@youfired:
This is one of the reason I’ve thought about bringing Ernest Wells back, so the whole server can see what’s going on.
To echo Timeysinc, RP with either side and you’ll see pawns are being moved.
Yes, RPing with either side is the bare minimum to even begin to get involved. Let me just give you some examples of what someone might do to really get involved with the Legion. If a character started talking with us, then wanted to really get the inside knowledge and prove his loyalty, if he did something like:
Hunting down a powerful necromantic artifact and bringing it to us.
Setting the mage's guild on fire, or burning a hart outpost.
Bringing us the head of a red hart, or perhaps a live one as a prisoner.
Infilitrating the other faction and bringing us information.
Going out and organizing hunting parties to collect supplies for the war
These are just 5 things that i thought of off the top of my head that my character would respond to and bring you 'into the fold' so to speak.
The problem is, people aren't doing these things. THey expect shit to be handed to them and to be involved with little or no effort whatsoever. They expect that we should just automatically trust their PC. Why? It's a war.
Another thing that I think is a problem and it was mentioned earlier in this thread, is the characters who just seem like nothing phases them. They get caught, tortured, beat up, or threatened (whether by the legion, red harts, mages guild, etc) and within 5 minutes's there's a sending saying 'X faction is trash and pussy'. While I don't speak for other players, I think I echo the thoughts of some in that, if you do something like that, people are going to avoid you. It's lame and stupid and not immersive, and if a group of players is being courteous and offering you a way to follow up in the conflict, and you go out and do that, all it says to us is that next time we should just FD you and not waste our time trying to make things interesting for you.
The ONLY player that I've seen in recent weeks that had any legitimate reason to make a sending along those lines is Bable, after he killed Giovanni, not to mention ALL the other shit he did. He got involved, he started all kinds of stuff, making him our BIGGEST nemesis. I'm honestly pissed he's quitting his character and I'd be pissed if I had to FD his character too, because once apep is gone, pretty much the only character that's actually doing anything really notable against the legion in the war besides talking big on sendings is gone.
EDIT: I thought I'd add some stuff to elaborate what I'm saying here. The legion and the varlet have had multiple conflicts, from pvp to other things. All of our characters ICly have a reason to HATE eachother, and oocly I'm sure our competitive sides sometimes come out. At the same time, only ONE conflict between these two factions has resulted in an FD - and even that conflict ended in a way that could further more conflict between the two factions.
When apep and nuyrr got caught and beat up, they backed off for awhile, showing the fact that, their characters obviously realised 'oh shit'. Lianna is still deathly scared of nuyrr. You can ask the people we play with, anytime we're going out I specifically bring up the point that we need to avoid Varlet territory as much as possible. Sure, both of our factions have a propaganda war between the two, but neither of us are sitting on sendings saying 'oh you're a pussy aint scared even though you just beat me up'. Neither of our factions are just rambunctiously going into the other's territory like it doesn't matter. I know that some of us on both sides have snuck around, but its not this ridiculous 'Oh I'm not scared' action. THAT is what GOOD conflict is. Both sides exceptionally OOC courteous, taking losses by backing off in some way, continually weaving conflict and story. Given the history between the two factions (at least what I know since I've been around), it wouldn't be hard to say we'd be fully justified in just spam FDing eachother at this point. And while both sides have attempted ganks on the other side, successful or not, there's still that aspect of our characters actually showing fear/caution/worry about our enemy.
I think I probably ranted off topic a bit, but since this thread has gone into many aspects above motivation I thought I'd bring it up.