1.
My biggest issue is what goes on behind the scenes. Not staff-side, but playerside.
BG has a pretty bad case of various groups becoming insulated and half-truths being spread about other players as facts, and are often taken beyond simple misunderstanding to the point of actually becoming dangerous.
I've seen plenty of examples of someone warning another person NOT to play with someone. Sometimes I was warned not to play with someone (for various reasons), and sometimes I found myself the recipient of someone with an agenda against me spreading it OOCly. Most of the time this leads to characters taking curiously-timed breaks, the player quitting and maybe, or maybe not, returning under a new name, cutting contact with even their friends lest they get leaked by accident.
Even if not directly telling someone not to RP with X, toxicity is still ever-present. I am ashamed to admit that in my early days on BG, I got involved with certain toxic Skype chats too - although I did not actively participate, merely listened in after joining for other reasons. In these chats, players made vile criticisms of how certain people emote, of how certain people dress their characters, of the fact that some people RP romantic relationships, and various kind of attacks on their personal identity. This exposure made me rather wary of what may happen behind
my back. After all, if someone talks shit about others behind their back to you, what stops them from doing the same regarding you as well?
This server harbours quite the collection of OOC cliques on all sides of the Good/Evil player-spectrum who take pride in destructively criticising others, who take pride in using this to show off how much better they are and then pat themselves on the back with their friends.
These cliques are also almost always awfully jealous. Ask any player of a guild of X alignment, and they will tell you how the DMs have obvious favouritism for the guild of Y alignment. Now, go and ask the a player of the guild from Y alignment and they will present you the exact same rhetoric, word for word, about the guild of X alignment. Sure - there are periods when a certain guild may receive more attention than the rest, but it tends to be due to an ongoing campaign.
Before those certain people who enjoy speaking behind my back, and sometimes to me directly, decide to stick me on a stake - I will concede that the administration certainly favours a certain kind of Player-Word interaction, and that is conservative interaction. This means, the administration is quite more likely to support requests for plot-lines, campaigns that at most have a local, isolated impact. Request that your guild goes and does something that doesn't affect any other guild? I'm pretty sure, as long as it's not ridiculous, your request will be accepted. However, make a request that may affect another player without their express consent, that is made without any outside influence, and your request will most likely be denied.
Is the above good or bad? For me, I prefer conservative approach over giving free-ride to impact the world globally and affect others in sometimes quite negative ways. Why? Simply put, I like stability. The real world is as tumultuous as it can be, having something reliable is always good.
Which brings me to my second major issue:
Players forcing others to accept their word as gospel. While compromise certainly must be reached between the various interpretations of the spirit of the server AND of the setting, I feel that a certain angle must be favoured for it not to wind up an exclusive club. This angle is the rule of "Least Sacrifice", which, in essence means that if there exist two interpretations, both equally valid in a purely objective sense, always support the interpretation that enables more freedom.
A good example for the above is the almost annoying war between Low-magic setting vs High-magic setting people. We have an abundance of people, some of them in the DM team, some of them on the forums, who advocate for us to interpret spells, the setting itself, races and whatnot as if it was a decidedly low magic setting - say, like Dragon Age: Origins. Notice how I classified DA:O as low-magic - these people are fine with magic, but want to see its effects and utility greatly reduced, and often in direction of (in my opinion) grimdark/gritty themes.
The thing is, low-magic interpretations CAN exist in a high-magic environment, but high-magic interpretations CAN NOT exist in a low-magic environment. By making the expectations of the setting to be in line with High-magic, which I believe is actually the proper interpretation of Forgotten Realms, we still allow players a low-magic experience simply because they can opt-out of using the tools others take for granted.
As a side note to certain people, Savage Species describes permanent, irreversible, true-seeing "fooling" transformations as possible for a party of level 7 adventurers. It costs enough gold to force the char in question to use shittier equipment than they should at their level, but it's level 7 compatible.
Further on this line is the idea of permanent death. Forcing people, or even normalising the expectation of permanent death goes against the idea of "Least Sacrifice." I find it easy to separate IC/OOC in behaviour, as in, to act ICly as if permanent death was a thing, but feel safe OOCly that it isn't. The constant push however, with the almost monthly threads vying for permadeath, or permamaiming or whatnot to be implemented or to be normalised as an "opt-in", my OOC confidence/comfort is rather shaken.
For me to enjoy RPing, I need to be able to shut out the external messes so that I may be wholly immersed. If that succeeds, I'm in Nirvanna. However, between being forced to watch my emotes and words ICly lest a certain fanclub or two take it out of context to my
delight, or the constant worry OOCly of encountering someone who will make not-so-subtle suggestions that if I don't PvP them I'm an X, or that if I lose my PvP to them and choose not to get maimed/permakilled I'm an Y, and will then choose to take it out of context later to their peers makes it an uphill climb. And even if I avoid both situations, the later "Elite RPer" will still wind up perma-maiming someone/torturing someone/killing someone my character cares about, and I'll be forced to RP emotional damage control.
Playing emotional damage control is not enjoyable. I play for the escape into a world where although hardships are aplenty, people still eke out a somewhat fulfilling, happy life for themselves. Having to console someone who got tortured to near-death for 3 days straight is not something I find fun. Short-term or trivial emotional distress is alright, but torture and mind(word that starts with r and is done by illithids) leaves such lasting scars that you either do them justice and lose any enjoyment in playing that character, or interacting with that character, or just end up ignoring it - and if you ignore it, why even bring it up?
So in short:
- OOC cliques spread rumours about everyone
- People spreading half-truths about others without approaching the person in question for the full story
- People literally telling other people not to RP with X because Y.
- People awfully judgemental of others' RP. Especially of those who RP romantic relationships of any kind.
- Incessant OOC jealousy, often two parties being jealous of each other for the exact same thing neither has
- People constantly trying to change the setting into a low-magic one when it isn't, and even if it were subjective, high-magic accommodates both parties.
- People constantly trying to grimdarkify/grittify/"maturify" the setting through mutiliatation, torture, mindrape, permadeath and other lovely things
- Due to the above: Lack of OOC comfort/feeling safe/confidence making it impossible to drop my barriers/guards to immerse myself.
I barely play anymore due to 3 major reasons personally:
- All the characters I enjoyed interacting with are dead/retired due to player making a new one or some random event that was not worth it even OOCly, or because they quit due to harassment.
- Obtaining a fan club or two who spread some lovely things about me as well. I guess they achieved their wishes? I guess good for you. Or not, I'm stubborn enough to keep trying to come back.
- Constant feeling of doom & gloom on the server with every week someone dying, someone tortured and what not. Just try to interact with someone and it turns into planning to deal with Big Evil Orc or Big Evil Drow or Big Evil Guild who are kidnapping and torturing people, or some random DM event about the same just this time without the associated player drama (in exchange, it has someone in a position of authority most people won't openly disagree with. Not much better)
