Dana Massey: The Myth of Role-Playing Servers
Every game has them, no one truly uses them. This week, Dana explores the myth of role-playing servers in MMOs.
Soon after the first few MMOs trickled out the door, developers came up with something else, much darker, much fouler. They called it the Role Playing Server.
You’ve all heard of them. Almost every MMO has one. They’re these special servers, with special conduct rules where people are supposed to play nice, leave the real world out of it and get really into their characters. It’s a good idea and God bless the role-players out there who love them.
;)
Impossible!
But, I am here today to tell you something. These servers are a myth. They’re not real. They’re like unicorns and Playboy bunnies. They’re an impossibility.
Now, before you say, this guy’s crazy, I realize they in fact do physically exist. Yes, game companies build them and yes, players do log in to them.
That doesn’t mean they’re real. There is no oasis out there where people stick to characters, act as if they’re in a magical world, and never, ever talk about their email.
Role-playing servers have become a beacon for two kinds of player: those who claim to be RPers, and those who love to annoy people who claim to be role players. And of the two, the second group is the more intellectually honest.
Most of the so-called role-players don’t really want to role-play; that is their fiction. They want to be victims. They’ve adopted a philosophy and a completely unenforceable ruleset as their own in the hope that others will come along, “ruin their experience,” and they can whine about it. These are the people who shush you in a campus library at 10:30 on a Friday night.
That is not to say that some people do not legitimately want to role-play in peace. They exist, and God bless their souls for sticking to their guns. They are, however, such a vast minority that they probably couldn’t support more than one guild, let alone an entire server.
Ever join a hardcore RPing guild? Within five minutes, even the most pious cleric will be on TeamSpeak cybering the Troll if left to their own devices. Generally, their “role playing” is a facade for public. They may talk in whilsts and thous when people can hear them, but they still demand properly composed groups, still do pulls, and still talk about the latest class nerfs. In short, they still play the game.
;)
Ironically, one of
the best RPers out there.
The sick truth is that this kind of role-player does it because they will have something to get high and mighty about. They enjoy the sea of guys named LeeRoy Jenkins who run around their servers sending the latest Jon Lajoie videos in general chat. They have a cause – the purity of their server! – and that, above all else, is the role the play.
A pretty strange rant for a guy who works for a site called MMORPG.com, no?
I hate to break it to anyone who may not yet have realized, but these games are not called RPGs because of the use of words like whilst and thou. We call them role playing games, because that is what the genre is based on: the pen and paper rules of the table top RPG genre.
It’s time to face the fact that no video game, no RPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing. It’s just the way the medium works. This has nothing at all in common with those pen-and-paper games where people could really get into their characters. No one is dressed up and instead of six friends you’re comfortable with, there are thousands and one of them is going to be anonymous enough to call you a name.
The disconnect from the keyboard to the screen is enough of a barrier that as neat as these games have become, they remain games. When someone plays Fallout, it creates a world that has more in common with reading a book than being in a play. When someone logs into World of Warcraft, they don’t even have the fiction to sink into. It’s about playing the game, and socializing, but few actually feel like they “become” their character.
;)
These guys can RP.
In fact, I’d argue the only MMO out there with any degree of real roleplaying in it is EVE, and that’s because the game’s mechanics allow people to really sink into their role, and those roles generally make sense in the context of the person behind the keyboard. In short, being an ass doesn’t require a lot of theatrical ability.
So if the community doesn’t use them properly, and RP servers just create conflict (and not the good kind) between players, why do game companies always insist on having them?
They’re unenforceable, mechanically virtually identical to regular servers and, trust me, a giant pain in the ass for the poor people who have to try and moderate them.
Which is what Sanya Weathers will tell you about in tomorrow’s column.
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Each Thursday, he asks the question "Why Not?" about some element of MMOs.
You know i've always pondered how a RP server with a highly restrictive chat and emote system would work out. I started thinking about it while playing FFXI. A friend IRL and my god parents live in Osaka and are Japanese, and i've made numerous Japanese friends visiting them and playing FFXI. I don't speak much, and definitely don't read Kanji, but in FFXI I grouped quite often with full Japanese groups. My interaction within these groups was done mostly with emotes, smiley faces, and the games auto translator. It had a learning curve, but before long the barrier between us was practically non existant. This got me thinking about how this could translate into a RP server with forced RP.
If a system was developed well enough and expanded on FFXI's auto translator a really unique and interesting environment could be created within an RP server while not allowing free form typing and text (This could be allowed in private or guild channels though.) I really think it could work, and after the learning curve could be a very unique and interesting way to communicate within game.
If you feel like roleplayers all sit around talking in Shakespearean English, you've obviously never played a tabletop RPG nor have you actually engaged in a true roleplaying activity with actual roleplayers.
I can feel the hate coming your way.
Hehe I usually pick roleplaying servers since they often have at least a naming policy, so I wont run in "Urdaddy" s and the like.
(For that matter I think rp servers are lovely)
Im not really enjoying the actual roleplaying, but I respect the rp-rules and I always rp in return when players approach me, staying in character isn't very hard.
I started playing WoW in 2004 on an RP server. I had fun and made a lot of money playing the AH! Loved it. Then our GM told me about pvp servers because I spent all my time in the battle grounds. I went to a pvp server and stayed there for a few years.
My boss tells me he is playing on an rp server and so I roll a toon on it.
Rp servers are the minor league of WoW. People don't care about spec or gear, they care about how they look, when the next wedding is going to be and what was on Scrubs last night. Trying to make friends in the LAMER guild I was in, I offered runs through classic instances for gear and fun. No repsonse. I'm like don't you guys want a Corpsemaker or Smite's Hammer and they are like, "Ummm were like working on the newest cooking acheivments and stuff." I am serious.
<Mod edit>
Because on my server they would be served with garlic toast and a good beer.
I have to say that was an exceptionally misinformed and unenlightened article.
I prefer to play on "RP" servers, not because of any real expectation of roleplaying - nor to "annoy" roleplayers. I play on them because they tend to have better enforced social guide lines on chat, naming conventions and behavior.
It's not all about bad acting lessons, shakespearian accents or drama queens. It's about respecting the intended uses of chat channels and tiny little things like not being allowed to deliberately break the immersion of someone elses playing time. I couldn't care less what you say or how you say it in an OOC channel, guild chat or a private convo; because I can choose to not be listening to them. However, I find having to listen to some moron named N33D5D0P3 talk about Michel Jackson in zone wide general chat to be really annoying.
So, no they aren't perfect and they really aren't about rigidly enforced "roleplaying"...but I find RP servers to be a better social environment than most MMO servers, simply because they actually allow for the enforcement of some basic rules of conduct and consideration.
I have to say that this comes off as a bit of a rant. Not 100% true but with truth. The problem is that in some ways you just don't respect the people who do role play.
the second issue is that for some reason you think all role players have to be total immersion freaks who don't know when to turn off.
It is more than possible for them to role play in the role play or general chat and to then be themselves in OOC. That is what it is there for "out of character".
Though I've done quite a bit of acting and a bit of improv, I am not a role player. I usually prefer role players because they take the game more seriously and are more interested in playing.
As far as them wanting to be victims, that's so full of hubris.
If you want to go that far then all video game players are victims, waiting for the "adults" in the real world to tell them to get real jobs and stop wasting their time. Might as well take that to the sport junkies as well. Then those who are in bands hoping they can still make it even though they are pushing 40.
The truth part is that "yes" there are people who feel that roleplaying is their venue to cyber or be more naughty than they can be off line. But you know what? In the end that is still a role and one that fits within the rules.
As for those who go to role play servers to bother them that is not the role players problem. And I also think that these servers can be enforced to a point.
In the end you come off as being dismissive of a group of people who want to be as serious about their game or at least adopt a play style that is as focused as say a hard core pvp player.
shame on you.
While I admit that there are people out there who claim to be RPers and still powergame their characters, that does not completely define the RP community. Come to LotRO some time, and you'll meet people who have characters wielding level 1 weapons throughout their characters' lives because the weapons look more realistic. There are RPers there who will refuse to travel by running, traveling everywhere instead by walking despite how slow and tedious it is. Visit certain NWN servers and you'll see this multiplied. On one of my old favorites, we would routinely just log in so that we could sit around the campfire or the table at the inn and just chat - entirely in-character chat, at that. And when you do that, you can have some amazing stories, such as how my Elf Fighter began to realize that he valued much more highly being able to spend time with his wife and friends than he did killing evil monsters and people, and slowly began to hate the very skills that had defined his career. That's the good and real kind of RP - not the people dreaming about how their warrior can wield a bigger axe or smash heads faster than anyone else, but the people who are simply there for the story, and game conventions are merely a backdrop.
Well Dana, there are companies out there that support the role players and that is one of the reasons that Blizzard's Wow has done so well.
A role play server is not for those that have to roleplay 100% of the time. No one does that, but you do have the ablitity, at least on the server I play on, to roleplay in peace if that is what you desire. You are also free of the kids with the wild names, Blizzard still enforces that on the rp servers. So in that sense you are wrong.
Thats the truth right there.
“They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players.” tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-role-playing.html
Thats the truth right there.
“They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players.” tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/02/meaning-of-role-playing.html
I don't like people that think you have to roleplay a certain way. I don't like how people used "old english" and talk with a "text accent".. even tho the language and accent don't fit the world they are in.
Ever notice how so many people play the exact same character? Their parents were killed when they were young... they were kidnapped, sold, brought up by (random people or animal) and later fought as a gladiator...
Or they are trying to have "golden skin with gold hour glass eyes.." or they are all the same "fair haired elven" guy with a bow.
I know I'm generalizing and I used to like to "role play".
However, the is only ONE reason that RP servers are a Myth... because as with almost all rules (think Eula / Tos) there is NO enforcement from the game developer.
They like to tell the community to police its self but we have no tool set to do this.
The myth and the utter failure is actually..
Terms of Service
End User License
Naming Rules
and server specific rules.
I'm not talking about gold sellers/spammers. Besides a few spotty bans of various sizes.. what game company has ever consistently enforced the rules?
I started on a RP server in EQ2 and now its the largest "standard ruleset" server in the game... and that's pretty much why I left.
Then again you don't need a specific ruleset server to "role play"... There was a lot of RP in Ultima Online long before Trammel (very active player towns etc).
I like the ruleset because if it was enforced 99% of the stuff about the community which leads me to "cancel" wouldn't be going on.. or would result in a ban or move to a standard server.
Wow. I am officially never reading another article by you again. You've done a great job, not only of generalizing, but of doing it in a massively negative manner. This does, as a previous poster said, come off as a rant. Also, just because you've apparently rarely seen the brighter side of a role-playing community doesn't mean it doesn't exist. How sad.
I think the vast majority of people who play on RP servers (and I've played on a few in my day) do it for two reasons.
1: They want a more mature, cooperative community, free of l33t speak, where people actually type in coherent sentences.
2: they want to experience some kind of immersion while they play, and not have to see someone talking about Transformers 2 or their crappy job flipping burgers in general chat, and have characters names actually fit the game's lore and not be some mindlessly asinine ripoff of a movie or some other pop culture.
I agree with Massey that most people on RP servers don't RP much if at all. People that actually speak Shakespearean...well, I've never run into more than three or five of them in all my time playing on RP servers in SWG, WoW, , WAR, and Horizons. Seriously, no one does this.
I think Massey is dead wrong, though, when he says that people play on RP servers because they want to play the victim. That's borderline hilarious amateur psychology. Sure, there may be a few people here and there that do something like this, but I think their real reason is to preserve their immersion in the game.
Yeh....nothing like a writer calling a bunch if his readers "whiners" simplhy because they like to roleplay.
Sounds to me like he's a PvPer. And if he's read any game forums recently, he would see that they make up the least number of players in most games (based on numbers of servers), but have the whiniest posts.
Actually....the entire article I just read came off as nothing but a big whine. I've noticed that quite often lately. Writers on this site calling their readers names and whining about game issues.
Last time I called a writer out on that, my posts were deleted. We'll see what hapens here..
I guess this article just shows you can't possibly like everything a writer writes. I normally think Dana's stuff is well-written and worth reading, but this whole article smacked of personal bias, whether or not that was the intent. If it had been about the financial viability of roleplaying servers (or rather, the lack thereof), or any sort of intellectual observation of the culture clash between roleplayers and non-roleplayers, I would've been onboard. The majority of the thing read like a personal attack against roleplayers in general, however. I found it to be in poor taste, and I'm not even a roleplayer myself.
"Most of the so-called role-players don’t really want to role-play; that is their fiction. They want to be victims."
"[Roleplayers are] such a vast minority that they probably couldn’t support more than one guild, let alone an entire server."
"Within five minutes, even the most pious cleric will be on TeamSpeak cybering the Troll if left to their own devices."
"The sick truth is that this kind of role-player does it because they will have something to get high and mighty about."
Another interesting quote: "It’s time to face the fact that no video game, noRPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing."
That's just patently false. I played MUDs for about a decade before coming to MMOs, and there are multitudes of the things out there that require character approval (to make the player's backstory and concept "fit")l before they even let you log in. I stuck to more hack 'n slash stuff, but there are entire categories of MU* codebases out there built around nothing but roleplaying. Look up MUSH or MUX sometime.
Of course the scenario above wouldn't work in MMOs; MMOs are profit-based, whereas MU*s are owned and operated by hobbyists. Dana's quote doesn't limit itself to MMOs, though. It overreaches with hyperbole, just like the entire first half of the article. The whole thing felt like axe-grinding. The article started by calling roleplaying servers "foul and dark," hurled various and sundry insults at the players themselves, then lauded EVE Online. Congratulations, Dana. You just used better-than-average sentence structure to write a worse-than-average EVE forum post.
Because you've shown on multiple occasions that you're a better writer than this, I'll cut you some slack and give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to your intentions. Why don't you do the same thing for some of those "sick, troll-cybering whiners." If they all want to be victims as you suggest, you were just playing into their hands by writing an article like this, and we wouldn't want that.
I have never disagreed with a official article as much as this one, infact the entire information is one sided and imo fme utterly wrong.
(talking purely about RPing) I have not come across any problems with other players what so ever in years of playing on RP servers, im not saying it doesnt happen ever, but the statement you either RP or go out of your way to annoy RPers is in reality a miniscule problem, infact no real problem at all
People tend to RP in the "say"/local channel and talk ooc in whispers and guild etc - theres nothing wrong with that and it provides a way to RP but also keep the "real world" stuff which needs/wants to be talked about also possible - so its a win / win
I wont go on anymore but I hope RP servers remain in MMO games and I think there are enough players out there which disagree with your views and want RP servers to remain for them to stay around for some time to come
oh and to answer your question
"So if the community doesn’t use them properly, and RP servers just create conflict (and not the good kind) between players, why do game companies always insist on having them?"
The community can and often do use them properly, RP servers dont create conflict and game companies see sense in having them as a portion of the community want them
:)
What a horrible uneducated article...
I agree with the person a few posts above on not reading this 'staff members' posts again.
He's done well to generalise an entire community with his (more than likely) 5 minutes on an RP server IF he has even ever been on one.
God... why would they even publish drivel like this?
No wonder he's the former editor, I hope he was fired for his diabolical work.
Jeeze... I find it hilarious he's the PR manager yet he manages to slate a large portion of the community.
There are many different styles of play prevalent in MMOs. There are roleperformers, for whom acting their part is a matter of speaking in a funny voice and making sure everyone else around them follows the script.
True roleplayers, on the other hand, simply want immersion and choices that fit the character they are playing. If they add a little bit of voice acting, it is purely for the sake of immersion and storyline.
True roleplayers actually respect the gameplay choices and styles of others to a large degree, because that is why the roleplayer is there - to see how that interaction is played out.
The author might want to familiarize himself with the MMORPG industry and its history.
I like the reply given by Jenuviel, a few posts above. MUDs, MUSHs, and all the others were havens for the RPers. And no there is not just one type of RPer who speaks in old english.
I do beleive those days are long gone and nearly non-exsistent in graphic MMOs. I think this is because of two things. First the games are not really designed to match the broad freedom of creativity that text games had offered and secondly because many of the type of people who grew up with that type of RPG have grown up and moved onto careers and family leaving the console type gamers to be the majority of the gaming community out there.
This is my opinion but i do think this article was a bit harsh and a one-sided rant
Burn the heretic!!!!
I kid :)
Basically I'll go ahead and say that Dana you're full of...interesting yet horribly misinformed conclusions. I also dont understand how you came to your conclusions. Perhaps you didnt spend enough time on various games' roleplaying servers to actually experience the community and understand the type of roleplaying that goes on. Yes people dont walk around all day in character speaking in the King's English and flaming people that talk about the latest football game, but I'll take it upon myself to explain to you what sort of behavior is exhibited and I hope that others will agree.
I'll agree with the previous posters in that my primary reasons for starting on roleplaying servers are enforced naming conventions if any, and the tendency of the community to be more mature, both in personality and actual age. I tend not to roleplay but I am also not one of those people that flames others for doing so. If I know enough about the setting I might even join in on the fun from time to time.
One thing the roleplaying servers' communities do really well is set up an environment for other people to enjoy being immersed in a world. What do I mean by that?
Lets use guilds as the first example. Many guilds (*see almost all) that are started on RP servers are created with the goal of immersion in mind both for the creators and guild leaders as well as their lowliest members. They do this in many different ways. One is using the deeds of the guild to weave an ever growing and shared story. Reading somewhere that "Today our greatest heroes battle the dreaded dragon Xarkxiz yet again. Where we were defeated before, we shall prevail and bathe our warriors in it's blood!" is a much more fun and imaginitive way to say "hey guys we wiped in DR running TZ in RF4 last sunday. We got the tank sweet drops from killing Teth last night so this time we'll do it!"
Telling a story or presenting it in this way helps you imagine your character doing these epic things even though you yourself are chatting about how your favorite nascar driver just drove in another circle.
Another way that people end up 'roleplaying' is well, actually doing it. Herein is another reason I dont believe you, dear Dana, spent enough time as part of the community on an RP server. People DO actually roleplay and though it may not be 100% of the time you'll find that since so many like-minded individuals joined the server because they like roleplaying games OUTSIDE of the game world, that they'll even join in. At least they'll enjoy seeing other people do it as a way to immerse themselves. It really just depends on who you're playing with.
Take Star Wars Galaxies as an example. There are no roleplaying servers, but look at almost any guild (in this case player association) webpage and you'll see all this garbage about how "The Empire will not prevail! Our squadron <insert guild name here> will be the instrument that the hands of the oppressed shall use to wash away the corruption the Emperor has wrought for too long!" I mean why even pick a side? Because people like to join in on the fun and be a part of the story if only in name and not action.
I could rant for days on end about how I almost completely disagree with your article, but hey, maybe that will qualify ME to have my articles (*see rants) on the front page of MMORPG.
Like his former game "Wish" this article is a flop. It's like he's making it up as he writes. Why he has to project his experiences on everyone else is beyond me.
RP servers exist, for a reason. People want an environment more conducive to RPing. I dunno what game Dana played on that ruined his RP experience but whatever it was it left a massive scar as anyone can easily tell by reading this article.
People role-play. Whether you consider is RP or not doesn't matter.
Sorry for the "Wish" jab but that game was seriously a train wreck.
if I'm playing an MMO and it has an RP server to choose from, i ALWAYS choose the RP server. Not because I RP, or because i grief RPers (i rarely RP and NEVER grief), but because the community on them tends to be more mature. Average age probably is a bit higher and the youngins that do decide to play and stick around on the RP servers are more mature than most of the kids their age.
I lead raids in my wow guild on an RP server and when i'm done doing it for the night i don't feel like i've been babysitting for 3 hours.
Itch
Well, I literally registered for these forums, just to comment on what a illinformed, illogical, and just down right ignorant article this was.
Dana Massey should be working for Fix Noise or the Drudge Report, or some other media works of utter baseless ficiton that pride there writers on not fatct checking, not actually going out and doing research, and just kinda coming up with what they think is a good spin, and then writing the story around that spin, rather then the other way around.
It feels like Dana went into one WoW RP server, thought, Oh, this must be how it's like everywhere, and then drew up his article and cut-and-pasted some pictures of other MMO's with little "witty" punches at RPers.
The Truth is, real Roleplayers are actually just writers expressing themselves through a cooperative medium.
Just like Dana is a terrible writer, of which I'm not currently aware of a good reason for him to continue to be under MMORPG.coms employ, there are also terrible RPers. They are generally categorized by people who either only RP in shakesperian english, get waaay to upity when someone breaks continuity or immersion, or just generally cause drama, through whatever source.
Generally speaking, you really don't know about good Roleplaying communities unless your actually apart of them. The mediocre RPers strive to RP in public where other non-rpers can see them. Theres really no point to this, except to kind of keep the waterfall of hate, so to speak, going. True, dedicated fiction writers, or real RPers if you will, will get to gather in groups far away from busy places.
It is not entirely unbelieveable that Dana would not have been privy to such groups, as a boy of his candor is unlikely to have anything of value to them, or too add in general.
Good Roleplayers perfer to colaborate with writers who can actually write themselves out of a thin paper bag, a feat I'm positive Mr. Massey can not accomplish for the life of him.
Way to alienate your audience dude. Who exactly were you aiming towards? I disagree with everything you wrote and would go so far as to say this article should be taken down. I don't believe this is the kind of behavior and mentality an MMORPG site should foster. You've insulted a good deal of honest people who honestly enjoy RP servers for none of the reasons you've listed. An featured article writer should have more intelligence and grace when writing and most definitely when dealing with matters he finds far from his personal preference (this fact is very obvious).
Your other articles were good. This article is venomous and would be more appropriate on a darkfall forum.
Sadly, you’ve managed to mar your integrity as a writer. Good luck recovering.
Wow Dana...of all the years I have been coming to this site this is the first time I have ever seen a venom laced rant from you. Guy I have been part of Role-playing guilds since UO, and those who use Elizabethan English (even in DAoC) are usually universally laughed at. ERP guilds are mostly often viewed with disdain by the normal folks who RP. We like gear, we like fun and we bitch about nerfs just like everyone else...we just don't want to name our Character madeyourmommoan, or Azzzwhippa, nor do we want to hang out with those who do.
No great mystery...no need for all the hate bro.After reading the article I was thinking it might have been a bit overdone. Then I read the replies and realized that that in fact the article is dead on and the replies prove it. Great work on saying something you just know is going to make you wish you had nomex undies on for.
Here's the telling line:
"those who love to annoy people who claim to be role players [are] the more intellectually honest."
Who are the *good* people? The people like Dana who troll the RP community and love to see us squirm.
Please don't feed the troll just because he's masquerading as a feature writer.
He's still a troll.
To add just a bit to what people here have already said: I'll predict Massey has never played a tabletop RPG where people bounced in and out of character in context, which is what most RP players do, or if he did, he played in monty haul dungeons with his other pimply faced adolescent friends.
Games like SWG and LOTRO naturally tend to light RP, because the lore is so well known. Landroval, the unofficial RP server in LOTRO, is the most civil and pleasant gaming environment I've ever played in. I have high hopes for sw:tor.
I would happily, as an older professional female gamer (and there are a lot more out there if you study demographics than anyone like Massey probably assumes) pay DOUBLE subscription, in a world where free-to-play is a juggernaut, for a server with better lore and conduct enforcement in just about ANY lore setting, literary or otherwise. And that's a market segment that is essentially untapped.
Fironia Vee on the original EQ was a great example of a successful RP server. Massey obviously never saw it, because he was probably in grade school when EQ came out. And Sunrunner on SWG. These are places where the RP covenants worked.
However, just like the cheap assed decisions that are made in story crafting, which a far better author documented a few weeks ago, RP covenants (and enforcement) are ignored by modern game companies for two reasons.
One is the expense -- they take far more care and feeding.
The other is people like Massey -- "who love to annoy people who claim to be role players." In the rest of the net we call these people griefers, but the game companies aren't willing to spend an extra penny to keep them in check.
Yrs,
Shava
Nothing more than a hit piece, this passes as jounarlism these days.
I've found that RP servers do vary from game to game. At the very worst they either attract players who think they can get an easy time from helpful roleplayers, or pvpers who see roleplayers as an easy kill. I've also found roleplayers to be very cliquey, perhaps to protect against these kinds of things, and so can sometimes be hard to find outside of particular inns.
I've had some of my best RP times in games with no special server so I wonder if they're even needed. I know LOTRO has decent servers but at what cost in increased support tickets?
What I'd like to see and what is often mentioned before a game launches is the introduction of premium RP servers. Playing on these carries an additional subscription fee which should discourage regular players and go some way towards extra GM costs to seriously enforce the stricter T&C.
Well, I can't agree with you (Dana) on everything. I knew it was only a matter of time, lol. You're entitled to your opinion (and Sanya is to hers in what looks to be, as you have set it up, another negative shotgun blast at RPers) just so long as you know it's your opinion and not a fact.
Ill informed and based on rampant stereo types... way to NOT be a writer.
I guess the writer prefers the company of the l33t speaking duds,,,I mean dudes. More power to you if you prefer 'barrens chat', Chuck Norris is... and smack talk. Each to there own. I also think they are pretty misguided branding the 'RP Police' with 'victims'. Misguided Idiots, sure, but a small minority and certainly not victims.
It's probably all been said by now so I'll keep it short:
I've spent a fair amount of time on roleplaying servers/communities in a number of different games, both actively RP'ing and as someone who just enjoys a server with a naming policy. And I don't recognize any part of the picture you're painting here.
Naturally Roleplaying Servers will not be perfect - but no server is. But to claim that they're impossible is just dumb. And if it's an attempt to get a debate going, it's a really poor one.
Wow..never expected to have to read bashing of a player base and generalization of that player base from this site. The ignorance from this article is more than abundant. For one, as others have stated, roleplaying is not about speaking in the old english. Anyone who truly understand roleplaying and character development would understand this. Only the ignorant do not and simply hold to this same mantle as you are. It's rather unprofessional to have someone writing an article for this site lacking this much knowledge in the words they are utilizing.
Secondly, not enough roleplayers to fill a guild let alone a server? I have led a roleplaying linkshell in FFXI that lasted two years. I led a roleplaying guild in WoW that last 2.5 years. So I must have had the one single guild that survived all this? Well...that can't be since in WoW my guild was also part of an alliance of other roleplaying guilds and about two of them were larger than my own. Again...you show ignorance in your "observation."
And roleplayers are not truly roleplaying? I have written dozens of stories of roleplay that have taken place in game and I carried forward to forums so others could see the development. In Age of Conan alone there is a dedicated community of roleplayers on an UNofficial roleplaying server (wiccana). I know because I am a moderator on it. In Everquest 2 there is a community on Antonia Bayle where they actually get the GM cooperation to run events such as Festival of Discord and the Unity event.
At least I learned a lesson and will no longer need to bother reading this individuals articles.
I have a feeling that these articles are an attempt to steer a game genre towards a certain destiny, by squashing the uncertainty about its nature. The funny part of this is that it will backfire in a huge way:
1) As soon as there is no lore, no interactive story, no in-character socialization, a very large part of current populations will no longer find "MMOs" interesting.
2) When these people are gone, the metagamers will find that they are all the same. They aren't actually better than anyone else still playing the game. They will lose interest in "MMOs."
3) Because the players are passionate, the roleplaying niche will spring up in some other medium, which may be very close to the current implementation of a "MMO." Only this time they might protect their genre somewhat from massive infiltration. This new medium will require roleplaying to make it interesting.
And what we end up with is a dead genre with roleplayers surviving as they always have.
What games did writer experience this on first hand? Yes I can believe Playboy Bunnies are a myth to you.
You've written some really good articles before, but God damn this is just trolling!
edit: For the record, Antonia Bayle has a GREAT role playing community. You don't even have to speak in old english or cyber to participate.
"Oh my god, you're not supposed to play it like that! You're doing it all wrong!"
Well... Have to admit some of the control freaks among roleplayers (not all control freaks are roleplayers though) do make a whole lot of noise out of nothing. I had this guildleader in AoC (roleplay guild in pvp-rp server) who raged in guild chat everytime he happened to get ganked. D'uh, comes with the territory. Rest of the guild were really laid back though, seemed to me they realized that roleplay like you see in LARP events or pen and paper just can't happen in free multiplayer environment. And I had great time roleplaying with those guys, though I didn't stay long partly because of that leader...
Me I don't really see enforcing the naming , OOC, etc. rules as absolutely necessary. I'm totally fine with just having one server tagged as RP, just so those with RPing in mind don't spread all over the place. I don't see why RPing should be restricted to just sitting around campfire either, as most RPing fun I've had have been while instancing or doing pvp activities (great passion of mine) , and it didn't slow us down or handicap even little.
If WoW didn't have RP servers I don't think I would have wasted 2.5 years on it. EQ2 was also great for RP in the early days.
But hey, finally an article that made me subscribe here after years of lurking. :D
Ps. English isn't my native language.
Pss. Last time I did live action roleplay I was 12. ;P
I have a couple of points here:
Its seems to me that if given a public forum to post opinion anonymously, you're bound to have people trolling, complaining and basically ruining it for whatever demographic the espouse to represent. In this case, RPers.
For every person you mention who's MO is to whine, the overwhelming majority are playing their game, the way they see fit. This is true for any service.
However, I will say that MMORPGs are not conducive to Role Playing.
They are systematic, controlled and are basically the antithisis of what Role Playing really is: Collaborative Story Telling.
I play table top every other week. Some times we role play, sometimes we just bash against the NPCs. As, Dungeon Master, I am as much a part of the game, working for the common goal with the players to have fun, build the world and occasionally tell a story about some characters we imagined.
The fact that individuals are able to get together, focus and RP together in these heartless online worlds, in spite of the rude, the ambivalent and the sarcastic points the heart of the issue:
The issue isn't that Role Players are the problem, but that there has yet to be a game worth their time and investment.
If you'd like to see some of the ideas I have about presenting a format for real online RPGs, check this out.
In all fairness, yes, there are role players that make the rest of us look bad. Are all role players jerkwads? not at all.
In all fairness, yes, there are PVPers that make the rest of us look bad. Are all PVPers jerkwads? not at all.
Funny how many bitter english majors I have met in my life that lack IMAGINATION & seem offended by those who have it.
Next week, lets see Dana do an article about how all PVP players are spoiled rotten, couldnt make the foot ball team jerks that all talk like John Wayne & see what kind of response that gives you.
Lotta hate on these posts, but sad to say a lot of what Dana says I've seen to be true.
I've spent time on a lot of MMOs, and most of them offered some kind of RP server. Usually the kinds of people I ran into broke down into 4 categories:
1) The cyberfiends: Interested in one thing: what's under that Orc's breeches.
2) The griefers: Do whatever it takes to disrupt ayone trying to roleplay in any form. Usually spend all day in any ooc chat channels griping about how they hate RP servers.
3) The RP juniors: No idea how to tell a story or create a character. They copy whatever anime or teen novel is popular this week. Case in point- DBZ and "Twilight" vampire roleplay in World of Warcraft. Yes I've seen these. Often.
4) Real RPers: They spend most of their time levelling, because there's nothing else to do.
That was the most ill-informed column I have ever read on mmorpg.com. RP servers, even the unofficial ones, exist for a reason. Role players enjoy the game more on an RP server than they do on a regular server. This will be true for every mmorpg even if Dana doesn't understand why. Many people go to the RP server because the community there acts more friendly and mature, even when they are not role playing. Others go there because they want to RP as part of an RP guild. Guess which servers have the RP guilds? Oh, yeah, it is the "mythical" RP servers.
I don't really get the attraction of powergaming or raiding but clearly some people enjoy those things. I'm glad they have servers where they can do that as a community. But since I don't understand what their style of gaming is all about I think I will refrain from writing a column called "The Myth of Regular Servers".
Now I know why I never read your articles. You obviously don't know much about RPing and the RP community so I'll chock your article up to ignorance.
Your entire article sounds like somewhere along the line some RPer pissed in your cheerioes and now you have a chance (as you think) to get back at them so have come up with this steaming pile of an article/rant... Or was your purpose in writing this an attempt to create what? Drama? A spreading of misinformation? Over generalizations are fine for dramatic effect but are not fine when you're trying (at least I think you are) to get your readers to take you seriously.
There are elitest in the RP commnity as there are in the PvP and PvE communities, but they none of them should be considered as being the norm for that community. Your willingness to focus on that one subgroup of the RP community and use them as a basis for denigrating RPers is shameful.
RP servers do exist. The ONLY reason RP servers degrade because of lack of support, poor rulesets, and player apathy. Player apathy usually comes after we figure out the support system is a POS. RP degrading in guilds is up to guildleaders. RP degrading in voice chat? WTH? Who cares? Really. It's not in game. The point is to try and be your character in game, not be your character 24/7 in and out of game because you say you're an RPer. Do you expect PvPers to PvP in voice chat as well?
Pen and Paper RP had their limitations and immersion breakers as well. You're sitting at a table or on the floor with the person next to you drinking a bottle of beer or soda and the one on the other side might check their watch every now and then or ask for a dorito, and then you roll dice which has to be interpreted, etc... How is that so vastly different from the immersion breakers we deal with in MMOs? Seriously. Did you think before you wrote that article? The dice and DM positions are now just the interface and game mechanics as in combat engines and whatnot.
And if I were to use your logic for server types I could say, why in the world do devs create PvP servers when all PvPers are griefers, whiners, and socially inept kids looking for attention. They can never decide on what ruleset they want and CS is constantly bogged down with complaints of ganking and cheating so why bother?
Devs bother because players in their community have demonstrated a credible desire for a PvP server and it's the same for RP servers. They also bother because they care about their community.
If you cared about this community you'd rethink the next time you thought about writing about a subject you obviously know very little about.
I hope Sanya doesn't try to pass off similar BS. There's a reason RP servers have problems and it's not because they're impossible to maintain, but I'll wait to read her article.
Written from the point of view of someone that doesn't sound as if they've gotten into many RP guilds.I've been in hardcore RP guilds, family RP guilds, family raiding guilds and hardcore raiding guilds.
Myself, I only join a game if they have an RP server. I refused to join Age of Conan when they said no RPPvE. I myself have witnessed a number of guilds where the majority of the members were all about RP first and foremost. In time there would be those that would come along and 'taint' the concept but for the most part, there are a lot of true roleplayers out there.
Why then, does it seem like there are those that believe that the RP populace is so small? I believe that is because roleplayers are isolationists as opposed to elitists. They tend to stick around others of their preferred playstyle, which is no different to other playstyles. Ever try to be a roleplayer in a hardcore raiding guild? Good luck. You'll likely be insulted and booted for wasting precious time roleplaying when you should be out grinding and gearing to get to end game.
Some roleplayers are elitist. But, honestly, can you say that raiders aren't? Can you truly say that raiders don't puff out their chests and behave holier-than-thou because of the epic level raid gear that they have thereby proving how much better than you they are? People make a big deal because of the rules RP Guilds enforce upon would be members and say it's elitist but for a raiding guild asking you to have X tier gear, X number of Advancement Points, and be available for x number raids per week are seen as normal? Sounds like a double standard to me.
I've been on both ends of the spectrum. I have played as a hardcore roleplayer who's character passes on certain gear if it doesn't fit their character and I've played as the raider, raiding 2+ times a day, 10+ times a week. All in all, after these many years I can tell you I can still remember the storylines I was a part of with other players but for th life of me I can't remember one single piece of gear gained during the raider days. Names and descriptions didn't matter, it was all about the stats.
I remeber when SOE first came up with the FV server for EQ. It had all the Rp rules you could think of.. restrictiosn on who could group with who even who could talk to who..ie no SK iskar could group with a Human paladin.
I recall a fight.. Group leader was a High elf he gave an order which the wood elf translated into dwarf the dwarf then translated it to common then Human then translated it to Barbarian thus finally everyone in the group knew what the leader was saying.
I'm actually now wondering what purpose this article even tried to serve in the first place, and what exactly was going through both the pseudo-writer that concocted this fallacy, and the editor that approved it.
To be honest, I've lost a lot of faith in the credibility of this site after this debaucle.
It is my opinion, and that of quite a few others reacting to the rude and downright stupid article that this was, that some sort of official statement, or reasoning should be made. I want to know what research your douche bag of a writer did before cut-and-pasting his my-pretend article togeather.
Hey! Guess what? People are multi-faceted. No medium actively supports Roleplaying, because roleplaying is, newsflash, a creation of the mind. It's taking text, a.k.a what you attempt to work with, and using this text to tell a story. That's it.
In a sense, ever great entertainer, every great writer (hint: Not you, Dana. And not ever.) is a Roleplayer.
So I guess if you want your MMO's to be little grey, un-sculped blocks running around firing similar, smaller un-sculpted little grey blocks at each other, I'd suggest you stop insulting the RPer community, and allow them to collectively continue to create the story content that you yourself get to enjoy, you stupid little man.
>>"It’s time to face the fact that no video game, noRPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing"<<
Actually, if you consider some of the early "MUD's" as video games, there was a lot of serious role-playing there. The Simutronics series (Gemstone/Dragonrealms) were the closest I've ever been to feeling like I was playing a character removed from RL.
I spent 3 years as a "Bard"...and didn't worry about leveling...just composed songs, and got decent tips as a reward. I don't see that possibilty in any current game though...and that's something I really miss.
The most acual RP I've seen in a game was in LOTRO on Landroval, the unofficial RP server. That being said, I think the most usual reason I've played on an RP server being official or not is looking for a more mature crowd. I mean if you think about it and its so kid's first MMO why would they roll on an RP server?
Honestly there are about 3 reasons to roll on a RP server, none of which are to RP : p
1 - More Mature
2 - Likely to meet some of those same mature people from game to game
3 - hopefully no dumb names. (Within second of logging into Aion's 3rd beta event I saw PussyLover as a name) I don't mind some of the non rp clever names out there but names like the aforementioned one are just well something I'ld like to never see again.
Not to say there aren't people who RP, but the best reasons for RP servers are the reasons above.
If you want debate and not riots it'd be wise not to insult a whole portion (not the major portion perhaps, but one of the portions (pve, pvp & rp)) in your article. :P
Perhaps you've had bad luck, but from the article you really come off as an asshat. I love the RP, though I dislike those who come in only to mess up the server for the RP:ers - something I've mostly noticed and encountered in AoC - and granted, not all of us RP 100% of our gametime, but we Do RP, and do it A Lot - at leat those I play. Oh, and we do it without the "thou shalt not kill" english. :P
Dude... your article wasn't "over the top" it was just nasty.
No I'm not an RP'er...
You wern't 'inciting debate' you're just trolling, you got your reaction now fuck off and be happy with yourself that you managed to be venomous to a large group of this site and passed it off as 'journalism'.
This article failed as hard as your game 'wish'. (As someone else stated).
Articles like this should not be featured, writers like this not hired and opinion should not be put across as fact.
[Mod Edit]
While a lot of what you said was spot-on...you definitely picked the wrong group to piss off.
I believed the hype I'd read about RP servers. I rolled a character on a WoW RP realm, under the assumption there would be a more mature, less obnoxious crowd, with enforced naming rules and behavior guidelines. Not so much that I wanted to RP, or had any real interest in it, I was just sick of being perpetually annoyed in a game I enjoyed.
The hype was wrong.
While there was (marginally, at best) less of the annoying behavior that had originally sent me looking at RP realms, rolling a toon on one opened up a whole new and exciting world of annoyances that are totally unique to those server types. The vast majority of the people on those realms really -really- just need to get up and go outside for awhile. That is, if they can tear themselves away from the ERP overload. Perhaps other games are different, but WoW RP realms seem to be the stomping ground for the most socially-inept freaks I've ever had the misfortune to happen upon.
About the only thing this guy is somewhat right about are the game companies lack of enforcement and a vast majority of people not RP on a RP server. However, I think that if companies actually enforced their own RP standards we may naturally see interested RP migrating to their servers. I enjoy RP but never have found it in any MMORPG... I have even seen leet names on so called RP severs. Other than that Massey your a quack! Seriously do some real research before you write an article...
I really agree!
Seeing so many people named Roxxormcownage and Lookoutbehindyou gets old. Generally the RP servers have a little bit more mature player base too I've noticed.
Well, that you did, lol. I mean, if you look at it and take into context that you aren't a fan of RP (and you were on a dev team) and factor in that many of your peers hold your view, you guys for the most part don't like RP (being too nerdy for your nerdom) and thus don't really put any real thought into things/systems you put into your game to aid in RP. You only worry about things to make people "uber" and how they fit into combat. Yes, it takes a good imagination to RP, but how interesting would the movies you like be without props? If you had to imagine the gun in the actors hand, the car they drive, the building they blow up? Not very. There have been very few games (SWG, UO, AC) that have made decent offerings in that realm.
So, you take that lack lustre approach to RP facilitation by devs in games, a serious lack of effort by devs to enforce the rulesets (I can't wait to see Sanya's excuses/pointed fingers) and combine it with an opinion piece blasting RPers saying RP servers don't work and the RPing crowd doesn't exist (factoring in you personally don't like RP and thus reason would dictate you don't hang with that crowd much less roll a character on an RP server)...yeah, it's going to be more riot and less debate, lol.
I really can't wait to read Sanya's opinion piece (I guess you succeded in that vein as you ensured your viewer base would come back for at least another day; admittedly, I wasn't offended by your writing (as my personal gaming experience gives me factual information that 99% of this writing is...anti-RP biased and not fact...and I wasn't going to stop coming here as this is probably the best hub for MMO information as far as new MMO announcements). Your lead in for her piece tomorrow lets the reader believe she stands shoulder to shoulder with your in this viewpoint and as I was on Percival the day they opened it to gamers it'll be interesting to see her spin.
RP servers do work. People do RP in open chat (and like others have pointed out to call yourself an RPer doesn't mean you have to 100% of the time (in open chat absolutely, but not 100% of logged on time or in OOC chat, etc.). The players have/continue to do their part. It's the devs and their lack of effort to support it beyond the act of throwing up an RP tagged server is where the failure and the "myth" of their support comes.
If I ever liked an Article they wrote it was so long ago I couldn't tell you. I know the last few things I have read *ponders* Well I just think that maybe Dana should apply to be a developer with a game company. They seem to have the perfect mind-set to work for one.
Forums are great places to go debate, agree or disagree with people. It just seems if you are supposedly a "writer" you should actually write something and seem informed on the topic. You know appear to at least have a clue what you are talking about.
Forum posters (like me) can have drool making the letter in our posts smear... but there should be something slightly elevated about being a writer.
The only question is why can't I put "staff" on my block list? Honestly if they need to communicate with me they can do it outside of a forum post...
You know, Dana, I've read multiple articles of yours and I normally agree with them, but this one is so full of bias and egregious exaggerations that it's absolutely appalling. I think it should be removed as it has no basis for being thought of as factual, as you seemed to imply. I don't think I can ever possibly take you seriously after this, as it's obvious that you're willing to go to whatever lengths that you must to make a point, even if it means falsifying information. To me, your article came off as little more than a flagrant diatribe directed at anyone who has ever role-played or played on an RP server. This is hardly what I would refer to as "journalism" of any type.
While I don't currently play on an RP server, I have played on two different RP realms in WoW for a total of nearly three years, and the "unofficial" RP server on SWG.
Yes, there are the people who flock to RP servers just to grief the drama-queen role-players (the victims you described -- note that these are NOT role-players but TROUBLE-MAKERS who exist for the very same purpose as the "griefers" since you can't seem to discern the difference); yes, there are the self-proclaimed "role-players" who just want to make the game into Second Life 2.0 and "cyber "all day, but there are, believe it or not, people who just enjoy playing on a server/realm/whatever where they can immerse themselves as if they were reading a novel or watching a movie (or playing an RPG like Oblivion or KotOR). Perhaps I am a "minority" as you say, but when I played on the RP servers, most people knew me because I was someone who actually created storylines for other people to follow (I love writing, and if I had time, I would love to author a work of fiction), and I'm one of those people who reports both the "griefers" and the "cyberers." I've gotten a few of them banned, even if only temporarily, suffice to say, and I have no regrets. Oh, but wait, people like me don't exist. That's right. I MUST be someone who just wants to virtually hook-up with a troll or an orc, or maybe I just like harassing people. Yeeeeah. (If you can't detect the sarcasm, I'll point out that it's supposed to be there.)
Yes, I'll be the first to admit that there are plenty of stodgy old farts and prepubescent boys who just want to "cyber" with a hot set of pixels, but I personally, and all of my friends I used to play with, found such behavior to be both abhorrent and repulsive.
The real problem here isn't that "real" role-players don't exist; it's that they want to avoid interacting with the stereotypes you mentioned so they exclusively associate with their own (usually small) circle of friends, at least from my experience. This creates an aura of hostility and a general sense of disorganization for players who are new to the community on such a server, leaving the impression that there are no people to role-play with and/or that the role-players who do exist only wish to remain within their clique, which might be true to a degree. Sadly, it's difficult to combat this problem because, as a new player, how would you even know where to look to find these people? I found my guild simply by combing through forums and websites, but it took me a while. And I suppose I'm fortunate in the respect that I had RL friends who liked to collaboratively write stories with me, but we always included anyone who wanted to be involved, including some players who were new to the game and/or server.
I performed a little experiment not too long ago by creating a brand new character on a role-playing realm on WoW and started observing people, and at times casually approaching them in an attempt to strike up a conversation. I'll give you credit for one thing, Dana -- I was met with mostly indifference or outright hostility, although I presumed that this would be the case since most normal people on the RP servers I have played on typically keep to themselves, as I've already repeatedly emphasized. HOWEVER, while, as I said, there is a modicum of truth to the things you wrote, you have vilified people such as myself who deplore "cybering" and "annoying others" and only seek to flesh out an interactive storyline with other players. Again, we tend to keep to ourselves for the very reasons you described -- that is, to avoid people with attitudes such as yours. It's like living next-door to an annoying neighbor; I would close my windows and try to avoid him or her at all costs.
I don't know what a "hardcore" RP guild is, but if you joined a cybering guild accidentally, I pity you. I know that I was in an excellent guild that held its members to high standards while I was an officer within it, and although I can't vouch for some of the players' generally bad attitudes (every guild has rotten apples), no one EVER got away with harassing others and/or cybering, both of which were against our rules. We had an application process just as most organized guilds do, so perhaps we were simply adept at straining out the more undesirable players, such as the ones you described.
But still, as an official staff member of this website, I would hope that you would refrain from engaging in such patently obvious prejudicial behavior, or at least acknowledge that you have made some blatant generalizations. I think the article needs a disclaimer at the top stating that its contents are purely subjective if you are going to leave it in place. I expect you to hold yourself to a higher set of standards in contrast to us average posters, and I find your article to be quite disappointing on top of being offensive.
Do you like the cop who abuses his/her powers just because he/she thinks he/she can? Or what about the teacher who breaks the rules imposed by the institution at which he/she teaches? Breaches of conduct such as these are usually frowned upon, and when you hold a position of authority, you should be mindful of your position, if you ask me.
(EDIT: Corrected a number of mistakes.
OH, and I NEVER have/never will employ the use of words such as "thee" or "thou." Thanks.)
EDIT #2:
You know, after reading the original post again, I'm starting to feel as if I'm "feeding the troll" here. It's unfortunate that I should have to think this about a FEATURED article on a professional website.
Allow me to add to the desired reaction. The above post is quoted for emphasis, truth, righteousness, and Scripture. Not everyone is either a leet-speaking, griefing douchebag or a powerless, whiny trouble-maker. Otherwise this place would be called MMODB.com. And maybe it should be, with staffers like the author.
QFT.
Edit:- Kylrathin, many thanks.
I generally gravitate to the RP servers for the community sake. Being more of a casual gamer it is nice to find groups that are gernally families and such playing there.
Just becuase people are not walking around texting thees and thous does not mean they are not rp'ing. I have had many a conversation about skills, trainers, attributes and such by talking to other people in game and in an rp manner.
Thank you for the first and last article from you I will read. It was uninformative, unimaginative, vitriolic, and specutation. Do me a favor and go play / report / blog about MMO's somewhere else.
My GAWD man! Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game .com and you are gonna BASH RP'rs and RP servers? Are you really that freakin stupid? Really?
Do not make me pull out a REALLY?!?!? post on ya!
Allow me to add to the desired reaction. The above post is quoted for emphasis, truth, righteousness, and Scripture. Not everyone is either a leet-speaking, griefing douchebag or a powerless, whiny trouble-maker. Otherwise this place would be called MMODB.com. And maybe it should be, with staffers like the author.
The two posters above summarized my thoughts exactly. Excellent posts.
Ony thing I got to say is that I will never read any of yours anymore D.
MMORPG.COM lives on popularity, Its seen in manny featured articles on this site. the more responce it will draw the faster it gets feature status.
This leads to poor and bad articles like this "made for reaction /discusion ?"
No..its made for popularity but the writer obvius has fallen to the level were truth and researts, knowlidge of the subject writen on aint no longer needed.
Might aswell start wring that the holocaust never happened.. we know it hapend but
Originally posted by Dana
I definitely got a reaction out of you all. Mind you while I obviously am not a fan of rp servers I may have been a bit over the top. The goal of this is to incite debate not riots. :)
Don't mods ban people for trolling?
Seriously, that's the worst article I have ever read on MMORPG. What's with the bias? So Dana doesn't like RP'ers. Does that really qualify him for a front page rant?
I'm going to agree with many of the others that posted in pointing out the author was both generalizing and ranting for desired effect with their column. It is not surprising this saw the light of day in print however as it's a free web site and people can type up any given series of opinions with weak facts as they like.
I enjoy role play servers. Many other players do as well, but not for the perceived reasons you seem to have on the subject. The majority of friends I have met on RP servers in various games all at heart sought out such servers for the same thing - An attempt to find the more mature player base of a game. Absolutely none of us expected every player on the RP servers to "be in character" while playing in public. Get real. All we desired were two things. Just two.
An escape from seeing political, religious, and inciteful real world topics in broadcasted game chat and... Being able to create role play events and hold meetings and plan outings casually within view of the gaming public, but mostly in more remote places and not be harassed for it.
I find it hard to believe that this is too much for either you to understand and relate to after reading your lengthy tirade that never came to grips with those simple common desires, or that it's too much trouble or a "pain in the ass" for a game company to enforce their own rules set that people click on when loading the game and making characters.
Best of luck with your next posting attempt.
Oh, and one more addendum for future reference:
The PvE server I currently play on is infected with far more perverse/sexual/political/religious propaganda/talk than the RP servers I used to play on. It's so horrible that I have all of the public chat channels turned off with the exception of /say. So don't tell me that such behavior is more pervasive on an RP server. That's utter nonsense.
Dana, I bet you are one of those people that love to get on an RP server and try to annoy the people there, aren't you? Really, the way you approached this article proves my point. Why do you have to label roleplayers as liars and whiners in the process of talking about the failures of the RP server system.
The way you talk about roleplaying shows all the prejudice the worst of the non-RP community thinks about RP. It ain't about 'thees and thous'; in fact, any serious roleplayer will correct you if you try that Ye Olde English crap (unless, of course, the setting for the world is Ye Olde England, lol). It ain't about 'playing nice', it's about playing your character, and if your character is not a nice guy, it should be played that way.
Neither does it require that you learn how to speak Orc, or Klingon, whatever. We allow ourselves to speak in the language of the day - hopefully without references to things that don't exist in the world we are playing in. Most fantasy fiction is written that way, and that's enough for all but the most hard-core.
If there were strict, true roleplaying servers, you are the kind of person that would write a column laughing at all those people who are trying to be someone else other than themselves. YOU are the one who likes to bitch and throw your prejudice around, wear it proudly like it gives YOU some kind of superiority.
You could have written this column and talked about some of the points you try to make which have some validity, but you didn't.
Can you say, FAIL?
I will now list every occasion in which I have seen a roleplayer using old english seriously:
I have to express my disgust that a staff member would write such an ignorant, biased article. Beyond that everything I could think of to say has already been said about it.
But I will say that WoW is the worst MMO for RPing, even on PvE RP servers, and I am sad to see that some fellow gamers have formed such misconceptions about mmo roleplayers based on experiences in WoW. If you played nearly any other MMO's RP servers you'd find groups of mature players, usually in RP guilds, who create compelling and fun stories from in-game events/roleplaying. I am particularly fond of the Virtue server in CoX. Although it is the "unnoficial" RP server of the game, i've had loads of great experiences with the RP crowd. There are a few areas in the game where public roleplaying is very popular such as Pocket D or Atlas Park. No ones cybering, no ones talking about leet set builds in the zone chat, people are legitamately interacting with each other, in character.
And that's just speaking from what i've seen in my favorite MMO. I've also heard great things about LotRO's RP server.
Dana's article I feel, is not only ill-informed and biased, but also appallingly troll-like. I am hesistant to believe he only meant to incite debate, as that being true would require a phenomenal lack of common sense. Maybe I shouldnt put it past him, though.
EDIT: Thrage, I see what you did thar!
Is this a joke? I had to read it twice. I though it was some weird irony to begin with, but I'm not sure any more. Seems like the author is out to troll the rp community. He has already made the picture clear what he thinks about us. Well in the next article, Dana, why not write something really nasty about the euro speaking servers or pvp servers. Its kind of hard to have a discussion regarding "rp servers being a myth" when you sucker punch us in the face with a troll article to begin with. "Wants to be a victim"... heh ...ok.
Well I play on rpg servers all the time and I do it because of :
1. Naming policy. (No more nasty leet names.)
2. Stricter rules regarding the use of chat channels. (Minimal "wtb.." "wts..." "lfg.." "lol..." "u a noob" in general chat. But I still use lol,wts,wtb(and so on) in the proper chat channels to do so in)
3. More mature and involved community. Usually a lot more high quality player/guild made events on rp servers from my own experience.
4. People care more for the lore and usually you notice this when playing on these servers.
+ much... much more
This is what rp means to me. It doesnt mean I run around "in character" 100% of the time speaking old english or run around like a "rp police" and whine about people not obeying the rules. In a sense, that is the real myth about rp servers.
And I'm not a victim or have a urge to be so. Thats just a plain stupid and insulting thing, to write, to all the people playing on these servers. I have no idea what made you write this. It must be some kind of trauma from a bad rp experience. Because the way you write about us, the rp community, in your article, make it all feel like a sick twisted version of the rp communities I have been member of the last 15-20 years. So far from fact and truth as possible, just a personal opinion based on some sort of a bad experience.
Worst gaming article( or more like a troll trolling for reactions) I have read in awhile.
gl in the future I bid you
I think a lot of you have taken Dana's words too literally. Seems like he was intentionally exaggerating some of his points, maybe for...emphasis?
Anyway, he's also totally right. If you think the majority of RPers stick to their guns and roleplay well, you've either never roleplayed or you're so caught up in your own bullshit that you've actually convinced yourself that you're doing it right. In reality, there is nothing different in the way you play than the average gamer except that you don't talk out of character as much. Most people that attempt to roleplay are not convincing and don't even attempt to act out their character. They just play themselves, and manage to go half an hour or so without talking out of character ingame. Being as quiet, shy and uninteresting in a game as you are in real life is not roleplaying (sorry). I had to go through being a GM for many different groups in Pen and Paper games and explain this over and over again to people that didn't realize my campaigns were not a fucking grind for experience/stats.
Then there's a large amount of people that play on RP servers that aren't concerned so much with the whole roleplaying deal, they just want to be part of a seemingly more mature community thats devoid of distractions.
I just sent a message under the "Contact Us" button down below.
www.mmorpg.com/contactus.cfm
I dunno who it gets sent to, but if you feel like this article should be taken down from the site due to its biased and alienating nature (amongst other things), then you should shoot them a message.
I will be honest after reading the first couple of lines i stopped i just could not finish it.
I just wanted to say .. dude stop playing WoW ..... back in the day RP servers were really RP servers but now the dam WoWers got into the MMO world and everything has gone to hell.
So yes RP servers are a waste of time for the most part now but that is becuase people get bored to quick and look for something else to do other then just enjoy the game that is just the way of the internet.
So think whatever you want RP servers WAS great at one point but they are crap now. Thanks Blizzard once again for totally screwwing another part of the MMO world.
Apparently it's YOU who has never role-played with a group of people with a modicum of actual interest in what they are trying to accomplish (or you're just lying, which I'm more inclined to believe). Where you get the basis for half of the crap you just spewed is unfathomable -- I NEVER role-play as a character remotely similar to myself (I usually play different races and/or the opposite gender --- heck, I've dual-boxed while role-playing, meaning I was playing more than one character at a time). I was told by many people that I enhanced their enjoyment by providing them with an interesting story in which their charactrers could participate. Yes, there are people who don't try/aren't convincing, but the vast majority of people whom I've met that were actually TRYING to play in character performed quite well and provided me with far more immersion than solo-play ever could have yielded.
Again, I'm not sure how you justify stating that " [m]ost people that attempt to roleplay are not convincing and don't even attempt to act out their character" -- you are making rash generalizations just as the article's author did. I'd seriously doubt that you've role-played nearly as much as you state you have. Yes, the random person hanging around the city might not seem convincing, but that's what guilds are for, remember? Every decent role-player whom I've met was through one guild or another.
Do you even know what you are talking about ????
"where people are supposed to play nice". sorry but what a bs!
Elder and wise...
My words are but the whisper of a forgotten wind. Let them be lost or found as suits the seeker.
I have no doubt, aye and less than that little, that may will find echo of thy words in their own belief. And who be any other to set that resonance aside and call it false? As each eye sees it.. so let it be to that sight.
But yet and all...
<But, I am here today to tell you something. These servers are a myth. They’re not real. They’re like unicorns and Playboy bunnies. They’re an impossibility.>
Heh.. a most intriguing thing to say, for ye speak of lands that many others not woken to those lands would call the same. That they are not real. They be but myth and madness. They live only in the minds of those fools that walk them. Well.. a Fool I have been and a fool I remain. And much there is that might be said to live only in a head or heart. Love itself, or love's sister, hate. Dreams and lies both, and the very image we each bear of ourselves where no other may see it.
<That is not to say that some people do not legitimately want to role-play in peace. They exist, and God bless their souls for sticking to their guns. They are, however, such a vast minority that they probably couldn’t support more than one guild, let alone an entire server.>
Elder.., wise ye be, aye and more wise than any wisdom I will ever bear. But.. what be this ' vast minority'?
. By such small mathematik as i was ever taught, by nature alone a minority may only be.. well... minor. And as to thy words of clan and world... I can only say that, indeed, in all my waking and all those lands I have walked, never hath clan been mine.. but that be old swearing and old Oath and thus a wound self dealt if wound it be.
<It’s time to face the fact that no video game, noRPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing. It’s just the way the medium works.>
And these words are words that ring loud to all.. for not god nor land, not world nor companion can foster the demon-child ye call RP. For it is a thing that is in the head and heart, in the will and word... and comes from within or does not come at all.
If I would stand against any word ye have spoken, and evern were I to do so, let no word of mine be taken ill or set to weight, then this I would say.
The lands called RP are not lands where all is RP. They be but lands where those poor fools and children of madness that seek to express natures not of the land called Real may wake, may dance... may _be_... with some small less ire and ill, fire and disdain from those about them than in those lands not called RP.
To seek that all must be of one nature.. that other natures be less than tolerable... this is what the poor lost lands seek if they seek any thing at all.. or such is my view. But then...
... my words are but the whisper of a forgotten wind. Let them be lost or found as suits the seeker.
One called... many things, in may places... and no few of them curses.
A Sad Old RPer (tm)
Apparently it's YOU who has never role-played with a group of people with a modicum of actual interest in what they are trying to accomplish (or you're just lying, which I'm more inclined to believe). Where you get the basis for half of the crap you just spewed is unfathomable -- I NEVER role-play as a character remotely similar to myself (I usually play different races and/or the opposite gender --- heck, I've dual-boxed while role-playing, meaning I was playing more than one character at a time). I was told by many people that I enhanced their enjoyment by providing them with an interesting story in which their charactrers could participate. Yes, there are people who don't try/aren't convincing, but the vast majority of people whom I've met that were actually TRYING to play in character performed quite well and provided me with far more immersion than solo-play ever could have yieled.
Again, I'm not sure how you justify stating that " [m]ost people that attempt to roleplay are not convincing and don't even attempt to act out their character" -- you are making rash generalizations just as the article's author did. I'd seriously doubt that you've role-played nearly as much as you state you have. Yes, the random person hanging around the city might not seem convincing, but that's what guilds are for, remember? Every decent role-player whom I've met was through one guild or another.
Congratulations for you, but too many people on Roleplaying servers:
-Lack characteristics that aren't their own in real life
-Declare your character's name without ever meeting him, simply because your name hovers above your head
-Cry that you don't role play just because the character you play happens to be a dick/bitch
-Use metagame tactics in battles that don't make sense in game (example: pulling)
-Prevent unfavorable situations by metagaming (example: countering future betrayals ahead of time using out of game knowledge, even though there's no way their character would know about it)
-Have the same unoriginal backstory (a stranger killed my parents when I was a child and I want revenge)
-Get confused as hell when you try to role play with them
Most of these hold true for all role playing venues from Pen & Paper to LARPing to Private Multiplayer Game Servers to MMORPG's. These and more are especially violated in MMORPG's.
Roleplaying is an opportunity to, you know, use your imagination. It doesn't hurt that much. Actors do it. They're not all bad are they?
Silver Hand was one of the first WoW RP servers, and though last time I was back there, there was indeed, practically no roleplaying, it nevertheless had a fair bit when it first started.
If you tried to base your roleplay persona on the character moving through the game, doing the same quests as everyone else, well obviously that can't work. Most people gave it a passing attempt, and gave up. Fair enough, given the structure of the game.
But early on, plenty of people took an idea, something about their class, race, or something brought in entirely from outside the game, and created a fantastic performance around it. I don't know anyone who talked exclusively in-character. Its alienating to do too much of it. But when two or more of those people met in game and really "got it," there was huge fun that could be had compared to merely running through the content. Minds would fizz and spur one-another on to great times I'll likely never see online again.
For those that can't get over their distaste for whatever they perceive a roleplayer to be, let me remind you that "normal" conversation is all make-believe too.
What's really sad is this article, which seems to damn the notion and spirit of roleplay as much as the present state of it in the mmorpg world.
I play on RP servers because people like Dana Massey DON'T.
I actually do roleplay, depending on the game. (Not in WoW, but in LoTRO, MxO, SWG and several other games I have played and currently play).
The generalization that roleplayers either possess a victim mentality or that roleplayers are more interested in "cybering the troll" than in development of their characters is, in my experience, about as valid as the generalization that everyone who plays WoW is a moronic imbecile who is only out to grief other players (hence the christening of the term "WoWtard"). The reality is that both generalizations could not be further from the truth.
While there certainly are roleplayers with superiority complexes and victim mentalities, there are also roleplayers who put a lot of time and effort into their characters' development. Many of those of us who choose to roleplay are interested in improving our avatar's combat abilities and our own skill at doing something other than mastering the cooking profession. (Personally, the only time I've ever cared about mastering cooking was in SWG because it took a lot of effort to become a good chef and find the best possible materials.)
In the same way, there are certainly PvPers whose main goal is to grief other players...but the majority of PvPers are seeking to have a good time and improve their skills and are also quite capable of being mature and responsible contributors to their various MMO communities.
It's my opinion that this article was written with a preconceived notion of who and what roleplayers are. In point of fact, I know of several fairly good-sized roleplaying guilds in several games. While in-game, most of the roleplayers involved in those guilds speak in character in both spatial and in guild chat and use tells or OOC chat for out of character conversations. While most of the roleplayers I know also happen to be mature individuals who are courteous and polite, there are some who are..uh...let's just say "less than pleasant" and leave it at that. ;) Incidentally, the guy/girl who wants to cyber everything in a skirt/pants generally isn't a roleplayer. There's a word for what those folks generally are, but it isn't often used in polite company - and most roleplayers make liberal use of ./ignore for those types of folks.
On a personal note, I think I would like to see Dana get involved - even if it's just for research purposes for a future article - with an actual, reputable roleplaying guild or group. I once had the same opinion of roleplayers that this article seems to display, but meeting some amazingly good people who also happened to be roleplayers gave me a fresh perspective. I believe it may be possible that, if one were to spend enough time with players who actually roleplay in games but who are also willing and wanting to improve their skill at playing the game (because, honestly, who wants a tank who thinks the term refers to an M1 Abrams? Or a hunter who can't shoot or dodge worth a dang?), they would be as pleasantly surprised as I was back in my "I play the game to PvP, so if you don't want to fight then bugger off" days.
I've read all of your articles, Dana.
I can say that the other articles you have written I agreed with, at least a little bit. They were all extremely uninformed about the subjects you covered but they at least seemed like you had actually played an MMO game before.
Unfortunately I can not say the same thing for this article. This attack against RPers just makes you sound ignorant. Obviously you do not like RPers but bashing an entire group of players that you know absolutely nothing about is unprofessional.
I really question if you have ever played an MMO game besides WoW. You seem to know very little about the genre.
Thanks for the articles, but I don't feel the need to read your drivel any longer.
Edit: I just thought that I would add that I have never role-played in any MMO game.
Well, I have to say that the article is provocatively enough to stimulate discussion, as can be seen by the amount of answers.
What I wonder though, is why the bashing on RPers - if RP could be done one a "regular" server, were all respect each other, then it wouldn't be a "problem". But there are too many who are on the extreme non-rp and on the extreme rp side who just can't get along.
Ultima Online is a place where I meet RPers without the RP server. There still is e.g. a guild where you have guard duty and a strict hierachy in the guild to fit the RP needs.
In AoC at launch on a RP-PVP server there were folks "ganking" at bridges in terms of "pay or die", so if you payed the waylayers, you could pass. This is such a small thing without taking it to the extreme, I wish there was more of that on any type of server.
RP servers exist, and WoW had a large impact there, but as stated, how many do actually RP there?
Grind is what destroyed RP. And that is equally WoWs fault as many other MMOs who work with time sinks for money (read monthly fee).
I have read through all the replies to this topic. I cannot add anything more than what has already been posted in defense of RP's and the servers.
Sure some improvement could be made, just like any aspect of a game is never perfect. You just have to get on with what you have available. I dont tend to let people annoy me, they pay for the game as much as me, I have an Ignore button for those that spoil it for me. this is the price you pay for being a minority.
I no way is this just cause howerver for the OP you made.
In fact you got your erruption,as intended, then got a pyroclastic cloud that followed.Please choose your words better next time.
It might be an idea to start a new topic with the story you wanted to write, that would infact result in a more sivilized debate. I happen to agree, this is definately a topic worht posting to, "the mythh of role playing servers, do they actually serve the rp'r"?
(it wouldnt be entirely out of the question to appologize to those that were offended either,... would it? mr.PR.)
this is not worth losing a job over, I like reading your articles, and i agree with (and sometimes dont) your topics, dont spoil your standards, and if you have a personal view on a topic, make sure we know your writing states that, (impo)in my personal oppinion. youre a person with responsibility, a title to uphold and a reputation to keep clean, let alone your personal rep.
im sure the others working on mmorpg did not expect this type of response to an article.
I was actually checking by the site to see if there were any viable roleplaying games comming up. And this, ofcourse, was not quite what I expected.
Odd that one working for a MMORPG site would be as kind as to scorn a percentage of those they should cater for. One would think an emplyee of such a site would seek to gather, not alienate the players.
Lastly thugh this whole PvP versus Rp thing is something I never understood. I roleplay and I PvP, I would not have one without the other.
The goal to incite did hurt the quality of your article though. And made your stance less believable. But apparently the article did not target me as an audience. I read it nonetheless and sighed.
On regular servers I sometimes engage in roleplay lite, just to fuck off a bit, but when I go to a RP server, it's fun to RP. You have to have an imagination in order to enjoy it. Hell, even a sense of humor would do. :D
I don't even know why they bother to make RP servers since no company ever bothers to really enforce them. If I came into regular chat on a game and started cursing your heritage, especially your mother, or something, I'm pretty sure I'd get banned for my apparent lack of respect.
The Role Players can't even get any respect on their own servers, and those who are supposed to enforce the rules don't even care.
But seriously, one solution to the problem would be to have an unlimited ignore list. That way, every asshole that comes into a roleplay server talking garbage about people using their imaginations to take them someplace beyond the every day grind would just be screaming their nonsense into the wind.
Why have the rules anyway if no one will enforce them?
I agree, however that some roleplayers I've come across in my time are exactly as negative as you describe them; I just disagree on the percentages. :D
While this article is true, it is poorly written.
This article might as well be titled as "what players on non RP servers think of RP servers."
The real reason that MMOs have no progressed in to true RPing is that they offer very little to the RPing community. If you want to see true RPing go to a LARP convention, LARP games are built for RPing, MMOs are built for Hard core gamers, comon gamers, and the masses that wander into WoW after their friends tell them about how much fun they are.
A MMO that caters to RP junkies would have to be built for those players, characters that had moral choices that effected their characers, quests with multiple out comes depending on how you handled it, the world and other players effected by what you have done, on top of all of this a game where your character is truely customizable beyond any thing we have seen before.
Customization is what kills it for me, Pen and Paper and Larp both have something MMOs still havnt grasped. The history of the character, most games start off with very generic backgrounds for your character so they dont have to explain in detail who you are. Generic is what kills the Rping, sure your character looks slightly different that that other random character someone just made due to gear and slight choice differences, but in the end your Elf Warrior is the same as every one elses Elf Warrior.
Give me a game with Scars on my body each time I die, where I can create a background for my character based on quest I am currently doing, or even flashbacks during quests that alters something in the game that I can see directly.
Right now the closest game being made to this is SWTOR, though it is doubtful that beyond the moral choices with NPCs and during quests that the game will be able to determine in a PvP setting if my actions were motivated by good or evil, and that ultimately I dont think any game will really give the full customization that a Larp or Pen and Paper RPGs allow.
Dana seems to be a guy who has been insulted once by roleplayers or something and now tries to take it out on the rest. I'm on a WoW RP server, and while not everyone roleplays, there are plenty that do, there are fun events, occasional random RP and a good friendly atmosphere you won't find on any other server. To bad a sour guy like Dana has to miss out on that.
I have been reading the articles on MMORPG.com for some time but have not feelt the need to log in and give my thoughts for a long long time.
Other people here have all ready given a plethora of reasons why role-playing servers are an excellent choice for some gamers, so I wont go into it. What I want to say is that I am deeply upset by this article, it is the closest thing to a gamer racisim I have ever read on an professional gaming site, terrible! So many of the so called "facts" Dana writes about are just plain wrong and either he just did not do any research into the matter or he is so biast towards RP-servers that he should not have writen this article in the first place, stick to what you know DANA.
ps. sorry about the spelling, english is not my first lang.
This article has done one good thing wether you guys like it or not.
It shows that we as a community can go so many pages without flaming each other when presented with an asshole we all have a common hate against.
It's nice to see the amount so far, and yes, if this article isn't taken down there will be more of us... it's nice to see us 'stand up?' to an uneducated and biased staff member.
Nice one guys =]
This. Exactly my point.
...especially the part about "exceptionally misinformed and unenlightened, Dana.
I prefer rp servers because there always seems to a smaller group or the Ipwnurmom crowd on it and the community is more helpful. Don't really know that many people that talk they they should be in Hamlet. It is also nice to play a game with people who realize it is just a game and not a second job like those loathsome people who raid 4 and 5 days a week.
I guess the author of the article has
a) never played a P&P RP
b) never played a good MMO
c) never been a role player and therefor says there are none
d) a bored life because of writing such bad article
e) no idea on what to write about
I mean if he would have written that's interesting to read or something real about why the role play server are overrun by non-roleplayers. The real problem is that most role players would like an environment like the auther described as fantasy and such environments also exist. No, I don't tell you where, because if I write it here, they will be overrun by a lot of stupid morons.
I have three solutions for the bad RP server in many MMOs:
Everyone has to write a _good_ char story befor getting in game.
A player referring system: You need somone, who lets you in. If you allow stupid people to join you get kicked/banned
A ranking system: If you prove to be able to role play you will be able to do more.
I guess if you pay at least 10 bucks a month a gaming company should be able to maintain good RP servers. If not, they are not worth there money. There are a lot of communities, who are able to do this for free and everyone, who really wants to play good RP should be able to find them.
Another tip: Don't expect good RP in a game, where your job is to kill monsters or players 24/7 and don't expect to be able to join them without a char story or a monthly fee.
IIRC the role play in 'A tale in desert' wasn't too bad.
To all role players: Good luck find your game ;)
Through my ten-plus years of playing MMO's, I have always played on roleplaying servers, because, *gasp*, I actually want to roleplay. In fact, the entire reason I started playing them in the first place was the thought that I could experience another world as my character. Furthermore, over the years I have met plenty of people like myself who spend their time in game roleplaying everything they do and will just not play a game at all if they have no roleplaying servers.
That this article even saw the light of day puts a huge black mark on this website. The author is truly ignorant and offensive.
So was this to you some sort of social experiment?
If so, subtlety would be your friend for future posts.
Dana, I suggest you visit this site http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001645.php?page=2 and look at the data.
The Daedalus Project was a 10 year long survey study of MMO players. The image below gives an idea of what you can find there.
Thank you, Dana!
Immersion talk always annoys me. I can suspend disbelief as well as the next guy, but unless I'm on stage or doing something with friends IRL (including tabletop), the keyboard and monitor keep me separated from my characters and their worlds.
I have very little to add as most have already covered the various issues with this article in so many posts. This was one of the worst articles filled to the brim with so many "mistruths" its utterly amazing it was even published. This article does a disservice to not only the roleplaying community but the credibility of the writer and MMORPG.com
The article does hit some points and I like the article in general.
You know, I've never been a fan of your writing, but I always got the idea that you were taking the "shock jock" approach to journalism. However, on this type of medium, it sounds more like Jerry Spinger.
You simply try to incite raw emotion and debate - even in it's most unhealthy of forms. Isn't this what the definition of what a troll is?
Out of curiousity, would you accept an article or allow a blog on constructive journalism riddled with opinion from your fellow readers and not your staff? Or would you simply make sure that it never sees the light of day?
LOL! Too bad Dana couldn't have come up with something to distract all those Darkfall debates a few months ago.
While I agree with parts of the article that suggest roleplaying in mmorpgs is impractical, I would amend that to read that it is impractical in themepark games (which are of course the majority nowadays, and likely all the author has experience with).
I question whether someone with such a limited view of roleplayers and what makes them tick ever played games like UO, Asheron's Call, SWG, etc, as those games did indeed foster roleplaying and had large communities of dedicated roleplayers to boot (UO and SWG still do).
Sure, the playstyle isn't for everyone (many people lack the imagination to do anything other than what the game tells them to do), but equating roleplayers to willing victims is quite possibly the most amateur bit of shock-jock journalism I've ever seen on this site, and that's saying something. I would've expected as much coming from some of the blog writers seemingly plucked off the street with no regard to writing ability or journalistic experience, but from a staff member?
Wow. Pretty sad.
/shrug
Couldn't agree with this post more, especially the highlighted paragraph.
In my past, I have played Ultima Online in a former top-end RP guild on Catskills (Pre and Post Trammel - Currently still playing as well) , an RP, PvP, and PvE server in DAoC(Percival, Mordred, Gaheris), and a few MUDs.
In my more recent history, I originally started on a WoW PvP server at launch, but about 2 or so years ago (maybe less), I started playing on a RP server. As someone who played for about equal times and to equal extent on both server types (Up to level 70 on PvP, after BC was launched, and now 2 level 80's on the RP server) in this highly popular game, and given my past experience, I think I'm in a safe position to state the folowing (Using WoW as a reference point, because it has the large population numbers, but per capita, it holds true to me in the other games I've played):
1) There IS a behavioral difference, a noticable one, between people on PvP servers and RP servers. The RP server I play on seems to have a much more mature quality than the PvP server I was on. Are there still Chuck Norris jokes, barrens chat, and all-around jackasses? Of course there are. This is WoW. It's unavoidable. But you can STILL notice it.
2) You're not elite, hard-core, better-geared, or more knowledgeable because you play on a non-RP server. I've seen players in battlegrounds and arenas on my RP server that put players who were chasing Grand Marshal on the PvP server to shame. I mean, these guys on the PvP sever, they weren't scrubs - Some of the groups I ran with had at least 1 Grand Marshal back when honor was first introduced, and lots of them ended up getting at least Captain or better. And I can safely say, having run with these kinds of groups, that I've seen some amazing talent on my RP server where I know they would simply crush the PvP players I've seen in the past. And more often than not, people who disdane RP servers use the fact that they are on a PvP server as some kind of crutch to support their claim that they are better players. This simply isn't true.
3) I prefer to have a choice of when I RP or not. I played UO, and with the guild I was in, RP was a way of life. OOC chat in guild chat was fine, but you did NOT break character when seen in public. When we fought other guilds in battles, you used the death robe, and you obeyed the no-looting rule, or you were out. There was no excuse. We obviously had a tolerance level for those new to RP, but if after extended time they still couldn't quite fit in, they were gone.. Usually they left of their own accord.
But in games like WoW, which doesn't exactly tailor to the RP mindset like UO did (Character customization, housing, furniture, skills and trades, etc., are much superior in UO than WoW in my opinion), and the fact that it's lore is so broken with inconsistencies, there's elbow room. I can go months never once acting in character, and when the mood strikes me, I know where I can go to likely find others who wish to roleplay as well. And despite what others have said, I've NEVER had a problem finding people willing to accept my part-time RP behavior, even the most "hard-core" RP characters on WoW have been very accommodating and understanding. I can't say the same for PvP players who knock anyone for, not even RP'ing, just using complete sentence structures.
This whole article smacks of PvP elitism which is completely unjustifyable, misplaced, and ignorant. Your bias shines through, and I can't help but wonder if you have some personal vendetta against RP players. Or to put it in a way I'm sure you can relate to: Someone got butthurt by an RP'er.
Despite a few fallacies and ignorant statements, I have to say that Dana brings up afew good points.
Too many people seem to expect that a RP server is going to be a magical land of total immersion, and it just is not the case. My first experience with a RP server was in EQ2. I had played on Crushbone and then decided to give the RP Server a try. I honestly could not tell the difference. People still used Global the same way and I didn't come across much public RP other than encountering a Dark Elf that wanted me to spank her. Needless to say I left that server behind real fast.
Now I do play on Wiccanna currently in AoC, and Wiccana has picked up the label of the "Unofficial RP Server". I have found this to be a fantatsic place, not because of some kind of supposed RP Ruleset byut just because you can find a lot of people that are interested in RP. You can find many many guilds with varying degree of RP, as well as find RP happening in many different spots on any given night. Sure some character names are silly, but does it really matter? Just ignore it. And sure Global chart can get pretty stupid sometimes, but I leave it turned off 95% of the time because I do not want the distracting chatter no matter what is being talked about. I really do not understand why so many people get all emotional and complain about what is being talked about in Global Chat, yet continue to leave it on. It is the equivilent of pricking your finger on a riose bush, and then laying down on the bush.
One thing I have noticed specifically in AoC is that whenever the topic of what kind of things that RPers want or see as a issue, there is a loud minority from the Official PvP-RP Server that always jumps on wanting Naming Policies to be enforced for there server. These players seem to want to be able to officially tattle on a name they do not want over adding more tools or content for Roleplayers, and I just do not understand that. I could spend hours say decorating a house if we had a housing system, but it takes me half a second to not click on a player with a silly name. It just does not bother me, but too many RPers get very snotty about it, and I think that leads to a lot of the misconceptions about the RPer population that the OP listed in his article.
Sirrah and Decayed Rodent Beast whose name Massey, in olden times did mean the slop bucket of the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet, whose sordid blog post on RP servers is a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood;
The one that did so generalize so, an open letter from I, one so beneficiant as to enlighten thee with words to educate and castigate, as it seems wicked fire of ignorance have melted yours in your own grease...
((I find it patently false, and demand you cease your qualling post haste! Your words are hollow, treacherous, and full of guile and thou art a craven tardy-gaited horn-beast! Now begon with thy sham of a blog, lest you maketh me a victim, and I shall be forced to unleash a 70th power level fire blast on yorn mewling full-gorged whey-face!
I shall Destroy your sight with a new Gorgon, and promise that if you amend thy face, I'll amend my life.
Now, no more bugger boo, for away, away to the unseelie places, that we may find respite once again among the donnybrooks and hedgerows of the fae forests of Unchartia, to face foes unseen and unheard of. I comment no more on this detestable blog let it That the music of my words were to enlard his fat already pride ))
Lord Ravenscar Unterbrecht Wulfcastle Von Brau
70th Level Shaman
Runescape RP Server Forum Moderater
Magic Missle, Magic Missle
The writer obviously wouldn't know RP if it walked up and bit him in the arse.
The point of RP servers is not to force some unenforceable ruleset on the entire population, it so that people who have a like interest in a particular aspect of the game have an easier time finding each other. That's all. MMORPG's cater to people with all sorts of different play styles and interests.....anything that makes it easier for people to find players with similar interests/tastes is a good thing (IMO).
While it is true that there are a small minority of RP'ers that try to enforce their style on everyone around them.... the vast majority are simply interested in playing their own game without having folks purposefully come in and muck up the works.
Some people think that RP'ers come off as elitist because we mostly associate with other RP'ers and often try to avoid grouping/hanging with folks that aren't into RPing. That's not because we think we're better then anyone else...or that we think we have more right to the game then anyone else....it's simply because RP is an activity that works best when the folks you are with are playing along.
Think of analogy with fishing and water-polo. Their both an activity that happens in the water. Fishing doesn't prevent some-one from playing water polo..... but fishing doesn't work if you've got some guy splashing around like a maniac right next to you. So the fisherman will generaly move a bit off from the water polo players and hang with other people who are fishing. That doesn't make the fisherman a snob or an elitist.....and it doesn't mean that he thinks he's better or has more right to the lake then the water polo guys.... it just means that he's doing an activity that only works well under certain conditions. So the water polo guy shouldn't get offended if the fisherman doesn't want to hang around and fish with him playing water polo. That's all.
Heck, I bet a hardcore Raiding group would get pretty PO'd if 2 of the players that were in their group wanted to stop and have a 15 minute conversation in the middle of the instance (whether that conversation was RP or blather about Michael Jackson)..... and everyone else was wanting to move on to the next encounter so they could finish the instance.
Wishful thinking. Maturity hits a wall when the storyline or expectations of characters are interrupted in ways that could happen naturally. This results in a disruption of guild civility. Also, in RP guilds--- there tends to be an easy sort of favoritism. When people become too nice or "mature" as you put it... most individuals don't know how to handle disruptions.
Mature on the surface... but not often mature emotionally. RPers can be real big emotional wrecks. Why else would they love to live an escape from reality? I wouldn't be surprised if most people upset with Dana's post are these people. =P
Hey all!!
I just registered to reply to this article.
(Though I don't plan on sticking around.)
I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm a roofer and I'm not the type to
get on and power-grind through an MMO like it seems is the
style today.
I like sitting back with a cigarette and role-play with others that
I have met through many role-play servers. I enjoying the co-op
story writing that roleplay is supposed to be.
This article isn't engaging or 'igniting debate', it's just a blast at
rp'ers. It would be like me saying, 'All PvP servers are a chaotic
immature place where X-box Live kiddos go to curse at you and
cry when their mom's tell them it's bed time.'
RP servers are for more 'mature' players, but they are for people
that like to play their character, get into the lore and story of the game
and roleplay with others. Any server is full of obnoxious people the
first thirty levels or so, but mainly, rp servers have rp players.
(And old english isn't rp, espcially when no english language really
exists. Hell, What do german or french roleplayers do? hah)
I just know that once RP servers are gone, I will no longer play MMOs
much like I won't be coming to MMORPG anymore. It's a shame that
a site with 'RPG' in it's name would let such an article be posted. You
want to encourge debate and not roits? Then don't blast the community
that played table-top rpgs, Muds and mushes, and helped mmos become
what they are today.
I can kick your mom in the face and say, "Whoa! Don't get mad, I was just
trying to get your attention!" This article is full of shallow stereotypes and
is just plain trash. You can talk about the poor things about rp servers, but
you don't touch on all the amazing things.
The day MMO's forget RP and become a broken landscape of console
players and those under the legal age, well, that is the day I no longer
play mmo's anymore.
Say what you will about role-players. We're here to be social and creative
and enjoy the game on a more social level, isn't that the point of mmo's?
Us roleplayers are being pushed out of our own realm and when jerks
like this guy act as if roleplayers are the people off-base. Yeah there are
jerk roleplayers out there, but I know there are more jerk pvp'ers and game
grinders. Most of the time roleplayers don't say anything, we sit back and
don't bother anyone while the rest of the community just craps all over us.
Well the day guys like this aurthor are considered the normal mmo
user.... that's the day I rather not play mmo's anymore.
Many MMO's have programs that take volunteer players as 'guides' of sorts
to manage things like rp griefing and name enforcement. I would be all for
that in any mmo.
Try to be a bit more positive next time. I have had more fun on roleplay
servers they any other type. If you want to claim mmo's are for downing
mountain dew while cursing at people on vent grinding away killing the
same thing over and over without roleplay,.. then go ahead.
Just don't rip on roleplay servers and roleplayers like you know anything about them.
There is a game that totally fosters role playing. In fact, you log onto the game and you are made to role play - it's the point of the game! It's called The Endless Forest and it's by tale-of-tales.com. You go through the game role playing a deer, you meet other deer, you can cast magic on them that you can earn by visiting special places in the forest that turn their coats another color or pattern or affects their horns or even transmogrifies them into another animal and best of all there is no pesky chat to ruin your role playing experience! What more could any role player ask for?
OPS post boils down too;
Some people want to feel immersed in the game they are paying to play.
Other people want to irritate them.
Op theorizes they don't really want to feel immersed, but they actually enjoy being irritated.
Hence, Op is a failure at guessing the reason. Op failed to understand the Occams Razor reason, is some people simply want a little more immersion and a little less irritation. That involves being around other people who are there for a little more immersion and not being around people with character names "Turdpumper99" who are there to be l33t.
If you want to play it like a "game" and name your character "Bloodelfpally" and simply grind and level up, all well and good, more power to you. Me, I'll try to wring a little more fun out of it by feeling like I am part of the world I am exploring and not an anachronism to it.
My only hope, is that OP stops writing blog posts on things he doesn't really understand.
This isn't an article, it's a thinly veiled verbal assault against a certian playstyle. Articles are not supposed to take sides or state the writer's opinions as if they were truth. I mean seriously Dana, you don't even TRY to disguise it as an article, the freakin' NAME is 'The Myth of Role-Playing Servers'. The title of the rant is basically trying to quote itself for truth. Even when you admit that there may be an exception to the rule, you immediatley discredit yourself afterwards on purpose in order to try to prove your point on several occasions.
Exaggerated Example: "I realise that there may be decent rp'ers out there but they are so few and far-between that they're hardly worth mentioning."
That kind of writing is bullshit. It doesn't matter if the article is The Myth of Role-Playing Servers or the The Joy of Role-Playing servers if all you do is ramble on about your personal opinion and use writing trick to sound subjective and informed when you're really not. I'm sure if the article was "Are Role-Playing Servers a Myth?" and allowed both sides of the issue equal time and consideration, and maybe if you did a little bit of research into the subject instead of relying on your own speculation it would have been much better.
In short, MMORPG.com should not be treated like a refrigerator door for the journalists to stick any half-assed thought on for all the world to see. This kind of journalism reflects badly on you, and in turn the website your writing represents.
Everyone who plays these types of games is looking for an escape from reality for a certain period of time. What's more, is that everyone who plays these games is a roleplayer to some degree. You can't truly want to play a game if you can't accept the importance of any game constructs. If it is all just make-believe and silliness, you won't play it.
There is nothing more pathetic than an out-of-character player harping on the dedicated roleplayer while boasting of his stats and gear in a virtual fantastic environment.
...to not be a deer?
...to not be a deer?
...to have other things more important to do than to be a virtual deer?
That was a great post, Red_Smoke. :)
I am not going to comment so much on the article, but I just want to say that I play on RP servers because the people seem a tad more respectful, courteous, and polite and the naming conventions are a bit better.
My own rule is to *never* say or do anything OOC in chat unless another player does so first (and thus "breaks the ice").
I never go OOC in General, Speaking, or Trade chat -- anywhere that other players might randomly read it. I will use abbreviations in the LFG channel, however, where they can hardly be avoided. It's just about respecting others and *assuming* all players are RP unless they say otherwise.
Personally, I would love to see a STRICT WoW RP server that forced players (1) to choose avatar names from a Name Generator, (2) had no chat channels at all, and (3) allowed only the use of preset emotes for between-player communication. I often wish WoW had even just ONE server set up that way. I bet many WoW players would like something like that. I know I sure would.
One thing that I find interesting after giving another read is that the OP seems to be expressing the opinion that since RP Servers are a "myth" that they should not exist. The OP also seems to be saying that players that do not wish to abide by the rules of a RP Server should not be forced to.
Now if a player makes a character on a PvP server and then complains that another player killed them, the response will typically be something along the lines of "QQ:" And really, if you choose to play on a PvP Server then you really have no excuse to be upset if another player kills you. You chose to go there. It is the reason why I avoid Darkfall.
So why is it ok for a player to go to a RP Server, not follow the rules that were apprent and in place when they created the character, and be seen as being "oppressed: and a anti hero? I am not talking about player ideas of rules, I am talkking about the rules that are officially designed for the server. I also am referring to offically designated RP servers, not unofficial ones.
Do players PvP all the time on a PvP server? Is it total anarchy and 24/7 battles and carnaage? Somehow I doubt that it is. So why is a players that disagrees with a PvP server a whiner but a player that disagrees with a RP Server being oppressed? Why are those that do not like a RP Server and go there to cause trouble being seen as the equivilent of Neo breaking free of the Matrix?
I'm not speaking about the content of the article on way or another, but I WOULD like to point out that this was an OPINION piece. Disagree with the opinion, sure, but you're dressing it down because it IS an opinion.... which is the point of each of the five featured columns every week.
Dana, one does not "incite" debates. One stimulates them by posing an intelligent, defensible position or question about which there might be two reasonable but different views. Your article failed completely in this regard and it is difficult to understand how you could have expected anything beyond a riot. What you did is called trolling, not journalism.
I have been visiting this site for many years and this article is different in character from anything I have yet seen. I certainly hope it does not represent a new trend or policy.
Thank you, Dana!
Immersion talk always annoys me. I can suspend disbelief as well as the next guy, but unless I'm on stage or doing something with friends IRL (including tabletop), the keyboard and monitor keep me separated from my characters and their worlds.
The keyboard and monitor are no more or less a conduit for the imagination than the pencil, paper and dice. I don't see how manipulating your character via keyboard and monitor "separates" one more so than manipulating data on a sheet with a pencil. You talk to people across the table, with the prevalence of free voice chat software you could do the same. Both instances of verbal communication would likely be with people you know (I know I don't randomly give out Ventrilo server info).
But, if that's your barrier, it's a shame. If anything, being able to have a visual representation of the world and its contents adds to any talk of immersion. *shrug*
Dana: "The goal of this is to incite debates"
Translates as "The goal of this was to troll for controversy"
Upcomping Dana Massey articles include;
Why playing MMOs will never get you a girlfriend
You stink, its just how it is.
I play MMOs for fun, but you play them because you are a socially inept mental pymy whose mother dresses you funny, because you play them differently than I do.
The Myth of the PVP server, people don't really want to go on there to fight each other. They go on there to be trolled by people who make fun of them for enjoying that kind of server. Case in point, you all responded to my article saying I am an idiot, so you must love it when I make fun of you.
Sadly, your post gets featured like a real article and isn't moved to "Trolling for replies" section. (Translate as: Deleted)
I'm not speaking about the content of the article on way or another, but I WOULD like to point out that this was an OPINION piece. Disagree with the opinion, sure, but you're dressing it down because it IS an opinion.... which is the point of each of the five featured columns every week.
You need to make it very clear that this is an opinion piece. Perhaps HUGE text at the beginning giving that disclaimer.
Though even that is not going to be enough. As managing editor, it is your job to moderate/edit what your columnists post. As an editor, you don't just spell-check for them. You are supposed to have a handle on your readers and what is acceptable in the community. If one of your columnists submitted an article claiming that all Jews or Blacks or Whites can't play MMOs, that they are too stupid to handle MMOs, it would be his opinion, and as it would be about MMOs, it might even 'fit' the site. But it would be your job to stop such drivel from making it to 'print'. Not every opinion is acceptable to print. You failed in your responsibilities with this article. This was trolling, somewhat disguised by being spelling/grammar checked. You should not have allowed this to pass.
I don't care if Dana Massey was God-King for this site in the past, EVERYONE needs an editor to tell them when they shouldn't post something - even past editors.
Here's my 2 coppers, for what it's worth, from someone who is both an MMO player for many years, and a tabletop rpg player for a lot longer. I hope Dana actually reads this post and it doesn't get lost in the sea of backlash.
I agree overall that no single game or RP server caters to a pure immersion factor of the game. But let's get serious: Even in tabletop role playing and Live Action role playing, there's the story and game with the characters, and then the OOC and chill out and have fun factor. People who truly "immerse" are, let's be honest, the things that give Vampire LARP'ers a bad name and result in movies like Mazes and Monsters. There's a difference between full immersion and just pretending and having fun.
As many have pointed out already, it's not just about typing in character, sometimes it's about taking advantage of the environment and making an extra layer to the game that involves more creativity and community involvement than raiding parties, grind and gear min/maxing. This isn't just for carebears to sit around and cyber one another and get to be the victims of trolls; this is about adding depth with the toys we have.
The Tools We Have
Here's a weird way of looking at it: Tabletop role playing's most popular game is Dungeons & Dragons. This game was an evolution from Chainmail, a miniature war game. A lot D&D's rules, especially the current edition, have combat based more on tactical, almost Wargame like setup than just narrative approach. Hell, the fourth edition right now is even under some criticism for its rather heavy use of minis for combat. So what seperates it from the Miniature Ware Games to being a true Role Playing Game?
Two things: The Ideology, and the Players. The Ideology behind role playing is that the sum of the rules, dice mechanics and abstract systems were designed with the premise that these are tools and building blocks for interactive storytelling; whereas in War games these are truly rules that must be followed for fair competition. Sure, players could role up characters and just fight monsters, gain loot and crawl dungeons without ever having to act out. Some do. But that's the second thing that seperates RPG's from the Mini Battle players: The Ideology. Combat is usually just a means to an end, not the main focus. There's politics, mystery, drama....it's the thrill of playing out a story.
Adding an extra layer to the Virtual Worlds
You said it yourself: MMORPGs are called thus because they have roots in the tabletop game play. You think Everquest and Ultima Online, and the older precursors such as The Realm and Meridian 59 took off because people wanted to grind to end game and be l33t sk33t on the scrotum pole? No, we played those because they were a brave new dimension of the genre of games we love. Somehow, along the way, MMO's evolved more into leveling treadmills and subscription based grinds for pretty pixels and bragging rights.
The reason a few of us MMO players want RP servers and form RP guilds is because we want to play the game in a way different from leveling treadmills and flavor of the week builds. It's not so much about campy dialogue as it is about community involvement. And don't pin this ideology to just PvE carebears, but plenty of PvP'ers too. My favorite times in PvP guilds in the past have actually been related to Roleplaying themed guilds. No, we weren't in character the whole time. What we were doing was playing with a structured society of roles, titles and jobs, a united goal and when it came down to both inner-guild business, Diplomacy with other guilds or taking arms en masse, we did so in the style and theme of our guild's "persona". We did this in EQ's hayday on Rallos Zek, we did this in Shadowbane, and I know many others who continue to do this in any game they play.
Usually on RP servers, you're more likely to see community driven events than you are on the standard servers. Certain games, like City of Heroes and LOTRO, which offer a lot of RP and social opportunities in game, thrive on the community and arguably are some of the most pleasant in-game experiences I've had when I wasn't doing quests or raiding. In Shadowbane (may it RIP), we always played on the Lore based servers because the community felt more tight knit, and lord knows the politics and drama play there were epic (Whether guilds were "role playing" or not. And for many, that was fun.)
And one last thing:
I agree, MMO's today are a different style of game than the tabletop games they draw inspiration from.
However, the tone you wrote it in, came off more like an industry cop out for lack of innovation to provide an environment capable of delivering and encouraging player character social interaction past trade and PK'ing. Some titles out there have worked on this, and thus have developed a strong RP community and player base from it. Hell, I know many EVE players who are excited about the possible space station expansion in the hopefully near future, because it's going to open up some RP possibilities.
I'm just getting sick of roleplayers being constantly $#!T'd on all the time!
You have all these new MMO players coming out of the wood work
taking over a genre and trying to 'justify' their like for MMO's by putting
down RP.
I don't mind people that don't RP at all! Enjoy the game, have fun, get
all the gear you can,.. it's fun!
But once you start going around talking as if roleplayers are all elietist
or just nerds that never see the light of day, then you're wrong. The ones
that sit down and have to grind out gold and levels constantly are the
offensive ones. I never seen a roleplayer call someone 'gay' in game
or go around kill stealing, or begging for gold. If you're not a roleplayer
then don't roll on the RP server. It's not a rule that can be enforced.. it's
not even a rule.. it's a signal rolepayers that says, "Hey! You like roleplaying,
Then come to this server! We're helping you out so you can meet
other's that enjoy the same style of gameplay!"
This article is a dressed up version of someone yelling out:
"LoL RP? GTFO RPERS"
My only question is how come I can report you but I can't block you?
The keyboard and monitor are no more or less a conduit for the imagination than the pencil, paper and dice. I don't see how manipulating your character via keyboard and monitor "separates" one more so than manipulating data on a sheet with a pencil. You talk to people across the table, with the prevalence of free voice chat software you could do the same. Both instances of verbal communication would likely be with people you know (I know I don't randomly give out Ventrilo server info).
But, if that's your barrier, it's a shame. If anything, being able to have a visual representation of the world and its contents adds to any talk of immersion. *shrug*
I have to go with what what Khalathwyr says.
Themilton [and I suppose that really means Dana as you were just supporting his postion]: though I can appreciate that you have a preferred method that incites your imagniation, ie being with friends around a table top, I fail to see why you find it so beyond the pale that one can sit in front of a screen and still be able to make a similar leap of the imagination.
I mean, really... around a table top, with pencils, screens, your friend's mugs gleaming in the pale light while scarfing down potatoe chips or pizza or whatever is the food of choice, constantly refilling your soda or beer or drink of the night.
Why is that any more imagination inducing then sittng at a screen, lights dimmed in a similar fashion with the images acting as a backdrop to what is going on?
The only reason it is is because that's how you work. I think that's fine. But if someoone can lose themselves in a video game because their imagination allows them to break that barrier then I say good for them.
There is no one book on how one can use their imagination to the fullest extent. And if there is then please point me to it because it's very possible that I'm missing out.
I know that my days of pen and paper D&D play were a lot of fun and I suppose the images that I conjured up in my head were all the more powerful because they were mine, but I can't say I felt any more immersed than a video game. If anything, I've found that game images (for me) can be more powerful in that I allow myself to be engrossed not in creating the scene but losing myself in the moment.
it's one of the reasons (and yes... I admit this) that playing games like doom III or Left4Dead or the demo of F.E.A.R actually sort of freak me out.
When in that F.E.A.R. demo I looked down a dark stair into the dim light and saw that little girl scurry from one side of the room into the shadows on the other side, I just turned it off.
To catagorically say that one person can't achieve a level of release as powerful as another's because one can't comprehend how they can just doesn't work for me.
I mean, we are not wired the same. So if someone tells me that they can achieve great immersion by blasting led zeppelin, wearing their mother's bathrobe and sitting on a chair of nails then I have no choice but to believe them until such time as they are taken away by the state.
I haven't read the previous 7 pages of comments, but I have to point out that you left out a third, and in all honesty probably the largest group of people who call RP servers there home....
This group is made up of mostly adults, or more mature teenagers that don't want to be bothered w/ the Xbox-live crowd...and most people here will know what I mean by that, I'm talking about the loud, obnoxious, obscenity spouting, spoiled children (or adult-children) that always have the ridiculous names, can't type normally but rather always use l33t-5p3ak, and are generally annoying d00dz. The large part of people I met on RP servers are simply looking for a MORE MATURE EXPERIENCE.
That is the category that I, and my entire raiding guild on EQ2's Lucan D'Lere server fit into. Honestly, this is probably the category that many people who play on RP servers actually fall into. And I have to admit, your article...well, was way off point. Yes, on RP servers you do have the, usually small, "RP" crowd who tries to always maintain their "in-character" persona, and then you have the, also usually small, anti-RP crowd who is drawn to the RP servers just to antagonize the real roleplayers. But by and large, I think the largest percentage of people that spend the majority of their time on RP servers fall into this 3rd category that you TOTALLY MISSED. The people that make up this 3rd group are usually more mature, and are looking for a more mature crowd, and RP servers are generally the best place to get that type of experience.
I know to some, the idea of coming to an RP server for a "more mature" experience may sound totally rediculous, but the large majority of people I have made friends with on RP servers, went there for a better, "more mature" experience. You see, RP servers generally have more, stricter rules, more GM's (or whatever they may be called in your game of choice), less l33t-speak and all that nonsense, and more serious minded people that are looking to avoid having to deal with a bunch of 13yo d00dz.
So really, yes, the RP servers original intent was to create an atmosphere of total immersion, but what they have become is a bastion of maturity, for people that don't want to deal w/ "Barrens Chat" everywhere they go.
I was just thinking it would be a nice feature, if we can click on an article like this and say "Block" and then any more articles from this person (including this one) are blocked.
It is not that I can't handle a different opinion than mine. I just want a way once I figure out someone is an idiot not to accidentally read their articles again.
He got some sort of caricture drawing of himself on the main page along with other writers, so I think (unfortunately) he will be permitted to continue with this nonsense.
It kind of infuriates me, because his logic is so backwards. You could do madlibs by inserting anything in the blanks into his critique (Example, I use Churches, but you could put restaurants, RP servers, dog shows, whatever.)
Dana Massey Article Mad-Lib Generator
Look Gais, its simple, people who go to Churches don't do it for to be with other like minded people who share the same interests. They do it because they are socially inept, broken elitists who enjoy it when someone like Me shows up and tells them how stupid they all are, so they can feel like victims and rail against me. You see if you rail against this article, you must really be enjoying it and so I feel I am helping you in some way by completely mischaracterizing your reasons and fufilling your true wish of being irritated.
Going to Churches is a myth. They are really win-win. The people who go their to ruin someone elses experience get to have fun, and naturally I believe that you go there to have your fun ruined, so that must be enjoyable to you. Derp, Derp, Derp....I have a caricture on the main page, so someone will take me seriously. Derp, Derp.
<insert charicture pic of squinty-eyed elitist author here>
The way I see this whole article is very similar to politics. It would almost be as if a columnist on a website reported to telling the news exactly like it is suddenly started writing columns about how horrible liberals were. He didn't say it to start a debate or a discussion, he said it because he enjoyed putting the whole RP community down. The entire article's tone was that of smug superiority, someone who is 'better' looking down upon those who are 'worse'. In any case, Dana has /obviously/ never RPed with anyone worth RPing with. I don't doubt that his only experience was on WoW, where the RP, like every other aspect of the community, tends to be sub-par. I dare him to spend a week or so free of his cynical outlook playing Lord of the Rings Online on Landroval, watching and studing the RPers there, to see just how mature and complex real RP can be.
The keyboard and monitor are no more or less a conduit for the imagination than the pencil, paper and dice. I don't see how manipulating your character via keyboard and monitor "separates" one more so than manipulating data on a sheet with a pencil. You talk to people across the table, with the prevalence of free voice chat software you could do the same. Both instances of verbal communication would likely be with people you know (I know I don't randomly give out Ventrilo server info).
But, if that's your barrier, it's a shame. If anything, being able to have a visual representation of the world and its contents adds to any talk of immersion. *shrug*
I have to go with what what Khalathwyr says.
Themilton: though I can appreciate that you have a preferred method that incites your imagniation, ie being with friends around a table top, I fail to see why you find it so beyond the pale that one can sit in front of a screen and still be able to make a similar leap of the imagination.
I mean, really... around a table top, with pencils, screens, your friend's mugs gleaming in the pale light while scarfing down potatoe chips or pizza or whatever is the food of choice, constantly refilling your soda or beer or drink of the night.
Why is that any more imagination inducing then sittng at a screen, lights dimmed in a similar fashion with the images acting as a backdrop to what is going on?
The only reason it is is because that's how you work. I think that's fine. But if someoone can lose themselves in a video game because their imagination allows them to break that barrier then I say good for them.
There is no one book on how one can use their imagination to the fullest extent. And if there is then please point me to it because it's very possible that I'm missing out.
I know that my days of pen and paper D&D play were a lot of fun and I suppose the images that I conjured up in my head were all the more powerful because they were mine, but I can't say I felt any more immersed than a game. If anything, I've found that game images (for me) can be more powerful in that I allow myself to be engrossed not in creating the scene but losing myself in the moment.
it's one of the reasons (and yes... I admit this) that playing games like doom III or Left4Dead or the demo of F.E.A.R actually sort of freak me out.
When in that F.E.A.R. demo I looked down a dark stair into the dim light and saw that little girl scurry from one side of the room into the shadows on the other side, I just turned it off.
To catagorically say that one person can't achieve a level of release as powerful as another's because one can't comprehend how they can just doesn't work for me.
I mean, we are not wired the same. So if someone tells me that they can achieve great immersion by blasting led zeppelin, wearing their mother's bathrobe and sitting on a chair of nails then I have no choice to believe them until such time as they are taken away by the state.
After reading all this, I guess I'll chime in.
Playing the game is different for everyone! Even RP is different.
Some people (like myself) see it as story writing. Unlike what Dana said, The
fiction is made by the players. Story-lines between characters and the such. Also
some people may get very invested and immersed in their character.
But you can't say, just cause 'you' don't immersed that it's all bull@#$.
It would be like me saying, "If you aren't role-playing, then you shouldn't play an mmo."
I have no right to tell you how to play, just like you have no right to tell others.
Unless they are just there to annoy and grief other players, which makes them
total jerks. Role-play is a massive part about rpgs and mmorpgs, and there's a reason
most mmo's have rp servers.
If you like it don't do it, otherwise why give rp'ers a hard time unless you're just that way.
I have to say that that is me. Unless I'm going to go to a game with friends, I just find the nearest RP server and that's where I make my character.
I have no issues beign surrounded by players who want to role play and I get a more interesting and dare I say "more immersive" experience.
If this "opinion" article had been posted on the forums, it would likely have been locked by a mod. There is a difference between an opinion piece and a rant. This article is clearly a rant.
Dana, roleplay servers and their communities are enigmas within the greater community. You can't just look from the outside and make judgments like you have with this piece. It's the same as if a non-gamer looks at an MMO game and makes comments about "why would someone name themselves BigBadSockMeatPuppet, why would a club of people call themselves Goonswarm, and what does pwn mean or even sound like?... are you people delusional or in need of psychiatric care?" Those questions sound daft to us, but the outsider clearly doesn't understand and therefore dismisses the community.
Imagine the outrage from PvP'ers if someone wrote an article discounting PvP servers. Replace every instance of the word "roleplay" in your article with "PvP." If you think the roleplayers are "rioting," imagine how the PvP'ers would respond.
Please more carefully consider your article content in the future. Content such as this damages the generally decent body of work presented by the website.
Pure opinion and pure shit.
Dana has pretty much lost my respect.
This post is very close to violating MMORPG's "Trolling, Baiting and Flaming" rules in the CoC. If it were some random poster, I would shrug it off, but I expect better from a representative of MMORPG.Com.
I do not RP online, though I do find RP servers to have much more friendly crowds for the most part. I have played PnP games for 3 decades, and I have many friends who RP online (non-game based) and those who cosplay at conventions.
The only time I have heard Shakespearian English is at a Rennaisance Faire.
Essentially, Dana got it wrong, which would be ok, but it is the tone of contempt and the condescending attitude this article did not need.
Here goes new account just for this
I Ussualy like to observe the trolls but i`ll bite this time and feed one
However I`m obviously late , all counterarguments are allready posted , all points are made...so I`ll just add one more thing
You mentioned EvE....are you by any chanche still playing? If so it would be my sacred duty as Amarr to purge filth as yourself from the New eden for good !
oh and QFT`in some previous poster...RP servers are definately worth money , even twice the normal fee if it means people like you dont play there
Well Dana, reading your article and even before your answer I was thinking this thread was purposely made to make people log in and post; in extension increase the hits on the web site and so the ranking and ads displayed.
So in short it's okay to publish anything as long as it brings money to the web site.
This is not anymore the MMORPG web site I was used to interact with.
Used to play in an Orc guild.
Talked in orcish, made your characters orcs or look like orcs, acting like orcs as much as the game allowed you too.
Only really worked in Ultima Online on the Siege Perilous shard because it was FFA PvP and the graphics were 2D and gear didn't matter, so you could wear an Orc mask or Orc Helm 100% of the time.
You'd get clubbed by the bosses for acting up or being stupid, we'd act like villianous orcs who loved nothing more then fighting and clubbing stuff...
Modern games these days just don't give you the freedom to do that kind of stuff.
Now they say, ok, you want to be an orc? Here are the classes you can choose, here is what you can and can't wear, here is where you can and can't go, and this is a list of things you can do, pick one.
No room for imagination really anymore. It's sad.
The issue we're taking here is that even if it is an OPINION piece it's still trolling. If JoBlo had posted it on the forums he'd probably have been moderated and gotten a warning.
As far as opinions go, mine is that Dana should concentrate on working with his bellyup MMOs and leave the armchair psychology to those of us who aren't busy creating subpar examples of the MMO genre.
They need to rename the site www.mmog.com
After this thread runs cold I'm done with the site. It's not a
protest or anything, but if that's the attitude here, I'll find a
site that cares about a games rp enviroment instead of a site
that handles mmorpgs like fps games.
Sorry, just sick of kids all hoping on mmorpgs now acting like
the genre is new and fresh trying to claim it, pulling from under
the roleplayers feet. All mmorpgs really are is old muds, mushes,
tabletop games, roleplay forums, and the such with a graphics
engine.
So to those that are thinking WoW is fresh and new:
Want to pretend you're a power-gamer and act like some 'uber
gamer' showing off your 'epics' but you can't spell at a fourth grade
level? ....
Then stick to games that don't use a mouse and keyboard.
Indeed. Would be interesting to hear an explanation as to why this is journalism as opposed to trolling.
I understand that journalism has some element of opinion, but this article was so far out in left field that it was funny. I have played on several RP servers and in several RP guilds. Most of the time, when we were with each other we stuck to RPing. However, when non RP players were in the mix, then we sometimes RPed sometimes didn't out of respect for the folks who didn't want too.
If you want to RP, then there are plenty of guilds to choose from in nearly any game. Most of them are fairly decent and offer better story and interaction than you get from the developer content. Is it perfect? No. However, it's usually much more interesting than kill 20 bears.
If you don't like RPing, that's fine. No one is forcing you to do so. Heck most companies only have one or two servers dedicated to RPing, so it's certainly easy enough to avoid. I can see why you think that there is no RPing going on. With that attitude, I wouldn't bother trying with you and would let you go about your way to play with folks with much more of an open mind.
WOW, I feel like I'm watching Fox News. That article was made to do nothing more than generate a response and get ratings, much like all the "stories" on Fox. It was an obvious plight, but obviously worked, as here I am posting hehe.
I have never been into the RP thing, but I'm glad its there for those who want it. I'd try to make counter points about the article, but it was so purposely swayed I don't feel I need to out point it to discredit it.
There was a line about people going to RP servers knowing players there would grief them, thus giving them a reason to cry about something. I think that the author may have confused RPers with EMOs. Emos are the ones who do things like wear bad cloths, just to cry about having bad cloths, not RPers. RPers are more like the HULK, they just want to be left alone.
I believe in TV they call this a shark moment or something like that?
This article expresses a very post mcwow perspective on the online gaming world and how watered down it has become. If you had done this as a comparison article to what roleplaying was like before and after the wow puppet kids were born to the mmo market, you probably would have satisfied more readers here. Some things you say are sadly becoming true, but its strongly worth noting that there were better times a few years ago, and good times can still be had, but you have to look alot harder to find like minded players who care more about living in the world and value the experience as an escape and dont want to see the numbers or base their self worth on phantom digital trophies.
There is still a market out there for those who want a strongly policed RPG or die gaming environment open to the market, and they are older, more economically sound, and willing to pay alot more per month to play this type of game. Your article should be asking this: with rpg servers run now being mostly useless, will not some company come forward and own this niche?
I think you meant CNN
Get it right when you talk about trolling....
LOL, CNN, FOX, etc. same thing, one is Blue Team, one is Red Team, when will we get a smart team? They want ratings and tv personalities, not News and Reporters. I am an NPR man if I take in and news.
I should write for the site. My first article will be called "All PVPers are 12 year olds, all RPers are 50 year olds who live in their parents basements, and all MMORPG players are as intelligent as a brain dead moneky." Then see if I get my response rating up.
on a more serious note , this must mean that it`s worth screwing the credibility of this site for a few dozen thread pages?
hmm...if i think about it i should not only be offended as a RP`er but as a constant reader of this site for the last 2 years , this article is a "frack you guys you`re just click generators" kind of message isn`t it?
this discussion is hilarious and proves much of what Dana has stated.
Everybody is entitled to their opinion and is free to shout it at the world. Freedom of speech ftw! Dana knew this article would be a hot spot.. still he posted it, that takes some courage!
Sweet! I have this article I wrote about how all people on pvp servers are little spoiled brats.
I'll post it so I have some courage too!
See, opinions are subjective. He has the right to think what he does, and
I have the right to think that he's wrong. There's nothing courageous about
this. He basically says that rp servers, servers very much appreciate, are
worthless. So I say this article is worthless, cause rp servers do have good
roleplayers on them, and he doesn't know what he's talking about.
nope , free speach is free within certain limits , and journalism has it`s ...err...rules that make it different from general trolling
if this would have been a simple forum thread i`d have laughed and moved on , there are thousands and thousands of trolls on this site
but this is an article...there is a huge difference . For all intents and purposes this piece of trash was published by MMORPG.com and reflects on MMORPG.com .
This pathetic excuse for a writer can have his opinions , everyone has one...you know...opinions. But what diferentiates a journalist from someone like me (except english skills) is how he presents that opinion . If he wants to be taken seriously on any degree he must present it based on some facts , research...or simply state that it`s all in his head like the case here
See I`m no jurnalist and i dont post official articles on this site , so i can affoard to be a troll right now and call out this piece of trash and the whining kid that wrote it , this does in no way reflect on MMORPG.com ...it`s just my opinion
But he did the same thing i did here : Hurl insults and naked assertions ....and from where i stand right now , the first thing I notice is that this is an ARTICLE on MMORPG.co , and then that it`s written by some guy with a girl`s name (Dana ftw! everyone in my hood loves a certain Dana...well...sometimes even 2 or 3 at once) .In a matter of speaking it`s MMORPG`s opinion , expressed with no base on any facts and research ...and with clear disdain , directed as a clear insult
See....forum trolls can be ignored...oh...so can be sites
disclaimer : I never post trash on forums , i try to stay civil even if i`m having an argument , but this article clearly deserves this....and if mods delete my post they would better delete the article aswell for the same reason
I'm all about controversial subjects and generating discussion. But it can be done in a professional, clever, well written way. Or you can do it the amateur way and scream something ridiculous like ALL MMORPG PLAYERS HAVE SOCIAL ISSUES AND YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE, to insight a response. I find it hard to appreciate the later method in a respectable "discussion" way.
I inserted a poll on my previous post on this topic, asking how many folks would pay 2x as much for a game and 3x the monthly subscription fee for a game that entailed better story (and presumably with better story, better RP potential).
So far nearly 90% answered unqualified yes (over half), or that it would depend on the game/developer.
Personally, I would be ecstatic to be able to pay a higher monthly fee for a more immersive environment in gaming, more GMs, better attention to story, and so on.
I think LOTRO and Eve are probably the closest to this on the market now, and sw:tor upcoming. LOTRO did it on the basis of the license for the root IP of all RPG games, and Eve did it because...well, because they're from Iceland and could think small and intelligent at the same time, I suspect! :)
C'mon guys -- people are paying over $100 for a DVD set of one season of a TV show. The market for a $120 game with a $30-50 sub fee is out there. You won't get most teenagers, slackabouts, and people downside of the digital divide (the last of which I actually am sorry for) -- but you would be recognizing the maturity of the gaming market as an adult passtime pursued by people who don't live in their mom's basements, tyvm.
But will future companies consider creating financially-gated communities for advanced, mature, RPing gamers, where each sub counts as *greater than* three current subs?
I say *more* than three because people involved in community and RP tend to ride out a game longer than do people who are shooting for level cap, then jump.
I can't wait until this market matures, so we get past the movie-like "big studio" stage and indie games have a better economic chance. Until then, there's little hope for anyone who isn't just trying to out-bliz Blizzard's WOW, trying to make the money-pitch for development, and that's sad for all of us, even the non-RPers.
Shava
Gonna have to disagree with the number Torscee pu tup for men and women playing different server types,
Sure it looks reliable, but seriously any satistic saying women play more than men on PvE server (the most populated servers in the game.) seems to be a bit on the false side. This could be just from a statisic value in which they take a small sampling of players and try to use those numbers to show the rest of the server population, but MMOs work against statistics since the only real numbers come from those that stick with the game rather than pick it up play for a week and then drop it.
Hey Hey
What a great article, and i have to agree with you the best game to RP in is EVE . However the responce have been very interesting and sometimes funny to read. Every one takes all the shit to seriously.
Welcome Home
Rev
Go make it and ill sign up.
1. roleplay strictly enforced by gm team aided by filters.
2. adult content in context of gameplay, make the ratings mark require 18+ only
3. no 'global' chat channels, only local. in game voice chat only broadcasts to your vicinity
4. no damage info or parsing
5. loaded with emotes, housing, crafting, player cities, vehicles with travel times, marriage/soul bonding benefits, animal as pets player races and death penalties that mean something(???!@!!!?)
some benefits to the company:
1. lower playerbase with much higher revenue per player
2. loyal playerbase with generally mature attitudes toward issue resolution
3. lower server/hardware requirements for hosting.
4. less demand for constant class balancing and rebalancing and rebalancing
5. more focus on sandbox and utility allows the company to be more innovative and explore the limits of mmorpg possibilities.
Two Comments:
1. This article alone has completely changed my perception of what a mmorpg is in general. Instead of seperating the play styles and social interactions i would get out of my fps,action,sports video games, i should expect more of the same mmorpg and not a different social experience i would get from a Rpg/table top game.
2. The great thing about free speech is you can say how much something sucks without backing it up.
Wow, I am shocked at the author for such an ignorant and uninformed article. It seems to be created from nothing more than personal opinion.
To be frank I choose RP servers to avoid pricks and people like this author who think they know what something is all about. It has little to do with the actual Role Playing, but the maturity level of most players. Many individuals when they see the options of servers will avoid the RP servers because they think it is retarded, there are restrictions (even if they aren't all enforced) and the player base won't be L33T.
I mean to me if the "Role Play" is nothing more than playing the role of a decent character in the game who isn't an ass and can stay on topic, that is more than enough for me.
Wow, talk about off base Dana. RP servers are very typically the most populated servers in the games I've played. Do any of them go all out in forcing RP? No. But that's not what an RP server is.
An RP server is a place where you are specifically allowed to RP if you wish, and NOBODY CAN GIVE YOU CRAP FOR IT lol. Unlike so many other servers, where even being polite can get you laughed at for how stoopid n'week u r. So RP guilds go there, and RP people go there, and people who want to see what RP is go there, and people who want to annoy RPrs go there and get KICKED OUT for acting against the rules of the RP server. Reported, warned, banned on strike 2.
Now I'm not an RPer, but I did check out a couple of RP servers in CoH and other games just to see what it would be like to play in that environment. My god, was it ever NICE. You could just go play without having any of the usual issues like having to /ignore jerks spamming cusswords and flaming and having to report characters with highly offensive names before your kids wandered up and saw them.
And every group you joined was serious about playing - lots of pros and the other people were at least trying to do well. All in all, my experience on RP servers was the best game time I've had.
I'm not speaking about the content of the article on way or another, but I WOULD like to point out that this was an OPINION piece. Disagree with the opinion, sure, but you're dressing it down because it IS an opinion.... which is the point of each of the five featured columns every week.
No offense intended but if I had written an opinion peice like this in the forums I'd of been warned or most likely issued a ban for several days. His tone is overly vicious which is cause of the problem more than anything. Article writers when writing Opinion Pieces should be held to the same rules that any of the rest of us are. Using tones that will obviously incite anger from a particular group is pretty much flame baiting by your own rules.
There's a thin line between editorial opinions and flaming in the name of "I'm an article writer i can do what i want and call it an editorial" this is obviously an example of the latter.
Regardless if a person is well known, a regular joe, an article writer, or an employee of the website none should be above the 'law' here. This isn't some small time lil blog website.
If I'm going to get banned for supposed 'flaming' when I'm not flaming then why should his article be allowed to be passed when he's obviously and ignorately flaming a group of people. Sure I respect his general opinion that RP servers serve no real purpose (despite the fact I think oppositely ) but I don't respect a person who openly generalizes and flames as a whole.
Wow, this site has such terrible articles. From the typical fantasizing/advertisement for F2P games to pure conjecture, "uhh i have to write something this week" piles of BS..I would hate to see what you people would do with political pieces.
You do realize that in a proper opinion piece, you don't just throw in random arbitrary claims, like "only a guild's worth of people actually RP," right? There's no real points in this. It's just sort of rambling. Do you get paid?
I once knew a guy from work who spent at least a half an hour talking to me about how badass his Orc Hunter was and how his guild was the best on his server and blah blah blah, etc. Then I mentioned when I used to play WoW I played on an RP server to which he responded "those people are dorks".
Needless to say, this confirmed what I already knew: he was an absolute moron.
People that spend all their time playing MMOs, then have the audacity too look down on roleplayers as freaks/weirdos are further out of touch with reality than any roleplayer. We're all spending our time in some form of alternative reality, but at least the roleplayers have the courage and imagination to run with it without worrying about what others think of them.
Personally, one of the biggest things I look for in an MMO is immersion, so I'll take a server full of people with a dramatic flare over one full of people named UberPwner and UrMom any day. While I myself can't stand the elitist jerks that refuse to talk to you if you don't use (()) to display you are talking out of character and so on, I see nothing wrong with trying to fully get into a game and character and come up with your own stories, and enjoy doing it myself from time to time.
You obviously haven't played on Moonguard in WoW. They actually RP there. Some decent ones, too! For RP, though, I prefer the games like Neverwinter Nights where you can build your own servers and RP with folks there. Less asshats.
Artikel is a bit weak.
Plus saying people who anoy the rpers on their servers are more intellectual is... BS.
RP-servers are there to have the rpers find each other on THAT server.
If the Autor thinks hes right that all RPers whine about 1337 kids behaving like AssO that was a wrong guess,
theres a ignorebutton.
I played enough mmorpgs to know there are fine RP guilds which have fun rping actually.
You are taking it to serious.
What a waste of time to read that biased text -.-
Some of the most creative, unique, and inspired people i've ever met used to be RP friends in PnP like Shadowrun and D&D. Many of them now work in the games industry at places like Turbine, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and they are some of the most interesting people i've ever met. People that look down on RP'ers in games can't even dream of the type of entertainment real RP can provide.
I feel exactly the opposite as Dana, and that game devs should start to go even further out of their way to cater to these crowds instead of stop supporting them. If anyone ever played in some of the persistant worlds in Neverwinter Nights with some good DM's then you know the potential this genre could have if there was more of an RP focus.
That article was an amusing read. It was a total rant of course but a good and justified one as its completely spot on. I havent read any of the responses in this thread but I'm sure many of them are from so-called hardened roleplayers displaying their outrage at having their serious hobby accurately described.......in short living up to the drama queens that Dana referred to them as.
There are never any particular rules on these so-called RP servers that make them any different to the other servers other than naming conventions......but then how could there be when these mmos arent even designed for proper roleplaying anyway?
I used to play lots of real pencil & paper roleplaying games when I was younger. It was fun meeting up with my friends and acting out the parts of our characters. We could properly roleplay because we were free to make decisions as we played that fit in with what our characters were supposed to be like......and those characters were detailed with their own history and backgrounds that actually meant something in the game world. The GM could react to our decisions by causing the gameworlds denizens to react accordingly. If you were a rich noble then the peasants in the nearby village would react to you accordingly. If you were a treacherous wizard then those same peasants might loath or fear you. Acting in character was required because the entire game relied on the efforts and imagination of the players and the GM. Anything was possible.
None of this is possible in an mmo.......at least not in any of the current ones anyway. Its like having thousands of individuals reading an online fighting fantasy book......and a badly designed one at that. You can come up with any fancy background that you like and pretend to be some kind of hero (or not) but the game just doesnt care because the story is already written and it doesnt involve anything the so-called roleplayer has invented. There is no GM to rule over your world. Its just an automated weak impression of a world that has been frozen in time. Holy paladim who has lost his father to marauding orcs, timid halfling who has fled from his village seeking adventure, reeking dirty troll who is on the hunt to reclaim a lost totem for his chieftain........its all irrelevant because they will all end up having to do the same "please kill 10 badgers so I can knit a scarf" quests. In fact games like EQ2 are hilarious with this as the game doesnt even have any structure in place to cater towards racial likes or dislikes. It just ignores it and lets everyone team up regardless of race or anything else. These games are all about ploughing through the content and reading stories. They arent places designed to cater to any stories you might be able to conceive. Sorry but this is the devs world not yours.
But of course players are totally welcome to "pretend" that the game is more than it actually is. Afterall they're not doing any harm. Its not really roleplaying though is it. The same level of roleplaying could be achieved by getting a bunch of players to log into Counterstrike and all pretend to be wizards on a quest for the orb of power. In fact I suspect that a large number of mmo players who say "Oh we're roleplayers" have probably never even played an actual real roleplaying game. I think many of them cant really tell the difference between "roleplaying" and "pretending to roleplay". Try and explain it to most of them and they react as though you just told them the world is flat.
Its hardly surprising though that people are so tempted to try and deliberately spoil the "fun" of these roleplayers. Afterall the roleplayers are the ones who arent actually playing the game properly. The "pretend game" that they are all acting out (which is more like a theatrical show) doesnt really have anything to do with the game itself. Ironicly the roleplayers are the anomoly in a massively multiplayer roleplaying game. They are the bunch of oddballs that decide to set up camp in the middle of a supermarket while everyone else is doing their shopping.......and then wonder why those busy shoppers have bad manners and keep running through the middle of their camp. Meanwhile everyone else gets on with playing the game the way it was designed......and if NoobKilla and FartyHead happen to pass a group of roleplayers standing around desperately typing out imaginary scenarios to each other in an attempt to compensate for the mmos lack of ability to provide them with the entertainment they crave, then its hardly surprising that those players might stop for a while to jump around in the middle of them all to get a rise......or pull some monsters into their vicinity to watch the reaction.
Ah well maybe someone one day will actually make an mmo which caters to proper roleplaying. I'm sure its possible. It just requires more complex systems than what the limited attempts have had so far. I certainly hope so as I would rather like to play a real massively multiplayer roleplaying game. For now though I have learned to just play the games the way they were designed, occasionally typing a bit of text in character banter for the silliness factor but otherwise just playing the game that I paid money for. If I want to roleplay I will just play a roleplaying game.
Hi!
red the darn responses or at least some of them before posting a wall of text
now mandatory go back to WoW you WoWtard
or are you the OP`s alt?
Abyway , RP`ing and playing the game with it`s game mechanics arent mutualy exclusive. Even if only "tonight we face the wrath of Graashashs , assemble the troups!" instead "We Raid in Kpf at Tdg tg u all T7 pink armor" It`s all about immersion and....gasp...having fun
But you know what? I have 5 years of MMO experience (young i know) and I learned that in 90% of the cases talking to arogant people such as yourself or the op is useless...
That`s why i only play free PvP / death penalty games...at least there I dont have to rely 100% on GM`s to do the job and I can at least work myself to weed out trash (aka grief out if you will) from the game :) Well even 1 WoWtard leaving is a step in the right direction
see what i did here?
i ve not actually played on a roll playing server before . in warcraft i ended up in pvp simily because some friends had told me about it and i ended up on the same server as theme . i did however like the idea of them and a naming policy appeals to me . i mean how many people in wow who play a death knight include death in the there name . i guess if your 12 years old something like pwnyou or critfire would appeal to you . so maybe the roll playing servers are the unofficial adult servers . when i play aion i might give one a try and see what its like
I totally agree with this statement. It should have been more objective and possibly tweaked the name of the article a bit. Dana obviously doesn't or has never been around good rpers. ~OZ
Congratulations on coming across as a complete asswipe! You only needed to read a handful of responses to realize that your entire post was off-target garbage - that you didn't even bother to take a couple seconds to do this is typical of the "me me me" mentality pervasive in MMOs. Ironically it is this type of player which is the most detrimental to game communities, as opposed to the niche and definitely smaller group of so-called "hardcore RPers".
Wow, this brought out the idiots and trolls, didn't it? Including the original blogger/poster.
All right, so the OP strikes me as the type who loves to roll on RP servers JUST to try to get a rise out of those "nerdy RP kids".
I never understood the hate. Listen, if people want to RP and make up stories with their characters because it helps them enjoy the game more, who the hell are you to say it's stupid and they're not "true leet RPers OMG!". Definitions vary. If you don't like RP, just don't do it... just like PVP. Who rolls on a PVP server and then gripes about the PVPers there? It's just flat out idiotic.
Secondly, I find that anyone who uses blanket statements and generalizations such as the old "Thou shalt RPeth with me or a GM shalt be summoned upon thee in a wrath that will make thy eyes bleed!" ye olde English RP cliche' (I honestly have never seen any RPer do this, they adapt to whatever the cultural standard for their chosen character race is in terms of lingo and dialogue, 9 times out of 10) is probably one of those idiots who doesn't realize that all those stories in the game? Probably created by the RP nerd devs in charge of storyline... and there you are playing it and getting all excited about it. And yet you never once realize that the second you log into an online, pretend digital world, you are RPing to some degree. You are running around as a little orc or elf shooting other little orcs and elves in some pretend battle for pretend legendary items.
Thirdly - most RPers just want non-RPers to be respectful and let them do their thing. The only time the whining against non-RPers starts is when the trolls come out to bait them and harass them and grief them. Sure, there's drama within a game's RP community...just like there's drama within a game's raiding community or PVP community. That's human nature, so you can't really single out the RPers in that respect because you might as well...as a very good lyricist put it once in a song... point that feckin' finger up your feckin' ass.
In short: Blogger, if you're not creative enough to understand the desire to RP, that's fine. Some of us aren't competitive enough to want to roll PVP servers or join big raiding guilds. But you do your thing, let the RPers do theirs, and stop being a whiney little turd because some RPer probably gave you an intellectual burn you couldn't quite grasp.
Read the article, must say, author has no clue.
I always pick a RP server on every MMORPG I play. I have no expectation of RPing or ruining someone elses. As others have stated, I go there for the increased "chance" at a mature community in the server population and for the naming policy. The players on these servers seem to be a bit older and at times, actually better players.
I do not actively seek RP situations in game, but if someone approaches me in that manner, I respond in kind specifically not to ruin their immersion. Its not like its hard.
The author's article is correct in that they are essentially a myth. But they are mistaken in almost every reason as to why. Had the author simply written a one line hypothesis they would be correct. But the resulting article is a sad and pathetic attempt at trying to back up their statements after obviously doing little to no research on the actual topic.
I only read the 1st page of comments after the OP. So, if someone else said this stuff, and I am sure they did, good job. And, I am sorry for the repetition.
Nothing but a rant post by Dana. The only difference is that it has more exposure than the other daily rants here.
So this is what MMORPG has been reduced too.
My immediate response is simply "You're an idiot" to the author. Then I thought about it. An editor gave this the nod. This is simply MMORPG drumming up controversy to get hits to sell advertising. Hey MMORPG I got a review I want to sell...I mean write, yeah I work for the gaming company but hey does that really matter.
Real poor guys, real fkn poor.
Removes MMORPG from bookmark.
This is exactly why I prefer RP servers. I don't rp much, hell I solo most of the time, but on an RP server I am less likely to run into moronic douche bags. When I want PvP I play L4D or Huxley (when the beta is up). PvP in most MMO's is a joke anyway, and it attracts crowds of mindless epeen waving yahoos who do nothing but talk trash and spout obscenities and racial slurs.
Seriously, parents need to start using key loggers so that can see just what it is their little manic is saying and doing while they're alone.
Is this a true article? Its very offensive! MMORPG.COM has to be very desperate to hire this type of "staff member"! Very weak material Dana! This type of things is for Trolls!
Sorry Dana, but it seems you really didn't do very well in this article. It happens, especially when there's so much to talk about (always the need to talk about something different) we're bound to eventually find something we do not really dominate enough to write about, or even though you dominate, that knowledge is above the average person. In both cases it doesn't really matter, the drama generated will be the same.
Still, I may be wrong on saying you are wrong, because my knowledge of RP servers are an absolute zero. Never tried one, although many that showed their opinions on RP servers seem to show that I really should give a shot at RP servers. Not really because of the RP, but because of this atmosphere containing a higher level of maturity you may not find in the normal servers with those "I PWN U NOOB" and "OwnsYou" names and grammar, immersion assassinations.
I guess I'd really find a home into RP servers if people are more worried about playing and trying to live the game than finding people with perfectly calculated builds that are in the FOTM requirement on the regular servers.
By you coming on now and responding with that you "may have been a bit over the top" means you do not stand behind the very words you wrote and merely wrote them to get a rise out of people.
You know I was going to respond half positively to what you had written because in a sense you are correct to some degree. I too, believe that some games are more conducive to actual roleplay compared to others, however, with your own admission that you may have gone a bit to far - you blew it.
You've lost all credibility. Should have stuck to what you wrote...because now how are we to believe anything you write and whether what you are writing is true to how you really feel.
best
rp
article
ever
written
thanks!
I rp for some games, some games not. Personally, I never encountered the problem you described, all you really need is an active imagination and the ability to block out everything else. And of course a /ignore feature for the trolls, or good fast GMs that ban them FAST.
Good grief. MMORPG.com could really do without these opinion pieces from the staff instructing us on something we're too naïve to realize (because their conclusions couldn't possibly by false or subjective), don't you think? I haven't agreed with or felt challenged by any I can remember, and I've rolled my eyes rather than grinned or stooped in thought on every occasion.
I've always looked forward to Dana's artciles, this piece was a real blow to my respect for him.
There is and has been a little misconception about Roleplaying.There are several ways t oroleplay ina game,Everquest offers a certain aspect ,witch is quite good,however roleplaying can be as simple as playing out a Paladin or mage withing the confines of the game.It does not have to be more elaborate than that to be considered roleplaying.There are cases as in EQ2 where your player icon is purple and you are in role playing mode,most games offer nothing beyond the roleplaying of the set character.
The opposite end of the spectrum is actually how MOST people play and that is nothing but see how fast they can level up.Levelling has NOTHING to do with ANY form of Roleplaying,unless you think someone in real life is out there trying to find ways to speed up their age and their life,i think the truth is 99.9% are trying to find ways to slow down the aging process and get the most out of each year in their life.
People in games as in real life should be trying to enjoy the real world content or gaming content,nobody in real life is thinking" i need to hurry up and turn 25 because at 22 i am no good and not respcted".So take your in game character and enjoy playing out that Paladin as a protector a group leader/tank,it does not have to be more than that,to be considered RP'ing.
Dana, kcuf ouy!
I don't understand what is dark and foul about a server that encourages people to have fun using their own imaginations. How about a little heart and appreciation for people simply doing what makes them happy?
It's interesting to see all the responces from posters with old accounts and less than 10 posts, talk about hitting a nerve. One guy posted on an account from 04 for the first time in this thread.
I wanted to blame you mercilessly for what you posted (To the OP). I cannot, looking at the present day mmorpg genre deny what you stated.
However, do not be blinded by the golden calf of mmorpgs (WoW) or any other mmo where dudespeak is the norm or where Rp exists in some sort of sickly twisted emo format.
In Dark Age of Camelot - for a few good years - we had three solid rp servers where even OOC was only in private chat. We knew that trade channels, public chats, etc., while not "magically accurate," had to be kept rp. We could use a very small portion of our frontal lobes and assume when someone offered the selling of a crafted product that we had heard this or read this information while wandering through a bazaar or out in the field heard this stated by merchants attempting to sell their wares to hero and commoner alike.
In Dark Age of Camelot - on these three servers (Guinevere, Percival and Nimue) CSRs accepted the responsibility of ensuring names of guilds and players lent to the air of the genre. We were most ex Dungeons and Dragons/MERP/GURPS/and other pencil and paper gamers that brought an air of class and imagination to an already exciting new genre called the mmo - RPG. We knew RP meant to stay loyal to behaving and conversing in the same way your race and class and class level would converse and behave. This made the game so (explitive) real for us - and while we were a "niche" audience - do not in any (explitive) way think for one second we are a minority deserving to be pushed aside for the WoW directed gamers of today's mmorpg generation.
Like old marines we still walk the same streets proudly ready to defend our cause in a world where games like Dark Age of Camelot have been swept under the rug of mediocrity by her own forgetful creators - we should not be cast aside and are arguable worthy of one server per mmorpg that is loyal to the genre. Rp can happen - and many many of us remember this to be true.
If any UO/EQ fans want to speak up on some of their experiences on an rp server (most likely pre 2004) please speak up in order to politely re-educate the OP and his converts.
Let me rename your article to, "The Myth that RP Does Not Exist"
this is just a bad article you have no clue what you're saying. i don't rp but i've always played on rp servers. the reason being its always in my experience been a more mature community. nobody rp's in vent or chat so of course you'll never see any "thou" or "whilst". sounds like you just made some stuff up to me....guess you really couldn't come up with a better subject?
Wow, just...wow.
That was absolutely the the most thoughtless, poorly-considered article I have ever seen posted on this site. I'm not an rp'er, but at least I respect that other people don't game the way I do.
Mmorpg.com brought a lot of gamers with various interests together over the years. I'm stunned that they would let *any* author post an article that so completely disregards the interests of even a minority segment of our community.
You owe those players a damn serious apology for putting that crap on the front page.
This article is a joke, plain and simple.
Mr. OP - I must add humbly that it is shameful to the mmo community and to this excellent website that you have been appointed the...
PR Manager??!!
This article seems to come for a "know-it-all" that really doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sure people in guild chat talk like everyone else, but it's not like we don't rp in team chat or in vin chat.
Seems the author spent a small amount of time on a RP sever, but never tried to get into the groove of it.
Talking about gear and dungon runs all the time probably made the role players stand-offish and guessed he was not going to be around for long. which he wasn't.
Wow, is MMORPG suddenly accepting articles from trolls? They should really just get it over with and throw this bullshit into its own Humor column and get it over with.
10% of the people on a RP server are roleplayers.
10% of the people on a RP server are griefers.
80% of the people are non-roleplayers looking for a server with naming conventions and a more mature player base.
That's pretty much how every RP server I've played on has ended up. If the server is a PvP-RP server, the RP tends to be a little bit better. The best RPing I've seen has been on RP-PvP FFA.
That's actually an observation that over my years of playing mmo's I've noticed as well. More pvp focused games bring out the real "roleplaying" in gamers. Ultima Online easily had the best roleplaying of any game I've ever played hands down. Shadowbane at it's release was probably a good second. From what I read the Cimmeria server in AoC had some pretty good roleplaying guilds doing their thing for awhile, which happens to be a FFA-RPPVP server.
Dunno, I suppose in the end having real conflict with other players to deal with brings out better roleplaying than just whacking mobs and collecting loot 24/7 has to offer.
I do have to say how ridiculous it was to read though some posters accusing Dana of being a "leet pvper" and him having no clue because of that. Probably one of the best, oldest, most respected and hardcore roleplaying guilds to ever exist since UO's release has been Shadowclan which just also happens to be a PvP centric guild (and they are quite good at it). I mean these guys create and use their own friggin languages in the games they play and are forced to always stay in character. And No I'm not a member, but guilds like them actually make a server more fun just being there.
Don't assume because someone prefers pvp they can't roleplay their ass off, the best roleplaying guilds I've run across were usually all about the PvP.
From personal experience.
I would rather do, in your eyes, the impossible and RP while I am logged into whatever game it is I am playin, it is hard as f*** to do with ass-hats logging in and talking their s***.
RPers are there and they abound, how many times do they need to be beat over the head for being "weird" and "gay"?
Weak argument if you ask me...
In all the time I have been coming to MMORPG.com, never before have I read an article so full of misrepresentations, half-truths, and mean-spirited diatribe as I have in this article. Some have come close to being as trite and ridiculous, but none have crossed the threshold into an out-and-out attack on the one form of gameplay that few people understand but many enjoy picking on.
The article is simply disgusting. I could spend inordinate amounts of time explaining what was wrong in that article... but what would be the point? Some would say I spend too much time on such a thing, and almost nobody who already doesn't like RP will care to listen to reason. They just want to be "right", facts and logic and common sense regardless.
I fully intend to contact the website's staff/admins to make a short complaint against the article. If anyone is similarly outraged and has a couple of minutes to spare, I'd recommend doing the same thing. Making posts here isn't going to do much other than make us all upset. Get it off your chest, and let the cards fall where they may.
Regardless of the outcome, I will certainly not be reading or commenting on any further articles by the author. I think 4chan has about as much intellectual merit as this article has bothered showing.
This wins my award for biggest ever troll article by the staff and guest authors.
Very few things in life that are worthwhile are easy to achieve. RP servers are one of them. Yes it is true that no online game is ever going to be like table top, but it does not have to be.
RP servers are their own genre, with players doing what RP they can with the tools at hand, we should be celebrating that achievement rather than heralding only the drawbacks. But I guess a pat on the back does not make for such a big splash does it?
So many people on here state that Dana is wrong about RP servers being filled with non-RPers, yet many people have posted proclaiming that a majority of people play on RP servers not for the RP element, but to play with other "mature" people. Interesting, I didn't realize you could say someone was "wrong" and then support their side with your opposing view.
I also find it funny how many people claim "normal" MMO servers are filled with leetspeak talking asshats, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Sound like you guys are no better than Dana at passing judgement on online communities.
Whoops! Irony!
Undobtedly they are 'hits whores'. Jon has pretty much admited as much. Having said that as a portal it fullfils my needs broadly speaking but it does seem more and more of the featured content needs taking with a grain of sand. Inciting controversy generates trafic.
Dana, this is called "projection" in psychology. Stop projecting your own fantasies and playstyles onto the rest of the MMORPG world. You're the victim and the griefer all in one, but that doesn't mean the majority of RPers out there are. You don't even know what it truly is to be an RPer, and most who go onto RP servers probably don't because they don't have a background in D&D style games.
Bad Dana, no biscuit. Don't knock it until you've tried it, or at least made an attempt to understand it. Oh and
Lightning bolt! Lightning Bolt! LIGHTNING BOLT!!!
I have never disagreed more with an article from the staff at mmorpg like I do with this one. Roleplaying, while not the most popular online gaming aspect, is still alive and thriving. Thriving because with every new generation of gamers, there will be a new batch of roleplayers out of that bunch.
ALSO, you get those adults who are just discovering online gaming and want to take it to the next level. "God bless them" right? Come on now, they aren't kid with down syndrome trying to put on a musical. They are just normal people who want to get into the roles of their online characters. Nothing wrong with that.
The sad thing here is: it is your perspective that is ironic and you are not even aware of it.
Forum posters can and *do* pass judgment on this and that, it is to be expected. They are not professionals and do not see themselves as bound by the tenets of journalism. However, we hope and expect that the media are, and we're usually frustrated when they are patently not.
Going by the reaction in this thread, we can see that the posters expect the staff of this website to hold themselves to such quality of professionalism. This may make the job of the writers a bit harder, but in fact it's a blessing. It means the users are taking this website seriously, and seeing it as a creditable source of information or even opinion. So when a staff member goes and writes a poorly thought out, poorly realized article like this one, they are disappointed. And yes, even angry.
On this website, I have many times tried to defend the concept of honest and noble journalism, argued that it is possible on websites, too - and revenue models be damned. But for this to happen, the staff members have to hold themselves to the tenets and ideals that can make writing professionally a vocation to respect.
I may personally agree with every single point an article makes, but if it's not done in a professional and respectful manner, the writer simply cannot expect to be taken seriously at all. It's not a question of the arguments being wrong or right (which is usually subjective after all). It's a question of respecting your readers, respecting the medium you are working for, and respecting yourself.
Trying to incite discussion by what is tantamount to straight out flaming is *not* respecting any of the above.
If it's true that players pretend to RP and just take the pretext to whine, why is it a problem to you? Not really you're problem if someone chooses to waste time whining rather than playing for fun.
I just feel this article is a rant against people who pretend to RP from a nostalgic pen and table veteran.
I sometime feel like RP'ing, sometimes I don't, I just like to have the choice. I barely speak to people in most case, anyway.
As many have said previously, I think most people use RP servers because of the more strict naming policies therein. It's been 10 years, but it still blows my mind every time I see someone hit max lvl with a character named "Slampig."
Now I usually just come here to get information and read up on the latest mmorpg news, but this article actually made me want to post. This is so far from what most rping servers are, I wonder if this guy has ever tried being on a rping server, let alone actually role playing. I had high hopes when I clicked on the article that I would get some good information, but that was not the case. This article gave a bad name to all rpers and further spreads myths that are far from the truth. Most of everything I would say about how inaccurate this article is has already been said so there is no need to say it again. I just hope that MMORPG.com with post articles with real substance, unlike this bias filled, uneducated rant.
I find the article irritating with it's spurious views on RPing and uninformed generalizations.
This article undermines the OP's opinion for me from now on and I hope we see some kind of explanation or apology
I see alot of complaints here, but, I agree with the article. Even in games such as UO, where there was a "sense" of role-play in the absolute meaning of the word, it only went so far (on a non-enforced non-RP server). Yeah most of my friends said "aye" and that bugged the shit out of me, but live and let live. I think if a person wants to role-play, expect to get ragged on. It's a fact of life that people log in just to make fun of you pansies that treat in-game items as real life items. It's the 6 degrees of seperation from not wanting to take the trash out or mow the grass.
I can imagine forcing the rules of an RP server to be a pain in the ass to say the least. Modding everyone who mentions iran or politics or talks about myspace because it has nothing to do with the game.
I don't agree with him saying the most RP tuned game is EVE though. I've played it for years and it mostly people talking about gimped ships or skills and nothing to do with "aye captian i shall go into sector 7 to smite the pirates" ... it's more like f*ck yeah lets kick some pirate ass boiiiitcches!
Anyway .. back to killing things for my pleasure
Dude.. That statement made me laugh so damn hard. Though, I wouldnt bless them, I'd laugh and point.
there is no irony at all. There are role players on these servers. They tend to be a bit more mature in many respects. Other people who are not role players seek out the maturity of these servers because the role players make it a more interesting and mature community.
I have been playing MMO's since Ultima Online first released .. and since RP servers started coming out on MMO's, I have almost exclusively chosen them when available (except in cases of RvR or PvP in which case i chose RvRRP or PvPRP) and I have to say that my personal experience with RP servers is so far removed from your article that it, for me at least, calls into question whether or not you have played many hours on a RP server other than one on WoW.
RP servers have, to me, almost always had a higher percentage of:
1- mature players (per total # of players on said server) (and I do not mean age, I mean emotionally mature, socially adjusted, and generally less A$$hatty behavior)
2- Orderly and well run guilds (probably, in part, for the above reason)
3- GM responses & attentiveness
I literally know *personally* over two dozen gamers, both hardcore and casual, that have become comfortable swearing off any other server than RP ones **specifically** for this reason. Some get very "into RPing" .. some do not. Ultimately, however, there is no doubt in my mind that RP servers hold the game to a closer standard to "realistic" fantasy play than other servers in virtually every MMO I have played. Are there flaws and misconceptions? Almost always. But I find your rant.. lacking any semblance to my personal experience and.. no offense.. but sounding a tad whiney. I neither *want* Leeroy Jenkins or Ikillj00 players on a RP server, nor am I one. I do not rant about RP servers having to be "pure", nor do I expect them to be perfect.
Personally, I think the 880lb gorilla in the room is the comment left unsaid and painfully left uncommented upon in your post. MANY players choose RP servers because *YES, THEY DO* tend to repulse the players who are less likely to fit in the #1 category above. IMHO, a shockingly high # of RP-server players just use the RP tag as a Ikillj00 filter, respect the actual RP players, and hide out on the RP servers in order to reduce the Chuck Norris spam.
100% agree
"As many have said previously, I think most people use RP servers because of the more strict naming policies therein. It's been 10 years, but it still blows my mind every time I see someone hit max lvl with a character named "Slampig.""
Do we have levels here? And did I hit the cap?
On a side note, Slampig is the name of my first band and according to a couple of Swedish guys I played EQ with it is slang for dirty-sl** in Sweden, don't know if that is true or not but hey...
By the way, do I get an exp boost or something for being mentioned in someone else's post?
Ego +1
That article has got to be the biggest pile of crap that I have ever read on this site from an mmorpg source.
I'm not impressed with this article at all. Mostly opinions stated as facts with little or no real information.
This could have been a good subject to write an article about, if it was done by someone who knew something about it.
If that had been posted by someone else on the forums, it probably would have been lock for trolling. All these F2P articles and now this, you guys are really putting out garbage lately.
William Shatner RPs. Hell he even LARPS.
William Shatner > Danna Massey.
It just goes to show everyone how naive a person(s) that both Mr. Massey, and his editor are, if they did not expect this sort of backlash from the community.
Sure, it's somewhat easy to saw at this point that it was an "opinion piece" and is therefor should be unsubjected to the general standards that most journalistic endeavors and brought to bear against. Unfortunately for you, Mr. MMORPG staff member, no one bought that line of horse shit for a second.
To make an opinion piece, you have to PRESENT it as an opinion piece, of which it most certainly was not, here, let me paraphrase your own shitty article, so you might actually understand where were coming from:
"RP servers are foul and dark, and terrible." "RPers are nasty people" "The people who routinely do nothing than insult RPers are better then RPers"
Those aren't opinions, those are lines that are almost directly quoted from the article. They are being presented as FACTS not opinions, so no, it wasn't an opinion paper by any stretch of belief.
It's a shame you guys went out of your way to insult what is possibly the most textually competent of any group of people you can choose to insult, because this isn't going to end. Were going to continue to come here and post about what a farce this whole ordeal has been, and were not going to let you back out of it with your supposed smooth talking.
First this sopping rag was termed as "It's intention was to incite debate". Now it's being termed as an opinion piece. What it really was, was a hate filled, irrational, drawn out slurr against an ENTIRE COMMUNITY. Regardless of whether or not you actually believe yourself that this was truely an "opinion piece" you fail to come to terms with the fact that you've managed to piss off a large community that writes far more collectively then any group of writers on the face of the planet. Good job MMORPG, you morons.
Here is Dana's logic in a nutshell. "If you consider yourself an RPer, your a piece of dirt that no one should care about ever."
It's almost as false as the following statement: "If you consider yourself a writer, and your name is Dana Massey, your a piece of dirt that no one should ever read again, ever."
Oh wait, that last one is actually quite factually correct. My apologies.
I don't even know what to say. I don't remember many people using "thou" or other such words when I played Shadowrun or Vampire.
Just because the servers and game mechanics themselves don't stop people from playing OOC and just because the vocal majority thinks roleplaying is "for nerds" as opposed to playing video games which is now "for everyone" ... none of this means the craft is not viable and not supported by the players.
You can't claim that the number of people who "would" roleplay won't even fill a guild when the population you are sampling is from a game that doesn't support them. You also can't blame the role players for trying to fit into that game when it labels itself as an RPG. If I made a game called "FPS Shooter RAWR!" and it was a puzzle game with falling geometric shapes that you have to make lines with... I think you could forgive people for thinking it was going to have guns in it.
The number of people who "would" roleplay if they were actually catered to is pretty large as evidenced by the sales and continued popularity of table top RPGs. Sure many purists would never go to an electronic format but many would. I think WotC is kind of banking on that with their whole new system for DnD gameplay through an electronic UI.
The bottom line is I play tabletop RPGs I also occasionally (though not often) roleplay in an MMO. SWG is a fine example, years ago I went around spouting all the Imperial rhetoric I could. Plenty of people told me to "stfu" and yet I never paid them any mind. Tons of people were actually happy to hear what I had to say and thanked me for adding to the "star wars" feel that was sorely lacking. It also made me feel quite immersed in the world and I enjoyed it for that aspect if nothing else. I never considered arguing with those who didn't like it ..just /ignore me and that's that.
Do ..SOME people do it for the "cause" they can feel a part of even if they don't really agree? Sure. Yet, isn't that true of any endeavor?
Yeh....not only are they trying to pass this trash of as an Opinion Article...which I guess means writing shit no matter who it may offend or piss off... (man, I could really write one HELL of an opinion piece right now), but it's the #1 or Lead Story on the main page.
The quality writing has really bottomed out here. Some of the newer contributors are absolutely pathetic and this piece went way over the top.
For MMORPG to stand by this article and actually promote it.
Well, I've been a member here for several years....but no more.
No clicks to your site from me anymore.
I may only be one.....but I have standards. Apparently, this site doesn't.
I can think of one RPG that goes against Dana's claims (concerning rpgs in general), the catch is that its a single player game. However, it still manages to coerce the player into the role playing experience. That game? Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. If it were multi-player it might just keep that effect.
Multi-player Baldur's Gate was able to do this as well to a certain degree.
Seems like a rather naive post. In my experience, these little arguments between RP people and the trolls that like to torment them occur in the beginning areas or the capital areas where people tend to congregate. But hey, those are where all the evils of gaming seem to occur. Gold spammers . . . beggars . . . blanket spammed guild invitiations . . . scams . . . it all takes place in the cities. Just like in the old days when the rural preachers of America used to talk about the sins of the city. It's just like saying that anybody that goes to the capital areas or crafting areas or auction areas, etc, likes to be the victim of gold spammers, beggars, scams, etc.
As for this idea that nobody really roleplays, well sheesh, I think that everybody does in fact roleplay. Afterall, only in a roleplaying game would you seriously care whether you had the Hammer of All-Power or not. In real life I don't run around in armor or a sword. And as for talking funny, well, who needs to talk funny to roleplay. In the Middle Ages, everybody in the same region tlaked the same and nobody sounded like they had an accent unless they were from a few valleys over. So if nobody uses an "accent" when they roleplay, that's fine. That just simulates that nobody would hear an accent anyway.
Leet talk is just another form of Thieve's Cant or the slang of youth gangs. In Rome there was there was slang amongst mercenaries, teens, etc. And no doubt, the language grated on the ears of the elder and the more refined. Well, hearing leet speak just lends to my roleplaying experience.
The only thing that really hurts the experience is when people talking about stuff totally unrelated to the game, but then again . . . haven't people always talked about family life, whatever sporting events they were interested in (bar fights or the latest gladiatorial results), and the more mundane occurances of life throughout history? So, hey, I can incorporate that into the roleplaying experience too.
So people can talk about all these different things and use leet speak and all that and STILL be roleplayers because even though all these real life discussions can be brought intot he illusion of roleplay, the fact that they are pretending to play with swords or using magic just doesn't transfer intot he real world. In the real world, we just don't run around with swords, fight dragons, etc. We don't care about obtaining ancient artifacts because of the power they will give us. We are not adventurers and warriors and mages. So we are all roleplaying.
I will agree 100% every role playing venture i have encountered is at the top of the maturity chain.Many like the childish incentives games offer,but most of us just want to play and relax.
Although it might have been brought up in the 200+ posts before this one, I think a point needs to be emphasized, namely people want RP servers for various reasons and not just to act like they are at a Renaissance Faire. The few times that I have tried RP-servers, I wanted an environment where the players would contribute to a developing story, a world history in essence. Unfortunately I first tried it in AoC, which was virtually unmoderated, even though they had clear statements such as "playing a homicidal maniac will not be tolerated" and strict naming conventions; nonetheless my demonologist would get repeatedly ganked by rez point camper guilds in whatever the endgame city was with players named “Leetassmonkey” and so forth. A RP-server that isn’t strictly moderated will fail, and cause people to leave the game in frustration; they had promised a prison-type system for months, but it didn’t make prime time prior to my loss of interest in the game; perhaps that could have imposed a less gank-based game-play experience for those players who like to ask why would my character do this (other than to get an upgrade on their gear). I am principally a PvP-server guy, but I sympathize with the RP’ers out there, as I think they aspire to a more immersive gaming environment, as opposed to the majority of habituated token economy driven mindless shooter players; I don’t think of frustrated RP'ers as whining, but rather blame the company’s inability to follow through in implementing promised game content. Another reason why people join such servers also include the perception of a more mature population who are interested in a larger more “real society” interactive environment, which is cool. There are plenty of old school pencil and paper gamers who have no desire to talk in Old English, who would welcome a more substantial story driven gaming experience; I will probably give it a try in SWTOR if available because of the potential for actually shaping a storyline, but time will tell just how player-on-player interactive it will turn out to be.
Well, imo, AoC is kind of a bad example.
The game was/is purely combat based, all it's innovations were poured into that system.
There whole RP server idea was tantamount to placing one more chocolate chip on top of a sundae in which you've already poured 100 prior to this last one. It held no weight, and was out of "Well, every other game company does it, so we should to" mentality.
That being said, in any game, even AoC, it's not hard to form enclaves waaaay away from traveled places, which totally negates the effect of anyone who joins the server for less-than-wholesome reasons, shall we say.
But yeah...back on topic, Dana and the folks at MMORPG.com really need to at least a little bit of research before writing "opinion" articles.
Let's say you, as a person, had never tasted cheese before. Someone walks up to you, at a cheese convention no less, and hands you what is quite possibly the most foul piece of shitty, processed cheddar and says, "Here, it's CHEESE, you'll like it." So you eat it, hate it, find it disgusting, and then proceed to run around said cheese convention, screaming your head off that "Cheese sucks, it's absolutely worthless, and it also doesn't even exist."
^ Replace the words CHEESE with Roleplaying, you have basically what you did here Dana.
Ahem, here I'll translate for you: l2p "My Pretend Writer" you nub, kthxbai.
Untrue that no video games have fostered RP. NWN has had some excellent RP on their servers but then that CAN be enforced because the people running the server are players and real people acting as the GMs. It's not like WoW where there is no way to enforce RP except for names and even then the GMs in WoW are lazy about it.
I find it funny as hell though that without PnP games like D&D, you know "Roleplaying Games" you wouldn't have most MMOs. Without people like Gary Gygax you wouldnt really have games like WoW because that's where the idea came from. Before computers people sat around playing games with pencil and paper and then eventually someone thought "hey what if I could put this into computer format and have thousands of people playing at the same time." That's the real kicker here.
Soon, we will get an mmorpg where we can RP. This game is mortal online. Like the writer said, RPing in EVE was like real. So it will be in MO too.
In MO, there is no global chat. When you wishper, if someone is near you and you wishper to someone far aways, the guys near you will hear what you just said. Even for guild chat or party chat. This may add a lot of immersion for rpers.
The whole game is fpv so it does add immersion. No minimap. You have to buy a map and you can note stuff on it with a pen in game.
So MO is the nest game where you will be able to rp well. If a none rper want to ruin your day, you can even kill him and go on or you can see him as a crazy guy.
Alright....one more post.
I also posted this in the AoC forums, where this trash was brough up in a post.
Massey's "article"....if one can even call it that....is nothing more than a rant intended to piss off a bunch of people....for who knows what reason.
It's quite apparent that he somehow got his feelings hurt while on a RP preferred server, so he used his position as a writer to "stir" it up.
All he accomplished by writing that trash is lose credibility as a "writer', and piss people off. A somewhat "official" rant like that also widens the gap between RPers and those that grief the RPers by feeding the griefers dislike with fictional crap presented as fact.
It's kinda like somewhat writing a racist piece and generalizing, in a negative way, members of that race. Those that agree with the writers bogus opinion take all that information as fact and it feeds and replenishes their racist views, while those that were needlessly and inappropriately attacked can only sit by and say "wtf?"
My poll is still running about 85% yes (YES! or depends on studio/game) that people would spend twice as much for a game and three times as much for a monthly subscription to get a game that focuses more on story (and presumably would be more RP friendly). If there are any industry folks reading this thread, maybe you should consider this as a leaping-off point for some more general market research?
Shava
Just to chime in, I have not read the 20 or so pages comprising this thread, but Dana's idea of what roleplaying, and roleplayers are is just plain wrong. Perhaps he should not write about things that he clearly has either one sided experience or no experience with.
An RP server that actually enforced policy can, and would probably have to, charge a lot more money each month. Enough people are obviously willing to make it worth someone's time!
Separating players based on their particular play styles may sound elitist, but a lot of the issues developers have policing RP servers in the first place are coming from conflicting play styles, and a simple lack of man power. Actually, conflicting play styles is a gross understatement, because Rpers and non Rpers might as well be on different planets. Not regulating RP servers because it's too much work... is the very reason they don't work. Charge more $$$...
Thoust haveth nay idea on what thou is speaking of.
/ooc worst article evah!
That sounds amazing. That is the type of experience I try to find in MMOs these days, but it is hard.
Dana must be menstrating right now because that article was just screaming "I am really pissed off because some RPer pissed me off ingame."
Dana could not be more wrong in his article. I have seen MANY roleplayers that contradict everything in his article.
Dane, if someone miffed you off in the game, settle it with that person. Don't write up an article about it because when people who are angry write articles, more times than not, the article will appear to be down right retarded. Like this article.
Sorry, man. Worse article I have seen on mmorpg.com.
Gee, you think?
You're entitled to your opinion but using your staff "powers" to make an article bashing a legit group of people deserves to be locked. Your thread was created to formally debate the topic. It was created because you got pissed off by a RPer and you excerised your title here to make the biggest damn thread about it.
Dana, remember when you rode my ass because you thought I did not spot check my star wars review as there was a couple grammar errors? Well, Karma sucks doesn't it? lol.
This "editorial opinion" should be locked for trolling.
Absolutely great article. Hits the nail on the head.
Hello,
I have been postin here off and on. My current MMO is Runes of Magic. I play on a PVE server Oshe (i think i spelt it right) Some of you may know me as the annoying guy who always role play. "Thorion " is my character's name. He does speak in the King James style english but it is quite fun for me. It helps me enjoy the game and when I role play the character has certain attributes about himself, such as his fear for horses and a couple other things. He also rambles on when he is killing monsters about smiting them etc, even if not in a party I role play this. Most people I find enjoy his company and enjoy him being in their parties. Other's a few are real big jerks about it etc and call me obscene names etc and tells me to stop. Most of the names my character doesn't understand so I say something that usually gets the zone laughing, which is part of the fun of me roleyplaying the character. Anyways role playing should be in MMORPG's since they are RPG"s RP as in role playing.. thus I try to remind people of that by playing "Thorion" it is fun for me and if people don't want to they don't have too but if there is a game with dedicated role playing servers, one would think those servers would be for those who are like my self and seek to role play, thus those who don't have other options. Just my thoughts..
God Bless,
Dustin
Just like to say there are some good people out there who enjoy roleplaying. Also, I've never, in the decade I've been playing MMORPGs, run into people who only roleplay because they want to be victims, so I don't know where that idea came from. Anyway, I've read a few of your articles Dana and some make sense, but to me this article was just extremely hurtful. Kind of like if you said to a woman who was raped, that most women who get raped enjoy it.
Overall this article was extremely offensive to me.
You know, considering most of you are casual and can't tell the difference between an asshat and a well played RP dick, it might be possible that most of you aren't empathic enough to realize Dana is right...to a degree. Maybe a lot of people got to RP servers to seek a more "mature" community and maybe when they run into "sirpwnsalot" they turn into the victimizing person Dana speaks about. It's not something you would even see, it would be a player ticket or feedback submitted by anyone any where without your knowledge.
For example, let's say Player A gets mad at Player B for metagaming. Player A might bring it to the attention of Player B and Player B might report them for harassment behind the scenes. Nobody would even know. This is the bullshit I imagine Dana is talking about. So many "Role players" try to exploit the system when they screw up by metagaming, and then they get angry. Is it so hard to imagine that they falesly report other players for breaking rules because of this? In a pen and paper game, this would almost never happen because it's pretty obvious when someone is just being a metagaming dickwad. In an MMORPG though, it might be less obvious.
This entire article was biased;
Role players are simply rolling on rp servers to be victims? Rp griefers are more intelectually honest? What happened to Dana Massey on a rp server for him to be so bitter?
Role play servers use phrases such as whilst and thou? Not likely, and since you are citing WoW as your primary source for your "article" next time look into the lore, not even the characters in the game use ""whilst and thou."
All in all your article was an uninformed rant that did little more than belittle people who play on and frequent rp servers. I would expect better from someone who works for a website that promotes the rpg aspect of MMORPG.
I actually agree. This article is little more than a troll of rp server players. Dana Massey should know better considering he is the former editor of MMORPG.
So you had a bad experience on an rp server Dana, we get it. It is just a shame that you used that experience to create a bully pulpit.
It is endemic of anyone in the media that they want to be as shocking and controversial as possible to get attention. Sometimes this backfires, like with the OP’s post.
Using my RP tools I have created a stake, built on kindling wood and fagots. We can tie him to it and light the match if you like. Just say the word. :D
Thank you Scot, I choked on my coffee...
Ok, everyones getting it by now; Danas full of crap, enough already... Just stop feeding the troll now.
I'm not speaking about the content of the article on way or another, but I WOULD like to point out that this was an OPINION piece. Disagree with the opinion, sure, but you're dressing it down because it IS an opinion.... which is the point of each of the five featured columns every week.
I'm not bashing the column because it's an opinion, I'm bashing it because it's a poorly thought out rant, and nothing more. Sanya was able to write a good column which has researched facts, well stated opinions and even some suggestions about how to improve the situation, which in turn led to the intelligent discussion Dana claims to have wanted to start.
If the point of the five weekly columns is just to offer an opinion on the internet, then why don't you just fire the professionals and hire unskilled schmucks off the street to do it for half the pay? Because you want quality articles.
So either the point of the weekly columns is to have well-thought out articles or to have the writers put out any damn thought that happens to float through thier head. If the latter is the case, I would like to apply for all the writer's jobs. I could easily write five columns a week by myself, and I'll do it for half the pay.
So, in the interest of fair disclosure, which of your sponsors encouraged you to trash the concept of RP servers?
Maybe the same guys who asked you to write an article about how what MMORPGs really need to succeed is to target their minimum system requirements on what the average gamer possessed for hardware eight years ago?
I don't mind the huge influx of ads and special sponsors on the site, as long as the content maintains it's integrity. However, it's really starting to feel like you are selling out.
How long until we start seeing glowing reviews for games that wouldn't have even been viable if they had come out eight years ago?
As to RP servers, even when half the people on them don't know what RP is and 1% of the RPers are "RP Nazis", the servers are still almost always better to play on than the non-RP servers.
The real myth is that RP servers are a failed concept no matter what. The reason there are so many problems with RP servers is that the game companies don't take the concept seriously enough. The added workload of trying to placate complaints issued by players on these servers stems from lack of seriousness in establishing rules from the beginning and enforcing them.
If players were forced to explicitly acknowledge and agree to the rules of RP servers before they could join one and could face the very real threat of having their characters booted from such a server if they blatantly flaunt those rules, the enforcement workload would quickly settle down to the same levels seen on other servers. It's the very real impression, reinforced by the developers, that the rules don't really matter and that the expectations that you will RP on a RP server are next to nil that cause all the trouble.
There is a potentially large financial benefit for an MMORPG publisher with a solid game to offer an RP server where the RP rules are enforced the same way any of the other ToS are enforced. A real, solid RP community can keep a title healthy and afloat long after the power leveler and lulz crowds move on to the next, best thing. Unfortunately, most companies have done a very poor job nurturing RP communities for their titles.
BTW, the concept that RPers aren't themselves true to the concept if they have any out of character communications is ludicrous. I'd be a little worried about the sanity of someone who insisted on 100% of their communications being in character with no exceptions. RP in /say is the crucial part. RP in other open channels is a matter of policy; RP rules for parties/guilds are up to those individuals.
To expect otherwise would be akin to expecting actors in a play to remain in character 100% of the time while behind the scenes, or expecting a parent who likes to embellish storytelling by doing character voices to tell the entire story in a funny voice.
I know that with the RP / anti-RP split among serious MMORPG fans you must have felt it would be safe to write such an article, knowing you'd find support no matter how flawed your argument was. Well, fine, but it still feels like you are really pandering to potential sponsors, or maybe even to a cadre of "insiders" with whom you are desperate to fit in with. Last I checked, though, this was a site for MMORPG fans, not an insiders site for developers and CSRs to commiserate on the "sad state of our ignorant, obnoxious customer base".
It's not the fault of the player base that so many titles fail, or fall far short of expectations. It's flawed development. It's not the fault of RPers that so many RP servers fail to offer what they promise, or become sources of conflict and contention; it's lack of clarity on the rules and serious enforcement of those rules by the developers.
To claim that RP server rules are unenforceable and only lead to an unnecessary waste of GM manpower is akin to claiming that rules against gold selling, hacking, racism, sexually explicit talk and harassment are unenforceable and only lead to an unnecessary waste of GM manpower. It's the lack of willingness to enforce the rules as any other rule set forth in the ToS that leads to the mish-mash we find on most MMORPG RP designated servers.
Journalism is no place for the jaded. Just because the RP community wouldn’t accept you is no reason to run around belittling the honour system that RP communities rely on. As you grow up you will find that not everything in life is quantifiable. Some things rely more on unwritten rules, than on hard and fast expectations. Your inability to see and comprehend the subtle nuances of online culture is outstanding.
And I'm not even a roleplayer...
The logic would make sense if this was a normal thread as it would make its way to the bottom. However, this shoddy material is published right on the front webpage of the site in huge, big, glowing lights.
Admin, needs to treat this thread like a troll thread; lock, delete and warn the op
RP in WoW exists, but one have to look for it because it is not happening all the time. The most popular RP server in WoW is Moonguard. After playing in that server for 3 years, I can say it could be a disappointment for new players that do not know the state of RP affairs in that server. The advise I give to people is to join a RP guild.
Although there are people that follow RP rules, the best bet is to join a guild. One must keep in mind that this is a video game, mostly targeted to teenagers. Do I have to say more? When teenage hormones go out of control it could ruin your RP experience at the point one must disable the general chat. That's when people realize that a RP guild is necessary. Last time I check there were military oriented guilds and some cultists/evil guilds and "Light-pushers" guilds.
It is good to join a RP guild because they usually organize guild events. For those that do not like to join guilds, an alternative is to ask in general chat . Chances are there are people looking for a RP fix. *shrugs*
In conclusion, RP guilds are the best option.
This column is a juvenile attempt at creating a stir. Well, I guess it did what it set out to do. 200+ replies, nothing in this world is black n white, which includes RP servers. I'm tired of the RP bashing. Enjoy your 2 minutes of mmorpg column fame. The column is a total waste of bandwidth.. And here i go contributing to it. Oops.
well said
Your articles are usually good, but reading that i felt like i was reading a rp bashing post written by some kid on the wow general forums. Really was like some sort of anti-rp propaganda. Absolute tripe.
I think there's a lot of 'douche-baggy biased opinion' laced in that article and many douche-baggy people will agree with what's stated to make themselves feel better about being douche-bags.
I think, if Wish was ever made, the major part of it's playerbase would've been RPers, so there is an irony in this. Oh, well, Dana, lucky it failed in the end, isn't it?
Underneath all the baiting, I think Dana has a point.
I'm generally alright with the article except for one line:
"It’s time to face the fact that no video game, noRPG, let alone MMORPG, has ever truly fostered role-playing. "
I believe that MMORPGs can foster roleplay, and do foster roleplay, when the design makes it just as easy to roleplay than to not roleplay. Because I'm of the thought that if it is easy for a player to follow continuity, players (even non-roleplayers) will generally follow continuity. However, most games make it a hard and convoluted process to follow continuity, which then makes roleplaying a hard, convoluted, and ultimately self-defeating pursuit.
Dana already mentions EVE, which is funny, because EVE is probably the worst platform for roleplaying there is, mechanically speaking. There are no avatars (just character portraits), no RP servers, no environments besides space, and no cosmetic customization. All EVE has is four chat channels for the four races, and thousands of players have create a strong roleplaying network just on the basis of what goes on in there and in the roleplaying forums. The key to EVE's success as a roleplaying platform is that it is just as easy to follow continuity as to not. As a result, people generally roleplay.
Perhaps the best platform for roleplaying I've seen is Star Wars Galaxies. It had everything EVE had...and a whole lot more. There were literally hundreds of places in the game that the artists created that have no mechanical purpose other than to provide environments congenial to roleplay. There are thousands of items that can be created to customize characters and customize environments. Speaking of environments, the player-placed structures provided a huge opportunity for roleplaying environments. However, like EVE, SWG had no roleplaying servers.
So I have to agree with Dana's assessment that roleplaying servers don't make a roleplaying game easy to roleplay in. If the game is truly a good platform for roleplay, it will need no roleplaying servers, and people will naturally roleplay because there is no conflict between acting in-character and acting in a free way, no matter what server a player chooses.
I generally have a few rules of thumb for fostering good roleplay:
1) Modern and sci-fi games generally foster roleplay better than medieval, fantasy games. That's because sci-fi and modern games are easier for we 21st century people to relate to. Nobody needs to speak in "thee" and "thou," and nobody has to follow strange codes of conduct that are not condusive to our times. That makes it easy for non-roleplayers to "get" what the fiction is about, and creates less resistance between the player and the lore. /Tells, global chat, and voice chat are a lot more "roleplay friendly" when the lore offers a reasonable, technological explanation for these conveniences.
2) Games that are based in something people know are better for roleplay than games where people have to learn a whole new fiction. I don't believe the roleplay in Star Wars Galaxies would have been as good if it didn't have the Star Wars movies for players to relate to. Everybody already knew how to roleplay--and wanted to roleplay--because they all saw the movies, and would just as well "play along" than "play against" the fiction. But WoW? All people have is the RTS to go on, and even there, one really gets no sense of how these people live or how the world is supposed to function.
3) Games that give many spaces for roleplay are better able to foster roleplay than games that have fewer spaces. Spaces can be defined in terms of time or places. If there is a lot of time where action doesn't take place (like travelling in EVE), roleplay will develop to pass the time. If there are plenty of spaces that are set aside for players to use as they see fit (like the places in SWG), players will use them for roleplay.
See, the problem is that most games these days do not do the above three well. Hence, they need to do "stopgap" measures of enforcing RP, like creating RP servers. But as Dana points out, a game isn't automatically goping to become "roleplay friendly" just because it is designated as a roleplaying reservation. Because if the game were truly a good platform for roleplay, it wouldn't need to declare roleplaying servers. All servers would be roleplaying servers, because the game would be designed in such a way as people would want to roleplay, or at least be able to play in a way as to not cause a conflict with continuity.
The article started out ok but then went too far. I knew a ton of true RP'ers in Wow. They didn't slip out of character, they genuinely liked RP. My entire guild of over 100 hundred was like that (mostly). And no fiction to sink into? An outright lie, these games have writers that sit around writing backstory, true RP'ers read it all and incorporate it into their RP.
I think his post was pretty good and hit the nail on the head in many areas, and all the responses you see here just goes to show the truth hurts.
What hurts is someone tossing around generalizations about a whole community of players that makes all look like the Cyber-whiney-thouwhilst crowd, when that's hardly what most RPers in MMO's are like at all. THAT'S why people are pissed.
Oh look, another philistine on the sidewalk.
An EVE advert.
Want to see real RP Dana? Shadowclan was the guild that set the standard, possibly a thousand members have been in our ranks over the last 10 years, we purposefully put ourselves at a disadvantage in games like UO to enhance the gaming experience for everybody. I find your article tasteless and offensive.
Shadowclan.org
There is a player behind every one of these orcs. This was the Catskills server in UO.
Furthermore, I don't know if you played UO, but people usually hung out in their towers or at the bank. Not the orc fort. We went out of our way to create something different for everyone to enjoy.
Oh look, another philistine on the sidewalk.
Oh look another who can't read, all they see is "OMG RPER'S GETTING ATTACKED"
As an Rper myself i knew when i first read this article the responses would be off the wall, So many Rper's get so butthurt over anything, hell they can barely get along with each other without talking behind each others backs, critiquing how everyone else Rp's, forming there little RP clicks basically shutting out anyone new from RPing.
This thread just proved alot about what he was talking about, just look how the RPer's here are acting.
I'll start Rping again when RPer's learn to grow up. =)
I will agree not all are like that, but in the games i have played, on many different servers, Rp servers have started out nice, then went down the crapper. Rper's are Rper's worst enemies, or are they just Rping drama?
Thats pretty awesome, i'm glad you are showing positive stuff about Rper's instead of just attacking Dana like most of these people.
There are good times i have had with Rp, but lately i see mostly bad sucks to be me i guess lol.
Anyways i'm just posting the negatives because Rper's seem to not want to admit to all the bad crap that happens in these communities.
I'm sure i'll get more RPer HATE, alot of Rper's get over emotional and want you to die if you say anything negative about RP.
The article has nothing to do with some of bad crap that happens in the communities. It disregards anything accomplished by said communities and downgrades the roleplayer in a sweeping generalization. You are raising a totally different topic. And quite honestly your issue alone is not all that special neither. What community has such amazing cohesiveness to not have some issues? PvP? Umm no. I've been a part of that community and sometimes it can be like tossing yourself in a den of rabid dogs. PvE? Nope been a part of that too and sometimes you would think it was a PvP community with how competitive these guys get.
Simple fact is there isn't any community without its issues and bad crap as you state. Acting as if it is something totally unique to roleplaying communities is a stretch. There is a reason why many players who simply do not rp wish to go to such servers. Other than those who wish to troll and harass there are those (and some admitted in this thread alone) that go because the cohesiveness in those communities are still rather strong. And your whole "butthurt" statement earlier...so pvpers don't get that way? So pve'ers don't get that way? No, they all do because they all invest something into their gaming and it means something to them.
Whether a pvp player, a pve player or rper, you are a person and a gamer. We all hold what we enjoy most close to heart. Yeah maybe too close sometimes but it doesn't matter your approach to the game. We all care about it the same and respond when that manner is attacked in some way. This article is generalizing many rpers and downgrading them...how else should they respond to it? Happy joy joy?
Personally, I don't have a problem with RP in and of itself. However, I do have a problem with those who refuse to back up their RP with action. It's like someone who constantly deplores the state of the upbringing of the local youth but doesn't lift a finger to try to change things.
Let me tell you a little story about the type of roleplayer I hate...
I play EVE Online, and once upon a time I was part of an alliance by the name of Star Fraction. They were a roleplay focused alliance with a rather radical in-game ideology which placed them in opposition all of the in-game NPC empires. As such, we would declare war on those corporations whose roleplay supported said empires. What was really annoying and ironic, however, is that when the war decs went live and we started killing members of said empire-supporting corps, in most instances they would complain about being attacked, stressing how they didn't want to fight or just refusing to engage even when they had a numerical and/or tactical advantage. In essence, they claimed to support their empire of choice, but, when the gauntlet was down, they refused to back up said claims.
Firstly the majority of replies have been from non roleplayers. Secondly on the whole they have been well thought out and articulate certainly not "omg blah blah blah" or "off the wall"as you claim. I wonder if you actually read any responses. Thirdly the majority have critisised the style of the piece (or should I say lack of it) rather than the topic that was addressed.
Like the article there is very little of merit in your post. That which there may be is lost in your 'rant', you are behaving in precisely the fashion that you suposedly abhor. Or maybe you are role playing a petulant teenager, perhaps you should stamp and pout and maybe scream a little because your point isn't coming across too well.
Firstly the majority of replies have been from non roleplayers. Secondly on the whole they have been well thought out and articulate certainly not "omg blah blah blah" or "off the wall"as you claim. I wonder if you actually read any responses. Thirdly the majority have critisised the style of the piece (or should I say lack of it) rather than the topic that was addressed.
Like the article there is very little of merit in your post. That which there may be is lost in your 'rant', you are behaving in precisely the fashion that you suposedly abhor. Or maybe you are role playing a petulant teenager, perhaps you should stamp and pout and maybe scream a little because your point isn't coming across too well.
I see another attacker, perhaps you should take your own advice, you seem to be ranting like a petulant teenager, hyporcrite much?
If you haven't noticed i have attacked those who have chosen to attack me, try growing up a little. =)
Not an RPer even, just pointing out the ignoramuses -- like yourself. Way to miss the point.
Paranoia my friend, no wonder you see attackers everywhere. Re read my post particularly pay attention to the three points I made. You seem to have trouble with comprehension so this exchange is pointless.
Was that banner ad for mmorpg hireing for new writers always there at the top of the page, or did that just start shortly after they posted this story?
Not an RPer even, just pointing out the ignoramuses -- like yourself. Way to miss the point.
You mean like yourself, seeing what you want to see, if your looking for ignoramuses, look in the mirror. =)
Paranoia my friend, no wonder you see attackers everywhere. Re read my post particularly pay attention to the three points I made. You seem to have trouble with comprehension so this exchange is pointless.
Not paranoid at all, you tried putting me down buy masking it in your little RP comment, nice try i guess.
but yes this exchange is pointless you see what you want to see and i see it the way i see it. have a good day. =)
I've seen it up there for a long time now.
No it has been up there for a very long time.
If this article were PVP, it was just one-shotted by Sanya Weathers.
Role-playing servers have become a beacon for two kinds of player: those who claim to be RPers, and those who love to annoy people who claim to be role players. And of the two, the second group is the more intellectually honest. - Dana Massey
Thank you for the insult (as well as the others in the message/rant). So staff are exempt from the Rules of Conduct that are enforced in the forums to users? Hummm...
/block
Oh wait, that's considered role-playing... then consider this as one less person to be reading of your works.
I have been following MMORPG.com for many years looking for information, discussions and advice about my hobby mmoRPG's. The past couple of years I feel it has declined as more and more writers get onboard and MMORPG.com seems to go for quantity instead of quality.
This rant finally tipped the scale to the point where I see no purpose in coming here anymore. If a rant like this can be posted and an official opinion of a staff writer, then it is time to seek out websites to get my mmorpg curiosity covered.
You might have gotten a lot of new users provoked by this excuse of an artcle, but you also have one less daily reader.
Nearly every one of the games on the list here has its own game forums to discuss the game in. We dont have to use this site. Its just kinda convenient. And that convenience is what mmorpg.com lives off of. In fact, they have bargained their convenience is so important that a wide sweeping insult to the majority of its readers is of little concern.
As far as they are concerned, you would still even willingly go into the RPG section of these forums and continue discussing how much you like to role play and your personal feelings on the subject, without further concern that this jack ass massey wouldnt steal your very words and use them in his next big set of sweeping generalizations.
There's really nothing here for me so ill be joining you. If you do find alternate sites similar to this one feel free to send me a link.
Please add me to the list.
This is what's called a "cop-out" arguement. Or in the world of Journalism, a world that Dana wishes he was truely apart of, it's termed a self-confirming arguement.
In other words, it's pointless and hollow, and means little. Basically, that above statement translates into:
"Dana is right. Dana is right because people are pissed off. People are pissed off because Dana is right."
See a problem there? It's called circular logic. It's what Republicans and Retards have found themsleves to be quite good at attempting to seed into the general frame of reference.
His article was about as far from the truth as a writen piece of literature could ever be, in these particular circumstances.
If I ever see a "By Dana Massey" tag ever again, it'll be far too soon.
Anyone here wonder why Dana used to be the Editor here, and now isn't? It's probably because he let too many trash articles into the cycle.
Now that we have brought politcs into this thread , its prolly time to shut it down.
Think everyone has stated thier thoughts by now.......
The guy's an idiot and why MMORPG published that trash article is beyond me.
Yes there are issues on RP servers. The range of RP styles of play are as diverse as tastes in PvP. FFA Full Loot through arenas with no real penalties. Compared to "a paladin should not be killing BABY trolls!" and "My fire giant will marry the undead gnome if they feel like it. That's love!" -- yeah, you've got as many wacko's and jerks in RP as you do in any other areas but to claim as he does... pft... the guy's a twit and shows a total lack of respect to that portion of the community.
Many create chars on RP servers, not to harrass but to find a more mature, less agressive, community to be with. The RP servers tend to be far more tollerant of "stupid questions" and "just learning this stuff..." than the other servers with the punk "I pwnd j00!!!" "L2P idiot!" type commentary you find on many other servers. That idiot didn't even tip his hat to the gamers that go to those servers just for the "maturity" reason which is a *VERY* large portion of those communities. That has squat to do with harassing and attempts at pseudo martyrdom he claims.
It doesn't take many "victimizers" to trash the environment of those places any more so than it takes a large portion of the population to mess up an FFA PvP situation -- *IF* they can get away with it and having the reverse of that, the overly zealous RP'ers out there, to help file tons of complaints... Yeah, these servers do tend to be higher on the GM list than most others but a funny little one that twit should look at is the games that offer RP servers: Those that also offer FFA PvP servers... The FFA PvP tend to be a close second behind the RP servers for complaints and surpass the RP servers at times. Again, it doesn't take many "griefer" types to mess up an other wise good game enviornment.
Really, why the hell did they publish such a bogus article? The only explanation I can come up with is if the publisher/editor doesn't know diddley about those types of servers...
This is what's called a "cop-out" arguement. Or in the world of Journalism, a world that Dana wishes he was truely apart of, it's termed a self-confirming arguement.
In other words, it's pointless and hollow, and means little. Basically, that above statement translates into:
"Dana is right. Dana is right because people are pissed off. People are pissed off because Dana is right."
See a problem there? It's called circular logic. It's what Republicans and Retards have found themsleves to be quite good at attempting to seed into the general frame of reference.
His article was about as far from the truth as a writen piece of literature could ever be, in these particular circumstances.
If I ever see a "By Dana Massey" tag ever again, it'll be far too soon.
Anyone here wonder why Dana used to be the Editor here, and now isn't? It's probably because he let too many trash articles into the cycle.
What i love about this post is he attacks people (to make himself feel better) has a problem with what Dana wrote so hates on him, but like the hypocrite he exposed himself to be he attacks republicans and mentally challenged people in one swoop. (so he was wrong in what he said and is attacking others and thats wrong but its okay for you and other to attack, riiiiiggghhhttt)
Then keeps on attacking Dana like he somehow knows better heh.
Oh please fill this out in triplicate while your here, so we can investigate further:
you probably want to fill out that form too. -pat pat-
LOL Massey is either on crack, or hasn't tried Age of Conan.
"Play Nice" .... that's roleplay?
15 in character barbarians aren't "nicer" than 15 nerds practicing their skillz with pocket calculators dude.
Log into the RP server I play on Dana, and learn what it feels like to "play the victim".
Cimmeria (RP-PVP)
"The most Brutal Roleplaying Experience in any MMO"
You'll wish Roleplay didn't "work" in an MMO when you walk up to a bunch of in-character Cimmerians and say, "Sup f00|_z, any phat lewtz droppin yo?"
Seriously, you should give it a try, you will have enough content for a full weekly article in under 15 minutes.
I'm not speaking about the content of the article on way or another, but I WOULD like to point out that this was an OPINION piece. Disagree with the opinion, sure, but you're dressing it down because it IS an opinion.... which is the point of each of the five featured columns every week.
If this would have been posted in the forums, it would have been axed and the OP warned. Instead, it has been endorsed by MMORPG.COM.. Because, according to Stradden, it is what they want their columnists to do!
So you want your columnists to rant and attack a large portion of those of us that frequent this site? This is just part of the ball game? Even "opinion" pieces need to be cleared for print by Editors by any real publication. The fact that this was allowed to be printed is offensive in nature.
I have to agree with a few others, the past 2 years the integrity of the published pieces/columns/etc has dramatically dwindled.
Opinion pieces that attack a large portion of your community are counter-productive, and more accurately, trolling to the highest degree. I say to the highest degree because it has been endorsed by the editor as well as the publication.
Pure Sickening…
let me throw out here what we all should be looking at and saying
rp and rpers need to go
rp and rpers no longer belong on mmos they are a bane on the game who take up resorces from things that the devs should really be working on namely the game and the game
rpers are whiny ppl who just want to whine about every little thing that happens to them they are the ones who then turn around and scream at the devs about the game and want to see a game that rpers have ruined? go look at swg nge and try not to puke
if you want to rp then please take it to a message board or irc chat i play an mmo i am not looking to get into some kinda erp love thing or something like that
i play mmos to crush as we all do
Well, after Sanya basically pitted real-life racial and social groups against each other in her column/thread, which would have been deleted fast if any of us had written it even in the "off topic" section, AND she still has a job here, nothing surprises me much anymore.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/242230/page/1
Just read the article.
I must say, Dana your observations are spot on, and match what I have found in the past decade of MMOs, with UO being the notable exception. I also play on RP servers hoping to find the "mature" playerbase, but due to the isolationist nature of RPers, it can be hard to break into the cliques, especailly when you are being constantly judged by your fellow players as to the "quality" of your backstory, or your RPing.
To see all these posters saying you are uninformed seems very odd to me, since your article matches my experiences to a tee. All I can think of is that these posters are unable to accept the reality of RPing in a modern MMO, or they have isolated themselves so much, they are unable to see it.
Compounding the fact a modern MMO lacks the flexibility required for RPing, is that based on this thread, it would be easy to sterotype RPers as being overly sensitive, and completely overreactionary. No regular player is going to want to get involved in the drama fest of RPing, not after reading this thread.
You comment is the secod most idiotic view posted ,the first being the original Ops messge .The only reason that yours is not the dumpest post is either you are joking and want a reaction or you are so uinformed its like a having an arguement with a 4 year old...pointless
You comment is the secod most idiotic view posted ,the first being the original Ops messge .The only reason that yours is not the dumpest post is either you are joking and want a reaction or you are so uinformed its like a having an arguement with a 4 year old...pointless
Actually he just translated Dana´s intention and thoughts with this article..
And the sad truth is that there is a movement to ban the RP from the MMORPGs (God, now we all call it only MMO´s nowdays), I think there is a tendence to dumb down the online games, because its cheap that way... The MMO world is becaming more simple and approaching a Counter-Striker style... The stablishment is now trying to convince us that simpler is better (Smedley was the avatar of this with NGE, in fact I have a sig in other forum who is a dialogue between Luke and Yoda and goes like this "Luke - Master Yoda, what is left if we pull out the R-P-G from MMORPG? ; Yoda - NGE").
Dana (and MMORPG.COM) is always doing the companies job, even if it hurts the quality of the games, and therefore hurt the gamers (after all, this is a free site, the companies are ones who pay the bills in here). However what they dont see is that this thumbing down of the MMORPG genre could be seen as a good business move on a short term, but it does not work properly on a long term run, and MMOs are long term runs... NGE is the better example of this, and how good and intelligent companies try to embrace all kinds of playstyle, and try to became a ´partner´ their player-base, who are, after all, who pay the bills. A dumb game, with no RPG server, or any ´fluff´ may be cheap at start but will lose player-base fast, because those players are like plagues, they jump from one game to another, because they seek the thrill of new and do not get atacched to any game... They are there to ´crush and destroy´... They are also tasteless as majority...
They are trying to convince us that pretty graphics and cool action is enough to hold a subscriber base, and we all know that, with all this competition, this is NOT... In the article, Dana comment how hard is to maintain a staff to take care of a RP server and their demands (for example, to keep track of open tickets about naming policy). From what I do know, tehre is not many games with numerous RP servers on it, lets say that every BIG shot would have 6 RP servers... First of all, to pay 6 interns to clean the names would, for itself, create a LOT better RP environment.. I would risk to say that ALL that the RPers want in their server is a clean sky, with a more conservative naming policy... No RP server obligates you to RP, but it may obligate you to have as proper char name... And pay 6 interns to do so is NOTHING to keep the player-base happy and offer something different.
Wonderful...
Thanks for that link. Seems that the RoC are no longer applicable. I think whenever I type such "heated" or flame baiting posts I'll post a moderation disclaimer pointing back to those columns, to the effect of, "Do as I say, not what I do" angle.
I only join RP servers because most "L33T" kids wont be caught dead actually playing on one. Yeah maybe to harass RP'ers, but wont/cant go past the newb zones. So I'm in the clear.
For the most part anyway. I'm not an "RP'er" but respect those that are.. and let them do as they please. I don't bug them, they don't bug me lol.
True I've still seen jackasses on RP servers, but its not terribly common.
Perhaps in some games this is true, but if you visit Antonia Bayle server in EQ2, you'll find that it is definitely not true. While not everyone RP's there, you'll find a dedicated community of RP players who very much appreciate that the server is an RP server. Player events are held annually, there are player run inns and taverns, and a huge variety of guilds set up along different RP styles.
Just so you know.
I welcome the author of this article to come play either CoX, Champions Online or DDO with me and my merry band of losers. We might be able to turn you to the darkside. Come on Dana...you know you wanna!
Wow. For the mature community that you claim to be, you sure are responding rather immaturely.
This man has presented his opinion relative to his experience with the role-playing community. To be honest, I happen to agree with him. A good role-playing server is a utopia nowadays. Sure, it happened in MUDs, but that is very, very rarely the case in MMORPGs.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE story-telling, I love tuning to one's character and role playing, and I love the immersion that one gets when such an experience happens, as long as it is veritable. But nowadays what happens in RP servers is nothing short of travesty.
Also, I would rather role-play lightly on a PVP server than be forced to engage in "hardcore" role-play that isn't even enjoyable anymore due to high-nosed-elitistic-pricks. (To be fair with you, role-play to the point where you don't follow the game mechanics anymore and care more about how the level 1 sword looks on your character isn't very healthy.) With an attitude such as this you defy the light-heartedness required for role-play and storytelling.
So sit back, relax, and get that bug out of your behinds. If you feel offended by this article it's because you lack the common sense to acknowledge that this is what happens in the majority of cases, and that if you somehow managed to have a good role-playing experience every time you logged into a RP-server it's either because you are very lucky, or downright mediocre.
Cheers and kudos to the writer for having the courage to state what is usually and generally the case in nowadays' RP servers. Yes, he may be blunt and outright offensive, but he's speaking statistically, and the statistics say most role-playing in MMORPGs has lost its authenticity.
P.S. If you haven't picked it up already, the writer actually wishes that authentic role-play was possible, but is dismayed by his direct experience with it.