I have been playing on Order for over a year now and although it is set up as a "roleplay" shard, I don't feel the least inclined to roleplay, especially not with the drama that I have heard about in the last year.

It really saddens me to hear a lot of negativity around roleplaying. Every time a storyline comes up that is "dark" (including evil, murder, etc), it's not just the in-characters that gets hurt but the players get hurt as well. I have seen friendships breakup in game and out over dark storylines. Many times there is a lack of communication out of character which also causes issues for the storyline and the players, whether purposefully or accidental.

Sure I can understand a bit of drama is needed to make things more interesting, but the storylines that are set out to hurt characters is it really making roleplaying fun? Is it fun to have your character seriously hurt or cause major issues to other players? How do the other people feel about these kinds of storylines? I would like to know what "fun" is there in the storylines that cause friendships to break and cause pain both in character and out? I know that different people enjoy different things, and it's a choice to be involved in a storyline or not. My question is that how can people get involved in roleplay situations that's going to hurt people? Maybe someone can explain that to me because I certainly don't get it.

I know not all storylines that people play are dark... and that there can be fun roleplay. Maybe I'm just overly caring and sensitive, but until these dark storylines fade, I won't even feel the desire to roleplay even on a roleplay shard.

You might ask why even be on the Order shard? If I don't like the Roleplay I could move to Chaos or Blight. But then I'd be losing one of the main reasons I'm in Istaria... the community. Can't beat that.

Karya