I don't believe the status quo was the intention of who started the thread. It's about characters and how you play your characters.
In my experience playing with Erik (I just deleted the character after years playing with him as my "main character" and after more than 200 RPs), most players simply do not know how (or are too lazy) to use even small incidents to transform their characters. It's not just to stop being a good guy to become a villain, but to show little demonstrations that the character was actively changing history, and as such, was also being transformed by the events. Radical changes are not always necessary, but the truth is that most of the time we don't have any display of humanity or development in the characters except for a few letters. Also, most of times is more interestening to hear (to read) about silly peculiarities than just the usual Battle-RP.
I got used to know the characters much more for their letters and behaviors in the said letters; it's very difficult to find someone willing to write RPs about the day-by-day of their chars.
Now, about the status quo... Erik was my prove that's possible to begin with a no-one to, to a certain extent, rule the situation of an entire continent for a long time. How I managed to that with him!? Making of this character a great character. And I did with while there are 120 characters in Sirion, not 50. If you think things are difficult now... imagine in those days. But with just one strong character (only one!) I broke the status quo and then built his own status quo, now in ruins. I can only think of how many players cursed me for helping to maintain the situation of Sirion and EC, but I like to think of many others who enjoyed the journey.
Yes, sometimes we do what a character demands instead of change him just to please another players in their search to break the status quo. And for me, this is fine.
