Well, I'm kinda done here. This community was fun as hell nearly three years ago when I first joined, there were smart people worth talking to, legitimate discussions, and at least something to actually do and discuss. Then all this Jagex shit happened, and while in several ways the community changed for the better, it got a lot worse in plenty of others. Oh and on that note, regarding the whole "omg the community's dying" panic mode thing that's caught on among some of the more impressionable, there's not one entity or group you can blame anything on, it just got big, got a ton of people (plenty of stupid people included) checking it out, then died off development-wise, which sort of caused the community to peak and die down. That last bit is entirely on Jagex's head, but everything else is just natural, no push for .76 or anything would fix that. Some people just get bored.
Eventually a good chunk of the cool people realized that the game was over, so they packed up and left, leaving the newer people behind with the morons to look up to. Said morons pretty much embraced their own stupidity, and with a lack of active moderation on here, pretty much everything devolved into shitposts, forced jokes, and circlejerks. And if you try and say something about it, they just keep up their oh-so-funny rhetoric they borrowed off of /b/ and carry on acting like jackasses. You can probably see said jackasses down below in the replies trying to be witty by saying "k", "tl;dr", or something along the lines of calling me a drama queen. Well rest assured, I'm not typing this to garner sympathy or incite change or to have people beg for me back or whatever you'd like to think, this is pretty much a giant self-serving blog post.
It's a shame too, this was one of the first Internet communities I actually liked being a part of. The old days were fun, back when it was fun to fuck with the srs bsns people, the game was still in development (and being developed by people who gave a shit about it) and the whole "ironic" shitposting thing hadn't really caught on yet. Probably some of the most fun times I've ever had online was with RoT, ruining everyone else's fun at our expense, getting on the GBL three times (two of which were BS, the other being for "Extreme Griefing" which I just love), helping to drive off CocoSmackdown twice from the community, and just basic all-around debauchery. One of my few regrets is that we never wound up getting RoT back together for some griefing like we all had planned a little over a year ago, unfortunately DE's autism-level IRC stalking crippled those plans, and even then it was too late, the game was garbage. Even on the other side, I enjoyed administrating on Minit and the other servers, it was fun (before it got weighed down by bureaucracy and red tape and basically taken over), and it was nice to actually give back to the community in a slight way.
But yeah. It sucks now, nobody cares enough to fix shit, so I'm out, later. Add me on Steam or whatever if you wanna play some games any time, I'll probably keep griefing 1.0 until they ban me.
-ReubenMcHawk
Co-founder of RoT, Swaglord of AoS (we started the whole "swag" thing btw, it's overused now)
Shoutz 2:
The best (and second-longest-lasting) clan ever RoT, specifically "fallen" (to the horrors of real life) / missing members Kanye, Arti, Hitler, Khan, Shadow, Boss, Devas, WoggleGoo, Jake, Devas, Thunderstorm, Galaxy, TRA, Pulchy I guess (even though he's a deserter scrub who treats us like a disease now :D) and Crow, as well as longtime fellow members That_Guy and EldredChandler (aka my alt)
Most of the old forum staff, tGM specifically, for getting royally fucked by Jagex the same way you did us. RoT in Hell, suckers. (Stack being an exception, he got a lot cooler once the Jagex thing happened, and dan's always been chill <3)
Hell, tGM especially, because if it wasn't for him snitching to the Quakenet ops and getting our channels g-lined from their network for good, we'd have never started up the RoT network, which now hosts several of the community's channels. We'd probably be dead if it wasn't for you. :)
Ben: Thanks for making this game. Without it I wouldn't have all these memories, made all these cool friends, and I'd probably still be stuck on /b/ or something. Jagex did you dirty, but I hope one day you can roll back around and chat.
DE: I actually miss you, we were cool toward the end, and you were at least a formidable "opponent" back in the day. I'd say I wish you were still around, but I really don't wish that on anyone.
That_Guy: You're pretty much the only one who's been around RoT the whole time. I send you well wishes and hope that you succeed in keeping the minorities out of your country.
EldredChandler: I'm glad we managed to pull you over to "the dark side".
mikuli: You were one of the few staff members to stick up for us back when our subsection was on death row. Even though it wound up getting deleted later on (for an even dumber reason) you're still a good dude.
Rambo: You were our first moron, though you were at least a fun one. It would be nice to chat again someday, despite all the jokes you're a great guitarist, I still listen to Faggot Blues from time to time.
SpaceVixen: You just suck.
Mehrunes: You're a weird fuck, but a great artist.
Komrades: Thanks for not being scrubs like the rest of the clans. <3 u korakocks
SPQR: With the exception of the few of you that I can stand talking to, that second paragraph mostly refers to you. Try throwing a few brain cells into thinking on how this makes you look, both as individuals and as a group, instead of the whole "haters make me famous" attitude. Especially if you hold a leadership position in the clan or on the forums, it just makes everyone look bad. A lot of people thought of you guys as the idiot clan back when you had rambo and Linkters and the like in it, and I really hoped things would improve from that, but aside from not accepting blatant and "repenting" cheaters, not many people feel differently these days. (As for the LINES folks, I never had any real issue with anyone in there so I didn't feel like including you, but still.)
P.S. I'm not quitting IRC or dropping completely off the face of the earth or anything, just not gonna be on the forums. I'll still be around talking shit on everyone in private backchannels like usual.
