I'm going to have to echo Glaumring a bit, I've never played a game like BM. It's very unique, and I roleplayed a lot bofore I found BM. I started the game very much with the new player "mentality" of winning, but after the first year or two, it warped. I just passed the completion point of year 6 a while back and I'm far more towards making the gaming interesting while still having my characters make IC sense. They want power of some sort, be it political, military, civil, whatever, but on the same note, I want things interesting for everyone else (as anyone who is familiar with my character Karana Tian will tell you--Barca would be quiet place without her).
So far there is about one player I can't stand, and my one character that's familiar with that family has legit IC reasons to hate them anyways. Beyond that, there are several family names I've come to recognize, but generally I try to avoid following people. Still a lot of realms I've never seen. It's unintentionally happened a few times though, but that kind of comes with the territory if you play for long enough.
On the flipside, my first five months in the game saw me get two characters banned from Ibladesh, join Perdan, one of them became a Duchal Marshal, who shortly therafter died in glorious combat as a legend, then the other character became a Countess. All of this in late 2005/early 2006 of the East Continent. I think I hit a stroke of lucky timing for most of it though.
I'll stop my rambling here though, before sleep deprivation lets me get too much further off track.
