07-10-2023, 03:43 PM
This isn't a quitting post, but rather a large post to reflect on the past year or so of SL2 and especially on the shift from G6 to Korvara. I'd like it if others share their thoughts, and we can discuss korvara and SL2 as a whole in light of all the things we've learned and the things we did and enjoyed or not. I'm also gonna give my own two cents but it might be long so feel free to skip to TL;DR or just post your own reply 
Sigrogana Legend 2 is a journey
As someone who has played this game an extreme amount for the past 3 years, I have done and experienced a lot of things. I even became an eventmin of this great game, and seen the other side of the coin. I've been on all sides of conflict. I've died, had relationships, had moments of tragedy and true happiness. I've made great friends, and lost many. I've seen people get hurt or burned out and quit, close friends of mine forced out to new horizons multiple times. I've organized large groups of people under a single banner, creating awesome stories with people, often making new friends along the way. I learned a ton about RP and how to enjoy it and how to enjoy SL2.
I think a lot of one's journey through SL2 should be about finding out how to best enjoy it, and then making the most out of that once you've found something you truly enjoy. That's something I was saying a long time ago, and it's resurfacing in my mind nowadays.
The game has stopped being fun for me a couple months ago, I'm not sure when exactly. I just booted up BYOND, wondering what character I wanted to play, and didn't feel like playing any. This happens sometimes, but this time it's more persistent.
To explain why, I think we have to break down what happened in the past year with the game itself. Starting at the beginning.
The golden days of G6
Before the announcement of Korvara, I was having a lot of fun with the game. There wasn't much to do, but I had fun with a few things: Antagging, LFG rp, casual pvp, private rps... There was at least always a way for me to just open up a bar or make my way somewhere with people to rp with. A place for socializing.
Sigrogana Legend 1 and 2 used to be a lawless place, full of rather terrible things happening on an OOC and IC level. I constantly heard stories of crazy things that happened in the past... But somehow that seemed to quiet down about the time I started to get into the game full time (help).
The atmosphere in G6 was fairly nice for a moment. A little golden age, where we didn't have too much crazy stuff happening. Though of course, there were still many issues of conflict between players. I was witness to many situations that made me sad on an OOC level. Three in particular resulted in one of my close friends being truly deeply hurt, and they simply left the game, or it was never the same again. The type of player behavior and atmosphere that caused this isn't exclusive to that era of course. That's something we've always had, and we'll always have. Yet amidst the anguish that I've witnessed and felt, there were some good times...
The best scenes I've had on SL2 were little moments with a few people I know, playing our characters in our private setting or just having a scene together. Having fun or experiencing amazing drama. Living through some beautiful character tragedies was my favorite thing, and it happened many times back then. Devastating scenes, watching the characters evolve and grow, and develop these bonds and... Well, I'm not going to spend hours talking about it. But I will say that it was fairly difficult to get those good scenes without a lot of luck. Unless we did some planning, like a group of some kind. Often, the best scenes were just us, in private... Oh, right.
Private RP tangent
In those days, people were complaining a lot about private rpers hiding away in their houses to do their own thing. And I'm going to be that guy who goes ahead and says it, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If someone is enjoying their time in private with people they trust, then what exactly is the problem? The only issue with that is the lack of players rping in public. But can you blame them? RPing in public kind of sucks a lot of the time, especially in areas that aren't really inherently made for people to rp in, for instance in some sort of town square. It's not very natural to have a conversation in an open public area with strangers, it's especially difficult to get a meaningful conversation or scene out of it. For that reason, I always favored LFG roleplay, where you either set up a scene or go somewhere with an established scene. Sometimes, a private rp is cool too if needed. But having the choice to do any of those things allowed for a lot of freedom, something that has been a cornerstone of SL2 for a long time. Overall, player housing is a very versatile tool, it allowed us to do anything. Build (Y)our Own Net Dream, even.
And all those players who are content to roleplay in private with their friends, sometimes called cliques, would it truly help the game to drag them out into the sun by force? Are they actually going to improve the public rp experience by way of their begrudging presence? I always found it odd to argue that player housing is making people hide away. Just let them hide. SL2 is about doing what you enjoy. I'm not even someone who did a lot of private rp overall, I did a mixture of public, LFG, and private. Yet it just makes sense to me... We need all 3.
Regardless, there were undeniable problems back then. Mostly the low activity and lack of interesting stuff going on. The world was very static, and even boring. Things stagnated, nothing changed.... Most things felt like they didn't matter, except the most prestigious and ambitious of events. For that reason, an idea was born: Korvara.
The Korvara Hype Days
When korvara was announced, there was a big shakeup in the community. A lot of people were excited for it, myself included, while others were leery or outright disliked the idea. I thought it had a lot of potential and might fix the aforementioned "issue" of a static world.
Despite the many concerns that were shared, people looked at Korvara as the future of SL2, which it would be! In fact, it's essentially SL3, even if it doesn't have that title. There was thus a phenomenon I'll dub the "Korvara waiting room crisis", during which player numbers dropped over time. After all, SL3 was coming out soon, so what's the point on continuing to play a char that I'll be dropping?... It was a bit of a boring era sadly. But hey, it eventually gave way to:
The Korvara Early Days
An exciting time to play SL2 for sure. Everyone was motivated and active. Things were chaotic and crazy. People had hopes and dreams and things to do all the time. At the same time, a lot of things were really bad. But I think the shittiness of early Korvara had a certain charm. People were just doing shit.
When Korvara launched, leaders were rolled randomly, which I believe is a huge mistake. In fact, it's the pinnacle of a phenomenon I'll call "Dev Hopium". This belief that players will simply "sort it out" together and things will be okay. Well, the leader lottery ended up being a huge mistake in my opinion. Sure, it's nice that anyone had the opportunity to get a very important role, but it turns out most of these people didn't have what it takes to be a leader, on an OOC level. Sure, it's fine if leaders are bad IC. But the role is also an extremely important one OOCly. In fact, being a leader is MOSTLY about how you can handle the ooc aspect of managing a whole nation. And it puts a lot of pressure on people. I think there should have been a bit of a curation process and a little training process. Teach these people how they should lead. You might think that defeats the purpose of Korvara, as players are supposed to do whatever they want, but we saw how that ended up going. You can't just expect everyone to know what they're doing. The most egregious example was rubin, which, although her character was very fun to play with in game most of the time, wasn't really able to handle the stress of the position and ran herself into the ground. There are other examples of leaders that ended up causing or receiving OOC trouble, and crumbled as a result.
Still, I remember fondly the fall of Lexaly. The rich roleplay that ensued, the beautiful conflicting values, and the time when Geladyne was trying to find itself. I miss those days dearly, even for all their flaws.
The Beggar's Hole Days
A bit later, after the initial chaos of those days, people were ready to chill for a bit. New leaders were in place, and now we needed to look at what was next. A few people were doing some silly bandit stuff, which turns out it was satire or something, I don't really get it still. And their group took residence in a settlement near Geladyne, which is nowadays known as the Wanderer's Vale.
In a striking turn of events, Geladyne suddenly decided to show up and tax them. Which I thought was pretty funny at the time, and cool. Although it had a few major implications. First of all, Beggar's Hole wasn't officially part of Geladyne, which means this was a threat of conquest and as such a declaration of war if they wanted to keep independence. They did, which means there was fighting. This is a problem because of the fact there was no warning.
Conflict
So, this is kind of the crux of the issue with Korvara, and probably merits its own thread. Conflict is something everyone has their own opinion on. Over time, I've learned something quite important about SL2.
Our community has a strange relationship to conflict. A portion of the playerbase wants MORE conflict, and a portion of the playerbase wants LESS conflict. In addition, the vast majority do not want to be on the losing end of a major conflict. This creates a fairly big problem, as you might imagine.
Now, what happened with the beggar's hole incident is the following: player(s) who want MORE conflict go attack players who just wanted to do their own thing. You might say, well, that is Geladyne land, so it's normal that they would be conquered. And I say to that, yeah, sure, on a logical standpoint for sure. But you can't overlook the effect these things have on people. I think a big problem is that the people who want MORE conflict tend to focus too much on things such as their own freedom and what makes sense IC, while forgetting that the game isn't real life. The main purpose of the video game is to be fun for everyone, and that means when you are initiating conflict, you need to make sure your enemy enjoys it too, unless you really have to do it regardless.
Only problem with that is, most of the time, your enemy isn't going to enjoy it, even when it's well planned and executed. But when it's unplanned, it's always going to cause problems, as we saw with Beggar's hole. Of course, people were unhappy. But thankfully, we learned from this era that planning and warning was very important.
The Fairview Days
The next big event was eerily similar to the first one. This time it was fairview who was the target of Meiaquar. Unlike the first time though, there was some warning. Not only was there warning, there was GM intervention. However, things did not go as smoothly as you might expect. Instead of mediating the situation from both sides, the GM team mostly oversaw the planning of an invasion, and there was very little communication between both sides of the conflict. An invasion eventually began with some artillery shooting sleeping gas into town, with the intention of putting everyone inside to sleep and imprisoning them. That didn't end up working out. In fact, it caused an outcry and great amounts of salt. There was some fighting, but it was inconsequential.
Due to constant disagreement and arguing, there was actually basically no fighting that happened after that. Participants ended up stuck waiting for the higher ups to give a green light that never came. It ended with a peaceful takeover after the OOC side of things resulted in a ban or something. The conflict fizzled out, and a meiaquarian mayor was appointed as the leader. Thus, fairview was now conquered.
The Shift to the Modern Era and the Geladyne-Meiaquar war
So, thus far in Korvara up to this point, we've got 2 major conflicts that did not go well. So the playerbase has a lot of feelings about conflict at this point. Many of them are tired of it, if they didn't quit already due to it. Others are hungry for a proper war, a conflict that is done well, to show that it's possible and pave the way to a better future for Korvara.
With a lengthy time of peace, the nations start to settle into a rythm, doing their own thing a lot of the time. Geladyne eventually switches leaders, and soon after, war is declared. This move was quite controversial. Some were happy, some were unhappy. But for the most part, Geladyne was hopeful and glad to finally have a war to fight.
Thus began the tedious and arduous process of "figuring out" how to fight a war properly. Unfortunately, the two sides of the conflict weren't really in agreement, and as such, before we could fight the first skirmish, the war was put on pause. A jarring thing for the IC side of things, but it was ultimately needed and helpful. After a lengthy period, the leaders announced it was finally time. And then, boom, war began. On a surface level, it actually went fairly well, as many people engaged in battles and some fun was had. Admittedly, I haven't participated, as I had lost interest in playing my normal characters at that point, and was busy helping out as an eventmin instead.
Overall, it seems the war is a far, far better conflict than its predecessors. Battles planned, PvE and PvP provided, agreement on outcomes, and countless people involved with plenty of RP to be had in the midst of it all. Great stuff.
Of course, it also created some salt and dissent. To the point some were harassing certain people about it, and many were vocal about their distaste. It turns out, a lot of people in SL2 just don't want to be in a war. Yet a lot of them want to be in a war... Either way, soon, the war will conclude, and we will know how history will see it... Will this usher a new era where we're able to have war properly? Finally making Korvara deliver on its promises? I don't really know. And truth be told, at this point, I don't think I have it in me to continue in the MORE conflict gang.
I gradually realized that most people aren't really happy when you cause conflict... Playing an antagonist in Korvara has been fun, but gradually exhausting on an OOC level.
My personal experience with antagonism
So, I wanted to talk about what I've been doing, myself. Aside from being mostly an observer in the major conflicts, I've especially focused on antagonism. Both on my own, and with Sawrock. Teaming up with Sawrock is its own kind of playstyle. We make some characters that work together, and run around ganking people for fun. Sometimes, people aren't into it, and we do our best to offer them to escape or omit the scene. We try to give people a fair 1v1 fight especially these days. We offer them options. And yet some people still don't like it. It kind of saddens me that even something so innocuous as a random gank bandit, is seen as a problem to some people. No, it really saddens me. To think that some people see it as exhausting, like they have to deal with every criminal themselves. That whenever something bad is happening, they need to deal with it immediately. That when there's a single criminal out on the roads, it's a problem and we need to hunt it down and end this so things are ok again. And when things are ok and nothing bad is happening, we can relax, and if another criminal comes around, we need to deal with that too. I get it, but it's just a real shame, because I do this stuff to have fun. And there's so many amazing scenes that come out of it. Yet it's like sometimes people aren't having fun and I'm like, alright, what do we do? Let's figure this out. But it often causes as much frustration as it causes fun, and/or ends anticlimactically. For all the great moments we've had, there's also moments where I've felt disinterest in game, or directly was told about frustration or such. It makes me sad. In those moments I remember the G6 days. Where guards were so pained to receive pings that asked them to do their job, where it was often treated as a chore. Things improved a lot since then, but perhaps that burdensome feeling has translated to others who feel like they have that responsibility on an OOC level.
Something similar happens when we're talking about more event-like antagonists. A few times, I've made my antags more focused on intrigue and a proper story to follow. An event, if you will, even before I was granted eventmin. I even made events, such as the flame guardian thing. But I liked to do these little antagonists that had a bit more going on, where people could enjoy a story. I did this for the players, so they could enjoy a storyline and eventually reach a boss fight, like the necromancer or Valya. I was kind of sad about Valya as I was dispatched by like 4 people ganking me in a meeting without warning they were coming to kick my ass. But I digress. The Necromancer is a good example of everything going right. It was a fun time for sure, although it is fairly difficult to handle a whole event antag as a non-eventmin. So I did that rarely as it took effort. In the same vein, managing a large scale event with a lot of intrigue has been a bit difficult. Things don't always go as planned, and in the end things progressed far quicker than I anticipated. I was a bit disappointed about how quickly the guardian was labeled a threat that needed to be deleted right away, but hey at least it was an awesome finale.
The current state of affairs on my end
Overall though, my motivation for antagonism has waned, even though it's pretty much the only thing I enjoy about the game nowadays. I feel as though the negativity in the community has gotten to me. And I think I have grown tired of trying to play the game of politics, and trying to be a big shot in the world of Korvara. It's truly tiring, takes a lot of constant effort, and you may not even be rewarded for it. Even the mundane characters feel like a slog to play, I'm unable to really find a context in which I enjoy playing the video game. Back in the days of G6, I could make any random char I wanted, and play them in the vast sandbox world. Nowadays, I feel like every character needs to fit into a faction, into a niche. Being unaffiliated in Korvara is dreadfully boring, as you're basically just getting inconsequential public RP. Maybe I've just grown bored of public RP as well, or haven't found my people. Sure, I still enjoy logging on to rp with certain people, but the general, basic experience has lost its spark to me.
I have also lost interest over time in my current enterprise, which is the Marauders. I've run into a magnified version of the issue I mentioned about antagonists. People just... Don't like to be attacked. Hell, people don't like pvp. People don't enjoy pvp, man. But that's the one thing I love about this game. I frickin love pvp in this game, and it's so sad to see that I'm a complete minority in this. People prefer pve a lot of the time... Why are we even doing this? Why are we even trying to have conflict? That's without even talking about the fact that this game doesn't have any systems in place to have large scale conflict, which means anything more than a gank is going to take insane levels of planning. And what happens when you want to attack someone and they're like "I don't want to"? Do you force it, or give up?
Why are we even on Korvara if 90% of the playerbase doesn't enjoy pvp itself? That's the entire point of the continent. The promise of player agency comes with the promise of conflict. With conflict, comes PvP. With PvP, comes salt and frustration and unfairness and disinterest... More and more, I am feeling the weight of this. If you put people who enjoy conflict against people who don't, what are you going to get? Someone is going to be unhappy in that equation. And more and more, I feel like... It's not worth it, man.
Conclusion
I think that we learned a lot as a community over the year we've spent on Korvara. I think a lot of people, like myself, have become disillusioned about the promise that Korvara offered. I think that our community just isn't ready for this level of conflict. Just look at how much shit the GM team has had to deal with recently. Is that really sustainable? Is it worth it? That's the question I'm asking myself these days. Is it truly worth it, to go through all this effort, to plan everything, to discuss with parties involved, to figure out schedules and disagreements, and make everyone happy... When we could just have eventmins do some events instead? Yes, I'm going to honestly say I wish we could go back to G6. I miss it, now, and I don't think Korvara's promises were worth it. I'm fine with not having war, anymore, and I think I'm done with trying to make big waves. I'm done with trying so hard to get a high ranking position in a government, that I might never get, and even if I do, I don't know if it's going to even be enjoyable. The leaders sure don't seem to be having a good time...
The big problem with korvara is that your character isn't going to get much interesting RP if you aren't part of a group. Be it a nation, or a small faction. And it's really difficult to make a small faction, as evidenced by what happened with beggar's hole and fairview. Best you can get is a tiny faction that is a part of a larger nation... There is truly no escaping the structure, unless you're small enough to go unnoticed and don't really interact with the world, which is not only difficult, it kind of defeats the purpose of Korvara. Everything is hard in korvara. Everything takes effort, everything is connected. I think I'm just tired of how much work this continent is.
I think I'm ready to go home, now.
Afterword
TL;DR: Korvara has taught us many things, but overall, I don't think all the pain was worth it for what we got out of the conflicts and the structure of Korvara overall as a player-run world. I think we lost a lot, and I miss G6.
Sorry for the long post, but thank you so much if you read it all. I'm sure a lot of it is just repeating stuff you guys already know, but I wanted to look back and... Have a retrospective. Let me know your thoughts on it all, and share your own experience of Korvara if you'd like. I'm sure there are many points people will disagree with, too, so feel free to make your response towards specific things as well.
Hope y'all have a good day. I love you guys. I've said it many times, but I believe in this community. I think we're gonna make it.
Sigrogana Legend 2 is a journey
As someone who has played this game an extreme amount for the past 3 years, I have done and experienced a lot of things. I even became an eventmin of this great game, and seen the other side of the coin. I've been on all sides of conflict. I've died, had relationships, had moments of tragedy and true happiness. I've made great friends, and lost many. I've seen people get hurt or burned out and quit, close friends of mine forced out to new horizons multiple times. I've organized large groups of people under a single banner, creating awesome stories with people, often making new friends along the way. I learned a ton about RP and how to enjoy it and how to enjoy SL2.
I think a lot of one's journey through SL2 should be about finding out how to best enjoy it, and then making the most out of that once you've found something you truly enjoy. That's something I was saying a long time ago, and it's resurfacing in my mind nowadays.
The game has stopped being fun for me a couple months ago, I'm not sure when exactly. I just booted up BYOND, wondering what character I wanted to play, and didn't feel like playing any. This happens sometimes, but this time it's more persistent.
To explain why, I think we have to break down what happened in the past year with the game itself. Starting at the beginning.
The golden days of G6
Before the announcement of Korvara, I was having a lot of fun with the game. There wasn't much to do, but I had fun with a few things: Antagging, LFG rp, casual pvp, private rps... There was at least always a way for me to just open up a bar or make my way somewhere with people to rp with. A place for socializing.
Sigrogana Legend 1 and 2 used to be a lawless place, full of rather terrible things happening on an OOC and IC level. I constantly heard stories of crazy things that happened in the past... But somehow that seemed to quiet down about the time I started to get into the game full time (help).
The atmosphere in G6 was fairly nice for a moment. A little golden age, where we didn't have too much crazy stuff happening. Though of course, there were still many issues of conflict between players. I was witness to many situations that made me sad on an OOC level. Three in particular resulted in one of my close friends being truly deeply hurt, and they simply left the game, or it was never the same again. The type of player behavior and atmosphere that caused this isn't exclusive to that era of course. That's something we've always had, and we'll always have. Yet amidst the anguish that I've witnessed and felt, there were some good times...
The best scenes I've had on SL2 were little moments with a few people I know, playing our characters in our private setting or just having a scene together. Having fun or experiencing amazing drama. Living through some beautiful character tragedies was my favorite thing, and it happened many times back then. Devastating scenes, watching the characters evolve and grow, and develop these bonds and... Well, I'm not going to spend hours talking about it. But I will say that it was fairly difficult to get those good scenes without a lot of luck. Unless we did some planning, like a group of some kind. Often, the best scenes were just us, in private... Oh, right.
Private RP tangent
In those days, people were complaining a lot about private rpers hiding away in their houses to do their own thing. And I'm going to be that guy who goes ahead and says it, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If someone is enjoying their time in private with people they trust, then what exactly is the problem? The only issue with that is the lack of players rping in public. But can you blame them? RPing in public kind of sucks a lot of the time, especially in areas that aren't really inherently made for people to rp in, for instance in some sort of town square. It's not very natural to have a conversation in an open public area with strangers, it's especially difficult to get a meaningful conversation or scene out of it. For that reason, I always favored LFG roleplay, where you either set up a scene or go somewhere with an established scene. Sometimes, a private rp is cool too if needed. But having the choice to do any of those things allowed for a lot of freedom, something that has been a cornerstone of SL2 for a long time. Overall, player housing is a very versatile tool, it allowed us to do anything. Build (Y)our Own Net Dream, even.
And all those players who are content to roleplay in private with their friends, sometimes called cliques, would it truly help the game to drag them out into the sun by force? Are they actually going to improve the public rp experience by way of their begrudging presence? I always found it odd to argue that player housing is making people hide away. Just let them hide. SL2 is about doing what you enjoy. I'm not even someone who did a lot of private rp overall, I did a mixture of public, LFG, and private. Yet it just makes sense to me... We need all 3.
Regardless, there were undeniable problems back then. Mostly the low activity and lack of interesting stuff going on. The world was very static, and even boring. Things stagnated, nothing changed.... Most things felt like they didn't matter, except the most prestigious and ambitious of events. For that reason, an idea was born: Korvara.
The Korvara Hype Days
When korvara was announced, there was a big shakeup in the community. A lot of people were excited for it, myself included, while others were leery or outright disliked the idea. I thought it had a lot of potential and might fix the aforementioned "issue" of a static world.
Despite the many concerns that were shared, people looked at Korvara as the future of SL2, which it would be! In fact, it's essentially SL3, even if it doesn't have that title. There was thus a phenomenon I'll dub the "Korvara waiting room crisis", during which player numbers dropped over time. After all, SL3 was coming out soon, so what's the point on continuing to play a char that I'll be dropping?... It was a bit of a boring era sadly. But hey, it eventually gave way to:
The Korvara Early Days
An exciting time to play SL2 for sure. Everyone was motivated and active. Things were chaotic and crazy. People had hopes and dreams and things to do all the time. At the same time, a lot of things were really bad. But I think the shittiness of early Korvara had a certain charm. People were just doing shit.
When Korvara launched, leaders were rolled randomly, which I believe is a huge mistake. In fact, it's the pinnacle of a phenomenon I'll call "Dev Hopium". This belief that players will simply "sort it out" together and things will be okay. Well, the leader lottery ended up being a huge mistake in my opinion. Sure, it's nice that anyone had the opportunity to get a very important role, but it turns out most of these people didn't have what it takes to be a leader, on an OOC level. Sure, it's fine if leaders are bad IC. But the role is also an extremely important one OOCly. In fact, being a leader is MOSTLY about how you can handle the ooc aspect of managing a whole nation. And it puts a lot of pressure on people. I think there should have been a bit of a curation process and a little training process. Teach these people how they should lead. You might think that defeats the purpose of Korvara, as players are supposed to do whatever they want, but we saw how that ended up going. You can't just expect everyone to know what they're doing. The most egregious example was rubin, which, although her character was very fun to play with in game most of the time, wasn't really able to handle the stress of the position and ran herself into the ground. There are other examples of leaders that ended up causing or receiving OOC trouble, and crumbled as a result.
Still, I remember fondly the fall of Lexaly. The rich roleplay that ensued, the beautiful conflicting values, and the time when Geladyne was trying to find itself. I miss those days dearly, even for all their flaws.
The Beggar's Hole Days
A bit later, after the initial chaos of those days, people were ready to chill for a bit. New leaders were in place, and now we needed to look at what was next. A few people were doing some silly bandit stuff, which turns out it was satire or something, I don't really get it still. And their group took residence in a settlement near Geladyne, which is nowadays known as the Wanderer's Vale.
In a striking turn of events, Geladyne suddenly decided to show up and tax them. Which I thought was pretty funny at the time, and cool. Although it had a few major implications. First of all, Beggar's Hole wasn't officially part of Geladyne, which means this was a threat of conquest and as such a declaration of war if they wanted to keep independence. They did, which means there was fighting. This is a problem because of the fact there was no warning.
Conflict
So, this is kind of the crux of the issue with Korvara, and probably merits its own thread. Conflict is something everyone has their own opinion on. Over time, I've learned something quite important about SL2.
Our community has a strange relationship to conflict. A portion of the playerbase wants MORE conflict, and a portion of the playerbase wants LESS conflict. In addition, the vast majority do not want to be on the losing end of a major conflict. This creates a fairly big problem, as you might imagine.
Now, what happened with the beggar's hole incident is the following: player(s) who want MORE conflict go attack players who just wanted to do their own thing. You might say, well, that is Geladyne land, so it's normal that they would be conquered. And I say to that, yeah, sure, on a logical standpoint for sure. But you can't overlook the effect these things have on people. I think a big problem is that the people who want MORE conflict tend to focus too much on things such as their own freedom and what makes sense IC, while forgetting that the game isn't real life. The main purpose of the video game is to be fun for everyone, and that means when you are initiating conflict, you need to make sure your enemy enjoys it too, unless you really have to do it regardless.
Only problem with that is, most of the time, your enemy isn't going to enjoy it, even when it's well planned and executed. But when it's unplanned, it's always going to cause problems, as we saw with Beggar's hole. Of course, people were unhappy. But thankfully, we learned from this era that planning and warning was very important.
The Fairview Days
The next big event was eerily similar to the first one. This time it was fairview who was the target of Meiaquar. Unlike the first time though, there was some warning. Not only was there warning, there was GM intervention. However, things did not go as smoothly as you might expect. Instead of mediating the situation from both sides, the GM team mostly oversaw the planning of an invasion, and there was very little communication between both sides of the conflict. An invasion eventually began with some artillery shooting sleeping gas into town, with the intention of putting everyone inside to sleep and imprisoning them. That didn't end up working out. In fact, it caused an outcry and great amounts of salt. There was some fighting, but it was inconsequential.
Due to constant disagreement and arguing, there was actually basically no fighting that happened after that. Participants ended up stuck waiting for the higher ups to give a green light that never came. It ended with a peaceful takeover after the OOC side of things resulted in a ban or something. The conflict fizzled out, and a meiaquarian mayor was appointed as the leader. Thus, fairview was now conquered.
The Shift to the Modern Era and the Geladyne-Meiaquar war
So, thus far in Korvara up to this point, we've got 2 major conflicts that did not go well. So the playerbase has a lot of feelings about conflict at this point. Many of them are tired of it, if they didn't quit already due to it. Others are hungry for a proper war, a conflict that is done well, to show that it's possible and pave the way to a better future for Korvara.
With a lengthy time of peace, the nations start to settle into a rythm, doing their own thing a lot of the time. Geladyne eventually switches leaders, and soon after, war is declared. This move was quite controversial. Some were happy, some were unhappy. But for the most part, Geladyne was hopeful and glad to finally have a war to fight.
Thus began the tedious and arduous process of "figuring out" how to fight a war properly. Unfortunately, the two sides of the conflict weren't really in agreement, and as such, before we could fight the first skirmish, the war was put on pause. A jarring thing for the IC side of things, but it was ultimately needed and helpful. After a lengthy period, the leaders announced it was finally time. And then, boom, war began. On a surface level, it actually went fairly well, as many people engaged in battles and some fun was had. Admittedly, I haven't participated, as I had lost interest in playing my normal characters at that point, and was busy helping out as an eventmin instead.
Overall, it seems the war is a far, far better conflict than its predecessors. Battles planned, PvE and PvP provided, agreement on outcomes, and countless people involved with plenty of RP to be had in the midst of it all. Great stuff.
Of course, it also created some salt and dissent. To the point some were harassing certain people about it, and many were vocal about their distaste. It turns out, a lot of people in SL2 just don't want to be in a war. Yet a lot of them want to be in a war... Either way, soon, the war will conclude, and we will know how history will see it... Will this usher a new era where we're able to have war properly? Finally making Korvara deliver on its promises? I don't really know. And truth be told, at this point, I don't think I have it in me to continue in the MORE conflict gang.
I gradually realized that most people aren't really happy when you cause conflict... Playing an antagonist in Korvara has been fun, but gradually exhausting on an OOC level.
My personal experience with antagonism
So, I wanted to talk about what I've been doing, myself. Aside from being mostly an observer in the major conflicts, I've especially focused on antagonism. Both on my own, and with Sawrock. Teaming up with Sawrock is its own kind of playstyle. We make some characters that work together, and run around ganking people for fun. Sometimes, people aren't into it, and we do our best to offer them to escape or omit the scene. We try to give people a fair 1v1 fight especially these days. We offer them options. And yet some people still don't like it. It kind of saddens me that even something so innocuous as a random gank bandit, is seen as a problem to some people. No, it really saddens me. To think that some people see it as exhausting, like they have to deal with every criminal themselves. That whenever something bad is happening, they need to deal with it immediately. That when there's a single criminal out on the roads, it's a problem and we need to hunt it down and end this so things are ok again. And when things are ok and nothing bad is happening, we can relax, and if another criminal comes around, we need to deal with that too. I get it, but it's just a real shame, because I do this stuff to have fun. And there's so many amazing scenes that come out of it. Yet it's like sometimes people aren't having fun and I'm like, alright, what do we do? Let's figure this out. But it often causes as much frustration as it causes fun, and/or ends anticlimactically. For all the great moments we've had, there's also moments where I've felt disinterest in game, or directly was told about frustration or such. It makes me sad. In those moments I remember the G6 days. Where guards were so pained to receive pings that asked them to do their job, where it was often treated as a chore. Things improved a lot since then, but perhaps that burdensome feeling has translated to others who feel like they have that responsibility on an OOC level.
Something similar happens when we're talking about more event-like antagonists. A few times, I've made my antags more focused on intrigue and a proper story to follow. An event, if you will, even before I was granted eventmin. I even made events, such as the flame guardian thing. But I liked to do these little antagonists that had a bit more going on, where people could enjoy a story. I did this for the players, so they could enjoy a storyline and eventually reach a boss fight, like the necromancer or Valya. I was kind of sad about Valya as I was dispatched by like 4 people ganking me in a meeting without warning they were coming to kick my ass. But I digress. The Necromancer is a good example of everything going right. It was a fun time for sure, although it is fairly difficult to handle a whole event antag as a non-eventmin. So I did that rarely as it took effort. In the same vein, managing a large scale event with a lot of intrigue has been a bit difficult. Things don't always go as planned, and in the end things progressed far quicker than I anticipated. I was a bit disappointed about how quickly the guardian was labeled a threat that needed to be deleted right away, but hey at least it was an awesome finale.
The current state of affairs on my end
Overall though, my motivation for antagonism has waned, even though it's pretty much the only thing I enjoy about the game nowadays. I feel as though the negativity in the community has gotten to me. And I think I have grown tired of trying to play the game of politics, and trying to be a big shot in the world of Korvara. It's truly tiring, takes a lot of constant effort, and you may not even be rewarded for it. Even the mundane characters feel like a slog to play, I'm unable to really find a context in which I enjoy playing the video game. Back in the days of G6, I could make any random char I wanted, and play them in the vast sandbox world. Nowadays, I feel like every character needs to fit into a faction, into a niche. Being unaffiliated in Korvara is dreadfully boring, as you're basically just getting inconsequential public RP. Maybe I've just grown bored of public RP as well, or haven't found my people. Sure, I still enjoy logging on to rp with certain people, but the general, basic experience has lost its spark to me.
I have also lost interest over time in my current enterprise, which is the Marauders. I've run into a magnified version of the issue I mentioned about antagonists. People just... Don't like to be attacked. Hell, people don't like pvp. People don't enjoy pvp, man. But that's the one thing I love about this game. I frickin love pvp in this game, and it's so sad to see that I'm a complete minority in this. People prefer pve a lot of the time... Why are we even doing this? Why are we even trying to have conflict? That's without even talking about the fact that this game doesn't have any systems in place to have large scale conflict, which means anything more than a gank is going to take insane levels of planning. And what happens when you want to attack someone and they're like "I don't want to"? Do you force it, or give up?
Why are we even on Korvara if 90% of the playerbase doesn't enjoy pvp itself? That's the entire point of the continent. The promise of player agency comes with the promise of conflict. With conflict, comes PvP. With PvP, comes salt and frustration and unfairness and disinterest... More and more, I am feeling the weight of this. If you put people who enjoy conflict against people who don't, what are you going to get? Someone is going to be unhappy in that equation. And more and more, I feel like... It's not worth it, man.
Conclusion
I think that we learned a lot as a community over the year we've spent on Korvara. I think a lot of people, like myself, have become disillusioned about the promise that Korvara offered. I think that our community just isn't ready for this level of conflict. Just look at how much shit the GM team has had to deal with recently. Is that really sustainable? Is it worth it? That's the question I'm asking myself these days. Is it truly worth it, to go through all this effort, to plan everything, to discuss with parties involved, to figure out schedules and disagreements, and make everyone happy... When we could just have eventmins do some events instead? Yes, I'm going to honestly say I wish we could go back to G6. I miss it, now, and I don't think Korvara's promises were worth it. I'm fine with not having war, anymore, and I think I'm done with trying to make big waves. I'm done with trying so hard to get a high ranking position in a government, that I might never get, and even if I do, I don't know if it's going to even be enjoyable. The leaders sure don't seem to be having a good time...
The big problem with korvara is that your character isn't going to get much interesting RP if you aren't part of a group. Be it a nation, or a small faction. And it's really difficult to make a small faction, as evidenced by what happened with beggar's hole and fairview. Best you can get is a tiny faction that is a part of a larger nation... There is truly no escaping the structure, unless you're small enough to go unnoticed and don't really interact with the world, which is not only difficult, it kind of defeats the purpose of Korvara. Everything is hard in korvara. Everything takes effort, everything is connected. I think I'm just tired of how much work this continent is.
I think I'm ready to go home, now.
Afterword
TL;DR: Korvara has taught us many things, but overall, I don't think all the pain was worth it for what we got out of the conflicts and the structure of Korvara overall as a player-run world. I think we lost a lot, and I miss G6.
Sorry for the long post, but thank you so much if you read it all. I'm sure a lot of it is just repeating stuff you guys already know, but I wanted to look back and... Have a retrospective. Let me know your thoughts on it all, and share your own experience of Korvara if you'd like. I'm sure there are many points people will disagree with, too, so feel free to make your response towards specific things as well.
Hope y'all have a good day. I love you guys. I've said it many times, but I believe in this community. I think we're gonna make it.
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