Hello everyone. I am not upset at any players who have commented on this thread who are positive about this choice, nor am I worried about the mods who voted.
But to be frank, this situation is anything but legitimate.
You can see Ryan already tried to get ahead of anything I might say, but I will give him what he wants and explain anyway.
There are several instances in which Ryan has abused his position throughout his tenure on Pkh. A couple of key examples include spawning items to put on his personal ironman account and taking items of banned accounts to pay players for services; I would also classify the toxicity he has displayed towards people who have spoken out against it as unfitting for a staff manager.
There are a large number of instances where I have disagreed with Ryan over various matters. However, Ryan's issues with me started when I first learned about these things, sometime around mid to late 2020, and the flavor of our conversations quickly soured. Coupled with his years of being hardly active or involved, I decided to reach out to Rapsey and Mike and request some sort of accountability, including outright demotion.
Ryan will accuse me of just wanting his position for myself, and while I do want to be a staff manager, this is a horribly reductive take on its own. I viewed Ryan as no longer being the best candidate for the job, and recommended Ely, myself, and even folks that are no longer staff members to take over his position based on my perception of their competency. So yeah, I did want his position, but I do not consider it inherently negative to want to move up if it’s for the right reasons, and I have never hidden my intentions.
How does that lead into this current situation?
I was informed by a moderator about some potential rule breaking involving gambling. Given that this is a situation I have almost never dealt with, the very first thing I did was get Ryan and Jayden’s input in discord. I have always preferred to handle things with as much input as possible, arguably to a fault in some situations.
While I waited for them to respond I spoke to one of the players involved and during the course of our short talk he mentioned that one of the people who had participated in the gambling was Ryan himself. At this point I just told this player and the other player involved to not do it again until we could determine how it fully fit into the rules, even specifically telling them that there would be no punishments or confiscation, because I was unsure of what the best way to handle it was until I spoke with others.
The moment Ryan began talking to me about it he began accusing me of "interrogating" the player to try to bring his name into it. Ryan is so anxious about my supposed history of trying to "mutiny" against him that he immediately turned incredibly hostile. There was no attempt to discuss the situation at all as mature adults, he was only concerned with attacking me.
Within 15 minutes or so he said "This is why you will never amount to anything more on PKHonor." But I do not know what "This" is as I had not actually done anything. Even based on his years of whining about me attempting to "mutiny" against him, the last time I spoke to Mike or Rapsey about it was well over a year ago now.
I would say the worst thing he said during this conversation was "You'd divorce your own wife if it meant getting more power on a runescape private server." I understand that we have our differences, but that’s not the kind of phrasing that even comes to mind for me when I want to have a conversation with someone. I’m a human being too, and it’s evident he’s seeing too much red to recognize that.
The conversation went on for a bit longer, and no need to worry about if no one with access to the admin channel of the discord wants to corroborate this, I've gotten used to Ryan’s tirades over the years and I screen recorded the conversation as it went on. Eventually I was tired of listening to this man just say things like "no one even likes you, just resign", calling me a nazi, telling me I've been trying to turn the server against him, all things which have no relevance to the initial conversation nor anything that has actually happened.
So I stopped talking, at about 6 P.M. my time, and attempted to message Rapsey privately for his involvement. The message was admittedly emotional, I asked if Rapsey could just choose me or Ryan and get it over with, even if it meant a demotion.
All things considered I don't think any reasonable person would say that I am due for a demotion. I've done very little that would be cause for more than a "that wasn't the best way to handle it" conversation, and I have been far more active and involved than almost any staff member on average since I initially got mod.
This is the point where Ryan decided to privately message mods, not even all of them, and ask them if I should be demoted. No context, I was not there to defend myself or explain. Like I said, I am not worried about which way the mods voted. How could one be expected to vote fairly without knowing anything? Ryan has a long history of himself trying to turn some members of the staff team against others, and he will no doubt accuse me of doing the same.
The first mod I can remember who discovered any of his wrongdoing was immediately flamed endlessly in my messages by Ryan, when we still were actually friends.
So it is my belief that this vote was initiated out of spite, not due to any actual offense or series of offenses. It's no accident that it happened while I was unable to defend myself, and it's unclear whether it was even discussed all that much, but I will remind you that at least 1 mod was entirely left out, so I doubt it was a very extensive discussion overall.
For context here is a
imgur album with screenshots of the entire conversation. I redacted the names of the players involved, since there was never a discussion of the event I don't think they should have their names involved unless they want to.
My hope is that Ryan will be held accountable in some way, either officially by Mike and Rapsey or by the community. I will answer whatever questions I can.