Elitism, Magic,

[Praetor 1550]

I just miss the days where you were the only player who had x or did x, and people knew you existed that x was something that people liked.

Now everyone has x. No one gives two shits about it because it's so commonplace. You sit in a corner completely losing value and spark you once had. You try to regain it, only to have failed.

 

Look at Geoboy's Mime. He didn't have anything special apart from pretty cool roleplay. He didn't get famous because he had something few other people managed to get.

He got famous because of his RP. Same for Benboboys Knox and the White Roses. Each one of those got famous because of the way they roleplayed and acted, something anybody can do.

[Tentoa 3161]

Now I feel there are two types of Elitism honestly. They're not as black and white as I'm about to make them out to be but we'll call them good and bad elitism.

 

Good Elitism: 

The desire to be superior and constantly improve while keeping others in mind and helping them to improve their roleplay for the sake of making a better environment for story.

BAd Elitism:

The desire to be superior and constantly improve to stand out among your peers and be unique/shine above them due to some special factor that cannot be duplicated. 

There are good and bad points to both of these but I'm labeling them as what I believe is bad for LoTC as a community. On one hand with good elitism there springs the possibility of simply refusing to acknowledge others who find themselves adequate or are satisfied with their quality of roleplay. Which in itself is bad for a younger community that wishes to be inclusive to all roleplayers.

One of the good points to the bad elitism is that this is a totally palpable and enjoyable goal if done with others in mind. A character can simply /shine/ and be unique with nothing terribly special about them. Simply making their personality complex and intriguing and fleshing them out to be more like a person than an avatar of the player's goals improves roleplay for everyone around usually.

 

 

Look at Geoboy's Mime. He didn't have anything special apart from pretty cool roleplay. He didn't get famous because he had something few other people managed to get.

He got famous because of his RP. Same for Benboboys Knox and the White Roses. Each one of those got famous because of the way they roleplayed and acted, something anybody can do.

^^^ Spamshok took the words right out of my mouth on my bad elitism point. You can be cool and special just by having an extremely interesting character and that's better for roleplay overall than just being the only one to do something.

[Geo 1415]

The fact of the matter is, we cannot purge Elitism from a server because we cannot control every individual players emotions or actions, we can only seek to regulate harmful elitism, and that's not easy.  Everyone wants to be something in this server, nobody wants to be the old boring farmer bob (Except Telanir) and as a result, they flock to places that seem promising for character development and advancement.  People's view of elitism is very select, and they only call things elite if they want it and cannot obtain it, or if they are trying to be mean and undermine someone.  For example:  A human character wishes to join the Oren guard because he can rise through the ranks and one day become a great warrior of the land.  An Elven character joins a dark cult because she can rise through the ranks and one day become a powerful sorceress.  Both things are exactly the same concept.  Both wish to advance their character by joining specific groups.  BOTH are examples of joining an elite group, but none are actually harmful to the server. 

These things become harmful when players begin thinking they are better than others out of character, and that simply isn't true.  And when people begin joining these groups, they make friends, and thus they begin settling into a niche or clique and may pick up likeminded goals or habits.  Its the relative mindsets that players are in which reflect on how they act, and that's just tough.  We cannot rip people from their cliques.  We can only try and give them clarity, and help them to better themselves and not act like a giant arse to the people they come accross.  Now, PD, you are certainly not helping the one problem by making a topic on the forums and screaming that these people are so bad and elitist and that we should purge them.  Because these so called elitist players are just going to shrug you off for your accusations.  You can't deal with people so crudely, as that won't change them.  What you should be doing is advising these people when you meet them in your travels, and trying to help them.  And if they don't listen, report them to a staff member.  If someone is causing trouble, advise them of the right path.

[susitsu 871]

Don't forget mentioning the effort to actually step out of my comfort zone, took on a near-dead "magic type", applied a refib then had supposed old "mages" ride the coat-tails.

Hm. I'm curious what magic type you rezzed. (*Was gone for two years. Just wants to know what was dead before.*)

[Samson Option 9652]

 

Hm. I'm curious what magic type you rezzed. (*Was gone for two years. Just wants to know what was dead before.*)

 

Earth Evocation. Ask Heerozero, PD, spartansoldier8, and Googlesearch.

[susitsu 871]

Earth Evocation. Ask Heerozero, PD, spartansoldier8, and Googlesearch.

Oh, awesome. Ive always liked it. Nice job man.

[Crayfishchris 751]

Solution: Be an anti-mage

 

: ^ )

[Quavinir_Twiceborn 1050]

Solution: Be an anti-mage

: ^ )

...

Well, you quite literally gotta steal someone's soul to do that...

[Crayfishchris 751]

...

Well, you quite literally gotta steal someone's soul to do that...

 

[Rig 17591]

If you want to get up in a tiff about elitism you can also look at it from the standard that was held before (As proved with shade magic) if a magic was getting out of hand the team would /gut/ it from the server with the assistance of the lore team. Of course people were going to trust their friends more with magic as they didn't want to lose their ability to perform the magic in case the person they taught turned out to be a huge power-gamer (and it would reflect poorly on the teacher almost as much as the student). 

I didn't start practicing magic until the end of the app system and what I saw during that time wasn't elitism, it was powergamers and immature children crying about how no one would trust them with magic when honestly it was a bit special. If you didn't know this, LoTC is one of the only community that /requires/ you to roleplay with others. We're extremely unique in the fact that we cannot outright decline roleplay we do not enjoy. Lord of the Craft focuses on being inclusive and providing fun for everyone at the expense of attitude. Elitism is something this server will /always/ breed. Because if someone can't refuse roleplay with you outright without being in the wrong you get to be as much of a pompous and annoying jerk as you want. Whereas in other communities that won't fault you for refusing bad roleplay. You have to get good and be kind to your fellow roleplayer. 

TL:DNR: LoTC is going to always have elitism. Thats just how our rules have structured the situation. Making posts on it isn't going to solve anything at all and is honestly just going to be seen as 'annoying' to the very group your addressing and they will recede further into their own group to avoid dealing with those who are going to point fingers and whine at them for 'elitism' as a matter of fact. Calling people out on elitism and saying its wrong and that your ideals are superior is the /exact/ definition of elitism.  (some food for thought)

I respect your opinion, though mine differs to a huge degree, I don't really consider myself elitist personally, nor special. I play a character who is somewhat unique, but not in a remembering fashion. I just wished to put forward points bellow.

 

 

The fact of the matter is, we cannot purge Elitism from a server because we cannot control every individual players emotions or actions, we can only seek to regulate harmful elitism, and that's not easy.  Everyone wants to be something in this server, nobody wants to be the old boring farmer bob (Except Telanir) and as a result, they flock to places that seem promising for character development and advancement.  People's view of elitism is very select, and they only call things elite if they want it and cannot obtain it, or if they are trying to be mean and undermine someone.  For example:  A human character wishes to join the Oren guard because he can rise through the ranks and one day become a great warrior of the land.  An Elven character joins a dark cult because she can rise through the ranks and one day become a powerful sorceress.  Both things are exactly the same concept.  Both wish to advance their character by joining specific groups.  BOTH are examples of joining an elite group, but none are actually harmful to the server. 

These things become harmful when players begin thinking they are better than others out of character, and that simply isn't true.  And when people begin joining these groups, they make friends, and thus they begin settling into a niche or clique and may pick up likeminded goals or habits.  Its the relative mindsets that players are in which reflect on how they act, and that's just tough.  We cannot rip people from their cliques.  We can only try and give them clarity, and help them to better themselves and not act like a giant arse to the people they come accross.  Now, PD, you are certainly not helping the one problem by making a topic on the forums and screaming that these people are so bad and elitist and that we should purge them.  Because these so called elitist players are just going to shrug you off for your accusations.  You can't deal with people so crudely, as that won't change them.  What you should be doing is advising these people when you meet them in your travels, and trying to help them.  And if they don't listen, report them to a staff member.  If someone is causing trouble, advise them of the right path.

I'm not trying to make the problem worse than it is, the following is what I wanted to get across.

You're not special by having magic, you're special by how you use it.

You're not inherently stronger, like anybody else, you have your drawbacks.

RP is a two way street.

Do not "Meta-Gain" or gain something rply through ooc friendships, cliques, and other things considered a group out of character.

Do not believe yourself inherently special, at the end of the day, we're on a pixelated block server having fun, why does it matter if we're remembered or not as long as we enjoy ourselves? It's a game, not real life.

OOC and RP will never be separated, but that does not excuse you to not trying to not bring ooc into rp.

Step out of your comfort zone, you never know what you will find.

[Boknice275 1588]

Don't you have to have something special to have magic, or do you just get it based on your char application?

[Rig 17591]

Don't you have to have something special to have magic, or do you just get it based on your char application?

You can learn a lot of it any time you wish as long as you follow lore! 

[TheBareSheet 194]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.