Guild Trim

[Dolalin]

Sounds like the sort of thing a patch might fix...

[Ennewi]

<Size Matters>

[dracosophy]

3 pages on dial a rez but no answer to the question of why were small guilds such a drain on resources?

Is it the misuse of a feature to get extra big names?

If we're worried about misuse of names, immersion breaking etc, how about we work on making people more aware that there's actually a naming policy on p99?
* * *
Sentences, phrases, popular culture references, names with titles inside them, and general immersion breaking nonsense,
has been the only major issue bothering me about p99 in the last 3-4 years.
It is honestly my biggest problem with this server/game, and has been one of the biggest reasons I take long breaks from p99
(and why I do not feel inclined to donate money).
While I actually hate arbitrary things, I'm an open-minded, liberal, creative-type-person, and most of the time I dislike following strict rules, tradition, boundaries & regulations just because "that's the way it is",
I think an unenforced, or unenforceable rule might be worse, in some cases, than a rule that has a questionable right to exist.
____And lest anyone think I'm an unreasonable stooge with no sense of humor, I absolutely see that some of the names people have are clever and funny,
I just don't want to see them used as a name for a fantasy character, in a high-fantasy setting...
which is exactly what the naming policy (see link below) was designed to do.
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=17488
_The problem is, you don't even have to have bad behavior to annoy someone in this game, you just have a name you force people to see.
___Theory of policy & philosophy aside, the p99 rules, naming policy included, were designed quite adequately in my opinion (the opinion of a 25 year-veteran of online gaming),
aside from the apparent lack of visibility/enforcement in the naming policy of course.
____Also, just to clarify, I am not worrying about obvious mules and/or EC market characters,
I'm talking about characters that are actually leveled, used, and visible all over.
(though to be fair, I wouldn't mind if the market characters that were there frequently/repeatedly were a bit less immersion-breaking as well, but I realize we can't always have everything we want, so I'm willing to compromise).
____And lest anyone think character names are a small issue, I have a folder full of evidence,
and a general sense that approximately half the active players are violating the naming policy at any given time, which seems, to me, like not such a small issue.
_Every time you see them run by, are targeted for spells, or chat with you....
It's just not realistic to avoid the problem by avoiding the people since there are just too many of them. It seems like every zone has a large percentage now, so where a few years ago I would screenshot the few annoyances,
now half the time I don't even bother trying unless it really stands out as offensive, because if I tried to document all "bad names" I'd be doing it so much I would get myself worked up into a bad mood and have to log out in less than an hour or something.
_Even members of the hardcore RP guild [Auld Lang Syne] violate the naming policy! Rarely, but I have seen it.
_
I volunteer to be name police, and help with the manual re-naming of the worst violators, if it can be done.
Also if something was done about it, well, let's just say I'd be much more inclined to donate to the fund that maintains the running of the servers.
* * *
Or would all that just be too difficult, too involved, where-as tossing out small guilds is a one-shot thing that doesn't actually force anyone to lose any time spent beyond gathering 6 people together, so there's no risk of hurt feelings or complications? _Maybe I'm expecting too much;
__to add some new layer to the account-making process that gives people more of a chance to read the server rules,
___or maybe it's unrealistic of me to think that character names might be submitted manually to a large group of peer-reviewer-type moderators, and if any of them have issue with the name it gets held up in discussion and not approved, or something.
_
Just throwing stuff out off the top of my head here, but you get the idea... I'm realistic in that I know it's obviously not an easy problem to fix, or it would have been already, I'm just saying that something, anything, being done more than is now would be preferable to continuing as-is.
I'm also not ungrateful for the server, it's truly one of the best gaming communities I have encountered (probably a side effect of the older age-range than your average gaming community, but who knows),
and I am truly thankful that p99 exists. My deepest thanks to everyone who helps make it possible, and especially thanks to anyone who actually read through my wall of text here. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[loramin]

Originally Posted by dracosophy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sentences, phrases

Pretty much sums up your post. Try introducing these things called "paragraphs" into your repertoire [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But to your point, the staff did crack down on naming violations not all that long ago. They did so with wild inconsistency, which led to a massive backlash from the player community, and then they stopped.

Maybe Rogean just wanted to send a message ("we can and will change names if we feel like it"). In that sense, maybe the rule isn't a rule at all (well, we all KNOW it's not a rule: the evidence of that is walking all over Norath), but rather a license: a license for the staff to change any names they feel like changing, whenever they feel like it. It's just that they only choose to exercise that license for particularly terrible names, or once in a blue moon to prove they can.

Maybe there was an internal division within the staff. Maybe the new GMs were like "why the hell do we have a rule if we don't enforce it?", so they started enforcing it, but then that created a backlash and Rogean was like "guys, I really don't give a crap about names, so cut it out".

The truth is we don't know why they briefly enforced a rule they never otherwise enforce, but really the reason doesn't matter: all you need to know is that the staff has only once ever enforced the rule (en masse) in the five or so years I've been here, and even then they only changed a small fraction of names, which means it's really not something Rogean cares about, which means it's not really a rule (again, it's really more like a license or warning from the staff). So we all have to just live with our 100% free and 95% accurate nostalgia game server and it's army of name-policy-violating names. Sometimes life is hard like that.

[Tethler]

Originally Posted by dracosophy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also if something was done about it, well, let's just say I'd be much more inclined to donate to the fund that maintains the running of the servers.

This reads as "work harder for free before I consider supporting this game that I already play for free".

You have it backwards. If you want to staff to expand, they need more resources first.

Ever consider that people with your kind of mentality are part of the reason they don't have the resources to enforce these things you claim to care so much about?