Shattered Kingdoms

I hear Dulrik made a mint selling the idea to Blizzard, actually.
He used it to pay off Wizards of the Coast over the whole Drow debacle.

That's actually a much better comparison than you think. Arguments are typically made that any role playing that went into killing someone happened while getting the group together to kill someone so you aren't required to talk to them when you kill them. Gank, /spit, move on.

Join a cabal and get ready for some mindless PKing (or if you play a caster, mindless enchanting of people that do the PKing) or find a nice inn and get some fountain RPs in. I also highly suggest ignoring the hell out of the PKers. Unless you play a darkie, they have to think up a reason to kill you and only the lamest of lamers (that frequent DA's log site, of course) will bother.

SK, land of low expectations.

Parnys, I don't even know why you play. All you do is cry and babble mindlessly.

While some people DO play that way, the general population of the MUD does not. There is plenty of good RP. I don't see you generating any - maybe that's why you can't find it.

Evena. Stop and think a moment. If every player learns every language. Why do we even bother with the languages? Why not just, remove them? The only thing they'd do if everybody learns every language, is garble a word now and then.

Fine then. Let's all conform to the world's innate need to sacrifice roleplaying potential in favor of slaughtering everybody. No matter where I look, it always seems to be the same thing. Either combat is horrendously unrealistic/unbalanced, or RP is thrown right out the window.

But first, if a staff member sees this... Do at least hold a damn VOTE. Let the majority of the current playerbase decide if the language barrier should affect emotes or not. If I see at least a 55% vote for keeping it the same, I'll shut up.

All I've seen you do is laugh at our new guest here about how terrible her ideas are and how the game is how it is and "you should just get used to it".

At least I'm giving her ways to find what she's looking for and being helpful instead of a [REDACTED]. See: The sentence mentioning fountain RP. Cabals are made for PKing. You may find some role playing within, but even Archernar says don't join unless you're okay with killing people and being killed.

Nice job playing Devil's Advocate, though.

I actually plainly stated that her idea was valid, but that it would not change.

She (we'll assume it is a she) is the one that is stomping her foot and making demands that the game turn on a dime for her.

"If everyone levels to GM, why don't we just all start at level 50?'

Language adds absolutely nothing of value to the game except to alienate new players. Fact.

Flame On. I was a little scared to bring myself into this thread. It is full of dicks.

Okay, Flame Off.

Rather than look at this through the lenses of good or bad idea, I'd instead point to the development this sort of thing would require, and then point to the various bugs here and there alongside features yet still in their infancy, and suggest that perhaps this is a lower-priority issue to those who develop the game.

This MUD is coded by one dedicated person, administrated by a close-knit team, and played by a ... rainbow of personalities, Piala. I would consider the upgrade cycles of SK to resemble less those of Wikipedia and more like those of Dwarf Fortress.

Evena, though you make good points, like Parnys, the perceivable emotional impetus in your replies causes many people to respond not to what you say, but how you say it. If that isn't important to you, then just chalk this up to a friendly observation.

Piala, in communities, good ideas do not always sell themselves. A bit of candor and cordiality go distances in bridging potential misunderstandings. Evena and I, I think, have been able to explore such a fascinating relationship in my time here, and I can tell you that for me, it feels better to feel understood rather than feel correct.

My first response was calculated and pretty cordial. I only "went ilky" when it became quite evident that "the way it is" isn't quite good enough for this player. I wasn't the one who called her childish for putting her argument the way she did, but I didn't disagree.

I UNDERSTAND the desire to RP the way Piala does. I am a VERY emote heavy and RP-heavy in general player (grep, you know this from experience). I simply can't seem to explain that there are reasons why it is this way, and why it will remain for the foreseeable future.

There are literally hundreds of socials. Perhaps some of them could show what you're trying to get across easily enough. I am sure that new ones have been added even this year. There's a vast number of ways to spell out your intent in socials. I've played characters that didn't learn languages. It became a chore after a while, like I would imagine it is for any adventurer to travel to distant lands and not speak the language. I decided to learn the languages and not speak them. It made the character more fun after I learned the languages, but I know that not learning them created RP. I just got tired of the constantly asking others what so and so was saying in the room. The cost of learning languages is not very much. I wonder at what level of skill training you can understand emotes. Perhaps just training the skill to the (awful) level would suffice. Try it out!