Caeda, and why you shouldn’t go there.
So for the past week or so while suffering the drainage of wow roleplay while I wait for BFA to drop, I decided to return to one of my old loves. MCRP. You wouldn’t think it, but Minecraft offers a wonderful sandbox to create rp worlds in, especially if you like to use a DND/Pathfinder style of play thanks to the cubic grid MC offers by default.
I have been through multiple servers through the years, big and small. And now, I’m going to tell you about my recent experience below the cut.
So, Caeda is an MC server that’s been apparently running for about two or so years, and has gone through multiple ‘seasons’ as they put it where they change the map and move towards the next ‘chapter’ in the storyline. Many older or larger servers do this as updates come out, or as storylines get bogged down. A soft reset, so to speak. I and my small group of friends entered Caeda during their third season, apparently.
Initially when I joined, it was completely empty, I thought this was because of the devastatingly late hour in which I chose to join, but I would quickly find that this was untrue. The server’s population is basically dead, only averaging maybe 2-4 people besides my tiny group on average, even on weekends. An event will let you see maybe ten people. While that isn’t exactly bad, its not exactly good either. Though, I and my group thought that this wasn’t an issue, that perhaps if we stayed active, other members would notice and come online as well. Roleplay tends to attract roleplay after all.
But we’d find out that this was probably the worst thing that was going to happen. I am all for in character racism and conflict. Its great! Its wonderful for character progression and development, however out of character I find it absolutely disgusting and I have no tolerance for it whatsoever. The staff on this server will gladly throw around slurs, including but not limited to things such as ‘fag’ and using ‘gay’ as a derogatory insult. When you call them out on these things being offensive and just downright rude, their response typically is ‘well I am x, so its okay’ or ‘don’t be so sensitive. My response of course was to say I don’t care if you are it, that doesn't make it right. You don’t get to use your supposed own sexuality to taunt and tease others, and if you are these things, you should know exactly how much it hurts to have these words used as an insult to others.
Next comes a blatant abuse of power. In the rare events staff were on, there was always a feeling of unease. You can see where people are on their hosted dynmap, and all of us quickly noticed that staff would constantly teleport to us and just.. Stalk. I dont mind having people watch my rp at all, but the fact that when you actually call them out on this, they deny it, as if we cant see them standing right on top of us on the map, see them turning things in item frames, or the little ‘puft’ of pixels that happen when you land from flying that you cannot hide, even when in vanish. I initially thought, alright, fine. That’s not a big deal. Maybe they’re just shy and don’t know how to interact, that’s okay! Often we’d try to move our rp to more public places so that they did have a chance to interact, only to get the same treatment.
This only got worse during an event in which I myself had to go out into the world and find an item and bring it back. Not too bad at first. However once I got to the item, I was stuck waiting about 15 or so minutes for the server owner to respond to the prompt he himself had left there at the start of this event. Okay, again, fine. People have lives. Its after this that things really started to go downhill at high speed. Once I had the item, after he killed my mount with no warning under a weak guise of rp (semi-okay, I guess. I honestly felt they killed it so they could do the next part of this ‘event’..) As I was returning to the city, suddenly boss monsters are being spawned on top of me.
Now, again, the dynamap tells us things. I would be completely fine, and then we would see one of the staff teleport to me on the dynmap, and I am suddenly flooded with the strongest of bosses around me. I would run away because no way I can handle 2+ bosses by myself with my lag and gearset, only to have more piled onto me again. Needless to say, this was stressful to a point that minecraft and roleplay never should be. It was out of pure adrenaline based fear that I even managed to force myself back to the city to barely shove myself through, shaking and dizzy with my heart pounding in my throat, even my vision blurring from absolute panic.
But, even when the staff were told by my friends to slow down, to give me a break, that they were causing me serious issues. Their response was not concern. It was not the worry you give another human being or living thing under distress. It was simply
“That is not our fault.”
And then they continue to do the thing they were just told is causing another person to mentally and physically suffer.
This is what keyed us off that the ride was no longer going to be fun. The fact that another human being does not care for the health of another. The fact that a team of staff, that the OWNER of this server brushed off the fact that their actions hurt someone, disgusts me. Even the fact that we called them out on this, and the responses of the staff were a conflicting mess of ‘we didn’t do anything!’ to ‘we’re just showing you how dangerous the world is!’ to ‘as if you would know’. Only one person gave a small suggestion of basic human concern. Out of an entire handful of staff. One.
Then we move onto the fact that if the owner’s character was ever reference to being anything less than perfect and powerful and untouchable, even as a light tease or joke or anything, the responses were often things such as ‘he wishes.’ or ‘in his dreams, maybe’ or ‘You could never pull that off with my character’ and other such things. By now, the alarm bells are going off at full volume, we’re already starting to back up and shake our heads, but it is for the sake of one player that we want to stay, because we were enjoying him so much.
Then you have staff using things like /pseudo to force players to say nasty shit like ‘why my peepee hard’ and then try to act like they actually did say it to make them feel like they’re going to get in trouble for something they didn’t do. To constantly make you the butt of their jokes, because how dare you lift your gaze when they are present and demand to be treated like an equal person.
But then, the final drop in the bucket. That last straw that broke the camel's back, was that when confronted with a bug issue, the owner like every other time, who claims to code everything, simply goes ‘oh, it must be your fault’ and tries to brush it under the rug. Even when attempting to give more information, the attitude remains the same. Elitist, talking down to others, a feeling of this person sneering down at you because how dare you say anything is wrong with anything he does. After all, he compares himself to R.R. Martian. I’m not even kidding. He genuinely does.
And this is only the most recent droplet of the sea of hell I and my group went through beneath the hands of these people. Honestly, I could go on at length for several more posts challenging this one in length, but this post is already beyond the point of tl;dr, and anyone who would even want to know, can easily contact me.
All in all. Stay far, far away from Caeda. And stay even further away from its Owner, AerysAegis, if you ever want a decent rp experience.