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.

You've been unbanned.

You've been unbanned.

Hi Stalone, it's been fun to see your return to the community and the reminiscing of old memories. You've been part of the history of TOR and have made an impact on the server. Both a positive and negative one. Considering all this history, it took us a long while to figure out what to do with this ban appeal and its edits.

On your first version of your appeal, it didn't seem like you wanted to return to the community. It seemed like you were using an excuse just to come back and play some. Perhaps figuring that enough time has passed that you could simply walk in at this point. After interacting some and seeing what you've missed, you did seem genuinely pulled back into community and decided to edit things up. We base our decision on the edited version of the appeal.

Firstly, in your past few months of playtime you were quite simply a rude person towards players in the community, as you say. As a recently ex-staff member at that point, you should've known better. I will say personally, a lot of the people you were interacting with at the time were very much at fault as well. The staff team of the time dropped the ball on that, and I recognize that. Currently, the staff team functions very differently. I would argue that we've created a place in which all parties will receive fair judgement across the board.

However, despite being ragebaited often, you were still just being a rude dick. That remains unchanged, no matter which staff team looks at it. Disrespect has no place on TOR, and such behavior is not something that can be tolerated. The call in which you tell your friend to kill himself was simply the last drop in the bucket. In that same call other disrespectful things have been said regarding players of the community as well.

We believe that you definitely have a path back to TOR. However, as it stands, we don't think this appeal is that path. It feels heartfelt, but it does not feel genuine as you claim to be over grudges, but don't show this in your interactions outside of the community. Appeals exist so banned players can win the trust back of the community. It's hard to tell whether or not you are truly sorry and whether or not you've actually grown. Or if you simply want to head back to the lab, explode some players, and scream at the next ragebaiter that would come your way.

Based on all that, we simply cannot lend you the trust to enter back into the community with this appeal. You will however at all times remain a part of TOR's history and will have always made an impact on this community. Both a positive and negative one.

- Mido