You really think Izzy is the one driving people away? There are others that try and drive people away.

Izzy have always been this games enemy nr 1. He have time after time involved himself in parts of the game he as owner and admin should stay away from. His actions have led countless of players to either leave the game or more or less stop playing.  

That he is once again doing it and that ha cant see why this is wrong should baffle me but to be honest I have stopped being surprised at what he brings himself to do.

Well.....what I find funny is quite simple and it's not Tes being a dick or Izzy 'overreacting'.

It is IzzyCreamCheese,someone who apparently was quite a badass player in his time stooping to the level of hitlisting to get the job done. I get that you are quite busy, Izzy and can't really be arsed playing hard but....lelz.

People still listen to Melis when she talks? Lol. You can spoon feed some people a HQ, district AND hands and they'll still find a way to fuck it up.

As far as the topic at hand goes, I'll probably not comment on it lest I get hit listed "anonymously" - which would be incredibly poor tekkers indeed for me.  

This is a sticky situation. A situation that brings up many questions. Many have already been asked and so many others could be added. How much interaction should admins have in game? Where do we, they, all of us draw the line? These questions aren’t so white or black when trying to answer them. There is a lot of grey area. Much like what I see here, the division between admin and users. Heck, I might try to make a profit off of this and sell t-shirts. Would you like a team Squishy or a team User? Jokes, of course. 

I didn’t watch this play out as it happened. I took the weekend off and am now catching up. As I read the streets yesterday Achilles thread Fucking Prima Donna’s got most of my attention. It brought up an issue that has been happening forever. People not donating enough or seeming to not donate enough. From an in character stance, Achilles acted as he should. As a crew leader coming to the streets with a subject he wanted to discuss. Just the other week I received a mass mail from my crew leader stating that we would have to start donating again because she keeps the taxes off so we feel good when we donate to her. That her bodyguards do not pay for themselves. Achilles thread, my crew leaders mail….you boil it down and they are the same thing. My crew leader is not Achilles and Achilles is not my crew leader. They have different styles and different platforms. 

If you go to the streets being nice, pleasant and dreamy - less people will listen to you. If you call people “ungrateful piss ants” for not contributing money to the crew - people listen. As much as everyone hates an asshole, they always seem to be much more popular. Sorry guys, tangent, I’ll get back on subject.

So I’m reading through, reading through and then someone points out the hit list. So I go over and look. Woah. WOAH. What is going on??? I must have missed something in the streets thread (I have a terrible habit of skimming). So I asked around (I had not even thought to look at OOC, just found this thread now) and got more information. I didn’t know how I felt about all of this. I was just started to get on team admin after many, many years of being not on team admin. Would I let this situation pull me onto the band wagon of hating on the admins, would I let the past and my personal previous views of Izzy decide on how I would feel about this? 

I didn’t want that to happen. The past is the past and if it keeps being brought up to support my opinion on how I feel about Izzy…well, that’s just unproductive on moving forward. Going after Izzy with what he did last month or two years ago, five years ago or ten isn’t productive. Old habits die hard, specially when this is your baby. 

This is starting to sound like I’m wearing team Admin t-shirt. I’m not. Because there are no sides, just opinions. We can sit here and point fingers at the credit system being the problem, admins getting involved (too much, not enough?) and players leaving (this is such a poor excuse, people leave all the time, for this reason or that reason or because they simply out grew the game, stop trying to use it as an insult) as the problem. Or because Melis (@Zephrya, oh hey you made it Wise Guy, congrats!!!) is a cunt and that’s the problem! (It’s not, Melis, please don’t take any pride in that statement that was a joke.)

I personally believe the true problem here is in character. It’s been over looked because the whole in character thing is so often over looked. Heel said it best and I’d rather just quote him that stumble around saying the same thing he said but not as well:

Maybe it is just me being pigheaded, but I can't for the life of me envisage a scenario where someone in the Mafia comes into a windfall of several hundred millions dollars and doesn't give their boss a taste of it. Can you imagine how that would even play out? "Hey boss, just made $250m, which I'm going to completely spend on myself, but thanks for your protection and connections that facilitated me being able to do that. You're a pistol." I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem likely to me that this individual would escape with their legs intact, let alone their life. 

He certainly used some choice language, but come on, we are meant to be guys who came up on the street in organized crime. Just because we, as players, are capable of constructing complex sentences that are grammatically correct and demonstrate a diverse vocabulary, doesn't mean we should have to. This is meant to be a tough old world, inhabited by not particularly nice people, so perhaps a thicker skin is required than is being displayed as I bet some of the real mobsters said a lot worse than Achilles did.

If the other crew leaders felt he was being offensive to their members, it is up to them to defend them, not you. Seemingly they didn't find it particularly abhorrent as some agreed with him and others simply explained their position. Nobody put a bullet in Achilles over it, even when you were offering them $250,000,000 to do so, which should tell you how much support there is for your mission and how little offense his words actually caused.

@Denam (RIP) wrote a great thread last month named: This game is not an RPG. No of course not everyone is going to role play a character, not everyone is a writer. This subject, like people donating up to the big guy, has also been brought to the streets time and time again. At this point though, the streets should basically be OOC. Anything said in them can be used against you on IRC and for your next 20 characters. A crew leader is not allowed to present themselves as a crew leader on the streets. A disrespectful goomba will face no punishment. This is a user base problem, not an admin problem. The users do it, now everyone is getting upset when an admin does it. Izzy isn’t allowed to take advantage of the users laziness? Oh, of course not. *rolls eyes*. 

The users that see Izzy not having any balance should look at themselves. Mako, do you have any balance between in character and out? You are quick to point the finger at Izzy that he is the problem, he fucked up and say he’s a man that never changes or that you have little faith that he ever will, but how is that solving any problems? Also, how quickly will your opinion of me change now that I’ve just said that. Will I get more mails about how you are thankful of the work I do for your district even though you were fearful of having me in your district? Where did that opinion even come from? Was it an OOC one? I bet it was. 

I've seen first hand, where the leaders, the big guys on top, the shot callers!!! have sat in their own problems (their own shit) and argued with Izzy, telling him that their problems are his problems. They don't want to put in the work (the in character work, you can't buy everything with credits) because of laziness. There are so, SO, so many problems the user base can solve through their characters, through being in character but would rather just complain to admins about it. Change this feature, make this feature easier for us. The game is so simple, but we still have so many issues. What sense is this?? 

Though, I will agree with you on one thing Mako (you don’t mind if I use you as an example do you? It’s not an attack, your post(s) just stood out to me, but I doubt you’ll believe that. GRRRR EEEPZ being mean/having an opinion again!!!!). Admin interference is a reason why people won’t return. Not a big reason. I’ve seen MUCH bigger admin interferences than this one and sure, people left, but the majority stayed. Has anyone even stopped playing because of this? 

<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">So, I feel like I have more to say, but I if I make this any longer people will be like TLDR. Hopefully I tagged enough people to grab attention and make them read the parts at least about themselves and then maybe they will reply to me (hopefully absolutely outraged!!! Dramaaaaaaaaa) and then I can reply back. Though, if you do reply to me, I hope you point out all the holes in my thoughts, misspellings, why I am wrong. Tell me if this felt a bit admin team fan, I'll let you know what parts of Whatsername's post I agree with. Most </font>importantly<font color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)">, what t-shirt should wear? Team Admin or team User. After this post, I'm sure these words will follow my next 15 in character accounts. So, I will need to learn how to be a sheep. Bahhhh.</font>

P.S. Desmand, you are a funny guy (honest), why you hate me?

Admittedly, I do not play nearly as frequently as the players in power who seem to be against Izzy, and I’m not claiming I’ve observed every controversial event. In all honesty, I’m shocked to witness the blatant dislike for him from a vocal minority.

Considering some are so quick to grab their pitchforks, I wouldn’t want to hesitate sharing my own perspective. I’ve always considered Izzy has had the game/and communities best interests at heart (spanning over the 12 years I’ve been around. Yes, I’m including the previous incarnation of the game, as that’s where the core community stemmed from… but I don’t want to go off on a tangent) – and in this particular case (after witnessing it unfold in #divinelunacy), my stance hasn’t changed. 
I’m not claiming he is faultless - but his passion and drive is unequivocal, in my opinion: for me, that’s what counts. He has been dedicated since some of you were still wearing nappies (US translation: diapers).

I find it completely slanderous, short-sighted and offensive to highlight that he is the reason why some players have left the game. Some may have left from disagreements (is this not to be expected? This happens in real-life and people move on. It is bound to happen when an Admin is close to the community and not locked behind steel doors), but contemplate the amount that have stuck around.

I think it’s important for some people to have a breather every once in a while and contemplate the bigger picture, because in my opinion - it is those people that are overreacting.

Whilst 250 million would allow their next of kin a good start, it isn't always worth the life of their current character whom they would have to have invested a large amount of work to be in a position to shoot the man in question.

you dont have to. Tyerdurden will if its not bought off

Let him run his game if his style didn't work this site would probably not be online right now. I don't know anything about coding or running a site so I don't know all the hardwork he goes through just to keep this site running. Sure he has a couple of problems with a few players and things might get personal but at least he cares. Sometimes this game feels like

http://youtu.be/HApwS_f6tiU?t=40s