The last 2 debirths were not my action. I will let the ArchWizard in question
to explain his reasoning behind it if he wishes to. The restores I did, were
made purely to allow some state of fairness in the matter. I'm trying to come
up with a generic policy which will be flower-oriented (i.e. yes, in certain
circumstances we do restores), but I'm not sure if that will be taken to an
agreement or even seriously by other arches. What I don't like, and I voiced
that opinion publically many times, that officially we don't restore, yet some
people get them. What I hear back from other admins is "well, then don't
restore". I wish everyone would adhere to that policy. So my question is - if
we DO restores occasionally (of course we could always babble ourselves a
"good" reason to do so in this case) - why don't we just say, hey, this and
that, in such cases you can ask for a restore and get one, in other cases not.
But then also take the situation more responsibly from both mortal and
immortal perspective. I.e. ADHERE to the rules we make.

This is solely my point of view, and I can sure as hell say that some members
of B.A.T. ry aren't on the same side with me.

^o^

The rules of BatMUD are enforced by actual people, not robots. As much fun as
it would be to apply all rules equally to all people in any situation, we
choose to let common sense guide us and to take some things in context. For
example, let's say the game crashes and half the mud loses their eq. Our
official policy is "we don't restore". And, yet, in cases like this, we tend
to do just that. Why? Because, generally speaking we think it would be better
for the game in general (as well as the affected people in particular) if the
rules got bent in such a case. When that happens, we rarely hear people
whining about how unfairly the rules are being enforced.

The same applies to individuals affected personally as well. A level 7 newbie
who creates a level 3 secondary and breaks the multiplaying rules out of sheer
ignorance is probably not going to get zaped, eq-dested, forcequit, and
removed with a humiliating mudwide echo. However, a level 100 player killer
who makes a level 65 secondary to sales cheat will almost certainly get just
that kind of treatment. Do the rules specify that one player gets harsher
treatment than the other?

So let's say there's a character -- for the sake of anonymity, let's call him
Mr. J -- rebirths, and within 48 hours, the race and guild he's rebirthed into
both get one of the harshest downtunes they've seen in years. While this was
almost certainly not done personally against Mr. J, he would probably feel
pretty signled out and scrood by that development. A compassionate archwiz,
such as myself, might take that into consideration when deciding if Mr. J gets
a restore.

Now, should Mr. J _expect_ a restore, or _demand_ one? No. You should always
play the game as if the rules applied to you, even in cases where you think
it's silly. But based on the number of people who ask things like "my eq
dested due to a bug, can I get a restore of it?" most of you have the
philosophy "it doesn't hurt to ask". Everyone thinks their case is special,
that it requirs more attention than everyone else's, and I say that having
handled literally hundreds of restore requests since I've arched. And, most
times, I didn't do anything about it. I cannot speak for the other arches, but
I can say that I only give restores in the most dire of cases, or when a bug
was involved.

I know this explaination is not good enough for some of you. I know some of
you are of the opinion "either we all get it, or nobody gets it". I don't
care. You do not want to be in a game where exceptions are never, ever made,
common sense is never used, and leniancy is never shown.

Shinarae Lluminus

P.S. I have no further comment on any specific restores.