack of any insightful point being addressed in your appeal, we can simply not give you the trust to return to the TOR community as of yet. You can consider the appeal denied.

This does not mean that you have no path back to TOR. You definitely have one, if you put in the effort for it. However, this surface-level appeal is not that path. Whether you take some time to reflect on this answer and appeal again in the future, or if you let it rest with this because TOR has become something that you do not recognize anymore. I hope you know that no matter if seen as positive or negative, you have contributed to the community and its history with your presence. That is something that can never change.

- Mido

Heyo, See my other reply where I have a longer thanks. but in short; thanks for the suggestion! In our discussion of this suggestion we have tried to categorize TOR in a lot of different ways. And honestly, it's pretty hard to do. TOR is not a server that has a focus really. We range from building, to campaigning on a tilemap, to community factions and events, to occasional PvP, to roleplay. We do a bit of everything, some bits more often than other. RP as with any form of it, comes primarily from the players themselves. We can create infrastructure for it, but we cannot (or will not) make it a primary focus of the server. Right now, you can claim many roles through the faction leadership system already. Meaning the person that wears the title King of Gondor, could if they wanted, be Aragorn. The leader of mordor could make his trusted members Nazguls. We like the idea of keeping this freedom for the players. We've had our Dains and Thranduils, but in the same sense we have had woodland realm leaders that weren't any canon lore-characters. They get to decide after they put in the effort to lead that faction. This is why some faction leadership lore items aren't tied to a specific character from the lore (some are because it was too tempting not to). I do agree that a system is lacking for non-faction-leader characters. There is no system for characters like Gandalf or Beorn. You could try it through a custom faction or title, but I understand it might not feel the same. Nor would you be getting a special item through either route. While lacking, I'm not sure if we want to fill this gap just yet. We recognize it is a gap, but over the course of time not many players have had an interest in playing as these characters. A few definitely have, and they RP'd it to the best of their abilities with the tools given. However, it is so rare that perhaps it might also be better that some characters simply aren't playable. They are in the RP of the world afterall, they affect it as they do, they travel, they live, and in Gandalf's case they guide new players. I apologize if this wasn't the answer you were looking for, but again thank you for your suggestion. It really sparked some interesting discussions that definitely improved the server! - Mido

Heya, First of all, thanks so much for your suggestion! It made us reassess a lot of our lore items and what value they bring to TOR! Suggestions like these keep us actively thinking about aspects that we might've been running on auto-pilot or were implemented years ago and never given a second thought! We've discussed this a lot and it spiralled into a whole other discussion and then we forgot to reply lol. While it is indeed cool, we have deemed them (for the time being) not necessarily cooler than other lore items we have. We don't want to bloat the lore item catalogue with too many similar items that players might feel less connected to. This would make it harder to justify a new lore item (like the recently released Treebeard's Appendage) as the category has gotten too full. For us to be able to represent as many types of players within a category of lore items, we ensure to take bits and pieces of various Middle-Earth cultures. Right now there really aren't any 'roles' as you describe either, but more on that with the other suggestion.

You've been unbanned. Don't let it happen again.

This appeal has been denied. You were warned before any of this happened by another staff member for another incident. You can sit out the ban and I hope it will give you the opportunity to thoroughly read the rules. If anything remains unclear, you can always ask. Not knowing is not a valid excuse.