If it's true that players pretend to RP and just take the pretext to whine, why is it a problem to you? Not really you're problem if someone chooses to waste time whining rather than playing for fun.

I just feel this article is a rant against people who pretend to RP from a nostalgic pen and table veteran.

I sometime feel like RP'ing, sometimes I don't, I just like to have the choice. I barely speak to people in most case, anyway.

As many have said previously, I think most people use RP servers because of the more strict naming policies therein. It's been 10 years, but it still blows my mind every time I see someone hit max lvl with a character named "Slampig."

Now I usually just come here to get information and read up on the latest mmorpg news, but this article actually made me want to post.  This is so far from what most rping servers are, I wonder if this guy has ever tried being on a rping server, let alone actually role playing.  I had high hopes when I clicked on the article that I would get some good information, but that was not the case.  This article gave a bad name to all rpers and further spreads myths that are far from the truth.  Most of everything I would say about how inaccurate this article is has already been said so there is no need to say it again.  I just hope that MMORPG.com with post articles with real substance, unlike this bias filled, uneducated rant.

I find the article irritating with it's spurious views on RPing and uninformed generalizations.

This article undermines the OP's opinion for me from now on and I hope we see some kind of explanation or apology

I see alot of complaints here, but, I agree with the article.  Even in games such as UO, where there was a "sense" of role-play in the absolute meaning of the word, it only went so far (on a non-enforced non-RP server).  Yeah most of my friends said "aye" and that bugged the shit out of me, but live and let live.  I think if a person wants to role-play, expect to get ragged on.  It's a fact of life that people log in just to make fun of you pansies that treat in-game items as real life items.  It's the 6 degrees of seperation from not wanting to take the trash out or mow the grass.

I can imagine forcing the rules of an RP server to be a pain in the ass to say the least.  Modding everyone who mentions iran or politics or talks about myspace because it has nothing to do with the game.

I don't agree with him saying the most RP tuned game is EVE though.  I've played it for years and it mostly people talking about gimped ships or skills and nothing to do with "aye captian i shall go into sector 7 to smite the pirates" ... it's more like f*ck yeah lets kick some pirate ass boiiiitcches! 

Anyway .. back to killing things for my pleasure

Originally posted by TheHavok

Come on now, they aren't kid with down syndrome trying to put on a musical.

Dude.. That statement made me laugh so damn hard.  Though, I wouldnt bless them, I'd laugh and point.

Originally posted by kaydinv

So many people on here state that Dana is wrong about RP servers being filled with non-RPers, yet many people have posted proclaiming that a majority of people play on RP servers not for the RP element, but to play with other "mature" people. Interesting, I didn't realize you could say someone was "wrong" and then support their side with your opposing view.

I also find it funny how many people claim "normal" MMO servers are filled with leetspeak talking asshats, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Sound like you guys are no better than Dana at passing judgement on online communities.

Whoops! Irony!

 

there is no irony at all. There are role players on these servers. They tend to be a bit more mature in many respects. Other people who are not role players seek out the maturity of these servers because the role players make it a more interesting and mature community.

 I have been playing MMO's since Ultima Online first released .. and since RP servers started coming out on MMO's, I have almost exclusively chosen them when available (except in cases of RvR or PvP in which case i chose RvRRP or PvPRP) and I have to say that my personal experience with RP servers is so far removed from your article that it, for me at least, calls into question whether or not you have played many hours on a RP server other than one on WoW.

 RP servers have, to me, almost always had a higher percentage of:

 1- mature players (per total # of players on said server) (and I do not mean age, I mean emotionally mature, socially adjusted, and generally less A$$hatty behavior)

 2- Orderly and well run guilds (probably, in part, for the above reason)

 3- GM responses & attentiveness

 I literally know *personally* over two dozen gamers, both hardcore and casual, that have become comfortable swearing off any other server than RP ones **specifically** for this reason. Some get very "into RPing" .. some do not. Ultimately, however, there is no doubt in my mind that RP servers hold the game to a closer standard to "realistic" fantasy play than other servers in virtually every MMO I have played.  Are there flaws and misconceptions? Almost always. But I find your rant.. lacking any semblance to my personal experience and.. no offense.. but sounding a tad whiney.  I neither *want* Leeroy Jenkins or Ikillj00 players on a RP server, nor am I one. I do not rant about RP servers having to be "pure", nor do I expect them to be perfect.

 Personally, I think the 880lb gorilla in the room is the comment left unsaid and painfully left uncommented upon in your post. MANY players choose RP servers because *YES, THEY DO* tend to repulse the players who are less likely to fit in the #1 category above. IMHO, a shockingly high # of RP-server players just use the RP tag as a Ikillj00 filter, respect the actual RP players, and hide out on the RP servers in order to reduce the Chuck Norris spam.

100% agree

"As many have said previously, I think most people use RP servers because of the more strict naming policies therein. It's been 10 years, but it still blows my mind every time I see someone hit max lvl with a character named "Slampig.""

Do we have levels here? And did I hit the cap?

On a side note, Slampig is the name of my first band and according to a couple of Swedish guys I played EQ with it is slang for dirty-sl** in Sweden, don't know if that is true or not but hey...

By the way, do I get an exp boost or something for being mentioned in someone else's post?

Ego +1

That article has got to be the biggest pile of crap that I have ever read on this site from an mmorpg source.

I'm not impressed with this article at all.   Mostly opinions stated as facts with little or no real information.  

This could have been a good subject to write an article about, if it was done by someone who knew something about it.

If that had been posted by someone else on the forums, it probably would have been lock for trolling.  All these F2P articles and now this, you guys are really putting out garbage lately.

William Shatner RPs. Hell he even LARPS.

William Shatner > Danna Massey.

It just goes to show everyone how naive a person(s) that both Mr. Massey, and his editor are, if they did not expect this sort of backlash from the community.

Sure, it's somewhat easy to saw at this point that it was an "opinion piece" and is therefor should be unsubjected to the general standards that most journalistic endeavors and brought to bear against. Unfortunately for you, Mr. MMORPG staff member, no one bought that line of horse shit for a second.

To make an opinion piece, you have to PRESENT it as an opinion piece, of which it most certainly was not, here, let me paraphrase your own shitty article, so you might actually understand where were coming from:

"RP servers are foul and dark, and terrible." "RPers are nasty people" "The people who routinely do nothing than insult RPers are better then RPers"

Those aren't opinions, those are lines that are almost directly quoted from the article. They are being presented as FACTS not opinions, so no, it wasn't an opinion paper by any stretch of belief.

It's a shame you guys went out of your way to insult what is possibly the most textually competent of any group of people you can choose to insult, because this isn't going to end. Were going to continue to come here and post about what a farce this whole ordeal has been, and were not going to let you back out of it with your supposed smooth talking.

First this sopping rag was termed as "It's intention was to incite debate". Now it's being termed as an opinion piece. What it really was, was a hate filled, irrational, drawn out slurr against an ENTIRE COMMUNITY. Regardless of whether or not you actually believe yourself that this was truely an "opinion piece" you fail to come to terms with the fact that you've managed to piss off a large community that writes far more collectively then any group of writers on the face of the planet. Good job MMORPG, you morons.

Here is Dana's logic in a nutshell. "If you consider yourself an RPer, your a piece of dirt that no one should care about ever."

It's almost as false as the following statement: "If you consider yourself a writer, and your name is Dana Massey, your a piece of dirt that no one should ever read again, ever."

Oh wait, that last one is actually quite factually correct. My apologies.

I don't even know what to say.   I don't remember many people using "thou" or other such words when I played Shadowrun or Vampire.

Just because the servers and game mechanics themselves don't stop people from playing OOC and just because the vocal majority thinks roleplaying is "for nerds" as opposed to playing video games which is now "for everyone" ... none of this means the craft is not viable and not supported by the players.

You can't claim that the number of people who "would"  roleplay won't even fill a guild when the population you are sampling is from a game that doesn't support them.  You also can't blame the role players for trying to fit into that game when it labels itself as an RPG.  If I made a game called "FPS Shooter RAWR!" and it was a puzzle game with falling geometric shapes that you have to make lines with... I think you could forgive people for thinking it was going to have guns in it.

The number of people who "would" roleplay if they were actually catered to is pretty large as evidenced by the sales and continued popularity of table top RPGs.  Sure many purists would never go to an electronic format but many would.  I think WotC is kind of banking on that with their whole new system for DnD gameplay through an electronic UI.

The bottom line is I play tabletop RPGs I also occasionally (though not often) roleplay in an MMO.  SWG is a fine example, years ago I went around spouting all the Imperial rhetoric I could.  Plenty of people told me to "stfu" and yet I never paid them any mind.  Tons of people were actually happy to hear what I had to say and thanked me for adding to the "star wars" feel that was sorely lacking.  It also made me feel quite immersed in the world and I enjoyed it for that aspect if nothing else.  I never considered arguing with those who didn't like it ..just /ignore me and that's that.

Do ..SOME people do it for the "cause" they can feel a part of even if they don't really agree?  Sure.  Yet, isn't that true of any endeavor?  

Yeh....not only are they trying to pass this trash of as an Opinion Article...which I guess means writing shit no matter who it may offend or piss off... (man, I could really write one HELL of an opinion piece right now), but it's the #1 or Lead Story on the main page.

The quality writing has really bottomed out here.  Some of  the newer contributors are absolutely pathetic and this piece went way over the top.

For MMORPG to stand  by this article and actually promote it.

Well, I've been a member here for several years....but no more.

No clicks to your site from me anymore.

I may only be one.....but I have standards.  Apparently, this site doesn't.

I can think of one RPG that goes against Dana's claims (concerning rpgs in general), the catch is that its a single player game. However, it still manages to coerce the player into the role playing experience. That game? Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. If it were multi-player it might just keep that effect.

Multi-player Baldur's Gate was able to do this as well to a certain degree.

 Seems like a rather naive post.  In my experience, these little arguments between RP people and the trolls that like to torment them occur in the beginning areas or the capital areas where people tend to congregate.  But hey, those are where all the evils of gaming seem to occur.  Gold spammers . . . beggars . . . blanket spammed guild invitiations . . . scams . . . it all takes place in the cities.  Just like in the old days when the rural preachers of America used to talk about the sins of the city.  It's just like saying that anybody that goes to the capital areas or crafting areas or auction areas, etc, likes to be the victim of gold spammers, beggars, scams, etc.

As for this idea that nobody really roleplays, well sheesh, I think that everybody does in fact roleplay.  Afterall, only in a roleplaying game would you seriously care whether you had the Hammer of All-Power or not.  In real life I don't run around in armor or a sword.   And as for talking funny, well, who needs to talk funny to roleplay.  In the Middle Ages, everybody in the same region tlaked the same and nobody sounded like they had an accent unless they were from a few valleys over.  So if nobody uses an "accent" when they roleplay, that's fine.  That just simulates that nobody would hear an accent anyway.

Leet talk is just another form of Thieve's Cant or the slang of youth gangs.  In Rome there was there was slang amongst mercenaries, teens, etc.  And no doubt, the language grated on the ears of the elder and the more refined.  Well, hearing leet speak just lends to my roleplaying experience.

The only thing that really hurts the experience is when people talking about stuff totally unrelated to the game, but then again . . . haven't people always talked about family life, whatever sporting events they were interested in (bar fights or the latest gladiatorial results), and the more mundane occurances of life throughout history?  So, hey, I can incorporate that into the roleplaying experience too.

So people can talk about all these different things and use leet speak and all that and STILL be roleplayers because even though all these real life discussions can be brought intot he illusion of roleplay, the fact that they are pretending to play with swords or using magic just doesn't transfer intot he real world.  In the real world, we just don't run around with swords, fight dragons, etc.  We don't care about obtaining ancient artifacts because of the power they will give us.  We are not adventurers and warriors and mages.  So we are all roleplaying.

Originally posted by URMAKER

this is just a bad article you have no clue what you're saying. i don't rp but i've always played on rp servers. the reason being its always in my experience been a more mature community. nobody rp's in vent or chat so of course you'll never see any "thou" or "whilst". sounds like you just made some stuff up to me....guess you really couldn't come up with a better subject?

I will agree 100% every role playing venture i have encountered is at the top of the maturity chain.Many like the childish incentives games offer,but most of us just want to play and relax.

Although it might have been brought up in the 200+ posts before this one, I think a point needs to be emphasized, namely people want RP servers for various reasons and not just to act like they are at a Renaissance Faire. The few times that I have tried RP-servers, I wanted an environment where the players would contribute to a developing story, a world history in essence. Unfortunately I first tried it in AoC, which was virtually unmoderated, even though they had clear statements such as "playing a homicidal maniac will not be tolerated" and strict naming conventions; nonetheless my demonologist would get repeatedly ganked by rez point camper guilds in whatever the endgame city was with players named “Leetassmonkey” and so forth. A RP-server that isn’t strictly moderated will fail, and cause people to leave the game in frustration; they had promised a prison-type system for months, but it didn’t make prime time prior to my loss of interest in the game; perhaps that could have imposed a less gank-based game-play experience for those players who like to ask why would my character do this (other than to get an upgrade on their gear). I am principally a PvP-server guy, but I sympathize with the RP’ers out there, as I think they aspire to a more immersive gaming environment, as opposed to the majority of habituated token economy driven mindless shooter players; I don’t think of frustrated RP'ers as whining, but rather blame the company’s inability to follow through in implementing promised game content. Another reason why people join such servers also include the perception of a more mature population who are interested in a larger more “real society” interactive environment, which is cool. There are plenty of old school pencil and paper gamers who have no desire to talk in Old English, who would welcome a more substantial story driven gaming experience; I will probably give it a try in SWTOR if available because of the potential for actually shaping a storyline, but time will tell just how player-on-player interactive it will turn out to be.

Well, imo, AoC is kind of a bad example.

The game was/is purely combat based, all it's innovations were poured into that system.

There whole RP server idea was tantamount to placing one more chocolate chip on top of a sundae in which you've already poured 100 prior to this last one. It held no weight, and was out of "Well, every other game company does it, so we should to" mentality.

That being said, in any game, even AoC, it's not hard to form enclaves waaaay away from traveled places, which totally negates the effect of anyone who joins the server for less-than-wholesome reasons, shall we say.

But yeah...back on topic, Dana and the folks at MMORPG.com really need to at least a little bit of research before writing "opinion" articles.

Let's say you, as a person, had never tasted cheese before. Someone walks up to you, at a cheese convention no less, and hands you what is quite possibly the most foul piece of shitty, processed cheddar and says, "Here, it's CHEESE, you'll like it." So you eat it, hate it, find it disgusting, and then proceed to run around said cheese convention, screaming your head off that "Cheese sucks, it's absolutely worthless, and it also doesn't even exist."

^ Replace the words CHEESE with Roleplaying, you have basically what you did here Dana.

Ahem, here I'll translate for you: l2p "My Pretend Writer" you nub, kthxbai.

Untrue that no video games have fostered RP. NWN has had some excellent RP on their servers but then that CAN be enforced because the people running the server are players and real people acting as the GMs. It's not like WoW where there is no way to enforce RP except for names and even then the GMs in WoW are lazy about it.

I find it funny as hell though that without PnP games like D&D, you know "Roleplaying Games" you wouldn't have most MMOs. Without people like Gary Gygax you wouldnt really have games like WoW because that's where the idea came from. Before computers people sat around playing games with pencil and paper and then eventually someone thought "hey what if I could put this into computer format and have thousands of people playing at the same time." That's the real kicker here.

Soon, we will get an mmorpg where we can RP. This game is mortal online. Like the writer said, RPing in EVE was like real. So it will be in MO too.

In MO, there is no global chat. When you wishper, if someone is near you and you wishper to someone far aways, the guys near you will hear what you just said. Even for guild chat or party chat. This may add a lot of immersion for rpers.

The whole game is fpv so it does add immersion. No minimap. You have to buy a map and you can note stuff on it with a pen in game.

So MO is the nest game where you will be able to rp well. If a none rper want to ruin your day, you can even kill him and go on or you can see him as a crazy guy.

Alright....one more post.

I also posted this in the AoC forums, where this trash was brough up in a post.

Massey's "article"....if one can even call it that....is nothing more than a rant intended to piss off a bunch of people....for who knows what reason.

It's quite apparent that he somehow got his feelings hurt while on a RP preferred server, so he used his position as a writer to "stir" it up.

All he accomplished by writing that trash is lose credibility as a "writer', and piss people off. A somewhat "official" rant like that also widens the gap between RPers and those that grief the RPers by feeding the griefers dislike with fictional crap presented as fact.

It's kinda like somewhat writing a racist piece and generalizing, in a negative way, members of that race. Those that agree with the writers bogus opinion take all that information as fact and it feeds and replenishes their racist views, while those that were needlessly and inappropriately attacked can only sit by and say "wtf?"