f13.net

I just finished reading this thread (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-realm-earthenring&T=21825&P=1) (also linked to from a different topic as an example of what's wrong with humanity).

I'm on ER, which is nominally RP.  I've never been on a general server, but the level of stupid on the RP server doesn't seem to be any lower than the other MORPGs I have played.  Far less than half the population makes any attempt to role play, and many of the names are just as stupid (I ran into somebody named "xxyabc" last night, for instance).

I've seen two types of players that feed off of each other in some kind of bizarre relationship: The ultra RPers and the doods.  The former constantly cry about what goes on in general chat.  When suggested that they put general chat on ignore, they get indignant and insist on staying because they "aren't the ones ignoring the rules."  (I don't know if they're roleplaying sissy elves, or if they really act like that all the time.)  The later type, of course, lives to menance players that are trying to stay in character.  (Apparently the memo about "not feeding the trolls" never made it into the World of Warcraft.

Since a lot of you have characters on ER, I am wondering what your attitudes are about it?  I don't care much what other people do, except when it comes to names that are sexual in nature, or a truly random stream of letters, such as Mr. Xxyabc.  As far as chat goes, my ignore trigger finger is just as fast as the best of them, and I actually have more bad RPers in there than anything else right now.

I'd prefer a community of casual roleplaying, which is to say that most people do it but they don't flip out if you decide not to.  The flip side of that is that the ones who choose not to would respect those who do and try to avoid getting in the way.

Of course, that will never happen.

I like to listen in to those arguments and toss in points to confuse people.  The doods, for example, were saying "If this is a RP server, why aren't you RPing on general chat?" and the RPers counter by saying "We can't RP on general chat, it doesn't make sense.  Why would we be able to hear what everyone's saying?"

And then I jump in and say "The power of Teldrassil and the spirits that support it cause a sort of communal telepathy to occur in all who currently reside upon the new World Tree."

And then they all hate me- the RPers because I disagreed with them and the doods because I tried to put some story into the game.

I play on RP servers so I don't have to see "HawtBetty3431" and "BuffGuy12" running around all over.

Ditto. I don't mind a bit of light roleplaying, but I certainly don't go out of my way to do it or expect anyone else to. I just want the jarringly stupid names away from me.

1. Turn off /1 General.
2. Ignore rp nazis.
3. Ignore d00dz.
4. Enjoy WoW.
5. FOR THE HORDE.

I roleplay casually. I try to keep in the flavor of my character. But honestly, Azeroth is just a bit too generic fantasy for me to work up any sort of real character history or motivations, so I generally play a bloodthirsty orc who wants to rip elves. I gauge my speech patterns (which are usually just 'kill that elf' anyway) by the quest and flavor text provided in game, not all orcs speak like peons. Generally I just speak normally with a bit of gruffness and don't take the anti-elf sentiment to the disturbing lengths some folks do.

I like roleplaying until I'm around "hardcore" roleplayers for a while, then I want to claw my eyes out or watch monster trucks or something. "Hardcore" roleplayers can ghey up anything imo.

I have no idea why people who don't want to roleplay are on the roleplaying server. Perhaps we could ask...Bat Country ;)

I can respect the fruity RPers wishes to RP and I can avoid the silly levels of it some of them get in to. I just want a quiet place to kill my Foozles that doesn't lower my IQ when I look at the names of the people around me. Also, the people on RP servers seem to have a better grasp of english. As in, they can actually type a coherent sentence every so often

I generally stay away from RP servers because, although I'll have to deal with a flock of assholes no matter where I play, I'd rather deal with the generic variety than the haugty, self-important fuckheads that throw a hissy at everything outside of their control.

Turning off /1 General is essential to a sane environment.

Raph the Great said (somewhere) that any RP server or game would be a police state by definition.  I think that's the only way to go if they are serious about keeping the RP flavor of those servers, which sounds like a joke atm.

It would have to become a violation of the CoC to talk about anything OOC except perhaps on some special channel.  Rules lawyers would have to be dealt with ruthlessly too unfortunately.  The good news is that they wouldn't have to ban anyone, just put a flag on their account saying they can't use RP servers.

That, or they could put manpower toward dealing with issues that actually affect anyone, which seems to be what they are doing.

Were you bashing RPers or people in this forum?






































JUST KIDDING ALL YOU HAUGHTY, SELF-IMPORTANT FUCKHEADS!

Don't violate Pepper Keenan!

Goddamn right.

Not one of those Arrr-peeee fags should ever use General chat. NOT FUCKING ONE. There is no goddamn ARRR-PEEEEE justification for it. Every single zone-wide AND peer to peer chat should be fucking turned off, including /tell. Every fucking one. Now THAT'S roleplaying.

Of course, you can't do that, because the RP fags would bitch and it would dramatically alter the game. However, the trend of setting up special RP servers is retarded. The rules that are in place for them WILL NEVER BE ENFORCED, unless you give the RP'ers enforcement powers. You won't have the manpower, especially when you think about the fact that RP servers are the minority of server types. It's just a retarded idea to ever think it could be enforced. You won't have the manpower.

And this comes from a casual RP'er myself. MMOG's have too many people on servers to try to enforce some arbitrary and potentially idiotic ideal of roleplaying.

If manpower is the problem they could set up a special volunteer counselor program to help people RP correctly and to enforce things when rules are broken...

I hadn't noticed.  U, ur, hlp plz, and cuz are especially prolific.

A little from column A, a little from column B.  It's sort of hypocritical, since I was/am both of those at one time or another.

Sometimes the fights between RPers and gimps can be amusing, mostly from seeing just how much the former lets the later get under their skin when all they had to do is type "/ignore Obnoxiousfucktard" like the other 40 people in the zone managed to do without a word.

It's too late for Blizzard to enforce its RP servers, it even if they wanted to.  If it were up to me, I would enforce names, but that's about it.

I've just never understood why people go to RP servers and then ignore the rules. There's plenty of regular servers out there.

I'm all for enforcing the rules with a big big stick. I just don't get what the issue is. Don't want to deal with it? Think the rules are stupid? Then don't play on an RP server.

It's like rolling on a regular server and then whining that you can't PK people.

Having said that, I'd love to see two levels of RP servers. One that's basically removal of the dood names and that kind of thing. And another for, well, RPers. Charge an extra buck a month or something for the latter.

Yeah, I've got to admit, I don't really see the point of roleplaying in something like World of Warcraft, because your character actions are just so limited that it doesn't seem possible to play a character.  It's like trying to roleplay in Quake or something.  I suppose you could roleplay the part of a violent warrior, or something, but the whole thing is set up as such an obvious "Game" world that it seems a bit redundant.  In World of Warcraft, at any rate, identical quests are hand-fed to you at a predetermined rate, so the only way I can see someone "roleplaying" a specific character is to decline quests that don't fit with their character concepts.  There isn't any way to say "I want to play a character who does X" and then go out and do X; if Blizzard hasn't coded a quest that incorporates it, you can't do it.

In general, the only "roleplaying" I've seen on roleplaying servers is that some players type with an accent (E.G. "Ach, dinnae anyone want tae be buyin' an axe with 56 DPS?"), while other players jump in to make fun of people typing in character, other people yell at people who aren't typing in character, and still other people yell at people to stop yelling at everyone and just enjoy the game.  Maybe it's just the places I've been, and in other areas, people are weaving elaborate dramas of tragedy and dreams, or whaveter, but I really doubt it.  If someone's looking for actual roleplaying, I'd suggest getting out of World of Warcraft altogether.  There are a number of ways to encourage roleplaying in a computer game, and Warcraft does almost none of them.

On the other hand, some people join RP servers in the belief that there are fewer annoying people there.  Personally, I find the bickering in general chat about roleplaying to be worse than the miscellaneous bickering in non-RP servers that it replaces, but I can see why other people might prefer the opposite.  If someone was to switch off the general chat, though, I don't know how they'd tell the difference between the two.

As to the topic question, I don't know that roleplaying should  be enforced.  If a company wants to encourage roleplaying in their game on a large scale, they should design that game to encourage roleplaying, not try to hammer a square peg into a round hole by penalizing people who play the game they designed.  In World of Warcraft, anyone on any server could be argued to be roleplaying, technically.  In a world where you could broadcast your thoughts across the nation, you could instantly see the precise numerical effectiveness of any item or ability, death was a mild annoyance, and every task you are given has already been completed by hordes of other people, I have no doubt that things would end up looking very similar to World of Warcraft.  If you want people to act like characters from Lord of the Rings, then make your game world similar to Lord of the Rings.  There's more to this than putting orcs and swords in the game.  Aragorn doesn't pick up a sword and say "Hmm, this sword deals eleven point two average per strike with six fire damage, but has a two round recycle," because that information isn't available to him.  He might comment on the heft, the sharpness, the balance, the craftsmanship, something like that, because that information is available to him.  He doesn't run off to fight Sauron because he's got nothing better to do, he does it because his world is genuinely in trouble.  People react in fairly standard ways (loosely speaking) to standard situations, and the game designers create those situations.

Of course, making such a game would be difficult, and making it fun to play may well prove to be virtually impossible.  But, for what it's worth, it would have role-playing.

I think RP is unappealing in general and is just the stupidest thing imaginable in a game like World of Warcraft.  Frankly every nerd on the planet thinks he can write "fantasy," every nerd who dreams of having magical powers seems to write about it, and even the people who do it professionally do it badly. The unsolicited fantasy and sci-fi manuscripts arrive at publishing houses in stacks, and are usually passed straight into the recycle bin still in their original envelopes.  Exposure to the amateur "fanfics" is a violation of the Geneva Convention. 

Blizzard's aesthetic for Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo is to take an aesthetic with a lot of cliches and to try to construct a world that includes all of them, in a sort of tongue and cheek manner.  The lore is as generic as it can be and is designed to pack as many cool video game encounters as possible. But it's much too convoluted to have anything approaching a compelling fantasy narrative (which are always, at their core, parables about the individuals coping with massive social instability). RPers don't seem to understand that the alien-ness of fantasy worlds is a device which allows for comment about real issues. I can't imagine anything worse than reading the fantasy writings of anyone who doesn't understand that the Hobbits' motivation in "Lord of the Rings" has something to do with the Luftwaffe strafing the ever-loving shit out of Tolkien's beloved English countryside. 

You can't have that kind of focused narrative in a world with dragons and demons and zombies and elves and orcs and dinosaurs and giant alien bugs all going at each other. But it makes for a hell of a video game, because there is a bunch of different stuff to kill and a bunch of different stuff to look at. In order to provide varied content, the storyline has to become convoluted, and, from any narrative or thematic viewpoint bad.  WoW at least is self-consciously bad, taking the notion of epic fantasy conflict to hyperbolic  absurdity, and then packing in references to every movie they've ever seen on top of it. If you try to teke the World of Warcraft seriously, the joke is on you.


In general when I'm playing video games, it's perfectly acceptable just to be playing video games.  I don't need to be immersed to the point that I actually want to pretend to be a moonwalking elf.  I feel like you must have to really hate your life to want to subsume yourself in one of these characters. Hardcore RPers must be really sad individuals, and rules that restrict annoying names don't justify having an unusual concentration of these people. I play on a PvP server. 

This is the same reason I don't like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and by extension most Whedon stuff. When I play a game or watch a sci-fi/fantasy/drama show, I want to take the world seriously and as such, expect them to take the world seriously. I don't need schlocky b-movie campiness. If I did, I'd play schlocky b-rate games and watch schlocky b-rate movies.

Of course, I don't find Norrath all that compelling either - and they take it very seriously. Pendulum swings both ways and no one has found that happy grey area inbetween the extremes. The only way to find it is through experiementation - which neither SOE or Blizzard will be doing. It's unfortunate too. I can only think of a couple games where that happy medium was found and most of them are first-person shooter/rpg hybrids (Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock, platformers like ICO and Beyond Good & Evil, on a VERY rare occasion an RPG (Planescape, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2), and very old adventure games (Grim Fandango, etc).

Roleplaying in WoW is like trying to roleplay in Diablo 2.  Sure you can technically do it, but the range of expression is so limited that the gameplay will be dictating your character rather than the other way around.  You had better not have a character concept in mind that doesn't fall neatly into one of the pre-determined class/race combinations.  For example, I decided I wanted to play something of an evil bastard human.  In UO, this might entail training necromancy/poisoning/whatever, dressing in black, and running out into the woods to murder innocent pixies and unicorns until it says "the vile" next to my name.  Maybe that's not really roleplay in itself, but it is an example of the gameworld letting me define my character as being distinct from all the noble paladins out there.  Meanwhile, back in World of Warcraft, all I could really do was complete heroic quest after heroic quest while saying "I'm not really heroic!  I'm a bastard who does it for the shinies!"  But really, as far as the universe was concerned, I was yet another noble hero in actions and appearance.

I never would have guessed you like to play the asshole Windup. No, really.

Me either.  I'm shocked. 


Ok... I'm over it.

Um, then call me stupid, but maybe you should be playing and Undead Warlock ?  Just a thought.  I'm an undead Rogue and I have no end of bastard quests.

In fairness, I see what you're saying - your talking about changing things beyond the 'norm' of the class - a peaceful and content undead warlock, for example.  The trouble with that is that the warcraft world is pretty black and white along those lines, as you say - but the other trouble is that when you give people the chance to do stuff like this, they tend to flock to be the 'dreadlord horrible person' while still taking advantage of a 'good' race.  If you gave Paladins the option to be 'bad' for example, then you have to start rationalising WHY holy light works.  What the fuck is up with your God, if that's the case ?

Also, bear in mind that pushing the norms and bringing together polar opposites is how we get thiings like Good Dark Elf Rangers.

With that in mind :  Fuck That.

That's probably why almost all of the Ar-peeing I've seen in WoW so far has been very tongue-in-cheek, including my own limited participation.  It's inclined to be more like Monty Python or SNL than LotR, but at least it's entertaining.  In fact, I prefer it that way.  The reason the Warcraft world has always appealed to me was because it's a breath of fresh air when compared to fantasy worlds that take themselves ultra-seriously.  You gotta love it when a dwarf with a mortar and a bad Scottish accent shouts, "Hey you!  Catch!"

It even has a /silly command.  "Moo.  Are you happy now?", or the unapologetically irreverent "I'm going to relieve myself behind this bush.  Cover me!"

I guess I can see why people that want to be Keithineolin the Exiled Elven prince, complete with a website that documents his ongoing search to find his family and true love, may detest a world like WoW.  But as for me, I'm in my element.

AAAARRGGGGHHH!!!!


Sorry...flashback to my last UO resub. By that time, I would venture that fully 1/5 of every fucktard I ran across was named Drizz't or Raistlin or some bastardization thereof. It was enough to make Baby Jesus shit his nappy.

Then I'd just be Undead Warlock Bastard #3612, my character still completely undifferentiated as I slide down the linear set of rails put there by Blizzard for my race/class combo.  All humans are good, all undead are bad, and there won't be any conflict beyond simple wordless violence because the two can't even speak to one another.  That isn't an RPG at all.


I just don't know why Blizzard put RP servers in place, when the game clearly isn't designed for RP at all.


Well in UO, the effectiveness of paladin abilities is modified by karma.  So if you want to use those abilities to go out and slaughter innocent peasants or whatever, you can, but you'll be getting weaker with each kill.  On the other hand, the use of Necromancy depletes your karma so much that it's almost impossible to keep it in the positive range.


That's the fault of the hack writer who created an "evil race" in the first place.

What if I want to be a paladin that slaughters innocent villagers but because of my pact with dark powers I still manage to keep all my strength?

I mean come on, you could just as easily say that you are sliding down the rails UO gives you because they won't let you be a powerful paladin and still be ev0l.  Just because the quest structure is less straightforward and effect based rather than having you specifically accept a charge to go do something good doesn't mean it's any different.

I don't think it breaks immersion at all for a clergyman of "The Light" to ask a young paladin to go off and do great deeds.  And you don't have to do a single quest to play WoW - you can go kill bunnies for all the game cares.  The quest system is just there to give you a direction if you so desire it.  Just so happens, most reasonable people do desire it (ones without an axe to grind about how The Old Stuff is Better).

WoW gives you no input into your character at all, outside of straight advancement.  A warlock and a paladin don't really do anything different in the world, besides their class-specific quests, and the world doesn't react to either of them differently.  On the other hand if you and I are both plain vanilla warriors in UO, except yours has butchered one too many gypsy encampments and is down into negative karma, and we bump into an angel?  It'll rez me if I die, but it'll chase after you and kick your ass.


You clearly missed the point, which is this:  The deeds aren't all that great when they're the only ones you can do.


Yes, a hardcore masochist could play the game without quests.  But there still wouldn't be any character differentiation, just a slower rate of advancement.

Yes, Yes - you're right.  And ?

The problem comes from calling them RP servers.  I have no idea why they did that.  All I know is that those particular servers have really cut down on stupid names and stupid people (European Earthen Ring, anyways...)

You are essentially talking about faction. WoW has that.  And, that wasn't in UO when I was playing.  So it's a recent addition. WoW has it at launch.


I didn't miss the point.  They aren't the only ones you can do, but even in real life do you think a goody two-shoes could walk into a crack house and ask them if they want something done?  First they'd say, hi Mr Cop and second he'd find himself in a shallow grave.

And I have a friend who refuses to quest.  His rate of advancement is faster if anything, but probably about comparable.  It's just more fun to watch grass grow than to grind like that (IMO) as we all know from countless games of this genre.  He is new to it though, so that's probably why he doesn't care.

Behold the power of noisy lobbists and the company that just wants them to shut the fuck up.

From the time in Beta that the PvP servers were announced up until the RP servers were announced there were at least 2 5+ page threads a week asking why Blizzard was 'catering' to one demographic while ignoring the other.

Ah, how I love the "me" generation redux.

In the same way the PvP servers draw the battle.net griefer crowd away from normal servers, the RP-flagged servers attract "roleplayers". (For "roleplayers" read fantasy literature psychos who build their entire persona around someone else's IP whether it's Tolkien, Salvatore or Weis/Hickman.)

They are there to make the Normal servers playable. And for that I thank them.

My Point was, it doesn't appear to be doing that, at least as far as I can see.  Hardcore 'Roleplaying' is not in evidence.

Grinding, if anything, is faster than questing, especially at 30+, though it does depend on your class to some extent.  The absolute fastest way to level is a mix of questing and grinding, where you do a selection of quests that are all in the same area and that you can do at the same time and then top it off with grinding till you're ready to move to the next area.

RP'ing on ER isn't exactly non-existant.  In spite of certain people claiming "it is gh3y to RP in a bliz game wtf?", when I actually pay attention to what other people are doing, it's at least half and half.  Basically, you have people that are focused on grinding quests/xp that don't feel like interacting with other players ATM, let alone bothering to RP, but when they're done they drop by an inn or something and have a go at it.

The Horde especially has a lot of RPing going on.  I guess it's a lot more fun to pretend you're a blood-crazed orc than a human mage.

Yesterday was the first day I actually contemplated "grinding" in the game. I was level 48 at the time. At this point, I realized that I'm basically doing quests for items. If they are just for cash, unless its a huge payoff, I don't bother anymore. The xp gains from quests are now worth next to nothing. To me, this is a problem. It's not that I want it to be easy at the top. It's just that I would like the xp returns to be worth the hours of effort some of them take. For example, I can kill ten mobs at my level while rested, and I will get the same xp as a quest that takes me at least an hour and many deaths to complete.

In essence, I don't think they've scaled the quests correctly for xp gains at the top.

WoW has those little bars that fill up when you do quests from a specific city, and when they're full enough they'll sell you a horse for cheaper.  Whoopee.  Hell, even old-timey UO at least let you differentiate by going red and being unable to enter town, even if the actual PVP implementation was a nightmare.



What the hell are you going on about?  If you want a cops-and-criminals metaphor, fine:  In WoW, everyone is a cop, and no one is ever a criminal.  It is impossible to do anything non-heroic.  On the other side of the planet there is a faction made up entirely of criminals, and it's impossible for any of them to ever go straight.  These two factions can shoot at one another, but there is absolutely no potential for a story, since the two sides can never speak to one another or co-operate even clandestinely.  A hero doesn't mean shit because there are thousands of him and he never had a choice, while the villains may as well be AI mobs anyway for all the interaction you're allowed.

You're being generous.  At level 14, my mage can kill four mobs while rested to gain more xp than from a completed quest.  The reason I do them is to see the content.  The rewards are often lousy, especially when they offer nothing my class can equip.  But it's not much effort to coordinate them with areas I would like to grind in, anyway.  Typically I gather all the required items while "rested", then head back to town or whatever to turn them in when my xp bar is back to purple.

Has Blizzard actually stated that quest xp was supposed to be an alternative to grinding xp?  It clearly isn't, but it helps. 

As a sidebar, I don't see how people can actually afford their skills and equipment without completing quests or getting handouts.  The only reason I'm not broke is because my blacksmith warrior has one item (out of about 30 recipes) that is in good demand at the auction house.

I did quests on my mage till about 22, then I had a healer friend follow me around while I used AoE's to level.  That's faster than shit, was getting about 1 - 1 1/2 bars of exp every pull, about 45s of downtime between drinking and running to the next camp.  Murloc's for the win!

I wonder the same about you.  I don't care what metaphor we use, I'm just trying to get this point across: you are wrong when you say you can never do anything non-heroic.  You don't have to do any quests, ever.  You can go around saying (as unrealistic as it may be) that you are a bad paladin who never does anything his superiors ask him to, and in fact likes to murder small pets.  Or you can be an undead warrior who has a kitty cat and likes to go for long moonlit walks.


Here's some news:  in any MMOG, everyone can't be the hero, at least in a meaningful way.  The best you can do is offer the illusion (for RP purposes) that you are the hero of some storyline.  In UO, that's up to you.  In WoW, you have the option to play along with the backstory.  For some reason, most people choose to.  Maybe that's the more popular choice? 

It doesn't have to be your choice.  If that's the case, I suggest you find a board where the people discuss UO instead of coming here to inform everyone that their game sucks because it offers you the chance to play along with an existing story instead of inventing your own.

While not wishing to bash on you WUA, it does seem to me that you are complaining that WoW is 'not the game you want'.


Well, ok.

So what ?

Don't play it ?

Wow, you've totally rebutted my point about the content being linear and leaving no room for differentiation of characters.  After all, I can just IGNORE THE CONTENT ENTIRELY.  Way to go.  Oh wait, the only difference between the questing and non-questing characters is a matter of varying advancement rates, so even that doesn't set my toon apart from others of his race/class combo.  Never mind.


Yes, and I can also play Pac-Man while roleplaying an eating disorder and a homosexual crush on the pink ghost.  But since WoW is billed as an MMORPG, complete with RP-specific servers, it should really do a better job of facilitating roleplay than Pac-Man.


Which is a lot easier to do when the game doesn't have everything you will ever do and every ability you will ever acquire planned out from the moment of character creation.  Yes, I know you can thwart the game's attempt at predestination by stubbornly refusing to engage in any content at all, but let's be serious here.


WoW doesn't simply have you play along with a backstory.  It has the entire primary narrative planned out from the very beginning, and the only alternative you can suggest is that a player stuff his fingers into his ears and shout "LALALA! NOT DOING ANY QUESTS EVER! CAN'T HEAR YOU!"


I sense the beginnings of a marketing blurb in there somewhere...  Let me see if I can pull it out... ah...

World of Warcraft, The Role-Playing Game Where Inventing Your Character's Story Is For Fags!


Quick, look!  Rather than quietly accepting that a game is not for them, someone is bitching about it in a web forum!  Stop the presses!

I've never understood why people need a game to facilitate their roleplaying anyways. Do RPers fall asleep as soon as they lie down and hit the lights? I don't know about anyone else but I roleplay in my mind while I wait for my brain to shutdown, and get more than enough of it that way. I don't need a MMOG to roleplay... neither does anyone else. When you roleplay in a MMOG it shows either a lack of imagination or the need for validation/drama queening amongst your RP peers. At least, that's my oppinion, feel free to deny it.

If all your roleplaying is in your own head, it's purely masturbatory.  For a "real roleplayer", the fun of roleplaying is in having your character interact with other characters that aren't under your control.  It allows you to be entertained by the other person's "performance", and the actions/words of their character will often force your character to react to situations that you hadn't thought out beforehand.  Not only is this fun because it's like watching a story be written in front of you, it's challenging because it puts you through the mental exercise of thinking through a "filter" ("transformation matrix" would be more appropriate but we aren't all graphics programmers) to figure out what your character would do in that situation.

That's if it's done "right", of course, in my subjective opinion.  Most of the roleplayers I've seen in MMOGs are completely masturbatory anyway, and are unable to react to other characters in any sort of creative or meaningful way.  The most hardcore "roleplayer" I've ever seen was somebody in SWG who came into a cantina and delivered a long soliloquy about her mysterious and unique past.  She also engaged in what appeared to be pre-scripted (and completely cheesy) banter with her Arrr-Peee-er comrade - I can only assume that they had repeated this exact performance in other cantinas all over the galaxy.  My attempts to engage her in in-character conversation fell flat because her character wasn't a character at all, she was a story (and not a very creative one at that). 

Few people (other than improv actors) have ever experienced what I would call "good" roleplaying, which is why most people don't get the appeal.

Anyone who was in Theed, Coronet, or hmmm some other city whose name escapes me at the moment, right before FFXI came out saw me roleplay. I put on the formal suit (blue and white leisure suit looking thing) and went to each cantina, stood in the corner and preached. I responded to every player as the evangelist. It was beautiful. I even, it would seem, got some people to switch over to FFXI when it came out. I very much enjoy playing "someone/something" else in a game for short periods of time, but there's far too many people willing to fuck up immersion. Hence, my previous statement stands, roleplaying is dead online.

I guess we aren't going to agree on this.  I think giving the player some content that he is free to ignore is somewhat superior to not giving the player any content and telling him to find his own.  But then I don't really follow the game that I assume you're using as a model (UO - I could be wrong here), so I don't know what your comparison is. 

In my day, UO pretty much had no storyline, so the story of the world was the following:  there is no story except the conflicting stories of a hundred different lifeless drama queen elf princes who could often be found emoting *strokes his beard thoughtfully*.

Please to inform how, if you had WoW as a canvas, you would fix the supposed lack of any choices in the game.  I would love to know how I can avoid being a robot to the WoW designers' will.

I used to hate playing GI Joe with friends because I couldn't control what went on (I'd do it because you still get interaction with friends which makes up for the actual play being crap). I have never, and probably will never enjoy anyone else's input in my "playtime" unless it is co-operative (team/group game), competitive, or aesthetic (ie. they don't really affect me, they are just there doing their own thing and their input is just conversation/company). I've never enjoyed playing a role... when I play by myself it's always either a game, or me creating my own story and seeing it either played out in my mind or action figures (in my youth... though I imagine if I had access to GIJoe figures I probably would play with them). When I play with others it's always a game. So I guess my personality just completely clashes with the appeal of roleplaying.

Actually, I'd consider the input of another roleplayer to be a combination of "co-operative" (you cooperate toward the common goal of defining your characters and enriching the world that you're both a part of) and "aesthetic" (your characters and the story between them is, IMO, a type of art).  It can even be competitive to some extent - it can be lots of fun to play your character to the hilt, in defiance of metagame restrictions (for example, doing something that OOC you know is dumb but that it's perfectly reasonable for your character to do), and thereby challenge other players to follow suit rather than using "metagame thinking" and backing out.  (This is a good way to seperate the achievers/munchkins from the roleplayers.)

The thing that defines a roleplayer, I think, is thinking of roleplaying itself to be a "game" the same as any other, and to fit within that cooperative/competitive/aesthetic sphere that you describe.  The tricky thing is that roleplaying does not have clearly-defined rules and arbitration, which is why it's almost impossible to represent in a computer game, and why "RP police" like the ones who inspired this thread always come off looking like douches.  Even in a PnP game, you can't "enforce" role-playing, you can only encourage it.

To take an example from outside the realm of what most people consider "games", consider the improv exercise "freeze tag (http://www.staircase.org/structures/tag.html)".  There's no way that you could make a computer game out of that, but damn is it fun.

Branching quests with multiple solutions, even if it's a simple "talk vs kill" choice.  Mutually exclusive quests.  Person X wants you to kill 15 foozles, but person Y wants you to kill person X, things like that.  Let me buddy up to the Defias and do some work for them.  Prevent Alliance and Horde from grouping, but let them learn each others languages.  Allow guilds to declare war on one another, even if both belong to the same overall faction.  Let me pickpocket NPC townsfolk and have the guards chase me.  Give me something, anything, to do that will cause the world to treat me a little differently than someone else.

I took the liberty of numbering them so that I could respond to each without insane quoting.

1 - I think that's a good idea.  Quests that can "go bad" are a good one too, where the quest npc attacks you for choosing the wrong option.
2 - Probably a good idea, but won't happen.  Too easy to confuse Joe Newbie.  "Why can't I kill person X now that I've done foozle B quest?"  Think of WoW as a beginner-friendly MMOG and you've got it.
3 - I think that would be damn cool.   I hold out some hope that this might one day be in, because even as it is now, there are some neutral goblin factions (Booty Bay etc) that you can raise or lower your faction with.
4 - Never going to happen, and for good reason.  DAOC got that right at least.  Trash talk can be an art form if done right, but most retards don't do it right.  "You can't handle the trash talk!"
5 - Once again, I think this would confuse the newbies.  You should be able to get all the PvP you desire fighting the other side.  It's not like there's a shortage of them.  And if you think guild wars will encourage RP, you've never played AC1 or SB (for example).  It's ALWAYS about out-of-game and ooc reasons, NEVER about rp.
6 - Something like this happens in Booty Bay.  If you attack someone in town, the bruisers go after you.  But PvP stealing will probably never be in. You think missing items in your pack doesn't generate support calls?  Not economical.


So I agree with you in theory on a few points, but a few ain't gonna happen.  I suppose though that those aren't game-breakers for me.  If they are for you, fine.. different strokes.

Try looking at it from the perspective of WoW being beginner-friendly, and UO for the more advanced roll playah.  Things make a lot more sense then.

It's not confusing at all if it's done logically.  "Why won't the director of the museum give me the quest to recover their stolen artifact?"  "Because you did a quest yesterday to rob them!"


Why not mute all players then, and eliminate all insults?   :roll:


It works well enough in UO, at least on my shard and with the set of RP guilds I deal with.  In any event, this and the item listed above guarantee that you never have an enemy who means shit.  They're all just silent mobs with better AI.


Doesn't need to be from players.  Let someone steal from an NPC, and if they get caught, they can't come back there for X hours without getting hammered.

I know you're being deliberately obtuse, but it's because "trash talk" only really happens between people that are on different sides of the conflict.  The fact that an Alliance player can't kill another Alliance player eliminates the possibility that an Alliance player would kill another Alliance player and then engage in moronic trash talk to add insult to injury.  Hence, Alliance players are allowed to talk to each other because the amount of intra-Alliance trash talking that goes on is pretty damn low (if it exists at all), and is far outbalanced by "positive" conversation that happens along those channels.

However, if Horde and Alliance could talk to each other, the predominant form of communication that would go on would be trash talk and hate tells - either the winner gloating about winning, or the loser whining about losing and flinging cheater accusations.  Neither is condusive to fun, so they took it out.

Muting all players is not necessary toward this goal because not all players can kill one another (I know this is probably another one of your complaints), which means that not all players are trash talk targets for other players.  See first paragraph of this reponse for an explanation of why this is so.

Have I made this sufficiently clear?

Speaking of the lovely SWG, WoW will soon be implementing funny-pages-like dialog bubbles as well. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/)

Oh, it exists, and is alive and well. (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-earthenring&t=25765&p=1&tmp=1#post25765)

Official forums!

It burns! It burrrrrnnnnns!

They're more amusing when you're not standing in the middle of the shit-fest.

As for me, it gives me a good idea of how these people are when I see them in-game for the first time.

Heh. Tells you everything you need to know right there.

I think Uthanak, a lvl 58 orc, said it best:



For some reason, it seems all the Alliance vrs Alliance trash talking has something to do with The Keepers of the Keg. (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-realm-earthenring&T=21526&P=1)  It's too bad they wasted such a fun and festivial name on a power-gaming guild.  That's my only beef with them though, as I my world consists of little more than Silverpine, werewolves, and bear adds.

Wow, min 58 and must be on at these hours or have an excuse?

Officer: You've been neglecting the raid hours. You've missed the last two days in a row. What do you have to say for yourself?
Member: Uh, I went on vacation, with my family.
Officer: Family? That is unacceptable. We have to make sacrifices to the guild in order to achieve.
Member: Dude it's my family.
Officer: Nonsense, we are your family now. Report to your gaming station at 21:00 hours or suffer the consequences.
Member: Consequences? This is an online game. What are you going to do, thrash me on the forums?
Officer: I will not suffer your insubordination any longer. Your membership is terminated, effective immediately.
Member: What are you, 12? Get laid you freak.

Bears are KoS in Silverpine. Follow this and you will go well.

Yes, and I spend all my time killing the stupid things.  Every fight I enter ALWAYS has at least one bear add.  They must multiply like rabbits.  Motherfuckers.

I like to cast Shadow Word: Pain on rabbits in passing.

So enemies can never speak, and all humans in WoW are the magical kind that never fight amongst themselves.  If you happen to like MMO Diablo 2, then good for you, but can anyone seriously claim this is an RPG?


I am the biggest carebear on earth.

In other words, completely open PvP is a requirement for something to be considered an "RPG"?

Who the hell said anything about open-pvp?  Go read the thread again.

You did:

That sounds like a complaint about the inability to fight amongst themselves to me.


Yes.

I sense an imminent semantics argument on the horizon.

Wanna know why Blizzard put up RP servers when they game wasn't designed for RP?

Because the players demanded it.

Anyone remember how they originally weren't going to put up RP servers?  Then we got a huge petition from a ton of people, some wanting to roleplay and some wanting a safe haven from stupid names, asking for roleplaying servers.  Blizzard caved, but they weren't exactly going to redesign the game.

No, the game isn't great for RP.  I can't really come up with a decent backstory for a character and anything interesting that you could inject into the backstory just doesn't make sense in their world.  For example:  My guild has a Night Elf who was found abandoned near Ironforge and was raised by dwarves, thus expressing their mannerisms.  But if you read up on who the Night Elves are, where they come from, etc etc, that really just plain doesn't make sense.  Most Night Elves have been around since before Ironforge anyhow.

All I can do for my characters is come up with a general concept and just keep it to myself.  I can't express it in the game because I can't customize how my character looks or what he wears (EQUIPMENT DOES NOT EQUAL CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION FFS, LOOK AT COH AND LEARN) and I can't really make a backstory that isn't just a slightly different version of the same crap we've heard a thousand times because the world doesn't allow for it.

The game's not designed for it, and Blizzard said it themselves in their reluctance to support RP servers.  If you manage to actually RP successfully in World of Warcraft, you're one of the best RPers in the world.  Not only are you handling it in the already handicapped MMOG environment, but you're doing it in a game that doesn't have any support for it except putting the letters "RP" next to a server's name.  And changing names, every now and then.  Though I still saw Drizztz last night, among other more offensive "joke" names.  Yes, you're very funny for including the world "douche" in your name.  I wonder why no one has thought of that before.

Remember this?  You numbered it as item five on our little list.


That was my only mention of a change to the PVP system.  Thank you.

So humans can fight each other, but it's only if they belong to a guild that has formally declared war, otherwise an invisible force field prevents them from doing so?  I don't see how that's really any more believable.  Your statement can easily shift from "all humans in WoW are the magical kind that never fight amongst themselves" to "all guildmates in WoW are the magical kind that never fight amongst themselves."  Sure, you can draw the line in all sorts of different places, but the only way avoid the "they magically never fight" syndrome is to allow full open PvP.  Which would potentially make for a very un-fun game for those that don't enjoy massive gankfests. 

Even FPSes for the most part have "no friendly fire" as a default option, because outside of clan matches, every FF server inevitably devolves into a massive teamkill circle jerk at each spawn point.  I can't even imagine how you'd combine that with MMOG-style combat and a world consisting of not a dozen but a thousand retards, and then have something resembling a fun game.

The non-role-players respond to the RP h4t3.  "If you say something on the boards in-character, I will ignore your entire post." (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-realm-earthenring&T=30165&P=1)

Poster is shocked to find that the world still lives on without him.

I want pain and suffering damages in the amount of $300,000 just for reading the first few posts of that march of morons.

Seconded.

Also, I never read "in character" board posts/threads. It just really really pisses me off.

Because of the two comments above this, I went ahead and read the first page as well. I'll finish this post when I stop crying...


...blood.

You people suck ass for making me read that.

In other news, I'm glad you're not all retarded. With minor exceptions.

Will you stop dragging WUA into threads?

In the words of Schild:

Don't shit on my fun.

In the words of Boog in the words of schild:

I hate fun.

If you ask me, out of everyone in this thread, WUA makes the best points.

And I'll be damned if I say it, I guess, but in most threads I've read with him in it, he seems to make a lot of sense. I really don't get the hate.

Then again, I'm probably the only one around here that likes Boog too.

Why do you hurt me? What did I do to you? You're making me cry, but I have to be manly with other people near me so I'll just quiver my lower lip a bit.

Enjoy Olive Garden. HAR HAR. :-D

They have a Zoo Keeper machine there, douchetard.

It's been long since proven that full-on gankage sucks.  (Cue trolling by Sinij.)  However, by instituting guild wars, you allow groups of like-minded players to implement their own group PvP in whatever context they wish.  If two uberguilds want to compare penis sizes by ganking each other, they can.  And if two roleplay guilds want to have a war in support of their own personal fiction, they can do that as well.  We've done player-run events in UO where certain people have been "captured" and a guild has to set them free by fighting their way through the opposing guild's guards, or one guild will be running a "convoy" of pack horses from one town to the next and the opponents have to stop it, things like that.  A bit contrived, sure, but there's just enough game mechanics there to let the roleplayers make up their own content.


I'm part of a group of three or four major guilds, and maybe half a dozen minor ones, that all have a large ongoing roleplayed war.  There are certain "gentleman's agreement" type rules governing when you can kill someone, and with rare exception these rules are followed, since a guild of asshats will quickly see their wars terminated, leaving them with nobody to fight.

PS:  Hey Schild, I wouldn't do so since a PM is private by definition, but can you imagine how many folks would crap in their pants if I were to post the contents of our PM dialogue from a couple months ago?   :-D

You mean when I asked you about maybe writing for us? That was long before you became a raging UO-fanboi asshole.

Everyone has a couple bad ideas, that was one of mine.

I'll stop being a UO whore as soon as someone puts out a fun and functional game that doesn't want me to chose an immutable race/class combo at character creation and then level them.  I really will.  But that aside, where have I used it to level unfounded criticisms in comparison?  Am I wrong in, for example, this thread?  If so, where?  If I alternated my "other game" comparitive references between UO, and say... Asheron's Call, would it still be objectionable?

References had nothing to do with your points. It's the general attitude you blew in the previous months. Even if you wanted to be rational now, that's fine, you're still clinging to a fossil and you know it.

Nobody gives a shit that your pet game is UO. It's just that you're a rabid fanboi. You could be a rabid fanboi of WoW and people would still tell you to STFU about it.

Yes.  But I'm so tired of throwing words at the problem that you win.

Congrats, you win the argument through word count.

No.  My long-standing position has been that UO is a "broken down old whore" and that my continued interest in it is more of a sad commentary on the "Let's remake Everquest!" state of the industry than anything else.


It's a fossil!  Oh noes!  Tell me, when the New Big Game comes out totally lacking in guild war/alliance features, and without even a crappy "instanced apartments" excuse for player-owned territory, am I supposed to NOT conclude that MMOG design has gone backwards?  I mean, as an example, you know what sucked in UO?  Boats.  Man, they're still choppy lag-inducing pieces of shit to this day.  But has anyone done a system like that better over the last seven years?  Has anyone even TRIED?  Nope, but you can play the shiniest dikuMUD... like... EVER!


Really?  Let me recap.  You asked what I would do differently, and I threw six ideas at you off the top of my head.  Go back a page and read, three of them you thought were either "good ideas" or "damn cool" and the others you responded to with ambiguous comments about trash-talk concerns, possibly confusing newbs, etc.  Yeah motherfucker, if you're gonna pick someone to have won that exchange, it was me.  It certainly wasn't you with your "players can just ignore all quests" idea.

Should I vanish soon, it's probably because I just sent Shock a PM asking him to quit with things such as the above.  Calling names is fine if there's a point to go with it, but this is just admin-trolling.

The thing about you though Windup is that you make posts in these kinds of threads that wouldn't seem out of place in the politics forum. I did have the terrible insight just earlier that you remind me of a just-before-a-ban Bruce or Geldon, but I'll spare you the comparison. Oops, too late. :P

Unlike Bruce, WUA can actually argue and/or make a point (Whether or not you like that point is not the point here though  :-)). He can also stick to the issue at hand, and not make the thread about his sex life.

Unlike Geldon, WUA is articulate. Rude maybe, but still articulate (and btw, Geldon isn't banned. At least I hope not??).

Anyways, without Raph around all the time, I appreciate the posts Windup makes. Somebody has to defend that side of argument from time to time.

By definition, it is no longer private when you brag about it publicly.

This makes you sound like a major douchebag.  Go play some UO.  It's crawling with people like you.

And it wasn't you either with your "WoW's problem is that it's not UO" argument.

Somehow, despite all the problems you have with it, WoW has accomplished something seemingly impossible in this space: a game that is fun at the beginning, end and middle. "Not the sort of thing that WUA likes" is not directly equivalent to "MMOG design has gone backward".

And for the record, I think that you're articulate and all that - I'd rather debate you than Bruce any day.  But I am tired of this topic.  We are never going to agree, that seems fairly clear.  We're to the point of talking at each other instead of to.

No, it's problem is that while it has lots of content, the player has very little input into the course of content-consumption or the customization of their character.  And that's it.  I use UO as a counter-example in instances where it fits (character customization) and leave it aside when discussing things like branching quests.  Now if everyone wants to call me a n00bz0r for not having played more games, fine, whatever.  If someone wants to point out where something from a game I've missed alters the argument, great.  And if they want to call me an asslicking polesmoker as they do it, they can knock themselves out. But I'd appreciate it if the board in general would quit trying to strawman me as coming into threads and randomly spamming "tihs game sux uo pwns."


See, I'm almost one of those "virtual world" idealists.  Almost.  I don't want a PK madhouse, but I think these games would be much better if the designers could work just a little more "world" into their "virtual."  There's a happy medium in there somewhere, and I play my tired old game because it's a former PK madhouse that's been nerfed up into that middle range.  Anyway, yes, I have a strong opinion on what makes an MMO fun, and I'm arguing about it on a messageboard.  Again, stop the presses.   :-P


Meh.  I don't think anyone is really gonna argue that branching quests and more faction options are bad.  It's just a matter of whether you think they're a better investment of development resources than... say... a new uberdungeon or two.

I do get that you are comparing it to games LIKE UO, not UO itself.

My point is that obviously someone ... or many someones... enjoy WoW style gaming over UO style gaming. If you think that's a sad commentary on the world, fine.  To branch off into metaphor, if you like art-house movies over blockbusters, fine.  Go to the art-house movies.  But don't expect Jerry Bruckheimer to start making heartfelt dramas that have multiple layers of meaning.  Enjoy your fine and sensitive tastes and let rest of the world enjoy its explosions.

To use a metaphor a little closer to the point: 

There is a style of acting called Improv (bear with me). That's where, given a character, the actor responds in a non-scripted way to other people who have been given characters to work within. 

What most actors do, though, is given a script that specifies each and every word she will speak.  However, somehow even this acting is still classified as "creative work", even though the actor is "sliding on rails" toward a prescripted destination.

Both styles of acting are valid, enjoyable, fulfilling, and all that kind of stuff.

Yes, the end goal of scripts and/or scenes are prescripted, but improv still exists. Scripts and plays are written in a way so as not to be so fleshed out. Individual ideas and spontaneity still come into play in character development and how the characters relish within scenes -- with the goals and outcomes being guiding posts. I hate to ruin your analogy, but it's not as rigid as you think. Script acting is not the opposite of improv - it actually uses a lot of it. It's improv with direction.

The opposite of improv would be a situation where a director or writer wants the players to abide solely by his or her vision...That's never considered a good thing really (except by the one person in charge, of course).

edit: No, this is not a derail. Yes, this is still very much about MMOG's  :-P

Don't worry - in fact you just made my point for me.  You've hit on WHY it's still considered creative work even though the script is worked out before the first actor ever says a line.

Personally, I'm not saying that Warcraft is t3h 5uc|< or anything; I think it's a great game.  However, it's not something you can roleplay in very easily.  Lots of people like World of Warcraft, and that's fine.  It does a lot of things well.  One of the things it does not do well is encourage roleplaying.

I'm going to have to agree with what I think Atheist is saying here (feel free to correct me): specifically, that if you want a game where it makes any kind of sense to roleplay, you have to pull away from the very scripted, very linear form of Warcraft and towards a more open, "Virtual World" style game.  For roleplaying to have any meaning in a massively multiplayer environment, you need to give players the ability to differentiate themselves from each other, which World of Warcraft does not do.  Yes, you can refuse to do quests, but there is no positive action you can perform that will establish your character.  There is nothing you can do to establish yourself as a hired assasin type character, for example, you can only refuse to do things which contradict that concept.  You can't do anything assassin-ish, you can only refuse to do things that an assassin wouldn't do.  That doesn't establish your character as an assassin, it just establishes you as a guy who doesn't like to do FedEx quests, or whatever.

I'm not saying that World of Warcraft is bad in any objective sense.  A lot of people like it.  I like it.  But it is not a game in which you can do a lot of roleplaying.  If you want a game where you get a lot of roleplaying, you're going to have to open the setting up somewhat, or everyone will end up playing the same character.  This (as I see it) means less focus on the setting as a "game" in which everything is fair and balanced (and thus very, very tightly controlled), and more focus on the setting as a "world" in which players have the freedom to do a lot of different things (even if those things annoy other players).  This would invariably annoy some players.  Some people won't like it.  Some people will love it.  Does that make it worse?  Does that make it better?  I don't know about that.  But Warcraft definitely doesn't do it.

Hmm, I don't see it as being all that comparable. It's probably best to drop the analogy and not get into it any further though....As much as I'd love to discuss the similarities of acting to virtual worlds.

So...Glad I could help. I guess  :-)

TEH WINNAR!

But another frustrating thing is that WoW's strengths (tons of content, ease of use, high production values, friendliness toward casual play, etc.) don't preclude what we're talking about in any way.  There's no reason we can't have both, in theory.  But UO is way too old and creaky to have the production value, and WoW seems to have just not bothered with the "fluff."

I see my chocolate, I see my peanut butter, now someone fucking put them together.

By the way, I see this all the time and I have to say that it's a disgusting combination and all devotees should be shot for gastronomic deviancy.

I agree with you there.  I never got into UO, my only experience with it was the player shard that was made by someone who posts here, which eventually closed.  And I didn't play long, because a) the UO client is clunky, b) there was next to no documentation, and c) I couldn't be bothered to take a long time figuring out the interface for a game I wasn't enjoying initially anyway.

I've played lots of level-up games.  I'm tired of level up games.  I think an ideal game for me at this point would be one that lets you set skills up before hand, like a modern UO that lets you spend 500 points up front, no skill higher than 75% or so.  With character mods a la Shadowbane, spend some points to get some bonuses or penalties or some such.

Then, the game is not about rabidly trying to gain the last 200 points... it's about the quests(complex branching ones, with options  like you mentioned), it about working for one side/faction or another.  Some skillsets might push you toward one group or another, having clerical skills wouldn't be useful unless you'd spent some time helping out the church.  Perhaps the mages guild would offer to teach you newer spells in exchange for doing some research for them.

But most of all, the majority of the game is not about advancement.  The quests might give some money as a reward, but primarily would be done for 'faction points' or whatever with that group.  For in-character reasons... not because you're 10% from level 14, and want to level tonight.

Alkiera

The quest chain i have enjoyed most so far in this game, is exactly what WUA has been talking about.

In desolace, thier is a tuaren chick in ghostwalker post that wants you to weaken the centaur tribes by first gaining thier trust and then betraying that trust in the worst possible way, to "weaken" them.

The thing is, since nothing you do will ever ultimately weaken the centuar tribes as a whole, the thing that actually made these (mutually opposing, but not absolutely exclusive if you're really willing to grind) quests interesting is that for the first time you can AFFECT HOW NPCs ACT TWORDS YOU.  By killing tons of magram centuar, the gelkis will see you as an ally and turn green.  Then Uthek the Wise (gelkis leader) begins to trust you more and more, as you complete increasingly difficult tasks for her.

One quest in particular she asks of you, is *extremely* time-inefficient in terms of leveling, it involves you going to another continent in a place thats fairly innconvient to reach, especially for a horde on a pvp server, but i and several people i had been questing with really wanted to due it because it was cool to be gaining an ally, for our actions to actually have some effect other then generating a lootable corpse.

It was tremendously disappointing when this quest chain came to an end, and the fact that, as far as i know, thier is nothing else like it in the game.

I dont think alot of WUA ideas are outside of WoW's design contraints, it really is more a matter adding more of specific elements that are already present, but underdeveloped.

I'll shoot you if you try to take away my Reeses Pieces.

I'm hoping that as time goes by, the develop features like this.  It's not out of the question given the current state of "mature" MMOGs as way different from how they launched.  I'm curious how WoW looks in 3-4 years.

The faction system in Everquest "Scars of Velious" was pretty good.

Faction choices affected what high-end quest armor one could get. It felt really cool to ally with the giants to get access to the best quest armor (with the added fun of walkng around in a previously aggro high end zone)

It had a huge flaw though--you could reverse your faction perfectly, and if you were in an "uber" raid guild, quite easily--in fact, you could go from full hate--dragon/full ally giant to the exact opposite simply by clearing that giant castle zone with the AoW, etc. in just a few uber mob sweeps. Need to do a dragon armor quest? Hit the next 2 AoW kills and you were good to go. Need to do a giant armor quest? Clear ToV in one night and you were good to go, or close. In other words, your faction didn't have persistence, just a latest net total.

Necro for hilarity: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26262580162&sid=1

5 year necro!

P.S. IME Alliance RPers are the creepiest mother fuckers on the internet.

We just threw a couple people out of my guild when one bragged about his cyberfucking a guildmate on Moon Guard in Goldshire. Specifically because he was 21 and she was 13.  :pedobear:

I'm on a RP server. The only role playing I've ever noted is the occasional person who walks instead of running. Of course, I avoid Goldshire.

Also, my server is/was host to the most awesome PvP alt ever: A gnome mage named 'twinkerbell'. He was a fucking PITA in PvP, at least back before TBC. Don't know about now. Probably moved onto more fertile ground.

I'm fairly sure some of the players mentioned in the "bad groups" thread are actually roleplaying.

Kirin Tor had very little RP back when I was playing.  Most people were playing on the server because RP servers are supposedly slightly more mature; few actually roleplayed, and most guilds were progression or pvp-oriented.

Moon Guard on the other hand is gaining popularity as THE roleplay server, and it sounds like their Goldshire is pretty bad.  Played to level 28 on it briefly, saw some roleplayed "News" sessions in Stormwind with people sitting non-disruptively and listening, and a few guilds with a RP "purpose."

Moon Guard Goldshire Inn is like nothing I have ever seen in a MMO.

Non-Goldshire RP on Moon Guard seems to be more present than on any other RP server I've been on, but yeah, their Goldshire fucking blew my mind. There was some post on their boards that was a sort of "Welcome to Moon Guard!" thing, and it had DO NOT GO TO GOLDSHIRE as one of the "rules." And I thought, "Oh ha ha, every RP server says that!" But then ... then I went there.  :ye_gods:

I play Horde there, though, and it's pretty cute.

Ok, I'm gonna regret asking but what is it about their Goldshire? I'm picturing some kind of creepy red light district kind of thing.

Just imagine the inn filled with a hundred or so characters, about half of them naked, about three quarters of them level 1, and the screen merrily scrolling away with /say and /yell and /emote descriptions of, well, all sorts of things.

As to WHY Goldshire, who knows.  It's an easy jog for a level 1 human, I suppose.  And once it became infamous, it fed on itself.

EDIT: Here, I got you a picture.  This is at 1 am server time, btw:


The chat is really the thing, though, so you unfortunately need to log in to see that for yourself.  The Tuskar-seeking dude in this pic is just the tip of the iceberg.

Ummm...wow.

I like how bearform druid/tuskarr fetish is fine, AS LONG AS IT'S NOT GAY!  :-o  Because GAY tuskarr/bear porn is just going too far!

Oh Jesus, and someone who wants someone who knows about Gor (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/swear-gor.php). I almost linked the wikipedia entry but it somehow manages to leave out the absolutely astounding misogyny involved.  :heart:


EDIT: My favorite Goldshire moment was someone asking in General for some family RP. Then there was a beat. And then the follow up "No ERP" request from the same guy. <3

ERP? Erotic?

Yep.

 :ye_gods: Why? The WoW population just takes everything to frightening levels.

Um...I hate to break it to you but every single online game has some sort of community devoted to adult entertainment. It may not reach SL levels but it's always been out there.

Sure, but to the level where we found out about it even if we weren't involved on that server? Or the mass gatherings that had to be policed by mods for being too over the top?

I mean sure, put 100 people in a room and a few of them are going to be total anti-social deviants. That's just odds.

This stuff be out there, it's not a WOW thing.

The MUD I played on and built a few zones for (Pandora's Box, it was your standard run-of-the-mill diku... most of the population, me included, didn't even RP) had an 'adult entertainment RPer' clique back in 1997. They started with evil vampires, switched to Gor (that's when I learned about it too... there are some things you cannot unsee or unlearn  :ye_gods:), then back to evil vampires and pixies once the public outcry got the Gor guild broken up.

I love Gor.

Not like in the sense I want to participate in it, but I've always felt Gor really helped out the kinky community by skimming off a sizeable contingent of crazy into a seperate, crazy-filled pool.

Is it a bad time to mention I run an adult themed wow guild on moonguard?   :oh_i_see:

How much for a tusk-job (not gay)?

Is it Gorean? Is it only open to rogues and druids, and pre-40 Hunters? (I think those are the only leather-wearers...)

Haha, it's just a roleplay guild that doesn't shy away from adult oriented storylines. It's not a brothel and god help me it will never be Gor, just a place unlike other guilds  where sex is stygmatized while violence is celebrated.  I mean seriously, I can't tell you how many rp guilds are fine with their members having belts made out of baby feet but the minute someone rp's a tit coming out suddenly it's ERP and forbidden.

It's forbidden because it's inappropriate for children to read in public channels.

I was a member of an adults-only guild, that had an affiliated guild for those under 18. And the "affliates" were pretyt much entirely children of the main guild.

It wasn't for sex -- it was for adults, with kids, who worked to play in a guild that did low-end raids but mostly were just available for questing and group stuff.

I don't remember there ever being any roleplaying, though there was a nice ceremony whenever a new person joined. Engineers provided fireworks. :)

Most rp doesn't actually take place in public channels anyways. regular rp or otherwise it's almost exclusively done in party chat or whispers, mostly to avoid griefing and partly so your posts don't get lost, of course anyone doing anything unsuitable for children in public should be banned.