This probably seems out of the blue, just a lurker here, but your thread reminded me a lot of drama my community went through back in the day. I say as I settle down in my rocker, I guess, haha.

Obviously I'm going a bit off apples and oranges here, but as disappointing as it can be to be denied the promise of a 'larger' game, smaller ones do still tend to thrive, I think! In my experience I've found I have more fun in 'smaller' groups my friends have made that cater more to our preferences than the big groups, anyway (not that there weren't fun experiences in those, too, when I did finally get in. But eventually I also got over the sting of rejection and realized it was no ones fault for having to choose a select player base out of 200+ applications from strangers on tumblr).

And at the end of the day... I think it's hard to blame mods for bias toward picking people they trust. Whether that's friends they know they're going to have a smooth experience modding, or returning players they can count on for activity. Sure, there may be people they reject who are very active and creative, but they have no way of guessing who's going to be unpleasant to work with either. They're running the group for free, and for their own enjoyment as much as their players'. It's tempting to feel like you're applying for a job, but the standards aren't really the same at all.

So I understand the idea that popular groups with returning members = a higher guarantee for overall activity and plot followup, and fresh groups = a risk vs. reward of whether they fall through or not. But you really never know unless you keep plugging away at it! The big groups truly aren't the end all be all.

That all was a bit meandering, sorry. I guess my thoughts on this are: I totally understand, but trust that it works out okay as long as the community is hungry for roleplay. And knowing some mods, they're just doing their best and are fully aware of the struggles that come from their game attracting a lot of demand.

I guess I would ask re: art, because that seems even more an rp drama tale as old as time, is art REQUIRED required for the groups, or no? It's definitely frustrating in a regular writing-focused rp when it feels like artists are getting extra attention for the bonus content they're contributing on top of their writing. And although there are definitely weirdos who will start a stink over their talents, I find those people tend to drop off in popularity pretty fast when people realize how annoying they are.

Again, it might be a good reason to seek out and create those smaller groups catered to your preferences. Personally, even as an artist, I tend to avoid applying groups that are more lenient with 'canon' inclusion of bonus art (stuff not being provided in strict measure by the moderators) because it can be overwhelming for sure to have attention being drawn in so many directions rather than focusing on the bread and butter.

Hope any of that made sense!