Greetings, noble knights, maidens, space cowboys, stormtroopers and ogres. ;)

I am a veteran roleplayer with experience in the world of video game and pen/paper RP. I  have roleplayed in the past years in Star Wars Galaxies and while I am partially content with the RP experience there, I'm also looking for something new.

My question is if anyone knows of a RP community or group in a MMORPG which meets the following points:

- An established RP group or community with a reasonable number of roleplayers.

- Mature roleplayers, in the sense of people acting mature. They do not throw childish tantrums and they do not engage into endless arguments about what is right and what is wrong.

- The game is not involving superheroes (no CoH, no CoV, no Matrix)

- The community is based on a set of realistic rulesets. Poweremoters and metagamers are unwelcomed, as are leet-speaking people. The focus is on being IC when roleplaying, avoiding smileys and abbreviations.

- The player can participate in roleplay to the degree they like, they are not forced to participate a minimal amount of time.

- There is no dictatorship or struct ruling council. Players are asked for their opinions and are not treated with a motto of "take it or leave it".

- The main focus is on casual RP, not on overexadurated storylines of mafia, criminal or heroics. Characters are ordinary rather then all special.

- Prefebly the game has the option of private player housing.

Do you recognize your community to be what I describe, or your game to hold such a community? Then please, please reply here. I'm very curious to find such a community again ever since the roleplay around me seems to focus more and more on a soap-series style of "worst and most overexadurated case scenarios". :P

Friend salute,

A searching roleplayer.

Sadly, I don't think you'll find any game that meets all those points, or even most of them. My group, however, is aiming toward improving this sort of thing in the future. Until you find an game that had done away with or has very little focus on a leveling system, you're not likely to be satisfied with the quality of RP on any game, less it be pen and paper or text based. There are a number of text based RPGs on the 'net, but I know little about them.

If you're feeling ambitious and would like to help make positive changes to the RP community, please visit us at The Guild. Someone's gotta do something to get the ball rolling.

In any case, good luck with your search! I hope you find what you're looking for!

Good luck, you'll never find it.  I'd kill for a game like that but it simply doesn't exist.  In order to have such a game, developers would have to cater to something other than WoW fanboys.

None of them do.

I'm more so on about a community (a collective of roleplayers) rather then a game. Star Wars Galaxies held such a community for years where people focussed on roleplaying through emoting, talking and so on in a large city they all frequented. The game's purpose itself was paid no attention to, instead solely using it as a platform to excercise roleplay on. It seems however roleplay communities in any game have degraded greatly in quality as of late, either allowing too many unserious roleplayers or focussing so much on storylines that character developement suffers.

Character development is at a minimum currently. I think a large portion of those who used to use MMORPGs as a venue to role-play have left for text-based and other non-graphical forms or role-playing. Developers don't seem to have this kind of play in mind, which is really unfortunate. I think City of Heroes' character customization is what keeps a strong role-playing community alive there, but I also understand your sentiments regarding a desire for a fantasy RP setting; I'm looking for the same thing. Hopefully Mortal Online will cater to a more casual, role-playing community with it's sandbox style gameplay. If it works out for Mortal Online, it may pave the way for similar styles of MMORPG in the future.

To be quite honest, the best online roleplaying you'll find in a MUD.

If you want online rp, the guild I am in for WAR has a decent bunch of role players and is casual.

At the moment we have a couple rp threads going, and one of our members is trying to start up an online dnd session for a campaign he created.

We have quite a few writers and visual artists doing various things themed in the warhammer universe, keeping ourselves busy until WAR comes out.

check us out: http://www.theunholylegion.org/

IF you think you might be tempted to hang around awhile, tell them Zemok sent you. It might not be the perfect answer, but it is an answer.

You'll be hard pressed to find much serious RPing on even a MUD, most of them have turned into either online orgies or are so tightly controlled by the owners that they're no fun to play.  I RPed that way for many, many years, finally abandoning it when it became clear that the overwhelming majority of people there were just out for type-fucking.  The few that were left were so whacked out of their heads they actually thought they were their characters.

I had hoped that the MMO scene would be a refuge for people who actually liked to roleplay, but alas, it was no better.

Roleplaying online is pretty well dead.

Thanks Daelnor, I'll check it out. :)

I can't really say you're going to have much luck, for two main reasons:

Most MMO's (and tabletop RP games, for that matter) are focused on the heroic/villainous.  Folks might start out as ordinary (think Bilbo or Garion or one of a thousand main characters in fantasy novels... its a fairly conventional way to tell a fantasy story), but getting past the first few levels pretty much requires some level of heroism and/or villainy.  The more you play the game, the bigger your character gets, naturally.  I'll admit, I've never really got the person who plays "Farmer Bob, the Dragonslayer."

You're looking for a casual RP guild with no central leadership, but imply that allowing too many unserious players is a problem with the RP you've experienced in the past.  If you do want casual RP with no real rules as to how folks operate, then you're going to have to deal with some unserious players and godmoders from time to time.  It happens. 

The best way to deal with either of these issues, in my opinion, is to roll with the punches and just have fun.  In the end, that's the main thing that matters.  If you're trying to replicate the atmosphere you find at the pen-and-paper gaming table, you're going to be in for continual disappointment.  RP in an MMO is a very different beast.

That said, Sunrunner on Star Wars Galaxies has a pretty dead-awesome community, imo.  And I'm very much looking forward to what comes of Age of Conan myself.

www.planeshift.it/

- An established RP group or community with a reasonable number of roleplayers.

'Reasonable' is a subjective term. You don't have to look hard in PlaneShift to find roleplayers, even though the playerbase is not remotely 'massive' as compared to other games. The community is growing with the game, so it is rather tight. Roleplaying is the main focus of the game. You will not hear "OMG, lame RPer! get a life!"

- Mature roleplayers, in the sense of people acting mature. They do not throw childish tantrums and they do not engage into endless arguments about what is right and what is wrong.

Well, you will get those once in a while in PlaneShift, but for the most part people are not rulenazies. Immature people do pop in as well, and it can't be helped. But they will not often stay long once they realize the comunity does not put up with it.

- The game is not involving superheroes (no CoH, no CoV, no Matrix)

No superheroes.

- The community is based on a set of realistic rulesets. Poweremoters and metagamers are unwelcomed, as are leet-speaking people. The focus is on being IC when roleplaying, avoiding smileys and abbreviations.

That is PlaneShift to a tee. Example: hydlaa.com/smf/index.php

- The player can participate in roleplay to the degree they like, they are not forced to participate a minimal amount of time.

Play an hour a week, or 24 hours a day (but please take time to eat and sleep). You don't get RP-docked for not being around much. If your time is spent productivly, then you will always be welcome back, whether you leave for an hour... or four years.

- There is no dictatorship or struct ruling council. Players are asked for their opinions and are not treated with a motto of "take it or leave it".

Players are asked to participate in testing the game and offering suggestions on improvements. Sometimes you will get a 'take it or leave it' stance on some aspects of the game that would change the creator's core vision, or things that the Devs find enjoyable but some players do not, but for the most part it is give and take.

- The main focus is on casual RP, not on overexadurated storylines of mafia, criminal or heroics. Characters are ordinary rather then all special.

I personally play a semi-successful banker, a simpleton barkeep, a mute flower seller... and others. No one really plays the 'hero', though we do get the villain now an again to stir things up. Having multiple characters is not discouraged in any way, as long as it it not used for unacceptable behavior (cheating, greiving, OOC spying, etc).

- Prefebly the game has the option of private player housing.

Sine the game is a work in progress... this is still one of the things that are in progress. Guilds can buy guildhouses (when one is put up for sale, but no homes are available yet. In time, there absolutely will be.

In addition, the game is non-profit, costs nothing to play ever, has no hidden costs, no item store, no adds (even on the website or forum), and does not sell any personal information (we only ask for a valid email to prevent spambots and send password info to). PlaneShift is a game made by volunteers. Most of the people working on the game have come from the community itself over the years (as have I and all of the Settings team, and good part of the Art and Engine teams). So you could say that PlaneShift is a game made by players, for players. And a good portion of the Devs -are- roleplayers, some with background in Pen & Paper and online text games.

Roleplaying is not dead. We are building a world for it in PlaneShift. Come visit us. Don't mind the dust, as we are still under construction. If you want to do more than just play, apply to the department you are skilled in, and help us build a game free from the constraints of time and money.

Under the Moon -Settings Prospect Writer (history, quests, stories, NPCharacters), roleplayer, dreamer.

Well i can only pass on my impressions garnered over the last near 10 years of MMO gaming, but to date, apart from early EQ, I havn't done as much RP in the last 7 years as I have in the past 6 weeks I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons Online. True the variety and number of preset text and physical emotes is poor compared to SWG, EQ2 snd LoTRo, but it just means you have to be more creative. Which is what RP is all about :)

RP in DDO, due to the community, is in general at very worst tolerated, but in my experience welcomed and encouraged. People using LEETspeak generally stick out like a sore thumb and seem in my experience to be the minority. Not your ideal scenario, but is rare in an MMO these days and probably the best available to you in a 'big name' MMO.

Take up the DDO trial and scour the forums for advice on which is the 'official' RP Server, then look out for a friendly RP guild.

If you are european (too tired and lazy to check) make a character on the Keeper server and send me a tell, same name as my MMORPG.com user. You could also check out my guild's website www.legendsguild.co.uk. Legends are a RP preferred gaming guild with a chapter in most of the current (and upcoming) MMO's.

Hope my rambling helps in some way :P

As leader of the settings department for the last two years and a veteran roleplayer of 18 yrs I can say the primary reason I work for planeshift now is that some of my very favorite rp experiences occurred within planeshift.

Nowadays I am wholly biased, I work for the game. I believe that one will not find a 3d atmosphere more favorable to rp.

We also currently have a need for an infusion of new  role players. 

I am glad this thread found its way to our radar, poke around on our forums and you will doubtless find a slew of commentary on the nature, means, and methodology of role playing.

The team works fairly hard to accommodate role playing and the game master team is stocked with consummate role players.

Planetshift seems very promising. I may well give it a try! Thank you truly for writing in such detail about what the game has to offer, both in content and it's playerbase community.