f13.net

According to Tyren PVP-RP servers are planned for the US and Europe (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=3909959&p=1&tmp=1#post3909959)

I don't see the need but I'm not in charge of the game.

/waiting for blood elves and goblin playable races

RP already means next to nothing on the RP servers....they're practically just "no stupid names" servers, and even then anyone who admits to reporting even the most greivous violation of a name gets flamed in /1.   And now they're going to add PvPers, annihilating any chance of any RP actually going on. 

Oh, there'll be RP. (http://www.iqto.com/bp/roleplaying_files/bone2.htm)

So why did blizzard even bother?  And why did people even join the Are Pee servers, other then to grief the  people that want to role-play?

WoW strikes me as perhaps one of the WORST games to attempt role-playing in.  It is littered throughout with real-world  humor, and the dev's have taken a decidedly "game over world" approach to WoW's design (thus, CTF).

Alot of people who enjoyed AD&D, or Vampire, or whatever, when they were a kid, seem to wish they could recreate that in one of these stupid games, and its not possible.  The bottom line in mmogs is that nothing you do can have any impact or consequence, and this takes alot of the fun out of Role-playing.  Would saving the village from the reptile god have been fun if as soon as you "hand in" the quest, they go right back to bein oppressed by it?  Thier is also no good and evil, law and chaos conflict.  Thier are no gods judging your characters actions, so the paladin will gladly kill the baby orc since he wants his .00005372% chance to get teh shiney, instead of saving the child and having him raised in his god's monestary (which you know, you'd think someone who  was into holy righteous goodness would at least try to do).

Persistence and Massive both directly conflict with and prevent RP.  When you have the M, you have to accomodate them all.  This amounts to allowing everyone to digest the same content, which means no previous player can actually effect that content.  Thus the "reward" for everything amounts to XP, Gold, and ph4t l3wt, because this is an individual character change, which doesn't effect the content that needs to be consumed by the next 50 thousand hamsters.

And don't get me started on problem-solving, puzzles, and mysteries that our wonderful intarwhebinet stabs in the face with a K-bar.  The age of all those wonderful things in our adventures is utterly dead, since the second even one in our 1.5 MILLION players figures it out, its posted, distributed, and disseminated to the point that it would be utterly impossible to interact with ANYONE in the game without getting "spoiled".  So this means no wretched banshee's that let you live, and leave you puzzled as to why... no houses that appear haunted but are really just a front for weapons-smuggling operations...

Seriously, how many ways can you interact with the game world?  You can beat a pinyata untill it becomes an accessible container... i mean basically your entire interaction with the game world can be summed up as container interactions, moving items from one zone to the next.  Thier is also Faction, but this is primarily used as simply another method for restricting access to containers and the items thierin.  The one place it was used in an interesting fashion, Desolace, has basically no continuation, and doesn't matter (neither the Gelkis nor Magram can ever triumph, no matter what you do).

Finally, thier is the stupid:  Here's a line.  Pick a side of it to stand on.  The guys on the other side?  You can't interact with them in any way, accept you can kill each other.  The guys on your side?  Well you can trade and talk, but you can't kill them no matter how big of a dipshit they are.  Suck it.

Damn.  I was having fun farming fire res shit in BRD with my guild last night (preparing for another Rag attempt).  But when i get started thinking about all the things this game lacks that i wish it had, it leaves me menstrual.  Maybe i'll forget by the time i get off work.

This argument always falls flat to me.  If you don't want your game spoiled, no-one's forcing you.

My ass.  Do you need to do the quest with other people?  It will get spoiled, unless you have a RL clique you can all do it together for the first time, or you are simply one of the first people on the server attempting it.  If  you are a late-commer to the game, anyone you do it with is most likely doing it with an alt, know exactly where to go when and how to do whatever.  Sure you can abandon that group, and spend the next month or so looking for that perfect bunch of virgins that you can go and bust your collective cherries with, but otherwise, no.

90% of the quests in WoW requrie no grouping to complete.  The ones that do point you directly at a dungeon and say "Kill and/or collect this." or point you to an area in the zone and say "kill and or/ collect this" so there's no 'spoilage' there either.

In older or less well-designed games your argument has merit. Not so much here.

This is hurting my brain.  What i was saying has nothing to do with WoW, as it exists now.  I was talking about RP, the lack thieroff, in WoW, and how RP is pointless, and the various things WoW is missing for RP to be pointfull.  One of those things was quests where thier was PUZZLE/PROBLEM solving and/or mysteries to unconver and explore.  My POINT was, that shit cant exist now, and we never see it in games like WoW, because dev's know it would be an utter waste of time, and i was lamenting the reasons for that.  Doom on me.

I actually thought the FV server in EQ in its first year did a decent job with RP.  Things I recall:

1.  Languages were hard / time consuming to learn and were a significant benefit in communicating with other races
2.  You could not group (at least not directly) with folks of an opposing alignment
3.  Trivial loot code
4.  One character on the server per account.  No alts.

We can argue about the individual merits of each of these rules but collectively it provided a concrete way that involved little CSM supervision to give the server a different "feel" than all the rest.  When EQ servers underwent population contraction, the RP server in EQ only grew - slowly - in its population over time.

Eventually, EQ changed some of the above rules which some of us felt eroded the RP atmosphere but it was enough to establish a server culture I have never forgotten (rules #3 and #4 were maintained to this day).  Nothing ruins a community more than alts.

It would be great if in WoW RP servers had "teeth" by way of different rule sets like the FV server did in EQ.

All public chat channels are OOC.  This is posted.

People tend to RP one on one or within their guild.

This is as it should be.

If you feel otherwise you will be very happy here. (http://www.sca.org/docs/scafaq.pdf)

Reposting the crap I posted on my server's forum... [yes, I'm a RPer and I play on a PVP server, my guild will probably play Horde alts on the RP-PVP server]

The problem with RP in WOW is three-fold:

1. Community
WOW has [on average] a younger playerbase than other MMORPGs. For some people it's their first MMOG. I'd wager that some [most?] of WOW's subscribers come from Diablo or *craft, neither of which involved RP at any level. RPers in general are shunned at worst and 'weirdos' at best.
Best demonstrated by Shadowclan on my old server.. they RP'd orcs -always- in character with their own language even (which is silly imo, [Orcish] is there for a reason) and nobody grouped or pvp'd with them. When RPing on PVP servers makes you a pariah [omg ur ghey go 2 RP srv lolz], that's not much of an incentive, is it?
Also, as demonstrated by this thread, people in general have no idea what 'rp' is about. And don't get me started about RP servers being pve-only and thus not allowing for [gasp] adversarial roleplay! BTW, to the people who think 'rp' = ingame weddings or olde english... kek. Hint: RP is not posting 10-page story threads about things that have not actually happened ingame. That's exposition or backstory maybe.

2. Mechanics
WOW is a level-based game, akin to a DIKU / ROM MUD of yore. These kinds of games are extremely RP-unfriendly when compared to skill-based games like UO or even [ugh] SWG, because:
- players are segregated by level, negating interaction unless in places like Lagforge
- a level 1 character has absolutely no chance in combat vs a level 60 [in UO this was not the case]
- the game itself has no 'downtime' [OMG why is he complaining about lack of downtime?! Dirty RPer.], thus no incentive for hanging out in inns or such. SWG had this, too bad the rest of the game sucked.
- probably many more reasons I could list. Level-based games are BAD DESIGN, imo.

3. Language Barrier
The absolutely most important thing in WOW is the war between the two factions, right? Why can't we do anything with it then? There'd be immense RP value in making ceasefire agreements / spying / taking other faction members hostage / etc, but it is NOT POSSIBLE because by design, Blizz made it impossible for 'enemy' factions to communicate with one another. They even nerfed the 'babelfish' addon, that should tell you something.

"This is just my opinion. I could be wrong".


-- Z.
butchering quotes since 1981

I think this is also why RP isn't very prevalent in WoW (http://www.f13.net/commentary.php?subaction=showfull&id=1100294384&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&).

I haven't really seen this demonstrated, myself.  I could be wrong, (I obviously don't have access to the numbers), but I'd be tempted to just put this down to the size of the community.  Every really huge game I've been in has seemed to be populated by sociopathic kindergarteners, while the smaller titles all seem to have a more mature community.  I think it's just a case of the whole "When you're sharing a world with ten thousand players, it's highly likely that one of them will be the kind of person that irritates the hell out of you" rule writ large.


This, I agree with one million percent.  The social interactions you get in an online RPG are real interactions between two people, just like two people bumping into each other on the streets of LA or in the Mines of Moria.  The difference is that the interaction is tempered by the environment.  If you want a reaction similar to one you'd get in real life, you need to set up a social situation that's analogous to real life.  The players in World of Warcraft are actually roleplaying perfectly; in a world where we could broadcast our thoughts across the planet, death was inconsequential, and nobody could have any real impact on the world, that is exactly how we would act.  If you want people to act differently, change that.

O'course, I have no idea how to do that and still end up with a fun game.  Cough.


This baffles me as well.  It's obviously something that Blizzard intentionally did, but I'm not sure why.  In Beta, I'm pretty sure that the Undead spoke Common and Orcish, and could act as a communication bridge between Horde and Alliance.  Why'd they change it?  Were they afraid that loosing players in PvP would get their feelings hurted by the mean ol' bad guys?  So now, instead, we get yells of ascii  penises and stuff, which is much better, I'm sure.

But, on the topic of the original post, I do think this is a good idea.  It always seemed to me that PvP and RP would be a more logical combination than PvE and RP.  I've heard a number of players who went to PvP servers because on RP or PvE servers they couldn't "keep the Horde/Alliance out of our areas," or that "it just seemed silly that we were at war but couldn't attack each other," which are basically RP issues.  Seemed a bit strange to me that they'd put in two factions who were supposed to "role play" a conflict without actually letting them fight.

In beta, Undead spoke common, and could talk to alliance. At that time, the number 1, by far, reason people got banned was verbal hurrasment. And when I say by far, I mean 8 out of 10. Blizzard felt they would just not let people killing each other talk to each other. Thats the main reason for not being able to communicate.

DAoC did this as well.  It's a 2-way fix.  You stop the idiots from getting banned for the constant verbal harassment, and you stop the harassed from cancelling their accounts.  Once again, folks want to PvP but they don't want to be made to feel like shit when they lose. 

WoW added overhead text bubbles for /say and /yell, with the option to expand it to party chat as well.

Yes, that is true. However, people are a LOT less tolerant of RP on non-RP servers (especially pvp). We'd regularly get people griefing us, others going "omg gay", and some spamming yells "go 2 rp servr nubcaek". Plus actually FINDING people on a pvp server who don't respond to RP attempts by /ignore is Hard. My old server (Bleeding Hollow) was designated as the "unofficial PVP-RP server" and had a good number of RPer guilds. Unfortunately, it was also the largest (yes, bigger than Archimonde) PVP server due to being #1 on EST to come up and we had a huge deluge of asshats who delighted in griefing RPers whenever they could. The treatment of Shadowclan should tell ya something...
And I can't imagine going to an RP server (which has an entirely different breed of asshat, see Haem's wow rant and, oh, that 4-page thread around here somewhere) because to me, PVP is an absolutely crucial part of RP.

Yeah, I remember beta.. plainsrunning for life y0!

And the language barrier doesn't fix the smacktalking thing, at all. Instead of people yelling "OMG URA NOOB OMG URA NOOB LOLCOPTER", you have people with macros that /spit /laugh /cry /violin 30 times. And the smacktalk moves to the forums instead... I swear my server's forums are worse than the vault, sometimes. (besides, you CAN /ignore players of the opposite faction.. too bad I already ran out of /ignore spots by just ignoring the known alliance griefers and trade channel spammer farmers)

There's also something I forgot, but Kail mentioned it -- WOW does not have the mechanics suitable for RP. I've given up on the "affecting the world" bit (UO had it, SWG had it), as virtual worlds appear to be Hard. You'd need a system that makes in-game metagaming impossible (ie. hearing what person X says, even though there are two walls and three floors separating you), deals with death in a semi-plausible way (not permadeath, but something that disallows you from just rezzing right away and running back to your friends) and has NO way of global communication, not even tells. Yeah, you can impose rules like that upon yourself, but when it comes to adversarial roleplay, people will metagame to their heart's content if it means their character prevailing over yours. Come to think of it, they'd just use alts to infiltrate the other faction and share info with guildies on IRC or something. Goddamn, people suck.
(bit of useless trivia.. I was a GM for an UO RP shard with permadeath. Bitter? Moi?)


-- Z.

Yes to the forums part, no to the emotes.  When an enemy emotes your corpse now, all you get is "so and so makes begins making wierd gestures".  Doesn't stop me from /lol every time a fagadin is forced to burn his LoH against me though.  Or dancing with him while he heals himself inside his little bubble.  Can you tell i hate fagadins?

Hmmm, im not even sure this part matters anymore or is even a design issue worthy of serious thought.  For a growing number of us, in-game chat is a secondary form of communication.  gchat is used because everyones not in the same vent channel, and our best rogue uses a mac, so we send him lots of tells to keep him informed and included.  And most of us still have a few friends outside the guild.  But for the most part, any restriction you put on communication in-game will simply be ANOTHER device that increases the difference between the haves and have nots, since the haves dont use your stupid chat windows anyway.

That is if they do /emote <whatever>. Built-in emotes like /spit and /cry still work, and in fact have a voice component / animation component.


-- Z.

UO didn't have tells, but every single person playing ran ICQ in the background.

'

Yeah, but that was different. You didnt have to see..

[General] Ilikeninjaloot: LFG WAILINGT CAVERNS 19 drood
[General] Frankyjoo: STFU ninja. dont group with ilikeninja he is a ninja looter.
[General] Randomnewbie001: HELPKMEPLE HELPD @#$% gankgers got me!
[General] Killahshammy: this is a pvp server
[General] Lorddoom: shut up tghis is pvp
[General] Sammyshammy: Go back to a pve server carebear.

Nice, I was never ever in General.  Ever.  I shut it off as soon as the game loaded up and didn't miss it.  Although, I did have buddies telling me stuff like, haha this guys is hilarious, and felt like I was missing out, then I would remember exchanges like above, and was fine.  Oh, and damn you for making me want to play again.

I find it preferable to /ignore individuals and then clean the list out every other month.  It's a great way to prod myself why I won't let some people into a pickup group.

I think later events disproved Haem's essay.  General chat in most games is nearly always OOC.  Newbie zones are often bad but I'm not usually in those areas long.  RP is reserved for face to face or private channels, something a lot of folks don't always figure out when they first join an RP server.

I took a month off, and have recently got back in to playing again, and Im actually having fun in battlegrounds. Im not killing myself for contribution or anything. Just having fun killing alliance. Also, I think I had more fun PVP outside AV while waiting in the queue, and camping the allaince entrance.

Heh, I used to have fun, but got bored and cancelled my account.  No want to go back and play my 60 rogue anyways.

If I play, it will be fresh on a new server and alliance side.

Same, I'll play a gnome or dwarf of some variety once I get a new puter and if I decide to reup.  I might just give the game a longer break though, perhaps until early October.

I wouldn't have had this desire to perhaps play again if I had just followed my status quo: when you quit, either A) ebay or B) find a friend that wants an account. Making sure your account isn't there makes it stay dead to you easier. 

I canceled my account just after those bs pvp trinkets came out.  But I'm thinking of coming back.   How much more have they nerfed mages and buffed every single other class?

WoW has strong background fiction and well-defined lore.  If those guys really tried to port their "klomp humie" language over from UO, then they're no better than the "My night elf is a DROW!" retards and got what they deserved.  I'm not going to cry over nobody taking their incredibly geeky RP seriously when the RP didn't even make sense in the context of the game.


My experiences with "adversarial roleplay" were just so much bullshit...  You're a godmoder!  No you are!  Hey how did you escape, we "kidnapped" you!  It's as fagtastic as regular RP, but with everyone balkanized into little camps who hate each other.  My own UO guild eventually withdrew from the whole RP/war scene in a fit of OOC ganking, and I didn't miss it.

You mages sure are a whiny bunch.  You could ask Amp but I think I pissed him off.   

Last experience with mages is that they did pretty well in all of the battle ground stuff I was involved with.  Hell, the number one horde player on my server is a mage.   Of course, last time I was in MC, they weren't really a dominant force in the DPS department (rogues/warlocks/hunters tended to do better), but that's also mainly because they have to do a TON of curse removal.  I believe they're lowering spell resistances on uber mobs, so mages will be doing more damage against them while compensating by increasing the overall HP of the mobs. 

The trinkets weren't really bad of an introduction.  They were really only SUPER useful in one on one situations. Outside of that, if you have to trinket yourself out of something, there's likely already 8 people beating on your ass for the 1 second it took you to hit your trinket macro.  Plus, certain class trinkets only break certain conditions.  I'm not sure which one, but either my shaman or rogue wasn't allowed to break out of sheep.

Of course, the grass is always green unless you're actually sitting on it. If I resub though, I'd wager it's about a 50% change my new class would be a gnome mage.

2 Major mage nerfs, 1 to cold 1 to fire.

Fire:  Ignite is now "magic" effect and dispelable.  Have fun vs paladins and priests with auto-dispel macros, you may not even get 1 tick.

Frost:  All cold shit is supposedly getting deminishing returns (word from the test servers).  This includes frost bolt.  Fortunately, blizzard spit on thier collective dicks before they stuck it in, so while your target will be immune to frost bolt chill after the third shot, they will still take damage.  This takes away almost all point to frost mages in pvp, making it the exclusive province of the MC-bunny.  Make sure you congratulate the next Frost mage you see, on his selfless sacrifice for guild.

I mean wtf, why doesnt blizzard just delete the frost tree and give us lightning or something cool?

I suppose I should be grateful that there haven't been anymore poly nerfs.  I still confidently predict that poly will be banned from pvp use before the year is out (or that pvp trinkets will be given infinite insta poly breaks or something similar). 

I hear you.  My choices are gnomer mage, warrior, or warlock.  Or a dwarf priest.

The problem is that on my old horde account, I had a L44 mage, a L22 priest, L16 warlock, and L12 warrior.

I know exactly the role of each them play later on and the warlock has the most options for gameplay.  The problem is, I really want a gnome warrior, but don't want to get wtf pwned in pvp.  The mage would be easy and fun, as I always liked mages.  The priest are just good times, especially if I group with my bud who's playing a lock.

Advice?  Are warriors gimped?  1.6wha?

urg.  Can we not use that metaphor again ?

:D

No.

Here's the list of classes I'd recommend if people said they wanted a char for PVP:

Priest
Mage
Rogue
Warrior
Shaman

None of the other classes are completely flawed, but those are the best 5 classes for PVP. If you pick the one that best suits how you wanna play you can't go wrong.

I usually am okay with just lurking on these forums but as a 55 Dwarf Priest on a PvP server I had to jump in.



If you want a viable PvP* toon on a fulltime PvP server:

-Warrior: With recent pendulum swing buffs in effect + the happy funtime new gear they can use.  Ugly.

-Shaman: "You know what would be a good idea?  A mail wearing melee class that can heal, dispel and cast offensive magic while carrying shield! LOLZ" *puffpuff*

-Mage: The "Honor Contest" winner(s) were a Mage and a Rogue.  Check the PvP realm stats sometime to assure yourself.  Frontloading4thewin.

-Rogue: Same as it ever was.  The ability to chose when/where/how/whom you engage in combat is always the greatest advantage.  Did I mention a 45 second stun
and the ability to interrupt spellcasting (Kick) just for giggles?

*Pvp combat defined as solo-ing, 3-5 man groups, non BG's.


I still have a WoW sub but don't really ever play.  The reason is purely based on the fact that I'm a Priest on a PvP server.  I skim the forums everyday clutching my vain hope in my hand but....ehhhh. 

Priests are the prime target in most PvP situations, since we are a force multiplier/fight extending agent.  Add that to the fact that we're are probably the softest of the "soft target" cloth wearers, AND our only real defense or escape mechanism was five holed by the "Honor System" trinket. 

I'm Shadow Tree down to Shadowform, with the rest in Discipline.  I have max First Aid.  I am an Engineer, with access to most of the nifty toys.  I have the "Nifty Stopwatch" trinket.  I have 3 sets of gear: +INT, +regen, and +Shadow damage.  I buy copious amounts of Gheal potions, Gmana potions, Free Action potions, Arcane Power potions, and Shadow damage potions.  In short I try and access every tool at my disposal to do well in PvP. 

I don't do well.



My point.  Don't let people tell you that Priests are "in the top tier for PvP'.  We ain't. What we are is overpowered in the offense department for a Healing class.  But we are also fragile, slow moving one trick ponies in PvP.  Shadow damage IS nasty.  But everoyne is ready for you and your Fear with their trinket, Arcanite Reaper, Ice Barbed Spear and Will of the Forsaken.  Fun.


If I had the sack to re-level a toon and I wanted an effective durable healer I'd go Druid.

If I had the sack to re-level the "best PvP toon" I'd roll a Shaman.

And if I was just a ganking asshat I'd re-roll a Rogue.  Preferably Undead.

If I was okay with being pigeon holed as a healbot, but could grind solo PvE if I must...then sure.  Go Priest.

Classic.

Oh I wasn't talking about shadow priests, if you really want an offencive PVP caster you should probably roll a mage or a shaman. Truth is, priests are the best PVP (pure) healers in the game. If that is the kind of thing you want, well that's the kind of char you want to roll.

As for survivabiility... I have an old file lying around that I made a little while back, it listed an items for priest PVP survivability. Unfortunately I could only find an old version so you don't get as much math and discussion. :P


Also, one caveat I'd like to add is that the shaman is the most "powerless" of those 5. Not to say they lack raw power output, or even survivability. What they lack is the power to really control a situation. No stuns, no roots, and no mezzes. You're really engaging in a race to kill the opponent before they can kill you and have little control of the situation.

Before this game came out, my friend and I had a conversation about what we liked while playing pvp games, ie, what kind of toons.

We basically came up with the following attributes to make a fun character to play PVP (even PvE) with in MMORPGS.

Speed.  Power/Damage.  Stealth.

Speed: Being able to run around fast to turn in quests, run away, chase.

Power/Damage: Being able to kill someone in 5 seconds, and grief the noobs w/ more damage than their hp.

Stealth: Being able to pick and choose where you fight.  And sneaking up and killing nearly dead players never gets old.

I think we're both going to try and bunk that and play a warlock/warrior combo.  Gnomers ftw.