I think most RPers would be happy with this: a space to help bring their ideas to fruition and an enviroment that doesn't scrutinize them for enjoying RP.
In AoC, the developers keep telling us that features for RPers on not high on the list...guess what?
WE...DON'T...NEED...FEATURES!
They are nice an helpful, but really all we need are empty towns and taverns and castles. Places that we can fight for (an empty castle would be really cool). WE TAKE THE PLACE OF NPCs! We don't need player housing and or being able to play instruments...are they nice? Definitely. Do we need them to RP? No. We just need space. Lots of space...and aren't MMOs supposed to be worlds? I'd say worlds are pretty big. So Mr. Developer, if you could manage to give us an empty town and a few empty castles here and there...I think you'll find that we can be quite an asset to your game. We are the ones that will continue to play through imbalanced classes. We are the ones that will keep up our sub even if the next raid is two months off. We are your stability. JUST GIVE US SPACE!!!
and to those who STILL think that RPers use "thees" and "thous"...go to your game's RP server and watch a little bit. I think your eyes will be opened. I'll admit I'm a newer RPer. I have been at it for about a year now, but in all that time I've never seen someone say "thee" or "thou".
I see where you are going with this, but I don't totally agree. The developers need to give us the tools, or "props" if you will, to role play with. It's hard to role play a tavern if there is no way to dispense drinks, or no musical instruments to play. While I agree that we need more areas to use for role playing, I also believe we need the tools to make it immersive. While I still consider LOTRO to be a theme park wow clone, the little things they had in there such as playing music or smoking your pipeweed really add a lot to the immersion of the game world. Games need to focus more on these little details.
I used to do LARP and play Dagorhir. Not many people used thee's and thou's. You just talk like a normal everyday person ecept your not going to talk to someone about your car or computer. I was actually roleplaying as a goblin which was fun using broken english and acting all crazy.
I enjoy those little things like smoking and playing music in games, it makes RP more fun and more immersive. After all there should be Role Playing because that is part of RPG's. I think of MMORPG as a graphical version of tabletop RPG's but with a ton of people. And to be honest I think every MMO out there would be so much better if everyone did Roleplay. I would be cool with OOC with in your party and guild and private messages, but the open world OOC really kills immersion for me.
What poll numbers? I am highly suspect of any large group of RPers. i have yet to really meet a RPers when i play MMOs. It is quite simple. Most MMOs are abotu hack-n-slash and people don't enjoy talking in "thees and thous". Oh, and it is not just kids. Most people i know (and in my guilds) are adults and professionals.
Under "Do you Role Play?" and "What aspect of MMORPG's are you more into?".
Wow, you really think that those stats are sufficient to base an entire statement such as "70% of people roleplay"? I know from experience that there are about three or four Role-Playing servers that are really that popular, mostly only Alliance players roleplay as well. I have tried it to get some laughs for myself; if you go and scream roleplaying stuff in the main cities or even little towns, they all tell you to roleplay in Goldshire only. Clearly, 70% is not even close. I would be surprised if more than 500 people even saw that poll.
Roleplaying is NOT popular by any stretch of the imagination, and it is expensive to cater to their needs because a whole population of players (AKA the Majority) will not use that content. In a game like EVE, roleplayers can do their own thing because of politics, etc. In a theme park game, there isn't really the roleplaying ride.
Besides, Roleplaying can honestly sometimes seem a little but pathetic. Sometimes, such as in EVE, it seems okay, but for any medieval times game I have played, its really funny to think people actually talk like that in those games and can take it seriously. Good for the people who do it though.
To me roleplaying is exactly like dancing in a disco. Sadly, people come to disco's, but don't dance. Maybe because fear to look like idiots. The same problem ocurr with RPG, people come to RPGMMO games, and don't RPG, because fear that will look like idiots.
Why are you on a RPG game, If you don't want to RP? you are losing the "core" of the experience.
I think different people mean different things when they say "roleplay." If you mean, "Talk like a retarded Englishman", then nowhere near 70% of players are into that.
But if you mean "pretend that the little cartoon guy is me", then yeah, that's the reason most people play. At least, nearly everyone starts out that way.
Then the question becomes, who is NOT a roleplayer. And that's the "hard core" players -- PvP'ers and loot whores.
Non role-players need roleplayers to gawk at their equipment, and get annoyed when they get ganked. Role players need non-roleplayers in order to...
um...
Well, anyway, roleplayers can be thought of as the fodder for non-roleplayers. The reason developers "don't care" about roleplayers is because they're after the Holy Grail of the MMO business -- people who will play FOREVER, with little or no changes in content. Of course they need to put some of that in to get people hooked, but the real goal is to turn them into either PvP'ers or loot grinders. And the ones that don't drink the Kool Aide - they're just sort of forgotten about.
I think different people mean different things when they say "roleplay." If you mean, "Talk like a retarded Englishman", then nowhere near 70% of players are into that. But if you mean "pretend that the little cartoon guy is me", then yeah, that's the reason most people play. At least, nearly everyone starts out that way. Then the question becomes, who is NOT a roleplayer. And that's the "hard core" players -- PvP'ers and loot whores.
Your assumptions center around your own personal playstyle, which is transferrence of yourself ontto the pixelated avatar. There are many people that see their character as a 'ship' or 'man' not unlike the little yellow guy in Pac Man or the white blob in Space invaders. It is just the thing they control while playing a game to amuse themselves. So anyone that isn't in the "I am my character" camp is a PvPer or a loot whore? The rest of your post drifted into some scary tinfoil hattery so I won't even touch that.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Roleplayers don't make "U HAPPY NAO?!? I QUITAZOR!!!!" threads.
"The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands, To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming! On we sweep with threshing oar, our only goal will be the western shore."
There are many people that see their character as a 'ship' or 'man' not unlike the little yellow guy in Pac Man or the white blob in Space invaders. It is just the thing they control while playing a game to amuse themselves. So anyone that isn't in the "I am my character" camp is a PvPer or a loot whore? The rest of your post drifted into some scary tinfoil hattery so I won't even touch that.
In an MMORPG, the other "ships" represent people. If you want to be a jerk toward them, that's your business.
But when you reject the notion that your behavior can effect others just because you don't "touch" them, and then describe SOMEONE ELSE as a sociopath... Well, that's pushing it just a little bit.
You're pushing it a little. We're not extreme at all, we just blend in the crowd. I often find people are surprised at how many roleplayers they are in their game whenever they decide to come out and speak up. Usually we just keep to our own fansites and roleplay guilds/groups however.
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way.. Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
You're pushing it a little. We're not extreme at all, we just blend in the crowd. I often find people are surprised at how many roleplayers they are in their game whenever they decide to come out and speak up. Usually we just keep to our own fansites and roleplay guilds/groups however.
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way.. Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
EQ2(AB), like UO(Europa/Catskills), has a pretty decent RP community , but the other MMOs... I mean, you pointed it out perfectly when you said that there's only been one RP community event in three months on the player-designated RP server.
How many roleplayers do you feel there are in each MMO? A hundred? Four hundred, maybe?
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
You're pushing it a little. We're not extreme at all, we just blend in the crowd. I often find people are surprised at how many roleplayers they are in their game whenever they decide to come out and speak up. Usually we just keep to our own fansites and roleplay guilds/groups however.
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way.. Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
EQ2(AB), like UO(Europa/Catskills), has a pretty decent RP community , but the other MMOs... I mean, you pointed it out perfectly when you said that there's only been one RP community event in three months on the player-designated RP server.
How many roleplayers do you feel there are in each MMO? A hundred? Four hundred, maybe?
Go to the servers Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord in WoW, then come here and tell me RP is dying off.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
Lynx, it seems every post you've made in this thread has been ill informed, or you've been willfully ignoring what other people have typed at the time. Try and stay on topic, you're going into scary tinfoil territory.
Also, @ ;tethys: That poll has almost 13000 votes. That's more than most scientific studies do.
Lynx, it seems every post you've made in this thread has been ill informed, or you've been willfully ignoring what other people have typed at the time. Try and stay on topic, you're going into scary tinfoil territory.
Can you tell me which statements I have made that were factually incorrect? Can you link me to any site, study, statistic, or poll that will indicate that there is an audience of at least20k total RPers in NA/EU MMOs today? 10k? 7k?
I've got nothing against roleplayers. I've been RPing my characters and organizing ingame events and serverwide plots in various MMOs for over a decade now. I enjoy it immensely, but I'm not going to try to fool myself into thinking that RPers are any sizable portion of the MMO gamer population.
I realize it's easier to wave your hand dismissively and rationalize that those who disagree with you are ill informed, but it might make easier for us to see why you feel this is some dastardly agenda by EvilDevCorp if you provide some kind of current data to support your position.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Go to the servers Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord in WoW, then come here and tell me RP is dying off.
Why? I never said it was dying, only that it was an extremely small percentage of the MMO population. It's like you guys are creating new arguments rather than just acknowledging that RPers are a small group, and that it's very hard to create a profitable MMO with a healthy population that targets any one subset of those RPers. It's not some dev hatred for RPers.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Roleplaying used to be about getting together as a group and having fun pretending you were actually in the game world and as that character, now all I see are a bunch of elitists with superiority complex issues that take roleplaying too seriously who think they're better than everyone and cyberers.
That is why roleplaying is dying, oh that and there are no games out that have decent mechanics to roleplay with anymore because its all about killing randomly spawning monsters constantly which doesn't offer very much in the storyline and lore department.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Can you tell me which statements I have made that were factually incorrect? Can you link me to any site, study, statistic, or poll that will indicate that there is an audience of at least20k total RPers in NA/EU MMOs today? 10k? 7k? I've got nothing against roleplayers. I've been RPing my characters and organizing ingame events and serverwide plots in various MMOs for over a decade now. I enjoy it immensely, but I'm not going to try to fool myself into thinking that RPers are any sizable portion of the MMO gamer population. I realize it's easier to wave your hand dismissively and rationalize that those who disagree with you are ill informed, but it might make easier for us to see why you feel this is some dastardly agenda by EvilDevCorp if you provide some kind of current data to support your position.
Do you Role Play? 12966 people posted on this poll.
Yes - 29.8%
Occasionally - 40.1%
No - 30.1%
The poll may not be able to be completely generalised, but it's a large enough survey to suggest that there is a FAIRLY large percentage of the MMO playerbase to make roleplaying a viable gaming community.
( If you still don't get it, 0.699 * 12966 = 9063. Now, we can presume that not all MMO players come to this site, so the actual amount of roleplaying people in EU/NA is MUCH larger than that. Therefore, it's a fairly valid piece of evidence to suggest that a large percentage of the MMO playerbase roleplays. That's from 2007, which was after WoW came out and before WoW started to slow down in terms of population growth, so the market is probably pretty saturated. )
Do you Role Play? 12966 people posted on this poll.
Yes - 29.8%
Occasionally - 40.1%
No - 30.1% The poll may not be able to be completely generalised, but it's a large enough survey to suggest that there is a FAIRLY large percentage of the MMO playerbase to make roleplaying a viable gaming community. ( If you still don't get it, 0.699 * 12966 = 9063. Now, we can presume that not all MMO players come to this site, so the actual amount of roleplaying people in EU/NA is MUCH larger than that. Therefore, it's a fairly valid piece of evidence to suggest that a large percentage of the MMO playerbase roleplays. That's from 2007, which was after WoW came out and before WoW started to slow down in terms of population growth, so the market is probably pretty saturated. )
That still says nothing about the viability of a roleplay-focused MMO.
Do you really believe all of those people want the same exact ruleset and mechanics?
Name restrictions
Enforced RP
No OOC
Race-restricted guild
That's just a few of the features that the RP community is divided on.
You will have some that demand that since it is a RP-focused MMO, the devs need to strictly enforce their particular pet rule. If it isn't, then "the devs don't care" or the RP designation is "lip service". For each RP-centric rule or restriction that you put in place, you narrow that down even further.
To help you understand this better, replace RP with PVP in that poll. Now is it clearer? One group likes FFA PvP. Another group may like factions/RvR. Another group may fancy dueling and arenas. Each of those groups are further split by who likes or dislikes looting. Now divide iy up by theme preference (sci-fi, fantasy, post apoc, etc)
So, you can see how that 9k whittles down fast once you put the specifics of the MMO in there.
After several months of constantly reading people post how an MMO under 300k is a failure, it's odd to see people posting that an MMO with a possible audience of 9k and likely audience of a few thousand is even a remotely viable idea.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
See, once again you're willfully ignoring what statistical analysis suggests. 13000 people is a SMALL percentage of the current MMO playerbase, but can be generalised to include the majority of people who have, at some point, signed up to this site, at the very least, which gives us about 720,000 players. It may not be completely externally valid to MMOs as a whole, but it can still work.
You don't seem to realise what an "RP focused MMO" means. Whilst naming rules need to be enforced, and so does IC chat in designated channels, it does not mean "forced roleplaying" or "race-specific guilds". What it means is a dynamic world ( which I've seen many people on these forums requesting ), rewards for "good roleplaying" and regular events by GMs / staff member, which also seem to be requested frequently. It means having a world that encourages people to act out their roles, instead of turning into munchkin #356,234.
RP focused means not focusing on the end game, but on the world itself. It means making the players lose their sense of disbelief. It means making their players THINK of their characters.
You seem to presume it means the usual crap but with RP rules attached, instead of thinking about what it could be. I'm afraid you seem to be stuck in a box.
See, once again you're willfully ignoring what statistical analysis suggests. 13000 people is a SMALL percentage of the current MMO playerbase, but can be generalised to include the majority of people who have, at some point, signed up to this site, at the very least, which gives us about 720,000 players. It may not be completely externally valid to MMOs as a whole, but it can still work.
You don't seem to realise what an "RP focused MMO" means. Whilst naming rules need to be enforced, and so does IC chat in designated channels, it does not mean "forced roleplaying" or "race-specific guilds". What it means is a dynamic world ( which I've seen many people on these forums requesting ), rewards for "good roleplaying" and regular events by GMs / staff member, which also seem to be requested frequently. It means having a world that encourages people to act out their roles, instead of turning into munchkin #356,234.
RP focused means not focusing on the end game, but on the world itself. It means making the players lose their sense of disbelief. It means making their players THINK of their characters.
You seem to presume it means the usual crap but with RP rules attached, instead of thinking about what it could be. I'm afraid you seem to be stuck in a box.
I'll try one more time...
I did not say an RP server needs that. I said that the perception of what an RP server should be and the rules it should have is so diverse among the members of that subset of MMO gamers that creating an MMO that caters to "roleplayers' is just as difficult as creating an MMO that caters to "PvPers". I don't think you truly understand the scope of the variables involved or how effectively catering to a niche further reduces your target audience within that niche.
Another thing that I hadn't mentioned before is that although an audience may exist, a developer is also challenged with creating a compelling enough reason for people to leave their established MMOs to go to the new one.
Unfortunately, it seems you just want to spout condescending comments so I won't bother trying to explain any further. You either get it or you don't.
Cheers.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
The difference between an RP game and a PvP game is that the RP game will be unique in the market. There are plenty of PvP games out there, and therefore developers need to get it to fit the niche perfectly.
EDIT: You also completely changed your tune when I confronted you with statistics. You were claiming that the percentage of roleplayers is "minimal", but now have completely ignored that. You're either attempting to bait, or are just impossible to deal with. You evidently have a negative image of roleplayers, and are trying to put down this thread.
It has never been my cup of tea although I do find it odd that recently developers seem to be ignoring the rp'ers. Seems silly to me that they would alienate those that prefer to rp. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be "allowed" or supported.
I always hated it even when I used to play D&D. I just found it odd or downright weird but I just didn't play with those that enjoyed it. Never gave them a hard time or anything.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It has never been my cup of tea although I do find it odd that recently developers seem to be ignoring the rp'ers. Seems silly to me that they would alienate those that prefer to rp. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be "allowed" or supported. I always hated it even when I used to play D&D. I just found it odd or downright weird but I just didn't play with those that enjoyed it. Never gave them a hard time or anything.
You have to have played UO to understand how it worked. =p You had people roleplaying orcs and having huge fights against the non-PK "knights", all with roleplaying. It was excellent.
We are not it is just we tend to be more mature and don't engage in the kind of behavior the gets much attention. Honestly I used to like pvp and could tolerate the community until I worked at a state prison and kept hearing inmates talk about getting out and playing some of their favorite pvp games. So in my mind the pvp crowd became felons or soon to be felons and I went another way.
Those immates also probably like to laugh. Does that mean that all people who like to laugh are felons or soon to be felons? This flawed reasoning never gets old lol.
On-topic: I dont rp myself, but I also never thought of rp'ers as lower class players. I mean who cares what others think about how you like to play a MMO?
I miss the old days in Anarchy Online. Sci-Fi MMO with a good story, and plenty of locations and history to base a character on. I enjoyed all aspects of that game, even the mass PVP Tower battles. The developers of that game gave a lot of cool things to the RPers, ingame items that we could use or wear, or drinks we could actually hold in our hands, small things like that. I never needed much from Developers to RP in a game, all I really need is a good enough story that I was interested in, and to find other people that are interested similarly.
Basically, if you are into a game enough nothing is goig to stop you from RPing, if you are having fun doing it that is all that matters. You dont need to be catered to by Developers to enjoy it. It might help sometimes, but its not gonna stop you
Comments
I see where you are going with this, but I don't totally agree. The developers need to give us the tools, or "props" if you will, to role play with. It's hard to role play a tavern if there is no way to dispense drinks, or no musical instruments to play. While I agree that we need more areas to use for role playing, I also believe we need the tools to make it immersive. While I still consider LOTRO to be a theme park wow clone, the little things they had in there such as playing music or smoking your pipeweed really add a lot to the immersion of the game world. Games need to focus more on these little details.
I used to do LARP and play Dagorhir. Not many people used thee's and thou's. You just talk like a normal everyday person ecept your not going to talk to someone about your car or computer. I was actually roleplaying as a goblin which was fun using broken english and acting all crazy.
I enjoy those little things like smoking and playing music in games, it makes RP more fun and more immersive. After all there should be Role Playing because that is part of RPG's. I think of MMORPG as a graphical version of tabletop RPG's but with a ton of people. And to be honest I think every MMO out there would be so much better if everyone did Roleplay. I would be cool with OOC with in your party and guild and private messages, but the open world OOC really kills immersion for me.
http://www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm/view/polls
Under "Do you Role Play?" and "What aspect of MMORPG's are you more into?".
Wow, you really think that those stats are sufficient to base an entire statement such as "70% of people roleplay"? I know from experience that there are about three or four Role-Playing servers that are really that popular, mostly only Alliance players roleplay as well. I have tried it to get some laughs for myself; if you go and scream roleplaying stuff in the main cities or even little towns, they all tell you to roleplay in Goldshire only. Clearly, 70% is not even close. I would be surprised if more than 500 people even saw that poll.
Roleplaying is NOT popular by any stretch of the imagination, and it is expensive to cater to their needs because a whole population of players (AKA the Majority) will not use that content. In a game like EVE, roleplayers can do their own thing because of politics, etc. In a theme park game, there isn't really the roleplaying ride.
Besides, Roleplaying can honestly sometimes seem a little but pathetic. Sometimes, such as in EVE, it seems okay, but for any medieval times game I have played, its really funny to think people actually talk like that in those games and can take it seriously. Good for the people who do it though.
Roleplaying is up to the players that wish to roleplay. All the devs can do is provide a stage upon which to act.
Roleplayers invented the MMO through D&D so some respect is due.
To me roleplaying is exactly like dancing in a disco. Sadly, people come to disco's, but don't dance. Maybe because fear to look like idiots. The same problem ocurr with RPG, people come to RPGMMO games, and don't RPG, because fear that will look like idiots.
Why are you on a RPG game, If you don't want to RP? you are losing the "core" of the experience.
I think different people mean different things when they say "roleplay." If you mean, "Talk like a retarded Englishman", then nowhere near 70% of players are into that.
But if you mean "pretend that the little cartoon guy is me", then yeah, that's the reason most people play. At least, nearly everyone starts out that way.
Then the question becomes, who is NOT a roleplayer. And that's the "hard core" players -- PvP'ers and loot whores.
Non role-players need roleplayers to gawk at their equipment, and get annoyed when they get ganked. Role players need non-roleplayers in order to...
um...
Well, anyway, roleplayers can be thought of as the fodder for non-roleplayers. The reason developers "don't care" about roleplayers is because they're after the Holy Grail of the MMO business -- people who will play FOREVER, with little or no changes in content. Of course they need to put some of that in to get people hooked, but the real goal is to turn them into either PvP'ers or loot grinders. And the ones that don't drink the Kool Aide - they're just sort of forgotten about.
Your assumptions center around your own personal playstyle, which is transferrence of yourself ontto the pixelated avatar. There are many people that see their character as a 'ship' or 'man' not unlike the little yellow guy in Pac Man or the white blob in Space invaders. It is just the thing they control while playing a game to amuse themselves. So anyone that isn't in the "I am my character" camp is a PvPer or a loot whore? The rest of your post drifted into some scary tinfoil hattery so I won't even touch that.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Roleplayers don't make "U HAPPY NAO?!? I QUITAZOR!!!!" threads.
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar, our only goal will be the western shore."
no, but I still see "I quit threads" from RPers.
mostly "Well, you really don't care about the RP aspect of your game, so see ya I suppose."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
In an MMORPG, the other "ships" represent people. If you want to be a jerk toward them, that's your business.
But when you reject the notion that your behavior can effect others just because you don't "touch" them, and then describe SOMEONE ELSE as a sociopath... Well, that's pushing it just a little bit.
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way..
Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
(,,,)=^__^=(,,,)
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way..
Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
EQ2(AB), like UO(Europa/Catskills), has a pretty decent RP community , but the other MMOs... I mean, you pointed it out perfectly when you said that there's only been one RP community event in three months on the player-designated RP server.
How many roleplayers do you feel there are in each MMO? A hundred? Four hundred, maybe?
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Whoa there. I never said roleplayers were extremists. I said they were an extreme minority. Roleplayers have followed the same pattern in most MMOs. They pick a server as the RP server, prove very active for a few months, begin to unite, dissipate, and then disappear into obscurity. Lionna.com (L2) and Landroval.org(LOTRO) are two great examples of that.
Yeah I understood what you meant by extremely small. I don't know about L2 never really played that game, LotrO when I was there, there was plenty of RP if a site died it may be because the community moved on to the Lorebook or other LotrO network sites, there was a few of them if I remember correctly.
Now you got me curious so I did a quick search and found many RP guilds on Landroval alive and well, the last RP event I found was this march the Moonlight Serenade. So again it's not because people don't roleplay in general chat anymore that it's not there. There's very good reasons why RP is no longer apparent.
Now I play EQ2 and WoW right now, and on Argent Dawn in WoW of ALL games I walked right smack into a circle of horde toons talking in character, I excused myself and went on my way..
Eq2 has their annual summer event coming up the Festival of Unity and I fully expect to participate and rp my ass off. :P
So while you may have to search around a bit roleplay is not that obscure.
EQ2(AB), like UO(Europa/Catskills), has a pretty decent RP community , but the other MMOs... I mean, you pointed it out perfectly when you said that there's only been one RP community event in three months on the player-designated RP server.
How many roleplayers do you feel there are in each MMO? A hundred? Four hundred, maybe?
Go to the servers Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord in WoW, then come here and tell me RP is dying off.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
Lynx, it seems every post you've made in this thread has been ill informed, or you've been willfully ignoring what other people have typed at the time. Try and stay on topic, you're going into scary tinfoil territory.
Also, @ ;tethys: That poll has almost 13000 votes. That's more than most scientific studies do.
Lynx, it seems every post you've made in this thread has been ill informed, or you've been willfully ignoring what other people have typed at the time. Try and stay on topic, you're going into scary tinfoil territory.
Can you tell me which statements I have made that were factually incorrect? Can you link me to any site, study, statistic, or poll that will indicate that there is an audience of at least20k total RPers in NA/EU MMOs today? 10k? 7k?
I've got nothing against roleplayers. I've been RPing my characters and organizing ingame events and serverwide plots in various MMOs for over a decade now. I enjoy it immensely, but I'm not going to try to fool myself into thinking that RPers are any sizable portion of the MMO gamer population.
I realize it's easier to wave your hand dismissively and rationalize that those who disagree with you are ill informed, but it might make easier for us to see why you feel this is some dastardly agenda by EvilDevCorp if you provide some kind of current data to support your position.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Why? I never said it was dying, only that it was an extremely small percentage of the MMO population. It's like you guys are creating new arguments rather than just acknowledging that RPers are a small group, and that it's very hard to create a profitable MMO with a healthy population that targets any one subset of those RPers. It's not some dev hatred for RPers.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Roleplaying used to be about getting together as a group and having fun pretending you were actually in the game world and as that character, now all I see are a bunch of elitists with superiority complex issues that take roleplaying too seriously who think they're better than everyone and cyberers.
That is why roleplaying is dying, oh that and there are no games out that have decent mechanics to roleplay with anymore because its all about killing randomly spawning monsters constantly which doesn't offer very much in the storyline and lore department.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Do you Role Play? 12966 people posted on this poll.
Yes - 29.8%
Occasionally - 40.1%
No - 30.1%
The poll may not be able to be completely generalised, but it's a large enough survey to suggest that there is a FAIRLY large percentage of the MMO playerbase to make roleplaying a viable gaming community.
( If you still don't get it, 0.699 * 12966 = 9063. Now, we can presume that not all MMO players come to this site, so the actual amount of roleplaying people in EU/NA is MUCH larger than that. Therefore, it's a fairly valid piece of evidence to suggest that a large percentage of the MMO playerbase roleplays. That's from 2007, which was after WoW came out and before WoW started to slow down in terms of population growth, so the market is probably pretty saturated. )
That still says nothing about the viability of a roleplay-focused MMO.
Do you really believe all of those people want the same exact ruleset and mechanics?
That's just a few of the features that the RP community is divided on.
You will have some that demand that since it is a RP-focused MMO, the devs need to strictly enforce their particular pet rule. If it isn't, then "the devs don't care" or the RP designation is "lip service". For each RP-centric rule or restriction that you put in place, you narrow that down even further.
To help you understand this better, replace RP with PVP in that poll. Now is it clearer? One group likes FFA PvP. Another group may like factions/RvR. Another group may fancy dueling and arenas. Each of those groups are further split by who likes or dislikes looting. Now divide iy up by theme preference (sci-fi, fantasy, post apoc, etc)
So, you can see how that 9k whittles down fast once you put the specifics of the MMO in there.
After several months of constantly reading people post how an MMO under 300k is a failure, it's odd to see people posting that an MMO with a possible audience of 9k and likely audience of a few thousand is even a remotely viable idea.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
See, once again you're willfully ignoring what statistical analysis suggests. 13000 people is a SMALL percentage of the current MMO playerbase, but can be generalised to include the majority of people who have, at some point, signed up to this site, at the very least, which gives us about 720,000 players. It may not be completely externally valid to MMOs as a whole, but it can still work.
You don't seem to realise what an "RP focused MMO" means. Whilst naming rules need to be enforced, and so does IC chat in designated channels, it does not mean "forced roleplaying" or "race-specific guilds". What it means is a dynamic world ( which I've seen many people on these forums requesting ), rewards for "good roleplaying" and regular events by GMs / staff member, which also seem to be requested frequently. It means having a world that encourages people to act out their roles, instead of turning into munchkin #356,234.
RP focused means not focusing on the end game, but on the world itself. It means making the players lose their sense of disbelief. It means making their players THINK of their characters.
You seem to presume it means the usual crap but with RP rules attached, instead of thinking about what it could be. I'm afraid you seem to be stuck in a box.
See, once again you're willfully ignoring what statistical analysis suggests. 13000 people is a SMALL percentage of the current MMO playerbase, but can be generalised to include the majority of people who have, at some point, signed up to this site, at the very least, which gives us about 720,000 players. It may not be completely externally valid to MMOs as a whole, but it can still work.
You don't seem to realise what an "RP focused MMO" means. Whilst naming rules need to be enforced, and so does IC chat in designated channels, it does not mean "forced roleplaying" or "race-specific guilds". What it means is a dynamic world ( which I've seen many people on these forums requesting ), rewards for "good roleplaying" and regular events by GMs / staff member, which also seem to be requested frequently. It means having a world that encourages people to act out their roles, instead of turning into munchkin #356,234.
RP focused means not focusing on the end game, but on the world itself. It means making the players lose their sense of disbelief. It means making their players THINK of their characters.
You seem to presume it means the usual crap but with RP rules attached, instead of thinking about what it could be. I'm afraid you seem to be stuck in a box.
I'll try one more time...
I did not say an RP server needs that. I said that the perception of what an RP server should be and the rules it should have is so diverse among the members of that subset of MMO gamers that creating an MMO that caters to "roleplayers' is just as difficult as creating an MMO that caters to "PvPers". I don't think you truly understand the scope of the variables involved or how effectively catering to a niche further reduces your target audience within that niche.
Another thing that I hadn't mentioned before is that although an audience may exist, a developer is also challenged with creating a compelling enough reason for people to leave their established MMOs to go to the new one.
Unfortunately, it seems you just want to spout condescending comments so I won't bother trying to explain any further. You either get it or you don't.
Cheers.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
The difference between an RP game and a PvP game is that the RP game will be unique in the market. There are plenty of PvP games out there, and therefore developers need to get it to fit the niche perfectly.
EDIT: You also completely changed your tune when I confronted you with statistics. You were claiming that the percentage of roleplayers is "minimal", but now have completely ignored that. You're either attempting to bait, or are just impossible to deal with. You evidently have a negative image of roleplayers, and are trying to put down this thread.
It has never been my cup of tea although I do find it odd that recently developers seem to be ignoring the rp'ers. Seems silly to me that they would alienate those that prefer to rp. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be "allowed" or supported.
I always hated it even when I used to play D&D. I just found it odd or downright weird but I just didn't play with those that enjoyed it. Never gave them a hard time or anything.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
You have to have played UO to understand how it worked. =p You had people roleplaying orcs and having huge fights against the non-PK "knights", all with roleplaying. It was excellent.
Those immates also probably like to laugh. Does that mean that all people who like to laugh are felons or soon to be felons? This flawed reasoning never gets old lol.
On-topic: I dont rp myself, but I also never thought of rp'ers as lower class players. I mean who cares what others think about how you like to play a MMO?
I miss the old days in Anarchy Online. Sci-Fi MMO with a good story, and plenty of locations and history to base a character on. I enjoyed all aspects of that game, even the mass PVP Tower battles. The developers of that game gave a lot of cool things to the RPers, ingame items that we could use or wear, or drinks we could actually hold in our hands, small things like that. I never needed much from Developers to RP in a game, all I really need is a good enough story that I was interested in, and to find other people that are interested similarly.
Basically, if you are into a game enough nothing is goig to stop you from RPing, if you are having fun doing it that is all that matters. You dont need to be catered to by Developers to enjoy it. It might help sometimes, but its not gonna stop you