I noticed in a prior post that Syn commented that the Admins have no playing characters within SWC. Could you please elaborate? Do the Admins have any presence at all within the Universe at the present time? Seems like it would suck to not be able to play the game you helped create. Did you have a presence in the beginning and then decide to opt out? If so, why?
Anyone with access to the database, generally asim+, is not allowed to have an active character in order to prevent their IC life affecting their administrative decisions. Other team members do have active characters.
I dare you to make less sense.
Are you a newbie, or do you have access to newbies?
The way it is determined is by database access. Full admins with database access cannot have playing characters. Their characters still do exist, but typically just for testing purposes if said testing cannot be performed on the dev server.
Some of us just have assistant access, or access to various tools that output logged admin events, and since we can't touch the database we still have characters.
Some admins eventually step down as an admin and return as playing characters, but this really depends, since admins are also capable of fully buffing up their characters and assets (and many do so :P). Yes, most admins started as players and eventually dropped their characters in order to focus on development instead.
Basically anyone who drops their character to become an admin does it for the love of the game. Playing the game doesn't matter so much, because you have the ability to create things and try to make it fun for everyone.
"Somewhere, there's a bullet with your name on it. The trick is to die of age before it finds you"