What you described pretty much already proves that restricting magic doesn't work, because currently mages still run around annoying each other.Felbion Lijawyn wrote: Hell no. There's a simple reason we don't want complete newbies having runes. It's annoying enough to have someone run around with a badly made sword trying to pk people, you don't want someone starting to throw ice balls at your cook who's sitting at the campfire, do you? This game is about roleplay and players who come here because they wanna be 1337 p0wnzrz mages for the fun of using awesome graphic effects, killing tons of monsters in the process 5 minutes after they've started the game aren't the players we're looking for. There are rp-theories behind the magic system every char with even a single rune should have at least some idea of and there is a ton of background on races, gods, cities and what not a character should know - especially a class that is generally considered to be smarter than the rest (mage, druid). The same goes for the druid system. People worked hard to make druidism something mystical and interesting. The purpose of the system is not to start out with a recipe book and a basic set of druid runes, it's to have fun while researching recepies and learning more about the ingredients etc.
We have enough so called druids and mages that basically do nothing but annoy the hell out of players as it is because they completely rely on the engine sides of their respective professions, completely forgetting about rp, we don't need more of those. I'm all for making Magic and Druidism available for every serious player, but not in a way that will utterly destroy the ig atmosphere.
Everything else is theory craft. Every player thinks that he is a shiny jewel and a total Captain Hero, but all other mage players are stupid and annoying. We can argue all day about whose RP is better, but in the end, we all forgive ourselves an occasional stupidity, while constantly nagging on stupidity of others. Restricting magic ownership isn't the answer. If magic is annoying, perhaps changing spells to be less annoying is a better idea. For example, a magical wall that cannot be broken by a sword or cannot be attacked is an annoyingly flawed spell. Or the poison spell that hits harder than any druid's poison. If Magic is just built annoyingly, it isn't the players' fault.
Concrete proposals would be a better alternative, like have spell damage decrease drastically with distance to target, or having to face the location you cast on, like fighters have to do, in order for strikes to be effective?
Why build a very powerful tool that you will be afraid to trust new players, instead of having a balanced and less powerful tool that everyone can have?
And can you give a definition of "serious player"? One who respects gods? One who plays a serious character without sense of humor? One who always avoids conflict? One who doesn't talk OOC and use modern slang? Who becomes serious and trusted enough for you to be able to allow them magic?
Who is to judge how serious a player is? You say yourself that many mages you see are not serious enough. Does that mean people who teach them are not serious enough? The whole system of restriction is belly up broken.
Resolution: make acquiring magic such a difficult puzzle, that only a devoted player, knowledgeable in lore would be able to get the runes, so they'd have to naturally devote time and effort to getting to know the world.