Disclaimer: Consider most of this written from the perspective of Valg the Player, and not so much Valg The Immortal.

There's currently a huge pack of 30-40 evils who are either:

1) Having just an awful time finding groups.
2) Level-sitting weenies (tm). (*)

A lot of them are clearly very experienced players- they're carrying and keeping impressive stuff, they're winning the vast majority of their fights, etc. Now, there's a whole mess of heroish non-evils who are on, exploring, RPing, and occasionally whacking the minority evil guy who ranked up and accepted the challenge. I don't blame them for not wanting to discard a character they're having fun playing just to level up an enemy, however- especially when it's clear that any day their enemies could decide to go out ranking for an hour or two and be in range.

Frankly, both sides of that make cabal wars pretty slow. There's a lot of days when I'm playing "Find the items", and I see a bunch of heroes from Cabal A raid Cabal B unopposed, after which a bunch of lower level characters from Cabal B counterraid Cabal A and retrieve. After all that, we're back where we started, and a couple NPCs died at zero risk to the PCs involved. Not very exciting.

So, what can we do to encourage less LSW-dom? Well, one principle I'm trying to incorporate into future design work is similar to what we did with Legacies- put good incentives in the mid-40's to give people a positive reason to keep improving. Back in the old days, thieves often sat at 30 because they got next to nothing for going further (whereas their PK range did), and as you can see from new thieves, we learned from that.

Something I've always tried to do as an IMM is reward characters who aren't 'playing it safe'. It's something I look for when I'm thinking of titles, questy rewards, leadership positions, followers, free XP, etc. I think the staff in general keeps this in mind pretty often, and a lot of players have made good careers being the underdog guy who reaps this kind of stuff (**).

However, at the end of the day, this is largely a player issue. It's sort of like gear-hogging... I think it's no fun to collect shiny baubles and never let them see the outside of your guild. A lot of more experienced players think this way as well. But a large group of people, as far as I can tell, would rather hold on to that stuff even if it means hiding in distant corners or logging off. This baffles me, but I'm not going to run around slaying people for merely being dull. (Though I am rabidly fond of the newer versions of the anti-hording code.)

So what can players do?

1) Keep busy with things other than ganging down the one underdog guy repeatedly. Explore, hang at the Inn, interview for your cabal, go rank yourself, etc. If you see the underdog guy, sure, smack him- I'm not advocating OOC free lunches for anyone, especially if they're lounging on Eastern (***) begging to be beaten about the head and neck area with a blunt instrument. But that's a little different from spending all your time gathering a group of 5 and scouring every corner looking for the dude.
2) Start a snowball. Once people start seeing their allies move up, they feel safer following.
3) If you're in a cabal leadership position, you can more or less demand certain members stop ass-sitting. Especially if you're getting your butt kicked while they sit in their comfortable range or hide in their guild. This works for any alignment- the peacefulest Floofi healer could want it because active champions are needed to ward off grave threats to the Light. Joe AP might demand it because he's sick of supporting a cabal full of lazy wastes of taglo jerky. Etc.
4) Don't be that guy who plays only when things are favorable. You know who you are, and you suck.
5) Play one character at a time. I can't emphasize often enough how many problems this solves, but one of them is that you won't be as tempted to log out and come back as your "safer" choice.

(*): Definition: A player who intentionally ducks the big boys in order to clean house on a weaker range. Lots of people get stuck at different ranks because of a lack of knowledge, poor grouping possibilities, etc., and I wouldn't call them LSW's. It's all about intent.

(**): Corollary: There's another population of players who constantly play weenies of various sorts, and then complain that they never seem to get rewards and other positive immteraction.

(***): Unwritten Rule #23857 of CF: If you are on Eastern, you are daring people to kill you.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com