User blog:Regrettles/Done for a while.

As I briefly mentioned in the RSOF, I've been taking a break from roleplay for a while. Recent events have inspired me to extend this break into a second hiatus; I am unlikely to return in the near future.

My first hiatus was from RuneScape as a whole. I had become "burned out" from the game and had felt at the time that it was a little too much of a grind for my liking. No roleplay that interested me was happening, and my attempts at creating roleplay were futile.

This second hiatus is most certainly not from the game as a whole; I will continue to play regularly and I do not see myself taking a break from the game anytime soon. However, I'm done with W42 for the time being. Simply put, there's too much venom and negative energy in the community. It's not that there isn't roleplay happening, it's that there are some who are attempting to actively prevent roleplay from happening or to manipulate events in order to exclude others for reasons which can only be described as immature and personal. OOC/IC mixing is rampant and it seems the problem remains without any level of acknowledgement.

"But Regrette", you might type with irritated fingers, "years ago, you tried to actively prevent roleplay". This is not true. Those who have a proper understanding of Zamorakian philosophy will understand my intentions at the time, and I don't apologize for any of it save a few mistakes I made which resulted in hurting a friend of mine. For that, I am truly sorry, but I'm not sorry for anything else. The Zamorakian Brigade's raid on Falador on October 12th, 2013 was a protest against what my clanmates and I had felt was a stagnant, anti-RP culture on W42 which would, in time, cause the death of the community. Time had only proven us correct, as the W42 community has recently hit an all-time low in activity, at least in the years that I've been a part of it. Everything else we did that followed was an aggressive attempt at promoting different roleplay styles which we believed would encourage community growth, among other things. We were certainly successful; despite opposition from some of those negative elements I had mentioned earlier, themeplay is now a publicly accepted concept. The antagonism of the Zamorakian Brigade further inspired activity and a lot of fun and exciting things happened because of our aggressive methods. Unfortunately, most members of the once 400+ strong Zamorakian Brigade as well as the RP community as a whole had simply lost interest in the game and stopped playing. I had been having my own problems and made the mistake of dismantling my once-great clan. Live and learn.

We didn't succeed at removing the venomous, negative elements from the community's culture, and as I retrospectively consider all that we've done and tried to do, especially in relation to the present, I think it was certainly a lofty goal to have. A lot of bad things happened. My friends had personally been hurt. Homophobia had been flung around like it was nothing. My own gender identity had been under attack numerous times. For reasons I can't quite fathom right now, some of my friends and I had continually tried different things to promote a positive roleplay environment on W42 and increase activity in general; every time we do, it seems that we are in the minority.

I'm very tired and just want to play the game these days. I'll generally do so on W52, as I like to keep to myself when I don't have a purpose for otherwise. Spartae Dei recently had proposed an idea to simply have new community members take over; I wish him luck, and will be very surprised if his idea has enough traction to succeed due to my own experiences.

I'm done for now, and see no reason to return unless things change drastically. There simply isn't any good roleplay to be had in a community that actively tries to prevent it.