Metagame and 2.6 permanent bans have brought the downfall of a bunch of orgs and active players. It is safe to say that permanent bans for these rule breaks have in a sense killed the competitiveness of pvp. Many dedicated players have been removed from this community and in turn damaged the activity of pvp. I remember in V5 there was always something to raid or someone to mug/steal from because these losers would be on for hours 10 hours at a time. There is a current debate right now between roleplayers and pvp'ers stating that the map is the problem with lack of raids or any activity but I don't find that to be the issue. I think the main reason for low activity is that the people who were constantly doing stuff for hours at a time have been banned. In my own personal opinion, permanent bans for these rule breaks (long time player/POs or not) is a petty solution.
My next point is that metagame does not provide the crazy advantage that people think of. At the very best metagame can give off a last know location of players after death or give comms for bases and how many players are inside. Despite being provided this knowledge it does not guarantee that the recepient(s) are going to win the situation they are in. Think of it like the equivalent of a quick flash of ESP where anyone in the radius is made known, this is against the rules and kind of helpful but it is impractical because people naturally move around in a shootout unless it is a tfu sniper holding an angle. Perma banning people over metagame is a rash decision that staff hand out as a way to assert themselves as problem solvers.
What I mean by 2.6 is knowingly playing with alters and metagamers. Alting is very cheap and easy to do and perpheads has a major issue with people alting to play the server again. It is almost a weekly occurance where someone tries to alt, is successful, gets caught, and then comes back next week. Regardless of being in the know or not there is not much to gain playing with a metagamer/alter. Thorgal used to metagame a lot while in NASA and we also had 2016african as well as made's alt in the org but we still ended up losing a lot of raids (we just sucked ass).
From an administrative perspective the rules are set and must be followed which is why right now it is hard to defend people who break these rules. At the very least many people who have already been banned for metagaming and breaking 2.6 should have more leniency in their appeals and people who do these things in the future should not receive permanent bans. Had these bans not been dished out and kept at a regular unban date then maybe perpheads would not be so inactive despite reaching 128 players.
