I see your point but ultimately any rogue that steals anything from anyone is considered a griefer by a vast majority of the playerbase. In fact, if you use steal at all, you are being a griefer.

All I know is this. I did not clear out people's inventories, I did not steal and run, I stole to fight. I left most of the inventory intact, if not all, if it didn't affect the outcome of the PK. But sometimes yes I stole that really shiny sword I could use. I'm a thief, I'm guilty of that.

My reputation was ultimately born on the forums with a huge amount of misinformation and false claims.

To combat that, I would have had to come to the forums and defend, which always ends up poorly, so the vocal minority, Artifical comes to mind, continued on a rampage with assumptions and out of context claims that apparently won the populous over. The stacking trap effects post was hilarious. Completely false, but so many people bought into it and used it as a club over the heads of immortals and Flaaayin.

Another prime example of this is Zorg. I kill him in Udgaard. I take one ring to lore it and return it. There is an orc and a thief there lower level. I am corpse guarding his corpse. Lowbies keep trying to take things, I keep blocking them. Keller, who Zorg called in, arrives late to help him survive. He comes after me. I have to break corpse guard to deal with him. Orc and rogue loot almost all the things. Zorg goes bitch happy on me then puts me on ignore before I can even explain. To Zorg I am a full looting asshole. Completely wrong, but oh well. How am I to combat that? I have someone doing an OOC blow up on me, saying their piece, and then putting me on ignore.

In game, I continued to treat most of my enemies with respect. I did not full loot those that completely full looted me, and I returned things as needed. No, not all the time, I was not a beautiful and wonderful snowflake, but ultimately I was extremely nice. Orb mentions that on some points I did take non-magical containers, I certainly did, and usually from repeat assholes who constantly screamed at me in OOC ways. And even they sometimes got things returned to them, or put them in a place for them to get. Those that survived didn't even want to be near me so usually didn't want the containers anyway out of paranoia.

So ultimately I could not do anything about the image because it was born on the boards. In game, if that is my reputation, what would you do to combat that? I wasn't griefing and the silent majority knew that. Am I supposed to be extra nice and Dawn like? Blah. I still had a roleplay to continue and proactively going out and being super nice to change that reputation doesn't fit at all the roleplay of a chaotic evil Drillmaster that doesn't ultimately care about other peoples' opinions anyway.