And the devs were even worse so than the admins
That was always the issue right there, the fact that a little bit of coding knowledge combined with giving e-blowies to the right people could land you an admin/item balancer position never made any sense to me. That's like me interviewing for an engineering position at GE and since I complimented the interviewer's tie and have a firm enough handshake I'm immediately promoted to CEO or VP of the company. A little bit of engineering knowledge doesn't mean I have any business knowhow or any other knowledge required to actually do that job, and yet that's what crpg has been doing since its inception. Take Tydeus, for example. The dude knew how to edit animations and code and shit, so they gave him the keys to kingdom. Sure, he was good enough at coding and such, but obviously he sucked ass as a balancer, and did a questionable-at-best job as an admin (jk he was pretty much corrupt af). I never understood why we couldn't have separate people on the balancing team: those that actually had a good sense of the game and knew what would make it as fun for all as possible that only did "balancing" by tweaking item values/character stats/deciding on whether or not any animations needed tweaking/etc. (the balancers/advisers), and those that would implement the changes requested by the balancers to the best of their ability (the coders/devs).
Now while I realize that in order for balancers to have access to all the tools to do their job they had to be given admin rights in-game, that is no reason why they were allowed to use those powers to police the game or actively patrol the forums. Because there was never a distinction between admin, item balancer, and coder/dev, we've had devs who are shit admins, balancers (who should be nothing more than devs) be shit admins, and shit admins try to be balancers. Looking at the more controversial admins, they are almost always devs/balancers first, admins second. Bronto, SP1N, Hungry, Granpappy, James, and plenty more that I'm forgetting (and all the EU ones, if there were any), crpg has had plenty of good or at least acceptable admins over the years who were
only admins. I'd argue that Sparvico too is a fine admin that only recently is shown in a more negative light since let's face it, the community probably deserves what it's been getting. Now if we list the names of balancers/devs who became admins for no reason... Tydeus, Dupre, Horns (and cmp too, tbh, although at least he had more of an excuse for being able to do w.e. the fuck he wanted)... well, they've all made some of the more questionable decisions, to say the least.
Crpg has never had the distinct roles that it needed, and instead the community is expected to suck the dick of some undeserving, power-tripping sperg with a couple of credits in compsci classes. Crpg has always had this problem, and we can only expect the us vs. them mentality of the community (and all-around shitty decision making from up top) to continue until the end of this mod's life unless some of the few people in the oligarchy actually realize that this is an issue chipping away at the mod's lifespan and give up some of their power during a restructuring of things (lol yeah right).
