All sleeks have ever done were encourage people to cheat.

That's why I've never really been able to play mages, because you can only ask IC a certain amount of times before you appear desperate/newbish. It's a lot easier just building up some AOL contacts and then asking them, and that fwiw is cheating.

I don't know the solution, but I do know that the ooc stuff got abused a little too much. And the players can only expect repercussions because of it. There's a diff. between asking someone after twenty real life hours where the fuck do I find a rabbit's paw and asking someone hey, I just got to lvl 45, mind throwing me a wand location list so I can find my set. And I imagine that's pretty much what was happening and pretty much why the IMM's said let's give the Vets a new challenge.

Guess on player retention it didn't appear to work out. In terms of game fairness, I think it did.

One big problem with a/b/s system is when the mage has it, he has a severe upperhand against non-Villagers. So when we say the system is broken, that part being emphasized may help remedy more things than focusing on the IMM's re-establishing old locations, because for some reason, I don't think that will ever happen.

Again, I don't know the solution, but I know the direction pbase is taking right now isn't really offering a solution either.