The story thus far:   Motivated by a disagreement within the DPS Leagues management,  RyanSTO and Felisean deleted the chat channels for the leagues 7000+ members without cause.  Within minutes RyanSTO posted an announcement that they were reorganizing the Leagues on the primary game forums.  It didn’t take long for the name calling to start, and in short order the forum announcement was shut down by the mods.

Invites to the new channels came out quickly, as did the reinstatement of the original channels.

What we have confirmed so far: RyanSTO and Felisean were acting on their own, without cause.  The root of the argument stems from a decision to reset the scores on the official DPS tables.  This was further complicated when it was revealed that some scores were the result of, while not against the rules, techniques that could not be replicated on Holodeck.

I should point out now that I was approached with this story several weeks ago, and that at the time the complaint was that ‘they’ were cheating.  My response to the email was that the DPS leagues had no official position on the matter, so while bogus, it technically was not cheating, and not worth calling out.  I may have been wrong for not following up on it.

At the end of the day, yesterday’s DPS drama clear attempt by a few disgruntled members of the DPS admin crew to take control of the league to protect their high-scores.

So… who’s right? Who’s wrong?  DPS-Numbers VS DPS-Metal

Since RyanSTO’s posting we’ve had a chance to review the discussions held by the DPS admins.  It’s clear that a few people took advantage of that discussion to co-opt the entire league.

Regardless of the motivation, what RyanSTO and Felisean did was inappropriate and under-handed.  It does not represent the good intentions of the DPS Leagues or the shared values of Star Trek player almuni in general.  It was cheap.  It was puerile.  And it created an even bigger problem for the game by exasperating the perception that the DPS Leagues are are a bunch of self-indulgent idiots.

It’s in that perception that RyanSTO and Felisean have hurt the game.  The resulting name calling and vandalism (DPS website is down at the time of this posting) was completely unwarranted.

Could I be wrong?  Is there something more to this?  We’ve heard nothing as of 3 pm PST from either person.  What occurred yesterday seems totally out of character for RyanSTO, but I do not know him well.  Porch, I feel comfortable in saying, is someone I trust and Sarcasm is someone I’d like to get drunk with 😉

So I am very much on the side of Porch AND Sarcasm on this issue.

Next Issue – CLR: is it safe?

One of my earliest complaints was using a new parser was it’s source.  While I get the people involved are all decent people, the actions of the 2 rogue admins leaves me with a very wary feeling.  If deleting the channels of 7000+ people was done without consent, what else are they capable of?

At the moment I am disabling CLR until I get something from it’s creator on his stand regarding this issue.  I would recommend you do the same.

So as players what should we do?  For me, I’m staying in DPS-10K and others as they are reinstated.  I trust these admins (good and grumpy), and I feel confident that they have our best interests at heart.  I encourage you to do the same.

Full Disclosure:  If you been a reader of my posts you know that I have a love/hate relationship with the DPS Leagues.  I’ve butted heads with Sarcasm Detector publically over perceptions of abuse, while at the same time I have been an active member since the beginning.   Porch recruited me in week one.   With the Arrival of Delta Rising and great player migration  – the DPS leagues have for many of us been the one last consistent group where we could run STF’s effectively.  That relationship has been rocky for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day THEY want to see the game succeed.