I'm with Ileein and Kira here.

'Good' orgs like Celest, Ackle, Seren, and are going to suffer because of the type of people being drawn to it. Let's face it, nice guys finish last. It's true in any sustained world. The people who are attracted to the good guys tend to be either holier than thou pains in the , or overly affectionate sissies. Meanwhile, the 'bad' orgs tend to attract the kick-the-puppy, for teh evulz types, the pricks, and the ruthless. This last one is the important group, because while it's easy to be on the 'dark' side of things and be ruthless, Real World morality (and Celest's Light) precludes ruthlessness as being a positive trait. This means that people who are on the 'light' side are shafted by it. "I wanted to" is a valid excuse for everyone else, but especially in places like Celest, you have to stop and consider your actions and whether or not they fit with your established roleplay.

This means that, in the long run, evil will win out over good because it has the freedom to act with impunity. If a bad guy wants to slaughter an entire city, that's just a normal Avechary, and no one bats an eyelash, even if he succeeds. After all, he's evil, right? Why should he have any morals? If a good guy wants to do the same? He'd better have a DAMN good reason, because without it he has to face the consequences people are more likely to dish out to him (and quite reasonably!) for his actions.

It's a stew of hypocrisy, really, especially given that Magnagora's roleplay is much less "Destroy everything because we're evil." and much more "Tear it down so that it can be built better.", "Hurt him so that he grows stronger.", and "If the idea is worth acting on, it can survive criticism." but it's a stew that would take more work to fix than is really worth it in my opinion, since it would involve actively punishing people for doing things "just because".

Really, the only org whose roleplay should even REMOTELY accept "just because" or any of its variants as valid behavior is Gaudiguch. And even that's dubious at best.

But because people have this idea that only 'good guys' have standards or morals, the jerk es are ignored, overlooked, or even accepted by orgs that really shouldn't. In my opinion, the whole game suffers for it, since inevitably people on the receiving end of the d erry get tired of it, burned out by it, or were turned off by it from the start, and either stop playing, or never start.

And at the other end of the spectrum, the orgs that aren't inclined to take in the bastard characters suffer as well, since said bastards tend to be the majority of combattants. Meaning that the 'good' orgs don't have as many fighters, and in turn they take more crap they shouldn't from the population that does fight (and is often vocal about that fact), leading to exoduses of people just as fed up of THAT as they are of being raided, 'raided', "raided", or ganked.

And as Lendren and others have pointed out in other threads, the constant cycle of e-peen waving and one-upmanship drives even MORE people away as it feeds off of itself, turning logging in for anyone not directly involved, but still responsible for the cleanup, into a chore or a job (one that we're not being paid for.) Which leads to burning out, which leads to leaving, which leads to the only people left playing at all being the extremely stubborn cadre of roleplayers who feel they've invested too much time and energy to just quit, and the people completely ignoring the fact that these people want to enjoy more than posturing, and have just as much right to the game as they do (sometimes moreso, in fact, since many of these players are the ones who designed the weapons being wielded, the armour being worn, helped establish the ideologies ostensibly being fought over, and sometimes designed the actual rooms being fought in in the case of manses, guild halls, and the like.).

EDIT: This came out with much more potential vitriol in it than I'd perhaps intended. I will likely need to further tone it down after I've had a few hours of sleep.

Shuyin typically plays in 'good' orgs. Just sayin'.

Also, someone needs to play the bad guy

Shuyin's been in Glomdoring longer than anywhere else, as far as I know. Or, are you talking about alts?


As for Good and Evil, it's what we make of it ourselves. The administration has tried to set us up to play things as ruthless or gentle as we like, and there is valid reasoning for either side, no matter in what organization you find yourself. Celest has had their warmongering times, where everything was "For the Light!" Serenwilde has done "bad" things for the sake of Nature, the Fae, and the Great Spirits. It's just that we all have preconceived notions that are hard to dispel, preventing us from playing the game the way we really want (or need) to play it sometimes.

I believe Shuyin started and was in serenwilde the whole time until he went Glom, which was only just over a year ago.

Also he's totally a paladin in achaea I thought.

I am inclined to agree with Grey vs Gray rather than Black vs White morality being the norm in Lusternia. I have re-intrepreted the various idealogies of the orgs many times over and over in my head to attempt and understand all the different ways they can be viewed, and I find it really fascinating, actually. Too bad I do not really have time time nor inclination to alt, or I would probably have quite a few other characters in differing orgs.

Llesvelt is increadibly good-natured, I think, though he really just closes his eyes and goes "lalalala" whenever something conflicts with his view of the Collective as being a paradise for -everyone- which is worth doing everything to protect. I would call him a selectively ignorant Lawful Neutral whose ideals are Lawful Good

He is slowly growing less and less "nice", though, because his newfound station requires him to be rather cynical at times, he finds. For the Collective and all.

I never really played an "evil" person until I played lusternia. I played an ebonfist in mhaldor on Achaea but I typically just minded my own business and did my own thing, just bash and pvp. Magnagora, I just rp a quiet (for the most part) hardass I guess. Nothing really evil about it. I really don't think there is anything completely evil about magnagora as far as the people go, as in, it is just a little more harsh roleplay environment than that of celest or whatever but I guess I just see it as holding people to a higher standard or some such. Sure we worship demons, tear organs from your body, eat them and then your corpse or raise you to be amongst the rest of the undead, and make sacrifices of others... But we also like to play in the mud and sing songs too. Can't be that evil!

In all I think it is safe to say that the "evil" orgs tend to attract the more serious players. Completely unbias, I think some of the best combatants I have run into have been magnagoran, except I guess ceren who was initially a Celestine/paladin. Sure other orgs have some above average ones, but these seem to take the cake.

People who try to RP in an org and center their RP around an abstract principle like Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, etc. are trying to skate uphill. Lusternia has not created orgs centered around principles. They are centered around things and goals.

Celest should not be trying to promote "Good" in the abstract. They should be about following and exalting their Supernals, cleansing the Taint (just as much out of guilt as some weird self-righteous idea), and bringing the Light to the Basin - and Light is almost more of a substance than an ideology. Sure, there are principles of behavior and ethics that flow from this, but whether or not these match up with some abstract definition of "Good morality" is irrelevant.

Mag is not about being "Evil." They're about their Demon Lords and transforming everything with Taint.

Serenwilde and their promotion and protection of unspoiled nature.

Glomdoring and their promotion of Wyrden nature.

Gaudi and Halli, I know less about, but I do know they also have their planar connections and organizational goals such as true enlightenment, scientific and aesthetic advancement, etc.

Building your character concept around those things and goals is going to be a lot deeper and richer RP than trying to play a "Good" or "Evil" character. Building your character concept around those abstract principles is like the short bus of RP. And that's why there's no reason why Celest or Serenwilde or any org should feel like they have their hands tied ethically in comparison to a Glomdoring or a Magnagora. I can easily envision playing a ruthlessly evil bastard in Celest and still being 100% on board with the Celestian mission.

All I know is I have to go to Mag to find blood-covered strawberries.

And I didn't find those until I stopped needing to eat.

No, Serenwilde, I do not want my strawberries with powdered sugar.

I skimmed this, so if someone already brought up and I'm reiterating a point here, then let's chalk it up to the reinforcement technique.

Lusternia is not intended to have moral polarity. Every organization has a STRONG direction and a reason for its existence. Just above this post, Xinemus outlines the different causes that each organization upholds, and I'll only go a little further to say that there can be "good" and "evil" people within each organization.

In Celest, if someone is working actively for his or her own self-importance, then he or she can be said to be doing evil in the way of the Light because he or she isn't putting the Light first for the right reasons.

The same principle applies in Glomdoring. If someone who's a stickler for the rules and the cause (I don't know WHO THAT COULD BE), he'll tend to vilify the perpetrators. But is he evil? He's going against what is making the Glomdoring successful, much to the chagrin of its leaders, but he's doing it because he thinks it's ultimately the best thing for the organization. Whoa multi-faceted sociological viewpoints.

The long and short of my answer is that it's impossible to have a clear-cut definition of what good and evil are, especially in Lusternia, because notions like good and evil aren't clearly defined across the board. They're subjective. We can interpret good in Glomdoring to mean killing off all the pesky rockeaters, for instance.

Gregori said it best, and I think this is where most people are being close-minded: it's easy to play a bastard. Bitches are not hard to come by. Punks and jerks are just one in a million droplets in a tepid pool of irritation and general ethical erosion. Follow the decay of happiness, etc. That's not necessarily evil, though, and that's where the distinction needs to be made between someone who roleplays an "evil" character and someone who is just out to strategize and meta-game (which aren't bad things, either! I'm being punny).

Nariah does what she does because she is from Magnagora. Torture, death and decay aren't evil there-- they're real gemstones in the crown of daily living. To Nariah, Azula is evil because she promotes Raziela's ideals, and so on.

What about gravy?

Well, yes. I don't think anyone (at least here!) really questions the shades-of-grey thing. I think the question was more about problems which seem to crop up in "superficially good" orgs more than anywhere else. But certainly a more abstract discussion of roleplay, good, and evil in Lusternia is no bad thing.

It's the Short Bus of RP phenomenon. I think, generally, your more shallow RPers find "Good" orgs easier to simplify and identify. But I assure you the "Evil" orgs are not free of that problem. Perhaps we have a vibe that keeps it from being expressed in certain ways.

Every org who wanted to could try to put in mechanisms to help people improve their RP and "cultural immersion" and ostracize or punish the people who simply refuse to even take a half-assed swing at it. It will make you unpopular, and people will complain about you on the forums, but every org could do it. If some orgs aren't hip to cracking down on this, that's their own choice. There is nothing about their org's defintion that inherently prohibits it.

Very unpopular. Death From Above unpopular. One of the signs of the apocalypse unpopular.

But more fun.

Seriously, you can't? Without resorting to personal attacks I can think of at least three people off the top of my head who play the game primarily to ruin other peoples fun.

Anywho, I actually think the "Good/Evil" divide is less pronounced in Lusternia (than, say, Achaea) because none of the orgs are good per se. They're all vehemently crusading for a cause, with the ultimate express intention of wiping out/indoctrinating everyone who isn't one of Them. I do think that the superficial impressions of orgs cause (less intelligent) players to make snap judgements on them, but that's not limited to superficially Good orgs either. Both types organizations get shallow RPers and idiots, they just happen to be different varieties: snugglers who think Celest and Serenwilde are OMGZ HUGS!, and face-stabbers who think Magnagora is all about puppy punting. The latter tend to be better at combat, that's all. It doesn't mean they're any less hassle to deal with.

I've never quite understood how snuggling fits in with a city that promotes the light, or one that worships and protects nature (As Celest or Seren could be generalized into, not saying they are that per se). Nature is all about survival of the fittest, the weak die and the strong thrive. And isn't Light all about virtues? I'd think snuggling fits more into the weakness department.

Then again, I've always regarded snuggling the equivalent of children's tales where all ends well or the imaginary playground of angsty people who can't handle the "harsh reality" and I prefer my roleplay with a healthy dose of realism. Sure, it is a fantasy world, but when I look at the backstory and setting this is not Hello Kitty Online. Gets to me in WoW as well. Sure, beginning roleplayers will act out cliche plots and characters, but that is no excuse to cutify (I just made that word up) a setting.

And better in the long run I'd say. Unlike Achaea, we don't have the city of Good and the city of Evil. Ignoring the fact that very few people will actually promote evil due to the inheirtant value of what evil-ness is, in Lusternia conflict is based around clashing ideologies. True, you can't expect a newcomer to come into the game and think anything but that Celest is Good and Magnagora is Evil, but that just makes it more important for the established player-base to ensure that the org-RP is taken to a level above and beyond the first sight. Good RP should be encouraged with both carrot and whip.

From Druken:

We don't have a lot of saints around here, either, if we're going to force it into a completely extreme dichotomy.

That's because you are someone who cares. People who think that Celest and Serenwilde are all about snuggliness are the people who don't know a thing about Lusternia's history and don't care to investigate what each stands for. It's the "hippy" mentality that brings the snugglers to Serenwilde (not sure what the draw is in Celest). Their faces when we call them out on it are priceless.

I've been a Glom approximately 1 year and 6 months, I was Seren for 2+ years (all throughout till my ascension and then all through till Xiel's ascension). I've still been a Seren longer!

Re: actual jerks vs. evil jerks - there's unfortunately a lot of the former, and not enough of the latter. You can see many of the former jumping random people on offplane areas just because they're an enemy, their orgs at war with theirs (i.e. not even enemied), and make douchey shouts whenever they lose. I honestly can't say I've met an good evil RPer in Lusternia, the last one I met was Wulfen on Achaea.

On snugglers - As Everiine said, a lot of it probably has to do with the hippy atmosphere in SW, but I feel like the tone of the CT and guilds in general also add onto it. I feel like being generally lighthearted as an org/atmosphere more or less encourages these snugglers to keep at it, and while people can stamp it down, those people aren't always around, and neither do they usually outnumber the snugglers. Evils orgs do.