ENT Gaming

Well now that the ENT days are drawing to a close, I thought it is the time to let you into the mind of Pinheadlarry. Throughout dota history, I have encountered players who I could never quite tell if they were just putting a show or actually were the same in real life. For example, I always pictured last(lethal) as Christopher Lloyd from "One who flew over the cuckoo's nest".

Do you actually use killer metaphors in real life?

Not nearly as much. However, I do find the shock-value you get a from a really good/cringy/edgy metaphor makes people look twice and actually pay attention. It certainly worked well on ENT's folks.

Did you actually intentionally throw games or are you just bad?

I'd like to say I didn't do either... I'd say I'm just lazy. I often played dota to unwind and would just do what was fun. I was never really concerned with winning. I usually didn't feel like chatting, I just wanted to farm, get OP and wreck some noobs. When I really did try back in the beerlord days, my highest ELO was between 1300-1400 before I got bored with playing serious. I'd like to think that is not "bad" but I certainly do not considered myself even close to a top-tier player on ENT. However, the more stacked a game is, the harder I play. People like Smoker certainly beat me more games then not, but I would win 20+ elo maybe every 3-4 games playing against them so I actually could hold my weight pretty well.

As I have stated, I originally did nothing but throw games on ENT back in the DC days. Now I don't throughout my 5600+ after DC, I maybe maliciously used spells maybe 10-20 times, I never griefed, never item destroyed (other than agis a couple of times). The only quasi-ruin I would commit on occasion is holding teams hostage purposefully (not my alch strat). If teammate ragged on me all game and said I was useless, i would usually play more useless and the team would not be able to win without me. Once they realized I was not useless and that they needed me to win, then I would help and lock the win up)

Favorite mod
Beerlord for sure. He was super fair, and actually looked at strategies based on their win-merit rather than "playing under a conventional means". Beer certainly let me off on a couple of dicey BRQs and I gave him huge respect for it as I could see he put his trust in me that I did not ruin on purpose. After that, I actually felt really bad if ever I made his sit through a BRQ caused by my occasionally sloppy gameplay. Because of him, I actually cleaned my gameplay up and really tried hard to be competitive. I when years and 1000s of games without a ban. Even after beer left, I kept it up. But then Banter boi came and did the exact opposite where he looked at everything I did with ill-intent and honestly, it was him that brought me out of the shadows.

Least favorite mod
Tough one... I'd still say banter boi (Astros). Nabo. was horrible, and tried to steam roll changes, rigged polls, and had HUGE biases. However, nabo. was invested in ENT. Banter boi was even worse in my opinion because not only did he have MASSIVE biases, hold MAJOR grudges, but he also tried to kill ENT (prematurely anyhow). He was the only mod I ever saw talk shit about ENT. Then afterwards, he continued his bitter endeavors by trying to siphon off ENT's player base.

What was your favorite thing about dota?
Definitely the flaming. I loved to sit back and watch people lose their minds at each other. I know some many people hated the "toxicity" of the community, but I absolutely loved it. Super entertaining. I miss the days of people like Gonzoindahouse who would forum spam the most hilarious stuff. I will certainly miss the dota community!

Who do you think is the best dota player?
Saint right now for sure. Back in the day it was this guy named Wrecktify. I never beat him. I could pick my best hero and still lose every single time.

Who is the most overrated dota player?
Either Smoker_ or Tusanik. Smoker is very beatable if you get an early lead. He switches to K/d conservation mode and gives up on the game. Tusanik has horrible builds and sloppy gameplay but yet still has a high elo. Is Ebay elo a real thing?

What will you do now that ENT is closing up shop?
I dunno. Definitely retiring from dota. I likely will still pop around Bnet every once in a while to play a game of legion or HLW ROC. I'm graduating from my graduate degree soon so my time was going to dry up soon anyways.

So that concludes the story of Pinheadlarry. Essentially Pinhead will die with ENT.

On a serious note: To both my allies and adversaries, thanks for making ENT/dota so memorable!

congratz on finishing ur graduate school. I have at least 3 years to go and I thought I could do well as long as I can DOTA on weekends, which tremendously lowered my stress.... but, now, I'm not confident...

Not nearly as much. However, I do find the shock-value you get a from a really good/cringy/edgy metaphor makes people look twice and actually pay attention. It certainly worked well on ENT's folks.

It's not Astros's fault that ENT became unplayable for any above-average player. Do you really blame him for not participating in the degeneracy? I sure don't. If I had still cared about DotA at all, I could have seen myself doing the same thing he did.

How was Tusanik overrated when no one thought he was good to begin with.. he trolled every game.

Beerlord was the best moderator. Arty was the best administrator. Uakf was the best developer. They were the backbone of ENT in its most high quality days.

The worst mod in ENT history was Agreements, but most won't remember him. He deleted appeals about him, he deleted complaints about him, he banned anyone who criticized him, he didn't follow guidelines at all (i.e. banning people 1 year from games for flaming him)

There have been tons and tons of mods with judgment issues, but for most it hasn't been enough of a pattern for me to say they are truly bad moderators. Like mostly it's just one dumb thing they do, like the classic "rule breaking is against the rules" line, but we've all said stupid shit before, I won't judge them. Even Merex didn't seem like an especially bad moderator, he just doesn't seem like a very intelligent person.

Rather, the problem with ENT moderation was not one specific person, but the entire direction of the moderation team in general. Like how the entire moderation team decided to no longer answer appeals based on the context, and instead copypasta a statement about quoting the rule you broke, and then unbanning if you did that. Little things like that contribute to people hating the ENT mods, which IMO is 99% the reason that ENT died and other servers survived. If someone hated ENT before, they may have still played on it because it was their only choice. But once bnet came out with a new patch and gave them an alternative, they left. That's why the player base fell by 50%+ overnight, and most of the ones who remained being game ruining trolls. It's not that they were too lazy to take 10 seconds to download an application; it's that they were tired of being (in their opinion) mistreated by ENT. It's disappointing and infuriating because I believe that the server I loved would have survived if everyone had cared more about the players.

Well, thank you fellas.

Although aggreements certainly exhibited some poor judgement at times, he wasnt all bad. I think worst mod ever has to go to anotherworld, who was never actually right a single time, and so often SO wrong it was hilarious to review.

My favorite was and is Hyo. Great skill, marvelous judgement. On rare occaisions his haldol levels would get subtherapeutic and he would be a bit erratic, but otherwise was terrific in all regards. Was only ever wrong once, because shihead really did deserve that ban .

I think haz was a terrific administrator, much better than arty. Arty had his favorites, and if you werent one of them he never talked to you. That is no way to lead. Haz was fair and available to all and did a great job imo. Jabba was also excellent.

taywon2 wrote:congratz on finishing ur graduate school. I have at least 3 years to go and I thought I could do well as long as I can DOTA on weekends, which tremendously lowered my stress.... but, now, I'm not confident...

Thanks! Good luck to you! I too will miss dota a lot. I sometimes went months without playing when things got busy but, I always knew I would be able to go back to playing. Not anymore...

@EdteOfChaos2 not gonna lie, that meme has some truth... haha. I really did it though to bring attention to the issues. Like you, I too tried to help cushion ENTs fall. Your direct approach never seemed to get anywhere, but nor did my edgy approach although it definitely helped draw huge attention to the issues I was trying to raise.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:Do you really blame him for not participating in the degeneracy?

No, I don't hold that against him. But I do hold his vindictive stab at ENT after he stepped down. Decent former mods like you and Beer never pulled stunts like that and I feel you still got your points across although they fell deaf on the ears that counted.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:How was Tusanik overrated when no one thought he was good to begin with.. he trolled every game.

Yeah, but he had ELO that was wayyy too high for his skill level. I never could figure out how he got it. He was always like 1600+ back in the day. When did he win?

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:The worst mod in ENT history was Agreements

You are probably right. I just never personally had a bad experience with him. I heard he was actually pretty decent though unless you fractured his ego.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:Even Merex didn't seem like an especially bad moderator, he just doesn't seem like a very intelligent person.

I saw a bit of agreements in him too. But not nearly to the same level. If you questioned him personally, he would ignore you. If you questioned him publicly, he would delete your post and forum ban you, and if you questioned him through complaints, then you could corner him and get some half-assed answers. But you are right that he did "seem" invested in ENT. He certainly did do his part handling BRQs and the general tasks. But his power-trippyness certainly did damage to ENT IMO. And if there is one thing I have to commend Banter Boi for, is that he atleast did not shut down dialog. For all the shit Banter Boi and I slung, it was always Merex coming in and leveling unnecessary censorship (or hazardous for Banter Boi). So I have to agree that Merex was a bad mod, but not an "especially" bad mod.

BeerLord wrote:I think haz was a terrific administrator, much better than arty. Arty had his favorites, and if you werent one of them he never talked to you. That is no way to lead. Haz was fair and available to all and did a great job imo. Jabba was also excellent.

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That is interesting. Arty, to me, always seemed like the calm compromising person ENT needed to put the brakes on poor changes and keep the community from going in the wrong direction.

I don't really know what to think of jabba. He seemed good, but then when he was named #1 he kinda vanished without a trace... I can't really call that "great" leadership. But certainly, the guy was dedicated when he was around and very fair. I thought his shutdown of the bots in protest of blizzard was exactly what the ENT community needed to understand what was happening. And Haz was solid. They guy banned me a few times but he was fair. He was pretty passive with the community over the last bit, but honestly, I think that is what this game needed. For those of us who stuck around all of these years, I don't think many of us were wanting big changes any more. We just wanted the same solid service ENT provided that drew us all in initially. Maybe others didn't appreciate continuity as much as I did, but I certainly thank Haz for providing me with that.

This has been quite the interesting read, and since this is indeed the end I'll definitely take part in some of the things said here.

pinheadlarry wrote:Beerlord for sure. He was super fair, and actually looked at strategies based on their win-merit rather than "playing under a conventional means". Beer certainly let me off on a couple of dicey BRQs and I gave him huge respect for it as I could see he put his trust in me that I did not ruin on purpose.

You know, I love beerlord. Honestly, when I look back on ENT and his involvement of it - He did great things for the dota community but what you don't specifically understand behind him is that he merely took on the role of moderating and only did it one specific genre. Not to say that's bad in anyway shape or form, no. I actually do appreciate him greatly for his efforts but honestly there is so much more to ENT that maybe you don't quite get but I'd expect EdgeOfChaos to, for sure.

Specifically, that's why I'll agree with him and say Hyo was probably our best. In the era that Hyo was mainly active there was a "struggle" with the middle-man positions at ENT that Hyo fulfilled. We had a fortified and quite strong moderation team but we didn't really have someone active enough to take on everything that is moderating and that's where he came in. Hyo was in-fact clear headed, made fair judgments and had a very "nice/friendly" approach to him - even when dealing with the most toxic of people via appeals/complaints what have you. What he did was more than just banning/appealing people, he took on nearly if not every subforum of ENT in his prime. Not many would ever know that about Hyo, at-least in this era hence why he was one of the people I noted in our shutting down thread.

pinheadlarry wrote:Tough one... I'd still say banter boi (Astros). Nabo. was horrible, and tried to steam roll changes, rigged polls, and had HUGE biases. However, nabo. was invested in ENT. Banter boi was even worse in my opinion because not only did he have MASSIVE biases, hold MAJOR grudges, but he also tried to kill ENT (prematurely anyhow). He was the only mod I ever saw talk shit about ENT. Then afterwards, he continued his bitter endeavors by trying to siphon off ENT's player base.

Nabo. was probably one of our most inspiring staff members. Not only was he running a majority of our in-staff relations and what-not but he did take extensive efforts to ensure any new staff were properly taught if need be. I believe it was nabo. as-well that gave a great influence to hazardous whom eventually took the role of management/department so that's also worth noting.

Astros was a good moderator. I'll say I've had my differences with him at times but he did what he could for his own - the dota community. The thing with him though that I'm sure had an effect on most of our modern-dota staff is that there was community hatred/opinions such likes ones from yourself that didn't help his case when moderating. Understandably, he did go "off the rails" a bit and retired/came back but overall he played his part and you being as mouthy as you were in his period with this obnoxious "banter boi" thing of yours didn't help his case. As far as him talking bad about ENT well, unfortunately that happens with some ex-staff and we couldn't really control that/nor did we care quite frankly.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:Rather, the problem with ENT moderation was not one specific person, but the entire direction of the moderation team in general. Like how the entire moderation team decided to no longer answer appeals based on the context, and instead copypasta a statement about quoting the rule you broke, and then unbanning if you did that. Little things like that contribute to people hating the ENT mods, which IMO is 99% the reason that ENT died and other servers survived. If someone hated ENT before, they may have still played on it because it was their only choice. But once bnet came out with a new patch and gave them an alternative, they left. That's why the player base fell by 50%+ overnight, and most of the ones who remained being game ruining trolls. It's not that they were too lazy to take 10 seconds to download an application; it's that they were tired of being (in their opinion) mistreated by ENT. It's disappointing and infuriating because I believe that the server I loved would have survived if everyone had cared more about the players.

Appeals are given due argument/defense when it's deemed necessary. We made the copy pastas and utilized them for quite a while now and to say that's what created some form of "hate" against us is quite humorous tbh. What would you have preferred? An appeal with back-and-forth arguments until one is sound enough to warrant unban/deny? Do you even know how moderation works on a big gaming platform? Most of the time people don't even know who the moderators are and yet games like that traffic in millions. Understandably, that wasn't ENT's case hence why appeals, requests, complaints, even applications are public. Even processed cases and such are made public.

Point being, the "copy-pasta" was made to bridge cooperation between a rule violator coming into our forums to appeal and the initial moderator that dealt with their ban request. It also wasn't always the case -> If someone came in guns blazing, demanding an explanation/claiming moderator incompetence then they were given said "context". However, if they come in saying sorry acknowledging why they broke a rule then we bridge cooperation so we don't just flat out unban someone on that.

Once bnet came out with a new patch what the hell did you think happened? Majority of players downloaded the updates and played on the new platform. Do you think they were 'shocked' or 'curious' about ENT/what happened with it? Of course, people who have been to our forums, accumulated a decent amount of hours/stats did but for casual players, players that didn't heavily indulge in DotA/LTD just moved on. It happens, there's not much we really could've done. Do you know why other communities survived? Because they use applications, they had a player-base that knowingly adjusted their war3 to be able to play on it as to where a community like ours was simply login to bnet and find the games bracketed [ENT]. Of course, ENT then came out with wc3c but that was to prolong communities like DotA/LTD and preserve peoples statistics/allow them to play further but it wasn't something we had beforehand. So yes, those game ruining trolls you think took over ENT and turned it upside down were actually just dedicated players. Unless you mean smurfs in DotA which is all to common then yes. Perhaps, but even then it's an easy report/move on.

I don't appreciate when you come in here yet again and start spewing your bullshit about ENT this, ENT that. You even claim yourself you stopped caring about pretty much everything and yet come on here with your pathetic EoC spinoff accounts and just meme around/argue for the sake of arguing. It's honestly sad. Even back in your staff days there wasn't anything significant about you besides being silent, in the shadows. There wasn't anything notable you really did besides after-the-fact which involved practically shitting on "a community you once loved" and that's not something I'd wanna take going out but hey, we all chose our own paths and that's the one you took.

pinheadlarry wrote:I saw a bit of agreements in him too. But not nearly to the same level. If you questioned him personally, he would ignore you. If you questioned him publicly, he would delete your post and forum ban you, and if you questioned him through complaints, then you could corner him and get some half-assed answers. But you are right that he did "seem" invested in ENT. He certainly did do his part handling BRQs and the general tasks. But his power-trippyness certainly did damage to ENT IMO. And if there is one thing I have to commend Banter Boi for, is that he atleast did not shut down dialog. For all the shit Banter Boi and I slung, it was always Merex coming in and leveling unnecessary censorship (or hazardous for Banter Boi). So I have to agree that Merex was a bad mod, but not an "especially" bad mod.

You know, I'll admit I did do a lot of post deleting/forum banning on certain members and do you know where they came from? Dota community. Honestly, one of the worst little groups ENT still had around was mainly the dota players. You guys sparred in public requests, appeals, complaints, applications it was horrific. Something I hope you and mr. EoC will understand is that when you guys go around just spewing bullshit on a ban request unrelated to you, or an appeal of the same nature - it's an issue. I did what I did to clean up our forum from becoming a heavily salted warzone of players who are either highly toxic in-game/don't even play on our bots anymore.

Merex wrote: but what you don't specifically understand behind him is that he merely took on the role of moderating and only did it one specific genre

Very true. But honestly, what he did, he did amazingly. I think ENT made a mistake by rejecting mod application who could only offer specialized (non general skills). I saw ENT deny applications where someone only knew how to moderate/review dota games but didn't know any others. Yes, someone who can handle everything is a champ, but a processed BRQ is a processed BRQ, regardless of the game and helps out. Other mods were similar, like @Arii was the champ at handling appeals and her post-volume was insane. When ENT was at its prime, it had many mods, with most handling a certain aspect of a moderators duties. But when you looked at the aggregate of their work, it overlapped and made ENT run amazingly.

And yes, Beer wasn't the most vocal on the forums, but that is WAY better than scrappy mod who is off-base at times. I agree beer was a dota-guy and a legion TD person probably has higher regards for other mods, but dota and ENT are basically synonymous to me, and therefore from my observational-point no one filled their moderator roll better than Beer.

Merex wrote:What he did was more than just banning/appealing people, he took on nearly if not every subforum of ENT in his prime. Not many would ever know that about Hyo, at-least in this era hence why he was one of the people I noted in our shutting down thread.

Hmm that is interesting to note. I thought highly of him, but didn't really see his behind the scenes work. I remember he too succumb to trolling in his final ent non-mod days. I know from a professional-level trolling doesn't look good on paper, but Hyo did it, like many of us, for positive reasons. If I also remember correctly, it was you that forum banned him and drove in the final nail for him to leave ENT.

The thing I found most frustrating about you (merex) is that you refused to look at the consequences of your actions with retrospection. Hyo (and even edge) were big members of this community, and if you are even a medium-to-large reason they leave, you should have some guilt (and this is saying alot since Edge has previously lambasted me as he noted in a post you/until deleted and I'm still sticking up for him - He also never came around until now since you banned him). You almost did the same to me by banning me into oblivion for trivial lazy-gameplay bans. Admittingly, I was getting VERY close to obfuscating my stats and ban history by rolling my IP and making a new account and leaving pinheadlarry in the dust. But here is the thing, I served every ban in full, I was descent enough to comply and not dodge my bans despite strongly disagreeing with them, and stuff like this meant nothing to you. Yes, I was never a big contributor to the ENT community, but I certainly filled games (over 5600 of them) and helped keep dota games filling. Tone is everything; beerlord knew how to encourage the best from a player where you (and particularly Banter boi) knew how to bring out the worst (become quasi-trolls)

I'd say the most laughable reasoning was that of Banter Boi who claimed my bad behavior was a result of Beerlord's mercy and a couple of bans, when in fact, it was that mercy that changed my gaming habbits for the better. I know you wanted to run a "tight ship" where everyone is respectable, but that is just not was WC3 and dota is. We are toxic to our core and that can't be changed. The more you fought it, the more people you lost. In the end, what is worse: losing Hyo because of some forum nonsense or letting him rant/troll on a thread that will be lost to time within 2 weeks? Your stance was clear, and my opinion wrong.

Merex wrote:The thing with him though that I'm sure had an effect on most of our modern-dota staff is that there was community hatred/opinions such likes ones from yourself that didn't help his case when moderating.

Banter Boi, however, was horrendous at moderating. Once again just look at statistics. How many times was he communally roasted on threads? How many times was someone line @Kappa or @matdas communally roasted on the threads? Being a moderator is not the common denominator for being roasted, making poor/vindictive decisions is what got him roasted.

Merex wrote:You know, I'll admit I did do a lot of post deleting/forum banning on certain members and do you know where they came from? Dota community. Honestly, one of the worst little groups ENT still had around was mainly the dota players. You guys sparred in public requests, appeals, complaints, applications it was horrific. Something I hope you and mr. EoC will understand is that when you guys go around just spewing bullshit on a ban request unrelated to you, or an appeal of the same nature - it's an issue. I did what I did to clean up our forum from becoming a heavily salted warzone of players who are either highly toxic in-game/don't even play on our bots anymore.

But here is the thing. ENT players expected ENT to be a salty warzone. It's like going to Mcdonalds, you go there knowing that you are going to get a cheap shitty-ass burger, not some gourmet food. Dota is rated as having one of the most toxic communities on other websites; you arn't going to be able to change that on a macro-scale. And by trying to change that you actually fractured the community at times. ENT, had an in-game !ignore command and players could avoid the forum threads if they got triggered more than fat SJW who just got told to lose weight by their doctor. Those measures were all ENT needed to deal with the toxicity, with the exception being some off-topic remarks on objective threads. In the end, most ENT players liked rolling in their own shit.


Merex, I know you cared about ent and put in a tremendous amount of effort and is why I don't think you are even close to being the "worst mod". You certainly did do some good work and so, despite all of this, I am still thankful for what you did.

It's funny to see you two guys banter still.

@pinheadlarry has never experienced what it's like to moderate before and @Merex has been moderating for 32 years now. I'm not surprised you disagree on a lot of shit.

Most moderators do the best they can and sometimes fall flat. There are some bad apples like anotherworld - Unfortunately, I wasn't around for those times but I've read his work and it's very impressive stuff. But in all honesty it is kinda a shitty job to do and not super rewarding especially when everyone is yelling at you and Blizzard starts affecting your ability to function. The general options are:
1) Quit
2) Stay long enough and become sour
3) Stay long enough to not care anymore and do nothing

Did some good work here I think and proud of it but you gotta know when to let something go.

"You know, I love beerlord. Honestly, when I look back on ENT and his involvement of it - He did great things for the dota community but what you don't specifically understand behind him is that he merely took on the role of moderating and only did it one specific genre."

This is a great example of the old saying if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. Honestly avion, I dont care that you think this, as you have been beating this drum for my entire time here. But it is an untruth, and i would prefer the community to be aware of this. I moderated other games besides dota. The only one I wouldnt involve myself with was legion td, because I felt that they were even more toxic than the dota community, and, being aware of my own limitations, felt like I could not handle both. It may have appeared that i only did dota, because there were so many more of them, and because I did virtually all of them for much of the time. Too many of my colleages were Minos. Moderators In Name Only. I also became involved in oversight when I was asked to moderate the moderators, so to speak. I was not just the dota guy...

I had a nice talk with hyo last night. Catching up and re-living some old times. A terrific guy, and was and is my favorite here for many reasons. I learned a lot from him, and he played a large roll in my development as staff.

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:

Not nearly as much. However, I do find the shock-value you get a from a really good/cringy/edgy metaphor makes people look twice and actually pay attention. It certainly worked well on ENT's folks.

imnotactuallycringy.jpg

It's not Astros's fault that ENT became unplayable for any above-average player. Do you really blame him for not participating in the degeneracy? I sure don't. If I had still cared about DotA at all, I could have seen myself doing the same thing he did.

How was Tusanik overrated when no one thought he was good to begin with.. he trolled every game.

Beerlord was the best moderator. Arty was the best administrator. Uakf was the best developer. They were the backbone of ENT in its most high quality days.

The worst mod in ENT history was Agreements, but most won't remember him. He deleted appeals about him, he deleted complaints about him, he banned anyone who criticized him, he didn't follow guidelines at all (i.e. banning people 1 year from games for flaming him)

There have been tons and tons of mods with judgment issues, but for most it hasn't been enough of a pattern for me to say they are truly bad moderators. Like mostly it's just one dumb thing they do, like the classic "rule breaking is against the rules" line, but we've all said stupid shit before, I won't judge them. Even Merex didn't seem like an especially bad moderator, he just doesn't seem like a very intelligent person.

Rather, the problem with ENT moderation was not one specific person, but the entire direction of the moderation team in general. Like how the entire moderation team decided to no longer answer appeals based on the context, and instead copypasta a statement about quoting the rule you broke, and then unbanning if you did that. Little things like that contribute to people hating the ENT mods, which IMO is 99% the reason that ENT died and other servers survived. If someone hated ENT before, they may have still played on it because it was their only choice. But once bnet came out with a new patch and gave them an alternative, they left. That's why the player base fell by 50%+ overnight, and most of the ones who remained being game ruining trolls. It's not that they were too lazy to take 10 seconds to download an application; it's that they were tired of being (in their opinion) mistreated by ENT. It's disappointing and infuriating because I believe that the server I loved would have survived if everyone had cared more about the players.

Edge, I'm glad to see you fell into the exact same boat I did, after you flamed me for calling out specific people. Probably the same few people you called out. I always did like you. Godspeed friend.

Btw, Merex wasn't the reason I left. Both times I left, it was due to 1) lack of motivation to clean up appeals/requests (it's really tiring) and 2) busy-ness IRL. I hardly interacted with him until I called him out for his super slapping issues. Unless you were a mod, you probably don't know how exhausting it is to deal with the same shitty game ruining behavior over and over every day and not see it get any better. Basically exactly what Kappa said. That's why most mods leave very quickly.

I also never flamed you for calling out bad moderation, Yarragon, I flamed you out because you played on ENT and at the same time asked Blizzard to shut ENT down on the forums. I viewed it as extremely hypocritical and that's something I can't tolerate. Yet I do understand. Yarragon is a great example of one of those members who played on ENT but hated the staff, and was surely happy then and now when it died.

Now some of that is unavoidable; some members are bad and deserve to be removed from the server. I don't know Yarragon's story and I can't say whether he was in the right or wrong. What I can say is that I see this kind of thing happen much more on ENT than on other gaming servers I've moderated and played on.

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As for the stuff about Beerlord. I don't think it's valid to criticize him for doing appeals/requests primarily. ENT needed experienced people on appeals/requests, just like it needed experienced oversights and technical staff. I say this as a former oversight. I never looked down on anyone for not wanting to be promoted. It's like in real world jobs; not everyone should go on to management. Some people should become experienced seniors in their job role and continue with it. That doesn't mean they are less valuable.

Also Merex, you weren't staff back then. You don't know anything.

I think - and this is an issue with gaming communities as a whole - that some people seek moderation positions because it's an easy way to feel powerful. This also applies to positions of power in real life, but I think it's enhanced in gaming communities since many gamers are people who use gaming for escapism from real life issues. I see a lot of this in Merex. He is someone who needs to feel power over people, which is likely why I frustrate him so much, since I never respected his position to begin with. It amuses me to think about how all that is gone now, for him.

All the banning. All the post deleting. All the flaming. And what did you gain from it? Nothing. It almost moves me to pity.

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What I said about ENT's moderation culture is absolutely true, deny it all you wish. You know it to be true. Ask anyone who played here. There are thousands like Yarragon, but less vocal. Seeing as ENT is already over, you may as well admit it to yourself if you can't admit it to us.

I'm not blaming any specific person or saying that I was above it.

I don't buy the idea that ENT died because people wanted to play on the new patch. Do you not remember how broken the patch was? How tons of people couldn't even log in, and those who did had constant desyncing issues? And how tons of popular maps just stopped working on the most recent patch for months, and some never got fixed? How there was no ban or kick system so players could troll and leave with no consequence? Wc3 players do not want this. They tolerated all this in order to avoid playing on ENT. What does that tell you?

Well pinheadlarry you are a lying gamruiner:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=142553&p=551826&hilit=pinheadlarry#p551826

Banned 20 days.

5th offense.

Worst mods
1) anotherworld
2) Agreements
3) Merex'

Best mods:
1) Hyo
2) Beerlord

EdteOfChaos2 wrote:Btw, Merex wasn't the reason I left. Both times I left, it was due to 1) lack of motivation to clean up appeals/requests (it's really tiring) and 2) busy-ness IRL. I hardly interacted with him until I called him out for his super slapping issues. Unless you were a mod, you probably don't know how exhausting it is to deal with the same shitty game ruining behavior over and over every day and not see it get any better. Basically exactly what Kappa said. That's why most mods leave very quickly.

I also never flamed you for calling out bad moderation, Yarragon, I flamed you out because you played on ENT and at the same time asked Blizzard to shut ENT down on the forums. I viewed it as extremely hypocritical and that's something I can't tolerate. Yet I do understand. Yarragon is a great example of one of those members who played on ENT but hated the staff, and was surely happy then and now when it died.

Now some of that is unavoidable; some members are bad and deserve to be removed from the server. I don't know Yarragon's story and I can't say whether he was in the right or wrong. What I can say is that I see this kind of thing happen much more on ENT than on other gaming servers I've moderated and played on.

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As for the stuff about Beerlord. I don't think it's valid to criticize him for doing appeals/requests primarily. ENT needed experienced people on appeals/requests, just like it needed experienced oversights and technical staff. I say this as a former oversight. I never looked down on anyone for not wanting to be promoted. It's like in real world jobs; not everyone should go on to management. Some people should become experienced seniors in their job role and continue with it. That doesn't mean they are less valuable.

Also Merex, you weren't staff back then. You don't know anything.

I think - and this is an issue with gaming communities as a whole - that some people seek moderation positions because it's an easy way to feel powerful. This also applies to positions of power in real life, but I think it's enhanced in gaming communities since many gamers are people who use gaming for escapism from real life issues. I see a lot of this in Merex. He is someone who needs to feel power over people, which is likely why I frustrate him so much, since I never respected his position to begin with. It amuses me to think about how all that is gone now, for him.

All the banning. All the post deleting. All the flaming. And what did you gain from it? Nothing. It almost moves me to pity.

----

What I said about ENT's moderation culture is absolutely true, deny it all you wish. You know it to be true. Ask anyone who played here. There are thousands like Yarragon, but less vocal. Seeing as ENT is already over, you may as well admit it to yourself if you can't admit it to us.

I'm not blaming any specific person or saying that I was above it.

I don't buy the idea that ENT died because people wanted to play on the new patch. Do you not remember how broken the patch was? How tons of people couldn't even log in, and those who did had constant desyncing issues? And how tons of popular maps just stopped working on the most recent patch for months, and some never got fixed? How there was no ban or kick system so players could troll and leave with no consequence? Wc3 players do not want this. They tolerated all this in order to avoid playing on ENT. What does that tell you?

Tbh, the people I had an issue with weren't even Merex/Av1on and the others you probably think they were. Sure, I didn't agree with his decisions sometimes and nicknamed him Salt Lord (<3 you boo, glad you're back), but overall he really did want to keep this place going.

I know some behind the scenes stuff from the past that wasn't really kosher. There was a lack of context on bans by other moderators after they left, and moderators just blindly quoting "rules are rules are rules" annoyed the crap out of me. When it came down to it they had to "protect their own" otherwise they all looked bad for letting someone make a decision that didn't pan out. Like Jew threw a ban on me back in like 2013 because I had a ban on BGN that was totally not warranted and when I messaged him about it he ignored me and flamed me on the forum when I brought it up. Great way to keep community members happy, wouldn't you agree? How was I supposed to know ENT and BGN were the same bot at that point after taking a year off?

Also, the desync and map issues lasted about a week on the new patch, and Blizzard had made posts about working on a solution. Yes, some of the solutions were on the map makers to look into because they changed how things worked. I truly believe the current patch is in a better spot than 1.28.X patches were in, simply because the power is given back to the person that made the game to play the game how they want to play it.

And on a real note, not once in that thread about private servers did I ever mention ENT until someone else did. Yes, this place is the one I was talking about but I *did* leave it vague intentionally. The rage kids are the ones that used ENTGaming in the thread and specifically named this place lol. Even the post Sylv likes to post is just, "Hey where can I report private servers?"

Thank you braveheart, much appreciated.