Horizon Dramaticus Personafication

[Obsidian]

Is this the same Setusko that posts on bg?

Edit: Also half of those screenshots make me feel like I had a stroke. Like some are clear in what happened, but some I can’t understand the flow of conversation at all.

Whole bunch of adults talking like they still 13.

I believe Setsuko was involved in some drama with the Eden server as well, they've got a history of cherry-picking what they screenshot from private conversations to make themselves look as good as possible.

As for this situation, it was entirely too predictable. Anyone familiar with Kipling should have expected this sooner or later.

[SilverBreeze]

The thing that blows my mind about the situation with Kipling is the fact that Annona (The Community Manager for Horizon) recently stated that she took a step back from her role due to excessive sexual harassment while working with Horizon.

I took a step back from some of the public facing CM duties (streaming and Discord) after the last Mog House Meeting (MHM) due to excessive harassment (largely sexual, but not exclusively) from members of the community. Most of it happened through unsolicited DMs, but it happened in other ways/places, too. As a female who plays games, you always expect some of that, but what I and some of our other staff have experienced over the last few months has just been unreal.

I do not understand how someone who has faced a level of sexual harassment online to the point where they would step back from the community to reconsider their role, would continue to be part of a staff where one of the people is known to do exactly that to female players. I sure as fuck would not want to be on staff with a known sexual predator, knowing my own personal history with people such as that.

There is so much of this situation with Horizon that just doesn't make sense.

I've seen some of the shit Kipling's done over the years. Didn't really wanna bring it up cause people can change.

Guess not.

You are not the first, and surely not the last person I've heard say something similar and I am beginning to see that the entire message that was posted on the Horizon Discord was nothing but damage control.

The 'clean slate' and lack of 'cancel culture' that was mentioned in it makes a lot more sense under this context.

We knew that meant we would attract some interesting personalities to the server, but given that some of us have had our own bad experiences with private server management, we felt that all players deserve the opportunity to start fresh, and in the case of those who have done wrong, reflect, change, and be a better person on another server.

Kipling has a history of this behavior and they are aware of it. The other staff either supports it, assists in covering it up, or has decided that they don't care about it and how it makes them look. They are okay with a member of their staff being sexually inappropriate with players and the level of moderation present on their discord is to discourage anyone from speaking out about it.

How you have a combination of several female staff members (some of whom have expressed issues with being a female on staff and the harassment they get) on Horizon with Kipling also on staff and everyone pretends like everything is perfectly fine sets all kinds of alarm bells off in my head.

[Salodin]

I wanted this to be a success so bad but alas

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[Spicyryan]

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[SilverBreeze]

I wanted this to be a success so bad but alas

You and me both. I really wanted Horizon to work because it was a cool idea.

When I was playing on Wings I swore it was my last private server, between all the issues and instability of Gweivyth, poor decision making, and everything else. I actually made the joke to my linkshell "I'll never play another private server unless its something ridiculous like 75 cap Abyssea with RUN and GEO. Well shit, that's what was eventually promised here. God dammit.

Aerec seemed to be a level headed person during his time on Wings, but it seems like it was only when he was standing next to Gweivyth. Era + sounds good but it just never happened. A couple of things were added at the start that were cool and interesting but the majority of choices on this server have been to nerf everything except for pet jobs, that doesn't seem Era+ to me. In TOAU, Turban, Haidate, Corsair rolls and every good piece of gear from that era are going to be nerfed while people continue to throw 12+ summoners at everything endgame. I don't understand how Horizon managed to do endgame worse than every other private server ever made.

I'm looking forward to getting popped for all of this. My private server record is squeaky clean so if/when it happens I'll know exactly why.

[Sonomaa]

Having been provided additional context and data on the excess drama going on, Im splitting it out of this thread.

Horizon team, as with all teams, are not perfect, but full context changes viewpoints dramatically. I will not be elaborating further. The data I have been shared is done so with the strictest of confidentiality and I will be respecting that.

Please keep all drama for horizon in this thread.

[Spicyryan]

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[Celeras]

I wanted this to be a success so bad but alas

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Was it not? Playing FFXI with that many people again was quite a thing. I enjoyed it. Yes the majority of their changes were fucking stupid, and yes it became very clear to even me (this being my first private server) that almost everyone involved is...highly questionable. But you still can't take that launch nostalgia trip away and I'm not sure what else would qualify as a "success" for a 20+ year old game server.

Now though? Shit. All I heard towards the end was how X was different from Wings, what Y was on Nasomi, or how they couldn't wait for Z content to be added from eras I've never even heard of. These same cliques just server hopping to play the same game over and over, and bringing their cross server drama with them. A large portion of which I can only imagine being 8-10 years old during retail launch and living out fantasies they never got to do as children.

This latest drama is hilarious from all angles, but also woefully unsurprising with additional context of who remains.

[Salodin]

It's objectively a success, but from the get go I hated the changes to retail and I'm not surprised they haven't gotten better.

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[arus2001]

Putting aside my old call out that a lot of leaders in these environments really shouldn't be, the reality of these communities becoming radioactively incestuous seems inevitable when you refuse to evolve past the elements that attracted the nostlagia-seeking shitlords to begin with. Which might not be fair for the chill people who do just want to have fun, but turning a blind eye or feeling it somehow authentic to the experience does no favors. Dudes are just Blizzard'ing themselves with equivalent frat boy horseshit.

[Gredival]

I wanted this to be a success so bad but alas

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Was always doomed to failure without being era accurate including kings ofc

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[Spicyryan]

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[Spicyryan]

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[Warudo Ecksu]

I believe Setsuko was involved in some drama with the Eden server as well, they've got a history of cherry-picking what they screenshot from private conversations to make themselves look as good as possible.

As for this situation, it was entirely too predictable. Anyone familiar with Kipling should have expected this sooner or later.

Not even good drama on Eden actually, usually just called out instances where there was obvious favoritism towards LSs with staff members/GMs. I left the Eden discord pretty early on. However, being a female linkshell leader made me an easy target for people starting shit and spreading rumors. I've heard a lot of wild things about what I've supposedly done lol. Between 2019-2020, the HNM scene on Eden was actually pretty toxic, and the HNM LSs hated each other with a passion. There was a LOT of shit talking back then. This died down a lot later on. (Yes the head GM and I had a beef. I DM'd her later on and gave her some context and thought the situation was mostly over.)

Also just noting that Spicy doesn't know me, my linkshell, and has never played with us. He didn't play on Horizon either as far as I know and likely doesn't have the full context. He claims to have some sort of knowledge that even I don't have. However, I stand by what I said-- Kipling had reasons to not like me and likely contributed to my ban. That was the entire point of my post. Staff abusing their power to ban players they don't like. From what I understand, they are painting this picture that I used Kipling to somehow get an advantage. I don't know what advantage we could have possibly gotten, but I did joke frequently about delete BST and fix utsu timers. Whenever I asked about what was allowed, I would either get a response or told to make a GM ticket to ask, which I would do. Obviously not all my tickets were met with rude responses. Ah Puch and Revel were usually pretty great.

Not playing the game doesn't bother me. It's more so the way the ban happened. I wanted to know what their evidence was but was banned from their discord when I opened a ticket and asked. (Also, how are staff sharing things with Spicy who isn't even on staff but don't DM me to share anything with me so I know what happened? What?) I wanted to quit for maybe the past 3 months or so because I simply wasn't having fun in game. The HNM system is horrible, and any time I tried to provide any kind of feedback on the system or on silly rules that weren't consistent, I just got shit on. I absolutely challenged staff when I felt something wasn't fair or consistent. I always felt very defensive of my linkshell, which I guess is more of a detriment on a private server than anything else. I probably should have learned that from Eden, but it's hard to not speak up sometimes.

[Salodin]

All these red flags were so evidentttttttt

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[Spicyryan]

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[Warudo Ecksu]

I posted what was relevant to get my point across for why I believed there to be a grudge. The only abuse I am trying to point out is abuse of power. You're the one throwing out the "sexual harassment" accusation when my point was only that I turned him down. You even claimed I was soooo upset about him leaving my LS when he was in my ls for maybe a couple of HNMs and left the discord/unequipped the pearl. I told him it was dumb to join a rival LS that had shit talked us so much, but his departure had literally no impact on our LS whatsoever as he was not active. Even you do not have the full story on anything that happened on that server since you weren't in my linkshell. I don't know what you mean by, "That's not much of a story." It's literally my entire point that it's abuse of power to ban someone over a personal vendetta. You are way too stuck on certain things.

I was banned from the horizon discord, but if my posts are still visible there, there was nothing that was ever abusive or derogatory. I disagreed with Aerec on the Enlight changes, and he likely hated me from that point on. I've also talked about my GM tickets. Some were fine. Some weren't and I challenged their decision and argued they should have a discussion to reconsider their rule on certain things, as I've said multiple times. I wouldn't expect that to be ban-worthy. I'm pretty tired of repeating this now.

Edit: Noting that after my initial reddit post, I did receive DMs from women who are afraid to go public out of fear of retaliation. I have zero knowledge on this topic outside of what has been said to me directly, and it is not my place to share another woman's experience.

[Spicyryan]

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[Wulfgang]

Ryan you gotta stop with these Reddit posts broseph. I don't think they do anything to clear the air or serve your desired goals, and the fact that this is the third novel-length screed makes you seem unhinged.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxidrama/c...e_to_conflict/

[Spicyryan]

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