Fair point to that Small. Very fair point and I can clearly see the reasoning behind that. Now I'd rather not go in to too much of a "this happened to me, look how unfair life is" but examples are necessary. So once again, whilst I was [Aeon] some years back I got acquainted to hosting events and such because of people like Abyss and through that I met JtanK and became decent friends with him (at this point he was only a GM). He'd give me tips and tricks for hosting a good tourney and because I wasn't GM I supplied my own prizes but even so, I hosted every couple of days until I was easily 20-30 players per tourney and people recognized me as a hoster. Obviously I was doing this to work towards GM and my clan supported me 100%. After a few weeks of this (I carefully noted the dates/times/prizes/winners in notepad with screenshots for validity) and during the GM recruitment drive, I send in an app that I myself was quite proud of and saw no reason as to why I should be rejected. But I was and when the recruitment drive was finished and people were notified who had become a Trial GM all I noted were that those recruited were people I'd seen hanging around GM's talking and shit and I'd never seen one host a tourney or an event. Ever. Of course I felt cheated. I'd put in hours and hours towards this goal and eventually I got past my resentment and moved on with my life.

TLDR; Small I believe you are right about them choosing friends but I'm not entirely sure it has to be with ability as well. Although I was friends with Abyss and JtanK, staff have never been very friendly with me and even if I had the skill, their hatred was what made the decision (I'm sure there was some reason for that but I can't quite remember). (Looks at Arctic who permad my two mains for myself account sharing with myself. What).

Arctic Moderated Message:

this is not true at all and you know it.

I'm not sure whether or not corruption among staff is killing the game but I am sure it's becoming a less friendly place than what it used to be like. I remember when I was coming back to the game in 2012 after a one year break and having Erth (god bless him) take time out of his day to hang out with me and help me learn tk and offered administrative help when one of my clan leaders invited all of our members as leaders. Good times. Once upon a time this community was just tons of players being friendly and respectful to one another but now most of us are split into clans and our friendship only extends so far.

On another note as well: Toribash does not lack new players. There's constantly new players but none of them stay. Or very few. I believe this has something to do with what I was talking about. People used to be a lot more keen to helping others and learning with them. Nowadays it's everyone for themselves. All I'm hoping is that TBN somehow fixes this but I have no idea how.

Any thoughts?