Okay, I only made it halfway before I had to stop, this letter is a bummer.
tl;dr for the letter:
Apparently Qhersek did a lot of uncredited and unpaid developing work and pointed out and tried to fix all the issues that the beta testers and current users have complained about since the site's inception. They were going to be offered a paid position when things broke down?
(ex. activity upgrades originally used moonstones, Qhersek convinced Alaunis to change them to pebbles, then after Qhersek was fired Alaunis changed them back to moonstones; Qhersek pointing out the launch date was too soon for how incomplete the game was when Alaunis secretly revealed the date, Alaunis flipping out for the breach of secrecy when Qhersek told other staff about the launch date in the hopes that they could convince Alaunis to wait longer for the launch; basically their whole tenure there was Qhersek fixing up the parts of the site they were grudgingly allowed to, with Alaunis being inexplicably stubborn about anything that involving balancing gameplay elements and improving the site)
Things broke down because both Qhersek and Alaunis broke the boundaries between being coworkers and being close friends and Qhersek had a real bad mental health crisis and reached out to Alaunis as a friend instead of a boss, and said, uh, bad stuff of the "i'm going to unalive myself and i don't want to hurt you" flavor to Alaunis, which she understandably interpreted as threatening, which was the breaking point to fire Qhersek and scrub their name from the site contributions they made.
Also the head mod babbled about Qhersek's personal stuff to other staff. Just, boundary breaking all around in this site's backstage, bad sign. I don't see a bright future for Lorwolf with these people in charge, honestly.
Qhersek's contributions from the site getting scrubbed makes so much sense now as to why one of the deity accounts was being used for mod stuff. I didn't recall back in EA, but I do now, that those threads were originally by Qhersek. I also remember the thread they mentioned where everyone was talking about their criticisms with the game. Everything lines up...
All around, I think everyone here is very unprofessional. Alaunis shouldn't even be dipping their toes into the drama by allowing people to get "receipts/screenshots", and the "exploiting Alaunis' empathetic nature" part of her message just rubbed me the wrong way. But Alaunis has a tendency to act unprofessional towards users, so this doesn't surprise me that much.
Yeah, agreed. Both crossed lines. Don't make your coworkers/bosses/underlings your confidantes!
(Also forgot to add, Qhersek handled mod applications, Alaunis didn't want to hire mods??? What shape would the site currently be in if Qhersek hadn't appeared?)
I forgot to add: they also did unpaid writing, graphic and admin work, quoting a bit here:
Wrote guides, the forum etiquette, rewrote the barebones ToS with Alaunis, created custom keywords and descriptions, contributed several implemented ideas, drafted countless documents on overhauls, QoLs, economy and balancing (most of which was disregarded), came up with the discord staff acount, the indexes, etc.
Like, dang. I wonder if, besides personal pride/control of one's creation, Alaunis said no to implementing many things because this person was borderline a co-creator/co-admin and would that would have opened up legal/money implications?
When they were becoming friends and Qhersek wasn't communicating because of money troubles, Alaunis gifted them money on a personal gift way, which I suspect further complicates things on the professional side of things.
fucking blows that quersek literally wrote the TOS that they were not credited for and that was sent to them when they got banned. if LW is going to the effort to remove them from the site entirely they should at least have the thought to rewrite that stuff. feels very unprofessional all around
*animations, I somehow erased that word when shifting text around. They did animation work on the site too. I'm counting like 3-4 normally-you-would-pay-for-this work positions they volunteered for
Which is also its own boundary blurring troubling behavior, if well-intentioned. Know your worth! All of this is normally paid work!
Like no wonder Alaunis is just confidently going ahead, feedback be damned, she saved so much money, which would have otherwise been hours and hours of her own time and effort if she tried to do it all herself.
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.
+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.
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 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.)
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.
Going to be honest, Qhersek does come off pretty unhinged later in the doc in screenshots they presented and absolutely need to get some professional help for their obsession issues BUT
Lol, lmao even. I am not surprised that both owners of the website couldn't care enough about their shortcomings to accept and listen to people they literally hired. They need to learn how to eat their pride.
Take this as a sign: Cash and get out fast. Lorwolf is not getting better anytime soon.
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.
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.
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Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)Ahh, thank you. I didn't realize they had posted it to their Tumblr as well.
Letter link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-UWC2UzojACCG_c74Jo_axw-oCC5GmhcDRtQBIBN7ic/edit
It seems Qhersek has updated the letter to respond to Alaunis' statement just now.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)Okay, I only made it halfway before I had to stop, this letter is a bummer.
tl;dr for the letter:
Apparently Qhersek did a lot of uncredited and unpaid developing work and pointed out and tried to fix all the issues that the beta testers and current users have complained about since the site's inception. They were going to be offered a paid position when things broke down?
(ex. activity upgrades originally used moonstones, Qhersek convinced Alaunis to change them to pebbles, then after Qhersek was fired Alaunis changed them back to moonstones; Qhersek pointing out the launch date was too soon for how incomplete the game was when Alaunis secretly revealed the date, Alaunis flipping out for the breach of secrecy when Qhersek told other staff about the launch date in the hopes that they could convince Alaunis to wait longer for the launch; basically their whole tenure there was Qhersek fixing up the parts of the site they were grudgingly allowed to, with Alaunis being inexplicably stubborn about anything that involving balancing gameplay elements and improving the site)
Things broke down because both Qhersek and Alaunis broke the boundaries between being coworkers and being close friends and Qhersek had a real bad mental health crisis and reached out to Alaunis as a friend instead of a boss, and said, uh, bad stuff of the "i'm going to unalive myself and i don't want to hurt you" flavor to Alaunis, which she understandably interpreted as threatening, which was the breaking point to fire Qhersek and scrub their name from the site contributions they made.
Also the head mod babbled about Qhersek's personal stuff to other staff. Just, boundary breaking all around in this site's backstage, bad sign. I don't see a bright future for Lorwolf with these people in charge, honestly.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:22 pm (UTC)(link)All around, I think everyone here is very unprofessional. Alaunis shouldn't even be dipping their toes into the drama by allowing people to get "receipts/screenshots", and the "exploiting Alaunis' empathetic nature" part of her message just rubbed me the wrong way. But Alaunis has a tendency to act unprofessional towards users, so this doesn't surprise me that much.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)Yeah, agreed. Both crossed lines. Don't make your coworkers/bosses/underlings your confidantes!
(Also forgot to add, Qhersek handled mod applications, Alaunis didn't want to hire mods??? What shape would the site currently be in if Qhersek hadn't appeared?)
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)I forgot to add: they also did unpaid writing, graphic and admin work, quoting a bit here:
Wrote guides, the forum etiquette, rewrote the barebones ToS with Alaunis, created custom keywords and descriptions, contributed several implemented ideas, drafted countless documents on overhauls, QoLs, economy and balancing (most of which was disregarded), came up with the discord staff acount, the indexes, etc.
Like, dang. I wonder if, besides personal pride/control of one's creation, Alaunis said no to implementing many things because this person was borderline a co-creator/co-admin and would that would have opened up legal/money implications?
When they were becoming friends and Qhersek wasn't communicating because of money troubles, Alaunis gifted them money on a personal gift way, which I suspect further complicates things on the professional side of things.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)*animations, I somehow erased that word when shifting text around. They did animation work on the site too. I'm counting like 3-4 normally-you-would-pay-for-this work positions they volunteered for
Which is also its own boundary blurring troubling behavior, if well-intentioned. Know your worth! All of this is normally paid work!
Like no wonder Alaunis is just confidently going ahead, feedback be damned, she saved so much money, which would have otherwise been hours and hours of her own time and effort if she tried to do it all herself.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 10:56 pm (UTC)(link)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.)
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-30 03:41 am (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)Lol, lmao even. I am not surprised that both owners of the website couldn't care enough about their shortcomings to accept and listen to people they literally hired. They need to learn how to eat their pride.
Take this as a sign: Cash and get out fast. Lorwolf is not getting better anytime soon.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 11:41 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Lorwolf Launch Wankers?
(Anonymous) 2023-05-29 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)Holy shit, I have no faith in the devs anymore.