I agree with Ravon. The mass multi really ruins it. Finding Roleplay on a game with smaller servers like Neverwinter Nights for example is far far far easier. On those servers generally no more than 60 people can log on at the same time and it has (generally speaking) way better rp than on the average mmo(rpg). I have been lately hopping to several mmo(rpg) games - WoW, EQ2, GW... and never really managed to stay on any of them for very long. My accounts on WoW and EQ2 are terminated and I never play GW any more either.
The reason? Very simple; everyone is focussed to much on grinding and too little on playing. That really ruins the game for me. If I want to spend hours and hours of mindless monster slaying, I can do that in solo player games without monthly fee too. I get bored with the grind if there is no roleplay. So I got bored with many mmo(rpg)s.
The old SWG (I quit that game long before the first Jedi appeared) had some potential because of it's social classes like the entertainer. But when people starting to make macro bots out of those classes, I knew the grinders had taken over. Never tried that game again since, as I kept getting haunted by the macro's and the pokemon-syndrom ("Rancor, I choose you!" *poof! the beast master pulls a 20 foot rancor out of his pocket*)
As for the shakespear langauge. I hate that too. A lot of roleplayers are not roleplayers at all. "I bid thy good day my fair lord, of what season and profession areth thou?" is NOT roleplaying. In fact, I prefer the lewt d00ds over the shakespear-players, as the lewt d00ds at least openly admit that they don't roleplay
So, am I happy with the mmorpgs now? No. Perhaps Seed might be something based on what I read in this discussion. But I am looking most forward to the multiplay aspects of Neverwinter Nights 2 to be released later this year....
Well, I can relate to both sides. I'm a hardcore RPer. Three of my adult daughters are also online gamers. One is an RPer like me. The other two have characters named Tuna Casserole and Whatsferlunch. There needs to be a place for both.
The problem arises when people named Tuna Casserole invade the RP servers, are allowed to harrass and ridicule the RPers, slap the naming policy around and the GMs do NOTHING about it. The l3wtz need a place to play. The RPers need a place to play. But the rules need to be enforced.
When l3wtz are given the majority of the servers, and that's still not enough for them and they feel they have to come to the RP servers and create guilds named "Cute Fuzzy Bunnies" and "We Pwnz" and the RPers are forced to suck it up and accept that the GM's are not going to support RP on RP Designated Servers, it's a sad state and totally unfair. And, it happens over and over in every game I've played.
There needs to be a place for the non-RPers and in very game I've played, there are a multitude of servers for them. What drives me mad is that they don't honor or respect those who DO wish to RP and leave us be on our designated servers, and non of the games provide any support whatsoever.
I've been playing RPG games for 30 years now, from pen and paper games to on-line ones. I think the clue to what MMORPG's is in its title- massively multiplayer online ROLE PLAYING games. Everyone who plays these types of games is infact role playing, wether they admit it or not. We all create characters to play the game, and we play a part in it, even if we only want to PK in the game. If we did not want to role play we would stick to real life would we not?
I have run table top RPG groups, LRP games ect ect and have made the following observations time and time again- Generally those players who have played typical RPG's start off wanting to take part in fights and battles but after awhile they realise there is so much more to do in the game. Eventually they start actually playing the game the way it was meant to be played. It is also true that the older the player is the more likely they are going to want to role play rather than 'game'.
Defafnyr, I can relate to your family experiance. I have a 15 year old son who plays, and he is pretty typical of what you might expect. From an outside point of view he would often appear to be a PK ganker, a "gate hugger", whatever. But he's just having fun in his own way. He does RP some, when he's with a group of RPers. Basically he just watches what he says, and he doesn't seem to mind that at all. He's a social player, and just likes to have fun with other player, no matter what style of play it is. He adaptable to the others.
As a heavy RPer myself, I've gone from being rather rudely snobbish about it to being more adaptable too. Not that I give up on RPing, but if another player ask me an OOC question, I've come to the conclusion that it's not going to kill me to answer him in a less than RP way. I've noticed that I end up with a more friendly game experiance than in the old days when I acted snobbish about it.
Rudeness breeds confrontation. And that happens all too much.
Grakus says:" Everyone who plays these types of games is infact role playing, wether they admit it or not." You're right on, in my opinion. I've seen those anti-RPers who always dress in their favorite fashion. I've heard them speak of that which they need (in game). They do, in fact, put their pants (in game wear) on the same way as thee and thou.
Originally posted by Grakus ... Everyone who plays these types of games is infact role playing, wether they admit it or not. We all create characters to play the game, and we play a part in it, even if we only want to PK in the game. If we did not want to role play we would stick to real life would we not?
I've been RPing since AD&D was first edition, and I'm sorry, but when people log into a game and spam the channels with what movie they just saw in RL and outside of the game, when people bounce around and harrass RP events, when people follow RPers around and say things like "U Rpers R Gay", that'ts not roleplaying and they aren't logging into game to roleplay. I'm not an RP snob and I have no problem with ooc questions and conversations when they are in their place in ooc channels. Our guild and our RP room both have ooc channels so we don't break the immersion of those that want to keep in character. Some players, however, specifically get into game to abuse the anonimity of the internet to be jerks and they treat the RP games as though it's just a vid game with a chat room. I'm sick to death of spending the last 6 years pleading with GM's to do something about people that create characters on RP specific servers and create characters named Chucknorris.
As has been mentioned, Role Playing has NOTHING to do with talking in some strange way. In fact it has nothing to do with talking at all. It doesn't matter if you are in character or out of character or talking about last nights football match. These things help immersion, but ROLE PLAYING to me means playing a ROLE. That means that the character you control exists in the world and by the actions of said character, you DO something that NEEDS doing.
By this definition there has only ever been one roleplaying game. That game is called make-believe, you know like you do as a kid, it it was FUN. You could be ANYONE and do ANYTHING and could (if you so desired) come up with all the reasons and purposed and consequences of your actions until it all became clear. Now that is a lot of work.
Then some guys got together and said what if we took that fun of make-believe and kind of defined it a bit more and had it so that there were some actual rules so that contests and such could be determined in some fair fashion. (instead of the constant yells when fighting with plastic swords that I GOT YOU, NO YOU DIDN'T, etc). These were table-top pen-and-paper type games. These games had the potential for roleplaying but I claim that it still rarely happened and this is why. It was STILL a lot of work to determine all the reasons and political implications and economic strains and personal feelings and motivations of every character AND every NPC they ever interacted with and EVERY npc that those NPCs had any contact with. 5 or 6 guys sitting around a table for a few hours every week found this to be far too exhausting. Instead there arose the concept of an adventuring party. That seemed simple enough. You had fighters, mages, thieves, etc. and they all went off on these pre-designed adventures and had some good times.
Later came single player computer role playing games. This used those same concepts of pre-crafted adventures and some basic classes like fighter or thief or ALL combined but those aren't roles really. They are more of a skill set. Your role was pretty much assigned and it was usually something grand like the HERO of the WORLD.
Now this all got applied in this progressive way to MMORPGs but totally forgot where the original drive for this make-believe play came from. Now with tons of players interacting there could, for the first time, be a dynamic developing world where the actions of many different people affected the game world on various levels and across all distances. Every action could contribute to the world even if the actors never met.
Of course this has never yet been realized. Instead they apply the concepts of either single players/groups adventuring along with some predefined skill-sets (fighter, mage, etc.) which they would constantly increase and add to (leveling up, originally designed for a FEW players all in the same party of roughly equal levels) as they either randomly fought monsters or each other or played through pre-defined adventures (quests). This is all the genre has ever done really. And none of these mentioned actions every affect an MMORPG game world in any way. Nothing changes. It is static. A role exists to fill a specific need to take necessary ACTIONS to attempt to cause specific outcomes.
A fighter named Loktar is not a role. A thief is not a role. A thief who works for a corrupt ruler in order to steal technological secrets from a rival empire in order to tip the balance of power in a part of the world is a ROLE. In most RPGs a thief is really just a professional lock-picker/trap disarmer. When did he ever really make a living stealing things. When someone steals loot they are called a greifer, not a thief. They aren't put on wanted lists and hunted for bounties. They are complained about to the producers.
What we are talking about here is a dynamic world. The potential of MMORPGs to create such a world is great but it would require giving the players the right tools and then putting the power in their hands. It would also take a lot of work to create a self-correcting, self-balancing sort of world. Only then will true ROLES start to develop and then ROLE PLAYING will naturally follow. People won't even have to think about it.
Perhaps you slay monsters for a living because SOMEONE has to do it and the players who like safe towns to craft in that don't get burned to the ground every week are quite willing to PAY you to slay those monsters. The rats don't have gold but the villagers that HATE rats do. NOW you have a role. You don't have to say 'thee' and 'thou' when you talk to the players in the village. What you DO have to do is think about how much money you can get them to pay. You have to take into account the cost of your equipment and the risks to your character. You might have to haggle with them, you might have to establish a reputation first. You might have to start your prices low but then raise the prices once they see the benefits. You also have to think about what happens if you do too good a job. If you kill ALL the rats then you will have to move on. What about when another monster slayer comes along offering his services at a lower rate? How do you interact with HIM? Do you bump him off in the woods? Do you sabotage his work? Do you soil his reputation with the townsfolk? Do you challenge him to a contest? Do you yell at him? Do you decide to work with him in some way to get the town to pay even more? The possibilities are endless.
Keep in mind these are all REAL players. There might be NPCs to chop wood and farm grain, but they would still be under control of other players that like to fulfill management type roles. What this means is that content is generated constantly by player actions. The monster-slayer role was created by the fact that players that build a town want it kept safe but want to focus on doing other things. The monster-slayer may mostly have skills of a fighter or a hunter or a woods-man, but these are just tools that help him fulfill the actual role. He will interact with others as someone in this role would. He is now role-playing. People will approach him because of this role, people will talk to him about his role, people will THINK of him as related to this role. That, is ROLE PLAYING. With thousands of players interacting, many more roles will start to develop:
Someone might manage the small (monster free) town where goods are manufactured.
Someone might buy those goods and try to transport them to places where they are in demand.
Someone might volunteer their services to protect merchants on those trade routes.
Someone might attack caravans on those trade routes.
Someone might hunt down those marauders on the trade routes.
Who finances all this? The goods-producing towns? The wealthy merchants? What if they can't stop the marauders? What if the marauders take over the town and begin to produce goods and then try and sell those goods but find it difficult because of other marauders? It all goes round and round, but their actions affect the world and they can find mutually beneficial solutions and all the while roles and content and depth and immersion and variety and FUN are being generated AUTOMATICALLY.
I have played MMORPG's with groups of people who immersed themselves into the RP experience and found my enjoyment of the game tripled. Taking EQII as an example, here we are in a world carefully created in every way imaginable to help us really feel like we're there. If the people around us take this imaginative creation seriously and take on the role of whatever character they have created it is amazingly fun for everyone. Do you have to talk in Olde English? Of course not. But, for those of us who truly enjoy the experience of immersing ourselves into a world of fantasy and magic, it is more fun than you can imagine to think about this character you've created and decide what kind of actions and speech would really bring him/her to life.
Having said that, I totally agree that there should be a server set aside for those of us who love to RP. For all others, be my guest and talk about the latest sports scores or whatever. I do feel that there should be a way to be rewarded for RP'g. The ultimate system would provide a character with something unique to them, something that would allow them to continue RP'g in a way that would make them an individual separate from the pack....a very difficult thing to accomplish in the current world of MMORPG's. I was thinking towards the possibility of offering a reward that would allow a person to create an item of clothing/armor/weapon that would fit into the character's RP personality and enhance his/her RP persona. I actually played a text-based RP game years ago that did that and it was awesome.
One more thing, as a comment to those who feel that RP'g is a burden or a bother.....there is so much to these games that is left to the individual. If you choose to power level and become a carbon copy of hundreds of other players around you, it seems to me that you are losing much of the potential fun of the game. With most MMORPG's, we all get to a certain level with pretty much the same skills available to us as the next guy, so what makes us spend so much time developing our characters? I know that not everyone wants to do the same kind of thing when they play these games and I don't want to try to lump everyone into my way of thinking, although it's hard not to...hehe....but doesn't it make sense to make your character unique from everyone else in the only way we can? We are the only ones who can develop a vision as to what kind of person we want to be and we are the only ones that can bring that character to life....hence the complete RP expereince. I don't know, seems like a no-brainer to me.
A fighter named Loktar is not a role. A thief is not a role. A thief who works for a corrupt ruler in order to steal technological secrets from a rival empire in order to tip the balance of power in a part of the world is a ROLE. In most RPGs a thief is really just a professional lock-picker/trap disarmer. When did he ever really make a living stealing things. When someone steals loot they are called a greifer, not a thief. They aren't put on wanted lists and hunted for bounties. They are complained about to the producers.
That's an excellent point, ironore. I still hold that anyone logging in is roleplaying a character, whether they believe it or not. But that's in the loosest of definitions.
You're right, if you really want to talk about real roleplay, you have to consider the fact of someone not playing a role at all is in fact not roleplaying.
Comments
I agree with Ravon. The mass multi really ruins it. Finding Roleplay on a game with smaller servers like Neverwinter Nights for example is far far far easier. On those servers generally no more than 60 people can log on at the same time and it has (generally speaking) way better rp than on the average mmo(rpg). I have been lately hopping to several mmo(rpg) games - WoW, EQ2, GW... and never really managed to stay on any of them for very long. My accounts on WoW and EQ2 are terminated and I never play GW any more either.
The reason? Very simple; everyone is focussed to much on grinding and too little on playing. That really ruins the game for me. If I want to spend hours and hours of mindless monster slaying, I can do that in solo player games without monthly fee too. I get bored with the grind if there is no roleplay. So I got bored with many mmo(rpg)s.
The old SWG (I quit that game long before the first Jedi appeared) had some potential because of it's social classes like the entertainer. But when people starting to make macro bots out of those classes, I knew the grinders had taken over. Never tried that game again since, as I kept getting haunted by the macro's and the pokemon-syndrom ("Rancor, I choose you!" *poof! the beast master pulls a 20 foot rancor out of his pocket*)
As for the shakespear langauge. I hate that too. A lot of roleplayers are not roleplayers at all. "I bid thy good day my fair lord, of what season and profession areth thou?" is NOT roleplaying. In fact, I prefer the lewt d00ds over the shakespear-players, as the lewt d00ds at least openly admit that they don't roleplay
So, am I happy with the mmorpgs now? No. Perhaps Seed might be something based on what I read in this discussion. But I am looking most forward to the multiplay aspects of Neverwinter Nights 2 to be released later this year....
The problem arises when people named Tuna Casserole invade the RP servers, are allowed to harrass and ridicule the RPers, slap the naming policy around and the GMs do NOTHING about it. The l3wtz need a place to play. The RPers need a place to play. But the rules need to be enforced.
When l3wtz are given the majority of the servers, and that's still not enough for them and they feel they have to come to the RP servers and create guilds named "Cute Fuzzy Bunnies" and "We Pwnz" and the RPers are forced to suck it up and accept that the GM's are not going to support RP on RP Designated Servers, it's a sad state and totally unfair. And, it happens over and over in every game I've played.
I've been playing RPG games for 30 years now, from pen and paper games to on-line ones. I think the clue to what MMORPG's is in its title- massively multiplayer online ROLE PLAYING games. Everyone who plays these types of games is infact role playing, wether they admit it or not. We all create characters to play the game, and we play a part in it, even if we only want to PK in the game. If we did not want to role play we would stick to real life would we not?
I have run table top RPG groups, LRP games ect ect and have made the following observations time and time again- Generally those players who have played typical RPG's start off wanting to take part in fights and battles but after awhile they realise there is so much more to do in the game. Eventually they start actually playing the game the way it was meant to be played. It is also true that the older the player is the more likely they are going to want to role play rather than 'game'.
'That which does not kill us makes us stronger'
Defafnyr, I can relate to your family experiance. I have a 15 year old son who plays, and he is pretty typical of what you might expect. From an outside point of view he would often appear to be a PK ganker, a "gate hugger", whatever. But he's just having fun in his own way. He does RP some, when he's with a group of RPers. Basically he just watches what he says, and he doesn't seem to mind that at all. He's a social player, and just likes to have fun with other player, no matter what style of play it is. He adaptable to the others.
As a heavy RPer myself, I've gone from being rather rudely snobbish about it to being more adaptable too. Not that I give up on RPing, but if another player ask me an OOC question, I've come to the conclusion that it's not going to kill me to answer him in a less than RP way. I've noticed that I end up with a more friendly game experiance than in the old days when I acted snobbish about it.
Rudeness breeds confrontation. And that happens all too much.
Grakus says:" Everyone who plays these types of games is infact role playing, wether they admit it or not."
You're right on, in my opinion. I've seen those anti-RPers who always dress in their favorite fashion. I've heard them speak of that which they need (in game). They do, in fact, put their pants (in game wear) on the same way as thee and thou.
Once upon a time....
As has been mentioned, Role Playing has NOTHING to do with talking in some strange way. In fact it has nothing to do with talking at all. It doesn't matter if you are in character or out of character or talking about last nights football match. These things help immersion, but ROLE PLAYING to me means playing a ROLE. That means that the character you control exists in the world and by the actions of said character, you DO something that NEEDS doing.
By this definition there has only ever been one roleplaying game. That game is called make-believe, you know like you do as a kid, it it was FUN. You could be ANYONE and do ANYTHING and could (if you so desired) come up with all the reasons and purposed and consequences of your actions until it all became clear. Now that is a lot of work.
Then some guys got together and said what if we took that fun of make-believe and kind of defined it a bit more and had it so that there were some actual rules so that contests and such could be determined in some fair fashion. (instead of the constant yells when fighting with plastic swords that I GOT YOU, NO YOU DIDN'T, etc). These were table-top pen-and-paper type games. These games had the potential for roleplaying but I claim that it still rarely happened and this is why. It was STILL a lot of work to determine all the reasons and political implications and economic strains and personal feelings and motivations of every character AND every NPC they ever interacted with and EVERY npc that those NPCs had any contact with. 5 or 6 guys sitting around a table for a few hours every week found this to be far too exhausting. Instead there arose the concept of an adventuring party. That seemed simple enough. You had fighters, mages, thieves, etc. and they all went off on these pre-designed adventures and had some good times.
Later came single player computer role playing games. This used those same concepts of pre-crafted adventures and some basic classes like fighter or thief or ALL combined but those aren't roles really. They are more of a skill set. Your role was pretty much assigned and it was usually something grand like the HERO of the WORLD.
Now this all got applied in this progressive way to MMORPGs but totally forgot where the original drive for this make-believe play came from. Now with tons of players interacting there could, for the first time, be a dynamic developing world where the actions of many different people affected the game world on various levels and across all distances. Every action could contribute to the world even if the actors never met.
Of course this has never yet been realized. Instead they apply the concepts of either single players/groups adventuring along with some predefined skill-sets (fighter, mage, etc.) which they would constantly increase and add to (leveling up, originally designed for a FEW players all in the same party of roughly equal levels) as they either randomly fought monsters or each other or played through pre-defined adventures (quests). This is all the genre has ever done really. And none of these mentioned actions every affect an MMORPG game world in any way. Nothing changes. It is static. A role exists to fill a specific need to take necessary ACTIONS to attempt to cause specific outcomes.
A fighter named Loktar is not a role. A thief is not a role. A thief who works for a corrupt ruler in order to steal technological secrets from a rival empire in order to tip the balance of power in a part of the world is a ROLE. In most RPGs a thief is really just a professional lock-picker/trap disarmer. When did he ever really make a living stealing things. When someone steals loot they are called a greifer, not a thief. They aren't put on wanted lists and hunted for bounties. They are complained about to the producers.
What we are talking about here is a dynamic world. The potential of MMORPGs to create such a world is great but it would require giving the players the right tools and then putting the power in their hands. It would also take a lot of work to create a self-correcting, self-balancing sort of world. Only then will true ROLES start to develop and then ROLE PLAYING will naturally follow. People won't even have to think about it.
Perhaps you slay monsters for a living because SOMEONE has to do it and the players who like safe towns to craft in that don't get burned to the ground every week are quite willing to PAY you to slay those monsters. The rats don't have gold but the villagers that HATE rats do. NOW you have a role. You don't have to say 'thee' and 'thou' when you talk to the players in the village. What you DO have to do is think about how much money you can get them to pay. You have to take into account the cost of your equipment and the risks to your character. You might have to haggle with them, you might have to establish a reputation first. You might have to start your prices low but then raise the prices once they see the benefits. You also have to think about what happens if you do too good a job. If you kill ALL the rats then you will have to move on. What about when another monster slayer comes along offering his services at a lower rate? How do you interact with HIM? Do you bump him off in the woods? Do you sabotage his work? Do you soil his reputation with the townsfolk? Do you challenge him to a contest? Do you yell at him? Do you decide to work with him in some way to get the town to pay even more? The possibilities are endless.
Keep in mind these are all REAL players. There might be NPCs to chop wood and farm grain, but they would still be under control of other players that like to fulfill management type roles. What this means is that content is generated constantly by player actions. The monster-slayer role was created by the fact that players that build a town want it kept safe but want to focus on doing other things. The monster-slayer may mostly have skills of a fighter or a hunter or a woods-man, but these are just tools that help him fulfill the actual role. He will interact with others as someone in this role would. He is now role-playing. People will approach him because of this role, people will talk to him about his role, people will THINK of him as related to this role. That, is ROLE PLAYING. With thousands of players interacting, many more roles will start to develop:
Someone might manage the small (monster free) town where goods are manufactured.
Someone might buy those goods and try to transport them to places where they are in demand.
Someone might volunteer their services to protect merchants on those trade routes.
Someone might attack caravans on those trade routes.
Someone might hunt down those marauders on the trade routes.
Who finances all this? The goods-producing towns? The wealthy merchants? What if they can't stop the marauders? What if the marauders take over the town and begin to produce goods and then try and sell those goods but find it difficult because of other marauders? It all goes round and round, but their actions affect the world and they can find mutually beneficial solutions and all the while roles and content and depth and immersion and variety and FUN are being generated AUTOMATICALLY.
It can be done. It will be done. Hopefully soon.
IronOre - Forging the Future
I have played MMORPG's with groups of people who immersed themselves into the RP experience and found my enjoyment of the game tripled. Taking EQII as an example, here we are in a world carefully created in every way imaginable to help us really feel like we're there. If the people around us take this imaginative creation seriously and take on the role of whatever character they have created it is amazingly fun for everyone. Do you have to talk in Olde English? Of course not. But, for those of us who truly enjoy the experience of immersing ourselves into a world of fantasy and magic, it is more fun than you can imagine to think about this character you've created and decide what kind of actions and speech would really bring him/her to life.
Having said that, I totally agree that there should be a server set aside for those of us who love to RP. For all others, be my guest and talk about the latest sports scores or whatever. I do feel that there should be a way to be rewarded for RP'g. The ultimate system would provide a character with something unique to them, something that would allow them to continue RP'g in a way that would make them an individual separate from the pack....a very difficult thing to accomplish in the current world of MMORPG's. I was thinking towards the possibility of offering a reward that would allow a person to create an item of clothing/armor/weapon that would fit into the character's RP personality and enhance his/her RP persona. I actually played a text-based RP game years ago that did that and it was awesome.
One more thing, as a comment to those who feel that RP'g is a burden or a bother.....there is so much to these games that is left to the individual. If you choose to power level and become a carbon copy of hundreds of other players around you, it seems to me that you are losing much of the potential fun of the game. With most MMORPG's, we all get to a certain level with pretty much the same skills available to us as the next guy, so what makes us spend so much time developing our characters? I know that not everyone wants to do the same kind of thing when they play these games and I don't want to try to lump everyone into my way of thinking, although it's hard not to...hehe....but doesn't it make sense to make your character unique from everyone else in the only way we can? We are the only ones who can develop a vision as to what kind of person we want to be and we are the only ones that can bring that character to life....hence the complete RP expereince. I don't know, seems like a no-brainer to me.
That's an excellent point, ironore. I still hold that anyone logging in is roleplaying a character, whether they believe it or not. But that's in the loosest of definitions.
You're right, if you really want to talk about real roleplay, you have to consider the fact of someone not playing a role at all is in fact not roleplaying.
Well said.
Once upon a time....