Current state of Attorney Online

Hello, everyone. I’m Crystalwarrior, an Attorney Online user who joined in 2018. I became an Attorney Online developer in 2019, and retired in 2023. I have authored 39,458 lines of code just to the AO Client alone, spearheaded the development Attorney Online version 2.8 under CrazyJC’s direction and been a developer up until Attorney Online version 2.10.0, after which I retired.

Over a period of 3 years from 2019 to 2022, Attorney Online has seen an active development cycle with a heavy push for server cooperation and public outreach. Since then, 2.10.1 released in 2023, and 2.11 released in 2024.

After that, we’ve gone 2 years without an Attorney Online update. What did happen is the tightening of the server list with opaque conditions to be advertised, at first unfortunately necessary due to a major DDoS attack at the time, but that has long since passed. As a server owner you’ve likely seen the dreaded “Failed to advertise to the server list due to the following errors: Server registration is closed right now.” message even now.

Many times as the owner of my own Attorney Online server I just had to find things out by word of mouth. There was no up-to-date blog, the Attorney Online Discord news channel was inconsistent, and the Server List Message of the Day also was retired being delegated to just an information page with a few links. You could only find anything out by knowing who to ask.

Then, on October 4th, 2026 I was told by someone that all servers will be required to be 18+ or be removed.

At first I thought this was a hoax. This radical of a change for the entire community without an advance warning sounded ridiculous. So I went to Wiso, who manages the Attorney Online Discord, and DMed him asking if this is true.

He told me I have 26 days. I learned 3 days later than I should have. After voicing my discontent, I was reassured the Client and Website will be adjusted to have an announcements corner, but no such announcements corner was made, and this website was not updated. I also wasn’t given a time frame for this update even when I asked.

As far as the reason is concerned why the 18+ change had to happen, there is no reason. Simply put, Attorney Online is no longer fit for people 17 or under. That is the matter of fact I was faced with. Therefore I must make my server 18+ or take it down from the server list. My only two options were to either comply in full and do a banwave or to completely isolate myself from the Attorney Online community to which I’ve given 8 years of my life.

I’m not the only server owner who has been blindsided by this change. Apparently, there was not even an announcement made about it. No guidelines have been posted. Not only that, I learned that stonedDiscord (the person who actually runs the server list) was not even aware of the change. I had to completely and utterly restructure my community in 26 days around the fact that it will have to be labelled 18+ everywhere - my socials, my contacts, my website - and inform all my hosts, including a roleplay host who advertised their roleplay on Dangan Nexus without an 18+ label just the day before, that they now have to ban everyone under 18 who joined under a false pretense.

Whether you agree or disagree with the 18+ change, the fact that Wiso did not even talk to me and I had to find out from someone else is a completely unacceptable way to handle major community decisions. These decisions impact everyone who wishes to be and remain part of this community, and they especially impact the server owners and their moderation teams who have to actually enforce this. They also endanger the minors who have been part of these servers and communities for years who are now faced with the fact that their presence is no longer welcome.

I am reversing that decision. Instead, all server owners have to follow the server listing rules outlined on this website here: Server Listing Rules.

Moving forward, things will be transparent and accessible. The server owners will be given no less than 2 months of advance warning to comply with major changes to any of the server listing rules. If you wish to be an 18+ server, you must label yourself as such. Otherwise your server must be at least 13+ and you also have to take responsibility to prevent harassment, doxxing and child endangerment. I will be personally telling every Server Owner currently on the server list of the changes to it so they are actually aware of them. Any and all illegal behavior will be swiftly punished and reported to the authorities directly.

As for Wiso, he has been demoted from owning the Attorney Online GitHub Organization for systemic neglect. He has failed to moderate the AO Vanilla Discord and Server by neglecting the raids, doxxing campaigns and targeted harassment. He has given infinite warnings but no punishment and there’s even been cases of him punishing the victims of harassment for fighting back rather than banning the perpetrators. I myself have also made a formal report against a former developer who’s been insulting and toxic on the GitHub and Discord but he chose to do nothing about it and I’ve been given no reassurance to the contrary. He has failed to uphold the responsibilities of a community manager and his inaction has been a tacit acknowledgement that doxxing, targeted harassment and slander are perfectly acceptable things to do on Attorney Online.

Therefore, he no longer has the final say over the development, and the currently existing Attorney Online Discord is deemed unofficial as all important information pertaining to the Attorney Online Community will be present on this website. The Killing Fever Online discord is its replacement as the community that maintains current leadership of Attorney Online. It is a long-standing roleplaying community on AO I own and maintain since 2018, and now I also own the Attorney Online GitHub Organization.

At the time of writing this post, there are only two owners: longbyte/oldmud0, and myself. Longbyte owns the website domains and the Attorney Online GitHub Organization, while I co-own the organization and take responsibility for making sure that the server list remains clean, accessible and fair to the server owners. Longbyte has remained the de-facto owner of AO even after his retirement, and he has decided to pass that role to me after learning of all the chaos that’s been happening for these past 2 years.

It is now an end of that era. Let’s make Attorney Online have a brighter future together.