Dulrik wrote:
I'm sorry it brings you down theORplayer. I recommend never visiting the General Discussion forums, as it is supposed to be the only section that allows this kind of thing. Sadly it does come through other places as well, but I am damned when I allow people to speak their minds (drama) and also damned when I stamp them out (censorship, cover-up).
It's in a lot of places. I guess it is a bit of a catch22, but I'd suspect the driving factor of this doesn't come from forum administration techniques (if that were the case, league of legends would have a pristine community given it's harsh moderation on forums), but rather, the cross of IC and OOC seems to be the real crux of the issue.
People take things personally, allegations of cheating left and right (staff and players), sharing of 'secret information' and such. It's just painful to try to read a topic (where this topic came from) about a character that lived, and in it, a massive amount of mud-slinging. Whether it's righteous or ignoble isn't really the point I guess, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if there was no way for individuals to talk out of character to each other, this mud would probably have significantly more players.
Right now it feels like I'm some outsider watching Jerry Springer and it takes away from the in-game atmosphere quite heavily, which I guess is the real problem - I guess I can always ignore people who seem determined produce their own talk show, though that begs the question why would I bother to stay around if I'm having to ignore 1/2 the community in a game built on community?
Consider what I see: in a thread about some character - it becomes all about the player, accusations of immortal cheating, thinly-veiled attacks by players on each other, and even staff gets involved in them.
I don't particularly see how any of this benefits anything. If anything it just reflects poorly on everyone and makes me wonder what kind of community I'm associating myself around.
Just saying.