100% player made roleplay will end in boringness.
New, out of the box ideas will get shot down by the people deluding themselves that the roleplay is fine. It's what I noticed in the last few sessions before Bluzone's shutdown as well. It went boring because there was nothing going on except player made roleplay with consens on both sides of the screen, even planned out and getting executed just like that. And these that tried to make stories up were branded as "bad roleplayers". While I have to admit to a certain hypocrisy on that point for myself, it really happens to depend on the boundaries of said "new" stories. While, of course, "my parents died after my birth" is a really bad and impossible claim, personal drama like "my mother died last week... I've been de-blahblah" makes it more alive as people start to conversate to them, start to make bonds and so on. However, even the greatest problem will reach a point where there is nothing to talk about.
Events bring in fresh air, something to talk about and ponder, to share ideas and concerns throughout the group and, ultimately, are what is exciting and defining. People die in events and in all honesty, these are damn easy to avoid. And while these deaths, tragic no questions, are simply "just another event" in a player's mind, a character's mind just realizes that it just could have been him (if the roleplaying party is at such a level of immersion of course). Of course it boils down to one's dedication and/or immersion. A particularly "bad" roleplayer will shrug it off, someone maybe shrug it off but play on that and extend it like Administrator did with his character Nathan. While I was not able to observe this situation where we went insane, that is a dedication that can be considered desireable and, ultimately, defines someone as someone who knows how the human mind works.
While I do not have any problems with either open ended or event-based roleplays, because they can both work as evidenced by Bluzone and Winter Bite, I think if a server becomes to one-sided it will begin to stale. Remember the events that took place in Bluzone? They brought fresh wind. Whether you liked it or not.
My point right now is that WinterBite, while certainly alot more event-based, just enriches itself with as much player-made roleplay. After all, more events lead to more topics, to more friendships, to more communication overall, blah blah blah. I could ramble on but it would not benefit my point here. There really is no point in dismissing this great roleplay simply because events are done on a regular basis. Alot of these are in reality really beneficial or at least not harmful in it's ways. We don't get a mutalid/super soldier attack every week that kills off people. Mostly, these event surround the local "psychos" or other groups of bandits in which multiple reactions and ways to solve that problem lead to multiple, although improvised, realistic outcomes. The first attack destroyed the station's radio tower, leaving the station without any long range radio contact. And we could have solved that by just distracting the super soldier from the tower itself.
What else beside the roleplay is merely a concept choice. Something you either need to deal with or leave. That means, either leave critics with foundation and your thoughts or just don't play on the server and pester us here.
Because we certainly have alot of work ahead of ourselves.
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