Trying to spread that success elsewhere should be the goal, imo.
This is more or less my stance.
I don't really think there's anything wrong with Mist Camp or how the people who occupy it want to play. I go there from time to time for one reason or another, it's fine. It's not for me, but that's the way things go. Which is exactly why I don't think we can crucify anyone for how they want to play. Port is a -very- selective style of playing and RP that I can completely understand why we aren't just oozing players like Vallaki is. Everyone is different and there's no reason to make them feel bad for it.
Now, I will say what I believe to be a fairly relevant problem that plagues Port-a-Lucine these days. Everyone likes to throw on the nostalgia glasses and reminisce about "the good ol' days" of Port, glorify the same handful of special case players, and forget about everyone else. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed those times too, but things change. I do my very best to try and provide different ways for people that want to involve themselves in the setting a way to do so. Will it work all the time? No, but I'm happy when it does. Is it the same caliber as what some players could offer in the past? Probably not, but I'm doing my best with what I've got. Beating around the same old bush expecting new and great things to come to you just isn't the move. If you want something to happen, make it happen.
This, entirely. I cosign, and add my own thoughts:
I feel that people are being very nostalgic and remembering incorrectly what made Dementlieu so fun and active in the past. It wasn't just 1 player, or a few players, it wasn't the DMs. The DMs actually came after the players. They always come after the players. The players,
all of them and their roleplay, is what made it work.
The bank didn't do anything to Dementlieu. Too many of the players that loved Dementlieu and made it what it is moved on, closed characters, or quit. It happens. If people want to play in Dementlieu, people will play there. It will take a concerted effort of
many players to get it to a more active place. It's not complicated math.
And, finally, this notion that the terraces was this incredible, elite place for roleplay is just misremembering the past. The terraces were just like the Mist Camp and the Outskirts. And when there was no bank in the Mist Camp, people would run through the terraces in ridiculous outfits and run back out from the bank. No stopping, no RPing. The terraces were not that fun. It's where we went when we had nothing to do, or to
gather to go dungeon, just like the Mist Camp. We all stood around and MAYBE talked about the weather. Then we'd disperse to find something better to do. The roleplay that was awesome was almost always pre-arranged or taken elsewhere - the sand banks, the forest, coffee houses, the theater, faction offices, etc. If we had the rentals back then, they would have seen use and it wouldn't have hurt RP.
I don't see the point of trying to pinpoint tiny little mechanical changes and blame them for not having the roleplay you want. I think we need to accept that things change and try to create new roleplay, meet new people, try and write new stories.
Attacking the Mist Camp isn't going to help that in any way. And, to be honest, I fail to see how a thread TITLED as an attack on the Mist Camp can possibly meet the staff's metric of being respectful & not attacking people's style of roleplay.