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Are there any RP guilds left in any MMORPG?
Nevulus
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
Recently built my new rig, finished my second degree in college, and I finally have a summer off where I can relax outdoors during the day and game at night.
With that being said, is there any RP left in any of the MMORPGs out there?
I've had the most fun in EQ/EQ2/UO/AOC with RP guilds, not even the hardcore die-hard RPers, the moderate ones who understand we all have lives outside of gaming.
Coming from a long history of D&D playing, I found playing with RPers similar and exciting. All the most mature players I have ever met in any MMO have always been in RP guilds, therefore I have begun to hunt for a MMORPG (post EQ2 era) with at least a moderate-to-large RP guild or just players.
So did RP die completely post-WOW? Is it a dying cause? Are my efforts futile?
So let's hear it. Who knows of MMORPGs that still sustain a healthy RP population.
Comments
RP still happens in games, but its not as prevalent, and its a lot more insular than before.
I know a lot of people who never RP outside of their own guild, but in the guild chat, its all their individual storylines each running.
But those storylines also become part of the problem. Most of them have some pre-determined conclusion in mind for how things turn out, and so they only RP with the people needed to accomplish that story-wise.
Plus, there is no standardzation of RP. Some people want serious shakesperan-dialect RP, some people go tolkien, others go saturday-morning cartoon.
There are a lot of styles of RP that happen, and its just finding one that can fit you. There isn't going to be any game that has some server-wide accepted dialect/context/RP standards. They're just as malable as anything else in an MMO.
Now, for games with a good sense of overall RP, I've enjoyed Fallen Earth the past few years. Not terribly active recently, but it's always felt a bit easier to get into for me.
I find post-modern settings are easier to adapt because you don't have to discount the knowledge of all the tech.advancements we've made.
It's also why a lot of recent MMO's can suffer. Information proliferation has exploded so much that its impossible to expect things to stay unknown and off a database for long.
This same level of info-control affected RP as well. Since server presence is no longer required, people focus more on character-specific storylines and adventures they create for themselves.
But thats also the big thing about RP, it's not something that'll just happen to you. If you go looking for it, you'll find it, but it won't passively manifest.
Though in the end, I think RP also has one big thing going against it in large-scale settings: Most people write crappy fan-fiction. Their stories are trite and contrived. Their ideas clearly torn from pages of books and other worlds.
People are just uninventive. And a lot of people would rather get that RP fix from SP games a lot because its that dedicated, "written by someone talented enough to get paid to write for a living" story.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
RP is still going on, but it's more difficult to find and it has become more insular and detached from the general population of the games.
Personally, I always preferred to RP in /say channel and use the /guild channel for ooc talk and good laughs but I'm getting the impression this has changed over the years. I believe it has to do with the fact that many people now use voice chat and sometimes even completely ignore the text chat in game. Another reason might be that we have more multi-game guilds that take their lore from one game to the other and practically only RP with their guild members but not with the general population.
Sad development really because it reduces the chance RP with strangers and makes RP less visible because it happens on guild channels instead of out in the open.
I don't know any MMORPG with a large RP population now. I'm playing Xsyon at the moment, and good RP can be found but the game has problems, it's a half-finished paid beta and doesn't have a large population anyway.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Buy the old Neverwinter Nights 1 game if you want real roleplaying.
Play on the multiplayer worlds. Good as any MMORPG...just better.
Buy Neverwinter Nights 1 here! | Unofficial NWN1 homepage | NWN1 guild on X-Fire
I know picking on WoW is all the rave right now but this is where it actually shines.
On Wyrmrest Accord and Moon Guard, the RP community is thriving. You almost can't literally walk down the street in Stormwind without seeing open RP take place on those two servers.
CoX still has two servers (Virtue and Union) that have large RP populations but open RP has faded in the last few years. But there still is a large number so if you actually seek them out, you will easily find them.
I loved NWN so much, I just am too spoiled with the graphics of todays games to go back. Though I think I will give it a try. I never played any of the multiplayer NWN games, and I feel i missed out on a lot.
I was hoping there were some thriving RP communities in Eve Online, but I have not found any yet (I have found various websites of some RP alliances though)
I was hoping Rift would have some type of RP community, so far I have found only one guild on 2 servers.
At least I will always have my PnP group!
When I was playing Aion I stumbled across RP on the Israphel server. I guess they have a pretty big RP community in that game here is a link for the RP community site.
http://www.aionroleplayers.com/
And whoever said NWN 1 had the best RP is completely right. Don't know if you are a LV or a SV player but anyone from here remember the server Field of Dreams?
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
For Rift, the main one I know is Rift Roleplayers. Other than that, you can try joining their channels on the RP servers (they are usually called RiftRP, on both Defiant and Guardian).
On-topic, though, the issue is simple, and is pretty much how Haegemon put it: You don't see the roleplayers because they are a minority and they are in cliques. And sometimes, they are trying not to be seen - roleplaying on an MMO with no way to enforce in-character status can bring you a lot of grief, and the developers are not going to waste time being roleplay administrators.
If you want to get in with them, you have to find them. This is usually done on a roleplaying network site. Several games have these (like the one I posted above), and some even have them for their specific servers or on official forums.
Roleplay is out there, even on WoW. It's just a matter of finding the right clique for you and melding into their community culture.
Hopefully that should help anyone who's lost and looking for RP.
Short answer = yes
You have to do the leg work though. It is up to you to find them. Almost every game has someone trying to get a RP guild going even games like WoW. I was in Stormwind once watching a group roleplay in the middle of town and it was good. Your search will have to extend out of game though. I find them usually through net searches. The big titles will have them. Can be tough finding a good one though. Like someone else pointed out everyone has their own opinion on what roleplay is. Roleplayers are in the minority now but the roleplay is out there. Keep looking.
You will never find roleplay in a game that is not designed with it in thought.
Buy Neverwinter Nights 1 here! | Unofficial NWN1 homepage | NWN1 guild on X-Fire
Yeah this is what I have done. I went on quite a few forums to search for any active RP guilds. I am willing to try any game or go back to any that I have tried, so game-wise it doesn't matter: WoW, Eq, Eq2, AoC, Vg, Rift, DF, MO, etc etc etc
Landroval server in Lotro has a very strong RP presence.
For EQ2X: http://www.everquest2.com (click 'Free To Play' then 'Download', there are links for both full download and a very nifty streaming client for those on lower bandwidth limits)
Elements Guild (on EQ2X): http://eq2.elements-guild.eu
Tons of great RPers in most any sizeable (and less than ) MMORPG.. even WoW if you bother to hunt them down. (which isnt that hard at all) However, everyone has their own definition of RP, and just like teenagers with music it's har dto deal with those whose tastes differ from one's own
I wonder if the demise of RP,or at least it's seemingly less prevelent prescence,is a reflection of the concurrent change in the demographics of who plays games now,and also reflects the current change in culture and economics. Not that long ago,even at the time of the release of WoW,online games were played by people who considered themselves part of a community of gamers. Like people who play golf,or fish every weekend. These people often wanted to be as much a part of the game they played as possible.Role playing was one more step in that direction.Now games have gone mainstream,the same people play who tailgate and flip you off driving down the highway,civility has dissappeared,and I suspect these transient players lack the patience or urge to be more than superficially involved in a game. And RP rtequires a creative imagination,which seems to be replaced by a population who wants all their thinking done for them. These are hard times too. It seems during hard economic times and times of war that art reflects a more apopolyptic theme. Such as Romereo's zombie movies being identified as metaphores of the Viet Nam War and Watergate. RP may be too "soft and squishy" for the gaming population today.
Man Of Constant Sorrow
there are prob lot of rp guild in say wow,but it can be an annoying exprience these days a lot of player see the huge amount of player and think greaT finally found where i can pk ,often they dont understand what role playing is and how many hours go into getting ready for their pvpve event or moment.with the sad result of player leaving rping or moving to other game .but i bet a lot of rp player are out there still
Wyrmrest Accord on wow is the best rp server ive ever played on in a game period, and I started on EQ1. I'd put up WRA ally side up against the best rp communities in ANY mmo today. Its just so damn good, its not even funny. Yes I would rather play a better MMO but until SWTOR TSW and GW2 drop, I am staying here.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Believe it or not, several rp guilds have found their way back to text-based games like muds and mushes. It's hard to wean yourself off of pictures, but once that's done, you find yourself in large communities specifically designed for roleplayers, with roleplaying standards and dozens if not hundreds of really good rp'ers to rp with. You tend to think of muds and mushes as having had their heyday around 2000, but the game I play on has been around for 13 years, and has more active players now than it ever has in all those years.
http://www.jointhesaga.com