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Message: [QUOTE="RageBurner, post: 40259, member: 5434"] I don't have a lot of experience with MMOs (I played RO a lot, though, helped run a guild and such) but I think I understand this dissonance you are talking about. Over time, as a community grows it tends to splinter (no relation to mentor rats), and as with the outside world, you have your radical offshoots. There is a difference between "living the game" and "playing the game"; they are not mutually exclusive (I honestly feel good MMOs are designed to mesh the two), but people will absolutely separate these intrinsic aspects and, as the saying goes, try to optimize the fun out of a game. People that are only worried about numbers and being hardly performant are fundamentally different from those that wish to truly socialize and foster growth and camaraderie. Even in a MMO with zero real plot like RO I could feel this. When my friend left me with the leadership of the guild, it became tiresome - most people wanted help for specific tasks, but not all. Some were really interested in just sharing a bit of themselves and foster a friendship - I stayed for this latter group, but they were the absolute minority. Anyway, sorry for the little reverie, I'm not sure if I'm way off base here considering what you shared, but I felt like chipping in. [/QUOTE]

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