Français

Hello all,
first I have to excuse for writing english. I can fully understand french, but writing french takes me a lot of time and since this post won't be short, I decided to do it english. Please don't take it as a lack of respect.

History

Our system of hunting the Marauder bosses was born on Leanon in 2007. We were only about 50 players online at the same time - serverwide! It was nearly impossible to kill the marauder bosses without forming cross-faction groups. The bosshunts became a cherished habit, something that was weekly fun and brought us together.
After merge, I immediately got requests from ex-Leanon guilds to re-open the bosshunt again. So the frist hunts went completely without participation of former Aniro or Arispotle guilds.

"Alliance"

The postings in this thread create the impression that I was actively forming an "alliance" and ignoring or even destroying RP background.
Fact is that it was just reforming the Leanon bosshunt group and leaving it open for everyone to join. (Following the RP-philosophy of my avatar.) I never asked guilds actively to join an "alliance". They just came to the bosses, often without even asking me before.
It is far from being a fixed alliance, it is a (structured) mass attack on marauders with structured loot tracking. The system is fully flexible - completely independete of certain guilds.

Differences in mentality

I witnessed the passion and skill of french roleplayers in many assemblies and it is really impressive. On Leanon, no one was in rp-mode 24h/day. We had a mixture of RP (assemblies, events, festivals, outposts) and gameplay-fun (leveling, hunting, digging). For some, roleplay is not easy and it became more difficult now with the language barrier. It needs concentration, thoughtful actions and acting talent. Some just want to have gameplay fun just being themselves, relaxing from work. Maybe this "open for all" system is a different style as the french community is used to. There must be room for different playing styles in Ryzom. And many german RP guilds have "times of RP" and "times of gaming" - just like they have members who do much RP and some that don't do much RP, at least not all the time. Playing some elements of Ryzom HRP, does not mean killing all RP in whole Ryzom. Maybe this is not fully compatible with the "french way". Mutual respect helps here.

Bosshunts as RP content

Maybe this question seems not valid to french RP guilds who are *always* in RP. So the following may seem senseless for them. Again I can ask for tolerance for a different way of thinking.
Is a bosshunt a good RP content? They don't have much potential on the RP side and don't do much harm to the background of ryzom if they are done in the HRP-way in my opinion. Homins of different faction and nations fighting together against marauders is not unthinkable. Following strict "RP rules" would just lead to two separated bosshunts without any interaction or RP benefit.
The interesting roleplay is happening elsewhere where it can play out its full potential, be it in assemblies, on events, at the bar or beach or on outposts where the two factions (or nations?) collide and diplomacy, treachery, treaties, nationalism and faction play can lead to thrilling and furfilling, meaningful rp scenes. So you can't blame the "united bosshunts" to take away unique possibilities for awesome, in-depth roleplay. We're not killing rp-content. For example, doing outposts with HRP-alliances does in my opinion.

Benefits for the community

Bosshunts separated by faction do not contribute much value to roleplay, in contrary, they cut interaction. But the benefit for non-RPers (also those who are in RP-interested guilds) is big, everytime I feel the excitement and joy of the players at the hunts. Without exaggerating, I can say that these open bosshunts contribute much to cross-community and cross-faction* communication and life on the servers, especially for all those small and tiny guilds who are not part of big faction alliances.
(* For me it is very important, that the *players* behind the avatars know and like each other. Enemies in RP, friends in HRP.)

Responsability of guilds for their own play

I assume that a guild knows what it does if it decides to join a hunting party that is made of all factions and nations. Since this bosshunt and its system comes from a server with a different style of play, it is the decision of every single guild to decide whether they can't accept it or not. As I stated above, an RP-integration is possible. If that works for a guild or not is their decision, not mine. But please don't condemn the guilds that do so. There might be players in their ranks who just want to have fun hunting these bosses. And these hunts may give them a reason to log in and stick to Ryzom. And many small block-free guilds who otherwise never would have the chance to get their hands on this content.

Conclusion

So I hope I could explain that I'm not a villain forming an evil HRP-alliance to crush all RP, just because I like to organise bosshunts and to give small guilds of all styles and from all servers access to this content too. "Killing" a very small possible RP-content like bosshunt (which is a lousy opportunity for good RP in my opinion) for that purpose and that benefit is acceptable in my opinion. This is my motivation - you don't have to share it, but I hope I could explain myself a bit.