Hello Midgardians,
I'm writing to you now to request that we all think about our fellow players as human beings and not an "enemy" to be treated like a piece of trash. We all come from unique places in the world and are united under a few common goals, to play games, to have fun and invest in some way into a community of other players. Some of the comments and behaviors that have begun to really surface in the last month or so, and erupting in the past week or so with the SEA merger, is absolutely the worst type of attitude the internet has to offer; frankly it needs to stop and be directed in better directions.
I absolutely understand players that have been a long time in a game will adopt a "territoriality" and circles of friends to form an "us vs them" mentality, PVP and guilds are sort of founded on this principle. But the social groups are only supposed to enhance your group's sense of community not to absolutely tear down everyone else's fun. Being competitive and even a bit of trash talking is expected and fun, but being a racist bigot with nothing but hate for every new person is downright counter-productive for a game community, and lends evidence to perhaps you are not a fit person to enjoy a community based game.
Racism: it exists in the real world but here in-game we are not citizens of our country instead are citizens of the game world, hating someone because they come from a location in the world and perhaps speaks in a different language is also counter productive to being in a community game. Filipinos and Singapore and Malaysian players are here and will continue to expand our game world, new people will continue to join us, and they could be your new game brothers, sisters and friends; but if you treat them like enemies from level 1 onwards they, and any new players from "your country", will not stick around. If no new players are capable of joining the game due to our veterans not allowing them to join, then Midgard will stagnate and ultimately become boring and less appealing even to the established veterans.
I am imploring you veterans to be kind and helpful to new players, bring them into your group and let them enjoy the world with you, trust me some amazingly fun times can come of this. But if you can't open your mind enough to be kind, then I must demand you at least accept them as fellow human beings and treat them at least as well as you would a stranger you meet on the streets in your hometown, help or ignore not demean. We cannot make you change your mind or your behavior that decision to change has to come from yourself, I hope that everyone can take a moment to honestly think about how you are treating others and take steps to treat each other better.
We will start treating racism and open hostility with more permanent censures now, we can't allow our community to devolve into open racist and hostility. We are an open community, if you are trying to "close it" then you will likely find yourself outside the community very quickly via forum moderation and possibly game access privilege removal. If your fun is in making others have no fun, then we will likely need to remove you as you are more damaging to the big picture than you are helpful to it.
My message here is not about censorship in not saying what is bothering you; we can talk about stuff that bothers you and even stuff that makes you angry, but we need to use a language that is not filled with hate and demeaning to others. If the only way you feel you can get your point across is with name calling and swearing then I feel it may be time you "up your literary game" and work to get your message across with a calmer attitude and more thoughtful phrasing.
Thank you, with regards.
Heimdallr
