Roleplay has fallen into the doldrums described by the OP because I, Verad Bellveil, am personally interfering to ensure that it is so. You may cast all blame upon me as you wish, instead of raging against nebulous forces that conspire against the creation of your personal vision of a perfect RP world.
Blame me, blame me! But I am unrepentant. I desire an RP world in which events are smaller and enclosed; in which players do not feel obligated to interact with all other players, but rather those they choose; in which the myth of community is shattered and players realize that we are but a fragment of a fragment of the server population, and we will never have a real sense of a perfectly immersive world in which all characters are inter-connected; and, above all, in which player stop assuming that RPers congregate around specific RP hubs solely out of magnetic forces.Â
Why are the RPers in Ul'dah? Because all of the other RPers are in Ul'dah, naturally. This is the argument I hear most often, as if there can be no other reason, nothing at all to do with Ul'dah having a more vibrant or interesting character in the eye of players than other in-game locations, and nothing at all to do with the city providing more tangibly useful roleplay hooks. I do not deny that magnetic forces play a part, but I do not discount the very real draw of a location to other players above and outside of that.
I, for one, cannot abide the notion that players be dispersed outside of their preferred locales for the sake of a vision of a perfectly-populated RP realm. And so I work to undermine, encouraging housing events rather than open-world ones and advising players to join the region they like best regardless of population. Even with my account suspended, I am the scourge of the open-world event.Â
Therefore, blame me! It would certainly be a more useful exercise.
Blame me, blame me! But I am unrepentant. I desire an RP world in which events are smaller and enclosed; in which players do not feel obligated to interact with all other players, but rather those they choose; in which the myth of community is shattered and players realize that we are but a fragment of a fragment of the server population, and we will never have a real sense of a perfectly immersive world in which all characters are inter-connected; and, above all, in which player stop assuming that RPers congregate around specific RP hubs solely out of magnetic forces.Â
Why are the RPers in Ul'dah? Because all of the other RPers are in Ul'dah, naturally. This is the argument I hear most often, as if there can be no other reason, nothing at all to do with Ul'dah having a more vibrant or interesting character in the eye of players than other in-game locations, and nothing at all to do with the city providing more tangibly useful roleplay hooks. I do not deny that magnetic forces play a part, but I do not discount the very real draw of a location to other players above and outside of that.
I, for one, cannot abide the notion that players be dispersed outside of their preferred locales for the sake of a vision of a perfectly-populated RP realm. And so I work to undermine, encouraging housing events rather than open-world ones and advising players to join the region they like best regardless of population. Even with my account suspended, I am the scourge of the open-world event.Â
Therefore, blame me! It would certainly be a more useful exercise.
Verad Bellveil's Profile | The Case of the Ransacked Rug | Verad's Fate Sheet
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine