Koster's law.

I don't believe it. I've seen some quality RP in high population games, but I will concede that perhaps player numbers can hinder people's RP when they are with a lot of people and only a fraction are going to correspond with RP.

Smaller more RP focused games might only seem like they have better RP because their niche nature ensures only dedicated RP types seek them out. I've also seen low populated games with no RP at all, because they attract different kinds of players.

So the point being I don't think that player numbers necessarily dictate or allow you to measure RP levels at all. It depends on the game entirely and the type of player it attracts. LOTRO and DDO both have a higher proportion of RPers per capita than the typical mass market MMOPG because of the type of fans it attracts.

no it is not.   Gameplay Mechanics (ones that affect RP) and the type of community are what makes RP in a game.  I've seen plenty of RP'ing in Ryzom and its population is hardly going to break 200k subs.

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

LOTRO breaks the theory because it is full of quality RP despite also being full of average gamers.

It does this because the average gamer that is attracted to LOTRO probably is already immersed in Tolkien and more willing and interested to RP it.

It's hard to say flat out that higher numbers of players just lead to less RP, when the real fact is that RP itself is a niche and smaller games focused on RP can have a high per capita ratio of them, but it doesn't mean they would suddenly lose that RP if the game suddenly saw an influx of non RP players.

People RP in WOW.  They're just hard to find hidden among the millions.  But they're there.

Originally posted by Carl132p

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

This.  The average casual gamer thinks role playing is "weird".

So the more of them a game draws, the more negative the impact on role playing.

I think the kind of game has a lot to do with it. These current versions, what I call "run and gun", the quest grind, they actually have a game play that stops roleplay for the sake of grinding rapidly through "content". If a game can allow players to stop and smell the roses, and still be fun while not making players feel like they are "losing time", I think RP can be very good. If NPCs are given more AI, and seem to live instead of being pez dispensers, I think that would give the world a RP feel that can affect the players. There are many aspects, the little things, that can affect how players play a game, and affect RP.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Carl132p

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

 

This.  The average casual gamer thinks role playing is "weird".

So the more of them a game draws, the more negative the impact on role playing.

 

I would tend to agree. For the majority of  players in games like WoW, they're not able to enjoy roleplaying. They don't have the ability or inclination to get past looking at it like an FPS or RTS, just moving a toon around the screen collecting shiny gear or getting more powerful.

There needs to be two sides played by humans for roleplay to really work.

That's what Paper n Pencil roleplay is, two sides played by humans. The GAme Master plays on side, and the Players are  on the other side.

It's not necessarily adversarial between the two sides. For example, the Game Master may play an NPC that needs help and asks the Players to help them.

But, in an MMORPG, it's all one sided. The Players are all on one side, and the other side is played by a computer. It's all NPC dialog and scripts.

Player Versus Player does not help this situation in the least. IN PvP games there is no time for roleplay before the attack. Even though players are attacking each other, in a sense as far as roleplay goes, they're still on the same side, making for the same lopsided sort of roleplay.

IMO, this makes for a sort of wierd lopsided roleplay, where one side is roleplaying, and the other side is a brick wall that doesn't respond ot the roleplay.

I think if you fix this, you go a long way towards encouraging roleplayng.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Carl132p

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

 

This.  The average casual gamer thinks role playing is "weird".

So the more of them a game draws, the more negative the impact on role playing.

 

 

I would tend to agree. For the majority of  players in games like WoW, they're not able to enjoy roleplaying. They don't have the ability or inclination to get past looking at it like an FPS or RTS, just moving a toon around the screen collecting shiny gear or getting more powerful.

There needs to be two sides played by humans for roleplay to really work.

That's what Paper n Pencil roleplay is, two sides played by humans. The GAme Master plays on side, and the Players are  on the other side.

It's not necessarily adversarial between the two sides. For example, the Game Master may play an NPC that needs help and asks the Players to help them.

But, in an MMORPG, it's all one sided. The Players are all on one side, and the other side is played by a computer. It's all NPC dialog and scripts.

Player Versus Player does not help this situation in the least. IN PvP games there is no time for roleplay before the attack. Even though players are attacking each other, in a sense as far as roleplay goes, they're still on the same side, making for the same lopsided sort of roleplay.

IMO, this makes for a sort of wierd lopsided roleplay, where one side is roleplaying, and the other side is a brick wall that doesn't respond ot the roleplay.

I think if you fix this, you go a long way towards encouraging roleplayng.

To me there always been two ways to roleplay:

-role-play

-role-be

Personally I want to create a character and play it in such a way that it evolves and achieves a 'life' of its own.  However, I never acutally want to be that character.  I use my imagination and improvisation to define what the character is experiencing rather than imagining that I am experiencing it.    A video game provides me all the tools I need to do so on the screen so I do not need to 'RP' in order to roleplay my character.  Anything more and I start crossing the line into role-be and that is just weird for me. 

This is probalby why I loved playing PnP roleplaying games but when my roleplaying group started doing live-action roleplaying I could not get into it.

Some people make fun of rp'ers.   I've nothing against it, but I rarely engage in RP'ing outside of the P&P D&D kitchen sessions.

I think the reason is, RP'ing has zero impact on the game, outside of each invdividual's enjoyment.   In other words, the player's character benefits in no way from RP'ing.   So, path of least resistance means RP'ing unnecessary.  

I've seen rp'ers in game taking this to extremes, like walking everywhere when the character could be running and save time.   /shrug, to each his own.

I rp by myself all the time, in RL even. 

"Hi guys meet nancy, we met at the carnival.  Oh shes sitting right beside me, she says she is happy to meet you.  Hey! Where are you going?"

srsly, the genre can really use more RP.  People treating video games like their job, is alot "funnier" to me than RP is to you.  You gotta have maximum progress by the most efficient, convenient means possible.  Bleh, I just like to play.  Getting in character is fun to me, calculating DPS is not.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Carl132p

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

 

This.  The average casual gamer thinks role playing is "weird".

So the more of them a game draws, the more negative the impact on role playing.

 

 

I would tend to agree. For the majority of  players in games like WoW, they're not able to enjoy roleplaying. They don't have the ability or inclination to get past looking at it like an FPS or RTS, just moving a toon around the screen collecting shiny gear or getting more powerful.

There needs to be two sides played by humans for roleplay to really work.

That's what Paper n Pencil roleplay is, two sides played by humans. The GAme Master plays on side, and the Players are  on the other side.

It's not necessarily adversarial between the two sides. For example, the Game Master may play an NPC that needs help and asks the Players to help them.

But, in an MMORPG, it's all one sided. The Players are all on one side, and the other side is played by a computer. It's all NPC dialog and scripts.

Player Versus Player does not help this situation in the least. IN PvP games there is no time for roleplay before the attack. Even though players are attacking each other, in a sense as far as roleplay goes, they're still on the same side, making for the same lopsided sort of roleplay.

IMO, this makes for a sort of wierd lopsided roleplay, where one side is roleplaying, and the other side is a brick wall that doesn't respond ot the roleplay.

I think if you fix this, you go a long way towards encouraging roleplayng.

To me there always been two ways to roleplay:

-role-play

-role-be

Personally I want to create a character and play it in such a way that it evolves and achieves a 'life' of its own.  However, I never acutally want to be that character.  I use my imagination and improvisation to define what the character is experiencing rather than imagining that I am experiencing it.    A video game provides me all the tools I need to do so on the screen so I do not need to 'RP' in order to roleplay my character.  Anything more and I start crossing the line into role-be and that is just weird for me. 

This is probalby why I loved playing PnP roleplaying games but when my roleplaying group started doing live-action roleplaying I could not get into it.

I suppose the experience is different for everyone. I see roleplaying as amateur acting that is unscripted and improvised.

I'm never trying to "be" the character, I'm simply acting as if I were the character, and responding in a manner that would be consistent with that character.

That's why it seems to me that two sides are necessary, otherwise there can be very little response or improvisation. Well, there is response and improvisation, but it's all one sided.

I guess the best example is roleplaying heroes in City of Heroes. You can roleplay that you are a bunch of heroes (or villians) in a Super Hero hideout, and running around dispensing justice (or injustice as the case may be).

But you're all on the same side, responding to each other. We're all Heroes, responding to each other as Heroes! We're never responding to NPC's asking for help, which gives us the opportunity to be kind to them, condescending, cruel, dismissive, sympathetic, depending on their reactions and our character as the scenario evolves. There is no evolution, since the NPCs will all have static dialog.

Same thing in PvP. There will be no real roleplay between the enemy players, because there is really no cajoling, negotiation, compromise, etc., It's just I kill joo! adn that's it.

So again, the roleplay is all one sided, roleplaying with the people in your party, but not the other side, whether it's PvP or NPCs asking for help.

Real, fun roleplay happens when you negotiate as a party with the other side, IMO. This doesn't happen when the other side is either PvP which means instant attack, or NPC which means computer dialog.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Torik 

To me there always been two ways to roleplay:

-role-play

-role-be

Personally I want to create a character and play it in such a way that it evolves and achieves a 'life' of its own.  However, I never acutally want to be that character.  I use my imagination and improvisation to define what the character is experiencing rather than imagining that I am experiencing it.    A video game provides me all the tools I need to do so on the screen so I do not need to 'RP' in order to roleplay my character.  Anything more and I start crossing the line into role-be and that is just weird for me. 

This is probalby why I loved playing PnP roleplaying games but when my roleplaying group started doing live-action roleplaying I could not get into it.

 

I suppose the experience is different for everyone. I see roleplaying as amateur acting that is unscripted and improvised.

I'm never trying to "be" the character, I'm simply acting as if I were the character, and responding in a manner that would be consistent with that character.

That's why it seems to me that two sides are necessary, otherwise there can be very little response or improvisation. Well, there is response and improvisation, but it's all one sided.

I guess the best example is roleplaying heroes in City of Heroes. You can roleplay that you are a bunch of heroes (or villians) in a Super Hero hideout, and running around dispensing justice (or injustice as the case may be).

But you're all on the same side, responding to each other. We're all Heroes, responding to each other as Heroes! We're never responding to NPC's asking for help, which gives us the opportunity to be kind to them, condescending, cruel, dismissive, sympathetic, depending on their reactions and our character as the scenario evolves. There is no evolution, since the NPCs will all have static dialog.

Same thing in PvP. There will be no real roleplay between the enemy players, because there is really no cajoling, negotiation, compromise, etc., It's just I kill joo! adn that's it.

So again, the roleplay is all one sided, roleplaying with the people in your party, but not the other side, whether it's PvP or NPCs asking for help.

Real, fun roleplay happens when you negotiate as a party with the other side, IMO. This doesn't happen when the other side is either PvP which means instant attack, or NPC which means computer dialog.

 

 

I think you hit the nail on the head.

RP in an MMORPG does not present a challenge.  When you interacting with a live GM you are presented with a challenge that you have to solve given cerain parameters as defined by the GM and by the way your character is setup.    That is what made PnP roleplaying so fun for me.  I have to consider who my character is and then act appropriately.   In a MMORPG there is no challenge I am trying to overcome through RP.  It's all characterization without any followup with appropriate actions.

I have to agree with other posters that RPing on a MMORPG is just inherently more difficult because of the mechanics that are in place. One's RP actions are utterly meaningless in an MMO, you are limited by the mechanics of the system, you can't suddenly have a new and innovative way of fighting combat, you can't change tactics in the middle of a fight, you're locked in by the combat mechanics of the game.

I'd have to go back many years, back to text-based MU*s, to find that kind of RP freedom. I'm not talking about MUDs either, where there are still programmed game mechanics, I mean entirely freeform MUSHs, MOOs, MUCKs, etc. Those are places where RP took place because there was little but RP to do. There was no, or at best a very rudimentary combat system, there were no goals, you were there to have fun and that was it. The content of the world was under the control of the players, people could build almost anything they wanted to and since it was all text, there were no limitations with the building tools. If you could describe what you wanted in words and people had a good imagination, literally anything could come alive.

The problem comes when you drop an MMO structure on top of that. The rules and the mechanics have an inherently stifling effect on the roleplaying. Instead of playing a character being the goal, winning a game is the goal and playing a character is entirely secondary and even entirely unnecessary to winning the game.

The funny thing is, those text-based games never had to worry about "player retention", people stayed for years and years and years because they had an emotional and intellectual investment in remaining. You can't trade one game for another like you do in an MMO where there's really no investment in the world, you have friends, you have relationships, people have massive tracts of land that have become integrated into the world, that's why most people spent not only years, but *DECADES* playing the same MU*, there are still people out there playing them today. When I finally left MU*s entirely, I think I had played my longest one for about 16 years. That's longer than the entire MMO market has been in existence.

Unfortunately, when people talk about sandbox MMOs, they're still not talking about having the kind of absolute freedom that those MU*s offered. There's still mechanics stifling the RPing. There's still an imposed "lore". There's still gear that everyone wants because it's better than other gear, a crafter can't decide to make something superior to the best armor out there, it just isn't possible no matter how long they do it. People can't decide the hell with it, they're just going to grab an unused piece of land and settle down, retire from the war and just have a life. Those are all failures in the MMO model as far as RPing goes. I've tried to RP with MMO people in the past and it simply doesn't compare because you simply don't have the freedom to make the character you want to play, you're stuck playing the character that the game dictates you play whether you want to or not.

And that's a damn shame.

Lots of good points brought up. I think it's going to be a long while before a graphical MMO reaches the same flexibility as a MU*, because the technology to allow individual players to dramatically affect a gameworld of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other players is either non-existent or far too expensive to invest in with too much uncertainty on the return of investment.

I think what we roleplayers are looking for is what I call the "holodeck experience", where we can do whatever we want in a game in any way possible. It'd be nice, but impractical. If a game does one thing role-play-wise, and does it well, it'll will be successful but not widely so. Take EVE for example. Over and over, people say how awesome the roleplay is, but just how varied is the gameplay? Compared to a more mainstream RPG, there's just not a whole lot of variety there, but what IS there is done in such a way that people can immerse themselves in it and have fun.

Originally posted by jonrd463

Lots of good points brought up. I think it's going to be a long while before a graphical MMO reaches the same flexibility as a MU*, because the technology to allow individual players to dramatically affect a gameworld of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other players is either non-existent or far too expensive to invest in with too much uncertainty on the return of investment.

The problem is, it's not going to be long, some games have been doing it for a long time.  Look at Second Life as an example.  People have been able to modify the game world since it started.  People aren't constrained by what the devs come up with, they can make their own crafts, decorate their own homes, etc.  As perhaps a more simplistic example, there's Furcadia, which granted is isometric 2D, but people have always been able to build their own mini-worlds to play in and the customization ability is huge.  It isn't like the devs are hand-crafting everything they make in a game, they have development tools that allow them to build and customize various aspects of the world, a limited set of those tools, made available to players, ought not be that difficult and certainly shouldn't cost any more than not doing so. 

I think what we roleplayers are looking for is what I call the "holodeck experience", where we can do whatever we want in a game in any way possible. It'd be nice, but impractical. If a game does one thing role-play-wise, and does it well, it'll will be successful but not widely so. Take EVE for example. Over and over, people say how awesome the roleplay is, but just how varied is the gameplay? Compared to a more mainstream RPG, there's just not a whole lot of variety there, but what IS there is done in such a way that people can immerse themselves in it and have fun.

EVE isn't that great for RPing, sorry.  What you tend to see in most MMOs that is labeled "RPing" is pretty much tacking pretending to be the character on top of the already-existing game mechanic.  Instead of going out as Master Chief and killing aliens in Halo, you're out hacking up trolls as "Stinky the SwordSwinger" in WoW.  Nobody plays Halo to RP Master Chief.  Following RP-unfriendly game mechanics around while pretending to be a character isn't RP either, it's pretty pathetic.

To really do any of this requires a fundamental rethinking of how MMOs operate, but since everyone is just out to copy WoW, that's just not going to happen any time soon.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Carl132p

The more mainstream a game the less likely people are to want to RP. The average gamer doesn't do it for multiple different reasons.

 

This.  The average casual gamer thinks role playing is "weird".

So the more of them a game draws, the more negative the impact on role playing.

 

 

I would tend to agree. For the majority of  players in games like WoW, they're not able to enjoy roleplaying. They don't have the ability or inclination to get past looking at it like an FPS or RTS, just moving a toon around the screen collecting shiny gear or getting more powerful.

There needs to be two sides played by humans for roleplay to really work.

That's what Paper n Pencil roleplay is, two sides played by humans. The GAme Master plays on side, and the Players are  on the other side.

It's not necessarily adversarial between the two sides. For example, the Game Master may play an NPC that needs help and asks the Players to help them.

But, in an MMORPG, it's all one sided. The Players are all on one side, and the other side is played by a computer. It's all NPC dialog and scripts.

Player Versus Player does not help this situation in the least. IN PvP games there is no time for roleplay before the attack. Even though players are attacking each other, in a sense as far as roleplay goes, they're still on the same side, making for the same lopsided sort of roleplay.

IMO, this makes for a sort of wierd lopsided roleplay, where one side is roleplaying, and the other side is a brick wall that doesn't respond ot the roleplay.

I think if you fix this, you go a long way towards encouraging roleplayng.

To me there always been two ways to roleplay:

-role-play

-role-be

Personally I want to create a character and play it in such a way that it evolves and achieves a 'life' of its own.  However, I never acutally want to be that character.  I use my imagination and improvisation to define what the character is experiencing rather than imagining that I am experiencing it.    A video game provides me all the tools I need to do so on the screen so I do not need to 'RP' in order to roleplay my character.  Anything more and I start crossing the line into role-be and that is just weird for me. 

This is probalby why I loved playing PnP roleplaying games but when my roleplaying group started doing live-action roleplaying I could not get into it.

 

I suppose the experience is different for everyone. I see roleplaying as amateur acting that is unscripted and improvised.

I'm never trying to "be" the character, I'm simply acting as if I were the character, and responding in a manner that would be consistent with that character.

That's why it seems to me that two sides are necessary, otherwise there can be very little response or improvisation. Well, there is response and improvisation, but it's all one sided.

I guess the best example is roleplaying heroes in City of Heroes. You can roleplay that you are a bunch of heroes (or villians) in a Super Hero hideout, and running around dispensing justice (or injustice as the case may be).

But you're all on the same side, responding to each other. We're all Heroes, responding to each other as Heroes! We're never responding to NPC's asking for help, which gives us the opportunity to be kind to them, condescending, cruel, dismissive, sympathetic, depending on their reactions and our character as the scenario evolves. There is no evolution, since the NPCs will all have static dialog.

Same thing in PvP. There will be no real roleplay between the enemy players, because there is really no cajoling, negotiation, compromise, etc., It's just I kill joo! adn that's it.

So again, the roleplay is all one sided, roleplaying with the people in your party, but not the other side, whether it's PvP or NPCs asking for help.

Real, fun roleplay happens when you negotiate as a party with the other side, IMO. This doesn't happen when the other side is either PvP which means instant attack, or NPC which means computer dialog.

 

 

RP is not something that most MMO developers even understand. But COH has a pretty high proportion of RP oriented people chiefly because the character creation system encourages people to come up with something totally unique, and then give it a backstory and name, and RP can arrise out of that in normal missioning for amusment.

Coming up with a unique character and backstory as a pretty common practice is something that already puts CoH well ahead of the RP curve. It's not something most people would think to bother with in other MMOs.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Torik 

To me there always been two ways to roleplay:

-role-play

-role-be

Personally I want to create a character and play it in such a way that it evolves and achieves a 'life' of its own.  However, I never acutally want to be that character.  I use my imagination and improvisation to define what the character is experiencing rather than imagining that I am experiencing it.    A video game provides me all the tools I need to do so on the screen so I do not need to 'RP' in order to roleplay my character.  Anything more and I start crossing the line into role-be and that is just weird for me. 

This is probalby why I loved playing PnP roleplaying games but when my roleplaying group started doing live-action roleplaying I could not get into it.

 

I suppose the experience is different for everyone. I see roleplaying as amateur acting that is unscripted and improvised.

I'm never trying to "be" the character, I'm simply acting as if I were the character, and responding in a manner that would be consistent with that character.

That's why it seems to me that two sides are necessary, otherwise there can be very little response or improvisation. Well, there is response and improvisation, but it's all one sided.

I guess the best example is roleplaying heroes in City of Heroes. You can roleplay that you are a bunch of heroes (or villians) in a Super Hero hideout, and running around dispensing justice (or injustice as the case may be).

But you're all on the same side, responding to each other. We're all Heroes, responding to each other as Heroes! We're never responding to NPC's asking for help, which gives us the opportunity to be kind to them, condescending, cruel, dismissive, sympathetic, depending on their reactions and our character as the scenario evolves. There is no evolution, since the NPCs will all have static dialog.

Same thing in PvP. There will be no real roleplay between the enemy players, because there is really no cajoling, negotiation, compromise, etc., It's just I kill joo! adn that's it.

So again, the roleplay is all one sided, roleplaying with the people in your party, but not the other side, whether it's PvP or NPCs asking for help.

Real, fun roleplay happens when you negotiate as a party with the other side, IMO. This doesn't happen when the other side is either PvP which means instant attack, or NPC which means computer dialog.

 

 

I think you hit the nail on the head.

RP in an MMORPG does not present a challenge.  When you interacting with a live GM you are presented with a challenge that you have to solve given cerain parameters as defined by the GM and by the way your character is setup.    That is what made PnP roleplaying so fun for me.  I have to consider who my character is and then act appropriately.   In a MMORPG there is no challenge I am trying to overcome through RP.  It's all characterization without any followup with appropriate actions.

I think YOU hit the nail on the head.

What makes roleplay fun, is when roleplay can change the game.

You can start a fight, avoid a fight, negotiate a better deal, start a rumor that leads to mayhem, negotiate a treaty, start a war, etc., etc., with just words, no combat actions.

doesn't happen in an MMORPG quest, because the NPC dialog is static.

Doesn't happen in an MMORPG PvP situation, because there's no reason to roleplay, mostly just fight.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I think YOU hit the nail on the head.

What makes roleplay fun, is when roleplay can change the game.

You can start a fight, avoid a fight, negotiate a better deal, start a rumor that leads to mayhem, negotiate a treaty, start a war, etc., etc., with just words, no combat actions.

doesn't happen in an MMORPG quest, because the NPC dialog is static.

Doesn't happen in an MMORPG PvP situation, because there's no reason to roleplay, mostly just fight.

Good call, and so long as no one gets rewarded for RPing, there's no point to doing it.  Even if you RP'ed avoiding a fight, what do you get for it?  Nothing.  Most of the above actions are meaningless in an MMO because you get nothing for them, while the person who dives headlong into combat gets XP and loot for their efforts.

Zero reward = zero reason to do something

Maybe we roleplay just because we like doing it? I don’t need a reward but I am not against people being given one. I would give a RMT (Roleplaying Micro Transaction) MMO a go. :)

I think higher populations at launch often kill RP in MMO’s. You get some roleplaying in Betas, then the masses turn up at launch and anyone roleplaying is swamped.
 

Roleplayers in modern MMOs are pretty much always going to be the minority at this point, so I don't think that population matters much. I'm going to say that for popular MMOs the ratio of RP to Non-RP is probably about the same. The quality of RP is... in a sense maybe related to game populationsbut that's not really fair because you have games like WoW, Lineage, and whatever F2P games are at the top like MapleStory  (I'd say people RPing in this is probably debatable, but I woudn't doubt it happens) pr Perfect World  who have vastly larger player bases (internationally at least) than most titles. Naturally you're going to find more bad RPers simply because there are more players, just as I would be more likely to find more green M&Ms the more bags I open.

It's difficult to compare popular MMOs to niche MMOs because they're really two different beasts. One is meant to cater to everyone and their guinea pig while the other speaks to a specific demographic.

In all, I think that there may be some kind of correlation between population and RP quality but that's just numbers, and it works inversely as well in that larger populations would also mean more potentially good RPers.

Furthermore, Roleplaying in games like WoW is much different than what some might traditionally consider roleplaying. I'd say the mechanics are indeed limiting but the potential to roleplay and give your character more than just a face and a sword to swing are still there. They're not so much a means of sculpting the game as they are a more enriching way to socialize within the game. Its a way to really give MMOs that... massively multiplayer feel. Admittedly, most of the same things that occur could happen in an IRC chat room, but if people want PnP style RPing, they should probably just play a PnP RPG. WoW probably isn't the best example either. A MMO with more open PvP would lend itself better to more open roleplaying because you also have the possibility of diplomatic scenarios and that whole waging war thing.

Originally posted by AgentsAreGo 

A MMO with more open PvP would lend itself better to more open roleplaying because you also have the possibility of diplomatic scenarios and that whole waging war thing.

I agree with this, and at the same time, it's going to be a case of how much you can depend on the other guy to be willing to roleplay. Say two people encounter eachother in the wilderness of a free for all PvP game. Person A is a roleplayer while Person B is a strictly competitive PKer. It doesn't matter how much diplomacy Person A tries to initiate, because while he's typing out "Please, let's be reasonable. I am just a traveler in these lands, and I come in peace.", person B is busy wailing on him until he dies, teabags the corpse, /spits, takes the loot, and moves on to the next kill. Person A, after having experienced this over and over again, either decides to change his playstyle to match Person B in order to survive in the game, or he leaves the game. Either way, the roleplay erodes and the game turns into yet another glorified version of Battlefield: Whatever.

With respect to the thread topic, I don't think it's so much a case of population affecting RP quality, but how the game facilitates it. No PvP or sandbox play means that you can't really do much more than the IRC style of RP you mentioned, which is basically interactive, on-the-fly storytelling with no tangible effect in the game. A PvP sandbox, on the other hand, provides the ability for more meaningful RP, but attracts the more RP-unfriendly types. It's a bit of a paradox.

Originally posted by Scot

Maybe we roleplay just because we like doing it? I don’t need a reward but I am not against people being given one. I would give a RMT (Roleplaying Micro Transaction) MMO a go. :)

I think higher populations at launch often kill RP in MMO’s. You get some roleplaying in Betas, then the masses turn up at launch and anyone roleplaying is swamped.
 

I'm not saying that RPers don't do it for the enjoyment or that they shouldn't, I'm saying that a group who RPs gets nothing for their efforts and a group that plays the game and doesn't RP gets all the rewards, advancement, gear, etc.  A group that RPs will sit at level 1 forever because they're not making use of the game mechanics.  The more you make use of the mechanics, the less RPing gets done overall so it's a trade-off.  I'm not saying you ought to get rewarded for RPing, only that the lack of reward makes RPing seem less important if you also value playing the game.

How about we add a corrollary:

The larger the population of a game the greater the suspension of disbelief that is required

gesalt11 made be laugh there. Who has not been to a new content zone, a region meant to be a wilderness, far flung from all civilisation and found it chock full of players? :)