When romer and I first started playing Discovery it was a busy night if you saw 20 players on. It was a small, tight-knit community as Virus stated earlier. There were many nights where you could see every single person that posted on the forums flying around in game. When new players came on, we welcomed them with open arms and showed them around the place. That's one of the reasons I made The Angels.
Now, about a year into this peaceful time, the Void server was shut down for maintenance. We were inundated with guys who only PvPed and did it damn well. I remember being killed 3 times and told (by none other than Axe, who has become a great member here) that I was killed 3 times and couldn't come back in the fight. I was like, wha? We didn't even have a reengagement rule then. I thought about it and said ok. That was just the beginning. More players came in and started doing things that we never dreamed of! You know what their excuse was? There ain't no rule against it so go suck it. Alas, our little server was getting more popular and getting out of control. Older members were leaving because they were getting harrassed and the game just wasn't fun anymore. I left for a couple of months and romer has only recently come back.
Slowly, these rules that seemingly make no sense were enacted to keep the server from imploding upon itself. I sometimes look back on those days and become a little bit sad. But then I look at the bigger picture and realize we've done pretty damn well for ourselves here. We've changed with the influx of new players, we've made it better. If we hadn't, Disco would no longer exist. As it is right now, Disco has a lot more life left in her and we will have to continue to adapt in order to survive.
