Firstly, I'd like to say thanks to all parties that were involved in hastily correcting this issue. I'd also like to say thanks to all those that supported reason. I am glad that we were able to fix this without massive destruction to any foundations to the community, and even equally pleased that this did not turn into another one of those horror stories you might read about elsewhere. Below is my letter I sent to the Customer Service Manager of SOE and her most polite, quick, and sincere reply. But in short, the Tetragrammaton is back, and things will be changing for the better.
My message:
Hello. I was told that this is the email for a supervisor from Sony Online Entertainment. I am a customer and long time player of a game that is somewaht new to your company called The Matrix Online. I like to think of myself as a firm supporter of the game, its developers, and most importantly its community. I even won an official contest (MxO's Ad Contest) and was very delighted at such an opportunity to have my work displayed in-game as a fictitious advertisement.
More recently, however, I feel as if my pride in the community has been shaken by a certain oppression that seems most abstractly wrong and cruel. I trust in your company to provide me with the experiences I pay for, and let me not delay in presenting the matter more by saying that, in the past, Customer Service has resolved some troublesome issues I had that prevented me from enjoying the game. Yet now, Mr. Daniel Binter, your leading CSR as I am told, has enacted and judged upon a matter that's totally unproportioned and unfair.
You see, on November the 7th, 2006, he changed the name of the "faction" (Guild/Clan/Etc) that I am currently in from "The Tetragrammaton" to "The Rename." At first, all of our members were very disturbed and confused, for we did not know a CSR changed it. We hastily toiled to reform the faction under the name of "The Tetragrammaton" once again. We /ccr'd the issue, thinking it was a bug caused after the post-Halloween patch, and were told that the name was a violation of the naming policy.
Now, let me explain to you that this faction has been a part of this game, the Matrix Online, for more than two years. Its leader, Beachhead, a most respected member of the community, founded the faction during the Matrix Online's Beta and it has since received much attention. When it was created, the name was inspired by another fictitious order from a movie called "Equilibrium" which followed the trend of the Matrix in style and some political viewpoints. The Tetragrammaton was a mechanized civilization without emotion thanks to special drugs. A sort of Orwell society, if you understand my meaning. In no way did we intend for the name to spark religious reference, and all of us had no idea that it was a name for four letters that, when put together, mean "God."
You can view a little about our large faction here on a domain that Beachhead pays for out of his own pocket for us all: http://thetetragrammaton.com/
We tried to explain our position to Daniel Binter, AKA Brewko, but he would not have any of it and said that he founded all of his purposes and designs in a "policy" that goes against the very logic of the game and its storyline itself. His ultimatum was that Beachhead change the name of the faction or his account would be banned.
There's great irony to be had here. The rule that Daniel Binter drew most of his most harming judgements from was this:
"3. Names of religious, occult, or significant historic origin (e.g. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Stalin, Angel, Devil, Demon)."
Personally, this is most laughable. You will find that perhaps more than half of the factions in this game have religious underlining, and a quarter go all out and have such words as "Angels" and "Demons" within them. Whereas our name, the Tetragrammaton, such an insanely obscure reference to four letters (Ergo, not another word for what the four letters mean, just the group of the four letters themselves), that, when assembled together, is an incredibly old term for "God," gets changed WITHOUT NOTICE and this change is enforced by brute tactics.
This entire game, the Matrix Online, is filled with religious metaphors. Main characters are named Seraph, the Merovingian, Rama-Kandra. Enemies that we face in-game are called "The Demon Army" or "The Demon Legion." Many of the locations in-game hold religious meaning. Even one of the developers, not to be a tattle-tale but to prove a point, calls himself Dracomet which is, obscurely, a name for a symbol of Satanic origin. I believe our name was targetted because of a grudge a certain player might have against our faction, and therefore affronted Brewko about our name and have thus caused a great majority to be harmed and appalled.
We've been recognized countless of times officially in the last 2 years by the developers and by the writer of the game's storyline, Paul Chadwick, as a positive presence and a faction that means well for everyone wishing to play the game.
As you can see, changing the name will be difficult for us because of all of the things we are attached to. Moreover, why was such a judgement not made clear to us as soon as possible 2 years ago? Indeed, this will make many reconsider their purchase of the game, and that will be extremely unfortunate. Is there anything you can do to help us? Because I find this action against we the players to be very out-of-line and unfair.
It's now 1:04AM on a Wednesday, and I hope my words will not go unseen.
Thank you for reading,
David XXXX (Sykin of the Matrix Online, Syntax Server)
The reply:
Hello, David;
Thanks for your patience while I looked into your issue.
First I wanted to clarify that the naming policy is as was stated to you by Dan is our current naming policy; the problem being is that we have been rather lax on enforcing it as you correctly pointed out.
One of our other problems is the lack of an ability to see when a faction was created, and as such decisions to change names are often made without this pertinent information. Most of the time bad names are reported quite quickly after creation, and we rely on members of the community to alert us to the more disturbing of such early on.
In your case while your faction name was well known to our community teams you had obviously been behaving yourselves within the Matrix as the name hadn't alerted anyone here
Also, your name isn't one that immediately leaps out as religious because of its obscurity, and as such could have been and was ignored for many months.
Dan was following instructions from his supervisor who made the correct decision, given the facts presented at the time, to change your faction's name. However, after discussions this morning we are all in agreement that our system is not working as well as it should when it comes to issues such as yours with the time lapse from creation. We have therefore devised a better way for handling such, and apologize for the inconvenience caused to your faction and leader, but by the same token thank you for pointing out the flaw so that we could correct it. We can not do better if we do not admit and learn from our mistakes. Dan has made sure he changed the name back for you this morning.
I do need to ask you now though to please ask all of your faction members to cease petitioning all the other faction names they see that have Angel or Demon and so on within them While I understand their frustration this is not the best way to get the issue resolved, and I hope you see that a calm e-mail such as yours is the route to take.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with, and again I thank you for your support of all things Matrix Online.
Kindly,
Sharon Morris
Customer Service Manager
Star Wars Galaxies/Planetside/Matrix Online
www.station.sony.com
My message:
Hello. I was told that this is the email for a supervisor from Sony Online Entertainment. I am a customer and long time player of a game that is somewaht new to your company called The Matrix Online. I like to think of myself as a firm supporter of the game, its developers, and most importantly its community. I even won an official contest (MxO's Ad Contest) and was very delighted at such an opportunity to have my work displayed in-game as a fictitious advertisement.
More recently, however, I feel as if my pride in the community has been shaken by a certain oppression that seems most abstractly wrong and cruel. I trust in your company to provide me with the experiences I pay for, and let me not delay in presenting the matter more by saying that, in the past, Customer Service has resolved some troublesome issues I had that prevented me from enjoying the game. Yet now, Mr. Daniel Binter, your leading CSR as I am told, has enacted and judged upon a matter that's totally unproportioned and unfair.
You see, on November the 7th, 2006, he changed the name of the "faction" (Guild/Clan/Etc) that I am currently in from "The Tetragrammaton" to "The Rename." At first, all of our members were very disturbed and confused, for we did not know a CSR changed it. We hastily toiled to reform the faction under the name of "The Tetragrammaton" once again. We /ccr'd the issue, thinking it was a bug caused after the post-Halloween patch, and were told that the name was a violation of the naming policy.
Now, let me explain to you that this faction has been a part of this game, the Matrix Online, for more than two years. Its leader, Beachhead, a most respected member of the community, founded the faction during the Matrix Online's Beta and it has since received much attention. When it was created, the name was inspired by another fictitious order from a movie called "Equilibrium" which followed the trend of the Matrix in style and some political viewpoints. The Tetragrammaton was a mechanized civilization without emotion thanks to special drugs. A sort of Orwell society, if you understand my meaning. In no way did we intend for the name to spark religious reference, and all of us had no idea that it was a name for four letters that, when put together, mean "God."
You can view a little about our large faction here on a domain that Beachhead pays for out of his own pocket for us all: http://thetetragrammaton.com/
We tried to explain our position to Daniel Binter, AKA Brewko, but he would not have any of it and said that he founded all of his purposes and designs in a "policy" that goes against the very logic of the game and its storyline itself. His ultimatum was that Beachhead change the name of the faction or his account would be banned.
There's great irony to be had here. The rule that Daniel Binter drew most of his most harming judgements from was this:
"3. Names of religious, occult, or significant historic origin (e.g. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Stalin, Angel, Devil, Demon)."
Personally, this is most laughable. You will find that perhaps more than half of the factions in this game have religious underlining, and a quarter go all out and have such words as "Angels" and "Demons" within them. Whereas our name, the Tetragrammaton, such an insanely obscure reference to four letters (Ergo, not another word for what the four letters mean, just the group of the four letters themselves), that, when assembled together, is an incredibly old term for "God," gets changed WITHOUT NOTICE and this change is enforced by brute tactics.
This entire game, the Matrix Online, is filled with religious metaphors. Main characters are named Seraph, the Merovingian, Rama-Kandra. Enemies that we face in-game are called "The Demon Army" or "The Demon Legion." Many of the locations in-game hold religious meaning. Even one of the developers, not to be a tattle-tale but to prove a point, calls himself Dracomet which is, obscurely, a name for a symbol of Satanic origin. I believe our name was targetted because of a grudge a certain player might have against our faction, and therefore affronted Brewko about our name and have thus caused a great majority to be harmed and appalled.
We've been recognized countless of times officially in the last 2 years by the developers and by the writer of the game's storyline, Paul Chadwick, as a positive presence and a faction that means well for everyone wishing to play the game.
As you can see, changing the name will be difficult for us because of all of the things we are attached to. Moreover, why was such a judgement not made clear to us as soon as possible 2 years ago? Indeed, this will make many reconsider their purchase of the game, and that will be extremely unfortunate. Is there anything you can do to help us? Because I find this action against we the players to be very out-of-line and unfair.
It's now 1:04AM on a Wednesday, and I hope my words will not go unseen.
Thank you for reading,
David XXXX (Sykin of the Matrix Online, Syntax Server)
The reply:
Hello, David;
Thanks for your patience while I looked into your issue.
First I wanted to clarify that the naming policy is as was stated to you by Dan is our current naming policy; the problem being is that we have been rather lax on enforcing it as you correctly pointed out.
One of our other problems is the lack of an ability to see when a faction was created, and as such decisions to change names are often made without this pertinent information. Most of the time bad names are reported quite quickly after creation, and we rely on members of the community to alert us to the more disturbing of such early on.
In your case while your faction name was well known to our community teams you had obviously been behaving yourselves within the Matrix as the name hadn't alerted anyone here
Also, your name isn't one that immediately leaps out as religious because of its obscurity, and as such could have been and was ignored for many months.Dan was following instructions from his supervisor who made the correct decision, given the facts presented at the time, to change your faction's name. However, after discussions this morning we are all in agreement that our system is not working as well as it should when it comes to issues such as yours with the time lapse from creation. We have therefore devised a better way for handling such, and apologize for the inconvenience caused to your faction and leader, but by the same token thank you for pointing out the flaw so that we could correct it. We can not do better if we do not admit and learn from our mistakes. Dan has made sure he changed the name back for you this morning.
I do need to ask you now though to please ask all of your faction members to cease petitioning all the other faction names they see that have Angel or Demon and so on within them
While I understand their frustration this is not the best way to get the issue resolved, and I hope you see that a calm e-mail such as yours is the route to take.Please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with, and again I thank you for your support of all things Matrix Online.
Kindly,
Sharon Morris
Customer Service Manager
Star Wars Galaxies/Planetside/Matrix Online
www.station.sony.com
D 