Letter from Dave to the Community

If you have been following the forums over the last few days, undoubtedly you have seen the dramatic confrontation between myself and another member of the community.

Myself and Laochra have been in conflict since the first day we met. While I stand by everything I said about him, I regret that it was done in public for all of you to witness. I have been working hard to reduce toxicity on atWar, yet what I posted the other day was very toxic stuff. For the sake of the community, it should have been done in private.

If we go by the rulebook, I'm sure I violated at least rule 3.3 ("Do not post to pillory other players"), if not other rules. If I were any other player, I would no doubt receive some kind of ban for it. However, being admin and owner, it's not very practical to ban myself, as that would simply mean the many tasks I do for the community would not be done at all.

So instead, I'm going to be voluntarily stepping back from the community for a while. Aside from a few certain things like official announcements, bug reports, etc., I will not be participating.

In the next day or two I will be appointing a new admin to the game, who will be responsible for handling any community issues going forward. The new admin has already kindly agreed to take the position, we're just finalizing a few details before I promote him. An announcement will be made once this is done.

(By the way, the decision to appoint a new admin was made days prior to my Lao roast, because it was already becoming clear I was letting myself become too involved in the community. Going forward I really need to focus on the programming and business side of things instead.)

It should go without saying, but our effort to reduce toxicity in the atWar community will continue unabated. Yes I said some toxic things in public that should have been done in private. I'm human, and after being provoked for 4 months I couldn't keep my cool about the situation. However that doesn't make it okay to repeat the same kind of behavior. Moderators will continue enforcing the rules as they always have.

Thank you for your understanding.
-Dave