Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4530750-20160228040801/@comment-65.80.204.52-20160228061446

Following this is the open letter with all instances of people being named being removed. There are some instances (generally when referring to Dion) where using names, or a description so accurate that it can be no other person, must be used so feel free to disregard this idea, however here is what I propose. Wikis are supposed to be for public use, and even though I above all would condemn TSG due to personal bias, I believe removing their articles entirely could (if construed in some form) be considered gate-keeping. On the flip side, to simply allow them to continue promoting themselves would be a wrong action as well due to their actions and the validity of this article. Which is why I propose this. Affix this letter as a permanent section to their page. Now, I know this is claimed to be vitriolic content, and targeted, but allow me to state my opinion on it. Firstly, as you have seen, or will see, below I have taken the liberty of removing all naming instances so it no longer violates that rule. Secondly, the definition of vitriolic is:  " filled with bitter criticism or malice". This article, in my (not totally, but generally) unbiased opinion (again, I have my own personal quarrels with TSG, as I believe almost all of us do, which is why I refuse to claim to be totally unbiased) is not filled with malice. It is a retelling events from Heron's perspective. There is nothing wrong with that. The filled with bitter criticism part is more vague. Yes, Heron is obviously bitter, and yes he is 'criticizing' TSG, however I do not believe this letter is guilty of being truly vitriolic. It is a retelling of events from an inside perspective which clearly details the flaws in TSG. I believe this to be the best alternative due to the fact that this information should be made public and available to the viewers. If this letter were openly being rude and attacking the clan that would be different, but again this is a retelling of events. It would be no different if I told all of you of my experiences of W42 and TSG, the latter of which I will admit I was a part of at one time. Simply because something contains less than pleasurable content does not mean it is an open attack or vitriolic in any way. In this case it simply means it is a truth that most, if not all, of us have suspected and has been confirmed as a truth. The truth hurts, and people don't want to see it sometimes, but sometimes it is necessary. The truth is a basic human right, it is our right to know it if someone puts it out there. So I have given my feed back on this and my suggestion, but I'll recap once more my idea. Add a section, wherever you wish it to be, entitled "An open letter from a former member of TSG" with this article, which clearly details to people what their getting into before they get into it. If you do this, perhaps other people won't have to go through the same things Heron did.



 Sincerely, LazarusSmith.



The letter (with names, other than that of the author's, removed):





When I first joined That Saradomin Group I had no idea what I was getting into, quite literally since I had not heard of TSG before my recruitment. But now that my life there is over, I can write with certainty that life in TSG was an absolute roller coaster.



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<p class="MsoNormal">I started off as a Recruit in the clan, just as everyone else, I was recruited in Falador square on World 42 by one of the captains, we’ll call him Captain A, who I remember was wearing Warpriest of Saradomin armor. This was only a few short minutes before the famous Initiation Ceremony everyone has to partake in. From there I was a Corporal in the clan and enjoyed my time in the clan, around this time I had joined to clan's group Skype chat. I had also began learning about the ever complicated politics of World 42 and how TSG was viewed. Needless to say after hearing very one-sided accounts of all this I was very against the public of World 42 and generally acted hostile. That was wrong of me. Continuing on with my time as Corporal I had learned about the payment systems in place for attending events and capping at the Citadel, admittedly I was not very comfortable in taking the money, repeatedly groaning and making other noises of anxiety while begrudgingly accepting the payment, and this is something that lasted through my tenure in TSG. Eventually I had been promoted to Sergeant in the Clan, nothing new had really come from there, it was pretty much a continuation of the status quo established while I was a Corporal. And from there I became Lieutenant in the clan and things were essentially the same there, I had learned a bit more about the politics of World 42 and continued my hostilities towards anyone who criticized TSG. Then one night after an event the clan leader messages me asking for a private meeting, he told me to wait at the Port Sarim docks near the ship to Entrana. When I had gotten there I saw Captains B and C waiting there as well. Needless to say I was nervous about this whole meeting but they eased me a little bit. After a short RolePlay introduction the others and I were offered positions as Captains in the clan, all three of us accepted. And this began the longest and arguably most exhausting part of my life in TSG.

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<p class="MsoNormal">After being promoted to Captain I became part of what could be called the "Inner-Circle" of TSG, and I was also added to the prestigious Captain's group chat on Skype where I was given a brief run-down of how things work there, as well as what is now expected of me now that I held such a high rank in the clan. And this is where I began to learn a lot about the inner politics of TSG and an even more one-sided view of events on what happens on World 42, learning about an enemy of the clan and his opinion towards TSG and TSG's opinion towards him. I remember there were a few note able things that happened during my tenure as Captain. The first of which was an affair, this affair consisted of four main parties; TSG, Member A and Captain D, and this clan enemy. Essentially what happened is not long before this affair happened Member A had just been recruited, and she was very like able, she was in the TSG group Skype Chat and I hadn't seen it more alive than when she was in it. She had been a talented artist who drew numerous pictures for everyone, one of which you can see on the clan leader’s page, and Captain E, who had been a captain long before I was. Essentially what happened in the affair is that the enemy was learning information about TSG's inner politics, with I think him getting transcripts of the Captain's group Skype chat sent to him. Eventually after investigating and searching we had found that Member A and Captain D were behind this, and were kicked out of the clan and blacklisted, with the Captains ridiculing and bad mouthing them once they were gone. And the other big event during my tenure as Captain was the debacle with Events. As a Captain of TSG you are expected to host a few events every month, which seems reasonable right? Except when a Captain did actually host an event only a handful of people show up, and when I say handful I literally mean you can count how many people were present on only one hand, sometimes two hands if you were lucky. The lack of attendance was extremely disheartening and for me personally tanked my morale for hosting events since there was a standard we had to live up to with Events, and that was getting 10 sometimes 20 people to attend at a time. That simply was not doable, and when I talked out about this and fixing this problem I was accused of, by the clan leader I might add, of "Excusing people's laziness." So being the obedient lap dog I was at the time I stopped objecting and trying to fix things and continued on as normal, hosting a few events here and there while the amount of events hosted by the clan leader began slipping. And that leads me into my next section.

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<p class="MsoNormal">For a while now as I found out, the clan leader, most of the Captains of TSG, and a few others, had been playing a game called Minecraft. I myself had played it a lot before but walked away from it due to numerous issues. I was invited by the clan leader to play Minecraft on a server named Survive. And I had to change my name because the clan leader required it, so my account had become Mr_L_The_Builder, and I joined, and started playing with them. They had already had a settlement set up there and I sort of just wedged myself in. One thing the clan leader had a plan for the group's tenure on the server; Build a Giant Tower, loot and raid people, become the top dogs. And for a while things were panning out in that direction. There was a hill being cleared so a tower can be built in its place. The clan’s, at the time, co-owner had started and I picked it up and started clearing it. I was essentially the only one excavating the hill and I knew it would take a long time to do so I started building houses for people in the settlement to live in while the tower was being built. And I was still the only one excavating for a while, I had asked a few people to help but they never stuck around very long. Then one day I snapped and said that if the clan leader wanted this tower to be a reality I couldn't be the only person putting work into it, otherwise it wouldn't be done for months, when the clan leader had wanted it done in only one month at the most. And after that the hill was cleared and a tower ready to be built with me and another at the head of the project. But while all of this had been happening TSG was essentially ignored, with the only two remaining Captains who didn't know about it being left soft of high and dry in this matter. But we paid no attention to that, me especially since I had wanted to please the clan leader and make him happy on this. As time went on though things on the server were becoming increasingly muddy, with us hardly being considered "top dogs" and just about everything else in the original plan falling through. Not to mention conflicts between the clan leader and the Owner of the server had flared up a few times, eventually resulting in us leaving and subsequently being banned from there. In the time leading up to the ban from the server the clan leader and some of his confidants in this Minecraft group, one of which was me, we're presented the idea of creating a new Minecraft server named That Minecraft Server. And as I learned before this the clan leader had hosted two other That Minecraft Servers before this one, all of which shut down on his accord, as well as hosting a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Multiplayer Server named That War Server. Anyways, when I heard the idea of creating a new server I was on board with it, as was pretty much everyone else. So we had made plans to leave our current server and create our own, the one thing we needed though was our settlement, so a few of us had talked with the owner to try and get a copy of our settlement to put into our own server. He had said he would get it and it took a long time, during that time I had built a revamped version of the tower in Singleplayer mode. I had shown the clan leader some pictures and he loved it. So much that even if we got a copy of our settlement my version would be used regardless. Then we eventually got our settlement and that's when we were banned from the server. Things were kind of bright from there, a brand new server we could do whatever we wanted with was in the pipelines and things generally looked good. But sadly that was not the truth at all.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Once work had started in That Minecraft Server (TMS) things had gone south between me and the clan leader. I was in charge of building the spawn and making things look pretty. However my Hard Drive died and for a week I couldn't do any work there at all. And during this time it was found out I had spawned a number of hacked items to test out an idea for a future expansion to the server, and I view that as the beginning of the end. When I had gotten back I wanted to work on the spawn and get things into shape there, I was hoping that they hadn't done anything while I was gone. But I was wrong. In my absence they left the outside of the tower alone for the most part, but the interior was completely wrecked, with extremely poor choices being out into the design of it while I was gone, to the point where my entire plan for the inside was all but a memory, and before that they had chipped away at that plan gradually as well. With the removal of the dining room in favor of giant tables in the throne room, a somewhat good designed library on the second floor, and the complete removal of my entire plan for the second floor. My original plan was to have a number of offices for each of our characters to use for RolePlay purposes, except the clan leader had wanted virtually the entire second floor all to himself so he could "hide out before events." That was before my crash. And when I got back, as I states before, everything I had done was almost completely discarded for terrible design choices, one of which was a fire pit, in a carpeted area, in what is supposed to be, or rather was, the capital administrative building. Needless to say I was quite mad at all of these. the clan leader had planned to have a sort of Closed Beta for all people who were apart of the Minecraft Group before being banned from the old server. So in the days leading up to it I was working my nose to the grindstone for hi to make this absolutely terrible place he made into something that was presentable. I had redone the Tower's interior and went off to bed. Only to come back later that same night to find that the clan leader had completely reverted everything I had done back to his stuff. And told me he had put a lot of passion into designing those rooms and he blinks and an entire night's worth of work is gone, which is the EXACT same way I had felt seeing what he had done, and I told him that, and yet he still puts things back to the way they are despite him saying MULTIPLE times that he is not a designer and not good at that sort of thing and yet I am, he completely ignored someone who knows what he is doing to use his own half assed vision of what things should be. This is where my idea of him being good and reasonable started to crack. So after that there was still about a day before the closed beta, and I had pitched to him to create a valley a short ways east of the tower and turn that into a city that would have served as a natural extension of the original settlement. Keep in mind he had set up a RolePlay storyline that had a 14 year time skip between the old server and That Minecraft Server. He was all for the idea when I pitched it to him. Except when I had actually started work on it the day after I pitched it he said no to the idea and then it just stayed abandoned after that, never being worked on again. And still, TSG was being ignored by basically all the Captains, except Captain A and Captain E.

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<p class="MsoNormal">And now we enter into the end. During the Closed Beta, one of the players had wanted to start a town of his own. A system was set up to where you could protect land if you donated to the server. the clan leader had said that by donating you would be able to protect up to 500 blocks total and that was it. This meant that you would have to donate another five dollars to protect more land, and it got very costly from there. Except that wasn't the case, a donator would be able to earn the ability to protect more blocks as they played. Except the clan leader never said that part at all. Two other people who were in the closed beta and I agrees to talk with the clan leader about fixing this. Keep in mind we didn't know about the ability to earn more. And when we did talk with him about it w accused us of a using our privilege of playing early to "criticize" him. And he basically tried to run away from the issue, and when he was called out on it, he exploded. And from there things got worse. He banned the person that had done most of the talking, for "criticizing" him. Then in-game I am given a book that basically says if anyone criticizes him they will be banned and expected me to have his back in this fight because he essentially sees me as a lap dog and yes man. Having enough of this the person who did most of the talking (who I will call Person 2 for ease) and I agreed that we wanted out. So he wrote a brilliantly worded post on the situation regarding the donation system and a possible fix to post on the That War Server forums. It was removed a few minutes later. So I signed into a chat for TMS as a guest, posted the contents of the post, and left. Then his co-owner sat down Person 2 and me, the three of us had talked this out. It ended with the bridges burnt and I was kicked out of TMS, TSG, and TWS Forums. And after that I was glad. After all of that, I wanted nothing to do with the clan leader. And now everyone who is reading this knows the truth.