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@bittymaccod : Icus and me are playing national extremist characters. There is no way to gain benefits (in game) in that roleplay. We don't possess any outposts, and do no play this way for obtaining something (or we just played kami), we are doing this for fun.
Thanks but no. gunbra hate matis. And she prefers to fight with his axe rather to discuss for hours. Personnaly, in real life, I appreciate matis! (Ah no! they don't exists!) More seriously, I'm very diplomatic and peacefull.

Another thing that makes me feel uncomfortable, is the way to do things. I do like roleplay. Roleplay is not following a scripted story, but what players do. If there is more peacefull characters, our extremist will lose, and I don't consider that as a problem, but part of the game. But I would appreciates that those appreciates that opposites characters take part in the desert politics, and confront my character extremism in roleplay, as a political ennemy. But when doing a petition on the forum to ask our demission, I feel it a bit OOC, and that it is more denying my roleplay.

We all had different traditions of playing and roleplaying from the different servers. And it is not very simple to play all together. This discussion is important to understand each other point of view, before finding a solution to play together on good basis.

Gunbra had a different with Zhoi during the last fyros meeting. Yesterday she ran in the Zorai Hoi Cho meeting, and I was astonished to see that some players were wondering if I (as a player) was angry against Zhoi's player. Luckily I was there so could explain that I have nothing against Zhois's player, I am merely pleased that (she/he) plays with we. Now our characters are angry, and finding a way out of this little crisis is fun and game!

Well, I can answer for myself at least. My IRL view is moderate, and that is carried over in-game. I couldn't credibly play an extremist persona even if I wanted, and as such I'm going to be the boring asshat who preaches cooperation in game. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy your extremist RP, just that I'm going to counter it when I can. I'll keep writing petitions if the occasion arises, but rest assured they're in-role too. Don't have a problem with the player Icus (or Gun for that matter), only with their use of political power. Guess I should've made this clear with an OOC remark earlier.

On a side-note, this cliche of clashing nationalities is a bit washed-out imho. Money and resources matter more, nationality is just an easy (but outdated) way to organize people in friends and enemies. The game mechanics don't really care for nation either, at least not on the negative side. I can be an empire defender and the merchants in Yrk won't bat an eye when I put something up for resale, though my matis fame was at some point -20. Big whoop. You'd think they would flat out refuse to talk to me, but it seems they like money too. Players don't quite care about nations if other resources are not at stake; I am yet to see a single homin intentionally killed because he was present in the wrong place at the wrong time (save for marauders, they are really doing their RP convincingly, dragging aggro over unsuspecting diggers and all that).

To my mind, there must be an overlapping of words and actions. If the RP'ing Icus is really such a patriot, then he should be ready to drag aggro over a matis spotted digging in the desert. Conversely, to have aggro dragged on him and his guildmates if they're digging in forest. I don't fancy that, and as such I don't RP as a violent person. RP'ing only for the sake of verbal conflict could be fun for a while maybe, but empty at the end of the day. I'm sick and tired of politicians IRL doing just that, empty promises, empty threats, empty discourse. Don't want more of that in my games too.

Sorry for the long text folks :)

I think it is great to have this discussion going, and we should have done that way earlier. But before I continue on the subject i need to say something about the "Chanchey System" as you called it.

Chanchey and his guild The Free Soul is a guild that is dedicated to pacifism, hominism and theism. It started back in the days of the episode 2 content when that was far from common sense. They have a RP policy toward being peaceful trykers, enjoying long sandy beaches, sharing it with everyone who want to have a good time. They argue the need of cooperation based on kitin and other natural threats. Chanchey himself does some imho very good RP about it. I know he had and has good OOC relations to many of the extremist guilds, be it RP extremists or extremists that don't like the RP term because they think it's associated with hanging out in bars and talking weird. So PLEASE: Don't blame kara-kami cooperation on him. He votes to cooperate but that is the most important part of his RP. He does it when he is the only one and he does it when half the server follows him.

Back to the subject.

Before the merge i heard a lot about Aniro players doing great RP and i was looking forward to see more of it. But to be honest: During my time as a karavan politician (from merge to when we went marauder) i was never approached in conflict RP, not a single time. Everything was about "My guild is THIS big and we are THAT good in pvp and that's why we will have the say about which ops is controlled by whom. And we say everything should be shared".... and so on. There was no exception, not from any community. All talk was completely OOC. There was a single incident when i was approached by a single Aniro player in some kind of cutish bonding RP (I mention it to not be unfair to that player).

But that was all. I missed some conflict RP. That's what they said about Aniro players but it never happened. We also had RP issues with another french guild but they actually never approached me in RP either. They just communicated their RP decisions OOC.

Ok, maybe the aniro players watched if people from the other server would engage in RP on the new server. But during watching they kinda forgot to introduce their RP into the new server's gameplay. Now you are starting to do that and I highly appreciate it.

What is happening now is the fear of the unknown. We just settled without RP and now conflict RP starts to happen. Give it some time, do MUCH MORE RP with non-french people and you will get more understanding for RP in general.

The biggest issue with RP and the new server is the language barrier. While everyone can say "that's my boss", "come to join my team", "help me" or "die now" with actions, emotes, hands and feet only, RP requires some decent knowledge of the language you are doing it in. I know there are quite a handful of players from aniro who got a decent knowledge of english. If you are one of them... Try to do some RP in english. If you want to make people that are not used to RP understand you, throw them a tell afterwards and tell them that it was RP.

In the most part people do not know well about RP and the joy it can bring. I can say it is fun. Although i rarely do weird talk (recycling my own insult on me) i play a vastly different role from what i did before the merge. And it's fun, as expected.

Keep up the dialog, tell us more about why and how you do things. People might enjoy it!

And if they don't we make a big all RPers alliance to kick their asses (watch for sarcasm).

I have far too many comments to make but luckily many of my ideas have already been written by other more famous people :P warning i may be going off topic at times but a real reply to what was asked requires going into many issues...

I would like to say this:

By my nature my "roleplay" is anti-theist anti-race because these things have very minor VERY MINOR impacts on one's ability to live in atys and pursue whatever it is you want to pursue, players aside.

What I mean is, I can dig to 250 undisturbed, I can grind my combat to at least 230 without any help, hell maybe even 250 if I really had to (ok , not really :))

I can kill named on my own these days, the ones with the exe mats
I can buy what others throw away from bosses and named (some of these items are extremely useful yet sold)
I can dig sups on my own
I can figure out recipes, buy sell trade on my own
I can buy a guild hall and store mats for my recipes

In atys there are two primary activities , at least to me. From a logical perspective I see:
1) leveling
2) roleplay

As such, considering that alpha players have been around for 9 years, beta for 8, most of the rest for 4-5+ and I have been here under 1 year :) my levels are low, and I do not "need" to depend on others for the first part of this aspect. However! If I had been playing 9 years, and had multi masters, perhaps I would have more "need" to care about the droll story of atys.

I like that someone pointed out that roleplay isnt necessarily following the rulebook, the guide, the wiki history. It is what the players make of it because frankly, that many years and little advancement "in game" for rp, means we are choosing what to do.

Again from a logical point of view, Eruv sees the kami and kara as a bit of a washout. A dying cause. With new horizons and homins in cities able to teleport me within lakes and forest and jungle, why do I practically need the kara? (desert is the only place with neutral tps between towns, kami-neutral)

I have 0 kami, 0 kara fame, 99 zorai fame. why? because practically 99 zorai fame gives me 7000 faction points per day to buy genetic mats with, so I can figure out more recipes. While people are busy killing each other someone has to figure out how to make the grinding gear better, how to make the pvp jewels easier, and that someone doesnt have to be kara or kami , matis or zorai, it makes no matter that my skin is blue and you are short :P

For my personal RP i see the nations as a bit brainwashed by the religions, tricked into needlessly fighting each other. or is it really that way? no perhaps not. we CHOOSE to fight each other, is it in the name of kami or kara? do the kami and kara not advocate conversion and love anyway? Is it not so that the kami still love the tryker and want them to convert? i'll have to find the quote from the rp handbook :P

keep in mind a lot of what i am saying is possibly inaccurate but this is from the perspective of a new player. there is nothing to be gained by being aligned one way or another except, so far, for me, faction points. I can dig my sup big and oath and amber and trade them for whatever i might be lacking in, kami or kara do you think either cares? do you think a matis doesnt want the sup mats because i am not matis? no, i do not think so.

Originally I did not even plan to join a guild, I am used to making my own guild in any MMO I play, put the people i met grew on me and as such they are my family now. True enough the devs force team play and they force pvp upon the populace. Updates are geared toward both.

The soloist is seen as a bit of an outcast even in Aris server, why do you not want to be part of the whole? Well for me, it is not that I do not want to be, but that I like having the freedom to choose. As such I have chosen to guild and chosen to help who I want, if they are matis or not, if they are kami or mara, if i like them or hate them, I can choose against conventional rp as stipulated by the history of atys

frankly content is lacking, and we, as the players, need to find ways to generate content or this world will die, this is my opinion based on logic and observation, and interviews. so i have been working on something. If this post can lead to more interesting rp, and generation of new player-made content, then cheers, because if not the entire planet will explode at some point and it wont matter if you like rp, pvp, pve, kara, kami, or mara.

P.S. aggro dragging is against the rules thor :P (im half joking because i KNOW you know that) but my point in saying it is this..... is that RP? or is that being a dick? If you want to destroy your matis enemies, do you do it like a coward or do you do it in roots with a launcher shot to the head? some people hide behind rp (as was mentioned by bittty) to justify being a jerk, most people are not that way but my rp involves removing those :)

remember homins and hominas, the kitin are coming back again so lets all hold hands for 1 day and remove them all so we can go back to shooting each other in the head.... because? I think holding on to a dying feud started by your great great great however many ancestors is a dying cause, i think we should be trying to travel to the distant lands of "real life" and finding more homins to join us on atys, i think we need to advocate gift subscriptions to keep the game going, i think we need to read the code a bit more.

rp and pvp are pushed by the devs, and the bigger issues at least to me are suffering. i rather go advertise ryzom and sub my mates and learn french to hit on the french hominas! ;)

from a cynical point of view this is what i see atys as, from the eyes of a newcomer

1) level your dig or combat so you can either dig or guard a digger in roots for sups
1b) if you dont like digging level your heal or combat for bosses

2) take these items and make uber items to... combat the kitin? no! to kill other homins so you can get MORE of the same items... to kill more homins.... to get more items.... so that eventually:

3) when it's time for "hand holding day" you can stand side by side with the same homin you killed last week, and stomp on the minor threat of the kitin (Because really... they dont have much of place in the atys rp... they just get in the way of homincide)

do it all over again, show someone how and where to grind levels, teach them how to dig, use your craft levels to gear them up.... so that we can go 1-2-3 all over again. the monotony , to eruv, is enough to make me not dislike any race or faction, i might even be called a kitin sympathiser!

what did they do anyway... they were attacked, we dig in their home, we kill them because they kill us
perhaps they are simply reacting and not thinking, but the organisation of the nests above ground suggests not

perhaps the goo is spreading all over atys and no one gives one ass about it because hey, who cares about goo when you can fight a homin. this is a strange world, for now i will do part 1/2 (leveling) and when i get to 2/2 (roleplay) it will probably be in the form of a novel about atys or at least a few novels therefore this post has been very helpful to me and i will be wanting speak to all of the ones who have replied at a sooner-than-later time

ALSO

everyone who said sorry for bad english- nonsense your english is fantastic, all of you. far better than my french or german. i am glad to have all of you in the same world regardless of your affiliation.

P.P.S. if you think i am over simplifying the nature of the gameplay regarding pvp and kitin.... it is because I am doing it on purpose. as i said, it CAN be seen that way, sure bittty will tell me that the kitin threat is major and not minor, that thousands died.... yeah yeah yeah.... kami and kara revived most of us anyway, how many stayed dead? (i know i died just outside the oasis but was spared death, thanks to both the kami AND kara right?)

and if Lady Neela is reading, as to the homins who were lost because of the merge, because they got deleted, there are backups. as to the homins who do not KNOW that the levels were not lost, and never came back.... it is your duty to go find your old friends and drag them back. if they choose not to come back... this is a bigger problem. atys is a wonderful place, but it does not seem to hold many in thrall for long, except for the hardcore fans.

Lol you wish. They quit the game because they were bored, not because carebears repelled or outnumbered them. They left looking for more complex, thought-out, interesting and rewarding PvP system than the one Ryzom has to offer. PvP shops in WoW or Eve Online had literally hundreds of items and their variations. PvP shop in Ryzom used to have 5 (five) items with a couple of variations of each. Now it's down to three. Enough said. Has Ryzom more interesting and rewarding PvP, there would be established PvP community. And these people won't quit no matter how hard carebears would try to repel them from the game, as they won't be bored fighting each other and attracted even more players of their kind.

You gotta thank Ryzom developers that due to their indifference to PvP there are only RP "extremists" in game, and not non-RP ones, for example like people running the Hulkageddon event in Eve Online.

For Thor: Pulling mobs is irrelevant for any RP. It's forbidden by the game rules and can't be considering as roleplay. And if a player don't want to be involved in any roleplay, or pvp actions, we need to respect that. I have seen maraudeurs, kamis, karas, aniro, arispotle or leanon players doing that, because being a dick is not a matter of language, nation, roleplaying orientation or anything else.

For the «Chancey system», I personnaly he has done a very convincing explanation himself in the subject.
Maybe it was a mistake. I never pretend to have a better RP, and surely don't want to be seen like that. Roleplay is for everyone, dont wait for others to take part in. And as a matter of fact, I have done some fighting RP with marauders, discussing about one hour before fighting, or just discussing before we were to weak to confront them^^.
Yeah, honestly I dont spent time on goo matter. Beacause I don't see the point, that is a goo roleplay:
– The goo is bad
– Yeah, that sucks
– Yeah!
– What can we do?
– Just repeat that goo sucks.
I'm a little bit joking, but if the roleplay is only telling stories with no results, I will tell much better stories outside from ryzom. Roleplay is fascinating when if influence the gameplay.
Yeah I don't see things like this. I have 100 fyros because I play a fyros nationalist. The advantages come AFTER the roleplay. Gunbra hate matis, so I have -70 matis. I'm dead on sight when approaching Yrkanys. What is my IG advantage for doing that? Nothing! It is in respect with my roleplay, and this can be food for roleplay, The day I need something in Yrkanys, I will need someone to get it for me!
That is the whole point of roleplaying: acting and playing a fictional character. If he shares all your ideas, emotions and acts, ther is no more roleplay, just play. It is not a bad thing, but it is very different.
And marauders roleplay is not just «playing an evil person». We can see things like that from a fyros or zorai point of view. But they just are homins who experienced and have different thoughts. And like that they can play their roleplay, something realistic and passionating.

Finaly, what some players fear from the all-in-one-alliance: killing parts of the game. Obviously, be in peace and share outposts material will be more profitable IG : less time => more mats. But at the end we don't need these mats! What we need is the game part of obtaining them. If the goal is to play like that, the devs wouldn't have develop the outposts, just put the materials in each others pockets once a month, so we would have the time to play play another game…

Hello, Icus! :)

Well, I'm a beta-player (2003/2004) and have experienced all kinds of roleplay on Leanon over the past years. There were times when extremism was more common on Leanon, especially religion/faction-wise. There have been harsh insults on the Universe-Channel between Karavan- and Kami-followers, there have been nationalistic guilds. I remember my first guild that I had to leave because they could not stomach my IC-sermons about "making peace" with the Kitins in the future :D

But yes, times have changed. Quite awful things happened when some players insulted and threatened players OOC because they played "enemy"-characters. Some players thought that decisions made by GMs and later on EMs at events were "meant" to score off certain players that were on bad terms with said GMs/EMs. I cannot even say it wasn't true because I really don't know :( Yes, roleplay has been abused as an excuse to practically "mob" or outcast players, and also the other way round, players have suspected things that were said IC to them to have been "meant" as OOC which led to endless fights...

Truth be told: the worst issue in the German community in my eyes is that some people STILL easily suspect that other players "mean" OOC what their characters say IC :( So it's no surprise that many of us Leanon-players have gotten into the habit of using formal middle-age speech ("Thou") in German ("Ihr"/"Euch") for roleplay over the years - to make it easier for others to understand that the homin-characters are speaking now; not the players. It is much harder to talk the same way in English though :( I wish I was able to write Shakespeare-English properly; however I cannot... Sorry for that! :(

Players who fought verbally too much felt bad because of the black mood it gave them over the course of months or even years, so consequently many of them left the game. Those who played peaceful characters prevailed because of having the most friends.

As our community dwindled it became more or less necessary to work together to fight kitins, marauders and other threads to hominkind, which also had an effect to our RP. Because of that also our characters learned by experiencing that working together with other homins despite race or faction was the most important clue to staying alive - and this has been going on for years!

And as for RP: only a bunch of players of Leanon are really into it, as you might have realized - it didn't and still doesn't make much sense to fight amongst the few of us; instead we are just happy to be able to talk and act together as a small, but friendly bunch. As players, but also as characters who have learnt to appreciate the few homins who are actually talkative and fun to have around...

As for Zhoi: she also expects all homins to have learned from the past when standing together like during the Exodus has let hominkind survive and that homins must have lived in relative peace in exile (Exodus-Isle/Kami-Oasis) after the second Great Swarming. Zhoi has not experienced the "holy war", she came to "life" in 2008. I played another character before that until the temple wars started, and then stopped playing Ryzom for a few months because the atmosphere even in the forums had gotten really awful.

Many players of Leanon left the game during the temple wars because they felt "forced" to play PvP and hated that. Others who originally loved PvP suddenly realized back then that they could not cope with being on the losing side. Well, the same thing happens in nearly every Browsergame, doesn't it? :D

Still not being extremist doesn't mean not to have any conflicts :) I do enjoy arguing in roleplay and I will not hold this against other players. Your RP is definitely NOT "unnecessary", Icus :) It's just that Icus has to understand that some characters have learnt from living in peace in exile after the second Great Swarming (for 8 Atys-years, as it was said!). So please don't be mad at me as a player when Zhoi tries to "tame" your character Icus ;)

They really do exist and live in the amazonian forest ^^
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matis

I only wanted to throw my few dappers in. =)

Extremism (not neccessarly extreme extremism) was part of Leanon for quite some time, and part of that was the possibility to get roleplayers and PvP players without real RP interest under one hat. It worked well while it worked, but - as others said already - those who enjoy just PvP can't probably be charmed into Ryzom forever, and sometimes they find it hard to adapt to RP rules. I guess that is why the possibility to play maurauders was introduced.

Having said that, I find the political conflict we now have quite refreshing. The difference between Icus and Gunbra on one side and Zhoi and "a little Salazar" is in the tools they use to fight it out. The Fyros on Aniro might have found it rather common to insult Matis, and maybe their Matis found (or find?) it common to do likewise with the Fyros. Salazar, in turn, uses a very different weaponry (and he did so for a long time on Leanon - not without success, I believe). If you'd choose the axe, he'd choose the foil, which (I hope ;) ) can be as deadly, and as serious. The preference of the subtle possibilities of politics over the stout simplistics of a brawl I hope make an acceptable Matis - someone whose pride and refinement is not neccessarily on the surface of what he says and does.

I feel I have to add, though, that Salazar is not racist. He is a priest of Jena, and as such believes all races are her children, although he likes some less than others, and over the years had friends in all countries, and members of all races in the religious Order he's part of.

I thought about taking bits of a play by some Matis playwright into my polemics re. Gunbra and the "non-homin" Matis, but decided to leave it out. It was, in fact, part of Shylock's speech from "The Merchant of Venice": "If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" ;)

Thanks Casy for your explanations :) As I said in another thread, the open-for-all bosshunt-offer is a product from Leanon that had a special situation. But there's another thread about his topic.

I just wanted to encourage Icus, Gunbra, Luth, Zhoi, Salazar and all others to keep on their "extremist" roleplay. The assemblies and ingame politics need these extreme sides. Although I'm playing a pacifist that is tolerant towards nearly everyone (yes, I know, how boring ^^) I'm sure that a world like Atys with full of tolerant pacifists like Chanchey would be incredibly boring.

So please go on with roleplaying this way! Maybe it helps when playing with roleplayers from Leanon to open a tell parallely or after a RP-scene full of conflicts where you make sure that your RP is understood as such and that everything is ok ooc.

I'm looking forward to assemblies with conflicts like these.

As one of the few (Leanon) Fyros who noticed everything that happened during the Akenak assembly I thought I'd give my personal input/opinions here.

A few people asked me to run for Akenos but sadly the RL wouldn't leave me enough time for that even though my character would probably be old enough by now to do so (during the start of ryzom 2525 he was in his 20s so now he'd be in his 70s)

I enjoyed following the debates and discussions during the Akenak (and directly after) and via the forums later on. My first thought when reading that with the new law was "Oh, does Icus want to start a war? This might become interesting" And I would probably have tried to protest against it if Lykus hadn't done so already because my character was present during the time of the original signing and thus remembered very well what happened back then.
But I'm just playing a moderate nationalist eg. avoiding the forest if possible because it's "enemy" territory and because my "old bones" don't like this slush and rain that's always there ;-)

In some areas I'm taking my nationalism (and in some way my RP) further than others though... my only harvest specializations are roots and desert, all other skill choices are influenced by what the character represents as well. I doubt that there are many other people doing this

The verbal (and emote) exchange after the Akenak assembly interested my personally so I returned when I noticed that Zhoi was staying behind to start a discussion - the return was a personal (ooc) choice so I didn't really think about how my character would react.
But now in retrospect I'd say that he probably would have tried to step between Zhoi and Gunbra to calm Gunbra down because Zhoi is an official representative of the Zorai (not because he'd completely agree with her)

Regarding the way Icus was talking to Lycus... I (and my character) were wondering about that as well but I didn't mention it directly because it wasn't my place to talk during the assembly and trying to defend someone who should be able to do so himself is a bad idea if he's your emperor ;-)
It wasn't so much that Icus had his own will but more the manner of stating this eg. it sounded nearly as if he was ordering a butler to bring him some documents in one case (the thing with the list of traitors)
I doubt that it was meant to be seen like this but it seems to be a "double in head translation" thing.. (fr -> en -> de)

Oh before I forget it: if you ever find a crafted item at the merchant by me where the quality is not dividable by 10 you might want to take a closer loo - sometimes I'm putting "fun-RP" items in there like Boots with a description like "Made from the finest Igara leather available in the Burning Desert" Yes, obviously these boots would be made from fine Igara leather and thus not exactly have the best stats but this is part of my RP as well - in reality I doubt that anyone will something with such bad stats though.

Oh man I'm rambling on and on here... so if you read all this: congratulations ;-)

Edit: forgot to say this... a lot of people say something about mixing RP and OOC in their explanations about the current behavior. IF that really were the case then Salazar and Zhoi would have probably filed a harassment ticket to the support team instead of going the RP way of mentioning it to their respective governments. This shows in another way that they do NOT think that the players behind the characters were attacked.
Just think of it this way:
Maybe Salazar was just searching for a reason to lower the credibility of the Fyros in front of his government
And Zhoi, who as a Zorai is used to note the finesses of grammar a lot more, doesn't handle insults as well as the Fyros that are used to this kind of rough tone more ;-)

There are lots of arguments and thoughts that I share with others here. In fact, reading through all of this there seems to be the common understanding that the political distress that is happening right now is welcomed by the players here in this thread. So keep it on!

Just reading responses in game, in forum, and even private tells during events, it will probably take another year for most people to understand the difference between OCC and in-character, and the difference between harassing players (always bad) and harassing characters (sometimes a good, sometimes a bad thing, depending on the context). This is obviously not a problem of people posting here.

It's good that this discussion lead to this open agreement, that such a conflict is of interest to roleplayers. Let us just not forget that there will always be players who do not like to, or cannot do roleplay, and just want to have a good time. There are players - especially new ones - who are not familiar with the lore, or with the current history of events. So, whenever we engage in some "hard roleplay" - and with "hard" I mean harsh words and actions - let us watch out for character names that we have not seen before, and possibly explain to them what's happening in a /tell. We may be able to attract more people because of it.

As a player I am looking forward to my character starting to hate a couple of other characters. Irfidel for the first time considers not to help the Trykers with the water trek because of the benefit it would have to the Fyros. He still has to make up his mind on that... He just loves the bathhouse in Pyr, and he hates all kinds of governments and organizations. He only respects them in that they have helped in the past to allow him to travel all four lands freely, as the independent isolated grumpy old Zorai that he has become.

I agree with Jarnys, and I can assure you that you won't have to worry that me or Salazar - or pretty much any of the other Leanoner RP-players - will ever write harrassment-tickets because of RP-arguments :D They might be discussing it amongst each other though.

Also I think it wasn't really necessary for you to explain that you as a player did not mean to speak badly of me as a player - since I myself have already repeatedly told a few people on Leanon even before the assembly of Hoi-Cho that nothing that you, Icus or Rollocks did or said, has been understood as OOC by me. And I will continue to tell this to others as long as it seems necessary to do so :)

As Luth said, there are a lot of different and even common ways to do roleplay. I have experienced and taken part in many kinds of roleplay in MMORPGs and otherwise (pen & paper) over a bunch of years. I am able to stick to very strict rules if needed as a player (and as a character as well if my char accepts these rules), but as I know well that Ryzom allows or even favours "RP light", I can also muster up the according tolerance :)

However sadly it is as Irfidel said: please understand that not everybody can distinguish RP from OOC so easily. Especially if you consider that sometimes system-emotes and a bit of OOC might be mixed into IC-talk in Ryzom. German speaking players somehow tend to interpret sloppy IC as All-OOC. They even might view strangers they meet online rather as maybe selfish or ruthless people than automatically as possibly good-willing. Perhaps that originates from bad experiences...

And this is, as Irfidel said, not "typical" for only Ryzom. I also play/ed a lot of different RP-styles in another MMORPG (including hobbits living in a village as simple commoners merely doing "boring" everyday-activities, telling continuing storylines about their family/business with a lot of comedy included).

So I was able to experience that on the German RP-Server of said game the exact same endless "OOC or IC?"-discussions occured. And even more often than in Ryzom - considered the waaay larger community there and a majority of Non-RP-players who were acting however they pleased, sometimes kiling the mood for the roleplayers. So much for bad experiences ;)

Every roleplayer knows of RP-styles that she or he dislikes or can only barely cope with. Like not resurrecting a character because your own character is from an "enemy"-faction. Or forum-RP - lots of people I know dislike any kind of roleplay via forums. Some roleplayers like "scripted" events with an ongoing storyline (even for their guildplay), others hate that and only want spontaneous RP instead.

Some roleplayers don't like worldwide RP and just cannot cope with strangers suddenly talking IC to them as they cannot quicly find fitting replies. Others love exactly that open-world-RP but instead hate "bubble"-RP that some guilds and event-organizators prefer by excluding every non-member/uninvited player to be able to keep their time-schedule and wave believable complex stories without unforseen disturbances.

Some players can only manage to get into "RP-mood" for a while and for that they prefer to meet up in a tavern or at a campfire with others to talk IC; while others consider themselves as "IC all the time". Some of those immersive players dislike having to talk OOC parallel to seeing the gameworld through the eyes of their characters and even might only be members of very strict RP-guilds who will nearly never talk OOC in their guild-chat. And so on and so on :D

As for me I can cope with a lot of things; but of course there are also "roleplay"-styles I dislike. Power-emotes or insulting thought-emotes for instance. They can also occur via forum-RP. Both make me feel uncomfortable as I will usually have to consort to methods that I dislike to be able to reply properly.

It is an unwritten rule of roleplay that you are allowed to answer to thought-emotes as if they had been spoken out aloud if you want to, and that you might react to power-emotes as if they are just attempts or if other players describe actions of your character you might treat that as if it did not happen. Still I dislike it since I want to make my character act believable at all times...

Except when my boyfriend or people I somehow know (and like) are doing this to my character ;) My characters usually have a lot of weaknesses and tend to make clumsy and even obvious mistakes so I do not even try to "win" using my roleplay. Funny RP-situations sometimes need someone who will play the gobsmacked part, and I'll gladly do that to entertain other players :) It's too bad that Sari's player finds it very hard to do roleplay in English as I always enjoy our acting like Laurel and Hardy with Sari and Zhoi ;)

Haha, sorry for all the off-topic; I just love to talk about roleplaying so much that it's hard to stop myself ;)

This is refreshing to hear and something that Bittymacod and his lot could do to learn. People like him were never able to separate RP, PVP and their RL feelings. This is what leads him to label those whom he doesn't agree with as "bullies". The fault doesn't lie with the PvPer or the RPer but with the ones who can't separate it from RL.