I'm not bored... yet, but understand that I will be someday. Humans will always get bored at some point and at different points in time, and that is just a fact of nature. But I say it has everything to do with the game and roleplaying in general, which should be expected, and especially in a game in Alpha mode. Friends and players probably also left because of other reasons, not just boredom, but I'll just stick with my boredom theory as applied by my full spectrum theory:
My full spectrum is that there is a full array of everything. If you see a car, there will be people with a vast array of opinions on the car, and no two will be exactly the same. Ranging from complete disgust to complete love of the car and everywhere in between. So for boredom for PS, there will always be a wide range of boredom which is connected to the elements available in the game, on a time frame.
An example is if you sit 1000 people in 1000 seperate rooms with nothing but themselves to keep them entertained. Some won't last a minute before they want to leave and others may last til they die. Now you throw a ball in the room, suddenly some of them will stick around a bit longer, others will leave quicker because they don't want to be in a room with a ball, but if the overall time frame of people remaining in the room has increased, then it is a positive added element. Now add a skunk, and watch the room clear, bad add. Keep adding and taking away elements, and you'll see different effects. The trick is to have enough elements and the right combination in the room to give you the best lasting power for the majority of people. But, there will never be a perfect answer, there will always be a full spectrum of opinions, and people will always leave over time, but you can however extend the time frame. So after 10 years instead of just having 5 people left in the game when no elements have changed, you can have 10,000 people in the game. Eh, not a perfected theory yet, but always a work in progress. Oh, and everyone gets bored, just some quicker than others. Shoot, some can keep from getting bored until the day they die, but if time and death wasn't a factor, they'd get bored someday.
In PS, the "room" is set up with elements, a fixed amount currently, the game is in Alpha after all. But, with roleplaying there is one great wild card, everyone's imagination. I think imagination and game elements/settings can feed off of each other though and expand the time frame before boredom effects us all greatly. But, it is to be expected that boredom will always kick in eventually, especially if the game elements stay constant or even degrade.
To get back to the basic question, I'm not bored yet. Joining a guild has helped keep things entertaining, I still have goals that I want to try and reach, mining isn't so bad since I usually try to make the best of it and chit chat with other miners (IC of course), and the quests are painful, but keep me busy. I have a pretty decent imagination, but do not like the serious roleplays. I'd prefer adventure or comedic roleplays over any sort of drama. And text based roleplaying will only get you so far over the long term. /me scratches my head is nice, but more effective to a larger audience if you see someone actually scratching their head. The imagination I think is the key, but if you put 100 people in an empty room, the "fun" will only last for so long until people get bored. Elements and the prospect of PS keeps bringing in new people, but the game and the imagination need to feed off of each other in order extend the time frame of the boredom spectrum.
"There is nothing wrong with boredom, only giving up on finding new ways not to be bored."
