Some Xplor Drama (also "TEST not good for the community as a whole")

Horatus

Space Marshal
Nov 2, 2017
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Horatus
Woah... I had no idea Explor had actually gone bellyup...

Well I hope whoever the poor person was that set it up only to watch it fall over found a nice Org to call home and if failing to find a nice Org, I hope they joined TEST :slight_smile:
I may end up parking my fleet here. The actual game is still a few years out by my math.
 

Blind Owl

Hallucinogenic Owl
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Nov 27, 2015
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with how much you drink, I'm certain we could capture a goodly amount of booze out of your piss. we'd just need to filter and distill it.

Hoot!
Haha, true story.
I have about 30 gallons of home brew going. That should last you a few days.
That'll do for a spell I reckon. Let the leadership begin! First things first, I'm going to abdicate my throne so someone better suited can do the job.

God, all that decision making was thirsty work. I need a beer.
I may end up parking my fleet here. The actual game is still a few years out by my math.
You're welcome here. You already brought beer, so you can't possibly be a SPAI, haha. Welcome to TEST!
 

Soundwave-SW

Admiral
Oct 31, 2016
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Soundwave-SW
It does make me wonder about the Xplore org ships. I know they had picked a few up with donor funds.
Tiiga never did provide receipts or proof that those ships had been purchased, people who asked about transparency concerns were purged. Generally speaking XPLOR loses its senior staff once a year.

Some other related issues that lead to instability within XPLOR in the link below.

http://abouttiiga.blogspot.nl/

Wait a minute.... wait a minute! I remember that whole TQR thing last year, I made a parody video about it
Looks like they actually succeeded then?! lol oh that's priceless
Not in the slightest.

XPLOR has been a corpse of an organization since long before TQR got involved with them.

Aside from embezzling backer funds to pay for his relocation from Newyork to Israel Tiiga barely checks in on his organization, his last substantial act as a "leader" was to lock down XPLOR's spectrum organization section earlier this year as the scripts written for the xplor.today website don't function on the RSI platform.

Having no substantive technical background of his own he's reliant on naive membership to provide him with assistance. Not long after acquiring what it is he needs the M.O. thus far has been to purge the people assisting him or really anyone who either contributes to much or asks to many questions.

The last serious effort from within XPLOR keeping its community on life support died when Murgen Templar (and senior membership) left, after seeing what was highlighted about TQR and XPLOR by our project turned out to be accurate.

There is a great deal more going on but hopefully the cliffnotes version will suffice.
 

Montoya

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Oct 31, 2013
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XPLOR has been a corpse of an organization since long before TQR got involved with them.
It saddens me to hear that.

XPLOR's early success is partly what inspired me to step up and get TEST moving.

They had a very impressive website, forum, graphics and overall presence in the community when they got started.

A lot of very good people all come together to make XPLOR happen.

To see it wither away like this is a sad end to what could have been a really nice org in Star Citizen.
 

CosmicTrader

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They had a very impressive website, forum, graphics and overall presence in the community when they got started.

A lot of very good people all come together to make XPLOR happen.
And none of them are there any more.
They were all kicked out be the Founder.
That alone should tell you all need to know about xplor.

btw - Try to imagine who is left in xplor............
Me thinks the priorities are a tad bit mixed up at xplor.
 

Soundwave-SW

Admiral
Oct 31, 2016
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Soundwave-SW
Cosmic hit the nail on the head.

In fact the original website designer was one of the first to be purged.

At the time of said purging Tiiga trumped up some claims of the website creators request for more access to the site (so he could do more work) equating to him trying to take over etc.

Tiiga went so far as to threaten legal action if several domains purchased by an XPLOR member (no longer with the group) were not turned over to his ownership. The helpful member buying a few domains for XPLOR to use appeared to threaten Tiiga's need to have a sense of "control" over things.

The classic micromanager, until he burned out.

This sort of thing has happened repeatedly in that organization until it has been eroded into what it is now. A weigh station that will finally die when its user base grows active once again and seeks a more relaxed environment.

It has only ever been a matter of time.

Thus is the nature of cults of personality, inherently unstable and with little support structure in the event the social hub of the group is either self destructive, to controlling, so on.

Leadership isn't something any sane person should ever seek out. In reality leadership of most groups is something that people ought to be sentenced to do. The stress, workload, time investment... These are things that can outright break people not prepared to either put in time, or are more concerned with personal ego than anything else.


 

DirectorGunner

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Man, seeing shenanigans like this makes me glad we have His Holiness Montoya of TEST as our Glorious Leader. Or, you know, whoever is currently in charge.
Last I heard it was a blind owl
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Or, you know, whoever is currently in charge.
I think we lost the badge and the whole concept went out of the window.

There is a huge difference between being in charge and being a leader. All hail the Glorious Montoya!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1FxfR3lg6Q

Leadership isn't something any sane person should ever seek out. [...] These are things that can outright break people not prepared to either put in time, or are more concerned with personal ego than anything else.
This is a unique part of Star Citizen development - as far as I am aware no other Massive Multiplayer Online Game has had the benefit of having the Org system before the mechanics that it can effect in-game.

A few big egos have already crumbled to dust, a handful of tyrants have already been toppled and a few douchbags have been banned a bunch of times (albeit coming back with new names and old tactics).

All this with minimal impact to the game as the game itself does not yet exist. I would be very surprised if this was not all being monitored and the game itself is now being built to incorporate or exclude certain grief that has already and could potentially take place - Hell, if certain Orgs are shitty enough it could add a year to development.
 

Nox2020

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Nov 5, 2017
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In my experience with leadership, it’s the ones that don’t want the job and lose sleep at night worrying about the ones underneath, that do the best damn job. Of course I’m not qualified to lead a bucket of piss so there is that. As far as using people’s donations to haul ass, that’s just disgraceful and I’m kinda mad I didn’t think of it first. J/k. I may be a bastard but I’m not a ******* bastard. ;)
 

MurgenTemplar

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Oct 31, 2016
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Since my name was mentioned I will chime in on personal title. The only reason for doing so is that XPLOR is an empty machine eating new backers. When someone checks the RSI org-pages he or she usually joins one of the bigger org's. I don't like the fact that the current XPLOR is no more and no less then a mechanism where one person approves the application, sends the discord-server address and then it stops because there is nothing left. It feels very unfair to the org's that actually put a lot of effort in their recruitment. IMHO RSI should disband XPLOR for this immediately.

Here is my story. I was one of the people who was spammed in the early beginning of org's in 2014. I joined as affiliate with the idea it could benefit my old small org by teaming up with a large org. When I decided my 1999 X-Wing Alliance org was dead I joined as member. This was just after Cosmic left and I jumped right in the middle of the Raoul incident. Raoul was involved in Tiiga's ship program and closest to the things Tiiga was doing. Raoul got concerned and backed by some other active members he posted this letter uttering his worries.




Tiiga ignored the matter, there was never a discussion and soon after this Raoul left XPLOR. Looking at this we gave Tiiga a strong advice to setup an Escrow in case he would run under a bus but the advice was just as much ignored.

In that period Tiiga relocated because of a split with his GF but it also started the timeline in which he was no longer interested in the game. Quote: 'this game is not worth playing for the next 4-5 years'.

So, there we were, 2016, a small group of active players trying to make XPLOR look alive. We organized the meetings, the Game Nights and we tried to keep the website and team-speak server alive with content. No-one except Tiiga and Uncaught can actually maintain the servers themselves. As a result both website and TS are highly overdue for maintenance and updates. As far as I know XPLOR's TS is down for 7 months now. Noone cares.

Back to my story, after a year in which website and TS started to fall apart we developed a plan to migrate to Cloud-servers and Spectrum. On 31/12/2016 two of us worked an evening to configure and build a new TS on Azure Cloud because the old one broke down and Tiiga was on vacation on a tropical beach and could not be bothered as usual. He qas even annoyed we cared for XPLOR. 3 weeks later he basically told us to f**k ourselves after a general meeting. Fil1976 (chipped in 700 euro's in Tiiga's fleet) was earlier appointed as daily leader and Fil1976 decided to go for the Cloud. however, after the meeting Tiiga decided to repair his old crappy TS. I will not post the things Tiiga told me in officer-chat. Basically I could either keep my mouth shut and follow his lead or leave like many people before me.

In the aftermath we (the group running XPLOR on a daily basis) left and started our own venture. He gave me the blame. Bottomline:

- Tiiga does not think Star Citizen is worth playing for another 4-5 years.
- There is no equality in XPLOR. There is Tiiga, then nothing, then members (as stuffing)
- It is unclear what happened with XPLOR's fleet. Rumor goes it is spread over locked accounts owned by Tiiga but there is no proof
- The Paypal account has been removed. Thousands of dollars passed that account
- Most people who chipped in left, are inactive or not traceable

I received a disturbing video-link from a guy on Discord who never came back to me.

There you go ... this is my story and it is here now (sorry Montoya)
 

DirectorGunner

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I'm not a very nice guy when it comes to people who do this to others... which is one of the reasons I'm doing law school for my grad program soon.
Thanks for sharing, makes me glad I never donated to Xplor or aka Tiiga fund.
What's the guy's name?
Is it Richard? because he does sound like a d*ck.
 

Talonsbane

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Jul 29, 2017
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All the more reason that I'm grateful for coming across 1 of @Montoya 's YouTube vids & thought TEST Squadron seemed interesting enough to check out further. I've spent nearly a decade in mostly dead (yet supposedly large) organizations on numerous games over the years. It is almost as lonely as being a solo player entirely. I'm also extremely grateful for the friends that I've made & that I'm making here.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Since my name was mentioned I will chime in on personal title. The only reason for doing so is that XPLOR is an empty machine eating new backers. When someone checks the RSI org-pages he or she usually joins one of the bigger org's. I don't like the fact that the current XPLOR is no more and no less then a mechanism where one person approves the application, sends the discord-server address and then it stops because there is nothing left. It feels very unfair to the org's that actually put a lot of effort in their recruitment. IMHO RSI should disband XPLOR for this immediately.

Here is my story. I was one of the people who was spammed in the early beginning of org's in 2014. I joined as affiliate with the idea it could benefit my old small org by teaming up with a large org. When I decided my 1999 X-Wing Alliance org was dead I joined as member. This was just after Cosmic left and I jumped right in the middle of the Raoul incident. Raoul was involved in Tiiga's ship program and closest to the things Tiiga was doing. Raoul got concerned and backed by some other active members he posted this letter uttering his worries.




Tiiga ignored the matter, there was never a discussion and soon after this Raoul left XPLOR. Looking at this we gave Tiiga a strong advice to setup an Escrow in case he would run under a bus but the advice was just as much ignored.

In that period Tiiga relocated because of a split with his GF but it also started the timeline in which he was no longer interested in the game. Quote: 'this game is not worth playing for the next 4-5 years'.

So, there we were, 2016, a small group of active players trying to make XPLOR look alive. We organized the meetings, the Game Nights and we tried to keep the website and team-speak server alive with content. No-one except Tiiga and Uncaught can actually maintain the servers themselves. As a result both website and TS are highly overdue for maintenance and updates. As far as I know XPLOR's TS is down for 7 months now. Noone cares.

Back to my story, after a year in which website and TS started to fall apart we developed a plan to migrate to Cloud-servers and Spectrum. On 31/12/2016 two of us worked an evening to configure and build a new TS on Azure Cloud because the old one broke down and Tiiga was on vacation on a tropical beach and could not be bothered as usual. He qas even annoyed we cared for XPLOR. 3 weeks later he basically told us to f**k ourselves after a general meeting. Fil1976 (chipped in 700 euro's in Tiiga's fleet) was earlier appointed as daily leader and Fil1976 decided to go for the Cloud. however, after the meeting Tiiga decided to repair his old crappy TS. I will not post the things Tiiga told me in officer-chat. Basically I could either keep my mouth shut and follow his lead or leave like many people before me.

In the aftermath we (the group running XPLOR on a daily basis) left and started our own venture. He gave me the blame. Bottomline:

- Tiiga does not think Star Citizen is worth playing for another 4-5 years.
- There is no equality in XPLOR. There is Tiiga, then nothing, then members (as stuffing)
- It is unclear what happened with XPLOR's fleet. Rumor goes it is spread over locked accounts owned by Tiiga but there is no proof
- The Paypal account has been removed. Thousands of dollars passed that account
- Most people who chipped in left, are inactive or not traceable

I received a disturbing video-link from a guy on Discord who never came back to me.

There you go ... this is my story and it is here now (sorry Montoya)
Wow, many thanks for your story. I had no idea we had so many refugees in the ranks, glad TEST could offer you all a port in the storm even if you do set sail when the weather clears :)
 

Sraika

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Nov 7, 2017
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These forums were the number one reason I joined TEST Squadron. The sense of community here is far and beyond any other organization I've ever been a part of. I also appreciate the decentralized power structure, which is rather refreshing, compared to my experiences with other games. Especially EVE. That being said, I've still not actually done anything in game with anyone from TEST (aside from bumping into a few people here and there), and I probably wont until we have some sort of meaningful gameplay. (Goddammit, 3.0. Where are you?) Also, having an organization this large in the alpha stage of the game allows us to exert a not inconsiderable amount of influence on the final product. Naturally, we'll likely only use that influence to get beer added as a tradable commodity.
Cheers to us, basically. :beers:
 
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