I think storyline MMOs are a step backwards after all in terms of gameplay. They enforce instancing and linear path even more than quests do. I disagree with the whole "everyone wants to be a hero" mentality, because if everyone is a hero, no one is. If GW2 storyline can be finished in three days, and there's nothing left to do, bleh, I'd really prefer it to have kill x quests (no, having a quest to kill 10 mobs ISN'T grind).
Roleplaying should be made by players, not forced upon you by your character creation and "choices" (yeah, what choice is it, be good guy and take the reward or be a bad guy and get no reward and you lose the chances to follow up the quest chain)
Bha that never actualy works, I mean evan Table top game's have a structerd story made by the GM. IF they don't there not any good. how ever as long as you get options to fit who you are and who your charicter is than its an RPG, Go here kill this dose not a fun intoresting story make. You are just Playing a Role after all you are the mighty worrier such and such, this is your conflict, this is your question, here are your 3 options, pick and deal with the consiquinses.
Its not about doing the right thing and getting a reword, mabby you get a reword if you do the "bad thing" and the right thing just gives you more hard times but you want to RP a hero so you say FU Leet helm of awsome Im going to save this kid and him mom and take there ten gold that give me
Wow, I'm getting old when we're arguing that the inclusion of a "personal storyline" and a some "dynamic events" makes this game a step ahead of the pack in terms of role-playing.
True enough, role-playing has been RPG-ified since the first Final Fantasy game on the NES. You can "play a role", I suppose, as long as you stay within proscribed lines of interaction and choices. These types of games transmute Character Development into a statistic, and rate it level 1 to 10. Ha! I'm a level 10 role-player! I win!
Now, before I rant on, let me make a couple of statements:
I'm super-excited about GW2 and will own it day 1. Fantastic game, and I'm very excited about all it's features.
I love old-school Final Fantasy RPGs, JRPGs, and others as well as broad open-world games like Oblivion, Fallout, and (to a degree) Dragon Age.
BUT....
I think it's time we found some new terms, though I'm unsure of what the new terms should be.
"Role-playing", as it originally appeared in pen-and-paper days gave you infinite depth with character development....'living the novel' with creativity limited only by your imagination.
RPG, though, is any game now where you play a character through any sort of story. The more choices of armor and weapons, the better.
MMORPG is and RPG, but with many many peoples. But by the old definition, admittedly not more actual playing of the "characters". Just playing with the characters. Not the same.
Maybe, we call the what once was CPGs..."character play games" or something similar.
Yeah, I know I'm a minority with roots that shrink every year. But I can't wait for a MMO role-playing game that truly gives me the ability to develop my character and evolve and grow my own story, with my community.
It's neat when the centaurs invade the farmlands, and the NPCs call for players to defend the village.
It's neater when me and my friends are the centaurs.
It's my belief that every time you log into a MMO, you are role playing. Maybe not in the sense of period role play, but in the sense of an MMO is a community. If you're a prick, to people in the community and then outcast, it's the same thing as playing the villian role in a D&D game, and not recieving any cooperation from the group.
However, the Community system is broken, as people don't care anymore. That's where the me, me, me attitude, pushes away hard role play, and in my opinon why people go through MMO's these days faster than most of them shower.
Vack FF XIV - the single worse game to cross my hard drive, ever.
That reminds me, there was an article on what some of the mmorpg.com staff members were excited about seeing at PAX, and GW2 was included. Can we expect an article on how those expectations turned out, or will there be a seperate one for everything? I'm really wondering what the staff thought of it all.
I'm most intrigued by the choice of which personality type to go with, and I've been wondering when a game would ever introduce such a thing.
As someone who values choice in games, how could I justfiy my preference for this system over one which might offer more dialogue choices? I think its because consistency is more important than the option to suddenly switch tracks and go with some schitzophrenic course of action.
Look at it this way. In real life only in theory do we have a range of reply options in conversations. If you are personally predisposed towards politeness, then that's how you'll likely respond under normal circumstances. The option to punch someone in the face without an excuse is really only an option if you're keen to explore your drooling insanity, or if we're talking about an aggressive personalty type.
Even if they only have three personalty types to choose from, its a major leap forward (with usual caveat: if done well) for immersive roleplay. Bioware have no such thing in their games and as such you'll probably hurt yourself trying to form a character's personalty around anything other than picking one side of the moral compass. Oh, I suppose you could pick them at random and end up with a shade of grey. Not much of a personality in that. Very very little in fact.
The best option for personality type I've ever seen in a game is when you 're Malcavian in Vampire: the Masquerade.
It's my belief that every time you log into a MMO, you are role playing. Maybe not in the sense of period role play, but in the sense of an MMO is a community. If you're a prick, to people in the community and then outcast, it's the same thing as playing the villian role in a D&D game, and not recieving any cooperation from the group. However, the Community system is broken, as people don't care anymore. That's where the me, me, me attitude, pushes away hard role play, and in my opinon why people go through MMO's these days faster than most of them shower.
This is not the case for all mmorg games,some still follow the old code of great community and the journey rather than getting to top level.
Vanguard is one such mmorpg that has the old customs and is great. Perhaps the best example of great RP and community is LOTRO europen RP server Laurelin.
Spend an evening in the prancing pony or meet in hobbiton and you will see that the last bastion of RP is alive and kicking in that game on that server, it really is magical.
I was on the Fallout 3 forums last year trying to explain to the guys there that you cannot roleplay on your own. Picking some skills and playing a type of character e.g. sneaky or assault is not roleplaying.
Yes you can have a story in your head and be roleplaying it out but it takes two to tango in roleplay. The Laurelin server is the best RP I know currently.
If they can pull this off it will be something. Remember though that you are what you decide to be. If the villagers all seem to be dubious about you but you are a good guy, take no notice when playing with other players if that fits the scene.
I think storyline MMOs are a step backwards after all in terms of gameplay. They enforce instancing and linear path even more than quests do. I disagree with the whole "everyone wants to be a hero" mentality, because if everyone is a hero, no one is. If GW2 storyline can be finished in three days, and there's nothing left to do, bleh, I'd really prefer it to have kill x quests (no, having a quest to kill 10 mobs ISN'T grind).
Roleplaying should be made by players, not forced upon you by your character creation and "choices" (yeah, what choice is it, be good guy and take the reward or be a bad guy and get no reward and you lose the chances to follow up the quest chain)
I liked games where everyone was a average joe, and it actually took something to make your mark in the game... Good example is SWG. Everyone was pretty un heroic. Yet you had people did crafting, you had your "average crafters", you had your "Good crafters", then you had your "Infamous crafters", which everyone would kill to befriend and have armor/weapons custom made for them. If you knew an amazing crafter, you were pretty lucky. Word of mouth even promoted good crafters and set them apart from your average joe.
I don't like the idea of everyone being a hero. I want everyone to feel like a nobody, but a nobody who does cool stuff. Then be able to make a difference in the social aspect of the game. Where SWG excelled was the fact that the way it was set up promoted socialization. If you have a bland crafting system and everyone is a hero, you will have crafters spamming 50 million swords of justice on the AH, and nobody will feel compelled to brag about getting the sword of justice... Sure the lore says it's the most power and rare weapon in all of history, but what good is it when everyone else has one.
Wow you said you saved the princess and she fell in love with you after slaying the dragon? Woah cool dude, a princess fell in love with me after I slayed a dragon too, what a coincidence!
Woah, hey guys me too! Really wtf seriously guys, I did the same thing, wow we are all 4 of us badass heroes who saved a princess by slaying a dragon, we are ub3r l33t. Nobody else has done what we have.
"Actually dude, I slayed a dragon to save a princess too"
"Orly, what was her name? Because my princesses name was fiona"
"Her name was fiona"
"Woooah dude, my princesses name was fiona too, she gave me cloak of divinity for saving her, she said to cherish it because it was passed down as a royal heirloom for generations!"
"DEWD YOU STOLE MY CLOAK OF DIVINITY GIVE IT BACK YOU MOTHER F*%&#%" "Oh wait I still have mine on wtf?"
"Haha look at that everyone is wearing cloak of divinity knockoffs, they must all be statless pieces of crap, mine give +15 to luck"
"So does mine"
"There is only one explanation guys, princess fiona must come from an alien planet of princess in destress clones who are sent to our planet and put in a castle guarded by a dragon.
"It makes perfect sense! As long as we RP our identicle princess fiona's as clones sent from a alien planet, it can still fit into the lore and hence we are all still origional!!"
Sigh, I'm always amazed at the crap people post here. Do some reading about the games before you ask questions, make assumptions, or start conspiratorial concerns, please. Most if not everything everyone has mentioned here has already been addressed.
The story is not OPTIONAL in that you don't need to do it to understand the lore or even the purpose of the game, it's optional in that if you really felt like it, you could go kill random things over and over and over until you leveled. Why the hell you'd want to, I don't know, but it's there if you want to. You don't need an NPC's permission to kill shit. And to the person that felt like this game mechanic was the better one and storyline was a step backward, I recommend you pick any number of the grindy failures that are traditional Korean MMO's and stay there. Rappelz is a good choice; 150ish levels of nothing but killing crap for .000001% of your exp bar per kill. Enjoy.
Also, no, parties/solo experiences should not be forced on you. If you guys had taken a moment to watch videos or read some of the PAX Press releases, you'd see people fighting solo...and people fighting together...and ending up with similar rewards regardless. Open world events where 10 people can fight a monster attacking a city, or 100 can help, and they'll all recieve the same reward regardless. Why is this good? Because it encourages people to play together. If there is no loot/exp/gold greed to interfere with participation, people have no reason NOT to fight together. By eliminating the need for greed, people start working together. If only that boiled over into the real world.
It's also been stated that there would be dungeons and instances and uber bosses just like traditional persistant MMO's that would likely require a team to get through efficiently. It was also stated that despite this, teams would not be necessary in order to advance and enjoy the game's key features in their entirety. And to stop the question before it's asked, this is not going to be one of those "Get to the end of the game then grind for months for dungeon gear" games; it's been stated when you enter these dungeons, you will leave with your gear, no buts about it. Whether you get it all at once or little by little (this seems more likely), that we don't know. Maybe the more you do it, the stronger it gets? Or you can combine/upgrade the gear with things you get the next time through? Who knows, there are a lot of possibilities and they haven't been fully discussed yet.
Anyway, that covers the questions I glazed over before my eye started twitching. To anyone who feels storyline and immersion is a step backward in an MMO, I encourage you to go back to your roots; the Ultimas, the Dungeons & Dragons, then pens and papers, and remember what the hell started this all in the first place.
Thnx.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
There really isnt anything a dev can do to make rp better in their game. Roleplayers are an extreme minority in mmorpgs. In fact most rp'ers (myself included) have experienced harassment by non-rp'ers on a regular basis, even on dedicated rp servers. its just the way it is right now unfortunately.
a decent set of emotes and a bio page: thats all i really need from a dev. the rest is up to the community.
well, storyline has me worried because of two things:
- when you finiished 'storyline' content in GW1, all that was left was grinding dungeons. Even quests were kinda useless because they weren't worth it for the time they took
- personal storyline in GW2 is going to be major, but it's solo. You can invite friends to play it, but otherwise it is solo in INSTANCED areas.
There really isnt anything a dev can do to make rp better in their game. Roleplayers are an extreme minority in mmorpgs. In fact most rp'ers (myself included) have experienced harassment by non-rp'ers on a regular basis, even on dedicated rp servers. its just the way it is right now unfortunately.
a decent set of emotes and a bio page: thats all i really need from a dev. the rest is up to the community.
I think the thing that people aren't getting is that the devs of GW2 are trying to expand you RP beyond the human to human interaction. If you're an RPer and you want to make your character feel rather rogueish, you can decide to get what you want from an NPC by punching them in the face after giving him a few threatning words. But if you want to be the charmer you can get what you want by being cool and friendly, and this makes your RP extend beyond the confines of just you and your human companion.
If you guys don't think that's great... well, good on you. Imma just play ma game.
Arent we roleplaying by playing the game in the first place? Im not a Level 34 dragon king in real life. I dont go around killing people and taking their stuff, then gloating about it from my castle. I dont kill monsters, collect their pelts then gouge people for leather armor in real life.
Neocron 1 + 2, Ultima Online, RuneScape (though its a clone of UO), Dungeons and Dragons online, and Second Life.
5 MMO's with high roleplaying capabilities... Though i do hope that GW2 wont tread the same path as all the clones have, this game has a lot of potential since its original creation of the GW universe, if they sellout they will probably lose a lot of fans and players.
I think storyline MMOs are a step backwards after all in terms of gameplay. They enforce instancing and linear path even more than quests do. I disagree with the whole "everyone wants to be a hero" mentality, because if everyone is a hero, no one is. If GW2 storyline can be finished in three days, and there's nothing left to do, bleh, I'd really prefer it to have kill x quests (no, having a quest to kill 10 mobs ISN'T grind).
Roleplaying should be made by players, not forced upon you by your character creation and "choices" (yeah, what choice is it, be good guy and take the reward or be a bad guy and get no reward and you lose the chances to follow up the quest chain)
I agree. I want atmosphere over story, gameplay over hype.
About time someone showed Bioware they lost the plot!
I think it's time we found some new terms, though I'm unsure of what the new terms should be.
"Role-playing", as it originally appeared in pen-and-paper days gave you infinite depth with character development....'living the novel' with creativity limited only by your imagination.
RPG, though, is any game now where you play a character through any sort of story. The more choices of armor and weapons, the better.
MMORPG is and RPG, but with many many peoples. But by the old definition, admittedly not more actual playing of the "characters". Just playing with the characters. Not the same.
Not true. Old definition: the abilities of your avatar/toon/character is represented by a sheet of paper with numbers on them that would determine how "good" it was in a given situation, using math (stochastic, die rolls etc). So it's not the "the real you" abilities that mattered, like how good you are at wielding swords, but rather this number on the sheet of paper that represented some imaginary dude in a fantasy world. There was no amateur dramatic performance involved at all, as RPGs evolved out of complicated war games, cross-pollinated with Lord of the Rings. That's why earlier games were obsessed with numbers and "simulating" situations using probability.
When computers hit the scene, they figured that the CPU could do the number crunching. Early CRPGs where still about dungeon crawling or about "adventure" type object based puzzle solving (which would become it's own genre). In the meantime, people have developed the pen/paper variants further (up to real enactment called LARP), and added other layers of storytelling and "in-character" play and all that. Roleplayers should learn that their hobby is appreciated and accepted, but not a dogma that must be applied to anything that has RPG printed on a box.
Or another simple check: How can you "roleplay" when there was no chat, back then? And those games were really called RPGs (commonly CRPG for computer RPG or JRPG for japanese RPG).
I think storyline MMOs are a step backwards after all in terms of gameplay. They enforce instancing and linear path even more than quests do. I disagree with the whole "everyone wants to be a hero" mentality, because if everyone is a hero, no one is. If GW2 storyline can be finished in three days, and there's nothing left to do, bleh, I'd really prefer it to have kill x quests (no, having a quest to kill 10 mobs ISN'T grind).
Roleplaying should be made by players, not forced upon you by your character creation and "choices" (yeah, what choice is it, be good guy and take the reward or be a bad guy and get no reward and you lose the chances to follow up the quest chain)
Having A quest to kill 10 mobs isn't a grind your right. But having 80% of quests "kill 10 mobs" IS a grind.
Comments
, ((or hell save them and take nothing!))
mmoRPG...nuff said
Wow, I'm getting old when we're arguing that the inclusion of a "personal storyline" and a some "dynamic events" makes this game a step ahead of the pack in terms of role-playing.
True enough, role-playing has been RPG-ified since the first Final Fantasy game on the NES. You can "play a role", I suppose, as long as you stay within proscribed lines of interaction and choices. These types of games transmute Character Development into a statistic, and rate it level 1 to 10. Ha! I'm a level 10 role-player! I win!
Now, before I rant on, let me make a couple of statements:
I'm super-excited about GW2 and will own it day 1. Fantastic game, and I'm very excited about all it's features.
I love old-school Final Fantasy RPGs, JRPGs, and others as well as broad open-world games like Oblivion, Fallout, and (to a degree) Dragon Age.
BUT....
I think it's time we found some new terms, though I'm unsure of what the new terms should be.
"Role-playing", as it originally appeared in pen-and-paper days gave you infinite depth with character development....'living the novel' with creativity limited only by your imagination.
RPG, though, is any game now where you play a character through any sort of story. The more choices of armor and weapons, the better.
MMORPG is and RPG, but with many many peoples. But by the old definition, admittedly not more actual playing of the "characters". Just playing with the characters. Not the same.
Maybe, we call the what once was CPGs..."character play games" or something similar.
Yeah, I know I'm a minority with roots that shrink every year. But I can't wait for a MMO role-playing game that truly gives me the ability to develop my character and evolve and grow my own story, with my community.
It's neat when the centaurs invade the farmlands, and the NPCs call for players to defend the village.
It's neater when me and my friends are the centaurs.
Vack
FF XIV - the single worse game to cross my hard drive, ever.
It's my belief that every time you log into a MMO, you are role playing. Maybe not in the sense of period role play, but in the sense of an MMO is a community. If you're a prick, to people in the community and then outcast, it's the same thing as playing the villian role in a D&D game, and not recieving any cooperation from the group.
However, the Community system is broken, as people don't care anymore. That's where the me, me, me attitude, pushes away hard role play, and in my opinon why people go through MMO's these days faster than most of them shower.
Vack
FF XIV - the single worse game to cross my hard drive, ever.
I just realized the title is inaccurate. The name of the continent in Guild Wars 2 is Tyria.
Playing now: Cities: Skyline / Ori and the Blind Forest / Banished
That reminds me, there was an article on what some of the mmorpg.com staff members were excited about seeing at PAX, and GW2 was included. Can we expect an article on how those expectations turned out, or will there be a seperate one for everything? I'm really wondering what the staff thought of it all.
Disagreement Heirarchy
I'm most intrigued by the choice of which personality type to go with, and I've been wondering when a game would ever introduce such a thing.
As someone who values choice in games, how could I justfiy my preference for this system over one which might offer more dialogue choices? I think its because consistency is more important than the option to suddenly switch tracks and go with some schitzophrenic course of action.
Look at it this way. In real life only in theory do we have a range of reply options in conversations. If you are personally predisposed towards politeness, then that's how you'll likely respond under normal circumstances. The option to punch someone in the face without an excuse is really only an option if you're keen to explore your drooling insanity, or if we're talking about an aggressive personalty type.
Even if they only have three personalty types to choose from, its a major leap forward (with usual caveat: if done well) for immersive roleplay. Bioware have no such thing in their games and as such you'll probably hurt yourself trying to form a character's personalty around anything other than picking one side of the moral compass. Oh, I suppose you could pick them at random and end up with a shade of grey. Not much of a personality in that. Very very little in fact.
The best option for personality type I've ever seen in a game is when you 're Malcavian in Vampire: the Masquerade.
This is not the case for all mmorg games,some still follow the old code of great community and the journey rather than getting to top level.Vanguard is one such mmorpg that has the old customs and is great. Perhaps the best example of great RP and community is LOTRO europen RP server Laurelin.
Spend an evening in the prancing pony or meet in hobbiton and you will see that the last bastion of RP is alive and kicking in that game on that server, it really is magical.
I was on the Fallout 3 forums last year trying to explain to the guys there that you cannot roleplay on your own. Picking some skills and playing a type of character e.g. sneaky or assault is not roleplaying.
Yes you can have a story in your head and be roleplaying it out but it takes two to tango in roleplay. The Laurelin server is the best RP I know currently.
If they can pull this off it will be something. Remember though that you are what you decide to be. If the villagers all seem to be dubious about you but you are a good guy, take no notice when playing with other players if that fits the scene.
these games like GW2 are MMOG and not MMORPG......if you can find me 5 REAL MMORPG games it will be alot.
Most of the games these days dont even have the abbility to roleplay because people all just want to hurry up and lvl.
I liked games where everyone was a average joe, and it actually took something to make your mark in the game... Good example is SWG. Everyone was pretty un heroic. Yet you had people did crafting, you had your "average crafters", you had your "Good crafters", then you had your "Infamous crafters", which everyone would kill to befriend and have armor/weapons custom made for them. If you knew an amazing crafter, you were pretty lucky. Word of mouth even promoted good crafters and set them apart from your average joe.
I don't like the idea of everyone being a hero. I want everyone to feel like a nobody, but a nobody who does cool stuff. Then be able to make a difference in the social aspect of the game. Where SWG excelled was the fact that the way it was set up promoted socialization. If you have a bland crafting system and everyone is a hero, you will have crafters spamming 50 million swords of justice on the AH, and nobody will feel compelled to brag about getting the sword of justice... Sure the lore says it's the most power and rare weapon in all of history, but what good is it when everyone else has one.
Wow you said you saved the princess and she fell in love with you after slaying the dragon? Woah cool dude, a princess fell in love with me after I slayed a dragon too, what a coincidence!
Woah, hey guys me too! Really wtf seriously guys, I did the same thing, wow we are all 4 of us badass heroes who saved a princess by slaying a dragon, we are ub3r l33t. Nobody else has done what we have.
"Actually dude, I slayed a dragon to save a princess too"
"Orly, what was her name? Because my princesses name was fiona"
"Her name was fiona"
"Woooah dude, my princesses name was fiona too, she gave me cloak of divinity for saving her, she said to cherish it because it was passed down as a royal heirloom for generations!"
"DEWD YOU STOLE MY CLOAK OF DIVINITY GIVE IT BACK YOU MOTHER F*%&#%" "Oh wait I still have mine on wtf?"
"Haha look at that everyone is wearing cloak of divinity knockoffs, they must all be statless pieces of crap, mine give +15 to luck"
"So does mine"
"There is only one explanation guys, princess fiona must come from an alien planet of princess in destress clones who are sent to our planet and put in a castle guarded by a dragon.
"It makes perfect sense! As long as we RP our identicle princess fiona's as clones sent from a alien planet, it can still fit into the lore and hence we are all still origional!!"
roleplaying has to happen between players. NPCs should be there for background.
Sigh, I'm always amazed at the crap people post here. Do some reading about the games before you ask questions, make assumptions, or start conspiratorial concerns, please. Most if not everything everyone has mentioned here has already been addressed.
The story is not OPTIONAL in that you don't need to do it to understand the lore or even the purpose of the game, it's optional in that if you really felt like it, you could go kill random things over and over and over until you leveled. Why the hell you'd want to, I don't know, but it's there if you want to. You don't need an NPC's permission to kill shit. And to the person that felt like this game mechanic was the better one and storyline was a step backward, I recommend you pick any number of the grindy failures that are traditional Korean MMO's and stay there. Rappelz is a good choice; 150ish levels of nothing but killing crap for .000001% of your exp bar per kill. Enjoy.
Also, no, parties/solo experiences should not be forced on you. If you guys had taken a moment to watch videos or read some of the PAX Press releases, you'd see people fighting solo...and people fighting together...and ending up with similar rewards regardless. Open world events where 10 people can fight a monster attacking a city, or 100 can help, and they'll all recieve the same reward regardless. Why is this good? Because it encourages people to play together. If there is no loot/exp/gold greed to interfere with participation, people have no reason NOT to fight together. By eliminating the need for greed, people start working together. If only that boiled over into the real world.
It's also been stated that there would be dungeons and instances and uber bosses just like traditional persistant MMO's that would likely require a team to get through efficiently. It was also stated that despite this, teams would not be necessary in order to advance and enjoy the game's key features in their entirety. And to stop the question before it's asked, this is not going to be one of those "Get to the end of the game then grind for months for dungeon gear" games; it's been stated when you enter these dungeons, you will leave with your gear, no buts about it. Whether you get it all at once or little by little (this seems more likely), that we don't know. Maybe the more you do it, the stronger it gets? Or you can combine/upgrade the gear with things you get the next time through? Who knows, there are a lot of possibilities and they haven't been fully discussed yet.
Anyway, that covers the questions I glazed over before my eye started twitching. To anyone who feels storyline and immersion is a step backward in an MMO, I encourage you to go back to your roots; the Ultimas, the Dungeons & Dragons, then pens and papers, and remember what the hell started this all in the first place.
Thnx.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
There really isnt anything a dev can do to make rp better in their game. Roleplayers are an extreme minority in mmorpgs. In fact most rp'ers (myself included) have experienced harassment by non-rp'ers on a regular basis, even on dedicated rp servers. its just the way it is right now unfortunately.
a decent set of emotes and a bio page: thats all i really need from a dev. the rest is up to the community.
well, storyline has me worried because of two things:
- when you finiished 'storyline' content in GW1, all that was left was grinding dungeons. Even quests were kinda useless because they weren't worth it for the time they took
- personal storyline in GW2 is going to be major, but it's solo. You can invite friends to play it, but otherwise it is solo in INSTANCED areas.
I think the thing that people aren't getting is that the devs of GW2 are trying to expand you RP beyond the human to human interaction. If you're an RPer and you want to make your character feel rather rogueish, you can decide to get what you want from an NPC by punching them in the face after giving him a few threatning words. But if you want to be the charmer you can get what you want by being cool and friendly, and this makes your RP extend beyond the confines of just you and your human companion.
If you guys don't think that's great... well, good on you. Imma just play ma game.
This is not a game.
Arent we roleplaying by playing the game in the first place? Im not a Level 34 dragon king in real life. I dont go around killing people and taking their stuff, then gloating about it from my castle. I dont kill monsters, collect their pelts then gouge people for leather armor in real life.
Neocron 1 + 2, Ultima Online, RuneScape (though its a clone of UO), Dungeons and Dragons online, and Second Life.
5 MMO's with high roleplaying capabilities... Though i do hope that GW2 wont tread the same path as all the clones have, this game has a lot of potential since its original creation of the GW universe, if they sellout they will probably lose a lot of fans and players.
That was a great phrase, well typed "if everyone is a hero, no one is"
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
I agree. I want atmosphere over story, gameplay over hype.
About time someone showed Bioware they lost the plot!
Just being ingame and enjoying the content of the game is enough to establish a roleplay environment
Not true. Old definition: the abilities of your avatar/toon/character is represented by a sheet of paper with numbers on them that would determine how "good" it was in a given situation, using math (stochastic, die rolls etc). So it's not the "the real you" abilities that mattered, like how good you are at wielding swords, but rather this number on the sheet of paper that represented some imaginary dude in a fantasy world. There was no amateur dramatic performance involved at all, as RPGs evolved out of complicated war games, cross-pollinated with Lord of the Rings. That's why earlier games were obsessed with numbers and "simulating" situations using probability.
When computers hit the scene, they figured that the CPU could do the number crunching. Early CRPGs where still about dungeon crawling or about "adventure" type object based puzzle solving (which would become it's own genre). In the meantime, people have developed the pen/paper variants further (up to real enactment called LARP), and added other layers of storytelling and "in-character" play and all that. Roleplayers should learn that their hobby is appreciated and accepted, but not a dogma that must be applied to anything that has RPG printed on a box.
Or another simple check: How can you "roleplay" when there was no chat, back then? And those games were really called RPGs (commonly CRPG for computer RPG or JRPG for japanese RPG).
/sorry for the history lesson
Having A quest to kill 10 mobs isn't a grind your right. But having 80% of quests "kill 10 mobs" IS a grind.