Personally, I'm against giving someone a position just because they've been in the realm forever. It can be a point in your favor, but you'd better have something more than that if you want a spot. This is doubly true if the position is a good one, like Margrave or Duke.
Generally, I actually am more likely to oppose someone's promotion f they're a golden oldie.
To the detriment of the realm?
Give examples... So far in all of the discussion it has only been about theoreticals. No actual situations have been mentioned at all. Vague comments with nothing to back them up serve no purpose whatsoever.
Examples?
Terran generally works hard to avoid this problem, but I know I had some concerns we might have a bit of it going on a few months ago when we had a big influx of new players. Hence one of the major motivations for Hireshmont taking a step back.
Eston is absolutely like this– a handful of players (largely with two characters each in Eston) have held effectively the same positions for approximately forever. It's hilarious if you look at their HighCouncl– they're basically all, like, 65+ years old. Makes for some fun RPing I guess, but annoying to play alongside.
Riombara when it didn't have secessionist elements agitating seemed like this to me.
Norland was definitely like this.
Most realms I've played in, to me, seem to have undue concentration of power based in large part on OOC friendships. Not to pick on someone specifically, but the relationship between the Bellator and Anaris families (i.e. players) is a great example.
Or, another example, the Vellos and Perth families– we are definitely OOC friends, and that definitely does affect how we play. I know we both try to mitigate it, but we don't do nearly a well enough job.
