Firstly, I thought invisible population was a relevant aspect of roleplay on Hollowworld? Otherwise - gee I can't wait to wake up at 7Am and laugh as I single-handedly take over/burn/whatever Turia because no one else is likely to be online and hence their characters aren't present - and I couldn't imagine the characters in order to kill them as that would be beneficial to my person.
Please elaborate on the invisible population rulings on the server - if there are any, of course. Otherwise, I'd highly recommend that they are instigated or considered seeing as it's an extremely important aspect of minecraft roleplay like that of Hollowworld's.
Secondly, how do you measure punishment for metagaming? It's a reoccurring theme on all roleplay servers because players play on roleplay servers to have fun. Roleplay events are the source of said fun and thus unless explicitly told not to participate, players attempt to go to said events in order to have fun. Take any roleplay that occurs at the crossroads, or any involving a /broadcast - which there are many.
Sally, you and I should most definitely roleplay some time - if people have to roleplay all their actions explicitly despite whether they're roleplaying with others to prove something to a plugin, then surely that is a flaw with the system rather than the wrong-doings of the player.
Either way, I can't wait for you to roleplay walking into my castle, opening my doors, walking towards my tables, taking a seat, sitting on the seat, grabbing the glass from the table, grabbing the bottle on the table, opening the bottle and filling the glass, putting the bottle back, taking a sip of the glass, putting the glass down, assuming conversation with me, taking the glass at other timers, sipping, then after saying farewells, shuffling your chair backwards, standing, turning to leave, walking out, opening the doors again, walking out of my castle, getting on the ship, signalling to the imaginary captain to set sail, going to your cabin, setting back to wherever you came from (I can continue to further prove my point? Understand my sarcasm but surely it demonstrates the ridiculousness of this?).
Banning because the said person didn't tell anyone else specifically in roleplay? Then what happens if say me and others are playing a game of EU4 or something, and someone invades Wolfstadt. <Insert resident> is however on minecraft, and notices a group is invading our city, breaking the laws, what not. He's meant to sit there and watch hours of work go into the hands of those who've simply abused OOC investigation?
Honestly I care little for the issue with the metal bars. In my personal opinion the break-out was ridiculous. The roll system is extremely flawed and I could go on writing reels about how it allows peasants to beat knights, and technically whether I have the physical strength to bend cast iron.
If the bars have to be specifically stated whether they can be bent by this and that, and what they're made of - why isn't every other potential holding meant to have a statement of what material they are and whether, if you roll high enough of course, if your character can infiltrate them? I want to see doors in castles with signs saying there's wooden beams behind them, I want to see portcullis's stating the structure of the gates etc. etc.
Furthermore, I do hope everyone on the server who owns landings' characters are educated builders of contractors, or at least know those capable of building cities and other structures of Altera - because otherwise I'm seeing a lot of invisible roleplay occurring.
In my opinion the rules are too interpretative and incomplete concerning roleplay to be set upon the community and expected to be followed to the exact specific way each individual administrator interprets them at that point in time, alongside their opinions of the event/s, character/s, player/s, etc. The current guidelines given in the roleplay section, too, are flawed, particularly concerning the last few lines about metagaming - when considering fairness to players and of course timezones which I addressed earlier.
Apologies if this is interpreted as dramatic - it was more a series of questions influenced by confusion and unknowing.