Beluaterra, Case #476 "Group Migration"

[Anaris]

Beluaterra
Complaint #476
Date: November 29, 2019
Title: Group Migration
About: Zeminemesis Kabrinski

This case was brought to our attention when a group of newer players were banned while leaving their realm of Luxx Nova to try to create a new realm near Thalmarkin. In addition, there was some concern about OOC knowledge being used IC.

The Titans judged this was not in violation of rules.

The Titans issued no punishments in this case.

We conducted a quite in-depth investigation on this case. When newer players are involved, we try to give the benefit of the doubt, and ensure they are being treated fairly. During the course of our investigation, we discovered the following events:

1. Players from Lux Nova had included the newer players into their realm. There was evidence of promises of war and titles, and also assurance that the newer group's minority culture would be allowed to exist within Lux Nova's laws.
2. The newer players decided that they still wanted their own realm, and they had enough players to do it.
3. The newer players sent a message to a different realm asking if they could set up their new realm nearby.
4. The newer players began moving there, with no communication to Lux Nova, which was obviously very quickly observed by nobles of Lux Nova. Leadership within Lux Nova sent several warnings that anyone moving outside of sanctioned areas would be banned.
5. After investigating, we found that Lux Nova learned that the newer group was moving to be near a rival realm, and that this information was gained legitimately through in-game and in-character means.

The main problem with all of this stems from the bolded and underlined portion of point 4. There was no relevant communication to Lux Nova. All Lux Nova saw was a bunch of nobles, who had units and presumably gold provided by Lux Nova's taxes, heading outside the realm in a direction they were not supposed to go. Upon receiving the information that the newer group was setting up a realm with their rival's assistance, it was an easy and fair deduction to label the newer players as traitors to Lux Nova.

As Titans, we cannot stress enough the importance of communication within the game. A lot of the cases brought before us would not be cases if players communicated openly with each other. One can not simply pick up a large force of a realm's nobles and move off to a rival realm without any word of explanation and not be considered traitors.

An OOC message explaining that they felt their characters did not fit in well, and wanted to make their own realm would have been an acceptable start. Even better, a developed IC reason.

In the end, we felt for the newer players. Undoubtedly, they are frustrated. However, BattleMaster is a game that is simple to play, and extremely complicated to master. They found themselves in a difficult position, but the nobles of Lux Nova broke no rules, and more importantly, we discovered no evidence of OOC malice in their actions or communications. They were simply acting on the information they had available.

As a last additional note, after the bans came into effect, the nobles became rogues and ended up fighting each other by accident. There was some call into the possibility of having their units restored. We would like to remind everyone that it is standard operating procedure in BattleMaster to not undo any in game effects. Things happen, and there are not enough resources to go into changing things to make everyone happy. Instead, we encourage players to use the bad to help develop the story of their character. Everything doesn't always go right in real life, the same applies to BattleMaster.