The Deletion of Avalon, by Sol Fessler

As most of you know, Avalon was recently mass deleted by the admins. Now that I think about it, I should have seen it coming.

To sidetrack for a minute, I just realized how long I've been in this community for. Mid 2013 I was a lowly recruit under Constantines personal training, and exactly a year later in 2014, I was the general of Amestris. Exactly another year later, I was the Emperor of Dobeln. Exactly another year later, I was a Liege-Lord and knight in House Avalor/Regium. Now, it's 2017, and in a few months, It'll be another year since the last one exactly. I had been playing graal since a year before Imperial, but that was when I really got into the military community. It's changed a lot, mostly for the worse. But it's really crazy to think about it. It feels like just yesterday I was Private XIII, the upstart soldier in Imperial. Or Consul Sol Octavian of Aurelia. Or President-General of Amestris. Or Colonel in the State. All these things took place at this point, 2-4 years ago.

To get back on track, you're reading about how Avalon got deleted. This isn't really a sob story or anything, but it's worth talking about definitely. It's alarming to see how quickly, efficiently, and silently it was deleted, and even more alarming, how it was done or how no one knows exactly what happened.

The battle for York was in full swing, and then it started to slow down. My internet disconnected sometime during the battle, by the time it was much less packed. It didn't go back on, and I ended up just going to sleep instead of wasting my time trying to fix it. The next day, it didn't go back on either, and I couldn't get it to work. I wasn't on graal for the entire day, but today, I logged on, and to my surprise, only the player chat button was there. Sometimes I log on and that happens when I have PMs, because once I click the pms the guild chat button pops up. I didn't really pay attention to my pms, but I did read one from Louis where he told me Avalon got deleted.

I figured it was a stupid practical joke or something, because Avalon as a guild, and the individuals in Avalon had done nothing against the rules that would have gotten us deleted. Unlike July 21st era, we hadn't been offmapping or mass killing babies. When I inspected my tags and gralat #, I realized Louis had been telling the truth. I was refunded half of the guild money, and my guild was gone.

It's happened many times before, but the issue is now, it might be more player done then admin done.

The admins have always maltreated the military community, but by recent times, it's only gotten worse. It's become just a mass hatred for the community. The same community that buys countless ingame purchases, ingame purchases that keep the game running. It's debatable, but potentially without the mass uploads of military weapons, customs, etc;, there would be a fair decrease in the amount of revenue through that regard.

The admins keep maltreating militaries, and the militaries don't do anything about it. We need the money for the gear, and in order to boycott gralats, we'd have to give up our gear or face having to do the insanely nerfed money making system repeatedly. I mean really. 50 Lizardons for 1k?? That's still, beyond the point though.

When it comes down to it, it's not only the admins. Without the strong centralized authority that was present years before, many issues both of similar and different styles have arisen. A lot of foreign intervention has arisen as a direct result of the disunity, which is the reason guilds like Crawford and Sehzan are able to sprout up and cause so much cancer, even without being actual militaries. At this point, a daycare guild could come to militaries and do some bullshit.

As you all know, I really tried to be different with Avalon. It was quality>quantity, with there being a very small amount of ranks; along with everyone being forced to remain in uniform and with the proper gear. That's beyond the point though. The community needs to realize that this goes far beyond just my guild.

Sehzan claimed responsibility for the deletion. Despite their claims, it was done physically by the administration. All unit leaders got 2k gralat refunds, as part proof. This means that either Sehzan wants to look cool really badly, or they got the admins to delete the guild.

If the latter is the case, it should alarm everyone. It should be alarming that a roleplay guild full of random sparrers can come into militaries, take advantage of them, and literally shake up the entire community. But what should be even more alarming is, that they were able to get a guild deleted by using admin connections, and spam reporting + spam PMing.

Chances are, it wouldn't have been possible without their admin connections. Had they been some Auelist guild trying to abuse the report button, it likely wouldn't have worked. Admins are very unlikely to help out militant reports, even if it's against other militants. However, the issue blatantly arises: If Sehzan could abuse admin connections to get Avalon deleted, anyone can. Any towering jock who knows a GP or two, any retarded sparrer at the arena who's in a admin suckup guild.

For a second, let's forget the fact that many guilds lives are at stake here. Maybe that's a slight over-exaggeration. During the Army of Auel guild, we would make noob alt accounts and report them as soon as they were made. They would get banned, no matter what we put in the report reason field. That was extremely alarming, because it meant the administration didn't care enough to view the reports.

The issue was more so however, that all the alts we made had tags in various military themed guilds. The one alt that I designed w/out a military tag wasn't immediately banned, nor did it receive any sort of warning or punishment. This meant that the administration was not only finding excuses to ban military people, but doing it in an avant-garde manner. And now, in 2017, 1-2 years later, both the player and admin hatred for militaries is beginning to rise in unprecedented levels. Even the Brazilians have started attacking militaries.

With this setting the scene, in the past, this wouldn't have been an issue. Someone on the levels of Auel or Xinke in the past would keep unity, centralized authority, and order in the game. However, with the lack of all these things in recent time, it's become clear that there is no actual barrier or defense against outside intervention anymore. Not even the inside is safe either, because militaries in themselves have also become a crapshoot. That's discussed many times in other articles, however.

This leaves one last statement. Militaries work best when people work together. It's obvious. When the UMA came together, one of the largest rallies in recent history was held. When the kingdoms was created under Auel and Vulnus, some of the coolest stuff ever in both recent and military history happened. When Sarovia unified the community, a legendary guild was formed.

Militaries are meant to work together, not fight. That's what people don't understand. Even if fighting daily wars for york is cool and entertaining for some, the real fun and activity happens when militaries come together.

If we don't come together, there's nothing stopping everything I mentioned above from happening.