A little introduction to what Project Epoch is:

Project Epoch is a clan in Heroes of Newerth created right after LN disbanded. This clan's only purpose is to serve as a way to help trainees under 1700 get better by having mentors volunteering to mentor the students that come to this clan seeking for help. Mentors are rewarded by gold coins as a little incentive and motivation to keep mentoring these trainees.

Hello Redditors, some of you may know me as DivineWithin, or eC`cHi. I have been a member of Epoch Project ever since this clan was made, and have been in the LNCIP (Ludus Novicius Community Involvement Project), mentoring over 200 students and refining my ways of teaching players how to get better (for free!). I have been a dedicated mentor and have provided a loyal service to my trainees and administrators of the like for a very long time, mentoring hundreds of hours way before the coin system was introduced to this community, way before this community even reached 50 members.

Working alongside Yukari and the rest of the Epoch community, I have made great friends and established strong connections with the trainees I mentor, as well as other mentors, officers of the like. I have seen people come and go very fast, and I have seen people who have stayed with me for this long. But not this time, E.

My Story:

I had exams for the entire month of April, so I have not been able to be active mentoring people on Epoch for that duration. During this time, whatever free time I had was put into mentoring my current trainees as a way of taking a break, and then it was back to studying. After finals were done, I came on the forums and was introduced to Portal, a system created and used by mentors so admins can check minutes mentored and credit mentors for their work. I will keep from posting information related to how Portal works for the sake of privacy.

My style of teaching differs greatly from other mentors. I like to go beyond the scope of merely spectating a game and give scattered (although some would claim detailed) instruction whilst my trainee struggles with last hits and denies. I feel that they cannot get the most out of our time, so I supplement these sessions with game reviews, 1v1 private sessions, and skype calls after the match. For trainees that ask for it, I also mentor their future matches and try to work with them to identify their areas of weakness. I put a lot of work into helping my student improve their level of play and all, with no exceptions, have shown honest appreciation for my efforts.

During my stay in Epoch, I found that students need time to process and digest the information we try to provide for them. For even the simplest concepts, trainees may need to ask questions that require attention outside the game they just played. This is where I try to go the extra mile and offer my spare time on Skype to go over and review a game, sometimes for hours, without playing with them. This is my style of teaching. I talk to them for hours on end via Skype without them playing, and they sit and listen. Whatever questions they have, they are free to ask me without being under pressure, i.e. in a game. When I review concepts and mechanics to a trainee, I talk for over 2 hours at a time, sometimes making my throat hurt just because I truly want them to get better and enjoy playing HoN more. However, when a big misunderstanding like this that leads me into being exempted from Project Epoch without notice, it hurts, it really does.

When I explained this to RyanWenke (new GM hired by S2 in charge of publicity matters for Epoch, also the manager of Portal), this gentleman accused me of "cutting corners", or as a way of spending more time with students in order to try and get more minutes recorded down, getting more coins as a result of it. I tried to explain my situation with him and before I even got to 30% of my explanation, he laughed in my face and told me that talking on Skype with your trainees can already be done via chat mentoring function in game, and splitting up the times to talk on Skype would just cut corners for you to get more coins. I hope this is merely an understanding on his part, as he did not give me a chance to explain myself. I tried reaching out to him on Skype but it seems like he has no interest in contacting me. I find these allegations to be quite frankly insulting, and anyone who knows me will know this to be untrue. I've been volunteering my time, for free, as a member of LN for the last 2 months until they have disbanded. I've been in Project Epoch since the inception of the clan; and I'm in no way movitated by e-currency to help others.

After he discussed this with Visions, I have not heard of any of them since (Visions has not even bothered to PM me, requesting my side of the story). I was:

• Removed from Project Epoch silently without notice

• My orange name that I have worked hard for was removed

• Removed from the Epoch Chat Channel

• Demoted to a regular member on the forums

With all due respect Reddit, I thank you all for reading my concern. It was a very fun experience working with Project Epoch until ElementUser and Yukari left. People who do these things simply leave no feelings for the people that do the hard work, and everything done is done internally, without letting the public know about it. I am here to shed you some light on this, and how the mentors are really treated when something does not go their intended way.

To this day, I have been constantly taking in new students to mentor, and every single one of my students have gave feedback that my teaching style has been a tremendous help for them and it has benefited their game play by far. A lot of my trainees frequently offered to pay me back, some even gifted me gold coins without my consent because they know I will always decline it. I will still continue to mentor my current trainees who are on my Skype list, because I am loyal to them. Just because I have been booted from a non-profit community does not mean I am not able to teach.

My mentoring thread can be found here

This thread here is where it all started

tl;dr: Epoch silently kicked one of the first and oldest staying mentors from their community, and this is here because the post I make on the Epoch forums will be deleted and removed once the administrators find it.

Edit: For anyone curious, whether or not I get invited back to Epoch is entirely up to them. If they decide to invite me back in, this will hurt their reputation, and seeing that mentors are a renewable source, I highly doubt this possibility anyways. I will be continuing to mentor anyone that asks for help still, with the same amount of effort put into this as I have put throughout my days in Epoch. The only difference now is that it will be more of a challenge finding players who are willing to accept me as their mentor.