I've played a fair number of games over the past 3 years, close to 200 now. During that, I have on occasion played Bytro staffers or CoW moderators. However, I was never told of this status by the players in question. Either other players told me, or else I could see function tags on various public chats. These players always congratulated me on a good fight, whether they won or lost.

I was surprised, in a recent alliance challenge against an Italian team, when the following happened. Unfortunately, there was a disagreement on the use of gold, we were accused of it when we started winning, they then started using it, etc. etc. In an attempt to communicate about this between team captains, rather than publicly in the paper, I was most surprised to encounter the following:

Just how wrong I was, according to the other player, was emphasised by the fact that he was not just a moderator, but a high level Bytro staffer, and I was lucky he wasn't going to make work of me from that capacity, and just wanted to concentrate on the game.

This implied threat led me to inform my alliance partners that if my account were suspended, it had nothing to do with them.

Regardless who was right or wrong in this argument about a game, surely the fact that one of those involved claims to be a high level Bytro staffer is completely irrelevant?

If this particular player isn't a bytro staffer, and seeing the unprofessionalism of his communication, that's likely, then that means someone out there is impersonating a bytro staffer, which is just as bad really.