Would it be out of line to ask a question everyone really wants to know? I.E Have the Titan people had access to this? If not, why wouldn't you have been if Leo is directly friends with the people here.
(I mean, remove if its out of line, I'm not trying to defame or attack anyone, I just think everyone wants an answer)
It's a fair question, and one I've answered.
I can only speak for myself, and the answer is no, I'm not on the private server.
Having said that, I've repeatedly said that many times, and each time, there's a contingent of people who refuse to accept that answer, people who use my denial as "proof" that I
must be "in on it," which is why honestly, I encourage others not to bother answering. People are going to think what they want to think regardless of the answer, so it's kinda useless to actually answer.
As for why, I dunno. It's not like Leo and I are best buds. We chat about once every month or two, and most of the time it's not even about City of Heroes-related stuff at all. In any event, I'm taking him at his word in his statement to Massively that he knows that I avoid conflicts of interests with Titan. It's one of the reason he hosts the Paragon Chat client files instead of us here, to avoid possible unwelcome legal entanglements, since the Titan Network is hosted in the United States where we're extremely vulnerable to takedowns if we step out of line. Given that, maybe he just assumed that I wouldn't want to be a part of it. He's not incorrect in that assessment, in that if I were directly involved in such a thing, I'd probably 1) be constantly bugging him to release the binaries and, if he possesses it, the source code to the server, and 2) it would post a pretty massive conflict of interest to me personally, weighing what's good for the community versus what's good for the existence and development of his private server.
So I dunno, all I can do is speculate. At any rate, it doesn't bother me. Yesterday I didn't have access to a private server, and it didn't bother me one bit. I'm not about to get mad and worked up about it now just because I know one exists. Just like I had to keep some secrets during the shutdown that could have literally jeopardized some people's livelihoods, I trust Leo to have good reasons for what he's doing. He has a proven track record of working in the community's interest, certainly more than enough credibility with me to give him the benefit of a doubt on this.