What makes CF fun is the balance of pk and rp. Hack and slash just gets boring when it is mindless and there is no reasoning behind it.

What makes CF fun is that when you get your butt kicked, or you get your shinies stolen, or you beat up the other guy...there is a reason for it. Political intrigue, romantic triangles, religious zeal, loyalty, betrayal, all of these things give the game realism, depth, and make playing a character a lot of fun.

Just beating someone down to see if you can do it gets old and boring and IMHO is a big cause for a lot of rage deletion.

And bringing in OOC chat...yuck! That ruins the whole experience!
By the gods, I can just hear it ..."I killed your character because I had a sucky day at work, so I took out my frustrations by pincering you to death...sorry, man!"

I used to play at a MUD where people chatted over one of the channels and it got very frustrating. Not only listening to people's personal issues and problems, but also people trying to manipulate the roleplay of your character to fit with the way they wanted the storyline to develop. I hated that! It took away all the sponteneity and suspense of not knowing how the other character would react to what you were doing. Fortunately there was a toggle to turn that channel off so I always did and the MUD is a lot more IC strict now than it used to be.

CF is great just the way it is as far as balancing rp and pk and keeping it all IC. At least at the higher ranks. There are still a lot of lowbies who pk for the heck of it and that's a pain, but I try to avoid them if I can.

Just my two cents worth.

Smile - It can't hurt and might help. :)