General Discussion

You know what? I think role-playing in MMOs is dying. It seems now developers are just trying to appeal to the quick hack-and-slash general audience POV. I feel like the general gaming audience is becoming more and more 12-year-old console kids with ADHD; the sad thing is that they are slowly migrating to MMOs and PC gaming in general (which I thought was my last bastion of hope).

Now this really makes me angry. I get more RP and fun out of playing on a Garry's Mod Role-Playing server (Half-Life 2 role-play mod) with a single map (about the size of a city block) and 50 people than I do with 5000 people on a role-playing MMO server. Sure, you get the odd person who wants to RP, but I'm finding more and more people on RP servers with names like "Bartsimpson" who say "wtf, lol" in-character. I mean, come on?!

Age of Conan is fun for it's partially-unique combat and gorgeous graphics, but that's all the gaming audience seems to care about now a days. How to lop someones head off asap and have 1 million  well-textured polygons in the frame while doing it. I felt this when playing AoC (I'm on an RP server) and ES4: Oblivion. ES3: Morrowind was an excellent RPG. Oblivion was awesome too, but it had a dumb-downed thing going for it.

/rantover

I urge anyone out there, please, if you know of or are in one, please, tell me of a strong role-players guild or MMO. Age of Conan just isn't doing it for me.

RP is dieing now that mmo's are being/have been introduced to the average/general gaming crowd. Back when mmo's werent really well known I found rp easy to come by usually, but yea since then its died down alot.

To be honest, I've never come across a crowd of people who truly roleplay. It's quite sad really.

I really haven't seen too many RP crowds in most games these days. I too tried to get into a RP crowd in AoC but found it pretty much impossible. Last real RP crowd I remember was in early SWG. I think the RP in MMORPG is pretty much gone...fast becoming MMOGs.

Originally posted by Lydon

To be honest, I've never come across a crowd of people who truly roleplay. It's quite sad really.

http://taconbanana.com/ If you have any interest in Half-Life 2 Role-play. Admins are ruthlessly strict for RPing (although OOC they are friendly).

yea i dont see much rp in mmos anymore, they only survive in text-based games nowadays

I'd have to agree with everyone; Roleplay in MMO's is dying if not already dead.

Once upon a time I remember fantastic storylines thought up by the players and really looked forward to logging into the games to see what was going on that day.  I used to be excited to find out what sort of interesting tidbits I'd get to be part of that had nothing at all to do with what the developers had planned other than the fact that it would take place in the world they created.

Anymore, though, roleplay is nothing more than people cybering each other.  No one wants to work with real storylines that involve antagonists and chances to thwart them.  Noooo, everyone just wants to RP nicey nice and make out...truly sad...and boring after a short time.  The last time I tried to develop an antagonistic character (my favorites to play), I was quite literally shunned by all roleplayers on the server except two people.  Everyone else I knew would send me tells saying what a horrible person I was.  And that was the pathetic end to my attempts at bringing some real roleplay back to MMO's.

So yes, I definitely say roleplay has died in the online gaming world.  The new generation of MMO players are incapable of handling the conflict necessary to make it happen nor can they separate IC from OOC.  Those of us who had the joy of knowing what it used to be will just have to sit back in our rockers and talk about the 'olden days' with each other.

Yes, it´s not possible to RP anymore in MMOs.

I suggest you try Neverwinter Nights 2 role-playing-servers. It´s no MMO, but it´s a great online game. The servers are private (but absolutly legal) projects and the makers of the so called persistant worlds put alot of ideas, effort, money in their projects to make them a beautiful role-playing opportunity for everybody.

It´s not an MMO, but 3D grafics and much better then text based games. The only problem is, there are to few players who know about the persistant worlds. Neverwinter Nights 2 has great role-play, but needs more players!

I agree
 

When i used to play WoW, I tryed an RP server out.

Even on RP worlds people still only want be the best

And just completely forget about the roleplay

RP is not dead in my opinion.

I just took up the offer for SWG 5th anniversary and on my fourth day into the game some guy messages me saying to meet him in the cantine, says he needs to talk to me.  I go, he says that because hes a smuggler he needs a good pilot, and because im Sullustan( and their good pilots in the lore) he asks me to be his gunner. We continue on and he tells me of how he dislikes the imperials because they killed his old jedi friend, and they were on the hunt for him, so now he has his house out in the outskirts of Tatooine to be low key. Then the next day i go back and talk to him and he has a metal arm that he says he lost the other day during a smuggling mission, and how he needs my help to get back at the Black Sun who did it. Its a pretty intriguing story actually that never seems to stop.  Sounds like crap when i tell it, but he got me hooked into RPing and now im doing all the pilot missions to help him. Also he buys me armor to help me out, so it works out well.

A lot of people i see in SWG have Roleplay above their head to indicate their RPing. If you are scared of this game, don't be. Give it a shot like I did, and you will actually end up enjoying yourself.

Plenty of RP around, just need to know where to look,and who to look for.