Hello,

As a new player with a strong RP MUD background I find the parameters of
roleplaying in Planeshift very confusing. I'd say less than half of the people I've
met even respect the division between IC and OOC in what they say. Out of the
people who didn't use "words" like "lol" and "computer" in their every
sentence, less than one in ten seemed to have any desire to interact for
any other reason than making those numbers in the "stats and skills" tab grow.

This is in stark contrast to much of the documentation both in game and on the
webpage, claiming things like "The game is about roleplay...".

I am aware of the fact that the game is in alpha stage and things are far from
finished. I understand that the developers might be more concerned about
making things work right now than acting as a police force to change the
behavior and attitudes of the players. However, I would like to get some kind
of idea what the goals set by the developers for this game are before making
the decision whether I am going to stay and help out as a playtester and
perhaps in development, or if I should just look for my roleplaying experience
elsewhere. Honestly, based on my experiences so far, anything resembling
serious roleplaying is not possible in Planeshift.

I know there is (was, according to some) a strong RP base in the game and all
kinds of plots and events were organized. Many aspects of the world seem very
good and well thought out, including the races and the death realm (always a
hard thing to explain and justify). The character creation for instance is
much better and with a better roleplaying feel to it than what most RP MUDs
have to offer.

But on the other hand everything seems to indicate that roleplaying is to
be taken in Planeshift as something that you are allowed to do "if you are
into that sort of thing", without real purpose, meaning or support. The
policies seem to limit any roleplay into the "harmless" level, disallowing
character development in everything (especially ethics, morals, ideals and
prejudices) except for some quirks and funny way of speech. There is no support
for allowing player-driven world development, rather everything seems to be
set in a way that you cannot affect other players or their experience at all
in a larger scale. There doesn't seem to be any effort to enforce roleplay on
any level.

These are difficult questions and it is not my intention to criticize the
decisions the devs make. Building such a place on one's spare time,
based on the principles of open source (mostly) is no small feat and I respect
it greatly as such, and on some level I understand if the devs just try to
attract the maximum number of visitors to see their work. I do believe however
that the ugly truth is that the "We offer everything for everyone" is not a
concept that works in the long run and some hard decisions have to be made at
some point. Rather than being disappointed sometime later in the future to
realize that the promise for roleplay was not given seriously, I'd like to ask
what kind of roleplaying environment the developers are really after.

If the case is that roleplaying is left without support as something optional,
I believe it would be appropriate to change the webpage to reflect the
contents of the game more accurately.

Thank you,
Muzzy

Hello,

For some reason I am not receiving account verification emails. During the last 48 hours I have tried repeatedly with several different email accounts (including resending), but I still haven't received any emails (I have checked also the spam-folders). The server didn't seem to be down either, so I am wondering whether others have also experienced problems recently and what would be the proper way to proceed.

Thank you,
Muzzy