Game owners locked the official forum but kind of like WORA/SOAPBOX/This place there was an unofficial forum discussing issues with the game. Realistically they rebooted from 20 avg to 80 avg and then in 5 months fell back to 20 avg. With dwindling numbers and systemic community issues they likely just decided it was no longer worth the effort. They publicly blamed a staff member leaking stuff but that had been happening for decades in one form or another so pinch of salt. Thread here has former staff and producers posting their thoughts.

I don’t play, myself. But as someone that plays in the MUD space side of RP games traditionally, I like to be apprised of nonsense from certain spaces - one of the reasons I’m here, in case some new predatory nonsense pops back up!

My less good reason (both for watching ARM and being in this space): my absolute guilty pleasure is other people’s drama that doesn’t impact me, it’s like my version of a reality TV/trash TV fix.

So when ARM drama began to really explode onto r/mud last year, I started checking out the arm official boards (the “GDB”) and the “shadow boards” that are run by a group of disgruntled people that range the gamut from “serious problems to levy” and “angry, sweaty grognard”.

Watching both of those spaces, I think the truth is that the ARM community is just poisoned beyond a point where it can be healed, from 20(?) or more years of just… Unhealthy game design and poor community management.

Like, the staff there? Probably pretty crummy overall. But the actual playerbase is also just absolutely a burning garbage pile - very similar to the vibes of Haven RPG, on a much smaller scale.

I am not, at all, surprised that the game runners decided they didn’t wanna deal with it anymore.