[FaeLenx]

     The first scene was in Tannis. Shirly had been working with a local who was helping her with her common when Casidy spotted them. We’ll call the guy Terrance. So this is a perfect opportunity to get things rolling. Casidy went to Terance, making the argument that Shirly stole from the family, and was too damaged to be on her own. Shirly, who could barely speak common, but had expressed firmly that she couldn't go back and was in danger, panicked, and tried to stir Terance to action. So we have a patented Star Trek moral dilemma. Do you trust the lawful evil knight claiming her sister needs to go back and fight, or do you trust the panicked knight that hardly speaks common, but might be saying she’d be killed if she went back? Terrance decided it was not his problem anymore, clearly, despite both sides insisting Shirly needed help of some kind, that she could take care of herself, and began advertising his guild. When asked later he is quoted as telling another character “Oh yeah she’s fine now, don’t worry”. No one else felt like getting involved, so Casidy let her run off in the interest of not causing too much of a scene.

This is a big, self perpetuating problem on this game. Most players will quickly make themselves a bystander in any situation that they can because there's usually no reward for involving themselves in a storyline or conflict that doesn't have them as an active participant. There are a large number of reasons for this that I can see or have felt before...

They might feel like they're intruding. Especially a thing if it's numerous members of a guild.

They might not want to get involved because there is clear and present danger to their character that is going to be decided by other people. Right now, the guards are the most lethargic seeming group of people who, as this post goes on, don't seem to do much, but they almost need to be that lethargic and slow because getting taken to Arjav enough times is one of the few things that can force your character to get murdered. Add on the fact that there's a potential for a soft ban in getting thrown in a cell that for some reason has an OOC restriction instead of just an IC one, the laws aren't clearly dictated anywhere that's accessible to the average player, and there's a lot of misinformation about what the guards will or won't consider crime, and some of the vocal minorities declare that the guards can and will and should arrest and detain people for IC misconceptions and misunderstandings when they have OOC power and authority to execute and soft ban means most people don't want to be put anywhere near that with a character that they want to last for their entire play time on the server. Involving themselves in a morally ambiguous group with this mostly fictitious but still potentially realizable sword hanging over them just isn't the optimal play there, and receding back into 'Oh they're fine' is the safest way they can extricate their character from that situation without harming the image or role they're trying to roleplay.

People don't know that they can OOCly communicate these sorts of concerns to each other and some people are actively against OOC communication at all when it comes to conflict because sometimes that OOC communication is just taking IC conflict and arguments OOC.

Nobody wants their character to be made weak because they're in the middle of a LE and don't have a PVP build.

Nobody wants their character to be made weak because they don't have a metahealer/whatever PVP build.

People don't like to lose, and you can't lose if you don't try to win.

Some people just like to watch.

All of this together means most people are just going to hang back most of the time. There's probably more subtlety and personal decision making there, but I can figure at least some people can relate or at least can look back and admit they backed out of a situation that might have been fun RP because they were worried about some of these things or just didn't want to get punked in the imbalanced system we've got for PVP. I've done it on a character before.