Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11406405-20130718161341/@comment-5781280-20130719190807

Forgive me if I am splitting hairs but just to clarify, the election of the Archbishop claimed no NPC authority. The election was completely derived from IC and PC roleplay that took place  over the course of many months of events and gatherings. Granted, many of the people who sat on the CoB as Bishops have in their storyline that they were appointed by an NPC to fill the rank of Bishop, but that's simply a limitation of the system (as Bishops are not elected). Following your previous line of reasoning, essentially any position that requires some amount of NPC authority is null and void, but that also means that every general / admiral / most GMs on A-side Moon Guard are appealing to NPC authority.

With that in mind, I would simply have to disagree with you, as I find it perfectly acceptable for people to claim small amounts of NPC authority so long as it is reasonable. Without this exception, pretty much every guild on MG would be some sort of mercenary type guild that has no connection with any NPC related structure.

Moving on from generalities, however, let's take a look at why this specifically affects you and why you may not care how your reasoning would affect the rest of the non-Holy RP community. Binor runs a Holy organization (presumably) and so, as you have said, this structure affects you in a way that that the authority claimed by other non-church figures does not.

First off, I don't think that the relationship is... derogatory?... so much as it is one group wishing to operate within a predefined world. You wish to operate in a world where RPers are not allowed to make appeals to authority and thus one in which only Blizzard can elect to put people in positions of authority over others. Whilst I think this can make for a bland world, I can also respect that it's one which you don't wish to operate in and that, in the familiar phrase, "It's your $15 a month."

I first encountered this in my roleplay with a group known as the , who are a really excellent group of role players. I love them to death and I RP with them all the time, the problem with them though is that.... the story timeline for their guild is way off from mine. When I RP with all of the other Stromgarde guilds (Arathorian Coalition, Kingdom of Arathor, and the numerous others that were more active about 6 months ago) they all Rp'd that Stromgarde had been reclaimed after their big campaign a year or so ago... BoA doesn't. Naturally, this is kinda difficult for Manstein to RP out, but I tend to skirt over it and go on my merry way. No harm done, no foul, no hurt feelings from any party.

What's the real problem with this? What happens when you have both BoA and AC in the same room? Your example would be "What do I do with this Ceylin thing?" The classy thing to do, IMHO, is to realize that the problem isn't really an IC one, but more so an OOC one. Since the two are reconcilable and completely illogica from an IC perspective, you have to deal with it in a detached fashion. You can RP that the other side is crazy, knowing full well OOCly that they are not, or you can just pretend they don't exist. If you wish to continue to RP in your own bubble, not recognizing the RP road others have taken, then the classy thing to do is ignore it and keep moving. If you want to RP them as crazy, then you've just recognized that they exist and even if your toon thinks they are nuts, you are still going to have to deal with their RP because they are a part of the server community.

I get the feeling that you'd like to continue to exist in the predefined sphere of "no NPC authority" but I get why that's tough, what with many of your friends acknowleding us on some level and even some of your guildies doing the same... it puts you in a bad position. It means you have 3 options: 1) Acknowledge their RP and either join or fight against their authority, 2) Ignore them completely and go about your business despite other factors, or 3) Question their RP and attempt to discredit it.

Personally, I would very much like to see you take option 1 with the caveat of Binor attempting to surplant the authority of the CoB but I understand why you may not wish to do that. If you wish to ignore our role play for the most part, then the CoB will continue to ignore your order and make no attempts to assert any control over it.

We only ask that you understand one thing. We've been around for a long time, and we've done a lot to cultivate a variety of high productive and fun role play on the server. We are not going to change the way we do business or RP our characters with the people in this community simply because a few people disagree with the premise of our role play. We don't ask that you bend a knee, but we do ask that you respect our right to play our $15 in what way we choose simply because it limits your own scope of role play. We've worked hard for what we have and we aren't terribly interested in tossing it out the window anytime soon.