been playing and mod making for this game semi-regularly for over a decade so i guess i have a few things to say in regards to this topic
Badspot created a fairly successful game in a time when there weren't a billion other lego or even building or even online indie games out there, and yet he went nowhere. Why? Because he is not a good or nice person, and that is why his community was known for being not good, for being not nice, and it's why this game died when it did and it's why over a decade later he has 600 followers on twitter. It's why he still mentions almost 20 years later that he "made a game once."
Everywhere you go on the internet you are going to find people being jackasses, that's just life, dude. We were all young once, and I'm sure plenty of us made some stupid posts that we regret. Nobody is perfect. The main problem the forum had back in the day were young teenagers starting flaming wars leading to other stupid drama, which if pressured enough could turn serious because things escalate. some people are just looking for the attention. The issue was and always has been forum moderation. When there was a decent sized moderation team, people were regularly getting banned because of their stupidity - sure maybe Badspot & the other moderators were a bit harsh at times, but in the end they were doing what they felt was right to address problem users...most of the time, anyways
There was never any attempt at hiring moderators or moderation in general outside of the rules which were judged VERY arbitrarily (as were permabans/unbans) and he made little to no effort at keeping out repeat abusers until it became clear that his the same toxicity that he festered in had projected onto his community and made it impossible to sell get into the game and then boom suddenly we get modera- NO wait that never happened, you just had to buy the game to post. I guess if it's the trolls or the gp at least youll know the trolls will keep paying.
plenty of people were permanently IP banned from the forums, this was back before you needed to own the game to have a forum account. The issue was that simply by using a VPN the offender could make a new account and be posting again within a matter of seconds, doing the same toxic stuff as before. To address this issue, Badspot made it so that each BLID is tied to their forum account - I really don't see how that is a bad thing...
He had people who were so passionate about this game churning out content, hell Ephialtes and then ran an entire dedicated server rental service and created an entire client to do what Badspot was too uninspired to do, and he managed to drive them away by being a gigantic starfish.
Wait, you think Badspot was the starfish in that situation? Ephi wasn't exactly a nice person himself....see an example here:
https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=250264.msg7227840#msg7227840A person who needed help on an issue cross-posted a topic about not being able to join servers. Ephi moved the topic to help, and then proceeds to ban said user because he expressed that he wasn't getting help in that particular forum section. Come to find out later the real issue was with RTB servers all along. I wonder if Ephi even felt a shred of remorse for banning someone over something so trivial, then discovering it was his own mod causing the problem in the first place? Somehow I doubt it.
Here is another example, where Ephi scolds a user that asks about embedding adfly links into their add-ons download links:
https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=249288.msg7194731#msg7194731At least user "Sevara" was bold enough to call him out on his hypocrisy.
I don't blame any of you for how this forum operated, but Badspot I do blame you for the traumatization of dozens of children.
Why is it Badspot's fault? If anything it's other user's fault - just look at your topic title it's called the COMMUNITY that killed the game, right?? The weirdos, the groomers, the sickos - those are the people that gave the game a bad reputation - and those are the kind of people that deserve to be banned
This forum is, and I don't mean this as a compliment, a monument to what could've been.
I can agree with that, although I feel it's better to look at the positives instead of the negatives - at least most of the weirdos went over to Brickadia
Despite everything though I still hold my memories of blockland highly as I met my best friend of 12 years now and counting, and made a very good handful of friends that I still talk to on a daily or weekly basis and I will be ever grateful for that. I hope that everyone that wasn't a groomer or something equally vile is doing good now, genuinely. I never knew about anyone's background so reading through this thread really opened my eyes at the people behind the posts. It does feel funny that we were all similar in our real life situations at the time, as I was also a really lonely 11 or 12 year old when joining the forums. I do miss the good times where I used to see a lot of people interact on the forums and always wanting to talk to some of them but was too shy to say anything lol.
It would be really interesting to have a video essay about the forums and the good and the bad the community was involved in, i've always wanted that since the sharp decline in the player base and forumer activity. Thank you guys for the good times. I hope this thread gets to other people in the community to hear their insight on their experiences and opinions on the forums and the game itself.
That was quite a wholesome post. I too have made some great friends from this game over the years.
Personally, this game has been nothing but a blessing for me. It's a fun way to express my creativity with my friends and family. I feel sad for the people who have had a bad experience here because of unfortunate events or the disgusting nature of toxic individuals. I wish nothing but the best for this game and hope someday the community can regrow into something better than it once was. I know I'm being highly optimistic, but I will continue to play with friends and create mods as long as possible. If baddy ever decides to shutdown the master server I hope he at least makes BL it free and open source / a way to host without needing authentication to master server as the final goodbye so that people who still want to enjoy the game online with friends can do so
