I had been rolling this suggestion around in my mind for awhile, and thought maybe it would be something for all the management to put into consideration. When I played UO we had certain GM type people whose main purpose was to play NPC's and what you might call catalyst characters. They did not do very much more than play these, helping in the growth of RP, and also creating RP though actions. Example would be someone coming into stormwind and attempting an assassination on the king. Or just blowing something up causing tension between factions and uncertainty amongst people. Maybe someone can add to this, but I'm just putting it out there for discussion or whatever.
I´d say that Content GMs to some degree fill this position, but also all the players, we can all be catalyst characters. A great example is Walluce, creating the Coalition and then taking them to the Barrens to wage war.
The only thing with player is we can't do crazy things as far as a GM can. Like if I made a dwarf, who I wanted to say was an Explosives expert, could I just suicide bomb a building, and actually have it IC destroyed, or would a GM not try to put a halt to that?
We'd make the guards ICly beat the hell out of your character, and if you were really aggresive about trying to cause harm to a town, we'd drop your reputation. Attacking buildings, guards, and all the like is a big no-no.
I'm not going to, lol. I'm just saying I could not get past the Idea as a mere player. But lets say I were to do this, how would the guards know this gnome is crazy and has explosives hidden under his clothing? He could just be another gnome walking around with gadgets. He walks into some random bar, and boom. He's dead, and the building is gone. Would that not create some serious trouble and RP, people freaking out, what happened? Did the horde do it? Let's go strike down the horde! Etc. Etc.
One of the problems with building destruction is we can't really convey it in-game. There are few enough actual buildings you can enter as it is as well.
I know, but that is the beauty of imagination, or just spawning something to block the entrance and posting on IC forums about the building being destroyed or something. But destroying stuff is not my point, I'm just saying with no ability's to do as much as GM's we really are limited. Gm's can create portals to anywhere IC, where as I haven't seen a player even attempt that. I have not been here very long, but plenty of times we just had to hoof it to locations.