[Miller]

But the far more intense degree of OOC beauracracy, suffocating lack of playable space for long term ventures, and staunchly more limited character options have all also provided additional obstacles to players focused on content creation that just weren't present before.

Anyways, tl;dr upvote my event map thread.

This is the one part that I would emphasize even heavier in my own post if I could, SL2 prior to Korvara has always been a playground for ideas and being able to come up with almost whatever within a relatively loose confines of lore. One of the main reasons I personally stuck to SL2 was this aspect, as the political aspect of roleplay is something I could personally find elsewhere should I desire; the ability to create as freely as we did on the G6 was a rarity.

RedtailPinny
Then the change in harassment policy happened.  People got banned for reasons nobody really knows, and that sapped a ton of motivation to continue.  Like it or not, intentional or not, the atmosphere of the game from that point forward became one of "don't step out of line, don't try to do anything or you'll get got."

I normally wouldn't comment on this, but this genuinely surprises me to a degree. I can understand being initially afraid of being hit with a ban given how many were rapidly doled out in succession but genuine question for anyone feeling this way? Why?

I can empathize and understand the lack of personal trust in the GM team and desire for more transparency on matters but during my time on this game since practically its inception the amount of bans I've seen have been very few and have almost exclusively been reserved for people who were actively duping, ERPing in public and bug abusing, harassment cases prior to this mostly went under the radar unless they really screwed up and years upon years of evidence were piled against them.

This isn't really a valid reference or anything but if we look over at the ban appeal forums, you can see that there's currently 69 (nice) threads in it. Of which, three are GM related posts regarding how to handle appeals or talking about certain matters. This leaves us with 66 ban appeals, the new forums was conceived in late 2014; let's round that up to 2015 for the sake of this point. In those 8 years, there's been an average of 8.25 ban appeals; which might sound like a lot but if you change your perspective to an monthly average that amounts to 0.6~0.7 ban appeals per month, whether that's big or small? That's up to you frankly.

Bans are something that were rarely doled out as far as I'm aware is because Dev has been extremely lenient with them and often any long term bans need a wide array of approval unless its blatant trolling/disregard for the rules, we've had multiple instances in the past where people who duped asago items or bug abused said items and were eventually let off and one of them still comments in this community to this day. (No issues with said player, it's just an example.) 

As far as I'm aware GMs need to agree to some degree on any bans beyond extremely blatant rule breaking, the induction of more GMs into the pile would likely muddle the process... right? As we're all aware, that did not happen; GMs with multiple backgrounds and 'groups' were chosen and things still rolled through, so either my entire deduction/assumptions about the GM team is incorrect or they likely saw the evidence against them presented and came to a collective conclusion. The former is something I heavily doubt due to personal and past experience. With all that said? Honestly, it'd be harder to refute if the only thing that was transparent was how many GMs agreed with a decision. Seeing a banned pop up with 8+ people approving of it is at the very least a bit more comforting, to me at least.

Sorry for going on about this, but this sort of thought process towards current events has me extremely curious. (This might need another thread if anything, I don't really want to derail people talking about their own personal experiences.)