>I find it difficult to believe that you find your methods in
>this matter to have been effective. From what I've seen, you
>have 85-90% of people who don't bother anymore to practice
>their defenses and what not to perfection. The problem is now
>you've further separated the average joe non-practicer from
>the bored practicer. What happens is joe practicer comes
>along and wipes the floor with non-practicer. Non-practicer
>though doesn't have time or patience to sit and master their
>skills because its been made a much more tedious project. So
>what happens? The non-practicer gets tooled repeatedly by the
>practicer of equal skill level.

*   Being bored will get you killed in a PK fight -- being interested can save your (character's) life.

*   A practicer will beat a non-practicer with radically worse but otherwise equivalent skills and physical condition in a head-up-fight where both are equipped and prepped comparably and both use very similar tactics.

Of course, practicing key skills does matter to some people (invokers, assassins), but I get the idea that that's not what you're talking about.