The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

Administrators part I:

As I said in the above section that I wrote there is a precedence set with the spooky dealings of the development stages of this Persistent world. One of the problems is there seem to be a few of these bad apples that carried over into the opening of the world and continue to this day which I will explain. I have so many bad experiences with administrators cataloged by others’ reporting that I should only pick a few that either I, myself, have experienced or the people that directly helped me by playing and reporting back their experiences to me, personally.

Most of the Admins/DMs I think have the right direction and motivation in their hearts. They want a thriving community and try to make it that way. The crux is that their ability to problem solve is suspect and their ineptness stands out to me like no other staff I have seen on a NWWN world. There is a part of this being a private server and as a private server it is tailored for the DMs and their entourage to be the main players. Let’s call them the preferred customers. Everyone else will just be regular customers. I will take that difference through the next two sections. Even with this difference there are some universal rules that should never be broken. Unfortunately, the Admins have broken many of these universal laws.

I will start with myself first and my experiences, which in fact were not that overwhelmingly bad. However, like I said within 10 minutes of coming on their main server on discord someone pegged me as the NWN reviewer, so I felt I needed to seek people out to help me while I was sort of a decoy. I knew the staff would be watching me and what I did. I also knew that they would do one of two things. One, try to seduce me into thinking that this was the best server I had ever been too. Two, Ignore me and hope for the best. They seemed to have chosen the latter.

So, this server uses discord tickets. It is one of the worse forms of communication between people. At least that is what I feel about it. It’s impersonal and often leads to miscommunications. I would never do tickets myself if I still owned a server I would speak as a character to someone else in their character in an ooc part of the game. It’s much better communication when you can at least see another body across from you.

My very first ticket I made myself. There was a conclave meeting. “A meeting between druids and their organization of rangers, druids, shamans and the like.” My character was not part of it but listened in on what they were doing. They wanted to contact the trees with for information on an entity they call the Scar. My shamaness Eibhlin happens to only speak to the tree spirits so its right up my alley. I made a ticket and basically said she will ask the tree spirits in hibernation about this situation with the Scar. I will now refer to my notes of April 11th:

Now the way my shamaness communes with her spirits is she goes into a state of hibernation for 5 or 10 days. Her body stays in the prime, but her mind and soul walk the border ethereal where she communes with the tree spirits, She learns, ask questions and is generally somewhat like their apprentice (she’s 6th level) until she can become the voice of the trees with such a deep connection with them that she just knows what they want and can be their ambassador to the world at large.

So, I decided to make a ticket to the dms asking them. When she communes with the tree spirits she will ask them. "What is the history of the scar? What if anything will the trees say to her?" I'm para phrasing.

I made the ticket and waited. They are supposed to get in contact with me in 24 hours but the event surrounding this whole thing is in 3 weeks so 'There's plenty of time."

24 hours goes by...... Nothing. 48 hours goes by, and I give them a bump. Asking something like It’s a new pw and everything so you probably have a lot of tickets, but could I get something back?"

The next morning a dm wrote, 'Yes, we have a lot of tickets....please wait."

Ok so I waited almost a week and a dm finally comes on. She gave me a rp prompt about what the trees felt in the forest about the scar. The sort of patted me on the head like now go out and rp it.

And so, I went out and played it out like a bad B horror flick. (Heh put my hands to my cheeks and screamed as Jason is about to disembowel me.)

She also apologized for the dms taking so long to get to the ticket.

So. 1. it was a very hard rp question in general that needed time for the Dms to think about it
2. TDN is a new pw that probably gets 100 tickets or so a week
3. and most importantly I got an apology for the dms taking longer than the standard time.

The dms not only answered the question. They did it with a hell of a lot of class. They are definitely aware that the players are customers, so This is the very first ticket I have done that I'm completely satisfied on. And they gave me enough information so I could do something with my character rp wise. Thats the first time that's happened to me.

First ticket and contact with admins went great. From here it went slightly downhill and pretty much stayed there.

The next interaction was around a week later. I was on the Y’tellarien which is a private discord server dedicated to the elves of The Dragon’s next. I was talking to some friends, and I described how my pc felt about humans. Basically, she was leery of them in groups but was willing to give individuals a chance.

Next thing I know I see a red dot on the main server. I found a ticket and a Admin was politely admonishing me for what I did. I kind of scratched my head because I really did not do anything wrong and basically sired them out. Yes, ma’am no sir. Wont happen again. Even though I really did not know what I did. I was being polite. It confused me enough that I missed that I was on the main server for awhile then it clicked in my head that the DM pulled me over to the other discord channel. That’s a huge problem for the staff at TDN. Why you ask?

Because of this statement: No Affiliation: We are not officially affiliated with The Dragon's Neck. This server is intended to be used as a collective resource and community for elves of Y'Tellarien. Please keep unrelated discussion to a minimum. You must be a member of the main TDN discord in order to remain a member of this one. Further, if you are banned/muted from the main TDN disc, we will reflect that here.

That is not a small lie. They are saying that the Y’Tellarien is not affiliated but when a DM drags you off to the main server, they are telling you that the Y’tellarien is actually the main server’s bitch. So, it’s all a big fat lie!

The time I realized that this Admin had dragged me to the other server I actually really was not sure I had been on the main server. What I did was wait a couple of weeks. Then I did it again and I added a small bit of words to make sure I got their attention.

Again, I got a notice on the main discord channel. I said Ah-Ha! Got you. I went to the ticket. I read what the admin said. The admin was arrogant, condescending, put words in my mouth and was a total douchebag right to start out with. Again, I sired this admin out. I had a job to do I was not going to make waves. I Defused the situation.

In the end I made certain that that affiliation statement was a huge lie and I am betting many, many others saw that too. That’s a huge mistake on the dragon’s neck staff. And probably why some people left after being taken from one server to the other to get chewed up by insolent Admins. Although I have to give this person a break. Everyone has bad days. Maybe this Admin was just having a bad day. Unfortunately, it seems to be a recurring theme on this server as reported to me by those I worked with.

NWN persistent worlds need to get something straight. Your players are your customers. Without players you have no world. Just a place for your personal friends to hang out. Customer service and public relations are extremely important to both Administrators and DMs. Administrators and DMs are the public face of a persistent world. If You are going to be a douchebag to a customer, you should not have either of these jobs. Ask yourself this if you were a salesman at a clothing store and you were impolite and rude to a customer how fast would you be counting your last paycheck on the curb.

I had two other tickets. One where I partially scripted a fix for the faction bug. Since the introduction of EE I have never been in a world where the faction bug popped up. I had actually thought that Beamdog fixed it for good. Well, it popped up on The Dragon’s neck in spades. I was even affected, and DMs were too lethargic to fix it before I had died and respawned twice. So, I sent in a fix, and it was completely ignored. In fact, they killed the ticket after only a few minutes. I found out soon after that the scripters had figured out their own very creative way to fix it. Kudos, but it would have been nice if the admins had said something like: Nice work but we have our own fix. See now that is good public relations saying something like that.

The last ticket was basically me asking if the tree spirits knew something about an incident that happened in the forest. An intruder killing all the animals. An Admin came in and said I had heard nothing so ok. Sort of a neutral thing and could be a situational little quest for a single player. Perfectly fine.

So as far as I can remember those are all my experiences with the admins. The next section will be on my sources’ experiences.

I am placing a note here: I have a new source. It seems I may have treated Danvius a bit too harshly and there is someone I have been watching very carefully that may have gone out of their way to smear him to worm their way into the leadership of TDN. Someone that I have been watching very closely. I'm going to do a section just on this one person because they have done more to destroy the Elven Enclave than anyone else. THE PLOT THICKENS.

[Winterhawk99]

Intermission:

I have to do an intermission during this article. New information has come to light about specifically the Y’tellarien and Two specific DMs that run this so-called unaffiliated server. Those DMs are DM Witchbane and DM Trashkeeper. I had thought that the Y’tellarien was the main server’s bitch when in fact it’s the other way around. The main server seems to be the Y’tellarien’s bitch. I also figure out why I was dragged to the main server and chewed out for something that is not a problem. Witchbane decided she did not like what I said and took me there and when that did not work Trashkeeper did. I’m about to give you the low down on these two individuals Starting with my most recent source that was an eye witness to the Davious situation and is somewhat close to Witchbane and Trashkeeper. So close in fact that I have to paraphrase their comments so to keep them anonymous.

Here is what my new source told me.

TDN has a longer history than what we know. It really started somewhere between 2018 and 2019. Thus as we think TDN is new, it really isn’t. They shut the server down sometime between 2019 and 2020. They did this to revamp the server design several times. They went through numerous staff and contributors. If you go to that library where all the books are when you first come on the server there is a list of former staff and contributors with some very well-known names. Some (I Winterhawk 99 have worked with before.)

As Most NWN servers there was no shortage of drama behind the scenes. One thing I want to make clear and let you know Winter is the what you said about Danuvis. I have known him for many, many years. The man has some issues, but I believe that the assumption he stole the money and ran was both character assassination mixed with bad timing.

The story goes, TDN was in a pretty bad state with developer/scripter staff. Danuvis was one of the only member that was working on building areas. So, his computer died. He held out his hand for donations from the others to buy a new PC, an agreement was made, and he was given the money for his outstanding work and the continuation of such work. Now Danuvis had been with the crew since the beginning. So, his colleagues had no worries that he would continue on with building.

A problem came up. Witchbane (The person that owns the Y’tellarien) and her clique decided they didn’t want him in the group. They came up with a plan. A plan that convinced Aschent to fire him only after a short time. This is what killed Danuvis’s reputation, and they made it look like he took the money and ran for the hills

Witchbane and her clique then wormed their way into the team soon after Danuvis left in disgrace. She completely took control of the elven community as its ruler as a player then wormed her way into the staff of TDN while running her ‘unaffiliated’ discord server like a personal little kingdom. She has largely abandoned the community and now runs the same with this discord server imposing her excentric personal views upon the community she fully controls.

The whole thing against sex and romance on the server was largely her idea and her weird bible-thumping ways. She freaks out over seeing cleavage or exposed thighs. Winter you only play and elf so you have not seen all the misogyny she’s been pushing over in Murann. She also is completely ignorant of lore thus screws it all up along the way.

She is apt to sending area-wide emotes when a female shows a little too much skin. Emotes like this. The men whistle and the women glare. By her scanty clothes, it was clear they looked at her as a whore."

They also have a habit of starting things like blizzards with polar winds to justify dealing frostbite damage to female characters with what they feel have too much skin showing. As you know Winter, Amn has a Mediterranean climate.

Witchbane has also threatened elven players that she would change them into a half-elves for various perceived transgressions such as teaching languages or having more than relationship with a person.

Wow as soon as I read that I figure out that when I was taking the main and bitched out by Trashkeeper was the Y’Tellarien’s doing (the unaffiliated server) not the main server’s doing and that puts together much I have collected on Witchbane herself with my investigative reporter.

This next source is an eyewitness source to actually illegal activity by Witchbane herself and its hateful. The source said this as we talked generally about TDN but as I crossed examined the person it came out that the source was talking about Witchbane and her crew.

While a community is small, it is easily tailored to just friends and like-minded individuals. This type of community allows a small team to keep a manageable pace, but rarely grows to prominence.
The problem is... they're using large group tactics for inviting with small group tactics for tailoring, resulting in an insular, secular group that creates more bad experiences than good ones. In the task of (likely) finding their few chosen elite, they allow the many to invest themselves heavily, only to be turned away by minor creative differences, which were not clearly spelled out in the first place.
This probably makes them feel powerful, but it has the unfortunate side effect of tempering the wider community against them.

They also have a dangerous habit of asking for personal health information in order to "ok" playing characters with psychological differences, and then using that information against the player OOC, resulting in a majorly A-Blist community aspect, which alienates the vast majority of their potential player base

If you have any kind of disability IRL, even an injury-based one, it's been expressed that they don't want you talking about it, or else don't want you.

This has only been turned on its head once to appease player backlash, and even then, the person was put on probation.

This may be a misunderstood safety rule from another server that they're applying badly, since NWN's message system is unencrypted, and there are real life predators out there who would take advantage of the old and disabled. But if so, the answer isn't to gentrify the community and only allow healthy, "normal" people to play a video game. Thereby cameoflaging themselves with those very same predators.

I cross examined this source:

Winterhawk99: Yea. Ummm two parts of the things you said the abuse of the disabled and the elderly did you see it on TDN main or on the Y’Tellarien?

Source: Trashkeeper has this method: When you play a disabled, elderly, or otherwise "non normal" (non mid 20's, hot, cisgendered, able) character...She asks you kindly not to do that because "It's common courtesy not to represent those groups when you are not one of them." Then if you respond that you have experience, she asks about it. If you knew someone, that's not enough. And if you have first-person experience, you are "not a good fit for TDN." So, what masquerades as concern for protected groups is, in fact, hostility and gentrification. A quiet banning of alternative experiences. When alternative experiences are banned in a group masquerading as concerned, and those names are kept on a list... to be discriminated against in other projects... That is hate.

Winterhawk: I have permission to use that?

Source: As long as you don’t use my name.

That’s pretty heavy. And I believe illegal. And this is why I had to put the other stuff up above. I knew there was something very wrong with this server at least the elf part of the server and when I put all the things in about the development team in the review. It lead me here to Witchbane and Trashkeeper. Here is yet another source speaking about these two.

Here is another source that has been harmed by these two Dms. This source not only left the server after the discussion. The source left the NWN community all together.

Winterhawk: Hi source. been reflecting on the Server all weekend as not many people were on. I believe TDN as innovative as it is in building and modeling is slowly depopulating into irrelevance because of some big basic mistakes. It is unfortunate. Though time will tell. I have been thinking about it a lot.

Yeah, I understand. I made some friends I'd like to continue spending time with, but so far, they look very unstable in hindsight. I think when I'm on, I'm able to gather people together into interesting conversations? But I also recently got yelled at for having a "too complicated" and "too interesting" character, and in a very heavy-handed way, was told how my character should be played ie, not often, speaking only about the story as it is presented and not about any other topics, and if I am to have my deity, preferably not log in I think these messages, rather than representing the server vision, were instead short-sighted and lore driven. But if they are representative of how the DMs expect to interact with players in the future, I'm thinking more experience might be needed.

Winterhawk: Which dm admonished you for your character being too creative and stepped on your intellectual property rights by trying to tell you how to rp your character.

Source: Witchbane and then Trashkeeper.

Winterhawk: Both!?

Source: Witchbane wasn't so bad. It was just a "Your character has to be serious."
Which I understand. Helping me fit the tone. Trashkeeper was the egregious one
telling me how complex my character could be, what life experiences I was allowed to have, and educating me about what "normal" is and how it is superior to all others and that all others have no rights at TDN, only the right to be deleted. I'm paraphrasing for point.

Alright Here I am going to stop a moment because now I’m really pissed off. No DM has the right to tell you how to RP your character. Your character is your intellectual property. PERIOD! Never let a dm tell you something like this. It’s a mortal sin and if I were the owner these two would be fired the second I heard of something like this and verified it. You do not step on the intellectual property rights of a player. You are a Dm and have a huge amount of power on a server but not that much power.

If a character does not fit the world you cannot tell them how to rp as a DM. The only thing you do is ask the player to not play the character in the world. I have been told that on Amia and took my pcs off without even a comment. I have been told that on Sigil Planar legends and I would have taken my character off without comment there to but a very stupid DM that was well meaning tried to tell me how to rp my character and still stay on the world. I then scorched him in my review of their server.

And I will tell everyone right now. Someone comes to me on any world and can prove a DM told them how to RP their character I will make a wall of shame and put that DMs name there with the world he works in on it in a post right here on HMC.

I have some more on Witchbane, Oh the news keeps coming.

Source:

Veldrisse (Saint Khoria aka Witchbane) & Cyroniir (Tareldar) / Eruil were the original "leader" couple with Tareldar mentioning not knowing elf lore so well. When Witchbane became DM he/she had to remove Veldrisse and Cyroniir died. Later, a new PC named Caerylia emerged and took a leading role, and she was married to Eruil (Tareldar on a new account), who was a Sentinel of the tribe and held a powerful position.
This was after it was ruled people couldn't play natives anymore. However, since she married in, she became one as a sun elf. Also the rules of no more natives was temporarily eased up around this time. I don't think that was a coincidence.

Questions were brought up in character about the sentinel rank since there's nothing about it on the wiki and previous staff announcmeents on the main forum all talked about people being nobodies. The DM team later ruled that they now were an official rank with Eruil being one of them.

I reached out in private to to Goldberry with a concern of Witchbane perhaps being Caerylia, which Goldberry vehemently denied. However, Caerylia has the same writing style and follows the same patterns such as time zones, gathering people into a power structure, even making similar writing errors and using OOC in the same way to cut RP off during meetings. Additionally, Caerylia has the same relationship dynamic with Eruil as Veldriesse did with Cyroniir/Tarelda

However, my personal point is that the Admins endorse this and Aschent and Goldberry actually want this sort of OOC environment. While I do go with 'Don't assume malicious intent when stupidity suffices' looking back into Aschent's old reedit posts and past behavior, there is a pattern. Another add I have: The Witch plot was kept by a clique of players, where one shared with me (a person) that thatperson was OOC told not to include more people. When looking further into it I got told IC and OOC by others that the event was open for all to join, and it was put on the meeting stone by Deluan (The painted druid or w/e is name is). He, however, didn't do that and thus the average player couldn't join it, the DM's kept it hidden. Is the green Hag event written down on the elf discord itself ?

The green witch quest was one of only 3 true dm quests I know about on TDN in the six months that I was there. Witchbane’s clique wanted to keep it a secret, a soft denial so that only ‘perferred customers could join.’ But word got out.

I have yet another source that has commented on the situation with Witchbane:

Winterhawk: I got some info from another source that the main clique of the elves is run by a dm/player which breaks their wiki promise that dms cannot have leadership roles on the server. The main clique even has a name 'Elder'

Source: Yeah, that's been wide knowledge since the start. The elven clique is an authoritarian cult that masquerades as a republic--with one person running multiple characters and getting multiple votes, and anyone outside of that group has no vote on major issues.

Then that same player runs a PC that they don't declare to figure out what's going on in the community. If someone makes a minor roleplaying mistake in their sight, they pretend that hundreds of people reported them, and it's become a huge issue. Leveraging the fear of being socially ostracized and deliberately inducing paranoid feelings among the player to kick them out of the group over minor offenses.

I made the "mistake" of playing to counter their culture, since I clocked it early. Wide forgiveness, gentle education, meaningful interaction, true democracy. Most people figure out which one is better for them early, and the counter play grows quickly.

Winterhawk99: Yea I knew about it shortly coming in that there was a main clique but did not know how far the rabbit hole went until recently mostly because I sensed danger and stayed as far away from them as possible.

Source: Yep. That's the fear reflex. It's not just you. I get the same story from everyone who's quit since I left. The good news is, groups like that don't grow. You can let them isolate themselves, and since it's a fantasy, distract themselves, and they'll do less harm to others over that time in the real world. The problem comes when they start recruiting and monetizing.

Winterhawk99: Well, the elven enclave is mostly a wasteland now except for that clique which only shows up for player events being that dm events are so rare I only know of 3 honest to goodness DM events from the entire time I was there.

I have much more but this intermission is running over 3,000 words. And I feel it is enough to show that these two individuals Witchbane and Trashkeeper are not people anyone would want on their NWN world staff. Hopefully the Staff of TDN will listen to these players’ and former players’ words and do something before their world fades away in the next year.

Most NWN servers only last 4 years. Some stick to their guns with almost no players and others have found the formula to continue a good player population. If TDN keeps these two dms it will go down in flames in less than a year from now. That is my prediction. I hope they make the right choice because I care about the community I did my small part to build for the last two decades.

[Winterhawk99]

Khaine has responded publicly to his part in The Dragon's Neck development here is his Biopsy. It's a link and a long read:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ygv ... it?tab=t.0

[Winterhawk99]

Administrators Part II:

I pretty much covered my other sources in my last posting. I only play an elf on the server so am only influenced by the DMs that run elf events. Not many. I'll get to that. I did want to mention two new rules. Which I thought were quite humorous.

The server had a cap of 8th level until June. When they updated it, they raised it to 11th. There became a problem. The regular customers were getting as powerful and started to have the same amount and strength of magic items that the preferred customers did. So, what do you do about that. You have to make new rules to again give the preferred customers the advantage again. These two rules cover that. In fact, rules like these are specifically meant to separate classes so to speak.

The first is you cannot be a leader unless you opt in to the perma-death system. Which I sort of chuckled at. The reason is the last time I was on the server for 4 days I saw a total of 6 elves total on the server at different times. The elven enclave has become a lush wasteland whose population include a heard of deer, two moose (I named them Bulwinkle and Natasha) and a few elves that wander in and out throughout the day. I saw Silvaine for only a moment. Luthias, Isilme, Keila (wonderful rper) Nuarverthal, and Sanya the half-elf I think that is it.

So, the reason why I laughed is because the rule itself is useless. TDN no longer has the population for the rule to serve any purpose.

But why make the rule. Well, if you are not a preferred customer you are sure to die if not extremely careful and that does not include DM events. If you are a preferred customer one of the elite children of the DMs I am almost sure you could call a DM, and I am fairly sure they can raise you without a perma-death roll. Let's call it a (System Shock roll) For those like me that heavily played 1e.

The second rule is: If you adventure alone and find treasure like in a dungeon none of the treasure will be special. so instead of getting gloves with a +1 spot, you just get regular gloves. You will most likely get no magic.

Now how does that separate the common from the preferred customers. Well, that's easy. Most not all of the common players travel alone thus its chance they meet someone else while they are playing and are able to form a group. In the 4 days I myself played last and I met those 6 or so players. I was able to go on one patrol and found a new dungeon with Keila and a couple others. That was one time in 4 days. The population is so low that it's hard to form a group in the elven conclave at any one time.

Now the elites usually travel in packs and keep their cores tight, so no outsiders get in unless they show loyalty to the dm that the preferred customers surround. They all go on the world together so they can go out to dungeons and collect all the magic. then they disappear until a festival, or enclave meeting.

These rules and strategies are very common on private servers. I've seen it many times on servers like this. You have to remember that if you are a common customer to expect this of a private server. You have to also expect things like the Green Witch quest which I will talk about in the next section. This is just to let you know if you go to a private server. You need to expect this kind of behavior. It's normal and why you need a password to get in.

If this was a public server, I would be roasting them right now but it's not. This is normal in this situation so you will have to deal with it if you are a common player.

[Winterhawk99]

DMs:

Before I even get into the DMs of The Dragon’s Neck, I feel I have to talk a bit about the ethics of being a Dm. DMs have a lot of power on a server, and I have seen more and more abuse by DMs throughout the years I have played which spans over 2 decades. I was there at the very beginning.

Between the years of 2006 and 2012 I was an administrator and DM on three separate servers. One of the jobs I did on all three servers was to teach new DMs how to do their jobs. I taught them everything about: The Chooser, Creator, Limbo all the wands, how to set up encounters in the dm rings, how to set up scenes. However, the most important thing I taught them was about the ethics of being a DM while doing all this other stuff.

The first and foremost thing a DM does is write outlines for adventures whether one shots or campaigns for players to fill in. They also call balls and strikes at what the players do. That should be the foremost mission of a Dm. Not their own characters, not administration. If you are a DM you are a DM first and foremost.

Second. The more I look at it the more I think DMs should not be allowed to have characters on the PWs they DM on. It almost always turns most into power hungry megalomaniacs. I walked that road in Anchorome. They asked me to be a DM but I had one of the most powerful characters on the server. The character was a weapon master that had formed a powerful mercenary guild. As soon as I accepted my first campaign involved killing off that character. The reason is I have always felt that No DM should have a powerful PC on a server they play on.

If DMs do play characters on the server then their characters should never be in power positions. It just doesn’t work. As you see in TDN with Witchbane and Trashkeeper.

On TDN too Dm’s have spawned creatures and attacked Player characters so that they would die because the DM did not like that player. They have taken away transition triggers on people trying to survive events. They have done all these things on record. That’s not fair in any way shape or form.

These DMs are completely unethical and corrupt in their power. It’s really a shame and it has helped depopulate their world. DM’s have to arbitrate fairly and without malice. On TDN DM malice is a mainstay not an aberration.

Let’s talk about events. I’m going to break down TDN events into three classes.

1. Player events like festivals, elven meetings and conclave meetings. Here it’s a player event. A dm may look on in the form of a watcher but other than that the dm does nothing except maybe set up a scene for the festival.
2. Dm assisted events. Here the players have an event like a ritual and the dm will provide encounters, visions, commentary and the like. Its not really a DM event but I will give the dms ½ point for the assist.
3. A true Dm event where the Dm sets up a one shot or a campaign event. This is an event where the DMs get credit for a full event. Now let’s go back to my 6-month logs.

My logs are not perfect by date because I play while I’m home then go to work and write.

Midmarch: Second day on the server. I was in a dungeon with three others and a dm came in and gave us a riddle. These are little greeting the new player events. It wasn’t a full quest just a “Hi How are you we do things here.” I thought it was great and was enthusiastic at this point. I’ll give him a ½ point

A day later same dm comes in while there were a dozen of us at a shrine. He gave a grave cryptic warning then disappeared. Doesn’t count in my eyes, the whole thing may have lasted 15 minutes.

From mid-March to early may there was…………. Nothing! Not one event other than the player events.

Early may was the failed ritual. This was a player event that was assisted by a dm. The conclave wanted to contact the spirits about the scar. The Dm actually did very well describing what happened and spawned some baddies for the druid/shaman defenders to fight. ½ point.

Sometime after around May 12th There was an unknown event that featured shadows. I came into the world to see the group leave but I could not stay because my great grandchildren were visiting. When they left, I came back in to see the group dividing their treasure and there was a lot of it. I’ll give the DMs a full point for this one. So from mid-March to mid-May there were a total of 2 points or two whole events that I know about. That sucks and with no quests that sucks even harder. Tw events in two months on a heavy rp server. That’s less than some power gaming servers I have been on.

May 31 I saw a dm come on line and looked on the player chart. I asked Silvaine if she were in an event. Silvaine is one of the preferred customers. She told me in fact that she was in a personal event. I asked if the Dm was possessing a named NPC. Silvaine told me that in fact the dm was possessing the NPC. I got to give the dms a point there even though it was a personal event and the client was a preferred customer.

Now somewhere between all this was the Green Hag event. The preferred players all got together and decided to have an event. They wanted to soft deny everyone else by keeping it a secret. But they got caught red handed just before the event. They backtracked so fast it was unbelievable and agreed to have everyone that wanted to join. I laughed. Still got to give them a point.

So 4 points (events) in 3 months. Hey, things are getting better.

June 16th was the next event I can give a ½ point to the dms. There was a player’s event called the meeting of the people. And a DM/Pc led an event, yes, a DM/pc not a player. To scry a necromancer and a dm came on to assist. Again, the Dm did well. No encounters, just a vision. I think I put it down on Eibhlin’s story you can read it as the Dm said it. ½ point.

There was also a little nature event around that time that a DM traveled with us but did nothing. Just followed us around as a watcher. Ok ½ point for that.

Now I took vacation just to play this server after that for 21 days straight. I was worried about how many events I had been seeing so I took 21 days off and played my heart out.

There was another ritual to cleanse the forest. Player dm assist ½ point
There was a true bugbear event by a dm the first event I was able to attend. Now, I started in mid-March and this is July! We chased bugbears around the woods and killed them. That’s it. Hell of a plot DMs. Still a point.

And the last thing I saw was a DM possessed a guard in the enclave and make a comment at me. I turned to speak to the guard, but the DM was already gone. No point there You Jackass.

And I do not know of any other events. Its August 17th.

So, let’s count. 61/2 events in 6 months.

To sum it all together. DM’s on The Dragon’s Neck are lazy, unethical, vengeful and power hungry. They will not hesitate to screw with your character if they do not like you or you slight them in any way. They care more about their own characters and their character’s acquisition of power more than they do even their preferred players. Especially Witchbane and her little Minnie-Me Trashkeeper. I don’t know why they even go to great lengths to take area triggers away from players or spawn wisps to kill them. They have their very own kill wand in their inventory….. Oh, that’s right they want to make the players Suffer.

That’s all I have on DMs. Surprisingly I did not have too much trouble with them. I kept low key as possible just to watch all this mess going on. With popcorn on my computer table mind you.

[Winterhawk99]

Conclusion:

The Dragon’s Neck Persistent World is the most beautifully built server I have ever seen. Technically it is a Marval. The problem is many of the natives have rabies. Not all of them but the ones that count do. If you would like to see a beautifully built world It’s a nice place to visit but I would not stay. If you like Hack and Slash you will find some great dungeons to do that. Just like I said don’t disturb the natives or you may come down with a case of I don’t want to play NWN at all anymore.

I know of over a ½ dozen people myself that played on TDN and were so sickened by what they saw they not only left the server but the NWN community completely. That’s bad. TDN has made an already small and dwindling community even smaller.

Unless you have weird masochistic tendencies, I would suggest you keep to yourself and be low key while you are there, something like a vacation in Venezuela. This ends my Review of this server. I made myself sick last weekend knowing I had to write the people part of the review this week. I want to write good reviews with few suggestions on how to make a server better. Sadly, I could not with this one.

The Dragon’s Neck is constantly losing their customers now. Their Beamdog board rating is abysmal. I really don’t think the server can be fixed with the DM’s driving 60-65% of their players away already. It will most likely die in the next year if not it will be relegated to those nostalgia servers like Bastons of War where the only players that come from time to time are their old players to remember what it was like in the past.





As in all my reviews this is a kind of editorial my opinion based on my sources and my own long experience building game worlds. 40 years building pnp worlds, 20 years building NWN worlds, and 5 years building a world for future novels. You may not agree with me and that is fine. I've done every job in NWN at some time in the past and greater experience outside of that. Take it as you will.

[Winterhawk99]

After looking around and going to sources I believe that the site was attacked by a very common attack.

I went to a source that knows about these things, and this is what I said about it:

My site was attacked by bots over the last few days. I should have figured. It looks like Kobra and I took care of things finally. it was a bit exhilarating trying to find out what was wrong and then dealing with it. Basically, the bots clogged up the system and kept giving me SQL errors (MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS) errors. I figure it was the developers of The Dragon's Neck that did it. These things just don't appear after making a review like I did. For every action (heh) I cut off all ips that seemed suspicious from my c-panel. Kobra helped a lot.
That seemed to clear things up.


This is what my source said: yeah. Those attacks are pretty easy to deal with. And they're usually done from a bot net of infected users. If you can definitively tie it back to TDN, then you can pin a felony on them
but normally that service is purchased, so that's unlikely
considering who the service is purchased from though, that's a RICO case
still, banning the IPs is what you need to do. If it only happens with a select number of IPs, then they aren't going to do it again
it's possible to coordinate with various white hat groups (usually professional technicians who advertise) to get those IPs banned from a lot more services, since they're likely an infected botnet, but be very careful with this route and please just coordinate with people you know rather than going searching for a rando to help.
but you have no obligation to spend that much effort on it
to make more users and more IPs, they would either need to infect more computers or build more computers and buy more internet connections. So, either way, you come out ahead in that calculus.
because it's possible to purchase this from a server farm these days, most server hosts require payment upfront for the first month of service. Most have defenses against this kind of program too, and if they try to go that route, their credit card info might be used to track down who did it
so, if it stops, they probably got caught.

more than likely, you have users who keep tabs open on your website taking up some of those connections. Some might be bots looking to harvest your writing for their LLMs, since you're a good writer. Some are probably just users who follow your work for pure enjoyment.


I don't really know if the staff of The Dragon's Neck did this or an individual from there, but it does go to show you have some very bad people there if it was done by them. I made some great friends there like Keila, Luthias, and Isilme but there are some there I believe are very evil people. I don't think it was a coincidence that my site got attacked as I finished my review.

Whether or not it was TDN or someone else Now you know how to fix this type of attack. go to your c-panel find your visitors and if you see concurrent ip's clogging up the system that's probably the bots. block all of them in a series and that should take care of it.

[Winterhawk99]

It has come to my attention that things have changed greatly at The Dragon's Neck, so I am amending the review. Remember that I personally have been banned though I caused no trouble in game or out. I was on the server from February until August of 2025. I was simply banned for writing this review. From what I know Aschent has stepped down as owner. Witchbane and her cronies have been banned. Trashkeeper was not banned but may or may not have had to step down as Dm.

Goldberry the new owner has published a message publicly about all that has happened on TDN during the time I was on and the two months I have been banned This is her article:

Hello TdN! Since the recent drama there's been a lot of rumors flying about and I think it needs to be addressed at least a little because this is all such a massive, sudden change to everything and this isn't the ideal way for new leadership to start. Apologies for the delay, I have been terribly sick this week, and I am not known exactly for being a very outspoken person, so it hasn't been easy for me to sit and talk about it with the two things combined. Still, for the sake of wanting to promote more actual transparency and less HR kinda speak (I hear you really hate that) …


It's true. It's me. I did it. I am going to tell you MY TRUTH . Hope that I am not too late to my cancellation party. Yes, I remade my character, yes, she was maxed out for a bit. It has, however, wildly been taken out of proportion and context. Anyone who has remade their character (and is a serial hoarder of memento, useless rp items) knows the pain of transferring inventories.
Meaning I spent over an hour organizing my inventory and moving things to the bank instead of levelling up. When I finally got to it, I realized that a mistake had been made with the XP and decided to push through with it to test what my build would look like. I communicated to Krezk of this however to later remove the levels. Here's exhibit A, just a casual 3 in 1 - typical dev conversation - in which I remind him that we've yet to do it, make of it what you will.




Little did I suspect that anyone would be tracking my movements and gathering receipts, so it took a week or so until she was finally downscaled to lvl 2, because in case you haven't noticed, I barely log in. I invest most of my time developing for the server and pushing patches consistently.
If you know my character then you also know I'm purely a social roleplayer, I don't engage in PVP nor PVE nor siphon DM attention, meaning I did not feel compelled to stop working on my projects to log in and fix that effectively immediately, it slipped my mind for a bit. The snapshot of my character at level 11 in the meantime feels like it has been done maliciously to paint things in a bad light, rather than being honest about the full context.


All the same, I take full accountability for my stupid mistake. In hindsight, I should have done things by the book, but here we are, things happen and you learn.

I apologise for the things that haven't been handled well over the past several months, and also for the shock that it was for the community at large to find out about this so suddenly, but it was not in fact so sudden, it had slowly been boiling up over time, and Aschent has had as much input as the rest of us, this decision was debated and made between the three of us.

Regarding the “lost lore”. I have been the main writer, area design and lore curator since Danuvis left, and DM’s would always come to me for queries, changes and guidance, so nothing really changes there, I am informed and aware of all ongoing plots and personal storylines that have been developing, meaning no plans are necessarily cancelled.

We also want to move away from stuffy corporate speak and be more natural in our communication with the community. It might take a little bit of an adjustment period but we'll get there!


And on a more serious note; now, to finally offer some real clarity, over several months there have been growing concerns of clique behavior that has been affecting various parts of the server. It has led to favoritism, it has led to server information being leaked, it has led to people being bullied, it has led to a lot of bad behavior that shouldn't have happened. The clique mentality that was happening with certain players was also happening in staff, and it made communication impossible, which is why a lot of the rumors are being spread about a breakdown of communication and trust. Reports are already coming back about how they continue to leak private information about the server, including all of the haks, areas, writing and scripts which have taken us many years of work, obviously stolen without our consent. I think their actions speak for their character better than I could with words, and so I will leave it at that.

I promise you that other rumors that are being tossed around are either gross exaggerations, half-truths or even outright lies in some cases. I don't want to go into the real nitty gritty of it because it would be a long, ugly description and prolong an already ugly situation into a needless back and forth. It feels awful to have this kind of negativity surrounding an already stressful and disappointing time, but all I can do is promise that we're going to try to show you in the coming months that all we want is what's best for TDN. We don't want to disappoint anyone, and we'll prove our integrity going forward by being more open and communicative about our decision-making and the things that happen on the server.


Now that everyone has had a moment to vent and take their feelings out of their chests, we are going to start moderating the chats properly, just a fair warning in advance. So, take a break if you must, take some time away, and consider returning at some other point, there'll be no hard feelings.


Thank you for taking time to read and sorry again for anyone we've upset.





This seems an honest apology for all the misdeeds the staff has done to their own customers over the time I was there. As I said before. I personally caused no trouble in game or out of game while I was on. I was banned for making this review which obviously had an effect of showing the public how bad this server was with its personal. I, myself have no interest in going back there. I am reviewing another server at this time and have several lined up as owners of other servers have requested reviews from me to help them improve their worlds. I may come back in a few years if TDN still exists and the ban on me personally is lifted, however this is purely a maybe depending on circumstances. There are many servers still active on NWN and I do not wish to waste my time on maybes and servers to whom I've already given a review especially when I did not have fun on them.

I do hope TDN cleans itself up and becomes successful. The amount of time and energy just in building the world is obvious. Good Dms and staff could do much there and give their players a wonderful experience if they use their heads and creativity. Remember this is D&D and D&D depends mostly on Dms actually running meaningful campaigns for their customers.

I also have this from a Dm by the name of Krezk



Krezk

Hey, Everyone

This is a staff change announcement. Witchbane, Komkar, Sunset and Blackwell have been removed by the TDN development team and have been banned from the server

The reasons for this boil down to a combination of an irreversible breakdown in trust and fundamental difference in views on how an NWN server development team should run and collaborate, which cannot be bridged for aforementioned trust.

Nonetheless we thank them for all the contributions to TDN they have provided and wish them the best in their future endeavors.


This concludes the update of my review
Thank you
Winterhawk.