Here's a bit of a rambling as I try to pull my thoughts together.
As I was reading Esorono's complaint about people spending all day at the furnace and not roleplaying, I started to think about the platinum mines, the time people would spend there, and the casual, freeform roleplay that was characteristic of the place. I also considered the ends to which people would be mining, such as funding their character's skill development or scraping up funds for their roleplays that involved money.
But one thing that came to mind and that I'm still pondering at the moment is the relationship between the difficulty of producing tria and the quantity, quality and type of roleplay that takes place in game. It seems to me that as money gets more difficult to make, the community of players can start to experience a greater contrast between grinding and roleplay. What I mean by this is that grinding has become so difficult to the point where it seems everyone who doesn't have their desired stat/skill levels or items is either:
a) Grinding their asses off,
or
b) Roleplaying with their little storytelling puppet characters.
What's the matter with this? Nothing really, except for the fact that its not really reflective of the what I thought (I could very well be wrong) was the goal of PlaneShift staff to begin with: To create and maintain a realistic and immersive roleplay experience through the medium of an MMO. While roleplay and playing the actual game are both present (and I have no doubt that both of them will remain), they seem to be gradually drifting apart from each other, in my eyes. I think what makes PlaneShift appealing as a game is that it is an MMORPG that actually encourages and maintains an IC environment. As players come, from what I've been seeing, they decide to either level and loot like mad or become roleplayers who don't really play for the game as much as for the community roleplay. At that point, what separates the PlaneShift experience from any other MMO or any roleplay chatroom?
I just think that the PlaneShift staff should be breeding players that use the game mechanics and roleplay, not just one or the other. And I think that as the game mechanics require more grind, we'll be seeing less of this type of player. At any rate, what's your opinion on the matter (if there even is one)?