About six years ago we, the owners and ARC, began work on the current 2.0 ruleset. There was a ton of work done by everyone. Votes galore, brainstorming, back an forth for years. As we began the ramp up Matt W came in as the Chairperson.
Then, about four years ago, Matt and Jesse decided that 2.0 was not a good system and went to Mike V to veto all the work that had been done up until that point (about two years worth of work). That set of a chain of issues and almost split Alliance at that point. The owners pushed forward with ARC and re-wrote so many items that it delayed 2.0 by 18 months in order to avoid the veto. Yes, 2.0 would have looked a bit different, but it would have been out sooner if not for Matt and Jesse’s interference.
Myself, and many others, were not a fan of the early version of 2.0 that was scheduled to go live without any feedback from players. It was seen as damaging to the future of the game. I felt that one of the most important things we could do was give the player base some input into how the rules were changed, with the added benefit of being able to see how things played out in the game, instead of just on paper. I admit, the way that meeting was handled, as well as the veto talks afterward, was not done well. That could have and should have happened much differently and I apologize for not trying harder to make that happen. Looking back on it, most of the problems seem to have come from the lack of communication between President and owners, which is a lot of what I’ve been trying to solve over the last few weeks.
That interference continued for the next two years as he slowed down the process of changes and organizing. Any perceived threat to power was met with constant roadblocks by Matt. The fact that Jesse only showed up every few months to ask for our chapter dues from the owners and then disappear did not help.
At one point, when approached by ARC to have a discussion, just a discussion, about the possibility of adding a high (very high) level cap in order to facilitate game design into the future and making ARC's life easier, Matt W replied, “I can say as a high level player nothing would drive me away from the game faster then a level cap. I have no interest where advancement can't be made on my character. Of the 12 of GB, my team among a few of those, we would be looking into other larps or perhaps trying to transfer to NERO.” That is who now owns the game, someone who was considering leaving Alliance because the owners brought up the very idea of a level cap, which, as he has the highest level character in Alliance, would definitely affect.
I think that all of us as players have an obligation to do the best things that we can for the game. Personally, I’ve been directly involved with the national organization since 2006. This put me in the unique position of having more access to more owners than most other players. If I didn’t point out something that would negatively impact the experience of other players unnecessarily, I would not have been fulfilling my obligations. Were there better ways for me to express that? Most likely, but I don’t think they would have had the same impact. Cory, you had no players in your chapter that this level cap would have effected, and you have the right to set a local level cap on your game. Why deny dedicated long-standing players the ability to continue to advance and enjoy the game? You once shared with me that your players usually only remain with your game for about 5 years, speaking as someone who has been here 22 years and can't even count on my fingers and toes the number of players I play with that have similar time dedicated to supporting and playing Alliance games, I find it completely unfair to push them aside.
Matt was so opposed to the CMA that he was removed from the project. Due to the continued opposition from Matt over the CMA, it was nearly scrapped due to the sheer frustration that Chris and the other programmers were experiencing from dealing with Matt. It was only through the dedication of the Tech Committee and the motivation of the owners with their support that it proceeded and went live.
Currently, the CMA license is with Mike V, not with Matt. One of Alliance's biggest hurdles is going to be figuring out if they are going to continue using it or go back to MS Access. We hope they come back to the neogotiation table so as to remove the pain that will be caused by converting Alliance back to MS Access.
There was a lot of discussion that went on regarding the CMA. For me, it boiled down to two issues. My first concern was the monetary value the CMA was estimated to be worth. When we got into discussions about it, I had conversations with a few software companies about the cost to develop this software and was given significantly lower costs than what we were getting from Chris. The bylaws have a strict money to dragon stamp conversion rate. It was very important to make sure that the value of dragon stamps for everyone as a reward system was preserved. We negotiated a bit and I feel in the end we met in the middle and this problem was resolved. I think that was one of the reasons why Chris was upset, but he can probably speak to that better than myself, and I hope that he feels that he can join in the conversation here.
My bigger concern with the CMA was one that is coming true right now. The contract written up did not protect the future of the Alliance. I brought this up with Jesse a few times as a major concern (Long before I even had thoughts about buying the game.). The contract does not transfer and does not allow anyone other than Mike V to use it. That puts us in a difficult spot, we are negotiating now with the CMA creators in an attempt to keep it. Even if the talks fail, we will not be moving back to MSAccess. There will be another CMA/online program to fill that gap, one owned by Alliance and one that will stay with it no matter who runs the organization in the future.
Matt was fired as the Chairperson by 63% of the ownership in May for his constant confrontations, his lack of actually doing his job (which was to coordinate committees, post votes up and moderate the owner’s forum).
He constantly delayed posting votes that owners or ARC proposed if he found the content of them upsetting to him, and only after he was confronted by the owners about the lack of leadership for the committees did he attempt to do something about them, after letting them flounder without direction for months. We wanted to remove the Dragonstamp committee so the owners could just reward them like we do goblin stamps. But Matt was against this because it would remove his co-owner, Dave from getting his plethora of monthly DS for doing virtually nothing.
As General Manager it was my job to assign people to committees and pass information between owners and committee members. The requests and direction of tasks they should be focused on come from owners. There was very little direction given from ownership and plenty of disagreement about which direction they should go. Both of these things went a long way toward holding up that process.
Removing the dragon stamp committee was fine with me, it was a committee overseen by Chris, as CTO, not one that I had any say in. My issue with your request to remove this committee was the way you demanded it be done, and how you treated Chris when he said he didn’t have time to work on implementing that function in the CMA as he had other items that were prioritized for development, because they were more player facing and would see more use.
After he left, there was another blow up with the owners and Mike V about the Player’s Guide. The owners never received it and after much confusion and anger did we find out that Mike V never received the Diversity Committee’s notes on the PG that was supposed to be sent to him by Matt. On top of that, Mike V had sent the edited Player’s Guide to Matt, who never passed it along to the owners.
I am not sure where this information came from, but it is incorrect. There has been a lot of things that have been thrown around about things I did or didn’t do, but this one really upsets me. I'm sorry that information got passed around, but things like this are a major reason I made this post open, so we can talk and clear up these rumors. I've attached a PDF of the emails between myself and Mike V. If anyone (especially
@Krystina F ) has any follow-up questions about anything in there, please let me know, either here or privately if you prefer.
Related to this, I want to share something that Mike V shared with me. He made it very clear that the rule book (and later players guide) were his, period, and not something to be decided by committee. I’ve already expressed my intentions to clean up the issues that the diversity committee found, as well as the many inconsistencies and issues in the rule book.