[FaeLenx]

So someone actually linked this thread to me. And I figured I'd throw an opinion in there because reasons. I played pretty actively for a while on a couple different characters, though mostly one. I also, for the most part, didn't participate in the OOC cornering or hanging out inside houses to hide from the unwashed masses. I mostly stuck around the square, dormeho fountain-area, and badlands doing IC duels. I'd like to think that I had a good relationship with most groups, at least on a surface level.

I stopped playing entirely due to a lack of interest and an aversion to some of the playerbase and how they interacted with others.

The lack of interest: Follow the bold to get the cliff notes version. I tend to write a lot.

Events with over 6 people are a chore. They're probably awful to run. They're awful to participate in. You don't have any individuality at all. World events in this way should be managed into smaller groups serving similar purposes. The moment you become a part of a mob, the only reason you'd see it through to the end is because you don't want to log in the next day to having to explain to somewhere where your character disappeared off to in the middle of everything. Sometimes, I made the decision to do it anyways and throw some character story into there completely separate to what happened in the event, like the time I redesigned Gwen. Smaller events? They were cool! But obviously this fixes things for a decidedly smaller population. I tried running some of my own events. Tournaments for fighting. Mostly to meme around and practice some art skills on the side. It was fun, but it was work. The only interesting things that came from it were a vague threat against my character from some event character, which was neat.

Slice of life is bad. Slice of life where most of the characters are puritans who know neither sin, scandal, or mischief is awful. If you can't think of a single time your character acted in a way that you personally don't approve of, you're probably guilty of being dreadfully awful to be around. Go cheat at dice, call someone a bad name, say something stupid, spill spaghetti out of your pocket talking to someone, and let your character get lied to, befuddled, tricked, or humiliated. Make them believe in something that someone else will disagree with them on but not to the point of being a raving lunatic or murderer. You live in a society after all. You wouldn't exist to adulthood if every elf you see sent you into a murderous frenzy.

Tagging a bit onto the comment above, there's a reason people don't hang out in the square. The interaction goes pretty swiftly from some banal conversation to light joking, puns, a few more jokes, and then someone mentions something vaguely interactive with the opposite (or same) sex. Everything grinds to a halt, a record scratches, and people get ready to type in 'Oh just another day in the square' or 'that's enough of the square for the day.' One or two people leave, one or two people come, and this repeats for the rest of the day.

I've never had a non-event related fight with my PVP build, but people who I know who are greatly weaker got targeted pretty randomly by villains who knew neither me nor them to make the educated decision to target one before the other. I understand that you don't want your precious highway banditman to get stomped on day 1, thrown in jail for high quality gameplay content, and then left to wait for a week while you either play on your main or keep posting about being in jail on the discord or world chat, but I've known a fair share of new players who I pretty much told "Don't worry about having a completed build. Nobody really ever PVPs outside of events or the arena here unless they're doing a bit. It's never happened to me once," and then they get stomped by somebody who followed them into a blackdoor and then never logged on the villain character again.

Being a bad guy is pretty much impossible. There are no rules for fair play. There are no second chances. The law and order system is very tone deaf for what it actually does. I've proposed what I felt were better alternatives before. I got accused of being too soft for a system that I've never been on the victim side of.

Hunting down bad guys is pretty much impossible as well. People exist OOC whenever they please. What does this lead to?

Either a bad guy gets clapped by some guard who turns into two guards in the overworld because they were being silly and not walking around OOC or nicknamed, gets clapped by someone they thought they could beat but couldn't, or they eventually have an EPIC SHOWDOWN with an OOC and potentially IC friend to resolve their storyline. Or they just don't log on for a while and everyone forgets what they did. I've seen that happen once. In the end, this attempt at adding some sort of world conflict will inevitably end in a humiliating guardswarm or another event that legitimately nobody will notice.

The PVP is bad. This one's probably a controversial statement. Unlike everything else that's the product of a carefully cultivated culture of metarules and expectations, this is ragging on the beleaguered efforts of one person who I am not personally paying any money. Still, it's a thing worth mentioning. But in the end, what's bad about PVP is the way the community does it. Most of it is badlands arena PVP with carefully manicured rules to 'remain in character' cutting out 10% of the class features available across the board, 1v1 which means that item counters pretty much will always win you the game (try playing a multishot magic gunner for more than 2 fights in a row and see if you can get away from someone smugly changing to a fangfaced shield or bellplate if they see you dual wielding), or are OOC 1v1s to jerk off over big numbers, and there's a particular fervor for NEVER CHANGING ANYTHING because certain classes just NEED to be stronger than others and item counters need to exist for some reason. I'll say this was my favorite part of the game still. I didn't do it OOC in that corner more than a few times, but the game aspect of this game was the only thing that SL2 has over being a chatbox. If I didn't care about the game, I'd be on some forum roleplay probably.

People were rather toxic. Dipping my toes in a lot of groups lead to me hearing about peoples' problems with each other or myself. It's a lot of unmitigated vitriol, usually trying to skew someone's identity into something else worth mockery and then trying to convince others that they were this thing. So the usual social interaction you'll get on the internet. I found itself a nice home in SL2 through the various discords available or groups. I've watched players pronounce that they defeated the toxic trolls/ERP clan/whatever else it was in the moment because those people no longer want to log on again. Usually there was a staffmember involved. Not in a disciplinary way. Far be it from me to question who they want on their game, but it's no surprise to me that the server is empty. You all built those barriers to entry and avenues of quick exit for a reason.

I'll quickly add that I made a habit of making enemies out of players that I liked. If my character interacted with you in a negative way, it's because I actually enjoyed that headbutting. So, y'know, ya'll know who you are, and just because this is the first you've heard from me in a half year and Gwen or other unnamed alts called you names doesn't mean there was any particular personal beef. Make enemies out of your friends when it comes to RP and all of that.

There are one hundred other things I could be doing with my time. This game never changes to be one of them. It's competing with every other outlet of its kind for attention. Every other MMO, every other roleplay guild or server, every other tactics game. While there is some comfort in knowing that I could log onto my character that I left a half year ago into a carbon copy of the moment they left and there would only be some winks and a nod to get rid of the awkwardness of them being back, it doesn't make up for the fact that that is the same carbon copy of the world that they were born into.

Conversations like this. I wish I could count out just how many times people had gone over every point made here over the time that I played. The lack of events, the lack of players to interact with, the lack of ACTIVE people going up to others, the lack of change, the lack of balance, etc, etc. The solution to most of these problems is actually pretty simple. Invite your friends to play, come up with some gimmick to do in your time here (play pathfinder or 5e using SL2 housing as a battlemap if you're out of ideas), try your best to be accepting or inclusive of others, and either stop PVPing for IC conflict resolution or make it something that people want to do. You don't even need to balance out the system for it- Just change the rules for character interaction via PVP.