Palem,

i took me some time to reflect before i could respond to you. I will endeavour to be completely honest, because if you detect a hint of insincerity, correspondence is pointless.

Your basic point is that I should not lecture my opponents on stopping smacktalk because it makes them feel like garbage, they feel FREE is "holier than thou" and hypocritical. To make us stop this behaviour is the reason why you raze into our wars.

I generally only like singleplayer or coop games. I started Utopia and Starcraft in ~2000 and while i liked the aspect of meeting people, cracking hard problems and being in tough situations with friends, i absolutely hated the furious assaults on my dignity by smacktalkers. In utopia, i hated the vile romanians and HaLL swedes who would destroy my KD while crosslogging and scripting and farming, and acting like they were better. I hate losing to people, esp to people i know. I avoided most MMOs and competitive online games because I cannot stomach people who add insult to injury. I only played starcraft because i achieved a level of ability that made me feel secure in winning/losing (and i would generally play 2v2) and Utopia for much the same reason.

My goal is to make people stop smacktalking. I reject that its a normal practice and because-many-do-it-it-must-be-fine. I want it to stop, I want to end it. My own KDmates are strictly forbidden to behave like assholes and I will publicly reprimand them if they do so. I want people to win with grace and lose with dignity.

I cannot let go of this goal. It is ingrained. I am a severe person, and I think people reap what they sow, so when your KDmates - despite whatever intentions there might have been - did their smacktalk, I felt justified writing the posts that I did. Meeni/Osaze were just bullying. I felt I kept the gloaty part incredibly mild. I followed my own creed, and tried to abstain from big rubbing-it-in-cermonies.

You will have noticed that a lot of posters on the forum agree with this - "first nightmare smacktalked, then free won, then free smacktalked" - this is the gist of many a post. I dont agree that we smacktalked back but you can see that just like you claim there are many KDs out there who can't abide by our behaviour, so are there many out there who think what transgressed is completely fine and unworthy of scrutiny. You try to justify your actions by referring to others who feel the same way, but if you look at the forums, most people who go beyond the 12-yr-old-hes-a-mod-blah-blah and comment on the actual events seem to agree with me that nothing razeworthy has gone down between our KDs. Im not a fan of ad populum arguments (theyre a logical fallacy after all) but if we enumerate all the pro and con posts, I doubt you'll come out ahead.

If you say that me reprimanding KDs for their thuggish behaviour ruins their experience, then I can tell you that smacktalking from winning opponents has most certainly a stronger effect. Recently I heard of a LoL player who had to work hard to keep his friends interested in the game because they were presented with so much vitriol that they didn't feel it was worth their time. I think a post from a winning opponent asking the defeated ones to be nicer in the future is much less a crime than a post from a winning opponent laughing at and deriding the loser. Maybe we can agree to disagree here.

I concede one point, and this was also reflected in my forumapology. It was pointed out by a KDmate who said: "Peppie you don't disguise your rubbing their face in their own shit mentality nearly as well as you seem to think you do". I use pretty words, full sentences and correct spelling but the message it conveys is equivalent to "lol u nub, stfu and lrn2play, ahahaha". This is what I want to avoid. In your case, I should have accentuated the positives in my post with saying that Smercjd behaved honourably, most of the players were cool, and overall the war was very exciting and interesting. If I had done a bit of give and take rather than a full take, this conflict might have been avoided.

So this is what I can try to do better, also because it aligns with my own goal to promote civility in competition (instead of putting people on the defensive). I can apply more diplomacy to the chastising, to soften the impact and to better get the point across and reduce the amount of hurts on butts. I cannot however abandon my creed.

You say you are interested in resolution. I can offer the following: I make a new thread in Utopia Talk with apologies, that you can proofread before posting

In return you stop your raze campaign. Is that fair?

- pep