Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Wherefore Art Thou, Roleplayers?
Naryysys
Member Posts: 117
While reminiscing about the olden days playing DAoC (yet again), I had a realization that was simultaneously startling and discouraging - where have all the roleplayers gone? I remember playing on an RP server in DAoC (pre-ToA) and finding them all over the place. They were out in the wilderness adventuring, out in the frontiers competing in RvR, and hawking their goods in cities across the world. It seems nowadays, though, that one would be hard-pressed to find one on an RP server period; much less so prevalently that you would read messages in trade chat to the effect of, "Isildur, Master-Smithy of Caer Diogel, at your service! Finest Armors and Weapons this side of the Isle of Glass!"
It seems that, even in MMORPGs, roleplaying has become so socially ostracized as to be virtually non-existent. The irony here is so thick you could cut it with a steak knife. What caused this unfortunate decrease in the prevalence of roleplaying? Maybe it's an unfortunate side-effect of MMOs becoming "mainstream." Maybe it's a decrease in the amount of former PnP players playing modern MMOs. All I can say is, the last time I can remember truly enjoying a real roleplaying session was back in 2004, with the release of City of Heroes.
As an aside, that's also the last time I can remember ever encountering a community in an MMO that I truly enjoyed interacting with, but that is for another thread altogether.
Comments
Some RP communities with above average population and activity
UO : Europa shard
EQ2 : Antonio Bayle
LOTRO : Landroval
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Well...I RP...and out of the games I have played, the best RP communities were in LotRO and AoC...yes, AoC has a good RP community believe it or not...
other than that, I could not say...not many people are interested in RP of any kind these days...I mean, I can't say how it was years back, I'm 24 and have only been RPing for about 3 years, and there is not much of it around...
aside from my girlfriend and I, nobody else I know in RL is even into MMOs, let alone RPing...
It's a sad thing...
PLAYING: NOTHING!!!
PLAYED:FFXI, LotRO, AoC, WAR, DDO, Megaten, Wurm, Rohan, Mabinogi, RoM
WAITING FOR: Dust 514
They're in Canada of course.
If you think about it AoC is a great setting for RP, I'm not sure why it would be surprising to have a good RP community there.
Haven't you heard? With linear "storyline" gameplay, dev's are basically playing our characters for us.
Each new generation of games after the post-UO player cities generation, has done nothing but take more and more of a crap on the ability to RP. WoW just barely has enough for RPers to build on, having a nice long backstory and a lot of variety in the world's lore. Most games can't say that much. What WoW and a lot of games also lack is a good sense of atmosphere. When you log in to WoW until the time you log out, you're pretty much reminded that you're only playing a game at every turn. There's no substance to the world that makes RP interesting. Same with most newer games, too.
>Haven't you heard? With linear "storyline" gameplay, dev's are basically playing our characters for us.
As a RPer I'm actually glad games have started paying attention to story more, it's the stuff they've stopped paying attention to to do it that I'm upset with.
Haha! too true! I've never understood the positive response to linear storylines making their way into mmo's. The whole point of an mmo is that your character is YOUR character. Following a linear story doesn't make any sense for an mmo. I mean, maybe instead of going left I decide to go right. Instead of smiling like an idiot and doing whatever anybody wants, maybe I just pull a Craig and walk away.
As for Roleplayers and RP in general? It's dead. There never was a point for it for the most part. The mechanics necessary to properly support and encourage it are far too complex to exist. The best way for it is an intense political system and even then getting 'into character' is such a vague concept that trying to define it as this or that doesn't make any sense. There would always be clashing styles and mismatched crap being thrown around everybody's 'RP' would constantly be thrown off and they would constantly complain.
So with an intense political system people can focus on PLAYING their ROLE in their respective side of whatever happens to be going on. Language is a complete non-factor for RP, it's time people realize this. It doesn't work because, let's say you go to pvp....well, you're GOING to use vent because if you don't you're probably going to lose. Are you seriously going to be in vent/Ts/whatever and talk like you're in character? No, sure some people would, but everyone else would be too busy laughing to pvp properly.
Most RP'ers generally devolve into over-emotional, drama-ridden, peen flexing, cyber-freaks having repeated pissing contests. Oldschool RP is dead and I'm glad it is, it was creepy as hell.
True, pretty much everything in an MMO has become more stream-lined and user-friendly BUT roleplaying.. But then again, whose fault is that? City of Heroes had no more support for roleplayers than does World of Warcraft, yet I was able to find infinitely more roleplayers in the former. Even farther back, Dark Age of Camelot had only minimal amounts of emotes (any other was simply done by a special chat command that had no animation), yet I met roleplayers almost every day playing in Albion.
As I said in my original post, it's a cruel irony that roleplaying has actually become socially ostracized in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. Developers may be crapping on roleplayers left and right, but they only assumed roleplayers were a toilet after watching other players piss on them repeatedly.
Edited for clarity.
Seems to be a fairly large roleplaying community in Lotro and as far as 'support' for roleplaying the emotes, animations, chat choices, housing, party planning, clothing, baking, mundane items and even the ability to actually play the large selection of musical instruments all contribute to the rp atmosphere.
I'm not a roleplayer in the strict sense and I don't frequent Lotro these days but they seem more or less welcoming to RPers in most groups regardless of server choice. Great community throughout.
LotRO, europe has RP-servers with very active communities...
M
I used to be a PnP roleplayer back in my high school and university days yet I could never get into RP in online games. It just seemed too much like LARPing which frankly weirded me out. I guess I was always more into acting like I was in an imaginary world then pretending I was in one.
Where's the difference?
RPn is bit more than talking funny things
RP-servers are RP-sewers
if game is full of flaws and reality-killers ,RP-chat is not going to fix it.
for example
You cant attack XXXmegaturboXXX because unknown reason (RP-server)
You can attack XXXmegaturboXXX because you can (PvP) server
Generation P
You can roleplay a linear story too, I played many linear stories in pen and paper RPGs and it works fine, it is a different experience but if you need a special kind of story to roleplay you don't know what the word means..
The problem is that they never add the small things that makes roleplaying fun. You swim but don't get wet. Your male barbarian have enough jewelery to freak out Paris Hilton but it doesn't matter because no one can see it. Time never passes in the world, it always look the same except possibly on some watered down holiday event. Everyone of your class have the same skills, you don't have small RPG skills, like fire eating, dancing or juggling.
Games are only focused on one or possibly 2 things: Kill other things and possibly craft stuff that looks the same as anyone else's crafted stuff.
If you play a thief there will be no sneaking into peoples home and stealing stuff and no traps to disarm. A ranger have no actual wilderness skills except possibly track and the ability to kill stuff to skin with his bow. Bards have automatic songs they play in the background at the same time they fight.
The only light in the darkness is emotes and in some cases RPG clothes. The problem as I see it is that the devs don't care about small details, they just focus everything about combat, if you don't fight you do fedex quests.
WoW's Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord servers have the best role playing of any MMO anywhere.
Moon Guard has a rep for ERP, but its an exaggeration.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Well, you can still emote you are dripping wet... and coughing.
And some games let people earn RP skills to a certain extent (like LotRO).
The wife and I are still enjoying (mainly hobbit) RP on LotRO's European Laurelin server!
Yeas,they could use emotes in so many ways that I cant even imagine the possibilities, but they dont.
they could do many many many wonderful things with flags but they dont.
me thinks these games needs webcams because DEVs lacks imagination.
Generation P
lotr and eq2
used to be some in wow but those server got corrupted by kids seeing lot of player and thinking rp server were just regular server.rp player got fed up because blizzard didnt enforce rp strict enough and left for other game that are true rp server .
Coughing emote is fine but you can still swin and get up from the water dry (well, not in Vanguard but in every other game).
And both LOTRO and EQ2 have a few RP skills, that is also true. But my point was the fact that RP stuff is usually small and simple things to add (well, except stuff like seasons to the zones), most devs however only focus on battle.
And I never said you couldn't roleplay, I RP on Lucan Dlere, EQ2 myself but there is a lot of things they could add to increase the experience to us all without actually costing them so much money.
Where's the difference?
To me the difference is based on letting my characters actions (as controlled by me) define who or what he is. To do that I do not have to speak in character or pretend that my character is motivated by some tragic backstory. My mage is a 'kickass delivery mechanism of fire and arcane mechanism' because it is what I do with him rather than just saying that he is that. My playing the character creates a story and personality rather than me making them up ahead of time and trying to force my actions to fit them.
eg my character's actions make him chaotic good rather than me deciding that he is chaotic good and then tailoring my actions to fit that template.
I've always played on RP servers in any game that I've played.
As others have said, lots of RP on LOTRO. Dwarf with a Lute = Awesome.
Most RPers tend to keep a low profile in my experience; it's considered to be the geekiest playstyle in an already geeky genre, and is often confused/tarred with the ERP brush.
That's "Erotic Role Play" for those who aren't familiar with the terminology.
The community on RP servers tends to be made up of the following:
More mature players, who are interested in RP.
Younger players, who are interested in ERP.
Stupid players, who don't know what either mean.
It's a bugger, but as an RPer I often find that I'm a minority even on RP servers.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Coughing emote is fine but you can still swin and get up from the water dry (well, not in Vanguard but in every other game).
And both LOTRO and EQ2 have a few RP skills, that is also true. But my point was the fact that RP stuff is usually small and simple things to add (well, except stuff like seasons to the zones), most devs however only focus on battle.
And I never said you couldn't roleplay, I RP on Lucan Dlere, EQ2 myself but there is a lot of things they could add to increase the experience to us all without actually costing them so much money.
mm we ll probably see more of those in the futur .game dev are really starting to use the full potential of some game
like some stuf are avail onjly in the night (its a start)i bet soon we ll have specific quest for x,y,z race avail only at full moon day,or a no moon daty etc,winter solctice,summer solctice
the limit is endless it probably what will diff regular mmo from aaa mmo in the futur
some game live because of rp player literally .its a niche that was mostly ignored aside from very small tweak but
now its so big some game make could live with just rp player (strictly enforced)because kids love to ruin those,check wow)
the problem rp player face is the fact a lot of game dont strictly enforce it.the best would be if a gm as a complain about a player
move him to a pvp server,regular or whatever.but no they dont bother .so rp player go were there are less issue.
i ear some game are very strict about say,one server is an rp,pvp or whats not but i havent heard the game name yet so its probably just that!TALK!
I'd RP more if I didn't catch guys RPing girls.
It's creepy... and...
I'm fine with them playing a girl character, but RPing one, no...
On a side note.
My best RPing experience was in SWG, it was only one night and it was upon joining an extremely small guild, but I had to much fun...
Playing - Champions Online
Unsure Of - Darkfall, Star Trek Online
Waiting For - Star Wars: The Old Republic, All Points Bulletin
Played - Age Of Conan, Everquest II, Mabinogi, Tabula Rasa, Star Wars Galaxies, World Of Warcraft
Roleplaying isn't cyber sex so the difference between someone just playing a girl and someone roleplaying her should be zero. Unless we are talking ERP, that is creepy.