Merging Green & Teal... while causing some temporary aches & pains, I think does make sense.
However, I'm not here to talk about that issue. I'm here to post about the ONLY issue I have with p99.
An issue that I think might be aided by some amount of server-machinations.
"
What issue could our amazing, top-10-online-gaming-communities-ever, filled with cool folks who are welcoming,
awesome, skilled, knowledgable, fun,
hard-working, brilliant, kind, generous and super great community
POSSIBLY have to encourage someone to write a virtual 'wall-of-text' (see below)?!?"
-You might say... well, I'm glad you asked.
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The one issue which stops me from donating 'cold hard cash' to the p99 community.
The thing that, for me personally, drastically reduces the amount of time I play p99 each year.
That
#1 issue,
my one & only problem with this game-server is
:*drumroll*
~
>>>>>
>>Immersion-breaking<<<,<
<<<
~
*whamp-whump*
mostly via violations of the naming policy (which is a fantastic policy, in my opinion).
Those times
the naming rules are broken, or, less immediate but related;
when the immersion-enhancing-spirit-of-the-
naming-policy is consistently damaged,
the vast majority of violations seem to be ignored and/or mostly unenforced.
Granted, role-playing (or lack there of) is a tiny- minor-issue by comparison to,
for example, being forced to see people using their names as basically a bio,
title, or quote space... instead of an actual NAME.
However.
I understand the difficulties involved, and why things are the way they are,
I'm not just here to complain (again) about the status quo, as it were,
or to point out, again, how having
unenforced/unenforceable rules weakens the entire system;
encouraging worse behavior in all manner of ways...
I'm here to suggest a solution to the issue (the new servers gave me the idea).
Two servers.
One server continues as in the past; e.g. "p99 green"
and the other something like a server labeled RolePlaying; e.g. p99 purple(RP)"
one which does not accept names which violate the current [most excellent] naming policy
that is currently [supposed to be] in
place.
The way the p1999 era of EQ is, there just are not many, or any,
good outlets for people to customize their characters in silly, humorous or other ways
(like having a title, easily changeable faction/guild name(s) etc,
so it's understandable why people, generally
unaware of the naming policy's existance...
well, I could go on at great length
along those lines, so I'll try to keep it brief;
On an RP server, we-who-value-immersion-above-most-other-things, wouldn't be:
forced to endure metaphorical 'piranha bites' of reality, 'stinking clouds' of fart-jokes, or mental 'static-shocks' whenever we come across a player with a
"particularly clever joke/phrase" in their name... (or pile of corpses);
names related to modern things/concepts/pop-culture, phrases/sentences, badly spelled versions of whatever.
I'm sure most folks have good intentions when coming up with such names, and I know there is a valid place for humor in gaming, [multi-player & otherwise]...
however;
To put it another way: one of the key ingredients in any good, successful, social interaction/transaction,
is to
try & make sure, from the start, that expectations are properly set up, communicated, agreed upon etc. and then that they are maintained,
or at least, if changed, then changed slowly, carefully, and/or openly.
Setting the right expectations can easily prevent 95%+ of issues, drama etc that could, can, and will arise.
Another metaphor might be:
when you begin a 'pen & paper RPG' with a group of people;
you set the expectations from the start and you don't change them without warning.
For example; if it's a 'beer & pretzels'-style campaign, where pop-culture references, random jokes, and/or meta-gaming are fine b/c
then everyone knew that when going into it, so the immersion, shock & any offense/annoyance is minimized.
On the other hand, if there was an up-front declaration of "this is immersive RPG, serious-gaming campaign" ...
(which is what the current Project 1999 naming policy comes across as)...
and then you are constantly seeing people with phrases for names and/or other worse examples
(i have a folder with hundreds of screenshots, but bards and healers tend to be some of the most innocuous, (which means innocent/least harmful just f.y.i.,) yet common violators).
Anyway, maybe I should start my own thread with this, and I had originally planned to do just that,
but I couldn't decide what forum it would best serve to get the most attention in,
so for now I'll leave you all here with my TLDR;
rant about people with annoying names.
Thanks for reading! <3 smoochies