lol, is this a joke?

Looking forward to Kill Bill Online now. *eyeroll*

Many terms are overused in the MMO lingo. Sadly, WoW clone is not one of them. It's extensive use is completely justified in the majority of cases. There just has been such a lack of originality since WoW's success, (as always, with a few exceptions) it's left many MMO gamers understandably tired and jaded. Before WoW, most MMO's were unique. That being said, I think we may see a corner being turned with games like SWTOR and FF14 on the horizon. We can hope!

As someone who has played CoX for 2 years, I do not think it needs a higher level cap. That will accomplish nothing. What it needs is more end game fun, like the old hamidon raids that still go on today. The beuatiful thing about these raids is that you dont need to be in a leet raid guild with a cookie cutter build. Read the forums of your respective server and show up at the scheduled raid time of whoevers organizing it, it's that simple. Going Rogue will hopefully add some much needed end game content.

With maybe 2 or 3 exceptions, i've played very few F2P games that have not been blatant WoW clones. These types of games are what give F2P mmo's a bad rap as being shallow, unoriginal and generic. (aka crappy) Kudo's to games like Dofus, GhostX, Lunia, and Mabigoni for being original and well developed. That said, i'm mostly a P2P gal myself. I find them to be typicaly of better quality. Sadly still, even in P2P games, only a few are not blatant WoW clones.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Beyond CSRs, roleplayers need events.

No, they don't. I have never roleplayed in an "event." I roleplay inside the structure of the game, and I think this is typical for most true roleplayers. There is a different style of play alltogether where people get together and act scripts out. I call that style roleperforming, and no, I am not a fan. Usually these are the players that get upset when things don't go exactly as planned, as scripted. The fact that the author doesn't seem to know the difference is telling.
 

Other posters in this thread have talked about sandboxy organizations that allow their members to roleplay without preconceived dialogue. That is what true roleplaying is about.
 

Roleplayers also need more scripted packages.

Scripted packages? No, quite the opposite. True roleplayers need an absence of scripted packages.

Finally, roleplayers need tools to execute their elaborate scenarios.

True. Is creating tools more difficult than creating "scripted packages?" I would say they are about even, with perhaps a slight nod towards "tools."

None of these people are going off a script, with reason and logic behind their choices.

Going off a script? They are writing the script as they play.
 

A MMORPG can make such an excellent medium for roleplay because it doesn't require every human available to maintain strict character cooperation. There can be conflict without group disintegration and metagaming. One poster in this thread mentioned being an orc among a group of friendly orcs. They didn't have to maintain civility when encountering other groups, even though a rough form of camaraderie was still available between members of the clan.

Or more probably, no one else at all.

Once more, a suggestion that roleplayers just can't get along with each other let alone the general populace. Completely untrue. In my experience the true roleplayers (not the roleperformers) are the ones that unite servers and keep everyone mollified, regardless of playstyle. They welcome new players instead of looking down their nose at them. They may, in fact, invent an event and allow everyone to participate, not just guild members.
 

 

I just wanted to point out some of the more offending areas of this article.

Yes, yes, yes. For the love of everything, YES! Raithe-Nor hit it spot on for me. Speaking as a roleplayer from CoH/CoV, this is exactly how the good people of virtue operate and handle RP. In fact, pre-scripted events are generally viewed as inconsiderate unless said event is agreed upon OOC by all taking part.

IMO, the quality of, and the way RP is handled varies significantly from MMO to MMO. I can't help but wonder if people who were left with a bad taste in their mouth over RPers have been playing some of the worse off MMO's for RP?

I'd also add, that the concept of RP is a fickle thing, and there is no sound right or wrong way to RP. Generaly, most RPers will respect others style of RPing.

I feel also that there are a few unspoke rules of etiquette that many MMO roleplayers keep in sub-concious mind, if not concious. Number one, and perhaps most important, is to play nice and understand that in an MMO environment, there is no GM guiding the action, only your fellow roleplayers. It is thus very important to be pro-active. What that means is each roleplayer acts as their own characters GM, meaning they set the goals, challenges, and hardships that their characters want to meet/go through. And when roleplayers like this meet and interact, usually in the form of a themed guild/clan/whateveryoucallit, the fun that can be had is memorable to say the least. Twists and turns abound.

Cutting to the chase, i'll agree with previous posters that RPers only need other RPers (and of course the setting the MMO provides) to have good quality RP. Roleplaying has always been about using your imagination, and it's no different in an MMO or any other medium.

I have to express my disgust that a staff member would write such an ignorant, biased article. Beyond that everything I could think of to say has already been said about it.

But I will say that WoW is the worst MMO for RPing, even on PvE RP servers, and I am sad to see that some fellow gamers have formed such misconceptions about mmo roleplayers based on experiences in WoW. If you played nearly any other MMO's RP servers you'd find groups of mature players, usually in RP guilds, who create compelling and fun stories from in-game events/roleplaying. I am particularly fond of the Virtue server in CoX. Although it is the "unnoficial" RP server of the game, i've had loads of great experiences with the RP crowd. There are a few areas in the game where public roleplaying is very popular such as Pocket D or Atlas Park. No ones cybering, no ones talking about leet set builds in the zone chat, people are legitamately interacting with each other, in character.

And that's just speaking from what i've seen in my favorite MMO. I've also heard great things about LotRO's RP server.

Dana's article I feel, is not only ill-informed and biased, but also appallingly troll-like. I am hesistant to believe he only meant to incite debate, as that being true would require a phenomenal lack of common sense. Maybe I shouldnt put it past him, though.

EDIT: Thrage, I see what you did thar!

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Realbigdeal

Every time i read someone post (I was looking faward to that game) What is coming next? Carebear request or they still get concerned about the third person view. Well... MO is not for everyone so go back to wow  and dont make my game become a trammel like UO.

There will never be any insurence, 3rd person view will never be implemented, stealing will be balanced, but it will stay.

 

Posts like this just get me.  They show complete ignorance of what has happened in past MMO's.  All I can say, boy are you in for a rude surprise.  The playerbase has gotten a lot worse than when UO  was around pre trammel.  It was not trammel that hurt UO, it was the Age of Shadows, where they made equipment determine the out come of fights rather than skill.

Without consequences, servers self destruct.  Too many people take advantage of gaps in rules and the rest just say to heck with it.

So for the ignorant, I reiterate, without decent consequences you end up with a dead game.  Any knowledgable developer knows that and I am sure from what I have seen so far of this game that will be true here.

I wish them luck, I would like to give this game a try.  Darkfall is such a disaster waiting to happen because of completely clueless developers.

This.

What a shame, this game looked like the MMO of my dreams until I read about the full loot, completely open PvP, and thieving. Have sandbox game developers learned nothing? The sort of player that this sort of open PvP/PvP looting system attracts are the rabid frothing-at-the-mouth griefers who enjoy making the game unplayable for anyone not in their "1337 z3rg clanz0r" and anyone who doesn't travel with an army. We need a sandbox game that appeals to more than the average PvP griefer.

The flagging system won't matter. People will exploit game mechanics to get away with whatever they want, whenever they want. That's just the maturity level of the PvP griefer crowd that this sort of system attracts. Don't believe me? Think i'm just trolling? Go play Darkfall, or Age of Conan open PvP server, or even a WoW PvP server. Any of those will have stealthed rogues ganking and backstabbing and stealing from you just because they can get a kick out of it, and just because they have nothing better to do. Any of those will have groups of immature asshats camping instance entrances and spamming "lolcopter you all sux your mom is fat i pwn you etc etc" in global chat while they zerg anyone who tries to get in. Any of those will have a group of immature asshats who hang around at the side of a well traveled road like a pack of starving animals waiting to zerg, kill, and usualy corpse camp/grief, anyone unlucky enough to cross. And these types of players are -everywhere-. Most of them -are- like that.

With full looting to stack on top of it all? Wow, good luck accomplishing -anything-  -ever- outside of a zerg guild. You'll end up with a few barbaric zerg guilds just randomly killing people and looting them in the end, and drive all those players who want no part of griefing away from the game entirely. And not a lot of players playing your game.

So let the handful of rabid griefers go at it in the PvP servers, and add a more realistic PvP system  as part of a different server. The world isn't ready to responsibly and maturely handle a fully open PvP system, let alone PvP looting. Past MMO's have proven that fully open PvP -always- degrades into total anarchy and gankfests.