"The point of this is rather 'Has the game became run by elitists and become inacessible for the casual player, fun-seeker?'."

I think it has. Ask yourself if someone started CF today, and could play an hour a day (A significant amount), how long would it take them to become 'competitive' against people like a Nepenthe, or a Jinroh? Three years? Five years? A month if they play a berserker villager (j/k heh)? Who has time like that to play a text MUD? Newer players aren't racking up 70 hours a week on CF, its those of us who know the MUD, have played it for years, and know exactly what to do and in what area etc.

Along elitist lines, preps come to mind. I think preps are a strange beast. As you play more, and explore more, you find more. What this has done has made exploring have an impact on PK. For the casual gamer, who just wants to fire up Zmud and get to business, this puts non-explorers at a terrible disadvantage in PK, and forces them to spend hours doing something they may not enjoy (Explore) to meet the challenge of those players who have had the time to explore. Further increasing the time-sink that RPG's in general inevitably become. This issue is not specific to CF. Look at Everquest etc, they all had this same issue. To really give yourself every chance for victory, you must spend a considerable amount of time gathering preps, gear, learning areas, learning skills/spells, etc.

I am sure some imm or elite player will come here and say "Gear and preps aren't the end-all, be-all of PK", and that's true, to a degree. But I think we all know that even a Cabdru would have got his #### pushed in if he ran around with no abs and a quick regear set. I will use preps as long as they are in the game, and in fact agree they have their uses. However it seems nowadays there are two camps of players.

Those that know preps (Older, more travelled players), and those who don't(Newer players).

Pertaining to your specific example, I think the village induction issues are more a result of the same subset of CF'ers playing villagers over and over and over again that causes them to have this mentality.

So to make a long (winded) story short, yes, I believe "to some degree" the game has become run by elitists.