Duke Frost said:It's sad is someone quits because they perm, surely. But we've lost a ton more people to life changes or just plain old moving on to other hobbies or other games. HQ has close to 2,000 people in the database, with maybe 200 that have actually played a game in the last few years. 1,800 people have not permed and quit. It would be interested to see how many people with permed characters no longer play. Until we run some kind of figures, the "people quit because they perm" theory is anecdotal only. I'm not saying it doesn't happen and it doesn't suck, but even if it's 100 people out of 1800 that no longer play, there are bigger reasons people stop playing.
Scott
<nods> I fall under the "haven't been able to play lately". Then again, my character's pretty much in limbo, as I have the somewhat unusual problem of the two people I played with being dead-in-real-life-dead, and I have another game that's got my drive from VA-to-NJ time locked up.
That's usually what happens- I'd say the number of people in the LARPs I've been who quit due to perming is a very, very small percentage. The cases I can think of it was due to stuff aside from the perm itself- being made unwelcome by other players owing to being a jerk themselves, feeling they were "screwed" by the game in some way, and so on.
That being said, being permed isn't the same as ceasing to be. There's a pair of swords from my first character. I died, they ended up passed down through multiple other characters, who permed in turn. They're currently on their fourth owner, and have quite a history as a result. Your friends will still tell stories about you- even if it's as simple as "Don't tic off that dragon mage, do you want to end up like Donut the Doomed? Why, he got turned to ashes right over there...". And most importantly, YOU aren't gone, nor are your friends. When I started playing again, I was expecting to just start a character with no connections and build up from there- my friends pretty much made that impossible. You won't be starting from zero, folks -do- help you get new costume and the rest of your kit together for whatever you bring in as your new main.
Take a look at the people you play with. If you permed, do you really think they wouldn't help you getting another character started and have fun with you doing it?