Every game has them, no one truly uses them. This week, Dana explores the myth of role-playing servers in MMOs. Dana's columns appear every Thursday.

Soon after the first few MMOs trickled out the door, developers came up with something else, much darker, much fouler. They called it the Role Playing Server.

You’ve all heard of them. Almost every MMO has one. They’re these special servers, with special conduct rules where people are supposed to play nice, leave the real world out of it and get really into their characters. It’s a good idea and God bless the role-players out there who love them.

But, I am here today to tell you something. These servers are a myth. They’re not real. They’re like unicorns and Playboy bunnies. They’re an impossibility.

Read it all here.

You know i've always pondered how a RP server with a highly restrictive chat and emote system would work out. I started thinking about it while playing FFXI. A friend IRL and my god parents live in Osaka and are Japanese, and i've made numerous Japanese friends visiting them and playing FFXI. I don't speak much, and definitely don't read Kanji, but in FFXI I grouped quite often with full Japanese groups. My interaction within these groups was done mostly with emotes, smiley faces, and the games auto translator. It had a learning curve, but before long the barrier between us was practically non existant. This got me thinking about how this could translate into a RP server with forced RP.

If a system was developed well enough and expanded on FFXI's auto translator a really unique and interesting environment could be created within an RP server while not allowing free form typing and text (This could be allowed in private or guild channels though.) I really think it could work, and after the learning curve could be a very unique and interesting way to communicate within game.
 

If you feel like roleplayers all sit around talking in Shakespearean English, you've obviously never played a tabletop RPG nor have you actually engaged in a true roleplaying activity with actual roleplayers.

I can feel the hate coming your way.

Hehe I usually pick roleplaying servers since they often have at least a naming policy, so I wont run in "Urdaddy" s and the like.

(For that matter I think rp servers are lovely)

Im not really enjoying the actual roleplaying, but I respect the rp-rules and I always rp in return when players approach me, staying in character isn't very hard.

I started playing WoW in 2004 on an RP server.  I had fun and made a lot of money playing the AH!  Loved it.  Then our GM told me about pvp servers because I spent all my time in the battle grounds.  I went to a pvp server and stayed there for a few years. 
 
My boss tells me he is playing on an rp server and so I roll a toon on it. 
Rp servers are the minor league of WoW.  People don't care about spec or gear, they care about how they look, when the next wedding is going to be and what was on Scrubs last night.  Trying to make friends in the LAMER guild I was in,  I offered runs through classic instances for gear and fun.  No repsonse.  I'm like don't you guys want a Corpsemaker or Smite's Hammer and they are like, "Ummm were like working on the newest cooking acheivments and stuff."  I am serious. 
<Mod edit>
Because on my server they would be served with garlic toast and a good beer.
 
 

I have to say that was an exceptionally misinformed and unenlightened article.

I prefer to play on "RP" servers, not because of any real expectation of roleplaying - nor to "annoy" roleplayers. I play on them because they tend to have better enforced social guide lines on chat, naming conventions and behavior.

It's not all about bad acting lessons, shakespearian accents or drama queens. It's about respecting the intended uses of chat channels and tiny little things like not being allowed to deliberately break the immersion of someone elses playing time. I couldn't care less what you say or how you say it in an OOC channel, guild chat or a private convo; because I can choose to not be listening to them. However, I find having to listen to some moron named N33D5D0P3 talk about Michel Jackson in zone wide general chat to be really annoying.

So, no they aren't perfect and they really aren't about rigidly enforced "roleplaying"...but I find RP servers to be a better social environment than most MMO servers, simply because they actually allow for the enforcement of some basic rules of conduct and consideration.

I have to say that this comes off as a bit of a rant. Not 100% true but with truth. The problem is that in some ways you just don't respect the people who do role play.

the second issue is that for some reason you think all role players have to be total immersion freaks who don't know when to turn off.

It is more than possible for them to role play in the role play or general chat and to then be themselves in OOC. That is what it is there for "out of character".

Though I've done quite a bit of acting and a bit of improv, I am not a role player. I usually prefer role players because they take the game more seriously and are more interested in playing.

As far as them wanting to be victims, that's so full of hubris.

If you want to go that far then all video game players are victims, waiting for the "adults" in the real world to tell them to get real jobs and stop wasting their time. Might as well take that to the sport junkies as well. Then those who are in bands hoping they can still make it even though they are pushing 40.

The truth part is that "yes" there are people who feel that roleplaying is their venue to cyber or be more naughty than they can be off line. But you know what? In the end that is still a role and one that fits within the rules.

As for those who go to role play servers to bother them that is not the role players problem. And I also think that these servers can be enforced to a point.

In the end you come off as being dismissive of  a group of people who want to be as serious about their game or at least adopt a play style that is as focused as say a hard core pvp player.

shame on you.

While I admit that there are people out there who claim to be RPers and still powergame their characters, that does not completely define the RP community.  Come to LotRO some time, and you'll meet people who have characters wielding level 1 weapons throughout their characters' lives because the weapons look more realistic.  There are RPers there who will refuse to travel by running, traveling everywhere instead by walking despite how slow and tedious it is.  Visit certain NWN servers and you'll see this multiplied.  On one of my old favorites, we would routinely just log in so that we could sit around the campfire or the table at the inn and just chat - entirely in-character chat, at that.  And when you do that, you can have some amazing stories, such as how my Elf Fighter began to realize that he valued much more highly being able to spend time with his wife and friends than he did killing evil monsters and people, and slowly began to hate the very skills that had defined his career.  That's the good and real kind of RP - not the people dreaming about how their warrior can wield a bigger axe or smash heads faster than anyone else, but the people who are simply there for the story, and game conventions are merely a backdrop.

Well Dana, there are companies out there that support the role players and that is one of the reasons that Blizzard's Wow has done so well.

A role play server is not for those that have to roleplay 100% of the time.  No one does that, but you do have the ablitity, at least on the server I play on, to roleplay in peace if that is what you desire.  You are also free of the kids with the wild names, Blizzard still enforces that on the rp servers.   So in that sense you are wrong. 

Originally posted by Dana

Most of the so-called role-players don’t really want to role-play; that is their fiction. They want to be victims. They’ve adopted a philosophy and a completely unenforceable ruleset as their own in the hope that others will come along, “ruin their experience,” and they can whine about it.

Thats the truth right there.

“They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players.” tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-role-playing.html

Originally posted by Shangala

Originally posted by Dana

Most of the so-called role-players don’t really want to role-play; that is their fiction. They want to be victims. They’ve adopted a philosophy and a completely unenforceable ruleset as their own in the hope that others will come along, “ruin their experience,” and they can whine about it.

 

Thats the truth right there.

 

“They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players.” tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-role-playing.html

I don't like people that think you have to roleplay a certain way.  I don't like how people used "old english" and talk with a "text accent".. even tho the language and accent don't fit the world they are in.

Ever notice how so many people play the exact same character?  Their parents were killed when they were young... they were kidnapped, sold, brought up by (random people or animal) and later fought as a gladiator...

Or they are trying to have "golden skin with gold hour glass eyes.." or they are all the same "fair haired elven" guy with a bow.

I know I'm generalizing and I used to like to "role play".

However, the is only ONE reason that RP servers are a Myth... because as with almost all rules (think Eula / Tos) there is NO enforcement from the game developer.

They like to tell the community to police its self but we have no tool set to do this.

The myth and the utter failure is actually..

Terms of Service

End User License

Naming Rules

and server specific rules.

I'm not talking about gold sellers/spammers.  Besides a few spotty bans of various sizes.. what game company has ever consistently enforced the rules?

I started on a RP server in EQ2 and now its the largest "standard ruleset" server in the game... and that's pretty much why I left.

Then again you don't need a specific ruleset server to "role play"... There was a lot of RP in Ultima Online long before Trammel (very active player towns etc).

I like the ruleset because if it was enforced 99% of the stuff about the community which leads me to "cancel" wouldn't be going on.. or would result in a ban or move to a standard server.

Wow.  I am officially never reading another article by you again.  You've done a great job, not only of generalizing, but of doing it in a massively negative manner.  This does, as a previous poster said, come off as a rant.  Also, just because you've apparently rarely seen the brighter side of a role-playing community doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  How sad.

I think the vast majority of people who play on RP servers (and I've played on a few in my day) do it for two reasons.

1: They want a more mature, cooperative community, free of l33t speak,  where people actually type in coherent sentences.

2: they want to experience some kind of immersion while they play, and not have to see someone talking about Transformers 2 or their crappy job flipping burgers in general chat, and have characters names actually fit the game's lore and not be some mindlessly asinine ripoff of a movie or some other pop culture.

I agree with Massey that most people on RP servers don't RP much if at all. People that actually speak Shakespearean...well,  I've never run into more than three or five of them in all my time playing on RP servers in SWG, WoW, , WAR, and Horizons. Seriously, no one does this.

I think Massey is dead wrong, though, when he says that people play on RP servers because they want to play the victim. That's borderline hilarious amateur psychology. Sure, there may be a few people here and there that do something like this, but I think their real reason is to preserve their immersion in the game.

Originally posted by Charity

Wow.  I am officially never reading another article by you again.  You've done a great job, not only of generalizing, but of doing it in a massively negative manner.  This does, as a previous poster said, come off as a rant.  Also, just because you've apparently rarely seen the brighter side of a role-playing community doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  How sad.

Yeh....nothing like a writer calling a bunch if his readers "whiners" simplhy because they like to roleplay.

Sounds to me like he's a PvPer.  And if he's read any game forums recently, he would see that they make up the least number of players in most games (based on numbers of servers), but have the whiniest posts.

Actually....the entire article I just read came off as nothing but a big whine.  I've noticed that quite often lately.  Writers on this site calling their readers names and whining about game issues.

Last time I called a writer out on that, my posts were deleted.   We'll see what hapens here..

I guess this article just shows you can't possibly like everything a writer writes. I normally think Dana's stuff is well-written and worth reading, but this whole article smacked of personal bias, whether or not that was the intent. If it had been about the financial viability of roleplaying servers (or rather, the lack thereof), or any sort of intellectual observation of the culture clash between roleplayers and non-roleplayers, I would've been onboard. The majority of the thing read like a personal attack against roleplayers in general, however. I found it to be in poor taste, and I'm not even a roleplayer myself.

"Most of the so-called role-players don’t really want to role-play; that is their fiction. They want to be victims."

"[Roleplayers are] such a vast minority that they probably couldn’t support more than one guild, let alone an entire server."

"Within five minutes, even the most pious cleric will be on TeamSpeak cybering the Troll if left to their own devices."

"The sick truth is that this kind of role-player does it because they will have something to get high and mighty about."

Another interesting quote: "It’s time to face the fact that no video game, noRPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing."

That's just patently false. I played MUDs for about a decade before coming to MMOs, and there are multitudes of the things out there that require character approval (to make the player's backstory and concept "fit")l before they even let you log in. I stuck to more hack 'n slash stuff, but there are entire categories of  MU* codebases out there built around nothing but roleplaying. Look up MUSH or MUX sometime.

Of course the scenario above wouldn't work in MMOs; MMOs are profit-based, whereas MU*s are owned and operated by hobbyists. Dana's quote doesn't limit itself to MMOs, though. It overreaches with hyperbole, just like the entire first half of the article. The whole thing felt like axe-grinding. The article started by calling roleplaying servers "foul and dark," hurled various and sundry insults at the players themselves, then lauded EVE Online. Congratulations, Dana. You just used better-than-average sentence structure to write a worse-than-average EVE forum post. 

Because you've shown on multiple occasions that you're a better writer than this, I'll cut you some slack and give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to your intentions. Why don't you do the same thing for some of those "sick, troll-cybering whiners." If they all want to be victims as you suggest, you were just playing into their hands by writing an article like this, and we wouldn't want that.

I have never disagreed with a official article as much as this one, infact the entire information is one sided and imo fme utterly wrong.

(talking purely about RPing) I have not come across any problems with other players what so ever in years of playing on RP servers, im not saying it doesnt happen ever, but the statement you either RP or go out of your way to annoy RPers is in reality a miniscule problem, infact no real problem at all

People tend to RP in the "say"/local channel and talk ooc in whispers and guild etc - theres nothing wrong with that and it provides a way to RP but also keep the "real world" stuff which needs/wants to be talked about also possible - so its a win / win

I wont go on anymore but I hope RP servers remain in MMO games and I think there are enough players out there which disagree with your views and want RP servers to remain for them to stay around for some time to come

oh and to answer your question
"So if the community doesn’t use them properly, and RP servers just create conflict (and not the good kind) between players, why do game companies always insist on having them?"

The community can and often do use them properly, RP servers dont create conflict and game companies see sense in having them as a portion of the community want them

:)

What a horrible uneducated article...

I agree with the person a few posts above on not reading this 'staff members' posts again.

He's done well to generalise an entire community with his (more than likely) 5 minutes on an RP server IF he has even ever been on one.

God... why would they even publish drivel like this?

No wonder he's the former editor, I hope he was fired for his diabolical work.

Jeeze... I find it hilarious he's the PR manager yet he manages to slate a large portion of the community.

There are many different styles of play prevalent in MMOs.  There are roleperformers, for whom acting their part is a matter of speaking in a funny voice and making sure everyone else around them follows the script.

True roleplayers, on the other hand, simply want immersion and choices that fit the character they are playing.  If they add a little bit of voice acting, it is purely for the sake of immersion and storyline.

True roleplayers actually respect the gameplay choices and styles of others to a large degree, because that is why the roleplayer is there - to see how that interaction is played out.

The author might want to familiarize himself with the MMORPG industry and its history.

I like the reply given by Jenuviel, a few posts above. MUDs, MUSHs, and all the others were havens for the RPers. And no there is not just one type of RPer who speaks in old english.

I do beleive those days are long gone and nearly non-exsistent in graphic MMOs. I think this is because of two things. First the games are not really designed to match the broad freedom of creativity that text games had offered and secondly because many of the type of people who grew up with that type of RPG have grown up and moved onto careers and family leaving the console type gamers to be the majority of the gaming community out there.

This is my opinion but i do think this article was a bit harsh and a one-sided rant

Burn the heretic!!!!

I kid :)