As someone with experience of being both a staff and normal community member, I have to say Kat that you're both bold and somewhat...what's the word, I really don't want to offend you lol, that isn't my purpose, just a little naive. Seriously no offense though. It really is awesome that you stand up and speak out for the staff as a community member, that's really great. I wish I saw more people like you when I was staff for iClassic back in the day before it went downhill.

You have to take into consideration of what it was like for iEra in the beginning. It was a brand new server that had high expectations from almost everyone. Naturally the staff members will go out and introduce themselves so that people will know them, then if a good impression is made, positive opinion will spread amongst players. If I'm not mistaken the staff at the time were mainly PC original people, so it was a new experience for both them and people trying out iEra (considering how PC Era really doesn't get all that many people and iEra had a massive wave of people checking it out the first day).

As far as people are and how they react to things in the game, what can you do? Every group/leader comes with people that like them or love them and people who complain about them or blame them. That's the whole point of responsibility and the ability of the staff to tolerate such things.