That kind of thing does bother me. But what bothers me more is cyber bullying and stalking: The repeated harassment of one individual by another individual, or by a group of individuals. It's rarer, and there's usually a complex story behind it and how the situation degraded to that point. But there are stories of it happening to different people at different times, and I've experienced it myself. There have been a number of players who have requested their characters to be renamed in order to avoid such abuse. Others players adopt entirely new online identities. Others wait it out.
Lucid again. Thats what I meant. Most of the regular griefing I can handle just fine. A lot of the time, people are just looking for a laugh. Its the extended scenarios like you mentioned above. You get into a real gray area where the report command is not of much use because people change their tactics, or use a group of players and/or alts to carry it out and they know who the GMs are and if they are on. Et cetera.
That doesn't matter so much. The point is that if you want to see a certain type of community on the new server, then now is the time to start reinforcing it by playing on it. There isn't really any restriction except to be polite to others. You might get ignored by the players there if they do not feel like engaging in RP. Which is exactly what happens now on Laanx.
Most of the people playing are online to actually play the game. The Roleplay aspect makes the world more immersive, and the enforcement of the naming policy adds to that. I enjoy both of those aspects to PS. But the point is -- heresy! -- it is the
game holding onto people,
not the roleplay. Horrors! And its true.
If that were not true, then everybody on Laanx would be roleplaying all the time with everyone else and it would be a RP paradise. Its not. If the roleplay is what kept people here then many people who have left would still be playing. They are not. If the "roleplayers" have retreated into their guild houses, then they have effectively capitulated whatever control they had of the culture on Laanx and the silent majority of grinders has become the nascent element, and they have lost the effectiveness of their complaints.
I almost got lured into talking about the "way things were". Effort spent on this sort of discussion would be better used in game to try and make something now. But, I agree with Zanzibar. The RP landscape on Laanx is parched and dry. I think that a lot of the players, no doubt the silent majority, now expect that RP should be done only for GM events that give rewards like
instant maxed skills, or gold or PP. Player run RP may have been hurt in the long run by
overpowered GM events that raised the bar on expectations to the point where player RP can no longer be interesting to those that are not steeped in the culture of PS.
Point is: You want the world a certain way? Make it so in game. Quit hiding behind this-server-that-server, powerleveler-roleplayer, carebare-griefer, or whatever other perceptual artifacts are seen as getting in the way of whatever you want to do. If you are a sincere player you will be able to play on either server, in either philosophical camp, or according to any strategy. But on EZ-PC you will not be able to hide behind your character nearly as much, which means no misrepresenting your intentions with an RP smokescreen anymore.
