Patch Complaint and an offer

My apologies for this being so long.

Here's the thing, Sylvia...If it wasn't for the Boss Illfang quest, we would more than likely be placing the site under maintenance mode presently and then none of you could post at all while we implement the changes of the site.

It's not a ploy for people to solely take on the boss illfang. If we wanted that, then I would have frozen both socials and quests. This was mentioned in the mini patch notes, but socials AND quests are undergoing some major changes. I can't mention too much, but they will technically be on par with each other and members will want to balance the two out for the appropriate COL/EXP. Socials will also be graded and treated with as much importance as quests.

AKA - Go make posts in socials and they will also be graded when the new changes have been implemented. As a hint, you can still fight in socials, too. Solely talking to other characters is not a requirement.

The biggest reason for wanting to halt the process of new quests is that some aspects of the present grading process will no longer work with our new system and we don't want to add more and more quests to grade when we're going ahead and changing things around anyways. On top of that, the staff have noticed and are tired of many members caring more about the numbers and rewards than the actual roleplaying experience. I've been guilty of it, too. This is a forum-based roleplay, too, not an MMO. There's no need to do all quests (and we have had horrible cases of grinding)! Rewards are not an obligation nor a requirement, but a privelage.

That system may have worked on Indigo, but it has been failing on here. We've had 15 moderators at one point in under one month's time since the site's creation. We have had six moderators basically retire due to getting too burned out from the site obligations. On top of that, there are two to four other mods who have really become too burned out and are hardly participating, uncertain if they even want to continue. For anyone who has been a moderator on a site, they generally understand it takes a good deal of time and effort, but when it is cutting not only into the roleplaying experience but personal time in real life and burning all of us out, something is wrong.

I am starting school this coming monday. I have two jobs on top of this site and I am leading both a steampunk crew and a Louisiana steampunk community (all of which sell merchandise and put on events). Let's not even get into my other hobbies and recreational activities. I understand busy. Most of us moderators still have lives outside of Link-Start, and other jobs for that matter, too. Yes, there are a few of us without jobs - but the point remains that we need and have to find a balance. Not all of the quest mods have been able to keep up with what I did for the quests and it wears them out.

Every site works in its own way. If all of the mods retire, then the site dies. There are only so many members we can hire and so many members that we believe can get the job done efficiently.

It came to our attention that something had to be done. In some past patch notes that were being written by Bunny, she stated, "There is a very thin line between the freedom to do what one chooses for their quest, and the amount of work that a moderator has to put in in order to grade that quest."

As it stands, we will not be removing the freeze on new quests. You did bring up some good points, though. I will speak to the staff about finding something equivalent to quests or possibly returning them for a little while longer until the Illfang quests have begun.

Please try to take your time to enjoy and participate in socials. The number and quest system is not everything and we are working toward changing this. Rather than have members focus so heavily on their numbers of levels, we hope to actually advance through the storyline and floors in Sword Art Online.