Well, we’re five months deep and I’m still locked out.  I have tried most of the available communication avenues, but received no response.  The flurry of hack attempts Teppy mentioned to SpliffBeanz is still my only lead.  I’m not sure if I was a target or a suspect, though the latter seems to explain more.  Since I haven’t explicitly stated this yet, I did not and would not participate in such malicious acts.  I find Teppy’s honesty in admitting his mistake with SpliffBeanz refreshing, and in line with his typical patterns of fairness and integrity.  Unfortunately, his practice of taking punitive action against suspects without engaging in communication with them yields unnecessary false positives.  Perhaps more troubling, it effectively closes the door to appeal, making it all but impossible for those falsely categorized as malicious to attempt to correct the record.  Even in SpliffBeanz’s case, Teppy specified that he just happened to notice the mistake while dealing with an unrelated issue.  I can only anxiously hope that this is a temporary practice stemming from Teppy’s busy schedule, and not a philosophical indifference toward or rejection of the Blackstone principle.

While I shouldn’t and won’t deliberately hide this disturbing flaw in the game’s administration, I don’t think focusing on the negative is my most effective path forward.  Having recently read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I want to act within what Stephen Covey defines as a win-win, rather than win-lose, paradigm.

To this end, when discussing Dragon’s Tale, I will continue to highlight its genuinely positive aspects, which in my opinion are abundant.  I will also write another forum post, one aimed at introducing Dragon’s Tale to non-Entropia players.  Any suggestions for forums I should publish it to would be greatly appreciated.  Other ideas to promote the game are as well.  I’d like my actions to make it unavoidably evident that I don’t fit the malicious hacker stereotype.  Hopefully seeking an outcome advantageous to myself, Teppy, and the community as a whole, will be a more effective approach than an adversarial one.