Compared to "years ago", perhaps a shift has taken place where your character has more ingame responsibilities compared to the responsibilities a player holds towards the community. I don't wish to generalize, so I'll talk about myself, but I have the feeling this may apply to the game in a whole;
I used to play my char as an extension of myself (horribly so, because I was in my teenage years back then) where now I play my character as a being on itself. This has caused a shift in how I approach ingame decisions, for example: where ten years ago I would treat them as a player and evaluate them as such (thus taking into account a larger picture) I now treat them almost exclusively through the eyes of my character. I feel that this was necessary: there were more and more RPG-minded players coming into the game thus shifting the focus from playing e.g. Risk to Dungeons&Dragons - less theoretical and calculated planning and more playing with a story attached to it. While that is nice, it has (for me) a side effect that I might get too stubborn in how I build up my character. Unlike real people, who are open to change in character, my ingame characters do not. Perhaps because their timespan is simply much smaller than my own. I dunno, I just don't tend to change my character's behaviour & principles. Perhaps I should.
So recently I decided that, well, I didn't have qualms with OOC arrangements a decade ago. So I approached a few people on IRC (yup, I know, still a giant OOC clan) and talked about Perdan/Vix. I had already decided for my character to ditch old ideas about Perdan and thus I could approach EC with a fresh look (also didn't care whatsoever about the history). It allowed me, for example, to stop going to war against Vix to "reconquer" them. Why not allow a new realm to exist, I thought? More realms equals more realms you can fight. Which we did, but not for reconquest. We came to the conclusion, OOC, that war was crucial to attract a player base to make your realm fun. It simply gives activity (aka message count) a jolt and at the same time it allows your realm to attract nobles from places where there is peace.
I know, it's not nice to construct a war to draw nobles from another realm, potentially squashing anything fun to happen there, but as a ruler you hold some responsibilities. Your first and foremost task - and I too sometimes fail in this - is to guide your realm to what your players want. Not your nobles. At least that is how I changed my thinking, recently. There is more to take into account than ingame arguments. Sometimes it's better to use these ingame arguments to create a story, but I now believe it's preferable to base the outlining of your realm's "existence" on an OOC-vision and then mold the ingame story lines to it.
So this gets me to a conflicting point which I mentioned earlier in this post: my OOC vision. I never wanted to take Perdan City. That's it. I still feel I let myself down by doing so, because in my OOC vision, I wanted Eponllyn to remain a vibrant realm. However we kind-of wrecked them. Why? Because I felt the characters (or players? I know for sure some also made the OOC motive) wanted to reconquer. So take back into account the history of Perdan, which I chose to abandon. Personally, the path we went on is a defeat for me. However, I took into the account not so much the opinion of other characters ingame, but also the opinion of players. Strong arguments were made. For example, and this argument was made ingame and is what I believe a perfect example of an "old playstyle" which I would like to see return: Perdan had 30+ nobles and one city. Our income per capita was ridiculously low, yet we fielded one of the strongest and possibly the most effective army on the continent. The argument is then that, simply, to keep Perdan itself viable with the noble count it had, expansion was simply a necessity. Even now the argument continues that Vix should give up more regions to us as originally agreed too (so technically the current situation). Vix, for crying out loud. Vix and Perdan are twins. Inseperable. We rock together, I have the feeling both ingame and OOC that these two realms click great.
Perhaps that argument is right. I don't know. Is it not fair that we drew in about 20 players, we should at least give them something? Most saw their tax income drop, and drop some more, because people kept joining. You have the chance to make your realm sustainable for your new noble count, perhaps you should just grab it. But then again that goes at the expense of another realm.
I'm straying off my train of thought, but to summarize I like it that I recently decided to take OOC arguments into account more. I still respect people who play their charaters with "pure RP", playing it as itself. But I am more and more going back to a point where I play my characters as little soldiers in my OOC wishes. They still have a story line and their ingame letters will mostly still be perfect in an ingame environment, but I might add in a tad more of a sense of "I'm playing a strategy board game".
tl;dr: took more OOC into account for playing game, still conflicted, exploring long lost boundaries!
