That being said I'd have liked to see TH send an OOC letter stating that he felt the situation was becoming personal and would appreciate people backing off a little before filing a magistrates case as this situation could easily be avoided.
The reason I didn't do this is because in the course of the past month, this very same request was made by three different people in the League for overstepping bounds prior to me even logging on to read the letters. As they were heavily tinted against me, and another had already brought up issue with it, I felt it was best to stay silent. Every time I even bring up something along those lines, I am shot down for making stuff up just to cause problems.
The argument that they aren't insulting a player rather than a character is flimsy at best. They plainly make fun of the realm's name in an OOC nature, which makes things much more personal. Besides, a realm's name is made by the player who creates it, and so making fun of it is personally attacking him, not the character. By the way Sacha, every one of those messages provided in the evidence post is OOC besides one or two, so that's not "the game". That's OOC.
Sacha, I agree that the case appears weak, but I ask that the duration of this problem be given some thought. This is far from a new problem. Several players have expressed discomfort at the "jests" over the past months (if not years), yet nothing has changed. Those implicated (on both sides) have been playing for years; they know where the line is and have decided to walk right along it. This case will decide whether or not we want to encourage testing the boundaries or make everyone take a step back again. The Magistrates on this case are essentially deciding the difference between "laughing with you" and "laughing at you"... will barely hiding the behavior be consistently good enough to escape punishment?
All I can say is that when playing on Atamara, primarily in the League over the past *years* it just feels toxic. I really have no other way to describe it. If you don't fall in line and do everything that you are told to do, you are brutally attacked by every method possible by many leading parties until you get in line. These letters are just the evidence I have from this past month. The players involved, know how to walk the line of what is acceptable, just so that they don't get punished. These are players who have played the game for years. They know the rules, they know how to say just the right thing so that while it has the intended effect, they can't get punished for it. Letters like the ones sent by Jason Elegant, listed above, while they hold the "IC" tag are far from IC in tone. They are written like a baby throwing a temper tantrum. A noble would never write that, and it isn't even addressed to a character, so it is quite reasonable to assume it is targeting the player.
The entire point of the social contract is to ensure that the game remains fun for everyone to play. The standard of determination here is
"Clear and Obvious." Is it clear and obvious that the players involved were targeting my character? I think that is very hard to defend when you consider most of these letters are OOC in nature. This doesn't have to be clear and obviously a player attack to be guilty, it just has to be clear and obviously NOT a player attack to be not-guilty.
You want to look at a reason why player retention is low? It's because the social contract is eroding and not being defended. We have slowly started to allow more and more things to be seen as "okay" because it isn't a blatantly obvious: "That player is a dick." You are never going to get something like that. People know the rules, so they walk the borderline intentionally because it helps them better "win" battlemaster.
