Talk:Mystere incident

YoOoOo how do I find shit like this. I'm glad I did tho I was wondering what happened ahaha Sept 2016 Torind of Mal'Ganis

Talk
This article is highly one-sided. It's very sad and pathetic. It proves that Wiki is not objective, but rather subjective. Poorly done. There is always more to the story.

Get the facts straight.

--Truth be Told —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.208.17.119 (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Since the language on this page is a bit strong, is there not a policy where the potential of such should be toned down? --Mnemnoch 02:34, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The policy you're probably thinking of is WP:NPOV. If you think the language should be toned down, you could tag the page with or another cleanup tag. --Nick—Contact/Contribs 02:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the guy who created this article. I don't contribute to Wikipedia much but was surprised there was no mention of an Everquest incident that dominated gaming news for a week.

I think NickW577 didn't really understand the problem you had with the article and directed you to the wrong policy. I don't see how the section you removed has to do with POV. I mean, it's there in the story (comment #64); He took her savagely, and when she had trouble getting lubricated, he used a knife to cut her labia, using the blood as lubricant. There it is, it's not anyone's opinion or point of view that it's in there (although I admit I misquoted it a bit, my bad).

I think it's more that you find the graphicness of the image offensive, but that's precisely why Mystere was banned so quickly (or at least how it appeared at the time, contrary to Smedley's later blog), and pretty relevant. I rather think the policy NickW577 should have directed you to is this one, doubly so because the section doesn't even contain profanity.

As far as POV is concerned, I'll tell you mine; I was a devout EQ player at the time, but I didn't even play on Mystere's server. I disliked the story intensely (both for its content and because I thought it poorly written), but at the time, was angry that Verant banned someone for something they did away from their official domain of servers and message-boards, and thought their argument about intellectual property use weak. Smedley's blog showed me that nobody outside of Mystere and Verant knew what the real story was, so now, I really don't have an opinion, other than that the story sucks.

I really tried to present both sides of the incident as best as I could, but of course having people even further distanced (ie. non-EQ players or people who followed the incident at the time) judge whether I succeeded is a good thing. Regardless, I don't think the portion you removed had anything to do with POV and more about how frigging gross it was.

As for the other tag you put on the article, I'm not really sure how to address that at all. How does it read like a review? A. Swearengen 07:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I just read a post from someone who claims to have been involved at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=395380 "My long-time EQ/EQ2 guild is the guild Mystere was in when that happened. The player was banned because of a false accusation of real-world pedophilia. The short version is: Mystere was reported to Verant by a player who had a history of stalking and harassing our guild, writing insult-laden emails to our guild leaders, following them around the various message boards and calling them "pathetic losers", etc etc. The accuser claimed that Mystere was trying to literally seduce his (the accuser's) little brother via the game. However, the accuser didn't actually have a brother, little or otherwise. Once that came to light, Verant still wouldn't back down from their public stance. But they did let Mystere's player back into the game, provided he played a different character." Obviously this isnt a reliable source, however it does bring into question some of the "facts" posted in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.87.118.221 (talk) 01:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Mystere
Hello, I was the player this incident refers to. I attempted to edit this page anonymously, but my changes were removed. I admit I have never edited a wiki page before, and attempted to do so anonymously. Having little experience, but still wanting to be heard, I suppose my only recourse is to mention it here.

Yes, I wrote those stories (there were two that Verant were allegedly in question), and no, they were by far not my best work. That being said, the stories had nothing to do with my being banned, and as the person who created the article states they heard from an unverified source, it had everything to do with a false accusation by a player with the handle Sensi Jadeleaf.

Sensi apparently decided one day that he didn't like our guild anymore, and had managed to get the passwords to our guild leader's account. He logged in every one of his characters and gave away every piece of equipment on every character he could. For free. Anything that was tagged as NOTRADE was summarily destroyed.

A couple of weeks after that, I was banned. Mr. Smedley eventually told me that my banning wasn't due to the stories (though they cast the accusation made against me in a bad light), but rather due to my attempting to lure Sensi's little brother out to visit me. In truth what happened was that I'd found out that Sensi himself had been in my area, and I said, "You should have told me, we could have met in person." There was no pedophilia involved.

Once Mr. Smedley told me what was said, I knew the source (I had only ever made that invitation to Sensi himself), and mentioned to Mr. Smedley the aforementioned compromised account of our guild leader by Sensi. A couple of days later, with the community still in an uproar, Mr. Smedley called and offered to refund all the money I'd spent on EQ up to that point, including both software costs (initial game purchase, expansions, etc.) and monthly fees. My account was to remain banned, but the record of my IP address would be removed, allowing me to create a new account if I so chose (which I did).

All of this was contingent on the fact that I not speak openly on what happened, which I have never done publicly until I just now. My reason for wanting the story told now is that I found Mr. Smedley broke his own word on keeping this incident quiet by publicly posting it on his blog.

I hope this clears up a few things. As far as the stories go, they weren't my best work by any means, and had been buried in the IGN forums for months before being dug up and used against me. 68.57.211.99 (talk) 05:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)MystereEQ
 * Sorry it took me so long to see this, haven't spent much time on Wikipedia the last several months. No way of confirming you didn't just post this for a laugh, I guess, but your story sounds pretty detailed and plausible, and fits with Smedley's blog comments, which was what got me to write this article when I searched for a refresher on Wikipedia and found nothing. I was very drawn into the debate around your story at the time, though I played on a different server (Bristlebane) and didn't know you or anyone else involved, though the name Sensi Jadeleaf rings a vague bell for some reason.
 * I'm sorry if I came off as harsh towards your roleplay story in the above comments, but you yourself admit it wasn't your best work; regardless, "sucked" always seems mean in the face of someone trying to write creatively. Still kind of gross, though, no offense. I wasn't the one who posted the comment just below my last comment (over a year ago!) about the post over on another RPG forum, though, thought I should clarify that (it was an anon poster just below mine). I was really trying to present it unbiased as possible, apologize if it didn't seem that way.
 * Do you have anymore details, just out of my own curiousity? I feel like I'm finally starting to get a sense of what really happened. How did you know this Sensi guy outside of the game? Where did you write this "invitation" (which just sounds like a totally innocent "hey buddy, why didn't you give me a call?"), publicly on a board, email, IM? How do you know he didn't have a little brother? Heck, how do you know that he wasn't 13 years old, making your "invitation" seem slightly sinister to Verant, even though you didn't know? How do you know it was him who hacked your guild leader's account, and was he banned for it? Didn't Verant keep track of trades and things like that to try to figure out who it was, or did he mask his IP somehow?
 * Or, of course, you can just ignore this, might just be dredging up bad memories. I'm glad, at least, that you got some kind of financial restitution from Verant. A. Swearengen (talk) 10:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Tesarra
I am a close friend and was the real-life roommate of the person who played the characters of Mystere and Vhasst at the time this incident occurred. I can vouch for everything he stated in his comment here and for his character and decency outside of the gaming world. Not only was the "Mystere incident" terrible and disturbing, Verant in general and John Smedly in particular handled it extremely poorly. Had I not witnessed this unfolding before us with my very own eyes, I would never have believed it possible. Mystere's player was deeply hurt by this, the more especially since he and I had both considered Sensi Jadeleaf an in-game friend.

The role-playing stories Mystere's player had written on IGN were no more graphic, no more sexual and no more intense in their content than many published novels and short stories (see, especially, the Nancy Collins "Sonja Blue" novels which were a strong influence on Mystere's writing and role-play at the time). There was nothing in their content that would have negatively affected Verant's reputation in the slightest. The allegation of Mystere's seeking out inappropriate contact with a child was laughable. Verant should have directed Sensi Jadeleaf to make his accusations to the police if he truly felt he or his brother were in any danger, rather than taking unilateral action to ban Mystere from their game and Smedly making public comments in his blog defaming Mystere's morals and ethics.--Tesarra (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Mystere incident. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20061029130557/http://www.gamegirladvance.com:80/mmog/archives/2002/10/21/stripping_the_dark_from_dark_elf_in_eq.html to http://www.gamegirladvance.com/mmog/archives/2002/10/21/stripping_the_dark_from_dark_elf_in_eq.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100716085300/http://stationblog.wordpress.com:80/2006/02/16/virtual-jail/ to http://stationblog.wordpress.com/2006/02/16/virtual-jail/

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 17:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)