A Frank Address And Statement on Recent Events and Revelations

[Forest_ 40]

Alex is an absolute idiot for doing what he did. He didn't donate that money to the server, moreso his fans and stream viewers did.

Imagine I'm an Alexensual donator right now and I had intended my donations to go directly to Elysium's servers while also watching a stream, Alex took it upon himself to say "hey everyone that donated to Elysium, I'm now choosing to refund your donation no matter what your opinion is on the matter."

You could make the argument that they should've just directly donated to Elysium (they should have) but Alex took it upon himself to refund HUNDREDS of donations to server upkeep without input for himself.

Oh and on the offchance (Read: very good chance) many of the people that donated to Alex don't understand how charge-backs work on PayPal, Alex gets to keep ALL of the money people didn't ask for.

It was not your place to refund those donations, and now you reap what is likely the monetary benefit of all of the people who can't figure out or are too lazy to get it back from you.

Absolutely fuck off Alex.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Forest_

[Papertank 0]

1 minute ago, Forest_ said:

Oh and on the offchance (Read: very good chance) many of the people that donated to Alex don't understand how charge-backs work on PayPal, Alex gets to keep ALL of the money people didn't ask for.

It was not your place to refund those donations, and now you reap what is likely the monetary benefit of all of the people who can't figure out or are too lazy to get it back from you.

isnt that scamming? and isnt scamming a bannable offense here?

[Forest_ 40]

^ Yes it absolutely is. Alex is very lucky he did not do anything bannable in game. It says a lot that the Admins were seriously considering banning Alex for his self-righteous moves.

 

Let this be a lesson to everyone reading this, never donate to someone who SAYS they'll donate something for you. Do it yourself.

[Papertank 0]

3 minutes ago, Forest_ said:

never donate to someone who SAYS they'll donate something for you. Do it yourself.

+1

[Porta 10]

just perma ban alexsensual no one needs bitching manchilds

[Xerxes 0]

This thread is hilarious on a lot of different levels. I don't even know where exactly to start with this because no matter where I start it's like wading through a crock of shit.

First of all, these are not just people who have "troubled pasts" or however you put it. It's one thing if you found out, oh one of these guys once sold an account 7 years ago. That's acceptable. It's another thing entirely to have 1000 posts on a gold selling forum and personally set up a gold selling shop. Do you honestly think that people should not be concerned that you're giving a person with this kind of PUBLIC, VIEWABLE history the title of "system administrator" might cause some red flags? As someone who plays the server and has to experience all of the gold sellers spam on a daily basis, do you really expect me to be totally cool that you're inviting the same people who would willingly do this for money onto the team? Or what about zzuk; it appeared to anyone interested enough to look into the hire that you were putting a known vanilla botter into contact with your code base. Now, after the fact, you say "but he's totally trustworthy and he didn't see any code, we promise"; why didn't you say this immediately? Was it really this unexpected that people would be upset?

On the side of Alex, should he have opened a dialogue? Probably, but he did not have any obligation to do so. He does not answer to you. He is a youtuber who plays vanilla wow. Show me one place where he called to "dox" these people, as in release their actual real life information. The most he did was a video in which he brought up these valid concerns and stated where he wasn't sure of the information. Threatening to ban him and name-and-shaming him seems awfully ironic when what you're accusing him of is "stirring up drama" and "witch-hunting". Do you really claim to have the moral high ground here? What has he actually done, in-game, to warrant a ban at all? Should I also be afraid of every dumb video I post on youtube in case it might get me banned from Elysium? (And as a side note, to those who continually bring up his "20%" of donations: the donations are to his stream. He also had no obligation to give money to Elysium at all. If he took 100% as many other streamers do, you would not complain. If he donated 100%, you would not complain. People complain because his 80/20 split appears to them to be 20% "lost" to Elysium when it's really 80% gained. Though, I do think that doing the chargeback after people donated to him under the pretense that a cut would go to Elysium, was the wrong move.)

I don't have a conclusion to this. There is no conclusion. This entire situation is idiotic. If you thought that this forum post explaining that these gold sellers and botters "dindu nuffin, they was good boyz" would alleviate concerns, then you are wrong. They shouldn't have been hired in the first place, in ANY capacity. Playing it off like it's no big deal just hurts your credibility.

[torrenz 0]

the nicest way to put it is that elysium's commitment to moral high ground is ahead of its time

just fucking ban the cunt. cease moderation of the subreddit by elysium staff. you are giving the playerbase and even yourself the impression that the shit spewed there matters. if it's just witchhunts why do you give a damn? constant witchhunts related to your VPN policy haven't phased you in the slightest. if this is just as illegitimate why are you giving in?

I hope the answer is that this is mostly about the donation. You've been terribly nice. You went out of your way in helping Nostalrius wash its hands of the business without giving in to demands that would have hurt your players. You let a large community of genuine players access your server, despite backlash and despite consequences real or imagined. You invested so much into your public relations despite having no monetary stake in it - until now.

Please draw the line.

[Acki 0]

1 hour ago, Hateshi said:

Fuck Alexsensual tbh.

I agree.

[Upgrade 0]

if alexsensual didn't do anything, in-game, this time, then i don't think his characters should pay the price.

however, i think banning him IRL, would be better. just don't watch his streams, ignore it when people talk about him, and let him die a slow death in internet obscurity.

 starting now.

[Mindcontrol 2]

So the guy who publicly exposed some professional gold sellers and bot developers who were associated with this LGN is now being scrutinised for apparently refusing to donate $1000 of Twitch donations to the Team that just created a public witch hunt against him. Sounds like both parties need to get their head out of their asses if they care so much about the greater good of the vanilla community.

18 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

There is no conclusion. This entire situation is idiotic. If you thought that this forum post explaining that these gold sellers and botters "dindu nuffin, they was good boyz" would alleviate concerns, then you are wrong. They shouldn't have been hired in the first place, in ANY capacity. Playing it off like it's no big deal just hurts your credibility.

100%.

[dodgykebaab 1]

26 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

They shouldn't have been hired in the first place, in ANY capacity.

I'd like to repeat something I said on Reddit regarding this sort of stand point, and why it's not a clear black and white situation.

Quote

If you have an problem with having staff members on a server project that are known for exploiting WoW for personal financial gain, that's fine. It is after all a perfectly legitimate concern.

What I'd like to do though is play devils advocate. Now I know that Elysium has staff members that are known for exploits and hacks but their names have not come up. I know that they haven't done it for personal gain but just to see if they could. Remember; a lot of hackers have that mindset. They just want to see if they can break a system. It's like trying to solve a puzzle, much like a rubics cube but the sort of puzzle that tests your programming knowledge.

I'm not going to name the hackers I know on the project because they've asked me to keep them secret as they don't want to be dragged into this current outrage.

I'll now explain why this whole thing is not a black or white issue, rather than many shades of grey.

Each hacker brought onto the project has a different skill set and different hacking background. Each know a different set of exploits. Now I'm sure most of you guys are aware that it's a common practice in the real world to hire people that comprise your security systems (Sony and geohot for example).

Now when building Elysium, do you want to stop all the exploits? Of course you do. What if some exploits are only known by people who are abusing them for money?

Do you get them on board to fix the problem or do you keep them away but risk them exploiting further?

The reality is that some of the very best and talented hackers do sell their skills for money. If the top level management can keep these guys under control then it's a nett positive for the server. They fix the exploits and actually stop the biggest hackers from future hacking.

However this method is not without risks. Letting in the top hackers near the inner workings of your systems and hoping they don't steal/sell for data off to another server.

I don't think there is a right answer here, it just depends in which direction you lean in to what concision you'll end up at.

 

[Ellipsea 36]

1 minute ago, dodgykebaab said:

I'd like to repeat something I said on Reddit regarding this sort of stand point, and why it's not a clear black and white situation.

No matter what, the good thing is Shenna gets out in front of all this bullshit.  There's drama where ever we go; no matter what decisions are made.  When has it been otherwise?

[Draegon 1]

2 minutes ago, Ellipsea said:

No matter what, the good thing is Shenna gets out in front of all this bullshit.  There's drama where ever we go; no matter what decisions are made.  When has it been otherwise?

Pretty much this.  This is standard procedure for major projects tbh and makes sense. This whole thing is just being blown out of proportion and i geuss Alex will keep the money? We'll see.

[Duality 4]

41 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

This thread is hilarious on a lot of different levels. I don't even know where exactly to start with this because no matter where I start it's like wading through a crock of shit.

First of all, these are not just people who have "troubled pasts" or however you put it. It's one thing if you found out, oh one of these guys once sold an account 7 years ago. That's acceptable. It's another thing entirely to have 1000 posts on a gold selling forum and personally set up a gold selling shop. Do you honestly think that people should not be concerned that you're giving a person with this kind of PUBLIC, VIEWABLE history the title of "system administrator" might cause some red flags? As someone who plays the server and has to experience all of the gold sellers spam on a daily basis, do you really expect me to be totally cool that you're inviting the same people who would willingly do this for money onto the team? Or what about zzuk; it appeared to anyone interested enough to look into the hire that you were putting a known vanilla botter into contact with your code base. Now, after the fact, you say "but he's totally trustworthy and he didn't see any code, we promise"; why didn't you say this immediately? Was it really this unexpected that people would be upset?

On the side of Alex, should he have opened a dialogue? Probably, but he did not have any obligation to do so. He does not answer to you. He is a youtuber who plays vanilla wow. Show me one place where he called to "dox" these people, as in release their actual real life information. The most he did was a video in which he brought up these valid concerns and stated where he wasn't sure of the information. Threatening to ban him and name-and-shaming him seems awfully ironic when what you're accusing him of is "stirring up drama" and "witch-hunting". Do you really claim to have the moral high ground here? What has he actually done, in-game, to warrant a ban at all? Should I also be afraid of every dumb video I post on youtube in case it might get me banned from Elysium? (And as a side note, to those who continually bring up his "20%" of donations: the donations are to his stream. He also had no obligation to give money to Elysium at all. If he took 100% as many other streamers do, you would not complain. If he donated 100%, you would not complain. People complain because his 80/20 split appears to them to be 20% "lost" to Elysium when it's really 80% gained. Though, I do think that doing the chargeback after people donated to him under the pretense that a cut would go to Elysium, was the wrong move.)

I don't have a conclusion to this. There is no conclusion. This entire situation is idiotic. If you thought that this forum post explaining that these gold sellers and botters "dindu nuffin, they was good boyz" would alleviate concerns, then you are wrong. They shouldn't have been hired in the first place, in ANY capacity. Playing it off like it's no big deal just hurts your credibility.

Alexsensual, is that you hiding behind a fresh forum account?

[Xerxes 0]

1 minute ago, Draegon said:

i geuss Alex will keep the money? We'll see.

This is an idiotic meme. He's stated that he would give a refund to anyone who asked for one.

 

Quote

I have refunded all of the money I have given to Elysium. Now, I'm also doing this to give back to you guys who donated. If you have a transaction ID from paypal from that day and want your money back, I will refund the money to you. Please contact me on Discord or Twitter with the transaction ID that you sent me.

 

[Mindcontrol 2]

9 minutes ago, dodgykebaab said:

I'd like to repeat something I said on Reddit regarding this sort of stand point, and why it's not a clear black and white situation.

Surely you're being speculative though. Who's to say they're the ones finding the exploits and not buying  exploits themselves? There is no evidence of that, just of them selling the exploits, developing bots and selling bots. Using an exploit, being busted and then admitting that you were just testing security measures is literally written on the front of the Hacker: 'Get out of jail free card'. If you're going to associate with people who gain wealth from exploits, bots and gold then expect the situation we have right now.

[Draegon 1]

1 minute ago, Xerxes said:

This is an idiotic meme. He's stated that he would give a refund to anyone who asked for one.

 

 

No such thing. Good to see he will refund the people that ask for it. 

[Crowley 8]

I thought we weren't supposed to mention names of players you have problems with on the forums? 

Agree with Alex or not it seems it like you yourselves are creating a witch hunt. 

There has been a lot of shady stuff going on here and I think the way the Elysium/Crestfall/whoever staff is handling the situation says a lot about the heart of the project.

[smokeit 26]

People who follow Alexsensual have mental issues.

[Ickus 40]

Good stuff boys.

[Shadiness 0]

Now wait for Alex to do video about after all his work for Legacy community he's the one to blame..

[AzAMOuS 2]

4 minutes ago, Shadiness said:

Now wait for Alex to do video about after all his work for Legacy community he's the one to blame..

Oh, so much hard work.

[Crowley 8]

In the age of the Internet and instant background checks did Elysium really think they could sneak these people in without questions and consequences? 

People do not change at the core.  A snake is a snake. They associated with snakes.

As far as Alexensual goes, I do agree the refund stuff could've been handled a lot better. At the same time I feel like Elysium found themselves the perfect scapegoat because they know Alex already has a lot of haters. It's an easy shift of focus and blame and you guys are falling for it.

[Haps 1]

1 hour ago, genovaheroo said:

be more agressive towards chinese wtintrading/acc selling mafia and ban them instead of muting the people that report them, because it seems like the GMs dont really care and the playerbase loses their trust in the admins in that way. thank you.

This pretty much.. except it almost seems like instead of caring they are fully aware of it and letting them do their thing because they throw some money at the server or some key people -I am not trying to say this is what is actually happening just that this is an impression I am left with.

They are running anything that can earn yuan in an extremely organized fashion, to me it seems like some simple monitoring of key toons could lead to identifying the entire farm house and after the farm house is identified they can easily be suppressed. It just seems like a lot of long time value for the server community to be gained from some dedicated work.

[Grampagreen 3]

Alexensual is a scrub who makes terrible videos and wants to be important.  Since he is a loser in real life, he tries to make himself important in a virtual world.

I can't believe so many people have so much to complain about on a totally free and volunteer project.  This world is a shitty place, maybe you people should worry about real problems.