I think forcing magic users to face the direction of their opponent would be great.  I also think making the backpedal speed half the normal running speed would solve a lot of magic problems.  This would mean if you attack with magic while running away from a swordsman, the swordsman has twice the speed, and is more likely to catch up.

If you really do want to play a bad-guy character, and want to do it the right way, get hold of Garris.  Duraza and such was before my time, so I really have no clue, but I've seen Garris running some interesting roleplays that don't involve "tea-sipping good-guys," and I can assure you he does it the right way.

Vannaka, it wasn't just your guild... I've RPed with you before, and I've heard plenty of complaints about you before. Their decisions were justified.

I think you're mistaken.  If you have roleplayed with me before (I don't know who your characters are, so am not sure) then you never said anything to me about how I roleplay.  You also may have roleplayed with a Vannaka clone, seeing as some players were kind enough to make alts with very similar names, and run around acting like idiots.  In an effort to disagree without starting a flame war... could you PM what it is that I've done that you don't think would be considered "good" roleplay?

I think most who have actually taken the time to play with me would agree that I do roleplay, and do a good job of it.  I've even had a peek inside that little circle of "elite" roleplayers, when helping out Garris with roleplays using some of my alts.
Disclaimer: No I don't actually believe there are "elite roleplayers," I only believe some people think of themselves in this way.

Dark Way and Red Way should be the strongest, since they're the ones described as being able to wield chaos and illness, yet... they actually rank pretty low when compared to Brown or Crystal Way.

So true, that always bothered me.  Although Dark way can be the second strongest way if you manage to get hold of a pair of those overpowered laanx's mind weapons.   Red way is just sad though, it's supposed to be strong, but in actuality it's laughable.  Last I checked there weren't even any red way spells that could do damage at range.  I've heard about a new magic system coming ..."soon"... maybe things will improve.

The easiest way to deal with it is to consider that your character is no more powerful than your opponent allows them to be.

Just for the sake of discussion, how does this apply to characters who are obviously nowhere near equals in stats and combat skills?  Would you consider it godmodding for someone with level 100 in heavy armor to block or take almost no damage from the majority of an enemy attacks?  Would you consider it godmodding for a light armor user with maxed agility to dodge nearly all attacks from someone without a high skill level in their chosen weapon?  If an opponent with level 10 swords complains about excessive blocking from a character with level 100 heavy armor and shield skills, are their complaints warranted, as suggested by the above quote?

It really makes me steam when people come up and insult or taunt you repeatedly, and completely refuse any sort of IC consequences, like being stabbed in the face. 

Once time a guy started shouting about Vannaka being a coward and a thief, and then declined a /challenge and reported me for trying to roleplay a fight, saying it was harassment...  It actually made me laugh pretty hard, but still somehow made me angry at the same time 

The way I see it (and this is only my opinion, don't hate me) one of the only reasons to choose a "RP fight" over a /challenge is to give the weaker character an equal chance of winning.  To me, I guess that makes the majority of fights that don't use mechanics OOC.  However in the tavern or around the city, if you /challenge someone you get yelled at in all this [brackety garbage] that fighting in the city is OOC, and sometimes you even get reported for it (which I still don't understand).  But for some reason, about every other time I walk into the tavern there are people running around saying /me stabs you and /me casts a magic kill-everyone spell.  Nobody yells at these people at all.  To me it's the same thing, and it's the negative view of PvP fighting that will be more of a problem than the PvP fighting itself.

Open PvP in the wilderness would be okay for me, but maybe we'd have to have safe areas around the loading zones, where all the traffic between cities has to funnel through.  As for open PvP in cities, it would be most realistic, but since we don't have realistic city guards I can't see any way it would work.  Also, I think before there is any more open PvP there are some PvP bugs that should be fixed, and maybe some potion issues as well.

What's with all the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^?