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Regrettably, the player of Aurion has been banned from MRO.

To give things more context: Aurion is also the player of Kaz, banned in January of 2010, and Merc, banned in June of 2010. All three times have been for the same reason: respect. For lack of better words: he has a temper that comes out when he doesn't get his way, and he has a track record of trying to burn the site down around him.

Normally a banning is permanent around here: we do it once, and we stick to it. But Kaz was an older member, so when he snuck in as Merc soon after his original banning, we turned a blind eye with the hopes that he'd learned from the experience. To put it nicely: he hadn't. We didn't intend to give him any more chances after that, but he slipped through a crack in moderation when he sent in Aurion's profile about a year later; it had been so long since we'd seen him last that we didn't realize who he was at first; we thought he'd moved on. By the time we figured things out, a few months had already gone by. The Mod Team voted to give him yet another chance under this latest identity. As those who have chatted with him on the Cbox or threaded with him know, he's a decent guy, a great writer, and fun to have around for chatting and plotting. We ruled that as long as he was just having fun RPing, and not starting down the same path as the last two times, then we'd again turn a blind eye on the former ban ruling. We hoped that the year he'd been away had been enough time for him to change.

Unfortunately, he recently sent in a power growth request. Usually that's a good thing; usually 'unfortunately' isn't how we'd describe a fun event like earning your character's first power growth. However, the Mod Team did not feel that shifting to a bat-winged human form was related to his current mutation. His opinion differed, and he chose to express that difference with bold, underlines, and personalized insults directed at specific members of the Mod Team.

We'd like to be very clear on one thing: while we definitely don't encourage shouting angry emails directed at ourselves, with any normal member, our first course of action would be just a warning and a request to, ah, stop yelling at us please, and we'd try to work things out from there.

But this is Aurion/Kaz/Merc, and this is exactly the same reason he's been banned before. Twice. And historically, his next step has always been to try and drag his fight with the Mods public—in the Cbox, in OOC posts, through PMs, through instant messages. It takes a heavy toll on our OOC atmosphere that, on the two prior occasions, has taken months for MRO to fully recover from post-banning. With his latest email to us reading exactly like something from the last two times... we regrettably reached the conclusion that he'd been given enough chances in the past, and that a swift ban now would be better for the site in the long run than repeating that history yet again.

The decision to ban him was unanimous. It's not something we do lightly. We believe that people can change—it's the basis of how we moderate, and it's the reason we keep making the mistake of giving him chances even when we logically know what a terrible, horrible idea it is. Our only excuse for this fiasco is that we'd sincerely hoped that he had changed, this time around. We'll do our best in the future to catch him before he sneaks back in, to avoid a fourth post like this. It was our mistake to let him slip through this time, and we apologize.

We apologize, as well, to anyone who was plotting with him; if you're currently in a thread with him, you can God Mod his character as needed to wrap things up.

If anyone has concerns over this, or just wants a little more clarification on something we said here, please email us at the Mod Mail, or PM an active Mod. Try to keep it out of the Cbox: whatever your stance, things will probably go about as well as a discussion on the literary merits of Twilight.

Again, please accept our apologies for this; we'll try to do better in the future.

Historian, on behalf of the Mod Team

As of November 2012, MRO had 52 active players handling 104 characters. Of these, a whopping 40 answered the player survey. The following data is based on those 40 players and their 76 characters.

Trivia. The MRO Player Survey had a higher turnout rate than the US Presidential Election.

The median MROer has played here for just over 3 years; our oldest active player has been around since May of 2006, and our newest are the bright new faces in the Cbox who are still bouncing around power ideas.



Our members run the gamut from those who've been RPing since they could toddle their way to a game, to those who just got into it recently:



Once they find their way to us, though, they tend to make themselves at home:



Everyone starts with one character, but about half of our players have branched out into more (and others are racing there as we speak):



Our top posters are:


Post rates calculated as (total posts on all characters) / (days since joining MRO). Why yes, yes I do have one for everyone who took the survey. PM me if you want to know yours!

As an original character X-Men RP, we have an even balance of folks who can quote cannon like scripture, and who wouldn't know Gambit if an exploding playing card whapped them upside the head:



70% of our players are from the United States:


Trivia. It would have been "75% of players are from the United States," but some of the Texans were very insistent.

We're a fairly international community, with 25% of players hailing from other areas of the globe:



We've got quite a few languages running around, as well:


Note: "Native English" was left off the graph, for the obvious reasons.

Age-wise, the average MRO writer is between Titanium and Vanadium years old, though the Chromium-year-olds make up our mode:


Trivia. This graph brought to you by Potassium. Potassium: I see your snarky survey reply, and raise you snark graph. What now, punk?


48% of MROers are currently in college; 30% have at least one college degree. Proving that when you're cramming for finals, at least 78% of the site sympathizes:



As far as those next steps in life, most of us are still a bit away:



(Words cannot express how happy I am that only one of you is in that last category. Not that I'm not... happy for...)

Hey look, MRO!children!



Have I mentioned how surreal cleaning this data can be?

On that note: a graphical treatise on the eating habits of the common Zephyr v. the rest of the site, as documented in their native Cbox habitat.

And I quote:


In a land of healthy eaters, Zephyr is King of Pizza and Oreos.

Maybe he can protect us...


what.

Oh hey, skins.



...but really. what.

Most characters (64%) are currently unaffiliated:


Note: That legend, I shall be using it for the rest of the IC graphs, as well.

The median character age for both male and female characters is 22 years old, though our played age range spans from 9 to 53 (ignore the six-year-old, he's a cheater).




The median character height is 5'5" for girls, 5'10" for boys, and 5'8" overall, excluding shifted forms.


63 characters (83%) are from the United States:


Trivia. Remember those uber-proud RL Texans? 77% of their characters aren't. Texan, that is. 44% of 'em are Yankees, born and breed. Eheheh.

13 characters (17%) are from other countries:



And now, I bring you shocking news: after three years of supremacy, our perennial survey mascot has been usurped:


Notes: "Amber" eyes includes amber, yellow, and orange. "Inhuman" skin includes fur, scales, etc. "Black/White" hair includes salt & pepper. Shifted forms and dyed hair not included.

Trivia. All red heads are women. 57% of red heads are in the Office Supplies section of the Taken Mutations list. Why yes, that is the entire section. *ginger office girls, unite!*

Introducing a new graph to our yearly survey: sex!(ual orientation)



And now, a final thought: proof that tea is heavenly, true neutrals drink responsibly, and you can never find snark without a soda drinker nearby. Man, soda. Way to slip down the moral scale...




Thus ends our survey results. Thank you to everyone who participated! Look for the next survey in your PM box, this November.

---

Notes on data collection/reporting:

Data was self-reported via a voluntary survey from November 10-24, 2012 (with some editing for obvious errors). Players from outside the USA but currently residing in it were counted twice in the RL location graphs, representing both their home countries and their current states. Eating habits of Zephyr v. the site were collected from approximately April – July, 2012, until someone tipped him off about what I was doing. Not all joke replies were included; only the ones Historian felt would get the most lolz.

Special thanks:

Massive thanks to Tses for sharing her awesome artistry and putting up with "just one more" graph requests in her PM box for days, up to and including the day this was posted. Please give her snugs every time you see a non-boring graph, and/or every time you see her, whichever is greater. Thanks to Miles as well, for foolishly posting the "Race to 300" pic in the Cbox while I was putting these results together, and extra-foolishly condoning my swiping of such.

PS: Were those enough personalized references for you, Mirror? <3

---

Interested in other years? Check out past surveys in Time Machines & Fools.

Rule Updates

Two rule updates!

First: So, it's been an ill kept secret for... ever, that MRO's 4 thread rule is more of a guideline than a rule. And has never actually been enforced. Ever. >.> Therefore: there is no longer a Rule 13 (the old "4 thread limit" rule), and rule 8 has absorbed the other half of its text. It now reads:



Second: For the sake of simplification, the "combined totals" have been removed from all the new character requirements. The time-on-MRO and 300-new-posts-per-character requirements have stayed the same, but with the combined totals gone, it's about 500 posts easier to earn a third/fourth/etc. The revised rule is:

Riot Plot

For any who may have missed the announcement thread a few days back: the Riot Plot has officially begun! Check out the Plot Description, and look for thready goodness over on the Phase 1 Thread. Both of those links are available through the Plots Tab, as well, so don't worry about losing them.


Cheers,

The Mod Team

PS: Survey data is being crunched. Expect a stocking stuffer in your PM box in the next week or so~

Perfect! Thank you, Tses! <3 *delivers brandy, as promised*

PS: There may be other broken images out there. I've checked the other skins, but I may have missed something. If anyone spots something, please do tell us!

Updated.

Thanks for the affilie, Keep Walking! Your banner is up.