f13.net

Sent in by Llava (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1144399704&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&).

Just to pre-empt any offense taken, even though I cover it in the article:

I use the word "gay" in a very derogatory, arguably bigoted manner.  I don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality.  Think 'South Park'- use of the word is part shock value (though if you're shocked by that... you need to turn down the sensitivity on your shockometer a bit) and part... well, laziness.  South Park can get away with it, so can I.

Okay.  I don't/didn't expect it to be a problem or anything, but just want to cover my ass (ha ha) on that one.

Your premise seems to be roleplaying=cybering.

I fucking hate that aspect of "roleplaying", but that is one aspect, sadly blown out of proportion because it is the number one fantasy of geeks who can never get any real sexual contact and have to play it out. That is NOT roleplaying.

Roleplaying is giving your character a background and motivation. And acting according to these motivations. For a long time my EQ Shaman never attacked or killed anything that wasn't attacking him first. He missed out on some raid encounters and even one of the Kunark Planes. Because he had a wife and kids at home (as background story, no other player, I always found that icky personally) he didn't have to engange in cybersex with other people. A short "Thanks I'm happily married", followed by a "Don't continue with this, how dare you try to tempt me! The Six Hammers of Justice may smite you!" usually took care of that.

One of my fondest memories in MMORPGs was an expedition from Halas to a bandit camp three zones away, to "Bring Justice to the plains of Karana". A group of people acting out the raiding of a camp in character. Just giving ourself a reason to be there and kill those bandits. Adding a layer of fun to the simple mechanic of going from A to B to kill C. And nobody cybertouched anybody.

I'm a roleplayer, and I hate 99% of the roleplayers I've ever met in MMOGS.
I mean, I hate how roleplaying seems to consist in turning every situation into some retarded pseudo-renaissance soap opera with balls and fucking weddings.
So I'll agree that having 100 guys saying "well met" for 2 hours so another one and a cybertransvestite can have their silly ceremony is too gay even for the gayest gay of them all.
I was part of the Lurikeen Uprising, a 1000 person leprechaun-only guild that invaded an RP server in DAoC. It was an hilarious infestation that amounted to a great oportunity for RP, that of  course was badly received by the leading drama dragqueens of the server, I mean... 250 rabid midgets crash into your lame flower throwing competition and all you can figure out to do is /appeal as fast as you can. Great RP there...

Hey, look what I found... I thought the intardnets had already lost it forever... http://archives.jeuxonline.info/fils/89963.html

Hmm, now that you mention it my last positve roleplaying experience in MMOGs is at least four years gone. You might be unto something...

Thanks for the article.  It really opened my eyes.  I knew you were pervy, but I had no idea you were gay. 

I don't mind the sex, really. It tends to go on in private and I don't have to see it. If it happens publically it is DEFINITELY against the rules and I can report those randy perpetrators to the proper authorities. Sex over wires is almost as old as communication over wires. We have reports of lascivious Morse code between telegraph operators. Meh.

It's the renaissance faire/soap opera that rises my gorge.

No, you are not the lost queen of a forgotten kingdom.
No, you are not a bandit lord.
No, you are not married.
STEP AWAY FROM THE CAMP FIRE --  IT IS NOT STORY TIME.

Some day there will be a game in which you can start as a street urchin and work your way up to bandit lord. I can already think of at least one game where marriage is more important and has more in-game effect than combat. These games are not and will never be World of Warcraft. I never want to be part of a game in which you can be the lost queen of a forgotten kingdom because, frankly, the supply of forgotten kingdoms cannot POSSIBLY keep up with the demand.

Gameworld-appropriate history and  background is great. Motivation and in-character chat while you PLAY THE ACTUAL GAME AS IT IS DESIGNED  is fantastic. Trying to play house and have tea parties in Anarchy Online is pathetic.  It hurts my sense of immersion more than some dipwad saying "LF HEALER" ever will. It makes the baby Jesus cry.

Some folks would prefer a social sandbox like the average MUSH... but left to their own devices, a crowd of pure Socializers flounders in their own elaborately incestuous mental-masturbation -- they need Achievers to give their world meaning. Just ask Old Man Bartle.

I take off my robe and wizard hat.

You obviously never had to endure people kissing and smooching a whole raid long over /emote. I envy you!
One of them was a Cleric. Fucking cleric shortage. There was nothing we could do about it.

Yeah, that's the meat of it. I fool around with a "roleplay" supergroup on CoH which is really nothing more than something to focus the banter around. There are very few games which can support a serious story, and most of them are niche.

Does AO count as niche? And did they ever implement player missions? You could do some serious stuff with that. I was out exploring and accidentally walked in on a "hostage situation" which was basically a clanner waiting in an Omnitek prison in a fairly open-PvP zone, and had a very interesting conversation which unfortunately started out as "don't shoot this is an RP".

--GF

You'd have to go to a MUD to find better roleplaying. MMOs are just not built for it.

Didn't you know that adding -eth to verbs makes you a good roleplayer?(as seen by his link) I owneth j00 RP noobs. lol

Hehe, I do some light RPing from time to time with characters I make on the RP servers, but sexuality just isn't a part of the program. If I'm horny I'll hit up my wife, probably get denied, then hit up my porn stash. The last place I would look for any kind of sexual fulfillment would be a videogame.

My latest RP character is a human priest on Steamwheedle Cartel named Grandpappy. Old black dude. It's fun to RP a cantankerous old man. It's not fun to RP a horny she-elf. I agree with the article - that's just gay.  :oops:

QFT

I'd even add that MUSHes are even better, since there are actually no combat mechanics at all and the whole thing has to be scripted and told by two or more 'mature' writers. That's where my best stories were told. I looked into RP guilds when in EQ, and although I respect them and what they are trying to do, the game play and graphics destroy any illusion that I'm able to write a real story of any sorts. The only thing of worth I saw were in MMO fan fiction.

I guess what it boils down to for me is wether you're writing a story or living out an alter ego that just sporadically reacts to its environment without any need for a fleshed out background. If you're just doing a personality revision for yourself, knock yourself out in MMOs. If you want to do interactive story telling, stick to text based games that not only allow that, but require it.

For hot Mangina information check out http://www.notaddicted.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138.

An article on the prevalence of androgynous sexuality in MMORPGs coming from a guy named Llava. Just saying...

No.

I've always been relatively open to a bit of RPing, but it always gets very very insipid, and I quickly give up.  There just isn't enough drive to act in character, and it never carries much meaning, I find.

Just because South Park does it doesn't make it right. I wish you would've come up with a better term. I also think you are painting all roleplayers with a brush that really only applies to a subset.

Unfortunately, in my experience, that subset is by far in the majority in online games. I've found, the less you leave up to the imagination of the players, the further they'll take the whole roleplaying thing and wander off into waters unchartered. And by unchartered I mean annoying.

In all seriousness, I really enjoy roleplaying.  I even do so occasionally in City of Villains now, just heading into Pocket D (the pocket dimension club) and chatting in-character.  However, that's not really writing a story.  Pretty much nothing that can happen in Pocket D is going to significantly change my characters one way or another- their stories advance when I say "Okay, I'm going to add to/change this story now."

I have to agree with schild in saying that it's been the majority of roleplayers in my experience.  Every time I start to consider getting  really involved in a roleplaying community, I read some of the stories by the people in the center of the whole thing and think to myself "Okay... nevermind, I'd rather not be a part of that."

It's not just the drama.  That's irritating, sure, but you can deal with it.  The really scary part is when you go to one of these things and you suddenly get the sensation, "...everyone here has cybered with everyone else here."  And the emotes start flying, and suddenly it's even more clear- you just walked into an online, in-character, swingers' club.

But it's not as though there's anything that could be done about it.  Those kinds of people are just out there, and it's not as though you can stop them from roleplaying.  More often than not, they're at the center of the roleplaying communities- you'd work really hard at it, too, if you thought it was going to get you laid.  The article was just for a laugh.

(And in all seriousness, I do apologize if anyone's offended by my use of the word "gay". As I said, it's not intended as a slam against homosexual individuals at all.  I figured that, in the context of this site, I could get away with it, given our enthusiasm for the term "art fag" and all.)

I don't play on RP servers.  I do RP occasionally.  I have one WoW toon who is always "in character" which can be rather challenging at times, although she's a tailor who spends most of her time in Stormwind.  It's on a regular pvp server.  I don't do stories, I just amuse myself.  Most of the time, I'm just playing the game (although that toon is mostly an AH toon).

The hostility from some people toward rp is quite amusing.

There's a guy on my server who rps full-time.  He's famous on the server.  All he has to do is say something, anything, and he elicits 5-6 comments.  I find it quite entertaining.

I played in an rp guild in DAOC on the Mordred server for a while.  (Mordred was the pk server).  It was all-rp, all the time.  It was an all-kobold guild called Shadowclan (aka Shaddurklan).  We used to surround players, and demand "tribute" from them (imagine being level 40 surrounded by 20 lvl 15 kobolds shouting "tribut!" and "klomp da pinky!").  Shadowclan has it's own language, in fact, and a strict hierarchy, with rules and so on.

That was a lot of fun, but it did become wearing after a while - all guild chat, public speaking, and even tells were in kobold-speak.

Anyhow, I've never run across cybering, nor a wedding, although I once attended an online memorial for a person who died irl.

Mih wur in Shaddurklan tuu.

Shadowclan was a lot of fun on Mordred and, in my opinion, a good example of what roleplaying SHOULD be.  It added fun and flavor to the server.  Nobody on the rest of Mordred was interested in roleplaying back, though, (or I should say- mostly nobody...every so often a couple people would join in) so it eventually just became a bunch of little, blue, funny talking weirdos.

They had a great attitude, though.  "You're only level 5?  Come on out to the frontiers, we'll take care of you!"

I dont think RP'ing is inherently gay as much as fantasy settings are 95% gay so any RP'ing done in them ends up gay.

But that doesn't explain why it followed over to City of Villains.

Course... there's all that spandex...

EDIT:

There's something going on in CoV right now on the Virtue server, it's pretty weird.  These guys just showed up with no fanfare or anything.  They've handled this pretty well, I'm impressed.  Wish more roleplayers were like this. (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=5216202&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1)

Waaagh Hoowah BuurzKlan! Heh, I was there too, the first months in Mordred, still wearing the starter leather rags at level 20 and living the life of a little blue highwaykobold are the high point of my MMOG life.

Hoowah!  Mor kobolds! Dats bubhosh!

Yes, Shadowclan was great fun.  Part of the fun for me was that they were rp'ers on a non-rp server.

I understand they are active on Bleeding Hollow for WoW.  Is that rp?

(If the damned WoW servers were working, I'd be able to log on and check myself.)

So it's a few years ago, the night of the big Age of Shadows patch in UO.  The goddamn thing is shit, and one by one shards are blowing up as they receive it.  The only shard not scheduled for a buttfucking that night is Siege Perilous, so naturally everyone makes a character there.  About forty of us newbs are sitting at SP Brit Bank, milling around aimlessly.

I start screaming that we should attack the Shadowclan fort near Yew, an NPC orc fort which the guild typically inhabits.  After a few minutes, someone with a developed character comes around and starts handing out yellow robes and cheap weapons.  Now we're forty armed newbs in uniform.  A mage opens a gate to the fort, and off we go.

The half-dozen orcs scattered at first, actually, at the sight of that many people spilling out of a gate.  Within thirty seconds or so, however, they realized what was going on, and the slaughter commenced.  They kept a wandering healer penned up inside the fort, so they could rez quickly in PVP, and we put that to good use.  We rushed them over and over, sometimes lasting only seconds between deaths, filling the fort with corpses and our packs with deathrobes.

It went on like this for twenty or thirty minutes, newbs screaming silly shit and rezzing over and over again, until petering out after the orcs killed their own wandering healer to keep us from rezzing.  Good times.

That's pretty much why I loved UO in a nutshell.

Ah this is always a fun discussion. I still play D&D every week, so I'm no stranger to roleplaying, but RP in an MMOG? Good luck. No one can ever agree on what equates good RP or bad RP, so everyone eventually just either has a hissy fit or runs of to cyber.

I've played a few in role characters over the years. Bunktavious on Siege in UO I played like a Druid - he wore robes, never tamed anything tougher than polar bear, and got his ass kicked all the time. I didn't really talk in character though, so was I roleplaying, or not? If I do roleplay, its usually a secondary character that I have no intent of ever being uber with. The two simply do not go hand in hand (which is one reason so many people see RP as a waste of time).

Then we can get in to the whole mangina thing. About half of my characters in MMOGs have been female. I never try to pretend I'm female and I never RP with them, but there is still that negative stereotype. I've wondered why I bother with the female characters, and the best answer I can give is that I generally prefer the art assets for females in these games over what they give the males. Otherwise, I don't know. Its not like I go wack off to my WoW character.

Shadowbane, before it came out, actually looked like it might lend itself to RP. That sounds silly, but full pvp games like UO, AC Darktide, etc have actually lent themselves to RP quite well. I think its the fact that the game doesn't force everyone to play on the same side. WoW missed the boat on this one, they really should have let the two sides understand one another on the RP servers. 

Anyways, about Shadowbane, I joined up with a group of people and participated in a pre game guild. This was probably about nine months before the game came out. Essentially we were a website/forum guild, since there was no game, made up of people from AC, EQ, etc, all with an interest in RP. It was fun for a while, people actually posting in character on the boards as we worked out the details of our little kingdom. It took about 4 months for the entire thing to devour itself in a mass of whiny chaos.

It was too bad, some of them were really good guys and girls (Grimwell was there briefly, he was smart enough to get out of Dodge before the whole thing imploded though). Roleplayers just can't seem to interact for long periods of time without wanting to kill one another.

Ah well, I always have my Priest of Hextor and his friends, hell bent on bathing in the blood of Heironious's self righteous peons in their pretty little city. Good old D&D.

God hates fa^h^h furries and nig^h^h^h roleplayers.

Because someone had to do it eventually, might as well get it out of the way.

Shadowclan rocked. I was lucky enough to rp with them some, though I never joined. This was way back on Cats, iirc, before they got GM blessing on the fort. There were a few newb orcs around training and a couple blue mages came along to mess with them. I was a thief, and this was before they changed the system, theives went red from stealing from blues back then (not some jerky bank thief, arrpeed). So I was red, with no combat skills (common for me in UO, heh). I was hiding out and filching reagents/arrows/weapons, really pissing off the pks. Eventually they took off because they couldn't attack anymore (though they did come back later with a vengeance).

The SC guys thought it was hilarious and let me hang out, despite being human. They loved my 'takee game', and trained me a little in swords so I wouldn't die so easily (I had whatever the default minimum strength was, and the accordingly low hp). They found it funny their training swords killed me in one shot :P

RP? One of the things that soured me on it was an otherwise nice girl who was a total cyberwhore, she had left her previous boyfriend for a guy she met online, cybering. That's disgusting, imo. I've always had a strict policy of 'gaming is gaming', and 'reality is reality', and ne'er the twain shall meet. Some people don't have a very strong hold on reality, or are just plain too freaky for me.

RP doesn't work in MMOG's, because the MMOG is a static, unchanging world. And roleplaying only thrives when there isn't a set list of triggers and switches that you throw to advance or change things. RP doesn't work very well along a linear path, becuase the whole idea of RPing is about improv, rolling with the situation and changing your character and the world through your actions or inactions. You can't do any of that in most MMOG's, because you can't change the world.

Roleplaying also requires PVP, because there has to be conflict or else its just masturbation with an audience. If you don't have conflict, your just some whiny whackjob talking to no one in particular about his hard life as an orphan destined to save the world. MMOG's just aren't made for it. Shadowbane could have been a great RP world, if 1) the mechanics had more actively punished those who didn't rp (such as ARAC guilds) and 2) open PVP didn't attract such a bunch of mealy-mouthed, drooling, crumbsnatching, azzraping fucktard mongoloids.

Second Life actually has a great deal of RPing, because other than building shit, what else is there to do? You can build the mechanics of roleplaying, as well as the set dressing. But you'll probably eventually run up against the Kool-Aid Man in your medieval dress up.

Personally, I'd say the biggest drawback to roleplaying in MMOs is the prevalance of information.  Back in UO, I successfully roleplayed quite a bit.  In EQ, it worked for a while until guilds stopped guarding their raid secrets and spoiler sites had gone beyond huge.  At this point is where many "casual roleplayers" lost their grip, because they'd be sorta-roleplaying and then lapse into DPS discussions, spawn rates and drop rates, loot locations, etc...  Every game since has been about the same, with WoW, Thottbot and the almost completely open UI being the most horrid example that makes it nearly impossible to escape numbers and raw data.  In City of Heroes, for a short period on the Virtue server, I had some damn fine RP.  I ran a newspaper and I played a reporter.  People who played along had some fun in-character adventures with the added bonus of seeing the story written up in a semi-newspaper style with prose and photos.  Even had some folks allow me to "run" stories integrating missions and street fighting into original works.  However, as time went on, and as we all levelled up, many people wanted to just tell me about their adventures and have me write a story, rather than actually have me tag along.  The most common complaint was that having me in group and not fighting made the missions too hard.  Of course, this was crap as some groups of folks still happily took me along.  In the end though, the numbers won, and the roleplaying on Virtue dwindled to mainly people standing in the park acting out soap opera dialogue.

The situation with Shadowclan arrose because UO actually had a very non-item centric game mechanic and the ability for the players to do something like this.. same with Kazola's.  Something that has not been provided to any extent in the games beyond UO.

.gg

This one is over folks, pack it up.

I wonder if that makes me a RP'er considering I'm always advocating for non-linear pvp+ worlds?

I stand by the opinion that the best RP happens in PVP+ games. Simply because people are able to react to one another in ways other than channel screaming.

We play whatever roles the developers give us and until now they have been shallow roles.

I'm not sure why PvP is a necessity.  I can see where some of you enjoy the extra danger and freedom it offers, but not everyone wants that style of conflict.  Despite avoiding PvP most of the time, I have fun roleplaying in all the games I play.

EDIT: booched.

It's necessary because conflict is what makes games fun, even if the conflict isn't necessarily about bashing someone's head in. The ability to be a villain is important; the other alternative is a world full of heroes with no villains to fight against. Or making a game with much smaller player bases segregated into smaller groups, like DDO only with good gameplay.

Conflict of that nature makes the game fun for YOU.  Certainly some type of drama/conflict helps but I would argue a roleplayer should be able to make due with whatever is at hand.  For example:

Jersey Girl was my CoH tank.  Eight feet of bovine goodness.  She wasn't too bright, but her heart was in the right place.  She could be considered a joke character, but I played her straight even when I got into a tongue-in-cheek situation.  Her nemesis?  Hero burger.  She was certain they were turning heroes into food and nothing disuaded her.  When she got to the Crey arcs, she realized with horror where their failed experiments went (even if the proof was a little lacking).  Devouring Earth were her favorite enemy because she could get a snack while working.  Yes there was silliness involved, but people had fun playing with me, and I had fun playing her.

My druid, Tsukihana, in WoW.  (I had to play a little fast and loose with WoW history, as I knew none of it up to then.)  She was young during the war four years ago and shuffled about to keep her out of harm's way.  Her parents both died during it, although she knows not when or how.  Maybe being an orphan is cliche, but no one managed to ever get her to talk about it because she always diverts the conversation (rather deftly if I can boast).  As far as anyone knew, she felt very strongly that further fighting between the races was bad for everyone.  It was tilting at windmills, and somewhat hypocritical because she did have to face the Horde, but she wanted to get powerful enough, respected enough, and wise enough to help find a better way.  She did not have the answers but that was not going to stop her from trying.

In Jersey's case, there was no real conflict at all (I rarely invoked Hero Burger).  Took's conflict was all internal in figuring out what she needed to change the world.  I interacted with people using their respective world views and by staying in character.  No PvP was never required.  (While I did some with my Hordling, Took had no PvP kills [or deaths] when I stopped playing at level 45.)

I actually think taking this position on a website such as this is fairly courageous (relatively speaking).  I guess my only complaint is that you apologized so many times for using the word gay.  That was pretty faggy.

While I was writing it, Queer Eye was running in the background.

Seriously, I wouldn't apologize so much except that I understand why it's offensive.  Certain folks can get away with it without an apologize because they've set their own context already- people expect it and understand the usage.  I, however, haven't and I knew I had to, at the very least, set that up.  My intention is to get a laugh, not offend.  Unless you're a roleplayer and you write erotic fiction about your characters- then you can be offended all you want, but I don't care because you're fucking gay.

Frankly, I'm really tired of hearing gay used as a generic insult. And whether you realize it or not, there are kids who take out of south park that it's acceptable to be insulting to gay kids. Yes, I know that's a full semester of Missing the Point 101, but it does happen. Ok, sermon over.

On the article.

I've been part of some normal RP groups, particularly on Nimue/Albion in DAOC. That worked out well. We just followed the rules of the server. We eliminated out of character chat as much as possible. And we played the game. It was a great level of RP light. I was also in Shadowclan in SB and I've never had a more satisfying level of immersion in a game. Having the clan rep was also fun. People would RP who normally didn't. And I actually got a stream of tells about what a great experience it was to be killed by SC from some guy we slaughtered after one of his companions got mouthy when we were demanding tribute. Shame the game was so messed up. Underlight also had some fantastic RP. I remember spending entire evenings discussing the nature of mares with members of different houses. I was a rabid pacifist who never fought and part of a small little faction that believed they were the victims of dreamstrike. To me Underlight was a great example of what happened when a company really supported roleplayers by, well, just simply kicking out anyone who didn't RP. Unfortunately, it also was a great example of how tiny that market was.

I've never had much interest in the storytelling guilds. I'm glad they're there for the people that want that, but since we can't be GMs, it seems really like swimming against the tide. If I'm going to do that, I'd rather just go to one of the text only RP spaces that facilitate that better. I think trying to do that in most mainstream MMOPRPGs just comes off as a bit silly. I think about the only thing I've really enjoyed for that kind of thing was the short little guild initiations some of our groups have had. But we kept in mind that there was a certain silly quality to it and we got through them quickly and then went out hunting or whatever.

But at least half or more of the "RP" groups I've been part of have been nothing more than pickup spots for cybering. And as time goes on, that seems to be getting more and more the case. When I start in on a new game, I usually start looking for a RP guild, but it's so hard to find one that isn't using it as a euphemism for cybering. And the last few games I've tried that, I've just given up. Maybe we just need "pickup" servers or something.

I think Eve has some great roleplaying on the macro level. Since people aren't necessarily following the game lore or trying to roleplay people don't really notice it. But all that politics to me is a form of roleplaying.

Hey, imagine this.  There is a word that people use to indicate that something is not normal, slightly off and indicates that the subject of the descriptor often makes many people feel uncomfortable.  Now imagine people use that word to describe stuff other than what it was initially used to decribe because it fits.

That's what I mean when I say players can't be villains without PVP. In a non-PVP world, like EQ, trying to Roleplay essentially disintegrates because you can't really make any sort of believable conflict. Sure, you can say "I'll kill all Deathfist orcs" but that never fits the story. The orcs just don't react with any sort of appropriate behavior, and they can't. The story can't really progress. And since no one can GM (and thus play the monsters or the villains), all you have is Improv Theatre with paper dolls.

The computer makes a great dice roller, but a horrible gamemaster.

Best RP I've seen in an online game is from an IRC game of White Wolf's Vampire game.  Full PvP, perma death, but XP is granted by the Story Tellers (GMs) on pure RP merits.  Downside is that it required a stigma of speccing up combat monkeys - no making a ex-special ops mofo with a bad attitude and sudden desire to murder.  And unfortunately, I don't see MMOs getting to that level of supervision. 

There is still the opportunity afforded by PvP games, which I think support better RP than you'll ever find in a PvP- game.  In addition is the opportunity for devs to supply players with tools to help support that sort of game - better guild tools mostly.  RPing requires a good community, and unfortunately most games lack good tools for players to work with the in-game community.

He just made you look like a big fat queer IMO.

You seem to be facinated by homosexuality.

I'm fascinated by your homosexuality.

There is only one man I would sleep with: George Clooney.

I wouldn't have sex with Tom Cruise, but if my girlfriend did, I'd be like, "Details!"

He IS pretty dreamy.

I'd be like, "But he's gay!"

Lava I enjoy your posts and insights on this board but I did not think that article was written very well nor did it comes across well.

I agree that your experience is not one we seek, however, in my experience - so far - roleplay guilds I have been a part of have handled themselves fairly well. (< insert dissertation on criteria here >)

Fair enough.

I don't think it's representative of my best work either.  That said, I had fairly short notice and not a lot of (or, really, zero) ideas, so this is what you get.  :-P  These two articles were my "Can I be in the cool kids' club??" contributions, expect actual substance a little down the line.

I agree with you 100% (well, except for hearing the term as a generic insult- it's just a funny sounding word and I want it altered from meaning 'homosexual' to being just a generic insult... they already changed the meaning once!) which is why I took so long to explain that I am co-opting the word and that it, in this context, has nothing to do with homosexuality.

But I understand that just because I say that doesn't mean it will magically become inoffensive.

"Niggas gonna be callin' you 'Bitches'!"
"What?"
"Hold on, I mean that you're gonna have so many bitches followin' you around, that that's what they'll call you.  'Bitches'.  No disrespect."
"No disrespect?  You just called your grandfather 'Bitches'!"
"Right, but I don't mean 'Bitches' in a disrespectful way.  I mean it as a general term for women."

Seriously I think that Boondocks or at least a clip show of Riley should be manditory viewing at most urban schools...

I also like the "game recognize game and I dont recognize you" bit, that was great too.

Irony is that hate is equally strong on both sides. If you ask average PvP+ player about typical PvP- player or vice versa you will end up with about equally unflattering descriptions.

Don't listen to them anyway, sinij, they've been deceived by CAREBEAR PROPAGANDA!

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/prop.jpg)

I knew Goebbels was a stupid fucker. He can't even speak German!

God I love Germgrish (Its like Engrish but with german).

Dictionary.com translator for the lose!

Ok.  I stopped reading the thread at this point.  I have no interest in your review if you feel you need "shock value" to commend it and defend that nonsense by missing *why* the fags who write Southpark make a parody out of the same Quest For Shock Value.

Oh Noes! I said Fag!  I Must Need Shock Value To Protest Shock Value!

(http://www.strangepolitics.com/images/content/10392.jpg)

I see your Sensitivity Meter and raise it five Quality Content points.

He does bring up a good point though.  Roleplaying is pretty gay.

Put down the queens and tell anti-queer jokes
Gay Lib's ridiculous, join their laughter
'The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?'

I love to RP myself but I find that you either get people that love it but have no concept of what RP should be or at least what GOOD RP should be or you get people that hate it because they either don't get the point or can't do it.  GOOD RP is hard to come by.  Finding people that can keep up with you or even challenge you is extremely hard.  I also think that the elements needed in game to give people something to work with are frequently missing.  This year at E3 it looked like a lot more games are putting the RPG back in MMORPG.  I'd like to hope so at least.  I haven't been able to do much RP in a long while and can't stand the soap opera types of RP that occur frequently.

In my opinion "RP" isn't about how you talk, but how you act. I agree with the posters that mentioned that PvP (or some form of at least semi-persistent conflict with measurable effects) is critical to the way I view playing a role...because it allows others to see results of the persona you play.

I hate to always refer to my experiences in ShadowBane, but for 6 months I played a role as a leader of a nation bent on a specific, self-assigned (triggered by an ingame series of GM events) set of goals, and both how we acted in game as a nation, as well as how we posted on the political forums were (as best as possible) performed based on the roles we layed out for ourselves early on.

The only other major attempt at "role based playing" I ever tried was when I was a complete newb at Everquest--we attempted to form a troll only guild, little realizing just how important clerics were :P...but it still greatly enhanced our game play experience...and while the troll guild did tend to talk like trolls some, in general it was how we acted, not how we spoke that defined our role.

Artemisa growls menacingly at you.
Inotep growls “ You need to leave ”
Gedran trys to disguise himself as a tree and makes crow noises.
  :wink:

Depends what you mean by roleplay, if you're talking roleplay as in *New member ryosuke entered the forums.*  Then I think it's just horrible, people get way too absorbed into it and sooner or later might start talking in third person.  Anyway, hey guys new to the forums don't know where to post, etc, w/e.

RP can't exist in a static world.  Why should I try to get into the head of my Tauren Druid when the evil in Wailing Caverns is just going to respawn after I leave?  RP requires a sense of accomplishment beyond experience points and shiny. 

If being the victor of heroic combat is what you want to RP, then that's true to some extent - claiming to be the mighty Orc who finally took down Baron Longshore won't have teeth otherwise. However, you can certainly RP (almost anything else) in a world of respawning mobs. However, player as individual and unique hero in world content is another problem altogether.

Two sites I shall never take down, no matter how embarassing they may be. Beware Angelfire popups....

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/slyfeind/sly.html
That one was made about a month before the UO open beta. (Damn memories....) You will notice that nothing on that page has anything to do with UO's gameplay. None of it was exercised while I was playing the game, either.

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/slyfeind/chinwa.html
That one was made about six months into AC live. You may notice that nothing on that site has nothing to do with AC's gameplay. Everything there is a direct reaction to what the game engine or fellow players were doing...including my character's parents. I got so freakin' sick of all the orphans running around, that I used a character slot to make my character's mother. She gained levels just by using the cooking and alchemy skills.

Everything in AC that's gamey, is explained in the game's fiction. Monsters spawn because of the same magic that allow quick travel to players. Nobody dies because of the lifestones, which appeared after Thorsten Cragstone died in battle against the Olthoi.

It honestly pissed me off when people roleplayed death in AC.

It is a matter of selectively tweaking the story and setting to fit your character.  This is not for the benefit of others, ultimately it is for your benefit.

One way is to say you woke Naralax and now the Barrens can recover properly but of course it will be slower than had he remained dreaming but uncorrupted.  If you decide to go back to WC then ignore it as far as your story goes, think of it as cleaning out the remnants of the Fang, or treat it as a flashback to when you saved him previously.

The thing about being a serious roleplayer is that there are always going to be events that pull you out of the experience, whether it is people talking out-of-character, stupid names, repeating content or what have you.  You have to learn how to take those and either twist them to fit, make them work like an alternative way, or ignore them outright.

I will use whichever makes the most sense to me at the time, although my favorite is to tackle them in a tongue-in-cheek way that has my character taking them seriously but shows I'm having a sense of humor about it.  Given the right situation it also flusters non-RPers, which I take as a bonus.