I hear this every other day from one person or another on the instant messenger or something.

There's a host of reasons for it but the gist of the issues behind shittalking and such is that with easier access to the internet and the advent of more instant gratification options, it entices both poorly behaved newbies who after a year or two show their true colors, and it inspires the veterans to harbor ill feelings more easily.

Not to mention people tend to thinly justify it as RP or a PK tactic, especially because the size of the world kind of precludes you from just waltzing up and killing the other guy's ass unless you actually raid his cabal.

You also shouldn't forget that this douchebaggery very often is the prime catalyst to learn to PK. Most inn-sitters and newbies wouldn't bother if some sadistic asshat with a tiny penis didn't start abusing them regularly, I know that's a large reason of why I'm jaded to this caustic jackassery in-game. Punitive PK against aggressors who were using you as a body-count or even hated your RP. (the other reason is not playing cabals.)

Add in the fact that even if Thera's areas got consolidated a bit ago that the game isn't getting noticably smaller, that a player can separate themselves from the rest of the world for power game uber-time (voker practicing, exploration, simply watching the PK while AFK and waiting for the balance to shift) and the majority of other players have either no desire or information to come and find them... it also becomes thin justification to taunt them to get them to come out.

And sure you could wipe the playerbase clean as you're proposing. And then you'd have an average 10 player peak instead of 30, gg. The older players are getting bored, older, moving on with their lives, and just plain sick of the bullshit that the occasional newbie or clueless medicore community member brings about in addition to people trying to a/b/s or gank-squad up and then talk shit when people aren't sticking around to die. This is the inevitable life cycle of a game, it's just taking a much longer agonizingly slow time to wind down than anyone could have predicted. I'm pretty sure this game will still be around 10-15 years later regardless of how low the playerbase gets because many of the imms find it a pleasant use of their spare time to be in control of various sized projects.

The suggestions still remain the same. Take a break, stop reading the forums, or gtfo. they're all bad suggestions but still the best ones.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2008 07:01AM by scrimbul.