Developer Perspectives: Roleplay Servers Are Hard

A good article.  I agree with most of what you said, espically that for a true RP Server it would require a list of things like you listed.  And really, that is not worth the trouble.  The problem is that too many people are more interested in how other people are playing or RPing then they are.  The best RP community I have been part of is currently in AoC on Wiccana.  It isn't a "Official RP" server, and I do not think that it ever needs to be.  By player advertising and word of mouth we have gotten the word outr that the community is open to RP, and attract a lot of members.  There are no "rules" or anyone trying to dictate what is right or wrong.  Rather, people are invited to come and join in, and they soon find a group that fits their playstyle.

Star Wars Galaxies never had an official RP Server either, and we played on the Naitus server.  The RP guild that I ran lasted for three years and had over one hundred members, and ran very smoothly.  Talented players wrote countless stories, ran numerous events and even produced a movie, and all of this was accomplished on a "normal" server.

The only part of your article that made me raise an eyebrow was: "On roleplay servers the guild leader needs to be a raid planner, an imaginative storyteller, a charismatic leader, and a shrink."

Really, other than a imaginative storyteller, I would suggest that any guild leader needs to be a raid planner, charismatic leader and a shrink/  The shrink part is dangerous because it implies that RP guild members have a mental instability that "normal" guild members do not have.  Having been a member of RP and Non RP guilds, let me assure you that any group will have it's mix of wackiness.  A guild leader will have to play "shrink" in any guild, PvP, PvE or RP.

 Once again A well written bit. I am what you call a casual role player, in that I try to stay in character most of the time but if I am grouping with others who dont Rp  I adapt to fit whats going on. I also dont like the drama queen Rpers who have to emote every other second., that just drives me crazy!

I dont get too upset  by much of anything ,unless someone is trying to be an ass and even then I just putem on ignore and report them if the situtaion warrants it.

Yeah..

As an orc we just RP'd that we didn't understand human speak "Me nub gruk oomie blah!" and then used the FFA PvP rule set on UO Siege Perilous to bash their face in for talking funny... and stole their shinies for tribute.

MMOs are too structured now to allow for any real roleplay.

Want to be an orc? Well you get to choose these looks and these classes and you can wear this but you can't wear that and you can't do this but you can do that...

No room left for imagination, too many rules and game defined systems.

I'm 100% convinced roleplay can only work as intended in open worlds.

We occupied a "fort" built by Origin full of NPC orcs, we just kept killing them (dumhed shardies!) for helmets and masks and built our houses near by.

Other guilds would attack our fort just cause it was our fort.

You don't see guilds claiming a town/tower in Warcraft do you? 

Nice!  I like the fort bit :)

Some of that I'm not sure is needed.

So, after years of trying to enforce the unenforceable, split hairs, and cut babies in half in order to discover the true mother, here's my own minimum feature list for an RP server:

•Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
maybe. At least CSRs that understand roleplaying or are willing to cater to this server. It doesn't make any sense to have a role playing server and not have CSRs who are interested in working with these players

•No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
I'm not sure this is important. Simply make post before players enter the game that OOC actually means out of character. End of story.

•No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
Sure

•Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
How about just allow players to create their own channels and send invites to people for those channels.

•Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
I think that role players can come up with their own stories but this sounds like something that everyone can enjoy.

•Object creator that creates items with no stats.
Possibly but I think the designers can come up with some mundane items themselves that are professionally done or at least fit into the game world.

•All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
Not sure that is needed. Just explain some rules such as no il0veyurm0m or d00000dz or Zoltar X67. Then take the complaints as they come. An explanation of what parameters names can be such as no numbers unless designating Sovrath the 3rd or some such thing.

•Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
sure

•In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
good idea

•A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
should be standard

•An unlimited ignore list.
I'd love one regardless of RP server or not.

If the company can't afford to do these things? Don't claim to have a roleplay server at all. It only ends in tears. Focus instead on tools for everyone to use to contribute to the world in which they live.

the thing is that in order to service a community of role players the environment must be conducive to role play. This to me seems like the most important aspect of a role play server. If players are prone to send in a CS ticket every time someone role plays something that is not in their definition of what the world supports a simple warning that the server is for everyone so no dicttating RP on others.

Add the no griefing rules to take care of the griefers and an intelligent person as the CS rep and you are good to go.

I tend to be more of a casual roleplay person myself. My characters tend to have the same motivations I do, questing and exploring the world, and tend to talk using normal language. At the same time, I don't like to bring up real life issues or feel a need to discuss game mechanics. I can usually express issues from the characters point of vies instead of resorting to a discussion of game mechanics.

The biggest draw roleplay servers have for me is the stricter nameing policies and the generally more mature player base. These are huge issues for me. If someone is a more serious role-player than I am, well, I accomodate them. This is after all a role-play server.

For the record, I was a huge fan of PnP games, and still am. So big that I used to have holes in my living room ceiling where I would get carried away while gesturing with one of my swords. While my wife will no longer allow me to use swords as props while DM'ing, I do still enjoy playing the roles of NPC's and talking in funky accents. 

I'd say in some games the percentage of roleplayers is much greater than 10%.  SWG, for example, boasts Starsider as its largest remaining server and it's no coincidence that was named by players as the Unofficial RP Server from day one.  Even now I'd say one in three folks there are involved in roleplaying on some level if not more.  They're everywhere and often easy to spot as most sport visible RP tags.  Even those that don't stand out with better designed wardrobes or names that fit the setting.

You can actually see this across games.  Look for the older MMOs and look who is still there.  Tends to be, yup, the roleplayers.  They tend to be both social but unlike purely social gamers, who can be as migratory as folks more into an aspect of the gameplay, they're into the setting and a particular roleplaying community and its history.

The most successful roleplaying servers I've ever seen were always Unofficial RP Servers whether it's Starsider or Landroval or Wiccana or Virtue.  The pattern holds up.  Every single one of these is among the most populated servers (PvE servers in the case of Wiccana) out there and they all have strong roleplaying and roleplay friendly populations.  The latter are the folks you mention who may not be big roleplayers themselves but are attracted to the maturity of the population as compared to regular servers.

I've done some blogging about roleplaying and roleplayers here back when my RL wasn't eating my face.

Official vs. Unofficial Servers: Fight!

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/022009/3365_Official-vs-Unofficial-RP-Servers-Fight

And there are other entries about other aspects of roleplaying in different articles.  A couple that relates to event/saga planning and how how players can and do well for themselves are here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/032009/3485_Roleplay-In-Action-Spinning-The-Saga-of-GreshMaj#comments

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/032009/3477_How-To-Roleplay-Lonas-Events-For-Dummies

Originally posted by heerobya

I'm 100% convinced roleplay can only work as intended in open worlds.

Maybe. I imagine it would be easier for role players to do their thing in an open world. However, I also think that role players forget that what they are doing is a form of improv.

And improv actors don't just get on stage and do whatever the heck they want.

There are set parameters. And even in regular theater, a certain level of improv talent and ability is important. I was once in a show where the main character was talking to his buddy and he accidentally jumpted to the last line of the scene. Unfortunatley it was a pivotal scene because some extremely important information needed to be imparted to the audience. Also, he was a young actor and I could see in his eyes that he realized what he had done but didn't know how to get out of it.

So I just said my lines but wove some of his lines (altered of course) into what ended up being a sort of soliloquy. I was to remprimand him anyways so it was easy for me to take over the scene and finish it up.

That said, in an improv show, there is a loose story and the actors know where they have to be at certain times.

So given that, I don't see why role players can't use what they have in a particular game as a sort of backbone for their stories.

So a game like LOTRO or World of Warcraft would still be able to accomodate role play. Players would just take all the info at their disposal as their stage and go from there. One might not be able to say that Stormreach is their city and they are king but they could RP that they are a deposed king or that they are the secret illegitimate brother who was taken out of the city for hiding and then the monk who was responsible died.

Provided that they can get a group to support this story then it could work. If the group didn't want to support the story it still coudl work because they would just not believe him and think he might be mad. He of course would have to spend all his time as an unknown heir to the throne which would have consequnces to his actions.

In any improv there are rules set. Some can be very strict such as having characters act but with the idea that there is a "key" character who, when gives a cue, sets off a condition that whatever action the actor was doing must now be turned into something else that fits in with the character.

So if a character was chopping wood, at the cue he would then adopt a new action that would fit in with what he was doing. Now he could be trying to catch a mouse with the axe or trying to open a safe or just simply swinging his axe up to catch an object in the tree above.

Or one could say you are in a subway, define the character's relationships, give each character a flaw and say "go" wth the idea that the story must fit into a certain form. so perhaps one of the characters has to die. But it must be under certain circumstances.

So in the end, role play can still exist. Players must just use their imaginations and actually stretch their acting talents.

Sanya, thanks for the well written column.

I think your expectations for RP servers are too high.  While it would be great to have everything on that list, I personally do not see the need for most of it.  I have played on some official RP servers and some unofficial RP servers.  They were all much more enjoyable than than the standard servers for those games.

There is only one thing I need to RP and that is other role players.  We need our servers even if they are unofficial.  We need the ability to form RP guilds.  Everything else is icing on the cake.

Of course if some game offered an RP server with all the things on your list I would subscribe for life.  But I don't judge the success of an RP server by its list of features.  I judge it by comparing the community on the RP server with the community on the regular servers.  So far I have never played a western-developed mmorpg that didn't have a successful RP server, even if it was an unofficial RP server.  The list includes DAoC, SWG, CoH, and LotRO.  EVE only has one server but there is a fantastic RP community there too.

Some games are better for RP than others but that is an entirely separate issue.  Give me a sand box any day.

RP servers are not hard.  We just need to have realistic expectations. 

Well said.  Also, this article comes across as far more objective than Dana Massey's article yesterday.

While RP-Nazi's do tend to irritate me (because as Ms. Weathers stated, it's well-nigh impossible to level past about 10 or 15 without asking something related to game mechanics), there really is something to be said for a community that doesn't have names like "Eye Peedonu" and whose members tend to be rather polite and courteous (though this is not always necessarily true, either).  On a more personal note, I tend to prefer RP servers as a general rule because there is far less leetspeak and there are general unwritten laws about what is expected of most community members that agree with my preferences in how people - even those at the other end of a keyboard - should be treated.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

I'd say in some games the percentage of roleplayers is much greater than 10%.

MMORPG.com's own survey of about 12,000+ members puts roleplaying as the primary activity of about 13% of them .

The primary point of these articles seems to be that creating a divide in a particular playerbase is unnecessary.  I could not disagree more.  Creating a divide between dedicated roleplayers and those not-so-dedicated is extremely useful for maintaining a larger playerbase.  That is because the divide already exists, it is already there.  Pretending that it isn't is going to simply reduce the size of your playerbase and, eventually, the longevity of your game.

The problem is not with roleplaying servers.  It is with game mechanics.  As long as the game companies cater to those purely interested in grinding, a (perhaps slightly larger) minority itself, the ability to roleplay will be made more difficult.  The more difficult roleplay becomes, the deeper the divide between dedicated roleplayers and normal roleplayers becomes, with interruptions to immersion becoming  increasingly frustrating.

These articles are speaking from one side of the divide.  They assume things that are simply not true.  Everyone who plays MMOs is roleplaying to some extent, just like everyone who plays 007 spy games is roleplaying James Bond to a certain extent.  No intelligent game company should abandon the ability to play James Bond just because a significant part of their playerbase was unsuccessfully mirroring Ian Flemming's character.  In fact, they should encourage choices and consequences in their game that make people understand James Bond better.

MMOs used to be some of the very finest mediums for the activity of roleplaying.  In secluded areas of certain MMOs they still are.  The problems with roleplaying servers witnessed by the limited experience of a few column authors is simply due to the rampant confusion about the nature of MMOs and the relative youth of the expanded genre.

Sanya,

I think it's really more about expectations then anything else. While toolsets/rulesets/events can nice...the only thing you really need for RP is.... other role-players and a decent imagination.

Simply doing something as simple as declaring "This is the official RP Server".... and doing nothing more including no different rule-sets is enough to be helpful. to RP-ers.

Why?  because as you mentioned the MMORPG community is very diverse in their play styles and interests and RP represents only a portion of that. So anything that helps RP-ers connect with like minded individuals IS useful.

Simple question..... Which is more helpful to a customer interested in RP in finding individuals of similar tastes when logging into an MMO for the first time...

Choose Server: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie

OR

Choose Server: Alpha, Bravo (roleplay), Charlie

For the same reason it's useful when choosing Guilds to get some information about who the people in that Guild are...and what their play-style interests are before making a decision about joining..... getting more information about a particular servers likely population can be useful as well..... it increases your chances of finding people with similar interests.

The problem comes when you setup false expectations of what it means to be on a RP server.

To me it simply means....a higher likelihood of finding people interested in RP, everything else is icing.

A more interesting question I think to examine would be what the untapped profit potential for an MMO company to target a niche audiance like RP-ers......either with an entire product devoted to them or with special set of tools or staff devoted to them.

It's interesting because MMO Developers seem to be looking at only one real business model for success.... trying to go for the largest/widest possible audience appeal and offering a low entry price...basing your profit on doing volume (i.e. The McDonalds model). But MMO's are at their heart a service industry.... and most other service industries understand that there is a different type of business model that can be very successful... the High End Premium Services Market.  In that model you don't need volume to be successful... you just need people willing to pay a Premium price for a higher level of service (i.e. The Ritz model)

The Ritz may only serve a 20th the volume of customers of a typical McDonalds franchise... but it doesn't matter because each of those customers is willing to pay 40-50 times the price of a meal at a typical McDonalds. It's really struck me that more MMO companies haven't experimented with this model.

For instance....look at Simutronics and it's Text based games.... I think last time I checked, it's Platinum Services were charging like $70-80 a month....and had a decent number of subscribers....and this was a TEXT based game.

One thing about RP-ers is that they tend to be older, more mature and more financialy stable then an average MMO gamer.... it's also not a market that alot of games seem to be focusing on serving heavly.... so not huge competition...

Sure...a typical RP-er may demand a higher level of service then other players.....but if their also willing to pay alot more for that service...does it matter?  Furthermore there ARE savings inherint in serving a SMALLER volume of customers who are each paying a higher price point.

From a resource perspective...I'd MUCH rather have 10,000 player paying $50/month then 50,000 players paying $10/month.

Just something to think about.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by OddjobXL

I'd say in some games the percentage of roleplayers is much greater than 10%.

MMORPG.com's own survey of about 12,000+ members puts roleplaying as the primary activity of about 13% of them .

The primary point of these articles seems to be that creating a divide in a particular playerbase is unnecessary.  I could not disagree more.  Creating a divide between dedicated roleplayers and those not-so-dedicated is extremely useful for maintaining a larger playerbase.  That is because the divide already exists, it is already there.  Pretending that it isn't is going to simply reduce the size of your playerbase and, eventually, the longevity of your game.

The problem is not with roleplaying servers.  It is with game mechanics.  As long as the game companies cater to those purely interested in grinding, a (perhaps slightly larger) minority itself, the ability to roleplay will be made more difficult.  The more difficult roleplay becomes, the deeper the divide between dedicated roleplayers and normal roleplayers becomes, with interruptions to immersion becoming  increasingly frustrating.

These articles are speaking from one side of the divide.  They assume things that are simply not true.  Everyone who plays MMOs is roleplaying to some extent, just like everyone who plays 007 spy games is roleplaying James Bond to a certain extent.  No intelligent game company should abandon the ability to play James Bond just because a significant part of their playerbase was unsuccessfully mirroring Ian Flemming's character.  In fact, they should encourage choices and consequences in their game that make people understand James Bond better.

MMOs used to be some of the very finest mediums for the activity of roleplaying.  In secluded areas of certain MMOs they still are.  The problems with roleplaying servers witnessed by the limited experience of a few column authors is simply due to the rampant confusion about the nature of MMOs and the relative youth of the expanded genre.

and perhaps the relative youth of a lot of the players.

Thank you for a respectful view of a difficult topic. You did a good job I think of cluing in the MMORPG community of some of the difficulties in creating a quality RP experience.

One thing that occured to me as obvious now that you mention it  - :D - RP servers cost more to run, even as they are now. I think it might be appropriate to charge a higher monthly fee for a legit RP server. Certainly, I would be willing to pay more.

;)

Considerably better and more balanced than Dana Massey's complete idiocy yesterday, but I still think you've been permanently damaged from listening to an extremely vocal minority of what you very accurately call "speech nazis".

I've seen my fair share of roleplaying and roleplayers both on dedicated RP servers and mixed in with everyone else, and I've never - not once - experienced an attitude towards RP that wasn't "hey, roleplaying is great if it happens but if it doesn't... oh well". Honestly. Never.

Excellent, well-written column.  Thank you.

I think you should read some of my earlier posts, but I'll give you the cliff notes.

When EQ was released, the world thought 250k subs was a LOT of people.

WoW was released, showing that this was in no way the cap, it was just that a demographic was yet to be tapped, i.e., the casual gamer.

Does this mean that EQ and DAoC and EVE and a slew of others have ceased to exist? No, just that the market has room to not only grow, but shift.

This is where reading my previous blog posts really come into play.

A game tailored to RP needs to be smaller in scope, larger in flexibility and here is the big one: More expensive.

RP is a niche, just like PVP is a niche.

Time is money. My time, your time, the dev's time. We as consumers, want different different things to do with our time. A per son who wants a collaborative story may not want 1000 quests to choose from, that are being done by 5000 people. They my want 1 or 2, that are mailable, changeable and unique to just a few.

Some people are willing to pay for more interaction and a collaborative story telling environment, that is funded by a smaller group of individuals that ISN'T available 24/7 because the group they play with is not playing, 24/7.

Please read my previous posts if you are wonder how I feel these could be accomplished.
 

Nice "Good cop vs. Bad cop" performance there. Kudos.

Nice article, and I certainly hope at least some of these ideas can be incorporated into future MMOs. I would enjoy a RP server that does its best to maintain the illusion without degrading into a bunch of people trying to force you to speak and act their way instead of just RPing to the best of your ability and learning what works from the examples of others and the responses you receive.

Originally posted by angus858

Sanya, thanks for the well written column.

I think your expectations for RP servers are too high.  While it would be great to have everything on that list, I personally do not see the need for most of it.  I have played on some official RP servers and some unofficial RP servers.  They were all much more enjoyable than than the standard servers for those games.

There is only one thing I need to RP and that is other role players.  We need our servers even if they are unofficial.  We need the ability to form RP guilds.  Everything else is icing on the cake.

Of course if some game offered an RP server with all the things on your list I would subscribe for life.  But I don't judge the success of an RP server by its list of features.  I judge it by comparing the community on the RP server with the community on the regular servers.  So far I have never played a western-developed mmorpg that didn't have a successful RP server, even if it was an unofficial RP server.  The list includes DAoC, SWG, CoH, and LotRO.  EVE only has one server but there is a fantastic RP community there too.

Some games are better for RP than others but that is an entirely separate issue.  Give me a sand box any day.

RP servers are not hard.  We just need to have realistic expectations. 

First, excellent article Sanya. Thank you.

Second, I agree with most of what I quoted above. 

The MMO world (lore, backstory, religion, environment, and the like) establishes(defines) how your players RP.

That should be the starting point for each developer to work from when establishing rules and guidelines for RP servers.  Devs can take the stories they create and outline what they expect from players on RP servers name-wise and behavior-wise.  That is also where players can say yeah a futuristic ghost celebrity decended from a dragon works or it doesn't work. 

I'm been playing MMOs since M59 and have joined RP servers for every MMO I've played when they were offered.  The number one problem I see with RP servers is that troublemakers are always able to keep making trouble.  Always.  Some may get suspended, very rarely banned, but they're always able to come back and pick up where they left off and that is why tickets on RP servers are so high.  It's not that RPers have different ideas on what RP is, or that we're whiny, as your fellow journalist put it, or that we want events and tools to promote RP with. 

It's because Dick can keep coming back and continue being a dick which generates tickets.

That's the number one problem, from my experience.

The second problem, and it's tied in with the first, is piss poor CS.  Sure CS is a hard job that's paid little, but they still have a job to do, and if they're not up to par then that also helps generate more tickets as well as creates a problem between CS and the playerbase.  The reason CS having poor performance generates tickets is this:  Joeblow is being a poopoo head on an RP server and 4 people report him.  CS answers or doesn't answer and nothing is done to Joeblow so he gets bolder and the next time instead of being a poopoo head he decides to be an all out ass.  Now 10 tickets are generated.  CS answers and talks sternly to Joeblow, but really nothing happens but a slap on the wrist.  Joeblow gets cocky now and his friend Jackblow sees the fun Joe is having with no repercussions so joins in, but now they've evolved to full griefer.  20+ tickets are generated, and now CS is swamped, but it's all those damn RPers fault!  *shakes fist* ...or that's how it looks on paper.

The third problem, which is really the killing blow, is player apathy.  Players start on the server when it first opens with the best intentions.  Yeah RPers!!  We have a server, now let's do it right!  Time goes on and they see how CS deals with (or doesn't deal with) the Joeblows of the server.  Some become angry and generate ticket after ticket hoping for an improvement from CS.  Others post suggestions and try in vain to get things changed, but most just say fuck it.  The devs don't care so why should we?

RP becomes what I call, pocket RP.  You can find it here or there and you always have to know where to find it, but it's not the primary playstyle even though the server is RP...

So how do you fix this?  First of all your developers have to care about RP and they have to be willing to make some tough choices when it comes to official RP servers and how they're managed.

Write viable rules and provide a means for effective enforcement of those rules, and stay as consistent as possible.  How do you do that?

- Rules should outline areas that detract from RP because those are the easiest and most effective areas to enforce.  You're right you can't define how to RP for each individual, but you can tell your players when what they're doing, RP claim or not, steps outside the boundries of the established rules.

- Training.  Continually train your CS and assign ones who have some RP background to RP servers.  The same should be done for PvP.  Training breeds consistency. 

- Tools and Enforcement.  Give your CS effective tools for handling problems quickly and efficiently.  Among those tools has to be a way to remove problem player accounts, not just characters, from RP servers and preventing them from creating characters on any RP server with that account.  Move the player to a server of their choice, or do whatever you think is fair, but get them off that server.  Leaving the player there only invites trouble which means more tickets.  If they're not there to respect the intent of the server, then they don't need to be there.  That's a hard fact.  Let them play on a server more suited to their playstyle, and this is not unreasonable at all.  You're not banning them just removing them from a situation that's costing you (the developer) money by the buttload of tickets they cause to be generated. 

- Clear warnings when selecting servers.  When it comes down to it, it doesn't matter if a player reads the warning or not.  You still have to click something like: I have read the rules for the server and agree.

And having effective tools and the training is a winner across the board for all servers.  Your CS becomes more efficient and your costs go down.

Remember, you can't please everyone but if you're going to create an RP server do it right or don't waste our time with promises that will fail.  I'm currently seeing more and more players say they won't play certain MMOs in development unless there are official RP servers.  I don't blame them at all.  I still wonder when a developer will finally step up to the plate and try to do one that has a chance to succeed and is not doomed to failure because of piss poor implementation. 

And as someone said, some games are much easier to provide RP servers for then others, and it's my opinion that some MMOs don't need RP servers at all.  Scifi or present day MMOs don't need RP servers because it'd be extremely hard to introduce anything that detracts from the type of RP you'd find on them.  Fantasy MMOs, on the other hand, always, need RP servers because the mmersion there is so easily to break.

We're stuck in (what I call) the Brad McQuaid rut as far as RP servers go.  Everyone has these pre-conceived notions as to the only way RP servers can be done.  No one's looking at going back and figuring out a better way that would work for players and devs alike.  So after all these years all the RP community has is excuses while other playstyles move happily along.  It's extremely disappointing. 

Anyway, sorry for the long post.  Again, excellent article!  I don't agree with it all, but you wrote it well.  Perhaps you should give your compatriot there a few lessons in how to encourage constructive debate!

Thanks for a reasonable article.  If you see Massey, would you give him a swift kick for me?

My name is Shava, and I am a RPer. ("Hi, Shava!")   I do not say thee/thou, in general.  I have a sense of humor and flexibility.  I am happy to co-exist with respectful non-RPers (Landroval server on LOTRO being a great example of this co-existence), but I would love to have a real official RP server, just like EQ had -- which people seem to stubbornly forget, worked very well.

You say:

here's my own minimum feature list for an RP server:

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.

Here's my take, point by point.

Yes, on the CSRs. 

An /ooc channel that can be TURNED OFF (LOTRO has this) -- it certainly can exist.  I am a RPer who started on those table top games, and we talked about ordering pizza or chinese, jobs, and gf/bfs between encounters.  Some people don't want to hear it, and they shouldn't have to.  But I'm as guilty as most people of complaining about Michael Jackson's funeral in channels last week...;)

Same deal for zone chat or /yell.  Let the client turn them off.  They don't have to go away. Which kind of obviates the next bullet.

Events -- on Landroval in LOTRO (the unofficial RP server) we manage quite a few player created/run events.  More when the server started and League of Arda was running the Storytelling Contest and Battle of the Bards every week, plus others running other events.  RP events from the devs are fine, but not strictly necessary.  In LOTRO there are specific RP-friendly venues (inns, especially the Prancing Pony and the Green Dragon; Methel Stage, the fairgrounds in Bree).  The music system is just an amazing add-on.  Casual games and quarterly festivals are added to the game for all servers, not just us, so that's no add-on is it?  I'm not sure RP-server specific dev events are required, although they are a lot of fun.

Object creator - take a look at Runes of Magic's aggregator, which adds one item's appearance to another item's stat, using a sink (a spendy catalyst).  Or, look at LOTRO's paperdoll system for costumes (which doesn't work for weapons or shields, alas!)  They are apparently well worked out decent systems that were offered to the whole community.

Name approval - LOTRO does pretty well in their complaint system which is already used for names that are offensive in many other ways.  You just log in with the name RENAMED00023 or something, and know your name has been ganked by the CSRs. 

Regional chat a la IRC:  Why not just channel management a la IRC?  LOTRO allows user created channels (but you can only listen to four, which is LAME).  Want to start a channel for #politics and send the people who insist on talking about politics there?  Do it.  IRC has better community tools than any chat system I've seen in a MMO or virtual world.  It's open source and it's probably not any much different from the chat servers, which are generally separate from the game servers now anyway.

In-game bbs, etc. -- custom channels and better windowed performance (I have two monitors, one runs the game and the other has game forums, MMODB, the LOTRO lorebook, and Google up all the time) probably make this unnecessary.

disclaimer -- yup.

unlimited ignores -- shouldn't any game with gold spammers (i.e. ALL OF THEM) have this already?

And, you forgot housing.  EQ2 and SWG had the best. housing. systems. ever.  More games should copy them.

I ran a poll in your previous storyline quest article and then again in Massey's spew this week, asking if people would spend 2X as much for a game and 3X as much for a monthly subscription if there were good storytelling/lore, and the overwhelming (about 90% in the recent poll) reaction was just YES or YES (depending on the game/devs).  Three time subscription is more than the average three subs, on a RP server, in general -- because RPers tend to ride out the game with their friends and community, rather than run to level cap and jump ship for the next "ooo shiney!"

There is a market here being ignored.  I am a woman gamer, and a professional, and I'm turning 50 this month.  If the load of CSRs is higher on a RP server, people like me are willing to pay for it.  And ultimately, the rest of the equation has more to do with even game studio execs being unwilling to recognize the sustainability of boutique games (my favorite example being Eve) that grow strong organic communities and are less concerned with price pressure.  The price pressure CAN GO UP, and we will still come if we are served.

Again, thanks for a more respectful post. 

Shava

Excellent article. Been preaching this myself for years. You nailed it. Good job!

 A very well written piece.. and interesting.. :)

I don't have time (or energy at this time of night here) to go into details, but I can't say I agree with everything.. Especially the events part, players have a tendency to make do with what they have (AoC is a good example imo.).. ^^

Anyway, thank you for making a Good article about RP.. 

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by OddjobXL

I'd say in some games the percentage of roleplayers is much greater than 10%.

MMORPG.com's own survey of about 12,000+ members puts roleplaying as the primary activity of about 13% of them .

The primary point of these articles seems to be that creating a divide in a particular playerbase is unnecessary.  I could not disagree more.  Creating a divide between dedicated roleplayers and those not-so-dedicated is extremely useful for maintaining a larger playerbase.  That is because the divide already exists, it is already there.  Pretending that it isn't is going to simply reduce the size of your playerbase and, eventually, the longevity of your game.

The problem is not with roleplaying servers.  It is with game mechanics.  As long as the game companies cater to those purely interested in grinding, a (perhaps slightly larger) minority itself, the ability to roleplay will be made more difficult.  The more difficult roleplay becomes, the deeper the divide between dedicated roleplayers and normal roleplayers becomes, with interruptions to immersion becoming  increasingly frustrating.

These articles are speaking from one side of the divide.  They assume things that are simply not true.  Everyone who plays MMOs is roleplaying to some extent, just like everyone who plays 007 spy games is roleplaying James Bond to a certain extent.  No intelligent game company should abandon the ability to play James Bond just because a significant part of their playerbase was unsuccessfully mirroring Ian Flemming's character.  In fact, they should encourage choices and consequences in their game that make people understand James Bond better.

MMOs used to be some of the very finest mediums for the activity of roleplaying.  In secluded areas of certain MMOs they still are.  The problems with roleplaying servers witnessed by the limited experience of a few column authors is simply due to the rampant confusion about the nature of MMOs and the relative youth of the expanded genre.

That poll number is telling and when you add in all those who roleplay on the side as a secondary activity and then shape the numbers to reflect that some games attract more roleplayers than others, for example licensed IPs, we're looking at a significant percentage of players on some titles who roleplay. That number isn't getting smaller with time. There are few ex-roleplayers around. I know quite a few ex-PvPers by contrast. I think that's because roleplaying is something that goes along with everything, a creative outlet that's easy and mostly stressless to employ and enjoy, as opposed to being a discrete programmed activity one can get tired of. I've got another blog post or two that take a critical look at how Bartle views gamers and ponder how far he, and following along like trusting lambs, the MMO industry has gotten us so wrong.

Likewise you'll find posts stressing the importance of design that evokes a setting and encourages believeable behavior to create suspension of disbelief.  I know for some folks 'simulation' is a scary word and something that sounds anything but fun.  But imagine a game that simulated an orgy with the Swedish Bikini Team in a vat of warm, melted, chocolate.   Suddenly simulation doesn't sound so bad!  Look, it's a puppy simulator!  Also not scary!
 

As a roleplayer I find qualities that lend themselves to immersion to be the most lacking in MMOs.  My favorites, Eve Online and SWG, both managed immersive qualities if with significant caveats.   Eve Online almost demands you enjoy PvP in order to appreciate what it has to offer.  SWG managed some of the most powerful social bonding tricks ever pulled off in an MMO including the economy, player cities, entertainer classes and customizability.  It also failed miserably at being Star Wars which ultimately is what done 'er in long before the NGE.

Still I can see where depth and simulation, immersion, in game design has worked even if the vessels that bore them might be flawed.  One day maybe someone will get it.  I'm looking to Star Trek Online, if somewhat warily, and World of Darkness Online as possible places we may see more innovations that point the way.  Maybe someone will put it together within my lifetime.

However I tend to be wary of the concept of Official RP Servers.  My reasons are in the previously linked blog post.  Here, I'll just paste it in for easy access:

For some reason it seems the best roleplaying servers I've encountered have been the unofficial ones; servers named by the players themselves rather than designated by the developer.

The names will ring down through the ages (or for a couple years at least): Starsider, Virtue, Landroval and Wiccana. All of these servers are among the most populated in their respective games with SWG's Starsider and CoH's Virtue leading the packs.

My theory is that this works on three levels:

1) When roleplayers get together and vote on a single server they end up on that server rather than being split up over multiple sites as is often the case with Official RP Servers. While not every potential roleplayer gets the memo, not all read forums for example, over time there will be a steady drift of population as the word does get out. Of course, people hostile to roleplaying emigrate, naturally, to new games or other servers while those neutral or friendly to roleplaying add in.

2) Just as in real life homeowners take better care of property than renters do, when players themselves name an unoffical RP server they've taken ownership of the responsibility to make it work. They know there will be no developer support so they have to figure out how to keep things interesting, how to get along with nonroleplayers (rather than berate them or report them) and to promote the server to other potential roleplayers around whether on other servers or not yet playing the game at all.

3) As nonroleplayers will be a big part of the population this creates a natural pool of potential new roleplayers. You can see this playing out vividly in the history of SWG's Starsider. The initial wave of colonists were a mix but heavily flavored by the first generation roleplayers who adopted the server. Over time most of the first generation burned out for assorted reasons, most of which owed to SWG's design, however what they left behind was ultimately what shaped the server's corporate culture. A tradition of roleplaying, knowledge of event organizing, histories of colorful characters and Player Associations and a whole slew of former nonroleplayers who were now the very leaders of the roleplaying community. I suspect because many of these nonroleplayers hadn't roleplayed before they had a much higher tolerance for SWG's foibles than the more impatient and critical first generation did.

I wonder how many roleplayers on Landroval, Virtue and Wiccana came to the server as nonroleplayers but encountered something new there. Something that entertained them when the rest of the game was getting dull or repetitious? Something that got them to flex creative muscles they didn't know they had...

My experiences on Official Roleplaying Servers are much more limited. What I've seen, in general, were smaller populations of roleplayers, compared the the general public, but with more insular seige mentalities. Quick to lash out at nonroleplayers, assume anyone they don't like is a griefer, make hobbies of writing down names that don't conform to canon, and often cultivate more trouble than they've prevented by being on an Official Server. I've yet to encounter an Official Roleplaying server where the rules were actually enforced, and not resented, by GMs there. Very often staff have no understanding of, or sympathy for, roleplayers and don't go very far out of their way to enforce "silly" rules or deal with the reams of annoying and, to them, trivial complaints.

 Good points from all, but I'm shocked, truly shocked, no one from the old UO world shards has weighed in.

You want a successful RP server? You need two ingredients - it's the same recipe as tabletop pen&paper.  One, you've got - everyone identified it - the actual RP player who will get into character to whatever degree and stay there.

Two, you need an active, good gamemaster.  The referee, the mediator, the peacemaker, the storywriter, event planner, npc player, the unbiased judge, the defacto, the 0 rule, etc. ad nauseum.

That's what is missing on RP servers.

You might think CSR can fill that role.  They can't.  They can pave the road, smooth the grade, and slick it down with ice if you've got good ones and a good responsive system, but it still takes a live gm to add that one spice of magic that actually guides players to the road.

UO world shards, the independent ones, had that.  I've not seen it since, regardless of the game or the 'thees' and 'thous'.  Some good RP Guilds have a good guild master who can be worthy of the name GM -- but like was said, they are truly rare individuals.

Live GM's, in the game, with all the power of a full tabletop GM.  Invested and interested, story planning and writing, event running and most important of all... playing right alongside the RP'ers.

The closest I've seen in the world lately is a Tale of the Desert - and it's more of a social experiment than a game.

Come to think of it -- wasn't tabletop more of a social experiment than a game too?

Rp'er's you got.  It's GM's you're missing.  Whatever form they may have to take in game, it's who you need.

Skimmed through the replies. A couple points stand out, i.e. better chat tools, and active CSRs. Oh boy. In almost every game that hasn't already crashed and burned these two would do a lot to alleviate the stress. Seriously.

Griefers and morons run rampant simply because bad behaviour isn't checked. I live in asia and don't have a credit card so my experience is mostly on F2P games and let me tell you that the people who play in those are definitely "a cut below" (to put it mildly) if you want to talk about community experiences. The vast majority of these free games are populated by asses, simply because in game after game nothing is done to actually help the players. It seems like the industry's SOP is just release the damn game, and then duck and cover. It's been my experience - and I'm talking about having played most of the games on the mmorpg.com list, I'm no 5-game newbie - that most companies either don't have the resources or simply don't care (?!) to police their servers. Seeing an actual GM online is about as rare as a lunar eclipse: you probably expect to eyeball them once or twice in your lifetime, that's about it. And "industry insiders" (pah!) wonder why their games fail.

Seriously. Devote less goddamn money to making things shiny - we don't give a rat's ass, as long as your game doesn't look like an 8-bit handheld game things will be fine - and devote more resources to training CSR personnel. In almost all pre-release news clips I'm always reading crap about how this new game will sport technology X or improvement Y... bullshit. Ultimately it won't matter, because I know, i just freakin know, that within half an hour of logging in you'll get people going zomfg wtf nub lolbbq and ganking level 1 people. A week later you'll see bots everywhere and nobody talking, and about a month later the entire game economy will be in the toilet as people offer a bajillion of the endgame items at ridiculous prices. Let's not even talk about chat, because it will most likely be flooded 24/7 by people either (1) advertising gold farming, or (2) drama queens.

F2P games have a bad rep for many reasons, and these are among the major ones. MMO companies expect to launch like singleplayer offline games, i.e. launch and then sit back and rake it in. It doesn't friggin work like that. You need to work at keeping things going along.

There are players who can pull it off with the right tools and many have managed to scrape by without.  The Saga of Gresh'Maj is the post-mortem report of the biggest player run saga ever put together on EQ written by the guy who did it (linked in my post on the first page).  They didn't have nothin' but time and creative energy and it worked.

However you do see some amazing RP storylines, like old timey tabletop campaigns, in SWG as a Storyteller can set up props, manipulate events as they interact with the players in real time, and even offer a 'narrator's' perspective to set the tone.  Architect in City of Heroes is quite a bit more limited as the creator/Storyteller can't really occupy a narrator's perspective aside from what he's already scripted into the scenario.  It is published to a potentially wider audience and for a given group I've seen Storytellers have thier characters fill in the blanks or offer improvised complications/responses in text but the actual encounter is set in stone.  That's rule 3691 in the how not to be a roleplayer's Storyteller manual:  Don't railroad the players.  Architect really doesn't have the flexibility to do anything else.

Here's a log with (perhaps too many) pictures of a typical adventure.  There are more recent threads with pics on my guild's site but this one does the best job really showing how Storyteller Tools and a good player GM all work to create that sense of old timy tabletop RPG goodness.  More recent was a much bigger multi-PA (guild) storyline but the RP text log seems to be omitted:

http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=70851&ForumID=327664&TabID=613052&Replies=5&TopicID=7868193

More common than these though are events like markets, parties, fairs, holiday celebrations and the like.  All you need is a theme for those.  Much less work!  But folks keep the sagas rolling in on Starsider too.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

3) As nonroleplayers will be a big part of the population this creates a natural pool of potential new roleplayers.

 I believe your observations about official servers are sound, and I myself am speaking mostly from experience with MMOs where server designations did not exist, and every shard was considered roleplay (because the game was a roleplaying game).

I think point 3 here is right on the money, and it goes along with what I was trying to get at before.  Whereas Sanya & Co. seem to think it is mostly financially unsound to support roleplay [in a roleplaying game *sigh*], I think the goal should be to acclimate people to freeform roleplaying.  This is done through mechanics that are freeform and sandbox-style.  This is done through encouraging artistic expression through graphics and emotes.  This is done by reducing linearity and separating grind from character evolution.

It might also be done by labeling one or two servers "Non-RP" and calling the rest "normal."

A *great* article.

Sadly, it's makes Dana's pre-article even worse by comparison.

I think people are misreading the general gist of Sanya's column.  They might want to reread it and be careful not to skim to the end.  I personally believe the end was tacked on due to yesterday's responses.

The point that I got from this article is that roleplaying in general is an unsupportable, unserviceable activity for modern MMOs, and yes, I disagree strongly.

UNLIMITED IGNORE LISTS, HOORAY!

And make it hotkeyable, a one button silencer, hmmm silencer.

Awesome article and I completely agree.

RP servers are the hardest bit about any given MMO. I mean, getting people to appreciate that the game is the game, yet at the same time getting them to get involved in the game to the same extent (somewhere between more than an active player and insanely obsessed) is a pain if you don't have the right kind of people. Then again, who's to say who this "right kind of person" is?

That and it's just crazy-hard trying to produce something, anything, that the majority of people won't try to exploit.

In my opinion, you would have to create mini-servers for each individual group. It gets rid of a lot of problems, and yet it creates a few. The lack of interaction wouldn't be realistic enough for the RPers, not to mention the implementation of such a plan would be a hassle. It's an idea, maybe there's a way a game could be based off of it...

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.

As a rule I dislike Ms. Weathers’ articles. Not unlike my opening statement, her articles come off as aggrandizing and self important. However, I did enjoy this article because for me it brought to light the most repeated and base lie from Developers of MMORPGs--massively multiplayer, sure, but far from role playing. Some Developers don’t even feign an attempt at including role playing aspect to their games yet they cling to the claim that they have a rich story which encourages people to invest time, money and emotions into their product. Just call it like it is: Fantasy Based MMOG, Sci-fi Based MMOG, IP Based MMOG. Please stop diluting the concept and meaning of role playing.

Okay, I'll start by saying that I had a pessimistic slant on what you would write based on Dana's opinion piece yesterday and his tie in to your piece today. Your piece today, I'm glad to say, wasn't the butchering that I thought was going to be offered up. It was...good.

You wrote:

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.

If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it. I'm sure many other gamers, enough to make it viable/profitable, would do the same. The sad thing is that people making games it seems for the most part are cognitively  incapable of putting together such a list as this for an RP server and implementing/sticking with it.

Today it seems more time is spent on trying to come up with new gimmicks and colors of smoke to blow instead of further refining exisiting options/past gameplay mechanics. Show me an P2P updated (version 2.0) AC/UO/SWG(pre-NGE) with a roleplay server with the guidelines you list, and I'll give that company $20/month for 10 years and buy expansions (as long as they don't go crazy on the expansions and drastically change the core game).

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

It was...good.

You wrote:

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.

If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it.

The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that.  As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it.  Even if you paid $40/month.

This article has been whitewashed, and it says basically nothing different from Massey's, except for a slight cleanup in tone.

Good article....I like the ideas.

Being able to PVP is my first love of an MMORPG and RPing is great and comes in 2nd! I think it's a shame that allot of the "RP" community generally doesn't like PVP.....Makes for a great mix when I'm in a position that a player wants to give me gold/stuff to let them live!!

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Okay, I'll start by saying that I had a pessimistic slant on what you would write based on Dana's opinion piece yesterday and his tie in to your piece today. Your piece today, I'm glad to say, wasn't the butchering that I thought was going to be offered up. It was...good.

You wrote:

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.

If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it. I'm sure many other gamers, enough to make it viable/profitable, would do the same. The sad thing is that people making games it seems for the most part are cognitively  incapable of putting together such a list as this for an RP server and implementing/sticking with it.

Today it seems more time is spent on trying to come up with new gimmicks and colors of smoke to blow instead of further refining exisiting options/past gameplay mechanics. Show me an P2P updated (version 2.0) AC/UO/SWG(pre-NGE) with a roleplay server with the guidelines you list, and I'll give that company $20/month for 10 years and buy expansions (as long as they don't go crazy on the expansions and drastically change the core game).

Agreed Agreed and did I say agreed?? Developers who ignore the above just don't (explitive) get it - and I dare say it's because of that lackluster lazy lack of imagination that is drying out the genre. 

 ************************************************************************************

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

It was...good.

You wrote:

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.

If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it.

 

The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that.  As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it.  Even if you paid $40/month.

By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap.

The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.

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.

Excellent article! A perfect RP server could never be for one simple reason. Role Playing means different things to different people (not counting jack asses that name there character Bigstiffyinyourass or the Neo Natzi Grammar police wich are flipsides of the same coin)

The good news for RPers out there is that Sanya's criteria are either within reach, or that newer technologies in game engines are making RPing much easier to deal with.

Dedicated CSRs:  This one is, oddly, the hardest to deal with.  The human element of any online game is, sadly, the weakest link in the chain.  Any time human judgement must be called on to resolve problems, there is a chance of either not resolving the issue, or even making it worse.  CSRs are commonly called on the carpet for making bad calls on regular game issues, and adding RP issues to that can make things a touch worse.

However, this doesn't mean it isn't feasible.  The good thing about having one or two RP servers with some dedicated CSRs on them to arbitrate game issues is that they are dealing with a more easily known factor.  While some RPers can be drama queens, many are very good at communicating, making the CSR's job a touch easier.  Instead of having to wait on hardcore players to finish what they are doing, and then having to wade through leet-speak, most of the RPers I know have taken time to solidly talk to the CSR, tell them the problem and answer any questions the CSR has about it.

RP server CSRs do, admittedly, need to be a touch more responsive to the community.  But there are technologies in place to help with 24/7 support in such cases; in events where there is a massive disruption, off-duty CSRs may need to be paged, log in a few minutes to deal with malcontents, then go back to sleep.  But this would simply be to investigate violations of TOS or EULA and hand out punishments for griefing and similar behavior.  As long as the message is clear that bad behavior will be punished if committed and reported on, the rest of the community should get the message: don't cause trouble, and you won't get in trouble.

OOC Channel:  This one I must respectfully disagree with.  Some OOC chatter is necessary to discuss certain things that have little parallel in RP.  However, having said that, as long as the game has the capability to create their own chat channels, then there is no reason whatsoever that the general rule of no OOC chat can't be implemented.  If we need to take it OOC, we can do that on our own initiative.

WOW currently has the best setup, IMO, for this: all RP must be in /say and /yell, with established channels set aside for talking shop.  It is pretty easy, then, to find RP, since you just look for where folks are talking in /say, and has generally worked well except when non-RPers begin engaging in harrassment that, even if reported, is rarely punished.  (And no, I'm not talking about what they say.  When you put a non-RPer on ignore, they just start finding any other way they can to annoy and grief you, to try and escalate things.)

I do agree with no access to /yell, though.  It's abused too much as it is.  It's not realistic anyway; I wasn't aware I could hear someone yelling miles away!  I'd prefer a /yell where it has a set range (say 100m in WOW, to use the equivalent).  It would still allow for decent RP, and not be intrusive to everyone in a zone/area.

Instead of a specialist dealing with channels, just set some basic stuff up.  You only really need a General channel in areas like cities and such; most of the ones like Trade are abused and contain random conversation anyway.  If a PVP defense channel is needed, that seems better suited to a party/raid channel (for those grouping up for PVP in the area) or a player-created channel.  If you wanted to be a bit more selective, limit the ability to create private channels to those who hit max level or something similar; this usually weeds out the griefers who come to an RP server with a 1st level toon because their own server is down.

Server Events:  Honestly, I think this is a good idea for MMOs in general.  Consider the fact that new content is frequently "conquered" by hardcore players only days or weeks after it goes live.  That's quick turnover for months of work, and I can't imagine that devs aren't burned out by that eventually.  So you give them some flexibility in scripting some more somewhat spontaneous events that help them get creative.  Give them the driver's seat of an NPC mob and some other things.  This both helps them reconnect to the players, and can help stimulate new ideas for future content.

But the best part is that it takes all the pressure off the company to just push the game to endgame.  If server events that permit non-hardcore players to get involved in some things crop up from time to time, it'll help people from thinking that they have to race to the endgame, because there actually isn't one.  They may hit a level cap, sure, but they'll log in at least some of the time to see what server events are up that week.

And contrary to popular belief, server events do not have to be complex.  It can be something rather simple.  For example, you spend a week or two setting up an area where a small army of a given type (let's say orcs) start appearing in increasing numbers, along with a few tents, campfires, etc.  Then for a few days, small raiding/scouting groups of mobs go into a town/city and attack folks.  Finally, you have the army attack openly.  Even just one town being attacked like this might get some real interest in continuing the game even if you have all the ultra-uber gear out there.  If these forms of content include some appropriate reward for the challenges presented, even better.

That's just a simple event.  Devs could get much, much more complex, making story-based things that play out over the course of months.

Enviromental Tools:  This is something that various game engines here and there already play with.  City of Heroes has much more player-oriented tools than a lot of things I know of.  It allows player-made PVP events, full detailed guild bases (with both functional and decorative items), and similar aspects.  Darkfall seems to be expanding on the idea significantly.

Fortunately, programming in MMO game engines is getting much better than it used to be.  Many games already have objects that come or go at scripted times and dates, or for specific events.  This seems more a matter of making sure the devs don't create too much server load than not having the technology, but that's just a matter of time and experience.  I still think that it can be done... if someone decides they want to do it.

RP Names:  This seems more complex, but it doesn't have to be.  If RPers concede that they can compromise for better quality of gameplay, then the solution is found in certain persistant state worlds and how they are administered.  For the really dedicated RP PSWs out there, you have to apply to play on them, subject to admin approval.  Simply make the registration of a character on an RP server an application as well that you get an email about when you are approved.  Personally, if the quality of the server is assured, I'd gladly wait a few hours to a day to get a character.

In-Game Communication Resources:  Sanya nailed another one as a great asset for RP servers.  More powerful in-game mail systems would greatly enhance the RP.  What we need, though, are the tools to make written communication more usable.  Make letters lootable items (which many games already allow to some degree or other).  Even better, allow us to post them to certain surfaces for others to read (you can set a limit on where such things are posted, or how many you can post, to prevent griefing).

Joining Warning:  We normally already have notices when you click on RP servers that these servers are for RP.  The problem is that people don't take them seriously.  However, the application function I noted above would definitely solve that problem.  When griefing people takes more effort, it tends to discourage people doing it for casual lulz; all that are left are people doing it deliberately, making more of a case for banning them once they've crossed the line.

Ignore List:  Another good point.  If the list can't be unlimited, at the very least it should auto-clear someone whose character is removed from the server.

I don't think some of these things are wholly unreasonable, and would actually server to progress the state of MMOs in general.  But unless someone wants to hire Sanya or others with such ideas, and implement them, we can't get much better than we already have.

Some games are a bit better about enforcing some RP server rules.  WOW is pretty handy about dealing with names, but they tend to just force a rename which causes someone to pick something even more offensive.  Harrassment tends to be universally despised in MMOs, and most companies deal pretty well with it.

I'm confident Sanya's list of demands can be met within the next generation of MMOs.  The only question is if any company has the cajones to do it.  I hope so.  Darkfall took some risks to please the PVP folks out there, and I see no reason we can't get some RP love from another game somewhere out there.

RP and player generated content go hand i n hand. As the article eluded to,  RP's can get pretty creative given the tools. Developer might find the solution to the 'end game content' dillema, that is the players themselves. The tools to do this needent be that sophisticated. For example player made  scrolls and tomes are a must have. UO players used them to drive ongoing 'campaigns' and to document the history of the land. Happy days.

I stopped reading on the second page after seeing the part about "I roleplay because I think it adds color and flavor to the world when people speak politely..." and "I don't talk in thees and thous, but I do say "Pardon me, good sir" when I'm speaking to a higher level character..."

This reminds me of Dana's article indirectly. It has very little to do with Dana's article, but it reminds me of the people that claim role players server are just dandy. When you role play, you DO NOT have to be polite. Second, why the hell would your character say "Pardon me, good sir," to high level characters specifically? Your character doesn't know the level or reputation of another character. You are basing your characters actions on information your character wouldn't know, simply because the game's UI indicates that person is a "high level character." This is called metagaming and is not tolerated by anyone that knows what the hell role playing actually is.
 

My point is that the self-proclaimed role players in Dana's thread don't know shit about how to act out a character. They do stupid metagame bullshit all the time and they're too stupid and stubborn to even realize the way they play doesn't make any sense.

The chances of anyone reading this and realizing how stupid normal role playing is in MMO's, are really low. Someone has got to say it, and I'm willing to do it because this article was boring and convoluted as fuck, just like all of Sanya's articles. I'm going to get something out of this.
 

A good article! (as opposed to Danas yesterday i might add...)

I would like to throw in an idea: the *complete* ignore

What do I mean by that? Well...

It really isn't enough to have an unlimited ignore - people can still grieve you by hopping around etc. So... make them disappear. That's right, make them vanish COMPLETELY from my game. Better still: let me do that per hotkey rather than havin to type in a line.

In Addition to that: Make a /completeignore for whole friends and even whole guilds. If my friend/matey decides he sees someone breaking his/her immersion... let me just take over his list so i don't have to put up with that someone myself...

my 2 ct for today.

This article is a lot less biased than the last one on RP and RP servers. Thank you.

I don't think an RP server needs all that was listed, though. Would it be nice to have that? Yeah, it would. A lot of what  was mentioned can be substituted for basic game tools used on all servers (like an ignore function) and good old imagination.

It is my belief that when roleplayers begin to focus too much upon the pixels the roleplay suffers. In my day, we could have RP weddings, RP events and the like. The guild I was a part of in Everquest (which was on a blue server because it was created before Firiona Vie and the guild didn't want to move once it was made) hosted most of our events in the arena. It was known when these events would happen but we never had issues with people interrupting because who would want to go in and interrupt an event with a huge group of ogres, trolls, and dark elves?

RP is fostered in the mind first. The nice gadgets, trinkets and such were nice but were uneccessary.  I remember my EQ character, over a few years of play, only married twice. You want wedding rings? We got wedding rings. BUT they were already in game. As a quest created by ourselves the guild raided the Tower of Frozen Shadows, killed the ghostly wedding party, and took their wedding rings! It can be as easy as putting such things in a special shop but I liked that version better. We didn't need special quests from DMs. Each and every new member of the guild was given quests by guild officers and they were everything from fetch quests to exploration or socialization.

RP is about making story to me. This isn't something you always need to rely on DM interaction for if all those involved are mature. I'll take a server with RP slapped on it as all I wish for is a place where RPers new to a game immediately know where to go and thus not scatter the community to the four winds.

Sanya, you have it exactly right.  And your outline for a real RP server would be very interesting to see happen some where.

I was one of those D&Ders back in the 70s (minus the costume).  I play a lot of various MMOs now.  But I seldom RP for the reasons you have so halariously detailed.  When you do stumble across a group of those tallented RP cat-herders and imagineers (term taken without license from the Disney crowd) it truely is magical and fun.  But one bad-apple spells painful drama at some point (often repeated in endless loops with endless variety).

So three cheers for your RP server ruleset.

But....

It needs some additions.  Like, I want to have emote effects - a simi-transparent ring of rotating doves alternated with pulsing hearts around my head I can trigger when I find you GMing in game and ask you to marry me.  Oh...and a nude patch for the honeymoon please.

Originally posted by Trucidation

By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap.

The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the responses to this article.  The author succeeded in placing the guilt by association on the entire roleplaying spectrum, simply because a few stick-in-the-mud roleperformers can't take it when someone interrupts their wedding.

I am sure that some of the items on the list are achievable and already existent in some MMO somewhere.  The biggies, however, were slipped into the list in disguise because the author knew that many self-important RPers would take no objection to them:

1) Dedicated event team:  Huh?  Why?  As soon as one minority gets dev attention, they will all want dev attention.  The object is not to make more work for yourself as a developer, it's to make less.  Roleplaying does that by entertaining itself, simply through application of game tools.  You make the tools for the sandbox, the roleplayers will play.

2) Item creation:  Huh?  Why?  Roleplayers should consider themselves a part of the game world and should use the same economy and crafting system that everyone else uses.  If you need a hundred special hats, you should craft them - assuming the game is sandboxy enough for that to occur.

3) Community specialist approval on all names:  No, completely unnecessary.  In a game with a significant roleplaying population, you just created several full-time positions for no real reason at all.  The better way is to simply not have names dangling in mid-air, or to make it so that /ignore makes someone completely invisible.

The people who responded and said they thought the article was good fell into a trap and helped the author drive roleplaying out of the genre.  All the non-roleplayers reading this thread are going to look at the points made and the list of RP requirements, see the responses, and say... "Yup, that is way too much work for what it is worth."

Her bottom line is correct though.  Dedicated roleplaying servers don't seem to be worth the hassle and frankly I've never encountered a very good roleplaying scene on any of them yet.  It could just be I wasn't in the right place to see it but the good scenes I've encountered were all the product of the hard work of players, and players alone, on general purpose servers they claimed as Unofficial RP Servers.   All a dev can do is offer tools and amenities and hope the right people show up to make use of them.

Elitist roleplayers, of the self-proclaimed variety, can often turn an Official RP Server (and some Unofficial ones until they simmer down - early Landroval was pretty bad in this respect), into a warzone that's got nothing to do with roleplaying and everything to do with trying to impose their sense of order on the unruly or the disrespectful by their own definition.  Sometimes foolishly phrased official rules just add more heat to the fire and promise unrealistic levels of support and enforcement.

Ultimately Official RP Servers end up like every other server as disillusioned and bitter purist roleplayers move on and even the more accepting ones find themselves isolated in a community that doesn't look to each other for support, and upon the nonroleplaying community as a potential resource, but to some GMs and developers on high for solutions and anyone who isn't IC as disruptive or ignorant.  It's a odd hybrid culture of dependency and elitism which hasn't seemed to serve roleplayers well.

I can say this because I'm an elitist roleplayer myself.  I know what incredible dicks some of my peers can be.

However on Unofficial servers all roleplayers have to make their peace with other folks who inhabit the same space.  This can be as easy as an /ignore or as involved as creating open events for roleplayers and nonroleplayers.  Many of Starsider's early converts from the nonroleplaying side of the game were PvPers who got caught up in RPer organized PvP battles both on land and, more notably, in space.  In fact, along with being the Unofficial RP Server for SWG, Starsider is also the #1 pilot community.  Again, this comes from that initial seed of those early pioneer RPers setting roots down there and attracting a more mature crowd including flight simmers who very much enjoyed SWG's space combat model and were also roleplayers.   Most simmers are only a hair away from hardcore roleplayer status anyhow.  Look at the in-character after action reports and pilot diaries some of them delight in writing up.

I didn't address Sanya's list yet.  I'll do that in my next post.

So, after years of trying to enforce the unenforceable, split hairs, and cut babies in half in order to discover the true mother, here's my own minimum feature list for an RP server:

You're good but you're not Solomon. 

* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.

As others have noted this is an unlikely and expensive course of action.  Only a title that was designed, explicitly, for roleplaying from the ground up, and seen as a real opportunity to be a part of, would even be able to attract the kind of talent you'd need on the GM staff to handle this for the, probably, modest income it would provide them.  An alternative would be volunteers, a citizen's militia, out there but that could be very fertile ground for abuse and favoritism.  Once there's an official in crowd versus everyone else things get ugly fast.  That's one of the draws MMOs have over MUSHes for seasoned roleplay firsters.  MMOs are seen as impartial.  In theory, you pays your money and you have the same status as the next guy in the community at least as far as the business running it should be concerned.  In reality favoritism is largely unavoidable but volunteer groups like this might be seen as institutionalizing the practice.

* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.

Someone previously mentioned how well LoTRO's OOC channels worked.  There were so many of them, with so many discrete functions, that nobody needed to use local (or 'say' or spatial) for OOC stuff at all.  This was one of the most remarkable things about LoTRO for me when I first arrived:  how blissfully quiet the local was once the OOC and regional channels were muted.  In fact, it became the roleplaying channel.  Only roleplayers needed to use it.  Everyone else had a better channel, with a more targeted purpose and better reach, than local.  So local belonged to us.

* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.

For the reasons mentioned above this isn't important.  Just make it easy to find the channels you want active and simple to turn the ones you want on or off.  A player should have his channel status easily available, at a glance even, and modifiable.

* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.

Again, not so much.

* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.

I'd trade this for better RP friendly tools along the lines of SWG's Storyteller and 'holo' costuming system so we can really do our own thing.  Some event teams are good, some aren't, but I'd trade those three folks for hundreds of players to chose from and experiences that are customized to serve particular individuals, groups and segments of a given server community instead of generic prefab fodder spread across multiple servers scattershot.

* Object creator that creates items with no stats.

Crafters can handle this.  Just give them an option to name objects (as in SWG) for custom use or decoration and perhaps another to render them purely decorative or for costume purposes.

* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.

That's never going to happen in any commercial MMO even my theoretical one developed by and for roleplayers.  Too labor intensive.  You simply have to create a world with mechanics and aesthetics that will attract roleplayers.  Let them sort out their own business themselves.  Some guilds or broader organizations (player cities, alliances, off-site RP forums) may come up with their own standards they enforce themselves but different groups of roleplayers will take different approaches to these things.

* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.

Players can do this for themselves.  Censorship isn't required except perhaps in, a perfect MMO for roleplayers, local chat.  Even then it's much smarter and more practical to assume players can figure out who to /ignore or what channels to mute by themselves.

* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.

This is a good idea.  It could be incorporated into, say, a guild's information system or as an object people could put up in player business or homes.  Let players create their own channels and possibly restrict membership or even charge for content.  I can imagine more folks hanging out in a cantina if it's an actual source of RP information.  Generally, though, folks get buy with offsite forums or guild forums to discuss things.  Many spread the word of IC happenings as news releases, this is certainly the case with Starsider's offsite RP forums, and folks can react to this in the game.  If that outlet were actually in the game world, though, man.  That would be cool.  And to restrict the information flow to a couple locations would turn those into definite hotspots for people to gather and gossip.

* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.

You think people will read that and care about it?  No, they'll either be smart enough not to bug CSRs in the first place or they'll start arguing the minutia about what roleplaying minutia means.  "Define it!"  Come on.  We both know these folks.

* An unlimited ignore list.

Nice but not necessary.  However additional fields on a friend/ignore list would be welcome.  Perhaps the last time logged on so you know who you can take off ignore when it's time to clean house.

If the company can't afford to do these things? Don't claim to have a roleplay server at all. It only ends in tears. Focus instead on tools for everyone to use to contribute to the world in which they live.

Well, I'm with you on the "no official roleplaying servers" page as I've noted elsewhere for other reasons.  However there are tools that roleplayers will make better use of than nonroleplayers and these aren't little things.  How text communication is handled, what emotes are available (and perhaps as importantly not available - we don't need 'air guitar' or 'i'm a little teapot' by and large), can characters sit, character customization in appearance, decoratable player housing and businesses, game systems that reflect the setting and so on...

Some of these will be attractive to nonroleplayers too but they matter a great deal to us in particular.

What I don't understand is why companies bitch so much about the hassle and expense of official RP servers, but they don't bother to monetize them.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that some people will pay a higher monthly fee for premium service, and the extra revenue can pay for the additional csr staff, live event staff, or whatever.  Hell, for an RP server like Sanya describes at the end of the article, I'd pay $50.00 a month, and I'm not alone.

The bean counters and executives need to wake up.  They're all masturbating over their new cash shops, yet no one sees similar potential for tailored ruleset servers.

Dumb.

Originally posted by heerobya

I'm 100% convinced roleplay can only work as intended in open worlds. 

QFT. The best roleplay I've ever seen is in LARP (live-action roleplay) simulators in SecondLife.

Most games out today are MMOGs, not MMORPGs. They should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting they are roleplaying games.

I'd be willing to pay extra to play on a server that meets the ruleset you mentioned Sanya, even if I don't roleplay that much.  I do agree that most of the companies do not enforce the few rp rules they do have on rp type servers.

Although the rp server I play on Wow seems to be half decent.  Dumb names seem to be removed if a ticket is made, players that harrass the roleplayers seem to be quickly silenced.  Better than most.

You made a very good point though, this is something that the developers need to address early in the design phase or just rule out rp servers and be prepared to defend that decision from the suits.  You can't add rules like you propose late in the design phase.

 Oh and to all those posts above, name control is a must, if you don't have someone reviewing them, you at must at least have someone who reviews and acts on complaints about names.   Nothing worse than a dumb name to ruin any immersion and no ignore is not a substitute for this either.

BTW really good article.  As we can see from all the posts you have disagreement across the board, pretty much proves your point what a morass this subject is.

While this was certainly a better article with Rping at it's heart then the piece of drivel that was "The Myth of RP Servers", I still feel that the general point the article reaches, and some of the things it suggests should be changed, is still largely off base.

First off, the changes you present are rather horrendous. Most of them, if I'm projecting this correctly, would turn a thriving RP community into an elitist, highly moderated "no fun zone." You seem to be under the impression that an RP server, or RPing in general, requires a shit ton of strict rules and allowances to work.

Even your example of 50 people trying to play hide and go seek and win a prize is extremely off. Generally speaking the "best" roleplay groups are no more then 10-20 people, and 20 is really pushing it. This is due to the fact that more then 20 people talking at once becomes to chaotic for even the fastest readers/typists, but this is straying somewhat from my main point.

You guys aren't simply doing enough research when it comes to these RP pieces.

All that is required for "good" rp to take place in any game is another RPer. That's it. 99% of all RP actions, stories, plot twists, whatever, are conveyed through in-game text between person-to-person. Sure, some like to get more extravagant, but I've always found, the more props, the more little fancy doodads you like to mix in, the more the actual quality of the writing begins to diminish.

For example: The best, hands down, roleplaying you can ever encounter is on dedicated message boards that are structured around either a central IP, or some type of familiar cannon. There are no doo-dads. It's all conveyed through text.

This is mainly why, as many people have mentioned, SWG was such a perfect RPing environment at one time. You could do so much to alter how your character spoke and how text was conveyed, that it was nearly endless.

The only "tool" any game really needs to foster roleplaying is the /ignore functionality. No other community moderation controls are needed for someone who really loves the craft of writing, which is who the true RPers really are.

To me an RP server means I can play a female character without someone asking the tiresome, "Are you a girl in real life?"   Unfortunately that is not the case all to often though, as horniness will  trump geekiness 9 times out of 10.

I will usually play on an RP server because usually it seems as though the people on them tend to be using their imagination a bit more.  It also seems to attract an older or more mature crowd.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

The people who responded and said they thought the article was good fell into a trap and helped the author drive roleplaying out of the genre.  All the non-roleplayers reading this thread are going to look at the points made and the list of RP requirements, see the responses, and say... "Yup, that is way too much work for what it is worth."

I think OddJobXL did a pretty good job on addressing the staff issues. As far as I'm concerned the chat stuff IS trivial, and I've seen them work in some of the better F2P games, and I think those make for better examples because we get far worse (immature etc) players compared to pay games.

To me a role-play server means ... I'm less likely to deal with kids who act like well, kids.

I don't have to deal with people named "Imuberleet".

I don't have to deal with obnoxious chat in "region" type areas.

I can generally have more fun, meet people that have similar gaming likes, and be anoyed a little less frequent.

Roleplaying and what’s needed for a RP server is very subjective. But I don’t think what she had as the problem list or what is needed for a RP is quite correct.

You cannot do Proper tabletop RP in a MMORPG, but you can do your best given the tools at hand. The 10% figure was way out, that’s more like the percentage who are really dedicated. About another 20% like to do some roleplaying, just not as consistently. What about Never Winter Nights, the author talks as if no MMO has ever been released with good in game development tools?

The dilution of the RP server by people seeking a haven from the teenies is a problem. But only if they have no intention of roleplaying. If they are very casual roleplayers that’s fine, we can tempt them to the roleplaying side. ( :) ) But I have seen RP servers where so many have turned up with no intention of roleplaying that the server dies for roleplayers. If you have no intention of roleplaying please don’t join a RP server, would you join a PvP server with no intention to do PvP?

All you need for a RP server is an enforced naming policy and players being told they are meant to RP, that’s all! Yes the box of chocolates and GM run events would be nice but are not a must. So you see I don’t think having a roleplay server is such a big deal, it’s the players that make it a RP server, give us a naming policy and we are up and running.

RP servers have worked, are working well right now and with a little less negative spin on our pundits side will sail on into the future.

i wont bother trying to argue for or against the list of features the OP thinks should be required for a rp server.

What i will say is that a list like that, with that level of thought and MAINTAINED EFFORT is required to make an mmo actually promote RP.

if any company actually did this..... no matter the actual setting they would pull in a vast majority of the rp'ers. who have been waiting for something like this to come along so they can stop playing NwN and get some actual graphics (sorry second life)

Next time y'all try to do a good cop bad cop article.... the bad cop should be a bit less retarded, and a tad more informed.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by Trucidation

By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap.

The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.

 

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the responses to this article.  The author succeeded in placing the guilt by association on the entire roleplaying spectrum, simply because a few stick-in-the-mud roleperformers can't take it when someone interrupts their wedding.

I am sure that some of the items on the list are achievable and already existent in some MMO somewhere.  The biggies, however, were slipped into the list in disguise because the author knew that many self-important RPers would take no objection to them:

1) Dedicated event team:  Huh?  Why?  As soon as one minority gets dev attention, they will all want dev attention.  The object is not to make more work for yourself as a developer, it's to make less.  Roleplaying does that by entertaining itself, simply through application of game tools.  You make the tools for the sandbox, the roleplayers will play.

Why? Because they can crank out multitudes of various events in game, giving NPC cities "life" by holding festivals and carnivals, holding criminal trials of NPC (heck, even PC) characters, in general doing "daily life" events that would be "normally happening" in civilized settings of peoples. You can sit there and take it in a narrow focused, "doing the event for small groups of people" way, but you are only displaying a limited ability of thought/imagination. Nothing wrong with having this on top of the sandbox tools.

2) Item creation:  Huh?  Why?  Roleplayers should consider themselves a part of the game world and should use the same economy and crafting system that everyone else uses.  If you need a hundred special hats, you should craft them - assuming the game is sandboxy enough for that to occur.

Item creation falls in line with sandbox tools. The whole idea of giving players the ability to put their imaginations/roleplaying to work through the ability to create the appropriate props to facilitate it. Yes, a really in-depth, "wide view" crafting system chock full of non-combat aiding craftables would accomplish this too. The trouble is, outside of SWG and maybe ATITD, no game has come near this point.

3) Community specialist approval on all names:  No, completely unnecessary.  In a game with a significant roleplaying population, you just created several full-time positions for no real reason at all.  The better way is to simply not have names dangling in mid-air, or to make it so that /ignore makes someone completely invisible.

No, it's not. Players have proven time and again (and I know, I play on RP servers and I see them running around) that they are "creative enough" to come up with spellings and phrases to bypass the standard naming filter. Names should be names, for one. Not phrases or little cutesy plays on words (on an RP server that is). Even when games provide cultural information about the character races and give that races naming conventions, you still are guaranteed to see people who don't follow them. So no, if a company is willing to provide the staff to monitor this, and charge a few dollars more for characters on that server, then by all means it should be done. They make their money, their players are happy and players like you who disagree with it can play on a regular non-RP server. Win win.

The people who responded and said they thought the article was good fell into a trap and helped the author drive roleplaying out of the genre.  All the non-roleplayers reading this thread are going to look at the points made and the list of RP requirements, see the responses, and say... "Yup, that is way too much work for what it is worth."

No. Most people who agreed and have been playing MMOs for 5+ years and like the idea of RP servers have been requesting options like these for years and years. and as far as it being too much effort for what it is worth, the happiness of as many customers as you can achieve is very much worth the effort around 5 event team members and 2 community name specialist to implement this.

Another interesting read from you and while there are some areas i disagree with, your writing style puts across your points in a decent manner

Having played a few MMOs on RP servers, some policed heavily some not, I do agree having a team of CS who understand the ruleset and likely minds of players on these servers is a good thing, not having a OOC channel at all isnt such a important thing

While dev run live events are great (and pretty rare) i guess this comes down to how many servers are running, if its 2 or 3 sure live events are possible and really a needed thing in many games both on the RP and normal servers, if the game is a "success"/running many servers i can sort of understand how dev live events are going to be harder to achieve without some sort of backlash from the community as a whole - player run events on the other hand should be more supported, there are some great minds out there for fun,interesting, deep etc etc storys/games which giving the players the right tools would be a huge benefit to the game

The players can and often do take pride in the RP servers, so having a team of CS checking all player/guild names really is not needed, let the players find the rule breaking names and report them surely this would be a much easier system

I also think a player volunteer CS program is under estimated by most of the dev companies, while that doesnt appeal to me, in those games who have it, it seems to be a very good way of bolstering the CS/storytelling etc in a semi offiicial way, which works very well

I wont nit pick at the article anymore but thanks for your views and some insider information from a few company "big wigs"

I'm going to stray a bit from the articles - Yes gaming itself is an escape as is RP, but.....

   If I were to apply my focus to how much gear I can get or how fast can I buff my stats to kill the next guy then what's the point? I could do that at home on a console. After watching many gamestyles and players the RP gamers actually tend to be the most mentally stable group unlike the players who are all about the gear and PVP. Yes, RP is about gear to the extent of "If I were this character what would he be wearing, carrying, doing". Can't tell you how many times I've seen  "hardcore gamers" (loose term)  fly into a rage for no reason or get discouraged because they didn't get immediate gratification. From experience that type of gamer typically has no drive in life itself and seeks an easy way to get ahead without having to do anything. You could assume teenager, but I've seen grown men who definitely fit this category living in mom's basement or the faux bachelor pad crawling with cockroaches. Physical fitness is out of the question and their attitudes are miserable.

After reading both articles in the end isn't it RP really about immersion in something we can't truly experience in this reality? Something any gamer is really doing when they sit down at a system or console.

  The RP players I've met aren't all "care bears". Some in fact experience the same rage issues as hardcore gamers, but they at least are expressing the anger in a healthy way through a character in a fantasy world (RP is used succesfully in the psychiatry field). They experience the same excitement in character building as  other gamers, but it's more a matter of satisfaction in seeing this new beings life fulfilled rather than gratification and let's move on to the next perk. Yes RP servers are great because the naming is more restrictive, the channels are less cluttered, if you're not rp'ing you can beremoved from most servers on excessive reports and no not everyone will approach you and go all "care bear". In fact  it takes a while of popping up on some servers before anyone does notice you.

Both articles did what they were supposed to and evoked an emotional reaction from many. Do RP servers require more work and maintenance or don't they? I feel they do and some of you expressed valid points on other servers where they don't. I feel it helps as a solid foundation for fledgling RP servers to do such though to attract the type of player on that server. I also believe RP players are the most financially beneficial in the long run for a company. They tend to have such level of involvement with a character that they'll keep returning years later to check in on them like an old friend (or mental baggage deposit depending upon your state of mind). They tend to be dedicated gamers rather than flitting off to the next FPS for achievements. Someone should do an article though on how these things play out internationally. A number of games (LOTRO,Conan,Witcher,etc)  that have a strong history and RP focus tend to do extremely well overseas and in the UK where they may see marginal success in the US. Is it just that we're shallow minded Americans in the end and lack the maturity and emotional intelligence for quality gaming?

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Why? Because they can crank out multitudes of various events in game, giving NPC cities "life" by holding festivals and carnivals, holding criminal trials of NPC (heck, even PC) characters, in general doing "daily life" events that would be "normally happening" in civilized settings of peoples. You can sit there and take it in a narrow focused, "doing the event for small groups of people" way, but you are only displaying a limited ability of thought/imagination. Nothing wrong with having this on top of the sandbox tools.

As you pointed out, these are simply game events that make the setting more real.  If a company wants to go to the expense of an event team to increase the verisimilitude of their game, that is somewhat different than events aimed purely at groups of dedicated roleplayers.  While certainly dedicated roleplayers would benefit from the increased verisimilitude, saying that such would be a requisite for their gameplay is going way too far, and the events would really be more of an enticement for the rest of the playerbase to become more dedicated to realism and roleplay.   Some of these events could be done via structured coding that is randomly spawned, without the need for a human event controller.

In this thread, we're talking about the things that are manditory for roleplay to be worthwhile.  Remember?

Item creation falls in line with sandbox tools. The whole idea of giving players the ability to put their imaginations/roleplaying to work through the ability to create the appropriate props to facilitate it. Yes, a really in-depth, "wide view" crafting system chock full of non-combat aiding craftables would accomplish this too. The trouble is, outside of SWG and maybe ATITD, no game has come near this point.

Again, is this manditory?

No, it's not. Players have proven time and again (and I know, I play on RP servers and I see them running around) that they are "creative enough" to come up with spellings and phrases to bypass the standard naming filter. Names should be names, for one. Not phrases or little cutesy plays on words (on an RP server that is). Even when games provide cultural information about the character races and give that races naming conventions, you still are guaranteed to see people who don't follow them. So no, if a company is willing to provide the staff to monitor this, and charge a few dollars more for characters on that server, then by all means it should be done. They make their money, their players are happy and players like you who disagree with it can play on a regular non-RP server. Win win.

A roleplayer dedicated to realism in their stories would ask why it's even necessary to have nametags.  In the real world we go by appearance, people do not wear nametags everywhere they go.  In the 3D graphical, highly customizable worlds of modern MMOs it seems to me that we have reached the stage where nametags should be dropped alltogether and you should have to ask someone their name in order to get it.

IMO, you are asking for something here that actually detracts from roleplay, and is most certainly not a requirement.

No. Most people who agreed and have been playing MMOs for 5+ years and like the idea of RP servers have been requesting options like these for years and years. and as far as it being too much effort for what it is worth, the happiness of as many customers as you can achieve is very much worth the effort around 5 event team members and 2 community name specialist to implement this.

Not everyone has agreed to these requirements in this thread.  I've been playing online roleplaying games for almost 20 years, and I don't agree.  If you and others who have agreed feel that these items are actually requirements for a successful roleplay experience, then know that I and a few others stand apart.

Just as a general response to a lot of posts in this thread, I think many roleplayers here don't really understand the current nature of MMOs anymore.  They are acting like wet, uncomfortable puppy dogs that have been kicked out into the rain temporarily and are making small noises so that their masters will realize it and let them back in.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, MMOs are big business.  The design team and art budgets are astronomical.  Subscribers can range into the hundreds of thousands of people, and even that is considered a failure.

This web site is not about little Mom and Pop roleplaying shops.  It's about the focus of a massive industry that could get even larger, if it doesn't castrate itself.  I think the future is roleplay and realism.  Others think it is commercialism and pecking orders.  The truth is that without the realism and roleplay, the commercialism and pecking orders simply immitate a life that most of us already know and dislike.

I disagree with the article.

Personally i think that any MMORPG that has a significant ammount of shards/servers absolutly needs a dedicated roleplaying server, otherwise finding other people to roleplay with becomes pretty much impossible. And roleplaying is really not a solo activity.

And no you don't need everything on that list, not even close. You need a server that has "Roleplay" in the name, and you need GMs that will intervene if anyone actively harasses roleplayers. As long as the roleplaying community is large enough, it will happen on it's own.

Yes people who can't stand a word of OOC on any channel, or who will have a seizure if they see IPWNYou hunting boars in the distance, will never be satisfied, but there's plenty of people who realise that just as MMO combat is not D&D dice combat, MMO roleplay is not the same as D&D roleplay, you need to chill a bit and have fun pretending to be your character, and not expect other people to play along with your scripts.

The only game that can cater to Roleplaying fans are games exactly like NWN and NWN2.   This is the only game at retail that really caters toward Roleplayers.  Why exactly?

Because player made worlds using the building tools NWN offers allows people to create and really change the world.  Want to start a band of rebels that take down the militia the main city?  That is all possible in player made worlds who can change things at will.

So I will agree, That there really is no sense in MMORPG's having Roleplaying servers, especially since they don't enforce roleplay.  Roleplaying should be an actual community within the server itself, not a whole seperate server that doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

As you pointed out, these are simply game events that make the setting more real.  If a company wants to go to the expense of an event team to increase the verisimilitude of their game, that is somewhat different than events aimed purely at groups of dedicated roleplayers.  While certainly dedicated roleplayers would benefit from the increased verisimilitude, saying that such would be a requisite for their gameplay is going way too far, and the events would really be more of an enticement for the rest of the playerbase to become more dedicated to realism and roleplay.   Some of these events could be done via structured coding that is randomly spawned, without the need for a human event controller.

In this thread, we're talking about the things that are manditory for roleplay to be worthwhile.  Remember?

Again, you continue to think from the frame of view of aiming at small groups of "dedicated roleplayers" and I'm talking from the point of "services" available to any roleplayer on a RP server. I'm not concerned about other servers (as adding such functions to all Regular PvE and PvP flagged servers would be pointless. Players there for the most part don't look for those extras and just want to "play a game". And again, I don't think you can list anywhere in this column where I stated Sanya's list was manditory for anyone. I stated that it is a doable list (which it is) and that such a list of options would entice me to spend more for a monthly subscription than the standard $15. I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one who would do so, which was proven by others in this thread.

I understand you may be content with structured coding, but I and others think it's time for companies to begin implementing more human generated dynamic content. Human company paid employees who go over story arcs with the writing team and the take on roles as key players in the game world and help drive the story.

Again, is this manditory?

For you, no. For others it is something that is desired as we are just plain tired of riding rails from quest hub to quest hub doing the same kill quests ad infinum. MMOs for the most part are hack-n-slash, tear things down over and over. Paying more attention to the building/creation things (and no, I'm not talking your typical crafting of items that aid in combat), and more positive, non-destructive cooperative gameplay mechanics and systems is sorely missed in this genre.

Is this manditory? No, not in every game. But as it stands, it isn't in any game in a cohesive and broad manner. Worlds should be made like this to offer more options and if some don't want to participate in them, then they have the current crop of games to fall to for play.

A roleplayer dedicated to realism in their stories would ask why it's even necessary to have nametags.  In the real world we go by appearance, people do not wear nametags everywhere they go.  In the 3D graphical, highly customizable worlds of modern MMOs it seems to me that we have reached the stage where nametags should be dropped alltogether and you should have to ask someone their name in order to get it.

IMO, you are asking for something here that actually detracts from roleplay, and is most certainly not a requirement.

Nametags...if a game is going to use them, then I stick by what I have said above. I'm not against a game doing away with the tags above player's characters. It would be nice to be able to click a button which allows a player you have targeted to click on you moving forward and have a pop-up that displays you name, sure. Of a practical nature, however, companies would need to incorporate valid methods to identify players for harrassment reports and TOS violation reports, etc. Names are an easy way to do it currently. If they continue to be something that you assign at generation and something that can be displayed, then on an RP server that has naming convention rules, it needs to be enforced. 

And again, the server isn't intelligent enough to see the little cutesy plays on words/phrases players try to use. Only another human being can and if a company is offering the naming convention feature, then it should make good on that promise/offer' implementation.

Not everyone has agreed to these requirements in this thread.  I've been playing online roleplaying games for almost 20 years, and I don't agree.  If you and others who have agreed feel that these items are actually requirements for a successful roleplay experience, then know that I and a few others stand apart.

I doubt you will find anything on this earth that everyone will agree on. I've never had an expectation to have everyone agree with my viewpoint, lol! That's absurd. What I have said, though you have interpretted in your own way, is that the items offered in Sanya's list are for me (and it seems others) "terms" for a roleplay server that I would indeed like to see in play. That list generates in me a feeling of the creation of an environment in which I would like to game/RP in. I never said anyone else had to agree with me or that this is the only way to do it. I just stated that I liked it. Pure and simple.

As I've said before, in my view RP servers on just about every game have been unsupported game mechanic-wise and live team wise. Sanya's list bolsters that support (giving more tools for RPers to implement the events they imagine as well as having a live team to drive the storyline through in character interaction) and adding 5 event team members and 2 community team members per RP server (and most games only have 1-2 RP servers as is) is not going to "break the bank" of the company. Especially if they are charging more/month for access to those servers.

 

Roleplay in MMOs has nothing to do with all that bullshit you think is required. RP has functioned without it in the past - The key is a game based on freedom of choice and interaction. If a game is on rails then there's no significant roleplaying to be had.

"Customizable faction and resource objectives run the risk of increasing complexity."

Oh noes, heaven forbid that the players be required to think!

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...and adding 5 event team members and 2 community team members per RP server (and most games only have 1-2 RP servers as is) is not going to "break the bank" of the company. Especially if they are charging more/month for access to those servers.
 

 I'll refrain from readdressing the rest of the post, but you might want to go back and notice that you replied to a post of mine where I was posting in reply to someone else.  It has gotten us on different wavelengths.

Assuming 7 people can handle the needs of 5,000 to 10,000 people on a roleplaying server cluster, you are still looking at more than a $20/month subscription just talking gross salary and benefits.

Events also have many other problems associated with them, the most noteworthy being latency, customization to the players, participation, and additional art/engineering needed to pull them off.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...and adding 5 event team members and 2 community team members per RP server (and most games only have 1-2 RP servers as is) is not going to "break the bank" of the company. Especially if they are charging more/month for access to those servers.
 

 I'll refrain from readdressing the rest of the post, but you might want to go back and notice that you replied to a post of mine where I was posting in reply to someone else.  It has gotten us on different wavelengths.

Assuming 7 people can handle the needs of 5,000 to 10,000 people on a roleplaying server cluster, you are still looking at more than a $20/month subscription just talking gross salary and benefits.

Events also have many other problems associated with them, the most noteworthy being latency, customization to the players, participation, and additional art/engineering needed to pull them off.

Well I'll chime in that before something really irritating happened I was on "The Interest Team" for Ultima Online.  Each server had a dedicated volunteer team Seer, Elder, Troubs, Ancients (supervisors) and there were two Interest Game Masters (paid employees) that did all the back and forth between the volunteer teams and "the company".

I'm not going into why that went away to long and off topic and wasn't really related to The Interest Team regardless.

Its already been done as far as having dedicated groups on every server, that did server specific content.  As well as Official Events that were the same for all servers (run by IGM's with help from Volunteers).

As to the topic.  You know what the biggest problem with RP servers is?  They magnify the problem that pisses me off the most with MMO's.  You have this wonderful ToS/Eula thing that you agree to... and its like a contract.  Yet its a one sided contract... If they choose to enforce it then you might get a ban.  Yet they don't usually enforce it.

RP servers have higher petition rates because people want the ToS/Eula enforced.  I know its an amazing concept and all.

Roleplayers are NOT 10% of the gaming population (that's pvp actually).  Roleplayers who actually ask for a dedicated RP server may make up 10% of the RP Community.  We never had "role play" servers in UO and there was more role-play going on in UO than I've ever seen on a "rp server".

Then again that's just me and my experience.  I haven't worked for a company in that industry since late 2005 when I started my current company... so the numbers may have changed.

UO had a great rp community.  I was a counselor and I had some good friends who were seers.  They managed to put on some truely unique events.  Unfortunately a few had to ruin it for the many because of labor dept. rules.

Originally posted by Raithe-Nor

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...and adding 5 event team members and 2 community team members per RP server (and most games only have 1-2 RP servers as is) is not going to "break the bank" of the company. Especially if they are charging more/month for access to those servers.
 

 I'll refrain from readdressing the rest of the post, but you might want to go back and notice that you replied to a post of mine where I was posting in reply to someone else.  It has gotten us on different wavelengths.

Assuming 7 people can handle the needs of 5,000 to 10,000 people on a roleplaying server cluster, you are still looking at more than a $20/month subscription just talking gross salary and benefits.

Events also have many other problems associated with them, the most noteworthy being latency, customization to the players, participation, and additional art/engineering needed to pull them off.

Ahh, so it would seem. Well, what's a forum without some wavelength crossing, eh?

As to those 7 people and whether they could handle it, I see no reason why not. It's not like those 5-10K players are going to be online at the same time...ever. And  there's always those people being the brain children behind the events and pulling other devs in that are available to aid/play storyline figures as needed. And I don't think I'll jump into the  salary/benefits argument. Unless you are in the relative position in a company there is no way to know what that would cost. What I do know is that other companies in other service industries add "premium services" for a few dollars more and allocate staff members in a greater amount than 7-10 and manage ok. I'm sure an MMO company would as well.

As far as the event problems you mention, they aren't. They are convienent counter points on which to draw from for the purposes of an argument, sure. The only thing involved here is a little more work and effort on the part of a service provider to provide another level of service. None of the challenges listed are worthy of a "cold fusion-esque" mantel as some here try to make them out to be.

Enjoyed the article! Wow look at the responses!  Wonderful job Sanya.

I would consider myself a casual roleplayer. (SWG was a blast!). I love the depth that it can potentially add to a game.

At times it can be more than a little annoying. (try explaining IM's in a role play setting). Having a high level character is more challenging due to the fact that these people do not always place a high emphasis on learning game mechanics. Oh and lets not forget the oversexed, gender ambiguious, harlet that is always trying to flirt with you when all you want to do is get a guild that can RP and has some aspiration of raiding.

That out of the way.  There are times when I actually prefer standing at the local tavern engaging in improv to the nearest dungeon crawl.  I agree with what many of you are saying about establishing ground rules for social enteractions.  How many low level characters have come up to you as a role player claiming some sort of royalty and demanding subjectation?  

"Pardon me M'Lord, but can we please set some peramiters for our iambic pentameter?"  Rathbone.

But hey, sometimes you can even have some fun messing with those individuals.

 ~R~

I must say I relly enjoyed article. I am so called "Casual RP Player" and I have only 2 people on my ignore liste, and both of them are Ninja Looters *winks*

Anyhoo, I just dont get one thing... Why people who dont want RP choise RP servers... its like Hey I dnon't like Meat but I'l order Hamburger in McDonald... You dont like PvP? You dont pick PvP servers. You dont like RP? Why you pick RP server?

Most games in our time got servers marked as RP - Maybe people dont know what RP means, and think its some kind of cookie?

Originally posted by Horusek

Anyhoo, I just dont get one thing... Why people who dont want RP choise RP servers... its like Hey I dnon't like Meat but I'l order Hamburger in McDonald... You dont like PvP? You dont pick PvP servers. You dont like RP? Why you pick RP server?

I'll try to answer this... I don't really RP but I love the RP community, I find that most of the community is really friendly compared to a normal server and a pvp server usually has a horrible community. I don't usually talk to anyone while I play MMOs anyway though so no one would know that I wasn't an RPer so I guess 'the silent one' is my role =D. I also like RP servers because the audience has a more mature persona and are very helpful.

It is also very rare that I see people being utterly rotten to one another in general world channels, the community conversations do not look like I am reading comments on a youtube video (those are always negative)

So to all you RPers out there I sincerly thank you for helping better the experience found in the MMO world ^^;

Frankly, I think in early going many nonroleplayers pick roleplaying servers just randomly.  I live in Richmond, VA, and downtown's Main Street is one way.   You'd be surprised how often a car is going the wrong way despite all the signs.  And this a real life driver on a real life street potentially putting his real life in jeopardy.   Gamers aren't always even that alert.  And, generally, most players know that RP server rules are never enforced so they don't care too much.

Some definitely look for RP servers for the mature base of players there, whether it's an official or unofficial server, but not all by a longshot.  There are also a few bottomfeeders who'll head to RP servers just because they assume RPers can't compete and they'll dominate or be able to grief with aplomb.

Over time on unofficial servers most folks filter out who didn't really want to be there and more folks filter in who discover it.  There's a do-it-yourself mentality in these communities that lends itself to both tolerance and longevity.  Official servers seem to crash and burn as bitter disappointment in the developers on high and their failure to enforce rules sets in.  These places tend to get depressing and weaker as time goes on.

Sanya,

 Great article.

You officially win "Dana Massey". You may do with him what you will.

I will say this again.   I believe that if a game is designed right, people will unknowingly roelplay.   I have seen it in games like Planetside and EvE.   The very game seems to allow people to just be themselves pretty much and the game seems to create an atmosphere where people start to act and behave a certain way while playing and so do how they talk when in game.   The players start to create a game lingo and behaviors that is just part of the game and that to me is the best form of roleplay.   

In games like Vanguard or Lord of the Rings or WoW there is no real game mechanics in place to cause people to behave or to talk a certain way.   Only those that wish to really do try to roleplay.  Like how you greet someone or say goodbye and what not.   I do believe though that if these games added more fluff type RP game mechanics and did some other fine tuning to the game in what people can do and how they do it - you'd see more people roleplaying and they would just think it was part of the game.

Sanya did a good job with this article - though I think it was made to take the sting out of Dana's.   That's OK though.   Your's is the article we should have gotten in the first place.

Originally posted by Teala

I will say this again.   I believe that if a game is designed right, people will unknowingly roelplay.  

 

You are incorrect in this generalization. There are some people who will always want to make it more of a game and less of a world.

The guy who wants to name his character "Bloodelfpally" will not press "Random Name" and pick a world appropriate name, so unless you force him to have no choice other than pre-selected names he will pick something anachronistic like a hybrid of his class/race.

He named his character Bloodelfpally because every version of Sephiroth he tried, even S3ph1r0th was taken.

If they accidentally think like their character would, it would be more an exception to the rule. If they were playing a Human Paladin of Light, Ninja looting and Kill-stealing is just as probable as if they were a darker version of paladin.

Unless you hamstring the freedom they have to choose their actions and what they say, you cannot convince that type of player to think and do what their character would do.

The trick/goal should be to satisfy those players with a place to be "Turdpumper99" and grind while they talk about Chuck Norris, without irritating someone who wants to feel like they are part of the world and that the people around them are part of the world and who want to do and say what their character would do rather than try to somehow design a game that would force players to take certain actions only.

I don't like ninja looters, I don't like l33t speek, I don't like grinding.

However, they are plunking down their money to pay and entitled to play that "way". The best analogy I have is rather than convince everyone never to smoke, is to just let smokers have a place to enjoy their choice.

 I think the idea of requirements for an RP server are awesome, but I also don't think that everyone should be forced to accept them.

I think that in addition to a vanilla RP server,  if they ALSO made a "Non-Twink" RP server, where with a few simple rules about what items could be equipped, what kind of enchants could be applied and how much gold you could carry, they could cut down on a lot of twinking, that would also be an awesome choice. That Non-Twink server would require the players to all pretty much earn their own loot and have enchants that are reasonable for their level, and they could only participate in a PVP league for non-twink servers. Sure, they'd have less people in the que to play, but I think that aside from the name L3g0las, what probably ruins my fun most of all, is the 19s BG where its two kinds of players. The endless pvper who enjoys shooting fish in a barrel with his high powered one-shot kill and the rest of us who accidentally tried to enjoy the pvp battle at 19.

I am speaking about WoW specifically there, but it could be done in other games as well. WoW just has the more obvious Twink problem than any other game I've personally ever played. If you want to twink, fine..plenty of servers for it. But just give me one place, where I am facing people where its about skill, not his +100 HP enchanted hat.

Originally posted by Kaenash

Originally posted by Teala

I will say this again.   I believe that if a game is designed right, people will unknowingly roelplay.  

 

 

You are incorrect in this generalization. There are some people who will always want to make it more of a game and less of a world.

The guy who wants to name his character "Bloodelfpally" will not press "Random Name" and pick a world appropriate name, so unless you force him to have no choice other than pre-selected names he will pick something anachronistic like a hybrid of his class/race.

He named his character Bloodelfpally because every version of Sephiroth he tried, even S3ph1r0th was taken.

If they accidentally think like their character would, it would be more an exception to the rule. If they were playing a Human Paladin of Light, Ninja looting and Kill-stealing is just as probable as if they were a darker version of paladin.

Unless you hamstring the freedom they have to choose their actions and what they say, you cannot convince that type of player to think and do what their character would do.

The trick/goal should be to satisfy those players with a place to be "Turdpumper99" and grind while they talk about Chuck Norris, without irritating someone who wants to feel like they are part of the world and that the people around them are part of the world and who want to do and say what their character would do rather than try to somehow design a game that would force players to take certain actions only.

I don't like ninja looters, I don't like l33t speek, I don't like grinding.

However, they are plunking down their money to pay and entitled to play that "way". The best analogy I have is rather than convince everyone never to smoke, is to just let smokers have a place to enjoy their choice.

 

 

You missed the whole point of my post didn't you.  As for what you are talking about.   See if they tools were in place and the game was designd right I should be able to put such players on an ignore list and I never see them(their character, their chat) and we should not even be able to interact with one another on the same server.  Right now all we can do for the most part is just ignore a certain users chat.  I am talking about the abilityto totally ignore a character.  

Along with other such tools and fluff incooperated into a game a game can be designed where people will roleplay and not even know they are doing it.   Just play Planetside...you'll know what I mean.
 

I realize that no one actually reads threads after they go past five pages, but if anyone who already posted happens to see this, I have a couple notes:

- There is room to disagree on the best implementation of a roleplay server for a mass market MMO. I don't claim to have the One True Way. But I have a column to write every week. Dana is always, ALWAYS, looking for people who can write. There's an application link up there. Apply.

- Someone upthread pointed out that I'm not talking about Mom and Pop games, here. I think what I laid out is entirely doable for a company working with thirty million dollars. The t-shirt budget is higher than the annual salary for an in-game event coordinator. The OFFICE SNACK BUDGET is higher than the cost of paying three "contractors" a few hundred bucks a month. And half of you have pointed out that most of my must-have features already exist.

- Speaking of already existing, someone said that no modern MMO would have hand-approval for names. You are quite wrong in that respect, sir. Free Realms with their four million registered users is doing it. You spin three wheels to create a name - all of the combinations possible with the wheels are acceptable. If you want to use your own name, you submit it for approval... and in the meantime, you will use a name you create with the three spinning wheels. If they can do it with four million users, believe me, anyone can.

- No edits were made to my article after seeing the reaction to Dana's - I didn't even SEE the reaction to Dana's until he mentioned it to me this AM. My eyeballs are still bleeding.

- Yes, LOTRO's chat system is one of the best out there, but I am greedy and want even more flexibility, hence my IRC comment.

- When I say "scripted" in RP terms, I don't mean two people reciting pre-written lines. But there is usually an outline of sorts for the major events. To name just one example, I remember a DAOC storyline where a female character was kidnapped, and her clan declared war in order to get her back, with her in-game fiance leading the charge. The person playing the kidnap victim knew, in advance, that she was going to be kidnapped, and she furthermore knew she was going to stay in a particular keep unless her clan ransomed her or won the fight. I mean, if she hadn't agreed in advance, well, you can't really kidnap people in an MMO. And in DAOC there are a dozen ways to avoid being trapped in one place. Finally, her primary kidnapper rained abuse on her, but because it was scripted in advance that he would abuse her, she didn't take it personally. It was roleplay, not cruelty.

Originally posted by Sanya

- Speaking of already existing, someone said that no modern MMO would have hand-approval for names. You are quite wrong in that respect, sir. Free Realms with their four million registered users is doing it. You spin three wheels to create a name - all of the combinations possible with the wheels are acceptable. If you want to use your own name, you submit it for approval... and in the meantime, you will use a name you create with the three spinning wheels. If they can do it with four million users, believe me, anyone can.

I'd really like to find out more about this.  What's the backlog like?  How alert are the screeners, really?  Anyone playing Free Realms know if this would work in the, presumably, somewhat more exacting and nitpicky universe of roleplaying?  Is it effective?

If it does work well that's definitely good news.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

Originally posted by Sanya

- Speaking of already existing, someone said that no modern MMO would have hand-approval for names. You are quite wrong in that respect, sir. Free Realms with their four million registered users is doing it. You spin three wheels to create a name - all of the combinations possible with the wheels are acceptable. If you want to use your own name, you submit it for approval... and in the meantime, you will use a name you create with the three spinning wheels. If they can do it with four million users, believe me, anyone can.

 

I'd really like to find out more about this.  What's the backlog like?  How alert are the screeners, really?  Anyone playing Free Realms know if this would work in the, presumably, somewhat more exacting and nitpicky universe of roleplaying?  Is it effective?

If it does work well that's definitely good news.

It all depends on the people you have doing it and how seriously they take their jobs. You can't create expectations from the employees of one company and how well they do a similiar job to employees at another. The "X" factor of different human beings makes it impossible. The one thing you can see is that it can be done. It may take some experimenting to get a smooth system down for it and to shuffle the right enthusiastic people into the role, but it can be done and it doesn't break a company monetarily (like some have hinted at in this thread).

@Sanya.

You know just as well as I do that there are many people who are going to look at your suggested list and not take it as a suggested list, but instead a "mandatory declaration" of the only way to do RP servers. They have trouble with seeing that it is a suggestion of what someone thinks would be a good way to do it. A way that would obviously be open to necessary adjustments (once implemented and feedback rolls in) in order to make it work. And instead of making suggestions of ways to advance it, they comdemn.

The problem is, RP cannot be enforced. The banhammers just can't come out when someone says 'lol'.  To me, a roleplay server is just a flag. It's a flag saying 'If you're looking for roleplayers, your best chances of finding them are here'. To a roleplayer as myself, that's great. Whatever I can do to find a community of like-minded players is wonderful. What it means to the rest of the community is, as defined through some conversations with non-roleplayers in roleplay servers, that roleplay servers are where you go to get away from the d00ds, the freaks, and the creeps and play with some (reasonably) mature people. 

It would be interesi\ting if they could create a mod that helped with the actual RP.  Sure no one really read the whole rules of an rp server and if they do either dont care, or think it lame.  I personally am a role player.  I am a ratehr relaxed one, and i played on a regular server first then moved with a few to an rp server on WoW. 

However I digress... It would be interesing to give a second window after you finish deciding race, appearance, and class.  Give us a window that allows us to give an age, a description and maybe even some background.  This could then be viewed by those in game by right clicking on the portrait.  Perhaps even a difference in flags for a character, no rp, new to rp, little rp, rp only, and ooc in pm.

I would love to see something like this, then I could feel better about going back to WoW.  Currently however I feel that the rp servers are over run by non-rpers.  While I agree some rpers need people to give them a story, I feel that a character can grow just by meeting and teaming up with others.  I guess I'm not a story driven character all the time. 

If there is an rp guild out there that is having a good time I would love to hear about it, and maybe even get back in on that :) 

Thanks for a more objective article (and no insults) than of Mr. Massey's.

While there is room for disagreements, the article does provide a good start in the right direction.

Much better article than Dana's.

Although the list of RP server "requirements" would possibly be the ideal, for an RP server to work does not require that degree of support.

The biggest problem is that MMORPG companies do not publish explicit rules on what are/are not enforcable rules for the servers AND that they do not take said violations as seriously as other ToS violations.

The rules don't have to cover every form of chat in every possible class of distinction. They do need to spell out naming conventions, which public channels prohibit out of character chat, which public channels prohibit in character chat and if any of those public channels will allow a combination of the two with ((brackets)) delineating OOC. They also need to spell out examples of what is and is not harassment or interference with role play; and what kinds of disputes they will not consider as legitimate complaints (with threats of suspensions or server bans for those who continually file prohibited complaints)..

Once the rules are clearly spelled out, they need to be enforced the same way restrictions on hate speech, explicit talk and verbal harrassment are enforced.

Sure, the CSR load will be heavier to begin with, as some people deliberately test the limits of the system, but if a track record of clear rules and swift/fair enforcement are established, then the number of tickets will fall significantly.

The reason why enforcement on most existing RP servers is so draining is precisely because the rules are not clear enough and trouble makers or rule nazis can get away with a lot while intentionally antagonizing other players.

The only distinction between breaking RP server rules and general ToS would be that instead of a ban from the game for serious or repeated infractions, your account would  be banned from the RP servers.

This is the first Sanya article that I read which happened to be well though out and decently written. Hopefully she sticks to this style of writing as opposed to the try and be cool with the same cliches that will make all the forum posters cheer type of writing.

It is impossible to have a successful RP server, and the article did cover that, it is cost innefective.

Also what the article said that I was going to mention, it's best just for an indie game to create an MORPG, that is a large open world with servers that the players host just like they would an FPS. That way whoever sets up a server can determine the rules and govern the users. All different people who want different level or roleplays and quests can find a server they like and play there. But I don't see that being profitable enough for any company to do. Since it would take as much work as making an MMO and you woud only get a fraction of normal MMO purchase numbers.

I always figured servers marked as [RP] would be the same as the other servers, except that people there would be more immersed and more into their character, and it would be pretty laid back when it comes to "Oh yeah! Sure ill do TK with LOLOL i have to talk to my mom first for a second tho kthx!". Region chat would be active, yet quieter. But overall people are much nicer!

The image for this article on the mmorpg.com homepage is epic.

Originally posted by Vagrant_Zero

The image for this article on the mmorpg.com homepage is epic.

It is. But you know what's funny also? I betcha rabid 'hardcore' pvpers look just like those kids (and the rest of us), only sans naff green tabards and latex dildos.

i used to rp a klingon mostly lawful sometimes chaotic evil BELF mage on a wow pvp server. the hardcore RP'ers took offense and tried to say i was doing it wrong. i lol'ed and then hunted them down, all while RPing my character faithfully. i even made a little story about it. they whined up a storm so i hunted them down some more, adding to my toon's little story. it was awesome.

Extremly good read! You have really sat down and thought this one through. I am not really a huge RPer today... Mostly because I was a really really good RPer in the 80s and a really good RPer in the Vampire chat rooms of the 90s and... Well, there is a loooooong way down qualitywise between those days the the extremly juvenile cybering of MMO RP servers today. And I agree with your conclusion why. It is extremly difficult to create the tools for any quality RP in an MMO today. Extremly difficult codewise and extremly expensive personellwise. It is a hard task. Last time I can really say I did any real RP in an MMO, was in Ultima Online, first month in Europe. I was a tailor of some renown. I was greeted into the world by a GM, waiting for me as I entered the world, chatting a bit, answering a few questions, then sending me on my way. I really felt it was a real RP universe. So I never left the tailor shop. I stood there, making my outfits, talking to the costumers entering.. making 3-4 suits or robes in different colors to each one so they could try out the different fashions.... then at lunch, I told them I had lunch, and we walked to the tavern and sat down ot eat. Not once did people fall out of character, and it was amazing to see. So long ago now.

Since then.... No GMs, no real story except a short prolouge (AO had a few GM run events which usually involved tons of attacking creatures. That was not Roleplay, that was LAGWAR) And as you say, the resources to create a real RP server is too costly. So... the years go by, peoples expectations go down and we reach today, with a few sad cyberers in a cellar somewhere, a few normal gamers that think changing "you" to "thou" means Roleplay, and a ton of 11 year olds trying to disturb the sad remnants of a glorious time, all trying to survive in a quite depressing universe.

It was really fun to read this column. Excellent job. Brings me back tot he good old days of mmorpg.com. Hope to see more from you soon.

I'm about as hardcore a roleplayer as one's likely to meet in MMOdom.  My background includes tabletop going back to the white box, and if you know what I'm talking about you may be a hardcore roleplayer too, and up into the present on MMOs.  MMOs do have a bad rap for poor quality roleplaying and some of that's deserved but there are islands of very talented people around out there.  When I went to visit a MUSH, a text-based roleplay heavy variety of MUD, and I told someone I'd been roleplaying on MMOs they said, "I'm sorry."  And I get that.  Between ERPers and anti-roleplayers with some distorted, from my perspective, idea of what roleplaying is about things can look iffy.

But there are folks out there who do spin old-school style sagas.  There are improv troupes around that can do much more than the usual tavern small talk and flirting.  You've got people who can build adventures in SWG using Storyteller props and their own imaginations that rival anything I've seen in tabletop RP.   On occasion you'll even find folks who can craft memorable characters and express themselves well enough to rival even haughty MUSH roleplayers.

These folks may not be the majority of those who call themselves roleplayers out there but keep in mind where we are developmentally.  It took a decade or or two, depending on how you see things, for roleplaying in tabletop to evolve from dungeon ransacking and power-levelling to systems more focused on realism, setting and character development.

Folks just have to decide they're bored of the same old, same old, and get interested in new ways of doing things.

I love the list.  I'd pay a higher subscription fee happily to support the additional resources needed.  I imagine there would be enough  interest for an actual RP server that a slightly higher sub fee would more than pay for the extra manpower.  I'd even consider playing a game I otherwise wouldn't be interested in if it had an actual enforced and supported RP server.

The answer is already there, and was provided by the author.

Yes, there is a much greater investment on the part of the developer/publisher in roleplaying servers. And since there's no such thing as a free lunch, the answer is simply this: Charge players a substantial fee for access to a roleplay server, perhaps even with a forfeitable security deposit as surety of good behavior. Security deposit waived if you are vouched for by someone already in the game (but then it's THEIR deposit and ability to vouch on the line, at least if there's a problem during a probationary period), and refunded after a period of no disciplinary action. It should be trivial for a contract lawyer to draft a supplemental EULA/TOS contract to make it enforceable.

This would have the effect of:

1. providing the needed funds to pay for all that extra staff
2. filter out the "tourists" and people playing on Mommy's credit card
3. filtering out the griefers and RP-harassers, as they would suddenly have something serious to lose
4. keeping the RP server population at a managable size

Elitist? Hell yes. I have no problem with elitism at all, when it's based upon positive behavior. We don't ban Ferraris just because most people can only afford a Honda. Not yet, anyway.

I would love to see a truly premium MMORPG which charged a premium price, gave premium customer service (including a service level agreement regarding ticket response time, login queue avoidance and server uptime) and demanded premium standards of good behavior from their player-base. Even if it was a hundred dollars a month, that's still an astonishing bargain in terms of entertainment hours-per-dollar. Could everyone afford it? No. So what? MMORPGs are not an entitlement, nor are their prices subject to regulation by anything other than market acceptance.

Whether the entire game was "premium" or just a server subset is another matter. Everquest was toying with that at one point... does anyone here have any feedback on how that worked, and what could be improved?

Gemstone IV, a text based mmorpg (feel free to debate MUD over mmorpg with a brick wall if you'd like) STILL charges approx $40 a month for it's platinum server which provides all of what you just suggested.  Subscriptions are on the decline, but that server has been in existance for near a decade.  It originally boasted a sub fee of $79.99 a month, and unless I'm mistaken, that was when its subscriptions were at one of its peaks. 

Now this is where you can scream "MY GOD you'd have to be a moron to pay that for text!"

Regardless of one's opinion on the mental state of such subscribers, it does point out there IS a market, and people (mostly adults in control of their own finances) will pay very good money for very good service.

EDIT:  all but deposit.  they don't require that.

Hello. I am not a hardcore RPer, but I have some ideas about how a game could improve an RPer experience. In fact, these are just specific design practices. I didn't read all the posts in the thread, but i saw some messages that reasonably match my point.

One of the most anti-RP things are those ridiculous names. Well, i personally think names have too much importance in MMOGs as they are the single way to reliably differentiate characters. In that respect, my opinion is that names should not be floating over the character's head. If I want to know a character's name, should I ask for it. In order to solve the problem of recognition, I can put a label (of my own choice) on that character. Whenever I see that one, I'll see that label floating above his head. It represents the memory of my character and not the name of my friend. That alone opens a lot of RP possibilities (e.g. the "chaotic" characters could tell different names for different characters).

Another thing I consider a problem in MMOGs is that I have access to too much game information. I precisely know how good I am and how good things are. I have never seen any MMOGs that have a good model of the perceptions of the characters.

About the spam, that isn't a problem if there is some cost to speak (e.g. limited breath) and a limited span for the character's voice. Communication channels don't seem good for RP at all to me.

Last, I consider the MMOGs too much unrealistic to compel me to RP. I don't mean better graphics and sound (of course that helps), but simple things like being able to put a looted object in your backpack while you are holding a shield and a sword, or finding a gold coin inside a dead rat. These things disrupt the RP, IMO.

All in all, I'd like to see an MMOG that is more like a character simulator.