Dictating Play

[Firetooth]

Everyone takes this game to seriously
Prove that you're the best indy, instead of wasting pages on a forum about it.

[Genevieve]

Are you really accusing us of wasting pages on a forum? :P

[Firetooth]

Are you really accusing us of wasting pages on a forum? :P

Noh I'm increasing my post count :P

[Shadow]

You guys are silly. At the skill level in the game now, "best" is just circumstantial. Claiming to be the best, now that's just asking to be proven wrong :P

[Juska]

http://www.redwallwarlords.com/forums/index.php?topic=5481.0

We'll I was the best and proved it back then, I suppose someone could have surpassed me.

[Peace Alliance]

Alright... So it's a shame i wasn't here for this conversation - since i seem to have taken a lot of flack here...

I only ready the first page, so excuse me if i'm repeating things or if i'm now off topic.

Geneviere, your original post was phrased as something of a question:

Hi all, I'm pretty new and am having trouble grasping the whole "etiquette" part of this game.

That is a fair enough statement! There are so many social nuances here at RWL that you're right to be confused! Any new player, totally unfamiliar with RWL would be in a state of anomie (look it up).

However, after this original statement you proceeded to accuse and condemn these social structures. This is unjustified because, as you said, you haven't yet grasped these concepts and are thusly not well equipped to criticize them.

It has been said already that this is an OLD discussion here at RWL. Holbs referenced something that probably came instantly to the mind of any player who has been here long enough to remember it, and that is the famous quote from Ragefur long long ago:

this is RWL: Warlords, not Redwall: Happy Pony Raisers

This is true, it's a game of war, and it is competitive. However, by definition, RWL is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing game) and one of the important parts of that ugly acronym is the RPG part. We are all playing roles here. The way you behave in game is the type of character you are playing. For example, Shade is always always scheming evil deeds. That is the role he plays in this game. Windy is always playing fairly, that is the role he's playing. Whether he plays that role intentionally, or if that's the result of playing the game with such ambivalence, doesn't matter!

You can play the game however you want, but the this game is social and diplomatic. It's interactive! It's that social connection that makes this game interesting. It's the human variable that makes the game infinitely different. There is an actual social evolution to this game that, when i do my thesis, you will get to read about!

I could go on and on about this, but i'm trying to sum things up. One thing I would like to reference is a clan idea i came up with many many years ago, misspelled "Vengence". As an example of how complicatedly social this game is... as an example of the most spelled-out version of the "etiquette" that you are having a hard time understanding, take a look at this example!
http://www.redwallwarlords.com/forums/index.php?topic=5195.0