I am disappointed by such answer.
What is the point? Do you prefer monotony?
Can't people see that it is "evil"
In-character?
Do we all have to RP "good" characters and despise realism and immersion to create an ultra-boring environment of 100% peace?
This is Planeshift, not "The Planesims". If you wish to have a 100% peaceful gameplay you're looking for another genre like for example a life simulator, not a MMORPG.
Edit: is it really asking too much to notify and seek permission of the guild leader of the to-be infiltrated guild?
Just as an example from other genre: I never asked for permission from the other player in a multiplayer session of a certain Strategy Game if I would allow or not him to send spies against me or not. It is a question of taking risks. When you found a guild that deals with politcs and with other forms of power, you should be aware that it may be prone to espionage of other groups sooner or later, and that is a fully In-character possibility. If I knew OOCly that someone would infiltrate a spy in my organization, one way or another this would put me in a slight advantage as it is impossible to separate fully OOC knowledge from IC knowledge, and add to that the fact that playing dumb is a really unpleasant experience that spoils most, if not all the fun and quality of an espionage RP(you know there is a spy, you know this fact may harm your guild, what stops you from pushing your character to become more suspicious than usual?).
Also I don't see any difference between this and PMing a whole list of NPC trainers to someone on PS forums, both would be spoilers, one about the game itself, other about a guild's action or secrets.
Clearly, it'll be close to impossible to ruin some guild or organisation, but OTOH, is that really such a bad thing? Yes, other MMO"RP"Gs have that option, but they also do have a more or less open PvP system also. All in all they're focusing on different things than PS.
As I said, "guilds" should be divided into different classifications from what they are now. And I believe that making a guild(soon(tm)) should pose a challenge as well, not just bunching up some characters and "roleplaying" that you always have enough funds to keep a commercial guild running for example. Of course fallen specialized groups like political and economic could "reborn" or try again from scratch, and as I said, there should be space for the guilds that avoid conflict and power altogether. For those looking for influence, power and wealth realistically there should be risks. For those looking for inner peace, it would be another history. I just suggested this as I think some challenges should be faced to make things more interesting. If this will bother people that can't accept defeat, well in a game you can win or you can lose and you could always make a guild not seeking power or wealth to avoid such risks, and when speaking of organizations of economic and political nature, this also applies. And what I am implying is something called competition, that for now only exists for new members, when it does. But it should exist between commercial guilds and such, and those that commit large mistakes could fall into bankrupcy. Of course this does not necessarily means that the system for funding guilds should have a atrociously high difficulty level, but having risks and challenges may keep guilds more active than usual. And about guilds falling down, it would be commonly due to financial problems as well instead of wars. And perhaps it should only be activated when at least someone with autority to deal with finances inside a certan economic or political "guild" is online, avoiding to give an advantage to those who have more time to play PS. To make on the game system(future one) a structure specific for commercial guilds, that never go bankrupt, is a truly immersive idea for RP.
the more you folks are insisting on being evil at all costs (to others), the more I come to think that PS should, in fact, become an Utopia with only PvE conflicts and no PvP, thieving, etc. whatsoever.
As I said before, there are other games for it if you want an Utopia where everything that happens is chatting and social events. It is not a question of "being evil", it is a question of realism and of fun factor. How would a perfect place where nothing ever happens(If there were newspapers they would be blank) be an interesting, realistic and not boring possibility for roleplaying? Also I didn't mention PvP at all. About no thieving, well there is lockpick skills among other sets of roguish skills, and I don't think scrapping down some already existing concepts and throwing away realism is a good idea.
