Thinking about this more got me musing about the different perspectives of the players vs. the staff in general.

I mean, it's obvious to me that Boltthrower had a slightly different take on what Battle should be vs. Nimbus vs. Holtzendorff vs. Kasty vs. Thror vs. Ordasen vs. Iunna etc. and I don't at all expect those visions to be completely consistent, but now that I think about it I can also appreciate that from a pure-player perspective it's easy for all of that to blend together into "the Battle Imms want X" and then to also be taken aback when they now seem to want Y instead.

It's also interesting to me, as a historian of the game, how this happens with respect to things done in terms of rules enforcement or by an anonymous immortal, except in that case it seems like there's always one imm at any given time who gets the credit or blame for all of it.

For a while, if someone busted on you or called you an idiot, it was obviously Rahvin/BT/ShaidarHaran. Then it was Cador. Then it was me. Then Valg. Now it somehow seems to be Baer. I don't get it.

I do remember this one time, Cador was back around for a while after being not around too much for a while. I saw someone mouthing off to (wizi) him in the Realm of the Dead, I don't even remember what the broken rule in question was but probably passing gear, and the guy's going on about what an asshole he is and how he's busting him for no reason and how he's always stalking his characters and ####ing with him. Cador, still used to being "that guy" asks the guy just who he thinks he is, and when he answers "Nepenthe" he raged and I about bust my gut laughing. Good times.