Years ago, we had a thriving RP Community, you could see interaction everywhere. Not just within an org, but between orgs, between factions, you name it, it happened.
95% of those interactions were player-run, while 5% was ARK-run.
The quality of the ARK Events were not great, but they existed, they were seen, the old term "greenies" was known by the entire RP Community and even in the very weird Jerry Springer spoof event in ICC... we wanted to participate even as a stunned audience.
Now what do we have?
ARK-run events are rare, and when they do happen in a visible scale... it's to promote an expansion for FC.
There is so little left of the RP Community, that most RP orgs have died out or just had to merge or adapt so that instead of being a 100% RP org, they are now maybe a 10% RP org and 50% Raid, 20% PvP, etc etc.
The Cup used to be full of people in the afternoons, now if you are lucky you can find one person... and he ain't there to Roleplay, he... got lost because he is a new player.
These days those very very few orgs who support and/or encourage their members to enjoy the RP aspect of AO create their own events in-house, between orgmates.
I remember when the CoT would make a public announcement and the entire Tower of Truth building would be surrounded by clan roleplayers, and I mean so many that non-roleplayers would notice and THEY would show up to see why so many were there for.
I think there has been several attempts by Roleplayers to help the situation, through RP OOC and IC bots to provide channels, IC online publications and even a background story pager (both at AO Universe), all tools to encourage Roleplaying... but the numbers of roleplayers and RP Events continue to decline.
Where once we had a large united RP Community, now we're a few small groups, separate like tribes doing our own thing because there is really nothing left of what was.
FC is not going to run RP Events in a large scale for a very small minority of their playerbase. ARK (from what I've been told) is already in trouble with their numbers declining every year, it's tougher and tougher to get more volunteers, even more so in the Events Department because if we match the low percentage of roleplayers in AO... how many of them will join ARK to help run events?
And to be honest, this forum being buried and practically invisible to new players who MAY be interested in Roleplaying... does not help.
I'd like to hear your opinion guys, what can we do that we haven't tried yet? I'm even willing to listen to Trousers on this, we don't like each other, but we do care about the RP Community just as much I think.