*Sighs* You lot are so picky and demanding now.
http://planeshift.teamix.org/index.php?page=char_statsA little less than 45 is the peak.... for the week. The average doesn't get that high across the year.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenRoleplayingDecayFavorite Excerpt:
One additional form of Open Roleplaying Decay that appears in many MMORPGs is the loss of a roleplaying population; while random, 'in-the-field' roleplaying may initially be a particular server's bread-and-butter, the roleplaying will eventually lose steam, and confine itself to guild-centric RP (or the occasional one-off RP event). As a corollary, speculation or inquiring about the status of this process as it applies to, say, one game server vs. another is a great way to break the Internet.
Happy now? Picky picky picky....
Added Bonus - Lecture!:What this game needs is to focus on rebuilding a larger core of steady RPers. It needs this more than art, quests, or any of the usual trappings of MMOs. What would help rebuild the community is to focus on giving players the materials for three levels of "conflict" to help them form, drive, and sustain dynamic and interesting RPs. The levels are personal, community, and world conflict...
World Level Conflict would be a progressive, non-quest story that pushes/affects the context that a character lives/exists in: invasions from the labyrinths, a challenge to the octarch’s administration, threat of hostile takeover of a major city, complete loss or a gain of an important resource, etc. This may or may not directly involve any particular character, but any character in game would be indirectly involved no matter where they lived or what their occupation was.
Community Level Conflicts are similar to world conflict stories, but they are smaller in scale. These will affect people from specific groups be it species, town, profession, ect. It may be a notable NPC citizen threatening to leave, competition from professional rivals, species specific diseases or biological quirks. This gives people fodder for nuancing their characters and gives something akin to “current events” to pull from when personal RPs don't present enough story material to work from.
Personal Level Conflicts result from the combination of character backstory, active RP stories, and world and community stories. They will naturally develop on their own as long as there is enough story material. If RP has started to peter out, it’s likely because people involved have run out of things to RP about. This will happen when there isn’t enough raw story material to work with.
What to do about the raw materials shortage? Players can help remedy the raw materials problem by coming together and agreeing to background story occurrences that run as a common thread through the lives of multiple characters. Settings and GMs can help by running events that don't focus on keeping players busy but rather reveal parts of a progressive story that gives a sense of a dynamic, living world.
What is Conflict? While good vs. bad and hero vs. villain are classic forms of conflict, those are not the only forms. Conflict is the thing that prevents a story from ending at the first sentence. It is the force/concept/thing/situation that has to be overcome, reconciled/ resigned to/endured/etc.
Conflict provides the variety in a story by posing a question then answering it. For instance: Will
<Character A> ever beat
<Character B>? Will
<Character B> marry
<Character D>? Can
<Character C> explore Shindrok’s Crater without dying a horrible death? The conflict can be as simple or as complex as one wants, but it absolutely needs to be there.
Also, wikipedia's version of what conflict is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(narrative)
In literature, the literary element conflict is an inherent incompatibility between the objectives of two or more characters or forces. Conflict creates tension and interest in a story by adding doubt as to the outcome. A narrative is not limited to a single conflict. While conflicts may not always resolve in narrative, the resolution of a conflict creates closure, which may or may not occur at a story's end.
Now NOTHING should be missing. 