[Despite my own misgivings about the PS forums, I'll write something.
Point 1:
People on Laanx WILL respect roleplay, and people on Ezps do not have to.
Right. But nailing RP to be as inflexible for players as possible seems counterproductive as well. That's not an attack on RP, but it is an attack on 'We say this is RP so you cannot do anything else than what we say' sort of RP. I'm not saying that this is a consensus position of the team, but it is a mindset that I have encountered. Take that for what it's worth (and not personally).
Point 2: Combat. Combat is an attractive part of any game. Unless one is going to sit around in a city all day, leveling is necessary - and I daresay at least some aspects of powerleveling should be expected. It isn't as if one can train in the arena a few hours a day and have a fair shot at some of the things along the *roadway* such as the 40 PP Ulbernauts or the Cutthroats. There is a very high power curve when it comes to the beasties with little in the way of progression. This also points to quests requiring their pound of flesh, if you take my point.
Point 3: Skills. Skills haven't advanced to a point where anything but mining and smelting and *some* crafting is useful. Plus there's a skew. Gold, apparently, was throttled which means everyone mines platinum (I'm interested in how plat mine changes will affect that, reserving myself on that). Platinum smelting happens at a very high level of metallurgy, which means people have been bypassing gold (and silver) and offering their sacrifice to the Carpal Tunnel System God to powerlevel... metallurgy. Sword making is, apparently, lucrative - but only after one can sell extremely high quality stuff. Bronze is somewhat odd in that it's components are far apart whereas the components of steel are typically within spitting distance of each other. And the mining skill is generally considered useless (though I have continued to train it...).
And whether a bug or not, some quests require quantum leaps in skills that, despite the best efforts of pillows everywhere, do not happen overnight.
Point 4: Quests are all nice and warm and fuzzy, to a point, but when a player has to log in to run a character across vast expanses of terrain a player with a brain (I acknowledge Caarie's point on maturity there too) will plan things. 'OK, I need to train this, this, and that there. And I have these quests to complete which require me to be there). So they plan things, and to meet those plans - who wants to run all the way across Yliakum to do one thing then have to go back within the next 30 minutes or hour? So that sort of planning does, in fact, 'force' people to 'powerlevel' to a point.
Point 5: GM Events that I have seen have been rather outlandish in their scale when it comes to attacking players or attempting to hold a resource hostage. So a player gets his or her posterior handed to them, and they think... "If only my character was a few levels higher, we would have had a chance!". A discerning player kind of knows that a GM can always beat the best player - it comes with the title - but still, the gauntlet is thrown down. This is further exacerbated by a GM event which tosses out skills to people when said skills could take months, or years (or in the case of RP-only players, decades) to acquire in a world where players dual one another and often compete for the same resources... Especially when players of all skill levels compete for the same resources all the time.
Point 6: No striations in resources for players of different skill levels leads to power leveling to compete for the same resources - vicious cycle. To get more resources, one has to grow more powerful to compete with the person with maxed brown way who is using all the resources all the time to get to the next level... for whatever reason.
Point 6: The 'RP as an excuse to be a jerk' routine is acceptable, but becomes irksome - especially when it comes to point 6.
Point 7: Certainly, Players can RP better. But players are constantly placed in positions that require power leveling to RP. So while players can RP better, the environment could certainly be made more conducive for it.
Point 8: Hydlaa cries of 'GUARDS!' by players might make one think that something interesting is going on. Cry 'Wolf' too many times, and...
In a world where EVERY RPer seems to think that they have the right to impose their version of RP on everyone else, and where the development team stands ready to do the same, what is a player really supposed to do?
Point 9: Related to possible answers based on heuristic study of the forums: "Yes, I have considered joining the team but Talad hasn't gotten to answering my email of concerns." We can move past that discussion.
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