[prof1515]

I was hesitant to respond again because I don't feel it's in keeping with the original post's subject. However, as the above post seems to feel it's appropriate to address me by name, I feel it's only appropriate to respond and elaborate on my earlier statement even if, articulate or not, I probably can't phrase it in words small enough for them to understand.

What Delerak means by "fanboy" is the tendency of some people, ie. those known as fanbois, to view that which they adore with blinders on. Every game has its problems but fanbois tend to ignore the existence of those problems no matter how blatantly obvious they are. However, one can never solve a problem unless they take the first step of actually acknowledging it exists or even can exist. Attacking the messenger because one doesn't like the message doesn't solve the problem, it just ignores the possibility that there might be something in need of fixing. It makes you part of the problem in fact because if one isn't willing to acknowledge the problem exists, it will persist and likely generate more problems, snowballing over time.

Armageddon, like any of the RPIs has problems. For starters, Armageddon's always had the worst *average* RP quality of any of the RPIs. While there are some amazing RPers to be found on the game, there were also players who operated far more as H&Sers and staff tended to let them do so without restraint. The best RP in the world is negated by H&S being allowed; it's the law of averages. In all my years of playing RPIs only once have I ever had the experience of my character being killed by another player without even one bit of RP to accompany it or in response to my own attempts to role-play through it and that was on Armageddon. Staff's response was "it happens". Now, that put me off for a while but I gave it another shot in a different region and found better results but that doesn't change the fact of the staff's response. When a problem presents itself, a game's staff can either address it or not. If they choose the former, how they address it speaks as to their competancy. If they choose not to address it, it's a sure sign that they either don't care about player concerns or they don't really care about maintaining a quality game. The argument that they're catering to different types of players might be used, but the lower quality of player that you cater to, the lower quality of a game you end up maintaining.

In fact, Armageddon's uneven RP as a result of a fairly tolerant policy in regard to H&S-like behavior actually has had detrimental effects on the RPI community as a whole. Trying to match Armageddon's popularity, other RPIs relaxed their standards. This was one of the primary reasons I quit SoI's staff. During my time as an admin on SoI, I banned dozens of twinks and when they were granted amnesty in some pathetic attempt to increase the playerbase, that was a pretty frustrating thing to deal with since every twink allowed in the game was just a potential mess to clean up after and potential bad experience for other players. It was a move that helped increase SoI's playerbase however and seeing that it became a temptation for other RPIs as well. Of course, catering to the lowest common denominator is the best way to alienate the better players as well as staff who get frustrated dealing with the crap. Faced with this, all too often the games accepted the sacrifice of losing one good player for the prospect of gaining three sh*tty ones. However, not only were they losing the very kinds of players and staff which brought people to the games in the first place but also those players whose experience helped other players grow and improve. The bar just kept getting lower and lower and the players and staff coming in, ignorant of what once was, failed to have the perspective to understand what was happening. Years after I quit SoI, I was chatting with someone from their staff who was telling me about the new batch of admins they'd promoted. Amongst the names was only one that I recognized and I was surprised to see a name of someone that, to be quite blunt, would never ever have made the cut years earlier. I asked if this person had improved in the years since I'd left and was told not really. How then, I asked, did they make it on staff? The response, verbatim, "We're scraping the bottom of the barrel to find anyone."

For me, one by one I left each of the RPIs because of problems ranging from staff incompetance to blatant favoritism and hypocrisy regarding their own policies to a lowering of standards regarding both players and staff. What the fanbois and apologists fail to acknowledge is that it's not just one or two players who are fed up with the declining quality of the RPIs though. I can cite eight alone through Facebook and I have never been one to really fraternize that much with my fellow MUDders. I don't think I've ever had more than a dozen people I know via MUDs on my "friends" list so for 2/3 of them to have given up on RPIs for a variety of reasons points to a much bigger problem. If 2/3 of the ones I actually talk to have issues with the games, what about the hundreds of players I don't interact with? Armageddon obviously has a few as Delerak pointed out and I know Harshlands, SoI and others do as well. However, so long as people refuse to acknowledge the problems even exist, nothing will be done to fix them and the snowball just gets bigger.

As someone who loved the RPIs in their heyday and still even after they started to decline, this is both sad and frustrating. From time to time I miss the days when I could enjoy hours on a MUD but I've never been one capable of putting on the blinders that the fanbois do. Call me cynical or negative but I don't see any reason to cater to the lowest common denominator. Screw popularity. Screw bigger playerbases. Screw "playability" as an excuse for appealing to the masses instead of to one's core base. If you have to compromise quality and drive off your best players and staff to attain these things then they're not worth attaining. Quite frankly, though, given that some of the people who own and run the games are the problem it's unlikely that they'll change their attitudes.

I'd like to be able to play a RPI again and enjoy it. I'm not alone as the friends who messaged me the other day expressed the same desire and we're not alone. It's not so much that we abandoned the RPIs as it is that the RPIs abandoned us.