In Response to Third Eye: Cerce's Suggestions

[CthulhuMan]

ALSO
HelpMe = FunnyCop
I made this one to PM yotta to tell him I can't get on my REALLY real forum account since CthulhuMAN and Third Eye were both banned at the time...

EDIT: Forget this And yes I would love to have my old account back.

[Third Eye]

I love you droid

[Cerce]

I think people liked 2.0 because they knew that they could kill, and would be killed. Here, people know that they should not be killed, and when they are, they get upset. I'll explain more at home - at anti-prom.

[Fourth Eye]

This thread is interesting - I think that a lot of problems have been left out but it's a step in the right direction. I noticed that comments for the minestatus page were again disabled - which seems to be a way to silence negative opinions rather than correct problems. It is alarming that the staff is electing not to listen to the players on the server but instead stick to some amorphous/arbitrary ideas of what "RP" means - plenty of servers have managed to successfully implement RP without being so fascist and irrational. I have seen no server that is so aggressive in silencing the opinions of disastisfied members - through bans, deleting posts and ad-hominem attacks.

Anyway, I doubt this post will last more than an hour before it is deleted but here are my opinions of where the server is going (they have been removed for the 12th time from minestatus) as well as direct proof of the claims:

Code:

I take back most of my previous comments about the server, since the restructuring of the staff and release of revamped the quality of the server has been in rapid decline. If you join the server you should expect to be banned, multiple times. While the server says that thieving and PVP are allowed they are allowed in name only. Any successful theft will be blockchecked by the moderators and your name publicly announced. 90% of the time you will also be accused of xraying, even if you have never installed an xray mod. Similarly PVP is technically permitted but if you consistently attack or engage in combat you will find yourself banned for "non-RP killing." A simple glance at the rules will confirm their arbitrariness - the rules are extremely vague and players have little idea if and when they have been broken.

This does not prevent players from being accused of breaking the rules regularly - players have taken to getting other players banned for a variety of technicallities in order to exact revenge against enemies and rivals on the servers.

To quote a player whose post I recently read on the Suggestions thread "RP should not stand for Rule-Play." Many veteran players are getting annoyed with the frequent bans and electing to leave the server. Some players are even getting banned for potentially being alt accounts for players that quit the server in exasparation.

Generally the server seems to wait until they can milk donations out of a player before having a witch trial and banning them for a crime they didn't commit. One person was banned for being an alt of mine a few days after he became a server donor. I can confirm here that he was never an alternative and he is never going to see his donation money again.

After serving on the staff for a brief period of time I can confirm that most of Kiwike is a facade. The votes and ranking position that you see here are a result of the players being bribed with in-game currency to vote. Players are encouraged to vote multiple times with proxies and other such tools, the staff also participate in these activities.

The staff is unprofessional and often engage in obnoxious conversations with each other in game, drowning out legitimate conversations with their banter and "joke-bans" of each other. They are generally beligerant to players, rarely offering assistance other than to direct confused players to the server website. They frequently teleport to players while in god mode and attack them or discover hidden bases and then later lie about the incidents.

Any player that complains about the rules in banned for "Mod-Disrespect" and told that if they don't like the way things work they can leave. Similar, abeit harsher restrictions are placed on staff members themselves. They are forbidden to speak negatively about the server and proposing too many changes to the way things work or complaining about arbitrary rules and bans can lead to rapid de-modding coupled with elaborate lies about why the staff members were de-modded.

The staff is so concerned that players will jump ship if they find more promising alternative servers that the discussion of other servers is actually forbidden in the rules and numerous players have been banned for mentioning other places where they play minecraft.

If you would like to try out Kiwike Revamped despite the above comments I would offer the following advice:

1) Keep your head down - if you stand out or talk in game, or steal or lead towns or anything noticeable you are more likely to get banned or make enemies who attempt to get you banned

2) Hold on to your donations - the donor tiers are very expensive ($50 to have a single protected chest) and many of the benefits advertised will never become available (when I donated I was told I would get access to Craftbook ICs, that still has not happened a year and a half later). Other benefits are removed or nerfed over time (/home was temporarily removed from donors and then later returned but limited to one-a-day usage). Additionally, very little of the Donation money actually goes in to the server, the administrator consistenly uses it to buy steam games and they openly jokes about it on the server. To make donation matters worse there is a discussion about making the exorbiant donation fees only provide benefits to players for a number of months instead of for life so as to extract even more money from the few people who can be suckered in to paying.

3) Make Appeals for bans - most of the time the moderators seem to ban people just to see how they react. They will generally shorten a ban if you complain about it, however after 3 bans (even if they are 3 unjust bans) you will generally find yourself perma-banned from the server.

Undoubtedly this thread will incite many replies in defense of the server. I know that the last time a negative review was written the staff were ordered to respond in support of kiwike so as to make the review seem inaccurate. Additionally players that "suck-up" to the moderation team tend to get rewarded with fewer bans and other priveleges. The server community is very interesting in that many of the long-time donors continue playing despite the bad quality of the server simply because they don't want to feel like they wasted their time and money joining. When you log on you will notice that almost everyone has a donor tag or has only been on the server for a few weeks. That is because the players that are smart enough not to donate tend to leave the server after their first ban whereas donors appeal in order to try to not feel like their investment was wasted.

Kiwike used to be a great server but recent developments have left me and other players more than a little annoyed.

Code:

I'm done with posting after this unless I discover that my review has mysteriously disappeared again. The moderators certainly are very persuasive when they are making unverifiable claims. Even if they weren't lying about my x-raying that does not change many aspects of this review which are accurate and easily proven. One major problem with kiwike is that they have trouble taking criticism. Users are frequently banned for "Mod-Disrespect" when they complain about arbitrary bans/rules (a quick-glance at the ban list or a few days playing on the server can be enough to verify this one because these bans happen very frequently). Notice that the staff below did not respond to the claims in my review or deny them but instead resorted to an elaborate ad-hominem attack. I cannot prove my honesty any more than the moderators can disprove it with doctored screenshots and elaborate lies however I can prove that a number of aspects of the above review are true and I shall do so below:

***********************************************************************************************
Here are a number of the dozens of threads that confirm that players frequently try to get each other banned for "non-RP killing" most of these threads are the (frequently successful) attempts of players angry that they lost a PVP battle trying to get the winner of that battle banned:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2900
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2991
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2890

To confirm that a number of players have been banned for "non-rp" killing you can also check out the ban list:
http://kiwike.se/banlist.php

The "No talking about other servers rule" is very explicit in the kiwike rules (Rule 8 I believe although the rules were recently rewritten). Here are a few instances I could find with a quick search of the identities of other servers instantly being removed or players getting banned for it:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1582

If you want to confirm further just log in to the server in game and try posting links to other servers or even mentioning them by name. You will be banned or muted for it.

************************************************************************************************
Here is a thread confirming the voting fraud I mentioned. Note that the moderators initially come out in support of the fraud saying "20 GN really isn't a negative effect" (talking about getting free bribes when someone votes in your name):
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2510

To quote one of the server owners in this thread:
"Unless you don't want the gold and would prefer not to vote for the server, I don't see any negative effect here.
The server's virtual economy would be at the same 'risk' whether it was you who voted for yourself that day or somebody else who voted for you.
Of course, the morals of cheating in this way are a different story."

One player asked in the thread:

"Sure, it's good that we're getting higher up because of it. But do we really want to get there by cheating?"

To which a server owner responded:
"If you haven't already realized, that's exactly how other servers go about it."


************************************************************************************************
Copyright issues:
One player backlashed after attempting to remove their posts from the forum and finding they were banned as a result. In the US this violates the DMCA big-time since copyright always belongs to the writer. They also secretly added a sentence to the terms of service saying that they owned any text written on the site and did not notify the players about the change. This change wouldn't matter much except on an RP server people often write substantial works of fiction that they might wish to reuse or publish in other scenarios:
Here is that player:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?mode=linear&tid=2376&pid=33793
Here is a forum thread about the change in terms of service that was on recently discovered:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3036

Note that in the above thread the moderators are entirely unapologetic about the change, just saying "well of course we weren't going to steal your content" but they have consistently ignored takedown requests such as the one Cerce wrote and also this one from me:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2930&pid=41914

*************************************************************************************************

Most of the time Staff Member opinion censorship is hard to find except in game and on the private staff forums. However I was able to find one such thread where a staff member expressed disagreement with the mods and was essentially threatened:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2237&page=41

(It's on Page 41 and starts with Android's post)

The most relevant post from the thread is written by one of the Administrators:
"I asked Hoiafar to stop acting up because he's a staff member, and publicly putting down what a superior says is not what we need them for."

************************************************************************************************
Player censorship however is pretty common in game. Members who complain are often muted and the appeals forum provides a few bits of evidence:
http://kiwike.se/forum/archive/index.php/thread-1254.html
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1778
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1779
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1899
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3004&pid=42603
(Note that mods mock this players sincere apology in this thread, and the player is only apologizing for the ambiguous 'mod disrespect' he was banned for after he complained)

Here is a thread in which I personally expressed my concerns about over moderation, most were dismissed by the staff but supported by the players:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1666

*************************************************************************************************

Here is some proof about the donations issue:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2480
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1015 (note that features like craftbook ICs were never implemented despite the promise and have since been removed from the donation list).

*************************************************************************************************

Anyway that's most of the proof I was able to collect pretty quickly. The real issue is not that kiwike is a bad server as much as that the staff is of the mindset that they should not make an effort to make it better and instead they should ban anyone who is of the opinion that something should change. The reason the server has NEVER hit its slot limit is because too many people get annoyed and leave, no matter how artificially inflated the vote count gets.

Finally, since I know that ad-hominems like the ones from geckosquid below can be pretty persuasive. Here are the threads in which I have consistently proven I did not x-ray on their server. In the final thread I said "If you embarrass me and hurt my chances of getting on another server by falsely banning me for xray again I shall forget about making an appeal and instead just leave the server." I specifically asked that if the moderators thought I had xrayed they consult me first and discuss the violation privately so that I could prove my innocence rather than having a public witch-trial in which my innocence was only confirmed after days of not being about to support my town/guild/friends and my reputation as an xrayer was unjustly increased. The threads are post below, you can make a decision yourself but I will maintain that they contain sufficient proof that I did not use xray mod and that a similar appeal on my last ban would have had the same effect:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2576
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1542
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2634

I have wasted way too much time proving a point that is really self apparent. Some people will join kiwike and love it, it's a great server in many respects. Some will join kiwike and leave it because of the reasons above. The review is my personal opinions of the server and my personal advice that you should look elsewhere. Take it or leave it, you are probably intelligent enough to make your own decisions and this whole thing between me and kiwike is starting to get out of hand with photoshopped screenshots of posts, last minute edits and other things. I will take this review down and advise people to join the server once more the moment the moderators recognize the validity of the above claims and take an attitude of "we will do our best to fix these problems" instead of "you are only pointing out these issues because you got banned so we will ignore them."

[Cerce]

This thread is interesting - I think that a lot of problems have been left out but it's a step in the right direction. I noticed that comments for the minestatus page were again disabled - which seems to be a way to silence negative opinions rather than correct problems. It is alarming that the staff is electing not to listen to the players on the server but instead stick to some amorphous/arbitrary ideas of what "RP" means - plenty of servers have managed to successfully implement RP without being so fascist and irrational. I have seen no server that is so aggressive in silencing the opinions of disastisfied members - through bans, deleting posts and ad-hominem attacks.

Spelling error.

It can't be Pavja.

[Sebiale]

Pavja must have no life . . .

I agree. I loved 2.0.

It isn't what I had in mind but these should help. In my opinion I would LOVE to go back to the old days of kiwike, but I doubt others will think similarly. But a lot of things should be fixed.

I'd prefer NOT to go back to living in a hole in the ground.

I think people liked 2.0 because they knew that they could kill, and would be killed. Here, people know that they should not be killed, and when they are, they get upset. I'll explain more at home - at anti-prom.

An . . . anti-prom? wut?

[Cerce]

Well, I figured I could have a lot more fun with less money than if I were to go to Prom, listen to bad music, eat bad food, and dance next to people who were there for the wrong reasons. So, instead, me and a couple of friends pitched in, bought pizza, pop, movies, etc. and just enjoyed ourselves.

[geckosquid]

This thread is interesting - I think that a lot of problems have been left out but it's a step in the right direction. I noticed that comments for the minestatus page were again disabled - which seems to be a way to silence negative opinions rather than correct problems. It is alarming that the staff is electing not to listen to the players on the server but instead stick to some amorphous/arbitrary ideas of what "RP" means - plenty of servers have managed to successfully implement RP without being so fascist and irrational. I have seen no server that is so aggressive in silencing the opinions of disastisfied members - through bans, deleting posts and ad-hominem attacks.

Anyway, I doubt this post will last more than an hour before it is deleted but here are my opinions of where the server is going (they have been removed for the 12th time from minestatus) as well as direct proof of the claims:

Code:

I take back most of my previous comments about the server, since the restructuring of the staff and release of revamped the quality of the server has been in rapid decline. If you join the server you should expect to be banned, multiple times. While the server says that thieving and PVP are allowed they are allowed in name only. Any successful theft will be blockchecked by the moderators and your name publicly announced. 90% of the time you will also be accused of xraying, even if you have never installed an xray mod. Similarly PVP is technically permitted but if you consistently attack or engage in combat you will find yourself banned for "non-RP killing." A simple glance at the rules will confirm their arbitrariness - the rules are extremely vague and players have little idea if and when they have been broken.

This does not prevent players from being accused of breaking the rules regularly - players have taken to getting other players banned for a variety of technicallities in order to exact revenge against enemies and rivals on the servers.

To quote a player whose post I recently read on the Suggestions thread "RP should not stand for Rule-Play." Many veteran players are getting annoyed with the frequent bans and electing to leave the server. Some players are even getting banned for potentially being alt accounts for players that quit the server in exasparation.

Generally the server seems to wait until they can milk donations out of a player before having a witch trial and banning them for a crime they didn't commit. One person was banned for being an alt of mine a few days after he became a server donor. I can confirm here that he was never an alternative and he is never going to see his donation money again.

After serving on the staff for a brief period of time I can confirm that most of Kiwike is a facade. The votes and ranking position that you see here are a result of the players being bribed with in-game currency to vote. Players are encouraged to vote multiple times with proxies and other such tools, the staff also participate in these activities.

The staff is unprofessional and often engage in obnoxious conversations with each other in game, drowning out legitimate conversations with their banter and "joke-bans" of each other. They are generally beligerant to players, rarely offering assistance other than to direct confused players to the server website. They frequently teleport to players while in god mode and attack them or discover hidden bases and then later lie about the incidents.

Any player that complains about the rules in banned for "Mod-Disrespect" and told that if they don't like the way things work they can leave. Similar, abeit harsher restrictions are placed on staff members themselves. They are forbidden to speak negatively about the server and proposing too many changes to the way things work or complaining about arbitrary rules and bans can lead to rapid de-modding coupled with elaborate lies about why the staff members were de-modded.

The staff is so concerned that players will jump ship if they find more promising alternative servers that the discussion of other servers is actually forbidden in the rules and numerous players have been banned for mentioning other places where they play minecraft.

If you would like to try out Kiwike Revamped despite the above comments I would offer the following advice:

1) Keep your head down - if you stand out or talk in game, or steal or lead towns or anything noticeable you are more likely to get banned or make enemies who attempt to get you banned

2) Hold on to your donations - the donor tiers are very expensive ($50 to have a single protected chest) and many of the benefits advertised will never become available (when I donated I was told I would get access to Craftbook ICs, that still has not happened a year and a half later). Other benefits are removed or nerfed over time (/home was temporarily removed from donors and then later returned but limited to one-a-day usage). Additionally, very little of the Donation money actually goes in to the server, the administrator consistenly uses it to buy steam games and they openly jokes about it on the server. To make donation matters worse there is a discussion about making the exorbiant donation fees only provide benefits to players for a number of months instead of for life so as to extract even more money from the few people who can be suckered in to paying.

3) Make Appeals for bans - most of the time the moderators seem to ban people just to see how they react. They will generally shorten a ban if you complain about it, however after 3 bans (even if they are 3 unjust bans) you will generally find yourself perma-banned from the server.

Undoubtedly this thread will incite many replies in defense of the server. I know that the last time a negative review was written the staff were ordered to respond in support of kiwike so as to make the review seem inaccurate. Additionally players that "suck-up" to the moderation team tend to get rewarded with fewer bans and other priveleges. The server community is very interesting in that many of the long-time donors continue playing despite the bad quality of the server simply because they don't want to feel like they wasted their time and money joining. When you log on you will notice that almost everyone has a donor tag or has only been on the server for a few weeks. That is because the players that are smart enough not to donate tend to leave the server after their first ban whereas donors appeal in order to try to not feel like their investment was wasted.

Kiwike used to be a great server but recent developments have left me and other players more than a little annoyed.

Code:

I'm done with posting after this unless I discover that my review has mysteriously disappeared again. The moderators certainly are very persuasive when they are making unverifiable claims. Even if they weren't lying about my x-raying that does not change many aspects of this review which are accurate and easily proven. One major problem with kiwike is that they have trouble taking criticism. Users are frequently banned for "Mod-Disrespect" when they complain about arbitrary bans/rules (a quick-glance at the ban list or a few days playing on the server can be enough to verify this one because these bans happen very frequently). Notice that the staff below did not respond to the claims in my review or deny them but instead resorted to an elaborate ad-hominem attack. I cannot prove my honesty any more than the moderators can disprove it with doctored screenshots and elaborate lies however I can prove that a number of aspects of the above review are true and I shall do so below:

***********************************************************************************************
Here are a number of the dozens of threads that confirm that players frequently try to get each other banned for "non-RP killing" most of these threads are the (frequently successful) attempts of players angry that they lost a PVP battle trying to get the winner of that battle banned:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2900
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2991
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2890

To confirm that a number of players have been banned for "non-rp" killing you can also check out the ban list:
http://kiwike.se/banlist.php

The "No talking about other servers rule" is very explicit in the kiwike rules (Rule 8 I believe although the rules were recently rewritten). Here are a few instances I could find with a quick search of the identities of other servers instantly being removed or players getting banned for it:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1582

If you want to confirm further just log in to the server in game and try posting links to other servers or even mentioning them by name. You will be banned or muted for it.

************************************************************************************************
Here is a thread confirming the voting fraud I mentioned. Note that the moderators initially come out in support of the fraud saying "20 GN really isn't a negative effect" (talking about getting free bribes when someone votes in your name):
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2510

To quote one of the server owners in this thread:
"Unless you don't want the gold and would prefer not to vote for the server, I don't see any negative effect here.
The server's virtual economy would be at the same 'risk' whether it was you who voted for yourself that day or somebody else who voted for you.
Of course, the morals of cheating in this way are a different story."

One player asked in the thread:

"Sure, it's good that we're getting higher up because of it. But do we really want to get there by cheating?"

To which a server owner responded:
"If you haven't already realized, that's exactly how other servers go about it."


************************************************************************************************
Copyright issues:
One player backlashed after attempting to remove their posts from the forum and finding they were banned as a result. In the US this violates the DMCA big-time since copyright always belongs to the writer. They also secretly added a sentence to the terms of service saying that they owned any text written on the site and did not notify the players about the change. This change wouldn't matter much except on an RP server people often write substantial works of fiction that they might wish to reuse or publish in other scenarios:
Here is that player:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?mode=linear&tid=2376&pid=33793
Here is a forum thread about the change in terms of service that was on recently discovered:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3036

Note that in the above thread the moderators are entirely unapologetic about the change, just saying "well of course we weren't going to steal your content" but they have consistently ignored takedown requests such as the one Cerce wrote and also this one from me:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2930&pid=41914

*************************************************************************************************

Most of the time Staff Member opinion censorship is hard to find except in game and on the private staff forums. However I was able to find one such thread where a staff member expressed disagreement with the mods and was essentially threatened:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2237&page=41

(It's on Page 41 and starts with Android's post)

The most relevant post from the thread is written by one of the Administrators:
"I asked Hoiafar to stop acting up because he's a staff member, and publicly putting down what a superior says is not what we need them for."

************************************************************************************************
Player censorship however is pretty common in game. Members who complain are often muted and the appeals forum provides a few bits of evidence:
http://kiwike.se/forum/archive/index.php/thread-1254.html
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1778
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1779
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1899
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3004&pid=42603
(Note that mods mock this players sincere apology in this thread, and the player is only apologizing for the ambiguous 'mod disrespect' he was banned for after he complained)

Here is a thread in which I personally expressed my concerns about over moderation, most were dismissed by the staff but supported by the players:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1666

*************************************************************************************************

Here is some proof about the donations issue:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2480
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1015 (note that features like craftbook ICs were never implemented despite the promise and have since been removed from the donation list).

*************************************************************************************************

Anyway that's most of the proof I was able to collect pretty quickly. The real issue is not that kiwike is a bad server as much as that the staff is of the mindset that they should not make an effort to make it better and instead they should ban anyone who is of the opinion that something should change. The reason the server has NEVER hit its slot limit is because too many people get annoyed and leave, no matter how artificially inflated the vote count gets.

Finally, since I know that ad-hominems like the ones from geckosquid below can be pretty persuasive. Here are the threads in which I have consistently proven I did not x-ray on their server. In the final thread I said "If you embarrass me and hurt my chances of getting on another server by falsely banning me for xray again I shall forget about making an appeal and instead just leave the server." I specifically asked that if the moderators thought I had xrayed they consult me first and discuss the violation privately so that I could prove my innocence rather than having a public witch-trial in which my innocence was only confirmed after days of not being about to support my town/guild/friends and my reputation as an xrayer was unjustly increased. The threads are post below, you can make a decision yourself but I will maintain that they contain sufficient proof that I did not use xray mod and that a similar appeal on my last ban would have had the same effect:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2576
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1542
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2634

I have wasted way too much time proving a point that is really self apparent. Some people will join kiwike and love it, it's a great server in many respects. Some will join kiwike and leave it because of the reasons above. The review is my personal opinions of the server and my personal advice that you should look elsewhere. Take it or leave it, you are probably intelligent enough to make your own decisions and this whole thing between me and kiwike is starting to get out of hand with photoshopped screenshots of posts, last minute edits and other things. I will take this review down and advise people to join the server once more the moment the moderators recognize the validity of the above claims and take an attitude of "we will do our best to fix these problems" instead of "you are only pointing out these issues because you got banned so we will ignore them."

You know, pavja, the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. We know your opinion, and it's blown completely out of proportion. That is all. Now... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWweqP_ZWbg

[Crazylol5]

This thread is interesting - I think that a lot of problems have been left out but it's a step in the right direction. I noticed that comments for the minestatus page were again disabled - which seems to be a way to silence negative opinions rather than correct problems. It is alarming that the staff is electing not to listen to the players on the server but instead stick to some amorphous/arbitrary ideas of what "RP" means - plenty of servers have managed to successfully implement RP without being so fascist and irrational. I have seen no server that is so aggressive in silencing the opinions of disastisfied members - through bans, deleting posts and ad-hominem attacks.

Anyway, I doubt this post will last more than an hour before it is deleted but here are my opinions of where the server is going (they have been removed for the 12th time from minestatus) as well as direct proof of the claims:

Code:

I take back most of my previous comments about the server, since the restructuring of the staff and release of revamped the quality of the server has been in rapid decline. If you join the server you should expect to be banned, multiple times. While the server says that thieving and PVP are allowed they are allowed in name only. Any successful theft will be blockchecked by the moderators and your name publicly announced. 90% of the time you will also be accused of xraying, even if you have never installed an xray mod. Similarly PVP is technically permitted but if you consistently attack or engage in combat you will find yourself banned for "non-RP killing." A simple glance at the rules will confirm their arbitrariness - the rules are extremely vague and players have little idea if and when they have been broken.

This does not prevent players from being accused of breaking the rules regularly - players have taken to getting other players banned for a variety of technicallities in order to exact revenge against enemies and rivals on the servers.

To quote a player whose post I recently read on the Suggestions thread "RP should not stand for Rule-Play." Many veteran players are getting annoyed with the frequent bans and electing to leave the server. Some players are even getting banned for potentially being alt accounts for players that quit the server in exasparation.

Generally the server seems to wait until they can milk donations out of a player before having a witch trial and banning them for a crime they didn't commit. One person was banned for being an alt of mine a few days after he became a server donor. I can confirm here that he was never an alternative and he is never going to see his donation money again.

After serving on the staff for a brief period of time I can confirm that most of Kiwike is a facade. The votes and ranking position that you see here are a result of the players being bribed with in-game currency to vote. Players are encouraged to vote multiple times with proxies and other such tools, the staff also participate in these activities.

The staff is unprofessional and often engage in obnoxious conversations with each other in game, drowning out legitimate conversations with their banter and "joke-bans" of each other. They are generally beligerant to players, rarely offering assistance other than to direct confused players to the server website. They frequently teleport to players while in god mode and attack them or discover hidden bases and then later lie about the incidents.

Any player that complains about the rules in banned for "Mod-Disrespect" and told that if they don't like the way things work they can leave. Similar, abeit harsher restrictions are placed on staff members themselves. They are forbidden to speak negatively about the server and proposing too many changes to the way things work or complaining about arbitrary rules and bans can lead to rapid de-modding coupled with elaborate lies about why the staff members were de-modded.

The staff is so concerned that players will jump ship if they find more promising alternative servers that the discussion of other servers is actually forbidden in the rules and numerous players have been banned for mentioning other places where they play minecraft.

If you would like to try out Kiwike Revamped despite the above comments I would offer the following advice:

1) Keep your head down - if you stand out or talk in game, or steal or lead towns or anything noticeable you are more likely to get banned or make enemies who attempt to get you banned

2) Hold on to your donations - the donor tiers are very expensive ($50 to have a single protected chest) and many of the benefits advertised will never become available (when I donated I was told I would get access to Craftbook ICs, that still has not happened a year and a half later). Other benefits are removed or nerfed over time (/home was temporarily removed from donors and then later returned but limited to one-a-day usage). Additionally, very little of the Donation money actually goes in to the server, the administrator consistenly uses it to buy steam games and they openly jokes about it on the server. To make donation matters worse there is a discussion about making the exorbiant donation fees only provide benefits to players for a number of months instead of for life so as to extract even more money from the few people who can be suckered in to paying.

3) Make Appeals for bans - most of the time the moderators seem to ban people just to see how they react. They will generally shorten a ban if you complain about it, however after 3 bans (even if they are 3 unjust bans) you will generally find yourself perma-banned from the server.

Undoubtedly this thread will incite many replies in defense of the server. I know that the last time a negative review was written the staff were ordered to respond in support of kiwike so as to make the review seem inaccurate. Additionally players that "suck-up" to the moderation team tend to get rewarded with fewer bans and other priveleges. The server community is very interesting in that many of the long-time donors continue playing despite the bad quality of the server simply because they don't want to feel like they wasted their time and money joining. When you log on you will notice that almost everyone has a donor tag or has only been on the server for a few weeks. That is because the players that are smart enough not to donate tend to leave the server after their first ban whereas donors appeal in order to try to not feel like their investment was wasted.

Kiwike used to be a great server but recent developments have left me and other players more than a little annoyed.

Code:

I'm done with posting after this unless I discover that my review has mysteriously disappeared again. The moderators certainly are very persuasive when they are making unverifiable claims. Even if they weren't lying about my x-raying that does not change many aspects of this review which are accurate and easily proven. One major problem with kiwike is that they have trouble taking criticism. Users are frequently banned for "Mod-Disrespect" when they complain about arbitrary bans/rules (a quick-glance at the ban list or a few days playing on the server can be enough to verify this one because these bans happen very frequently). Notice that the staff below did not respond to the claims in my review or deny them but instead resorted to an elaborate ad-hominem attack. I cannot prove my honesty any more than the moderators can disprove it with doctored screenshots and elaborate lies however I can prove that a number of aspects of the above review are true and I shall do so below:

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Here are a number of the dozens of threads that confirm that players frequently try to get each other banned for "non-RP killing" most of these threads are the (frequently successful) attempts of players angry that they lost a PVP battle trying to get the winner of that battle banned:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2900
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2991
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2890

To confirm that a number of players have been banned for "non-rp" killing you can also check out the ban list:
http://kiwike.se/banlist.php

The "No talking about other servers rule" is very explicit in the kiwike rules (Rule 8 I believe although the rules were recently rewritten). Here are a few instances I could find with a quick search of the identities of other servers instantly being removed or players getting banned for it:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=911
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1582

If you want to confirm further just log in to the server in game and try posting links to other servers or even mentioning them by name. You will be banned or muted for it.

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Here is a thread confirming the voting fraud I mentioned. Note that the moderators initially come out in support of the fraud saying "20 GN really isn't a negative effect" (talking about getting free bribes when someone votes in your name):
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2510

To quote one of the server owners in this thread:
"Unless you don't want the gold and would prefer not to vote for the server, I don't see any negative effect here.
The server's virtual economy would be at the same 'risk' whether it was you who voted for yourself that day or somebody else who voted for you.
Of course, the morals of cheating in this way are a different story."

One player asked in the thread:

"Sure, it's good that we're getting higher up because of it. But do we really want to get there by cheating?"

To which a server owner responded:
"If you haven't already realized, that's exactly how other servers go about it."


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Copyright issues:
One player backlashed after attempting to remove their posts from the forum and finding they were banned as a result. In the US this violates the DMCA big-time since copyright always belongs to the writer. They also secretly added a sentence to the terms of service saying that they owned any text written on the site and did not notify the players about the change. This change wouldn't matter much except on an RP server people often write substantial works of fiction that they might wish to reuse or publish in other scenarios:
Here is that player:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?mode=linear&tid=2376&pid=33793
Here is a forum thread about the change in terms of service that was on recently discovered:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3036

Note that in the above thread the moderators are entirely unapologetic about the change, just saying "well of course we weren't going to steal your content" but they have consistently ignored takedown requests such as the one Cerce wrote and also this one from me:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2930&pid=41914

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Most of the time Staff Member opinion censorship is hard to find except in game and on the private staff forums. However I was able to find one such thread where a staff member expressed disagreement with the mods and was essentially threatened:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2237&page=41

(It's on Page 41 and starts with Android's post)

The most relevant post from the thread is written by one of the Administrators:
"I asked Hoiafar to stop acting up because he's a staff member, and publicly putting down what a superior says is not what we need them for."

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Player censorship however is pretty common in game. Members who complain are often muted and the appeals forum provides a few bits of evidence:
http://kiwike.se/forum/archive/index.php/thread-1254.html
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1778
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1779
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1899
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=3004&pid=42603
(Note that mods mock this players sincere apology in this thread, and the player is only apologizing for the ambiguous 'mod disrespect' he was banned for after he complained)

Here is a thread in which I personally expressed my concerns about over moderation, most were dismissed by the staff but supported by the players:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1666

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Here is some proof about the donations issue:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2480
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1015 (note that features like craftbook ICs were never implemented despite the promise and have since been removed from the donation list).

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Anyway that's most of the proof I was able to collect pretty quickly. The real issue is not that kiwike is a bad server as much as that the staff is of the mindset that they should not make an effort to make it better and instead they should ban anyone who is of the opinion that something should change. The reason the server has NEVER hit its slot limit is because too many people get annoyed and leave, no matter how artificially inflated the vote count gets.

Finally, since I know that ad-hominems like the ones from geckosquid below can be pretty persuasive. Here are the threads in which I have consistently proven I did not x-ray on their server. In the final thread I said "If you embarrass me and hurt my chances of getting on another server by falsely banning me for xray again I shall forget about making an appeal and instead just leave the server." I specifically asked that if the moderators thought I had xrayed they consult me first and discuss the violation privately so that I could prove my innocence rather than having a public witch-trial in which my innocence was only confirmed after days of not being about to support my town/guild/friends and my reputation as an xrayer was unjustly increased. The threads are post below, you can make a decision yourself but I will maintain that they contain sufficient proof that I did not use xray mod and that a similar appeal on my last ban would have had the same effect:
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2576
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=1542
http://kiwike.se/forum/showthread.php?tid=2634

I have wasted way too much time proving a point that is really self apparent. Some people will join kiwike and love it, it's a great server in many respects. Some will join kiwike and leave it because of the reasons above. The review is my personal opinions of the server and my personal advice that you should look elsewhere. Take it or leave it, you are probably intelligent enough to make your own decisions and this whole thing between me and kiwike is starting to get out of hand with photoshopped screenshots of posts, last minute edits and other things. I will take this review down and advise people to join the server once more the moment the moderators recognize the validity of the above claims and take an attitude of "we will do our best to fix these problems" instead of "you are only pointing out these issues because you got banned so we will ignore them."

[Third Eye]

Da faq?

Who is this Fourth Eye shiz