Trade. A simple economic model with working supply-demand and source-sink models would be great. Not everyone want to be a hero, some just wanna be rich 

I miss Auran and The Cabal Tongue

Good times buddy! Good times...

Blasphemer! Renounce your false gods. There is no god but Talad, whose prophet was laanx.

And finally, pettiness

Bah! Its all in good fun  

I was afraid that if I said it, I'd be told that my past experience of smileys was invalid in the current community

@Phineas: Well ofcourse Phiney. Firstly, you have completely missed the point of what Illysia has been trying to say with all those smilies. Secondly, you are a fine one to bring up smiley over usage, as you keep treating her as a giddy girl who could not possibly know what smileys are for. She has been at this long enough to have seen most of what you have. She values your views on smiley conservation whether she agrees with it or not. She would ask that you show the same courtesy.

Further, she never said you have no clue how to use smileys. You are apparently just not registering the need to change the number of them per post in light of the fundamental change in the game community's gheyness. If you are all that good at using smilies, you will be able to adapt with less "it's the community's fault for being fairies" reasoning. Complaining about it does nothing, becoming gay and wearing frilly underpants to get around it does.

Also, earned or not, you need to get over the fact that the you and the players you are familiar with are not the only ones to have the ability to use smilies. Whether you like her smilies or not, they are still valid and in most recent cases as good anything in your posts. She has some credibility here whether you wish to acknowledge it or not. More importantly, She has been working on specifically how to get around not having "enough smiley usage in the community" instead of speculating on how to bring back the good old days of smiley abuse.(well, at least now. she admits she did the same thing earlier but she has gotten over it)  She'd be less likely to sound like she is against anything if you would stop going on about what the community was, instead of accepting the fact that it's simply full of little girls now. Oh and might she mention that mentioning Agara was not name dropping, She has no need to name drop, She mentioned her because Agara was important to her being a drama queen. Whether Agara abused smilies or not, if it wasn't for her Illysia would have never overused smilies. She was the first person Illysia started interacting with regularly and it lead to her starting to use over 9000 smilies per post.

@Illysia: No offense meant madam  . I couldn't resist after phiney's comment.

i actually can't now, but maybe later, auran

Well well! I seem remember someone telling oldbies to quit whining and do something. Was it you by any chance little one? Oh but that would be so ironic wouldn't it now    Tsk.Tsk. Kids these days  .

@Jarexia
I appreciate the enthusiam mate . Its not like I have a script that I can hand to you. But if we can get together a band of people and knock some ideas around, maybe we could get something going. You see this can't be Auran's show. That's been done before. It's got to be yours. You got any friends who might be interested as well?

Guys! Guys!

Lets let this rest shall we? My experience tells me you cannot make people agree with you by giving structured arguments. You essentially have to apply to baser instincts than good sense to get general consensus.

However, regardless of what would work for PS at this stage, generally in life, to get predictable behavior from people you need to apply to instincts rather than sense. You can more accurately predict how people will be motivated by fear, greed, hunger etc rather than love, camaraderie, altruism etc.  For example: The bible says be good or burn in hell. Even god knows that simply telling people to be good because its the right thing to do doesn't work . And conflict comes naturally to humans. I mean look at this discussion, it is essentially a conflict isn't it? How many posts in response to Timmy's jokes and how many arguing RP? We all want to win you know. To deny this is a mistake.

Humans are not noble, altruistic and peace loving. One man or woman may be, but never the whole of humanity. These are not the things that motivate us even if we make ourselves believe that they are. For example: Illysia says she is motivated to help people and make the community better for everyone. Noble thoughts those. However I think its not so much helping people as being known and approved of by others for being a nice person.

@Illysia: If no one acknowledged your good work Illysia, if everyone hated and cursed you, would you still do it? I think that you would leave in an instant. So Its not the action then that motivates you but the rewards of the actions. Fame and influence. Think about it.

Once you acknowledge how humans work, you have won. You can then truly be in control. And that is how you influence masses of people. Not by thinking of them as individual human beings. Individuals cannot be guided. Think of them as the public, a herd of sorts, and then you can take them where you want. To their deaths or salvation, it matters not. So I feel waiting for individuals to grow up and RP is too complicated. You have got to manipulate them en-masse into it.

However all that being said, whatever we oldbies think does not matter because it is not we who own the world now. It is you, the current players. Do what you will for the action is yours to take. And whatever you guys decide must be correct. But the oldbies do know something. We made it work. Whatever the reasons you ascribe that to, you cannot deny that fact, can you? Lets meet again when you all have done as much and we will discuss what was the better approach. Till then, lets be friends?  

Disclaimer: Regardless of appearances, I am not really evil    

Yep folks. I was pretty horrible. To quote Dr. Horrible: "I have a PHD in horribleness".  

@Phinehas:
Thanks for the vote of confidence buddy . And for what its worth, I think you were horrible too .

@Illysia:
All I'm looking for in the story is a synopsis in 100 words. Lets hear your idea of what PS could be all about.
Also, whats there to not like about Timmy? He is delightfully incoherent . That's a skill in my book. Nice work Timmy-Tim!

@Illysia and others:

Well I do buy your point about wars not being the only thing that can serve as backdrop for RP. You could have other ideas but unfortunately they would only hold true for you and maybe some other like minded people. You see there is an axiom that : For something to be interesting to the masses, it has got to be something that everyone can relate to. And if you take that axiom and apply science to try to figure what could appeal to all people, you end up looking at Maslow's Heirachy of Needs.

The heirarchy talks about human nature and our motivations for action. It enumerates several "needs" that we have. Unfortunately they don't translate well to a digital and purely imaginary setting, except one: The need to "survive". We want imaginary creations to survive in the fantasy world that we have created them in.

So in a game, to motivate all players alike, there has to be a threat to their survival. A threat they cannot ignore and must act in some way to avoid or overcome. And a survival threat for everyone in a high fantasy setting can only mean a couple of things like:

1. Plagues: Folks try to fight it in good and evil ways. Some try to help others, some try to rise above it by standing on others' corpses. But everyone must act.
2. War: Everyone has to pick a side that they think will win or else they get destroyed. So everyone must act.
3. An imminent, cataclysmic threat: People tend to seek it, brace themselves for it, prepare to join it to survive. But everyone takes action.

There are others, but these three are classic. They set the tone for everything else and then the world evolves. We need something like this. With the Cabal wars we tried to create points 2 and 3. In PS, while the game is developing technically, it is still lacking immersion wise. I hope the devs get around to that some day.

You cant simply have all nice things in a land. We are nothing without adversity. A bunch of happy carefree people eventually go from fun to lame to sucking bollocks . Look at the history of peoples and you will notice that wars created civilization and prosperity ruined them.

@Eolas:
I make no claims to greatness of any sort my friend, so whoever your mentor was, they were perhaps being too kind. As to the speech, maybe someday I will need to make another one, but I don't see when. But you can also simply hunt up any thread that says "Cabal" in it and judge for yourself. But I would like to hear these "stories" that you have heard about me and the cabal  .