[prof1515]

It's likely that those players you're referring to are not RPI players but rather players who have played games incorrectly calling themselves RPI (they might have tried out the RPIs as well but their impression of what is acceptable would appear to be derived from non-RPI MUDs). That's one of the problems with the abuse of the term: players who don't understand or adhere to the policies of RPI MUDs coming in with misconceptions based on the policies of non-RPI games which incorrectly describe themselves as RPI.

Arm, SoI, Harshlands and the other RPIs have strict policies against abuse of OOC. The ooc command is there only for those rare occassions when something needs to be communicated which is of an ooc nature. Players who overuse it have and will be punished (I recall having to tell a newbie once or twice not to overuse the command back when I admin'd on SoI).

Here's SoI's help file on the command:

Note that for a time the OOC Lounge was even closed due to players violating the IC/OOC barrier. This is not allowed in RPIs and I can recall banning a player or two for doing so back in 2004.