Join the community!

TLDR: Newcomers to discord, join but just use it as a tool, not a social community.


Yea, the "official discord" (lmao) has lost touch with reality.

There are a massive group of POE veterans who think that Avic runs it like a child, and constantly tries to use deflection to address core issues with his Discord.

"Oh all those are people who got banned and don't mean anything"

Except I'm not banned anywhere, nor is anyone in my group. We are consistently top of the ladders and active in the community. Everyone sees how you handle situations Avic, you are a child with an agenda.

You posted on Reddit that you have never banned anyone for flipping in discord, except you did exactly that. Imagine having discord rules that not even Chris Wilson would agree with, the game creator.

Also, why is the person running the "official" discord playing on PC poe? You literally don't even know what is going on in the game you are sponsoring. How do you expect for the community to grow if you don't even support it?

But most of all, is the way you mock people after they have been banned. I'm still in your discord, and it happens every time. You think its funny to post a GIF and flex your e peen because you are the lord almighty of that channel. Its sad dude, you are a sad man and I think you will one day realize how much your lack of wisdom is blatantly obvious to those of us objectively taking note.

I feel like a lot of you who are upset with me are justified. I've screwed up a few times (maybe more than a few). This discord and my role in it were never the goal I had when creating it.

Initially, I had reached out to a few of the mods in the PC discord to give xbox some love in there. I was not so politely refused, so I just made my own server and invited my friends. The discord has since grown to just over 3100 players, and has about 30% of the activity of the PC's 70,000 players. They are a lively bunch in there lol.

Since the creation of this server, we were getting bigger, rules kept changing, we didn't really know what we wanted or what we were doing. Eventually, the PC discord and reddit mods reached out to us and made us "Official" with them. We have a permanent link on the reddit side bar, and in the PC discord. We also have at least 6 developers from GGG who participate in there, though only two are named publicly. It turned into a really cool place.

Then we entered what i call the "Golden Age" of the server. We had awesome moderators, we had community events and giveaways, and generally no toxicity.

As the time progressed, and more and more individuals were banned for repeatedly breaking the rules, they started to band together to trash talk the discord. They created a separate discord with no rules, and it is fairly active. I actually have given it a recommendation from my own server. It fits a narrative that rules are bad, and for the people who don't care for all the rules, they have a safe haven to go hang out with some top tier players.

We hit a very large bump in the road when I did something unintentionally in December that started a cascade of dissent in the staff. I've since tried to apologize and do everything I can to make it right, but it's not working very well.

After that bump in the road, I took a mild hiatus and collected and gathered feedback and thoughts on how to move forward. We lost a LOT of great players, many of whom I had considered friends. I miss them personally, and so does the server. Here are a few things that have happened recently that not many of you may know about:

1. We have been consistently shredding rules. We are out of the puppy dog phase of the game and as such see less value in catering to the new players and more value in catering to the veterans (all of which fairly unanimously requested certain rules, especially trade rules be modified or deleted). We are working on this still and invite anyone with ideas or arguments to swing by and let me know whats on your mind.
2. We have implemented a rule list of actual numbered rules that are about as clear and concise as we've been able to come up with thus far.
3. We have created moderation procedures that guide our moderators, admins, and yes even myself through a number of steps like a flow chart. We really wanted to make this happen because we needed uniformity in punishments when needed so that no bias takes root. For example, If I just really don't like some guy in chat, I will never be the one to mute or speak to that member in regards to the infraction. I do still ban however as I have reserved the right to be the main 95% ban, and I only ban now with unanimous consent from the dozen or so admin. We take it very seriously, as we did in the beginning, and we want to get back to our roots of not banning as much or at all if possible. I personally despise banning, though some here might argue otherwise. It feels bad. I've had to ban people i really enjoy having around, simply because they refused to adhere to rules set in place.
4. On the last point, moderators and admin have had to change the culture of the positions. It got out of hand for a little while and I felt like my mods were actively looking for incidents to moderate. Over the last few weeks/months, I feel like we have successfully changed the culture. We now issue verbal warnings, or verbal deflections of topic to try and stop arguments, and to inhibit rule breaking. We are still working on this but so far it's been really successful.
5. We have unbanned literally everyone who has ever been banned barring bots/TOS/RMT. We want to give everyone new life here in the server because we feel that people can and do change, and because we changed the rules so someone banned for a rule that is no longer a rule should be let back in.


As for my objective moving forward, some would say that my objective should be to see that the discord flourishes with activity. That isn't necessarily my objective, so let me explain what my role and vision is for this server.

I'm the server owner, alongside me is the co-founder, and 2 admin. One admin owns the bot in the server as he built it from scratch, and only he has access to change anything on it. The other admin is an adviser whom I highly respect, and he has done a great job in that role. My role in the discord is three pronged:

1. Come up with / implement new ideas and features for the discord
2. Manage the culture of the staff as much as I can so that we have a tight ship up top.
3. Keep people happy.

Keeping people happy is basically also a three pronged task, and it accounts for a lot of the rules we currently have in place.

1. Keeping members happy by provided enough freedom and enough guidelines and rules so that noone is offended / scammed etc.
2. Keeping my staff happy by making them more of a good cop than a bad cop. This is very difficult to do, as you guys can tell from this thread.
3. Keeping GGG happy. We have to implement certain rules in order to keep their attendance and contributions in the server. We cannot allow RMT or other Terms of Service breaking activity in the discord, and we have to keep the NSFW content such as drugs / references etc. out of the main discord server channels. Many individuals, not just GGG use this discord while at work. Seeing drugs or porn pop up at work could land them in a bit of trouble no doubt. So while we understand that POE itself is NSFW, people don't often play POE at work. My idea for this is to implement a NSFW category of channels people can opt in to with a role. A change like this requires unanimous consent from the admin team and I am still trying to swing the votes.


Moving forward, I have offered those who have issues with me a truce, and will continue to hold that truce available for them. I'm excited for them to come back in and see the changes we've done. This is an amazing game, we've got an amazing community, and I hate that they may feel on the outside of things by not taking part so again, just come check it out and work with me on what rules / things you would like to see changed that would make you happy. We miss you guys.

Good Luck Avic,

- Mephedrone

P.S. They did not wipe the slate clean. The bans are still in place.

"

StickyWeed wrote:

Good Luck Avic,

- Mephedrone

P.S. They did not wipe the slate clean. The bans are still in place.

This is correct. Many of us (including myself) are still banned. This is why we created our own thriving community - to not have to deal with lies and misdirection.

If you, like the rest of us, are tired of this shit - JOIN US! See the link for the best path of exile discord on console in my signature.


- (not)Mephedrone

Ok so first off there is no ToS about your discord you're not fucking affiliated with GGG in any sense of the word, other than they hang out in your server as a player. I actually have the emails from GGG to back this up.

No one signs or agrees to a ToS by joining your discord and they arent indebted to either GGG or Microsoft ToS because they frequent your discord which is a private player owned entity, you said it yourself you're the server owner.

And as far as the unbans go I can attest that people are not unbanned. Also in order for you to validate a ToS or RMT ban, what is your investigative process to do so. You certainly dont have access to game logs to validate such claims, so please enlighten the people on how you plan to actually provide substantial proof beyond heresay for such claims, which is far from irrefutable.

PS I would love for someone from GGG to actually reply and validate his claim that by joining his discord you're obligated by GGG ToS

I can confirm that Avic has not unbanned a rather startling number of accounts, including my own and every single person from his “list of apologies” I have been able to speak with.

Unless you are seriously going to offer evidence that we are all bots and RMTers- including so many of your former staff members!- I recommend you retract this claim or acknowledge it for what it is: a lie.

"

DistinctMist08 wrote:

I can confirm that Avic has not unbanned a rather startling number of accounts, including my own and every single person from his “list of apologies” I have been able to speak with.

Unless you are seriously going to offer evidence that we are all bots and RMTers- including so many of your former staff members!- I recommend you retract this claim or acknowledge it for what it is: a lie.

You and Ex disappoint me, neither signed your post "Mephedrone".

For those not in the know, we had many of our accounts banned because Avic had some kind of paranoid breakdown and thought Meph had a dozen alt accounts.

Do you want a guy who is most likely a certified lunatic running your community? I don't. Join ours instead! We're slightly more sane.

Link in my signature 😁

There seems to be a competition between Avic's server and Exis' server. I'm not one to be overly vocal, but perhaps some folk may recognise my name and read this.

In truth, neither server is better - they're just different. Exis' server is filled with die-hard PoE enthusiasts who take the game very seriously, but as a result, many are bullheaded and a little abrasive. However, these people are also extremely knowledgeable, and very helpful if you're wanting to break into high-end play. Many experienced members from Avic's server are members here, so there may be a few familiar names, and more than enough in-game knowledge. The server doesn't have any real rules, as long as you respect each other.

While I cannot comment on the current state of Avic's server, as I was banned in December, it used to be a solid internet chat room and, despite the excessive moderation and Avic having final say in every situation, it was a very useful resource for new players. Unfortunately, the bulk of help new players received came from an array of experienced members, who have largely moved on to other games or servers.

The uncompromising hierarchical structure of Avic's server meant that even as a moderator, I had little voice. Such a moderation structure damages the community, and likely led to this whole fiasco.


The best thing to do is to join both servers, and see which one you like more.

This is the link to Exis' server: https://discord.gg/TzYyppU

Andro, you're right as usual. Also, for those still banned, you were re-banned after the last unban wave. My bad! I didn't realize we had nailed the cross back to everyone. It was supposed to only be the RMT/TOS/Bots, post your discord name so I can make sure and get you guys unbanned if you still are in about 5 minutes. It's hard to tell who you are here, and I'm just going off of memory.

"

DistinctMist08 wrote:

I can confirm that Avic has not unbanned a rather startling number of accounts, including my own and every single person from his “list of apologies” I have been able to speak with.

Unless you are seriously going to offer evidence that we are all bots and RMTers- including so many of your former staff members!- I recommend you retract this claim or acknowledge it for what it is: a lie.

It's difficult to find all of you, as some of you had multiple accounts under various names. As such, I have been unable to find quite a few. PM me in Exis discord or tag me because i genuinely cannot find you distinct.