If you want the truth, then know that hardly anyone gets pk'd anymore... Especially not by the temple, they are smarter than that. But ofcourse I have noticed that they get the blame for it... It's true, the temple to the naked eye really has gone "soft", they still have things up their sleeve, but hey, they aren't going to go crazy. Which is because (in my opinion) of all the flame wars of the past, and the whole "one ruins it for all the others" cliche. They are "soft" now (in my humble opinion) because if they were still the 'scary I will kill you temple' that everyone believes them to be, they would probably all be banned by now because of OOC bitching. Oh yes believe, they are a player guild. If they weren't things would be a hell-lot different. Whoever described it as being a mafia sort of description would be correct, atleast as it is under Verdazar. It was when Avalyon the former Overlord was around that they were deemed 'darker', and if you payed attention lately you'll know that Avalyon was removed. It's only natural that they are different now. There are so many illusions going on in game these days, that even the PO himself won't be able to see through them.. Some of us like to play the looong game .
Take a step back and look at Illarion these days, one might sense a slight 'nanny' culture which has obviously been caused by such OOC fiasco as this. The game has been getting more tame, but I'm not complaining. I just don't want to see it get any tamer. Seems everyone has a wonderful habbit of merely looking and learning about the happenings in game through all these flamewars and conflicts on the forums, without ever hardly being present in the actual game itself.
Apologies Gerron, you didn't want a big discussion but I felt I had to say something. Even if it is incoherent ranting.

Temple= Player Guild who used to be a quest guild but got so popular and became that much of an influence to the game that the players continued it, and have never been exterminated. The end.