Kai

That. Personally I give people the chance to have a conversation and if it becomes clear they can't follow that, then I don't RP with them. Specific points...

Attacks on my characters simply bounce off an invisible field if they insist on '/em hits you over the head with a chair' because I go by the no fighting rule

Whether level is taken into account is up to the interaction between characters, sometimes the level 38 street brawler is not as powerful as the level 6 energy blaster for concept, sometimes the level 1 character is really a level 50 who has a power drained/locked/temporarily burned out alt for purposes of RP and they really could kick your ***...if they had their powers.

I have a number of alts that have extra powers, like some of my psis have telepathy. Its integral to the concept in that case, one of my characters has the ability to see in almost complete darkness, its not a specific power but it makes sense conceptually and serves no real purpose other than making a character less 2D. I'm frankly bugged a lot more by people who have multiple versions of a character with different powersets 'because they can do that too' than the occasional power thats impossible to represent in game.

Psi immunity is a complete godmod, I can filter out those people quick enough with the mutual respect assesment. I do actually have two characters who are very resistant to psi (and this is backed up by their lore AND their build) but even I would never say immune. The same goes for stealth, one of those is very perceptive, but I ask first and she is slotted with the Kismet 6% to hit bonus and a whole lotta Chance for +ToHit from Analyse Weekness sets to back that claim up.

As you can't make SGs in Praetoria, that's not technically possible I know random people have Praetoria-only characters but you'd need to find a Primal character to start the SG and whatnot.

Uh....maybe 5 years ago, or even 2. The modern day MMO audience has proven by numbers and revenue that that subscription only model of MMO sustainability is a dead end. Gone are the days when games fought over the same small target playerbase, and the new targets are not hard core gamers who can be convinced to make monthly payments. They are the people who play Farmville, who buy $2 apps on the iPhone and Android stores, and would gladly pay $5 or $10 here and there if they had the option. Companies don't offer free to play models because they are desperate these days, no, its because they are intelligent enough to know that they can get more money from untapped markets and most of their existing playerbase will not be affected.

When a game currently 'live' decides to try to move to this new model of microtransactions and no steep upfront investments the one thing they can't afford to do is piss off their hardcore base that has seen them through everything. Therefore, two things must always be true. 1) People who commit to paying money as a subscription going forward have free perks. 2)Said perks must be good enough for the non-subscription types to see them being done/used/shown and desire them, and have the ability to purchase them.

NCSoft and Paragon have been extraordinarily intelligent in creating a Premium level that is less than subscriber, but more than random people. It says 'we recognize that once upon a time, you supported us, and because of that, we are letting you start off a little better than the random people'. Nobody 'owns' anything but a nice looking box. When you subscribe, you rent your characters and the world for a month. Technically, they could do what many other F2P systems do and what real life landlords do, stop paying your bill and they stop letting you have any access to it. Instead they are letting you rent some of your characters and some of the world based on effectively your past history.

Think of it like a storage center. You have bought three bicycles with baskets, water bottle holders and helmets. You can't make the rent on the place, but the landlord, seeing as you've always paid up before lets you have 1 bicycle as-is and another without its basket and water bottle. You could still get the other bicycle and the missing basket and water bottle...as soon as you start paying rent again.