It's MMO now, all most people want is advancement and they want it as fast as possible.
Try to go into a conversation with any MMO player, 99% will mention the words 'progress' and 'raiding' within 2 minutes into the conversation or 5 lines in a post.
And roleplaying a warrior trying to become as powerful as possible in a world is now not acceptable roleplaying? That elitism.
Is implausible that a such warrior has little to no desire for social interaction and is merely working towards achieving more power? I find it is very plausible scenario for a warrior with a such ambition.
The thing games like Ultima Online and SWG is that you could group a newbie with a group of veteran players. They may not always last as long in combat, or do as much damage of course, but they could still land hits, contribute to the group, and increase their skills, since both these games lacked a traditional level system that restircted what you could fight. The difference between a vererans performance and a newbies performance in these games wasn't so great that the two couldn't group together, and as the newbie advanced further, that gap would continue to lessen. This was a strong characteristic for RP guilds as a new player could still advance the life of their character by grouping up with members of their guild all along the way, rather then having to catch up to the members first.
I agree with everything you said (although I only quoted one paragraph to save space). The level advancement system is a huge detriment to RP. I'm hoping that Star Citizen brings back RP in the way we saw with Star Wars Galaxies.
(Edit: Hole Moley, that was way longer then I thought it'd be.
TL:DR version: Levels restricting what monsters you fight, and what ares of the game you can access can also hinder the establishing of a RP group. The lack of mutual respect in modern MMOs often prevents players from staying in character due to out of character frustrations they encounter from player interactions)
Very good thoughts. I especially like the consideration of abusive players hiding griefing behind "roleplay."
When I played Jumpgate, I was in the squadron "Conflux Hunters" and our RP was clearing the spacelanes of the AI-controlled Conflux aliens. Since 'flux were an annoyance to everyone, regardless of faction, our activity was considered neutral and a CH member was allowed to hunt in otherwise "hostile" space, keeping trade and mining routes open. Because we benefited all factions, attacking a CH was disallowed by all (by extension, a CH member was forbidden to participate in faction conflict. Many members had alts in other squads for PvP.) This was a great example of a community policing itself.
One player decided to adopt the "RP" of a "Conlux Rights Extremist." Think PETA in space. He took to attacking CH members, who were usually not outfitted for PvP and at a serious disadvantage. He always attacked single players hunting alone. What he failed to realize that the senior CH members were among the best PvPers in the game, using their CH alts to fund their PvP toons. They and other PvPers issued a kill-on-sight and the fellow (or at least that toon) was run out of the game.
As soon as you see a game with yuellow markers over npc heads,it is no longer a RPG.That is the design that Wow really made famous,a design to hand hold and guide you where to go and what to do.That is not the definition of role playing.,My beleif is that Blizzard decided there was a huge player base waiting to grab that wanted things handed to them or made easy,so they went after it,with no care at all about their game design following the RPG label.I guess the ythought if it has some concepts it is ok,ya a Volvo has tires and a steering wheel,does that make it a race car?
it has even spawned new terminology like a "game on rails" "linear questing" ect ect.I also like to call it connecting the dots because that is how they are designed.
Also the experience they like to freely hand out for doing a quest is not RP gaming either.If i am roelplaying a Warrior for example,how do they figure i become a more experienced Warrior by running an errand?It makes no sense and to be honest,it won't be long before games admit their fault and stop calling themselves RPG's.
We already have the MMO term abused in gaming,so guess it is time to add more titles to online games or just call them all OG's for Online games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The early MMORPG's like UO, EQ and DAoC had a large pool of ex-PnP gamers to draw from, gamers who were experienced RP'ers. They were familiar and comfortable with the concept of "being their character" in front of other people, because that is how you played DnD.
Very few gamers coming into the MMO market in recent years have had that background.
And with MMO's being less and less about virtual worlds and more oriented toward providing a constant stream of stimulating entertainment, the focus has shifted away from RP.
Many little things can contribute to a RP-friendly environment. It requires extra effort to have a casual RP conversation with someone else when both avatars are stuck in dramatic, action-packed poses that look as if they're both about to launch into mortal combat at any second. Forget about scratching your nose, the change in balance on your autocannon could lay waste to half a city block in the blink of an eye.
Props, animations, outfits and emotes make RP a richer experience (and one that's easier to pull off), but those little features are almost exclusively Cash Shop fodder in the growing pool of F2P titles. RP has always been optional, but nowadays "optional" means "we can charge extra for that".
I have always marveled at the fact that very few MMO's ever allow you to sit on chairs or benches. It would seem that that is an incredibly difficult feature to do. I'm always thrilled if my avatar can simply manage to sit down on flat ground, it's not something I take for granted.
When companies make games to be disposable, as they have been and continue to do, they don't care. Since that is the business model they seem to want, what should they care about anything that does not fit into that model? That being anything encouraging long term play. They don't care to put any of that in. Thus, along with RP, we have seen a decline in the quality/attention to crafting, social game play, housing, and anything focusing on non-combat gameplay options. The roleplayers (and crafters, and social MMO players) are gone because the developers of current games do not want them.
As soon as you see a game with yuellow markers over npc heads,it is no longer a RPG.That is the design that Wow really made famous,a design to hand hold and guide you where to go and what to do.That is not the definition of role playing.,My beleif is that Blizzard decided there was a huge player base waiting to grab that wanted things handed to them or made easy,so they went after it,with no care at all about their game design following the RPG label.I guess the ythought if it has some concepts it is ok,ya a Volvo has tires and a steering wheel,does that make it a race car?
it has even spawned new terminology like a "game on rails" "linear questing" ect ect.I also like to call it connecting the dots because that is how they are designed.
Also the experience they like to freely hand out for doing a quest is not RP gaming either.If i am roelplaying a Warrior for example,how do they figure i become a more experienced Warrior by running an errand?It makes no sense and to be honest,it won't be long before games admit their fault and stop calling themselves RPG's.
We already have the MMO term abused in gaming,so guess it is time to add more titles to online games or just call them all OG's for Online games.
Roleplaying a character trying to become as powerful as possible and kill the most difficult enemies, is still roleplaying and is very much coherent with the WoW design. Perhaps not the kind of roleplaying YOU want, but indeed roleplaying.
I play on Landroval server in Lotro, and I love watching folks RP there. I am not an RPer, but I tend to always pick RP servers due to the fact that they tend to have a more "grown up/no drama" community. I remember the days of watching people RP in the SWG cantinas. Watching RP, to me, was a good way to break up the monotony of constant combat.
My hat goes off to all of those that enjoy RP in mmo's.
I play on Landroval server in Lotro, and I love watching folks RP there. I am not an RPer, but I tend to always pick RP servers due to the fact that they tend to have a more "grown up/no drama" community. I remember the days of watching people RP in the SWG cantinas. Watching RP, to me, was a good way to break up the monotony of constant combat.
My hat goes off to all of those that enjoy RP in mmo's.
Thank you, the grand majority of MMO players enjoy RP. The silent assassin, the scrupulous merchant, the bloodthiristy newbie killer, the guild warrior, the power-seeking archer, the perfectionist boss-killer: we are all very happy for your token of appriciation for our roleplaying.
We may not always express our roles through our words, but very much so through our actions. And like they say: actions speak louder than words.
This article was written with good intent, but unfortunately based on inaccurate information. RPrs did not come from MUDs to MMORPGs. The first PC video game was a RPG and the first global multiplayer PC game was also a RPG.
It really seems like the OP might not understand the definition of what an MMORPG is. Which is not too surprising considering how this site likes to list non-MMOs on it so often. Especially ones that are simply existing in concept with no pics or vids like CU and SC.
Another missed fact in the current state of RPrs is because most modern dev companies have chosen to dumb-down MMOs in order to draw in the console players to increase profit at the cost of the original fan base. The RPrs have not left, they are outnumbered is all. Despite the fact that if it wasn't for the first PC games being RPGs, there wouldn't be the level of gaming available on PCs at all today.
Yet unfortunately even on dedicated and labeled RP servers such as in Tera, RPrs are often ridiculed there in global chat for RPing due to the action combat drawing even more console players to the PC market along with their narrow-minded views of online gaming social interaction.
This article was written with good intent, but unfortunately based on inaccurate information. RPrs did not come from MUDs to MMORPGs. The first PC video game was a RPG and the first global multiplayer PC game was also a RPG.
It really seems like the OP might not understand the definition of what an MMORPG is. Which is not too surprising considering how this site likes to list non-MMOs on it so often. Especially ones that are simply existing in concept with no pics or vids like CU and SC.
Another missed fact in the current state of RPrs is because most modern dev companies have chosen to dumb-down MMOs in order to draw in the console players to increase profit at the cost of the original fan base. The RPrs have not left, they are outnumbered is all. Despite the fact that if it wasn't for the first PC games being RPGs, there wouldn't be the level of gaming available on PCs at all today.
Yet unfortunately even on dedicated and labeled RP servers such as in Tera, RPrs are often ridiculed there in global chat for RPing due to the action combat drawing even more console players to the PC market along with their narrow-minded views of online gaming social interaction.
This article was written with good intent, but unfortunately based on inaccurate information. RPrs did not come from MUDs to MMORPGs. The first PC video game was a RPG and the first global multiplayer PC game was also a RPG.
It really seems like the OP might not understand the definition of what an MMORPG is. Which is not too surprising considering how this site likes to list non-MMOs on it so often. Especially ones that are simply existing in concept with no pics or vids like CU and SC.
Another missed fact in the current state of RPrs is because most modern dev companies have chosen to dumb-down MMOs in order to draw in the console players to increase profit at the cost of the original fan base. The RPrs have not left, they are outnumbered is all. Despite the fact that if it wasn't for the first PC games being RPGs, there wouldn't be the level of gaming available on PCs at all today.
Yet unfortunately even on dedicated and labeled RP servers such as in Tera, RPrs are often ridiculed there in global chat for RPing due to the action combat drawing even more console players to the PC market along with their narrow-minded views of online gaming social interaction.
You talk as if console gaming does not have a long history of RPGs. Oh wait, it has.
If this argument develops any further, someone is soon going to claim that DnD was invented so that people without computers/consoles could play RPG's...
One of the games I play, Lineage 2, used to have a vibrant RP community. I joined 9 years ago (long for a Korean treadmill game!) and now, there are just a handful of role-players left. I still manage the RP community website, but it's a ghost town.
What's worse is that as new content is added, old areas and the lore attached with them simply vanish. There is no explanation as to why the changes were made in terms of continuity, and as such we few role-players are left scratching our heads.
I never really got into RPing, but it's still around. There's an unofficial RP server in the FFXIV community.
If anything, the one thing that bugs me is how people newer to the MMORPG genre tend to just skip through quest text just to level up faster and get to the endgame content so they can get their shiny loot. It really takes away from the whole "RPG" element of things.
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While I did not actively *roleplay*, I did something I call *play in character* and I did respect roleplayers and sometimes even joined their activities for a while if I knew them.
Why I don't play mmorpg's anymore? They've stopped being good gaming medium. They're too gamified, streamlined, simplified, effort-less, don't give opportunities anymore (waved off as time-sinks) and had bring real world inequality and immersion breakers to game world. (microtransactions).
So I am just watching industry from side-lines on site like this one. I am not playing for 2 years already and I am not planning to unless indsutry start to create product catering for me. I am done compromising - compromises in order to make more 'wide-appeal' are something that what was pushed in industry for many many years - many people have enough of that and realized how stupid it was to play along with it when it started to happen many years ago.
Originally posted by Raventree MMORPGs just aren't a good medium for RP. You have very few customization options and you certainly can't RP outside of specific circles. I remember back in EQ I was playing the race that all looks like a bunch of pirates and I jokingly talked like a pirate in a group I was in and one of the guys flew into an inexplicable rage and began swearing and harassing me. I wasn't even being serious and received RP hate.
This is pretty much the problem. I've RP'd quite a bit in MMORPG, but even LotRO and TSW simply aren't as conducive to good RP as other mediums.
I think it may be a problem of scale - it with MMORPGs, there's just too much noise from everything else, in addition to the problem s listed above. Imagine trying to LARP in the middle of a busy high school gymnasium, and that's basically the situation you have in MMORPGs.
The original Neverwinter Nights by Bioware circa 2002 had the best foundation for online RP that I've yet found, outside of muds and other online mediums. Sadly there hasn't been anything released recently that was even close, and NWN2 was an abomination that should have been put down before release.
The Roleplayers are still there, with Global/Zone chat turned OFF.
There are around 65ish or so in my guild, its a mixed guild of over 400 people spread throughout many games. One of them played WoW for about 3 years, never hit 60 because he was almost always stumbling around Orgrimmar dead drunk, and when he wasnt in town he was questing, dead drunk and yelling at things for taking his drinks...usually mobs that end up killing him.
Originally posted by Raventree MMORPGs just aren't a good medium for RP. You have very few customization options and you certainly can't RP outside of specific circles. I remember back in EQ I was playing the race that all looks like a bunch of pirates and I jokingly talked like a pirate in a group I was in and one of the guys flew into an inexplicable rage and began swearing and harassing me. I wasn't even being serious and received RP hate.
This is pretty much the problem. I've RP'd quite a bit in MMORPG, but even LotRO and TSW simply aren't as conducive to good RP as other mediums.
I think it may be a problem of scale - it with MMORPGs, there's just too much noise from everything else, in addition to the problem s listed above. Imagine trying to LARP in the middle of a busy high school gymnasium, and that's basically the situation you have in MMORPGs.
The original Neverwinter Nights by Bioware circa 2002 had the best foundation for online RP that I've yet found, outside of muds and other online mediums. Sadly there hasn't been anything released recently that was even close, and NWN2 was an abomination that should have been put down before release.
Well. Mmorpg's were never good mediums for role-playing in style of LARP / table-top small team role-play adventure. Some few mmorpg's was good medium for 'playing in character' as I call it, using actual game mechanics. Of course that was possible only in few mmorpg's and on role-playing servers with things like name-enforcement.
For classic table-top / LARP gameplay - yeah mmorpg's are not really that good.
Great read and hit close to the heart. I do try to rp as much as possible in my ganes. Lotro of course is the main event for rp these days but funny enough I have found great rp in... of all places... eve.
You have great lore in eve to build your rp story around... however you aren't really exposed highly to it... rather you have to look. I have a second. Account (paid for by buying plex on my main) that is in an rp corp and has been strictly rp for maybe 16 months. He's a minmatar sympathizer who is in exile from the amarr homeworlds for heresy.
In other news, if you aren't married christina neither am I. Juuuust sayin.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
First of all Christina, thank you so much for a great article.
Like many who have written in reply this is a subject near and dear to me as well. As a long-time lurker and a seldom poster I am even driven to write up this response. I wish that the RP community or RPers in general were better supported by MMO developers. Yes I am in the camp who simply calls games of the genre MMOs as I think the RP of MMORPG is long since gone. Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Star Wars: Galaxies, City of Heroes I have many fond memories of RP experiences in those games and it was those RP experiences and the RPers I met who kept me coming back for -years- to all of those games. But now? I play an MMO for maybe less than a month and get bored with it. For me, roleplaying is an integral part of my enjoyment.
There is a lot of 'your mileage may vary' now. I have read a few posts extolling the virtues of TSW and Funcom but from my perspective I barely ran into a single RPer on the 'official servers'. I tried both and quickly got bored because at first glance the month or two I played it just seemed to be the same 'wasteland' of people behaving in character or RPing that many other MMOs tend to be. As even with official servers there were still many people who did not RP, and even ridiculed RP and RPers quite vehemently. The bygone days of the 'RP flag' would probably have helped with this.
Another problem which just seems kind of general is that RP groups have become quite insular. Keeping to themselves, and are often wary or even downright hostile to 'new players' who try to join in and interact. That might be a symptom of the fact that the general MMO population is incredibly hostile towards RPers or people who play in-character.
Official RP servers, RP flags, and naming guidelines would help somewhat I think, but those are things that most developers who are on a tight budget are unwilling or unable to provide.
Comments
And roleplaying a warrior trying to become as powerful as possible in a world is now not acceptable roleplaying? That elitism.
I agree with everything you said (although I only quoted one paragraph to save space). The level advancement system is a huge detriment to RP. I'm hoping that Star Citizen brings back RP in the way we saw with Star Wars Galaxies.
Very good thoughts. I especially like the consideration of abusive players hiding griefing behind "roleplay."
When I played Jumpgate, I was in the squadron "Conflux Hunters" and our RP was clearing the spacelanes of the AI-controlled Conflux aliens. Since 'flux were an annoyance to everyone, regardless of faction, our activity was considered neutral and a CH member was allowed to hunt in otherwise "hostile" space, keeping trade and mining routes open. Because we benefited all factions, attacking a CH was disallowed by all (by extension, a CH member was forbidden to participate in faction conflict. Many members had alts in other squads for PvP.) This was a great example of a community policing itself.
One player decided to adopt the "RP" of a "Conlux Rights Extremist." Think PETA in space. He took to attacking CH members, who were usually not outfitted for PvP and at a serious disadvantage. He always attacked single players hunting alone. What he failed to realize that the senior CH members were among the best PvPers in the game, using their CH alts to fund their PvP toons. They and other PvPers issued a kill-on-sight and the fellow (or at least that toon) was run out of the game.
As soon as you see a game with yuellow markers over npc heads,it is no longer a RPG.That is the design that Wow really made famous,a design to hand hold and guide you where to go and what to do.That is not the definition of role playing.,My beleif is that Blizzard decided there was a huge player base waiting to grab that wanted things handed to them or made easy,so they went after it,with no care at all about their game design following the RPG label.I guess the ythought if it has some concepts it is ok,ya a Volvo has tires and a steering wheel,does that make it a race car?
it has even spawned new terminology like a "game on rails" "linear questing" ect ect.I also like to call it connecting the dots because that is how they are designed.
Also the experience they like to freely hand out for doing a quest is not RP gaming either.If i am roelplaying a Warrior for example,how do they figure i become a more experienced Warrior by running an errand?It makes no sense and to be honest,it won't be long before games admit their fault and stop calling themselves RPG's.
We already have the MMO term abused in gaming,so guess it is time to add more titles to online games or just call them all OG's for Online games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The early MMORPG's like UO, EQ and DAoC had a large pool of ex-PnP gamers to draw from, gamers who were experienced RP'ers. They were familiar and comfortable with the concept of "being their character" in front of other people, because that is how you played DnD.
Very few gamers coming into the MMO market in recent years have had that background.
And with MMO's being less and less about virtual worlds and more oriented toward providing a constant stream of stimulating entertainment, the focus has shifted away from RP.
Many little things can contribute to a RP-friendly environment. It requires extra effort to have a casual RP conversation with someone else when both avatars are stuck in dramatic, action-packed poses that look as if they're both about to launch into mortal combat at any second. Forget about scratching your nose, the change in balance on your autocannon could lay waste to half a city block in the blink of an eye.
Props, animations, outfits and emotes make RP a richer experience (and one that's easier to pull off), but those little features are almost exclusively Cash Shop fodder in the growing pool of F2P titles. RP has always been optional, but nowadays "optional" means "we can charge extra for that".
I have always marveled at the fact that very few MMO's ever allow you to sit on chairs or benches. It would seem that that is an incredibly difficult feature to do. I'm always thrilled if my avatar can simply manage to sit down on flat ground, it's not something I take for granted.
Roleplaying a character trying to become as powerful as possible and kill the most difficult enemies, is still roleplaying and is very much coherent with the WoW design. Perhaps not the kind of roleplaying YOU want, but indeed roleplaying.
I play on Landroval server in Lotro, and I love watching folks RP there. I am not an RPer, but I tend to always pick RP servers due to the fact that they tend to have a more "grown up/no drama" community. I remember the days of watching people RP in the SWG cantinas. Watching RP, to me, was a good way to break up the monotony of constant combat.
My hat goes off to all of those that enjoy RP in mmo's.
The world would be so much simpler if that was true
.
Thank you, the grand majority of MMO players enjoy RP. The silent assassin, the scrupulous merchant, the bloodthiristy newbie killer, the guild warrior, the power-seeking archer, the perfectionist boss-killer: we are all very happy for your token of appriciation for our roleplaying.
This article was written with good intent, but unfortunately based on inaccurate information. RPrs did not come from MUDs to MMORPGs. The first PC video game was a RPG and the first global multiplayer PC game was also a RPG.
It really seems like the OP might not understand the definition of what an MMORPG is. Which is not too surprising considering how this site likes to list non-MMOs on it so often. Especially ones that are simply existing in concept with no pics or vids like CU and SC.
Another missed fact in the current state of RPrs is because most modern dev companies have chosen to dumb-down MMOs in order to draw in the console players to increase profit at the cost of the original fan base. The RPrs have not left, they are outnumbered is all. Despite the fact that if it wasn't for the first PC games being RPGs, there wouldn't be the level of gaming available on PCs at all today.
Yet unfortunately even on dedicated and labeled RP servers such as in Tera, RPrs are often ridiculed there in global chat for RPing due to the action combat drawing even more console players to the PC market along with their narrow-minded views of online gaming social interaction.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390917,00.asp
You talk as if console gaming does not have a long history of RPGs. Oh wait, it has.
If this argument develops any further, someone is soon going to claim that DnD was invented so that people without computers/consoles could play RPG's...
[Column] General: Where Have All the Roleplayers Gone?
Private servers.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
One of the games I play, Lineage 2, used to have a vibrant RP community. I joined 9 years ago (long for a Korean treadmill game!) and now, there are just a handful of role-players left. I still manage the RP community website, but it's a ghost town.
What's worse is that as new content is added, old areas and the lore attached with them simply vanish. There is no explanation as to why the changes were made in terms of continuity, and as such we few role-players are left scratching our heads.
http://www.rimwall.com/shilenpics/albums/userpics/10001/Olorae-Crimson-Lilly.jpg
I never really got into RPing, but it's still around. There's an unofficial RP server in the FFXIV community.
If anything, the one thing that bugs me is how people newer to the MMORPG genre tend to just skip through quest text just to level up faster and get to the endgame content so they can get their shiny loot. It really takes away from the whole "RPG" element of things.
While I did not actively *roleplay*, I did something I call *play in character* and I did respect roleplayers and sometimes even joined their activities for a while if I knew them.
Why I don't play mmorpg's anymore? They've stopped being good gaming medium. They're too gamified, streamlined, simplified, effort-less, don't give opportunities anymore (waved off as time-sinks) and had bring real world inequality and immersion breakers to game world. (microtransactions).
So I am just watching industry from side-lines on site like this one. I am not playing for 2 years already and I am not planning to unless indsutry start to create product catering for me. I am done compromising - compromises in order to make more 'wide-appeal' are something that what was pushed in industry for many many years - many people have enough of that and realized how stupid it was to play along with it when it started to happen many years ago.
This is pretty much the problem. I've RP'd quite a bit in MMORPG, but even LotRO and TSW simply aren't as conducive to good RP as other mediums.
I think it may be a problem of scale - it with MMORPGs, there's just too much noise from everything else, in addition to the problem s listed above. Imagine trying to LARP in the middle of a busy high school gymnasium, and that's basically the situation you have in MMORPGs.
The original Neverwinter Nights by Bioware circa 2002 had the best foundation for online RP that I've yet found, outside of muds and other online mediums. Sadly there hasn't been anything released recently that was even close, and NWN2 was an abomination that should have been put down before release.
The Roleplayers are still there, with Global/Zone chat turned OFF.
There are around 65ish or so in my guild, its a mixed guild of over 400 people spread throughout many games. One of them played WoW for about 3 years, never hit 60 because he was almost always stumbling around Orgrimmar dead drunk, and when he wasnt in town he was questing, dead drunk and yelling at things for taking his drinks...usually mobs that end up killing him.
Well. Mmorpg's were never good mediums for role-playing in style of LARP / table-top small team role-play adventure. Some few mmorpg's was good medium for 'playing in character' as I call it, using actual game mechanics. Of course that was possible only in few mmorpg's and on role-playing servers with things like name-enforcement.
For classic table-top / LARP gameplay - yeah mmorpg's are not really that good.
You have great lore in eve to build your rp story around... however you aren't really exposed highly to it... rather you have to look. I have a second. Account (paid for by buying plex on my main) that is in an rp corp and has been strictly rp for maybe 16 months. He's a minmatar sympathizer who is in exile from the amarr homeworlds for heresy.
In other news, if you aren't married christina neither am I. Juuuust sayin.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
First of all Christina, thank you so much for a great article.
Like many who have written in reply this is a subject near and dear to me as well. As a long-time lurker and a seldom poster I am even driven to write up this response. I wish that the RP community or RPers in general were better supported by MMO developers. Yes I am in the camp who simply calls games of the genre MMOs as I think the RP of MMORPG is long since gone. Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Star Wars: Galaxies, City of Heroes I have many fond memories of RP experiences in those games and it was those RP experiences and the RPers I met who kept me coming back for -years- to all of those games. But now? I play an MMO for maybe less than a month and get bored with it. For me, roleplaying is an integral part of my enjoyment.
There is a lot of 'your mileage may vary' now. I have read a few posts extolling the virtues of TSW and Funcom but from my perspective I barely ran into a single RPer on the 'official servers'. I tried both and quickly got bored because at first glance the month or two I played it just seemed to be the same 'wasteland' of people behaving in character or RPing that many other MMOs tend to be. As even with official servers there were still many people who did not RP, and even ridiculed RP and RPers quite vehemently. The bygone days of the 'RP flag' would probably have helped with this.
Another problem which just seems kind of general is that RP groups have become quite insular. Keeping to themselves, and are often wary or even downright hostile to 'new players' who try to join in and interact. That might be a symptom of the fact that the general MMO population is incredibly hostile towards RPers or people who play in-character.
Official RP servers, RP flags, and naming guidelines would help somewhat I think, but those are things that most developers who are on a tight budget are unwilling or unable to provide.