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I don't care about Lorwolf but from your summary, this honestly seem like a petsite version of the iiluminaughtii Youtuber drama.
I read a summary of that and yeah, a tale as old as time. It's the common of thread of passion projects where you don't separate your work from your personal life stuff, either because of unhealthy ego or because of mental health stuff.
Internet being what it is now, it's super easy to have all this stuff leak to the public.
Also the lower barrier of entry; for better or for worse, you don't have PR keeping your drama under wraps to protect a company's interests, you are your own PR.
Internet being what it is now, it's super easy to have all this stuff leak to the public.
Also the lower barrier of entry; for better or for worse, you don't have PR keeping your drama under wraps to protect a company's interests, you are your own PR.
+1 Yeah I was just thinking this. No sock account harassment army or cease and desist letters yet (or wild pedo accusations) but the tamer bits are very similar.
Someone asked Qhersek more details about the ideas and changes they suggested:
https://www.tumblr.com/qhersek/718686255250079745/i-appreciate-you-taking-accountability-and-owning
Some of them are iterative quality of life and balance things, like the kind of thing you only realize is missing once you try to play the game to see how it flows, but others are such bare basics for a functional petsite that it's baffling that it was pointed out they were missing way back then and they still are missing today.
The site truly wasn't ready for launch.
https://www.tumblr.com/qhersek/718686255250079745/i-appreciate-you-taking-accountability-and-owning
Some of them are iterative quality of life and balance things, like the kind of thing you only realize is missing once you try to play the game to see how it flows, but others are such bare basics for a functional petsite that it's baffling that it was pointed out they were missing way back then and they still are missing today.
The site truly wasn't ready for launch.
I have read the letter and... I have quite a few thoughts. I will be upfront I was not there for Lorwolf's development and launch, so this post will be purely reacting to Qhersek's open letter.
To get the obvious out of the way: He should get the credit for the stuff he wrote. If they do not want to keep it, remove it. I understand why they removed his name (ngl, he took the obsessing and stalking pretty damn far) and I would not be surprised if that soured everything on behalf of the team.
But again, sucks he doesn't get the credit.
I also agree with the anon pointing out not seperating passion projects from your own work. Do not do free unpaid work for people, esp when unprompted, no matter how passionate you are.
I also acknowledge Qhersek mentioning being not in a well-off country economically. I can sympathize with this, as someone from a country which has been smacked around pretty badly by inflation.
To get to the rest of my thoughts...
As someone who, again, was not there, Qheserk's tone in the letter is unfortunately pretty unsettling. The friendly tone being present while presenting martyr-like behaviour, added in with self-loathing and self-deprecation, do not sway on lookers in their favour. On top of that, the constant stalking and obsession after the friendship has clearly broken, including that - for a better word - unhinged Tumblr DM, also damns him.
Aluinis definitely should have kept the relationship professional, and better communicate, and vice versa, from what was said, but Qhersek unfortunately does not paint himself well in this light.
Also - he probably had his friends distance themselves not only cause of the (unfortunate) suicidal ideation, but also for his behaviour.
Ultimately, I hope he can find the help he could use, and be able to better himself and find a new community after that.
As for Lorwolf - It will entirely be on the dev team if they end up falling like Dappervolk did. It is now on them to recognize issues and act on them asap, or fall short and dwindle + die down like DV ended up being a ghost town.
To get the obvious out of the way: He should get the credit for the stuff he wrote. If they do not want to keep it, remove it. I understand why they removed his name (ngl, he took the obsessing and stalking pretty damn far) and I would not be surprised if that soured everything on behalf of the team.
But again, sucks he doesn't get the credit.
I also agree with the anon pointing out not seperating passion projects from your own work. Do not do free unpaid work for people, esp when unprompted, no matter how passionate you are.
I also acknowledge Qhersek mentioning being not in a well-off country economically. I can sympathize with this, as someone from a country which has been smacked around pretty badly by inflation.
To get to the rest of my thoughts...
As someone who, again, was not there, Qheserk's tone in the letter is unfortunately pretty unsettling. The friendly tone being present while presenting martyr-like behaviour, added in with self-loathing and self-deprecation, do not sway on lookers in their favour. On top of that, the constant stalking and obsession after the friendship has clearly broken, including that - for a better word - unhinged Tumblr DM, also damns him.
Aluinis definitely should have kept the relationship professional, and better communicate, and vice versa, from what was said, but Qhersek unfortunately does not paint himself well in this light.
Also - he probably had his friends distance themselves not only cause of the (unfortunate) suicidal ideation, but also for his behaviour.
Ultimately, I hope he can find the help he could use, and be able to better himself and find a new community after that.
As for Lorwolf - It will entirely be on the dev team if they end up falling like Dappervolk did. It is now on them to recognize issues and act on them asap, or fall short and dwindle + die down like DV ended up being a ghost town.
What other petsites are you currently playing? Any recommendations?
SA
To clarify, my post was meant as an additional pov as more of an outsider that is not running in the Lorwolf crowd, and how it made me perceive it, cause I feel people who was not there for years during the development will walk away with similar feelings.
Just this uneasy feeling of the vibe and how this is a huge mess and prolly best that he left (if we had to tl;dr and generalize it.)
To clarify, my post was meant as an additional pov as more of an outsider that is not running in the Lorwolf crowd, and how it made me perceive it, cause I feel people who was not there for years during the development will walk away with similar feelings.
Just this uneasy feeling of the vibe and how this is a huge mess and prolly best that he left (if we had to tl;dr and generalize it.)
Qhersek probably is a country that doesn't value mental health
I originally thought the devs were just oblivious/in over their heads and didn't know a damn thing about game design, but looking through what Qhersek told them, they had all the blueprints/advice on how to make a good petsite (or at least better than it is now) on a silver fucking platter and they're choosing to do nothing with it.
Holy shit, I have no faith in the devs anymore.
Holy shit, I have no faith in the devs anymore.
I personally play Gryffs, which I love. It is a very small site (two admins), and slow with updates, but they are consistent, and responsive to the player base, and the player base itself is very friendly. It is more of a 'breed and dress' your gryffs than FR as it doesn't have mini-games etc.. so it is a much more casual/slower paced game. The breeding is not like FR, but rather based on markings and hex codes.
There is also Sylestia, which recently went through a ban wave that I still don't know who all was banned. However, they are revamping their species (the Faelora, deer, was just recently released) and the coder (again a small team, but I think more than two) wants to basically rewrite the site because it is on a lot of different codes apparently. There were also more recent QOL updates as well. I personally haven't really interacted with the admin, so I don't really know how responsive they really are, but they seem friendly and responsive. They have a bit more to do than gryffs, and the breeding is more complicated than FR.
I do 'play' chicken smoothie, but that is basically just collecting pets, so not a whole lot to do there.
There are other games that I have tried, but they didn't 'click' with me: Felisfire (which I really hate that it didn't click, because I *really* want a cat site like Lorwolf/gryffs/FR, but felisfire isn't it), Khimeros (One person doing it, and a bit too much released for their premium currency for my tastes), Beastkeeper (would have kept playing this one, but it is practically dead, so *very* hard to get anywhere, as you can't buy anything you might need).
There is also Windrose, which wasn't bad, but not to my tastes, Leayphs, which is a sister site to Gryffs, and has a bit more to do, again just didn't click with me, Aywas, which has a huge inflation problem (literally gave away like 10s or 100s of millions of their free currency, and still didn't feel 'wealthy'), Subeta, which seemed more geared towards human Avatars, and Furvilla.
I also just started Lorwolf, and it seems fun, but sadly from the sound of it, probably won't be around long :P
There is also Sylestia, which recently went through a ban wave that I still don't know who all was banned. However, they are revamping their species (the Faelora, deer, was just recently released) and the coder (again a small team, but I think more than two) wants to basically rewrite the site because it is on a lot of different codes apparently. There were also more recent QOL updates as well. I personally haven't really interacted with the admin, so I don't really know how responsive they really are, but they seem friendly and responsive. They have a bit more to do than gryffs, and the breeding is more complicated than FR.
I do 'play' chicken smoothie, but that is basically just collecting pets, so not a whole lot to do there.
There are other games that I have tried, but they didn't 'click' with me: Felisfire (which I really hate that it didn't click, because I *really* want a cat site like Lorwolf/gryffs/FR, but felisfire isn't it), Khimeros (One person doing it, and a bit too much released for their premium currency for my tastes), Beastkeeper (would have kept playing this one, but it is practically dead, so *very* hard to get anywhere, as you can't buy anything you might need).
There is also Windrose, which wasn't bad, but not to my tastes, Leayphs, which is a sister site to Gryffs, and has a bit more to do, again just didn't click with me, Aywas, which has a huge inflation problem (literally gave away like 10s or 100s of millions of their free currency, and still didn't feel 'wealthy'), Subeta, which seemed more geared towards human Avatars, and Furvilla.
I also just started Lorwolf, and it seems fun, but sadly from the sound of it, probably won't be around long :P
Speaking of other petsites, has anyone here sponsored Mythaura / thinking about it? I forgot about it until yesterday and the creatures look pretty decent. I'm debating whether or not I should sponsor it a bit.
Mythaura and Pawborough are ones to keep an eye on, both have upcoming betas in the next year.
Pixel Cats End is having another opening reg at the end of June
Pixel Cats End is having another opening reg at the end of June
SA
And now this response is gone from the Lorwolf Discord's announcement channel. Maybe it finally hit them that this wasn't the most professional move?
And now this response is gone from the Lorwolf Discord's announcement channel. Maybe it finally hit them that this wasn't the most professional move?
I hadn't played Sylestia in over a year, so I googled this and holy shit those were some big name players that got banned!
The original admin forum post explaining the situation doesn't quite clarify things for me, because the screencaptures were removed and there is a lot of back and forth in the thread over how much was joking and venting in a private discord server and how much were genuine plans to tank the game's economy by selling things too cheaply or something like that?
But more seriously, apparently some of the users were apparently harassing and threatening the site owner in their real life social media and circulating identifying information of them, their spouse, workplace, etc.
On a more selfish note, as someone pointed out in the thread, the bannings will have repercussions in the gameplay: One of the banned users leveled up "ranks" for other users (leveling up an individual pet's attacks to make them stronger in battle, it's super time consuming, it takes weeks) as a service and also sold leveled up and ranked pets, another had extensive breeding projects using event only pets that might be out of circulation now, another sold pets with very high battle stats (which requires a lot of patience and money, like, over a year of hard work is not an exaggeration, with spreadsheets to keep things straight).
So if you want pets that look good (randomly pairing up pets result in washed out greyish palettes if you don't choose the parents' colors carefully) and have strong stats (because battling in the more difficult areas of the game is the most profitable in-game grinding there is) and rare markings and so on, you are basically investing a fortune, but you also might have a somewhat steady source of income after several generations of pets, selling the offspring to other users.
(Oh and the pets will need leveled-up battle equipment too, which is its own insane grinding...)
Notably, there is an item that makes a pet infertile forever, to make sure that buyers don't start their own pet breeding and selling business using someone else's hard work as a springboard.
Because there weren't very many users selling these high value pets, now there might be some event only pets (collectionist bragging rights) and other pretty, battle-strong pets with rare genes and whatnot that cannot be bred because the only fertile specimens are in the banned players' stables.
Also for bonus points, if you want the highest possible battle stats, which make the Ultra Hard Area more grindable, you need to capture wild pets with bonus high stats in the highest difficulty exploration area, to breed them with pets that are the result of several generations of gradual stat-increases until you hit the cap.
Or buy them from someone who already did all the hard work. A number of which were banned. D:
The original admin forum post explaining the situation doesn't quite clarify things for me, because the screencaptures were removed and there is a lot of back and forth in the thread over how much was joking and venting in a private discord server and how much were genuine plans to tank the game's economy by selling things too cheaply or something like that?
But more seriously, apparently some of the users were apparently harassing and threatening the site owner in their real life social media and circulating identifying information of them, their spouse, workplace, etc.
On a more selfish note, as someone pointed out in the thread, the bannings will have repercussions in the gameplay: One of the banned users leveled up "ranks" for other users (leveling up an individual pet's attacks to make them stronger in battle, it's super time consuming, it takes weeks) as a service and also sold leveled up and ranked pets, another had extensive breeding projects using event only pets that might be out of circulation now, another sold pets with very high battle stats (which requires a lot of patience and money, like, over a year of hard work is not an exaggeration, with spreadsheets to keep things straight).
So if you want pets that look good (randomly pairing up pets result in washed out greyish palettes if you don't choose the parents' colors carefully) and have strong stats (because battling in the more difficult areas of the game is the most profitable in-game grinding there is) and rare markings and so on, you are basically investing a fortune, but you also might have a somewhat steady source of income after several generations of pets, selling the offspring to other users.
(Oh and the pets will need leveled-up battle equipment too, which is its own insane grinding...)
Notably, there is an item that makes a pet infertile forever, to make sure that buyers don't start their own pet breeding and selling business using someone else's hard work as a springboard.
Because there weren't very many users selling these high value pets, now there might be some event only pets (collectionist bragging rights) and other pretty, battle-strong pets with rare genes and whatnot that cannot be bred because the only fertile specimens are in the banned players' stables.
Also for bonus points, if you want the highest possible battle stats, which make the Ultra Hard Area more grindable, you need to capture wild pets with bonus high stats in the highest difficulty exploration area, to breed them with pets that are the result of several generations of gradual stat-increases until you hit the cap.
Or buy them from someone who already did all the hard work. A number of which were banned. D:
I doubt it. They're probably more concerned that not everyone is instantly on their side and a lot of the community liked Qhersek and are believing her.
The mod team's attitude is very black and white. Either you're on Alaunis' side, or Qhersek's.
If you even dare point out that the google document points out some things that are verifiably true from other sources -- such as the owners not listening to all the bugs and issues that needed to be fixed -- you might as well be okay with the harassment that Qhersek did.
To clarify, before anyone gets it wrong, what Qhersek did was not okay in terms of harassing staff. However that doesn't mean that their other points are immediately invalid.
The mod team's attitude is very black and white. Either you're on Alaunis' side, or Qhersek's.
If you even dare point out that the google document points out some things that are verifiably true from other sources -- such as the owners not listening to all the bugs and issues that needed to be fixed -- you might as well be okay with the harassment that Qhersek did.
To clarify, before anyone gets it wrong, what Qhersek did was not okay in terms of harassing staff. However that doesn't mean that their other points are immediately invalid.
Qhersek wasn't right. But the staff wiping their name off all they did and turning them into a villain for mental illness and sharing that with anyone that asked?
The situation is just shit, and I'm glad I didn't give any money. Honestly, if I had anything there, I would strongly consider selling it for FR while the getting is good.
The situation is just shit, and I'm glad I didn't give any money. Honestly, if I had anything there, I would strongly consider selling it for FR while the getting is good.
i like pixpet
it's cute pixels collect-em like pokemon but the art is really nice, and you can have pokemon-esque little houses (heres a screenshot of mine, i havent really fucked around with it but i think its cute. you can put your pets in them, that top middle one is my dragon) https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/620465620282114058/1112945950583947284/image.png
it's cute pixels collect-em like pokemon but the art is really nice, and you can have pokemon-esque little houses (heres a screenshot of mine, i havent really fucked around with it but i think its cute. you can put your pets in them, that top middle one is my dragon) https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/620465620282114058/1112945950583947284/image.png
Honestly it's the sharing of someone elses' mental illness that really did it for me.
Qhersek seems to be a person who puts in way too much for a passion project that they're outright taken advantage of and too emotionally invested in. They clearly need professional help but LW staff's PR response and invitation to share receipts (of their possibly bad mental state) leaves a terrible taste in my mouth and I'm glad I never started playing.
I wouldn't even be surprised if LW staff lawyered up.
Qhersek seems to be a person who puts in way too much for a passion project that they're outright taken advantage of and too emotionally invested in. They clearly need professional help but LW staff's PR response and invitation to share receipts (of their possibly bad mental state) leaves a terrible taste in my mouth and I'm glad I never started playing.
I wouldn't even be surprised if LW staff lawyered up.
Oh I know. I was surprised at at least one of the players that was banned, because our interactions were always pleasant and they always seemed kind in chat. Another one that I knew about, I wasn't *as* surprised at, because while our interactions were always pleasant, I did see some behavior in region chat that I felt was concerning.
I am *really* hoping that the admin of Sylestia does figure out something about the pet market (and sadly, I saw something recently that I didn't like, where I believe he was talking about making the 'end game' content dependant on having one of the max stat/super max stat pets, which when I first joined, I thought people had said 'nope, it would just make it easier but it is still doable with a regular pet!'.) and the max stat/super max market.
For me, personally, I am not that affected by it. I already have some max stat pets, but I don't really grind anymore, and I wasn't into breeding. I just like taking some of those washed out 6 visible pets and dye them pretty colors.
There is one 'saving grace' and that is the black friday wheel, which allows players to get 'rare' themes so some of these event themes could get added to the wheel so there is always a chance to obtain at least one fertile pet of that theme.
I am *really* hoping that the admin of Sylestia does figure out something about the pet market (and sadly, I saw something recently that I didn't like, where I believe he was talking about making the 'end game' content dependant on having one of the max stat/super max stat pets, which when I first joined, I thought people had said 'nope, it would just make it easier but it is still doable with a regular pet!'.) and the max stat/super max market.
For me, personally, I am not that affected by it. I already have some max stat pets, but I don't really grind anymore, and I wasn't into breeding. I just like taking some of those washed out 6 visible pets and dye them pretty colors.
There is one 'saving grace' and that is the black friday wheel, which allows players to get 'rare' themes so some of these event themes could get added to the wheel so there is always a chance to obtain at least one fertile pet of that theme.
(also, forgot to add, but I am AYRT)
not all of it, but the vast majority. you have to use premium currency to submit the designs too lol. if it looks good, it's probably user-made.
Yeah, I'm really hoping the popularity of Campaign will nudge FR toward adventure mode again too. Honestly, I wonder how much of the Campaign on LW was inspired by a former FR player wanting adventure mode. I'm assuming we'll never know since I doubt they'll want to say how much of their site was/wasn't inspired by elsewhere, but it would be something I'd love to have my curiousity sated on someday if I could.
Oops. I had a previous draft that specifically mentioned a bit more detail than the final draft of my OP, but between drafting the first version and then trying to cut it down for length (yes, that was the SHORT version by a significant %), I omitted some content including details that would've clarified a few things. For example, I specifically remember writing that ARR specifically hadn't been too bad about the pitchforks (minus the one Anon who outright lied about MS to $ pricing, which was quite odd), but that must have been in a paragraph I cut. My apologies.
The post was not directed toward ARR anons hyper-specifically so much as a global FR audience. This particular time on LW's release, I've mostly seen it on the site (before posts got deleted), but in the past I've seen it more in community discords and various salt communities. However, given that this is one of the few places I'm active and that I know won't just immediately shut down the conversation, this was where I had to post it. So it was less in direct reaction to comments here (where I agree with you that people have been very reasonable with very few exceptions), and more about broader FR sentiment as a whole. That was also part of why I felt comfortable drawing the sports team tribalism parallel (assuming it was largely going to be people responding with observations rather than directly, though I certainly hoped to draw a couple direct people in), but again, looks like I cut a LOT of that paragraph too. I really fucked up on not editing for content rather than just spellchecking after cutting it down so heavily; a lot didn't make it through. lol
As for veilspuns, I admit I don't know on that one. I'll take your word for it, but iirc that was during a time in my life I just didn't have the energy to devote to even logging in once a month to FR, so I missed most of the announcements at the time, and so my impressions were based on older breeds where I hadn't seen similar streams or in-the-moment content (or when occasional sneak peeks popped up, not nearly as whole as an entire stream).
Again, that's totally my bad on fucking up the cuts badly. There was more to the post too, but it was obnoxiously long and I figured no one would read it at the old length (and I was getting it checked over by someone to make sure it read okay so I didn't want to subject them to a full novel). I really should've been more careful about what I cut though, that's mb, and I'm sorry.
The post was not directed toward ARR anons hyper-specifically so much as a global FR audience. This particular time on LW's release, I've mostly seen it on the site (before posts got deleted), but in the past I've seen it more in community discords and various salt communities. However, given that this is one of the few places I'm active and that I know won't just immediately shut down the conversation, this was where I had to post it. So it was less in direct reaction to comments here (where I agree with you that people have been very reasonable with very few exceptions), and more about broader FR sentiment as a whole. That was also part of why I felt comfortable drawing the sports team tribalism parallel (assuming it was largely going to be people responding with observations rather than directly, though I certainly hoped to draw a couple direct people in), but again, looks like I cut a LOT of that paragraph too. I really fucked up on not editing for content rather than just spellchecking after cutting it down so heavily; a lot didn't make it through. lol
As for veilspuns, I admit I don't know on that one. I'll take your word for it, but iirc that was during a time in my life I just didn't have the energy to devote to even logging in once a month to FR, so I missed most of the announcements at the time, and so my impressions were based on older breeds where I hadn't seen similar streams or in-the-moment content (or when occasional sneak peeks popped up, not nearly as whole as an entire stream).
Again, that's totally my bad on fucking up the cuts badly. There was more to the post too, but it was obnoxiously long and I figured no one would read it at the old length (and I was getting it checked over by someone to make sure it read okay so I didn't want to subject them to a full novel). I really should've been more careful about what I cut though, that's mb, and I'm sorry.
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