Skimmed through the replies. A couple points stand out, i.e. better chat tools, and active CSRs. Oh boy. In almost every game that hasn't already crashed and burned these two would do a lot to alleviate the stress. Seriously.
Griefers and morons run rampant simply because bad behaviour isn't checked. I live in asia and don't have a credit card so my experience is mostly on F2P games and let me tell you that the people who play in those are definitely "a cut below" (to put it mildly) if you want to talk about community experiences. The vast majority of these free games are populated by asses, simply because in game after game nothing is done to actually help the players. It seems like the industry's SOP is just release the damn game, and then duck and cover. It's been my experience - and I'm talking about having played most of the games on the mmorpg.com list, I'm no 5-game newbie - that most companies either don't have the resources or simply don't care (?!) to police their servers. Seeing an actual GM online is about as rare as a lunar eclipse: you probably expect to eyeball them once or twice in your lifetime, that's about it. And "industry insiders" (pah!) wonder why their games fail.
Seriously. Devote less goddamn money to making things shiny - we don't give a rat's ass, as long as your game doesn't look like an 8-bit handheld game things will be fine - and devote more resources to training CSR personnel. In almost all pre-release news clips I'm always reading crap about how this new game will sport technology X or improvement Y... bullshit. Ultimately it won't matter, because I know, i just freakin know, that within half an hour of logging in you'll get people going zomfg wtf nub lolbbq and ganking level 1 people. A week later you'll see bots everywhere and nobody talking, and about a month later the entire game economy will be in the toilet as people offer a bajillion of the endgame items at ridiculous prices. Let's not even talk about chat, because it will most likely be flooded 24/7 by people either (1) advertising gold farming, or (2) drama queens.
F2P games have a bad rep for many reasons, and these are among the major ones. MMO companies expect to launch like singleplayer offline games, i.e. launch and then sit back and rake it in. It doesn't friggin work like that. You need to work at keeping things going along.
There are players who can pull it off with the right tools and many have managed to scrape by without. The Saga of Gresh'Maj is the post-mortem report of the biggest player run saga ever put together on EQ written by the guy who did it (linked in my post on the first page). They didn't have nothin' but time and creative energy and it worked.
However you do see some amazing RP storylines, like old timey tabletop campaigns, in SWG as a Storyteller can set up props, manipulate events as they interact with the players in real time, and even offer a 'narrator's' perspective to set the tone. Architect in City of Heroes is quite a bit more limited as the creator/Storyteller can't really occupy a narrator's perspective aside from what he's already scripted into the scenario. It is published to a potentially wider audience and for a given group I've seen Storytellers have thier characters fill in the blanks or offer improvised complications/responses in text but the actual encounter is set in stone. That's rule 3691 in the how not to be a roleplayer's Storyteller manual: Don't railroad the players. Architect really doesn't have the flexibility to do anything else.
Here's a log with (perhaps too many) pictures of a typical adventure. There are more recent threads with pics on my guild's site but this one does the best job really showing how Storyteller Tools and a good player GM all work to create that sense of old timy tabletop RPG goodness. More recent was a much bigger multi-PA (guild) storyline but the RP text log seems to be omitted:
More common than these though are events like markets, parties, fairs, holiday celebrations and the like. All you need is a theme for those. Much less work! But folks keep the sagas rolling in on Starsider too.
3) As nonroleplayers will be a big part of the population this creates a natural pool of potential new roleplayers.
I believe your observations about official servers are sound, and I myself am speaking mostly from experience with MMOs where server designations did not exist, and every shard was considered roleplay (because the game was a roleplaying game).
I think point 3 here is right on the money, and it goes along with what I was trying to get at before. Whereas Sanya & Co. seem to think it is mostly financially unsound to support roleplay [in a roleplaying game *sigh*], I think the goal should be to acclimate people to freeform roleplaying. This is done through mechanics that are freeform and sandbox-style. This is done through encouraging artistic expression through graphics and emotes. This is done by reducing linearity and separating grind from character evolution.
It might also be done by labeling one or two servers "Non-RP" and calling the rest "normal."
I think people are misreading the general gist of Sanya's column. They might want to reread it and be careful not to skim to the end. I personally believe the end was tacked on due to yesterday's responses.
The point that I got from this article is that roleplaying in general is an unsupportable, unserviceable activity for modern MMOs, and yes, I disagree strongly.
RP servers are the hardest bit about any given MMO. I mean, getting people to appreciate that the game is the game, yet at the same time getting them to get involved in the game to the same extent (somewhere between more than an active player and insanely obsessed) is a pain if you don't have the right kind of people. Then again, who's to say who this "right kind of person" is?
That and it's just crazy-hard trying to produce something, anything, that the majority of people won't try to exploit.
In my opinion, you would have to create mini-servers for each individual group. It gets rid of a lot of problems, and yet it creates a few. The lack of interaction wouldn't be realistic enough for the RPers, not to mention the implementation of such a plan would be a hassle. It's an idea, maybe there's a way a game could be based off of it...
I'm only acting out because I didn't get to kill anything.
No, they don't. I have never roleplayed in an "event." I roleplay inside the structure of the game, and I think this is typical for most true roleplayers. There is a different style of play alltogether where people get together and act scripts out. I call that style roleperforming, and no, I am not a fan. Usually these are the players that get upset when things don't go exactly as planned, as scripted. The fact that the author doesn't seem to know the difference is telling.
Other posters in this thread have talked about sandboxy organizations that allow their members to roleplay without preconceived dialogue. That is what true roleplaying is about.
Roleplayers also need more scripted packages.
Scripted packages? No, quite the opposite. True roleplayers need an absence of scripted packages.
Finally, roleplayers need tools to execute their elaborate scenarios.
True. Is creating tools more difficult than creating "scripted packages?" I would say they are about even, with perhaps a slight nod towards "tools."
None of these people are going off a script, with reason and logic behind their choices.
Going off a script? They are writing the script as they play.
A MMORPG can make such an excellent medium for roleplay because it doesn't require every human available to maintain strict character cooperation. There can be conflict without group disintegration and metagaming. One poster in this thread mentioned being an orc among a group of friendly orcs. They didn't have to maintain civility when encountering other groups, even though a rough form of camaraderie was still available between members of the clan.
Or more probably, no one else at all.
Once more, a suggestion that roleplayers just can't get along with each other let alone the general populace. Completely untrue. In my experience the true roleplayers (not the roleperformers) are the ones that unite servers and keep everyone mollified, regardless of playstyle. They welcome new players instead of looking down their nose at them. They may, in fact, invent an event and allow everyone to participate, not just guild members.
I just wanted to point out some of the more offending areas of this article.
As a rule I dislike Ms. Weathers’ articles. Not unlike my opening statement, her articles come off as aggrandizing and self important. However, I did enjoy this article because for me it brought to light the most repeated and base lie from Developers of MMORPGs--massively multiplayer, sure, but far from role playing. Some Developers don’t even feign an attempt at including role playing aspect to their games yet they cling to the claim that they have a rich story which encourages people to invest time, money and emotions into their product. Just call it like it is: Fantasy Based MMOG, Sci-fi Based MMOG, IP Based MMOG. Please stop diluting the concept and meaning of role playing.
Okay, I'll start by saying that I had a pessimistic slant on what you would write based on Dana's opinion piece yesterday and his tie in to your piece today. Your piece today, I'm glad to say, wasn't the butchering that I thought was going to be offered up. It was...good.
You wrote:
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.
If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it. I'm sure many other gamers, enough to make it viable/profitable, would do the same. The sad thing is that people making games it seems for the most part are cognitively incapable of putting together such a list as this for an RP server and implementing/sticking with it.
Today it seems more time is spent on trying to come up with new gimmicks and colors of smoke to blow instead of further refining exisiting options/past gameplay mechanics. Show me an P2P updated (version 2.0) AC/UO/SWG(pre-NGE) with a roleplay server with the guidelines you list, and I'll give that company $20/month for 10 years and buy expansions (as long as they don't go crazy on the expansions and drastically change the core game).
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list. If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it.
The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that. As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it. Even if you paid $40/month.
This article has been whitewashed, and it says basically nothing different from Massey's, except for a slight cleanup in tone.
Being able to PVP is my first love of an MMORPG and RPing is great and comes in 2nd! I think it's a shame that allot of the "RP" community generally doesn't like PVP.....Makes for a great mix when I'm in a position that a player wants to give me gold/stuff to let them live!!
Okay, I'll start by saying that I had a pessimistic slant on what you would write based on Dana's opinion piece yesterday and his tie in to your piece today. Your piece today, I'm glad to say, wasn't the butchering that I thought was going to be offered up. It was...good. You wrote:
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list. If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it. I'm sure many other gamers, enough to make it viable/profitable, would do the same. The sad thing is that people making games it seems for the most part are cognitively incapable of putting together such a list as this for an RP server and implementing/sticking with it. Today it seems more time is spent on trying to come up with new gimmicks and colors of smoke to blow instead of further refining exisiting options/past gameplay mechanics. Show me an P2P updated (version 2.0) AC/UO/SWG(pre-NGE) with a roleplay server with the guidelines you list, and I'll give that company $20/month for 10 years and buy expansions (as long as they don't go crazy on the expansions and drastically change the core game).
Agreed Agreed and did I say agreed?? Developers who ignore the above just don't (explitive) get it - and I dare say it's because of that lackluster lazy lack of imagination that is drying out the genre.
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list. If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it.
The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that. As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it. Even if you paid $40/month.
By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap.
The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.
No, they don't. I have never roleplayed in an "event." I roleplay inside the structure of the game, and I think this is typical for most true roleplayers. There is a different style of play alltogether where people get together and act scripts out. I call that style roleperforming, and no, I am not a fan. Usually these are the players that get upset when things don't go exactly as planned, as scripted. The fact that the author doesn't seem to know the difference is telling.
Other posters in this thread have talked about sandboxy organizations that allow their members to roleplay without preconceived dialogue. That is what true roleplaying is about.
Roleplayers also need more scripted packages.
Scripted packages? No, quite the opposite. True roleplayers need an absence of scripted packages.
Finally, roleplayers need tools to execute their elaborate scenarios.
True. Is creating tools more difficult than creating "scripted packages?" I would say they are about even, with perhaps a slight nod towards "tools."
None of these people are going off a script, with reason and logic behind their choices.
Going off a script? They are writing the script as they play.
A MMORPG can make such an excellent medium for roleplay because it doesn't require every human available to maintain strict character cooperation. There can be conflict without group disintegration and metagaming. One poster in this thread mentioned being an orc among a group of friendly orcs. They didn't have to maintain civility when encountering other groups, even though a rough form of camaraderie was still available between members of the clan.
Or more probably, no one else at all.
Once more, a suggestion that roleplayers just can't get along with each other let alone the general populace. Completely untrue. In my experience the true roleplayers (not the roleperformers) are the ones that unite servers and keep everyone mollified, regardless of playstyle. They welcome new players instead of looking down their nose at them. They may, in fact, invent an event and allow everyone to participate, not just guild members.
I just wanted to point out some of the more offending areas of this article.
Yes, yes, yes. For the love of everything, YES! Raithe-Nor hit it spot on for me. Speaking as a roleplayer from CoH/CoV, this is exactly how the good people of virtue operate and handle RP. In fact, pre-scripted events are generally viewed as inconsiderate unless said event is agreed upon OOC by all taking part.
IMO, the quality of, and the way RP is handled varies significantly from MMO to MMO. I can't help but wonder if people who were left with a bad taste in their mouth over RPers have been playing some of the worse off MMO's for RP?
I'd also add, that the concept of RP is a fickle thing, and there is no sound right or wrong way to RP. Generaly, most RPers will respect others style of RPing.
I feel also that there are a few unspoke rules of etiquette that many MMO roleplayers keep in sub-concious mind, if not concious. Number one, and perhaps most important, is to play nice and understand that in an MMO environment, there is no GM guiding the action, only your fellow roleplayers. It is thus very important to be pro-active. What that means is each roleplayer acts as their own characters GM, meaning they set the goals, challenges, and hardships that their characters want to meet/go through. And when roleplayers like this meet and interact, usually in the form of a themed guild/clan/whateveryoucallit, the fun that can be had is memorable to say the least. Twists and turns abound.
Cutting to the chase, i'll agree with previous posters that RPers only need other RPers (and of course the setting the MMO provides) to have good quality RP. Roleplaying has always been about using your imagination, and it's no different in an MMO or any other medium.
Excellent article! A perfect RP server could never be for one simple reason. Role Playing means different things to different people (not counting jack asses that name there character Bigstiffyinyourass or the Neo Natzi Grammar police wich are flipsides of the same coin)
The good news for RPers out there is that Sanya's criteria are either within reach, or that newer technologies in game engines are making RPing much easier to deal with.
Dedicated CSRs: This one is, oddly, the hardest to deal with. The human element of any online game is, sadly, the weakest link in the chain. Any time human judgement must be called on to resolve problems, there is a chance of either not resolving the issue, or even making it worse. CSRs are commonly called on the carpet for making bad calls on regular game issues, and adding RP issues to that can make things a touch worse.
However, this doesn't mean it isn't feasible. The good thing about having one or two RP servers with some dedicated CSRs on them to arbitrate game issues is that they are dealing with a more easily known factor. While some RPers can be drama queens, many are very good at communicating, making the CSR's job a touch easier. Instead of having to wait on hardcore players to finish what they are doing, and then having to wade through leet-speak, most of the RPers I know have taken time to solidly talk to the CSR, tell them the problem and answer any questions the CSR has about it.
RP server CSRs do, admittedly, need to be a touch more responsive to the community. But there are technologies in place to help with 24/7 support in such cases; in events where there is a massive disruption, off-duty CSRs may need to be paged, log in a few minutes to deal with malcontents, then go back to sleep. But this would simply be to investigate violations of TOS or EULA and hand out punishments for griefing and similar behavior. As long as the message is clear that bad behavior will be punished if committed and reported on, the rest of the community should get the message: don't cause trouble, and you won't get in trouble.
OOC Channel: This one I must respectfully disagree with. Some OOC chatter is necessary to discuss certain things that have little parallel in RP. However, having said that, as long as the game has the capability to create their own chat channels, then there is no reason whatsoever that the general rule of no OOC chat can't be implemented. If we need to take it OOC, we can do that on our own initiative.
WOW currently has the best setup, IMO, for this: all RP must be in /say and /yell, with established channels set aside for talking shop. It is pretty easy, then, to find RP, since you just look for where folks are talking in /say, and has generally worked well except when non-RPers begin engaging in harrassment that, even if reported, is rarely punished. (And no, I'm not talking about what they say. When you put a non-RPer on ignore, they just start finding any other way they can to annoy and grief you, to try and escalate things.)
I do agree with no access to /yell, though. It's abused too much as it is. It's not realistic anyway; I wasn't aware I could hear someone yelling miles away! I'd prefer a /yell where it has a set range (say 100m in WOW, to use the equivalent). It would still allow for decent RP, and not be intrusive to everyone in a zone/area.
Instead of a specialist dealing with channels, just set some basic stuff up. You only really need a General channel in areas like cities and such; most of the ones like Trade are abused and contain random conversation anyway. If a PVP defense channel is needed, that seems better suited to a party/raid channel (for those grouping up for PVP in the area) or a player-created channel. If you wanted to be a bit more selective, limit the ability to create private channels to those who hit max level or something similar; this usually weeds out the griefers who come to an RP server with a 1st level toon because their own server is down.
Server Events: Honestly, I think this is a good idea for MMOs in general. Consider the fact that new content is frequently "conquered" by hardcore players only days or weeks after it goes live. That's quick turnover for months of work, and I can't imagine that devs aren't burned out by that eventually. So you give them some flexibility in scripting some more somewhat spontaneous events that help them get creative. Give them the driver's seat of an NPC mob and some other things. This both helps them reconnect to the players, and can help stimulate new ideas for future content.
But the best part is that it takes all the pressure off the company to just push the game to endgame. If server events that permit non-hardcore players to get involved in some things crop up from time to time, it'll help people from thinking that they have to race to the endgame, because there actually isn't one. They may hit a level cap, sure, but they'll log in at least some of the time to see what server events are up that week.
And contrary to popular belief, server events do not have to be complex. It can be something rather simple. For example, you spend a week or two setting up an area where a small army of a given type (let's say orcs) start appearing in increasing numbers, along with a few tents, campfires, etc. Then for a few days, small raiding/scouting groups of mobs go into a town/city and attack folks. Finally, you have the army attack openly. Even just one town being attacked like this might get some real interest in continuing the game even if you have all the ultra-uber gear out there. If these forms of content include some appropriate reward for the challenges presented, even better.
That's just a simple event. Devs could get much, much more complex, making story-based things that play out over the course of months.
Enviromental Tools: This is something that various game engines here and there already play with. City of Heroes has much more player-oriented tools than a lot of things I know of. It allows player-made PVP events, full detailed guild bases (with both functional and decorative items), and similar aspects. Darkfall seems to be expanding on the idea significantly.
Fortunately, programming in MMO game engines is getting much better than it used to be. Many games already have objects that come or go at scripted times and dates, or for specific events. This seems more a matter of making sure the devs don't create too much server load than not having the technology, but that's just a matter of time and experience. I still think that it can be done... if someone decides they want to do it.
RP Names: This seems more complex, but it doesn't have to be. If RPers concede that they can compromise for better quality of gameplay, then the solution is found in certain persistant state worlds and how they are administered. For the really dedicated RP PSWs out there, you have to apply to play on them, subject to admin approval. Simply make the registration of a character on an RP server an application as well that you get an email about when you are approved. Personally, if the quality of the server is assured, I'd gladly wait a few hours to a day to get a character.
In-Game Communication Resources: Sanya nailed another one as a great asset for RP servers. More powerful in-game mail systems would greatly enhance the RP. What we need, though, are the tools to make written communication more usable. Make letters lootable items (which many games already allow to some degree or other). Even better, allow us to post them to certain surfaces for others to read (you can set a limit on where such things are posted, or how many you can post, to prevent griefing).
Joining Warning: We normally already have notices when you click on RP servers that these servers are for RP. The problem is that people don't take them seriously. However, the application function I noted above would definitely solve that problem. When griefing people takes more effort, it tends to discourage people doing it for casual lulz; all that are left are people doing it deliberately, making more of a case for banning them once they've crossed the line.
Ignore List: Another good point. If the list can't be unlimited, at the very least it should auto-clear someone whose character is removed from the server.
I don't think some of these things are wholly unreasonable, and would actually server to progress the state of MMOs in general. But unless someone wants to hire Sanya or others with such ideas, and implement them, we can't get much better than we already have.
Some games are a bit better about enforcing some RP server rules. WOW is pretty handy about dealing with names, but they tend to just force a rename which causes someone to pick something even more offensive. Harrassment tends to be universally despised in MMOs, and most companies deal pretty well with it.
I'm confident Sanya's list of demands can be met within the next generation of MMOs. The only question is if any company has the cajones to do it. I hope so. Darkfall took some risks to please the PVP folks out there, and I see no reason we can't get some RP love from another game somewhere out there.
RP and player generated content go hand i n hand. As the article eluded to, RP's can get pretty creative given the tools. Developer might find the solution to the 'end game content' dillema, that is the players themselves. The tools to do this needent be that sophisticated. For example player made scrolls and tomes are a must have. UO players used them to drive ongoing 'campaigns' and to document the history of the land. Happy days.
I stopped reading on the second page after seeing the part about "I roleplay because I think it adds color and flavor to the world when people speak politely..." and "I don't talk in thees and thous, but I do say "Pardon me, good sir" when I'm speaking to a higher level character..."
This reminds me of Dana's article indirectly. It has very little to do with Dana's article, but it reminds me of the people that claim role players server are just dandy. When you role play, you DO NOT have to be polite. Second, why the hell would your character say "Pardon me, good sir," to high level characters specifically? Your character doesn't know the level or reputation of another character. You are basing your characters actions on information your character wouldn't know, simply because the game's UI indicates that person is a "high level character." This is called metagaming and is not tolerated by anyone that knows what the hell role playing actually is.
My point is that the self-proclaimed role players in Dana's thread don't know shit about how to act out a character. They do stupid metagame bullshit all the time and they're too stupid and stubborn to even realize the way they play doesn't make any sense.
The chances of anyone reading this and realizing how stupid normal role playing is in MMO's, are really low. Someone has got to say it, and I'm willing to do it because this article was boring and convoluted as fuck, just like all of Sanya's articles. I'm going to get something out of this.
_________________________________ "Fixed it. Because that wall of text attacked me, killed me and looted my body..." -George "sniperg" Light
A good article! (as opposed to Danas yesterday i might add...)
I would like to throw in an idea: the *complete* ignore
What do I mean by that? Well...
It really isn't enough to have an unlimited ignore - people can still grieve you by hopping around etc. So... make them disappear. That's right, make them vanish COMPLETELY from my game. Better still: let me do that per hotkey rather than havin to type in a line.
In Addition to that: Make a /completeignore for whole friends and even whole guilds. If my friend/matey decides he sees someone breaking his/her immersion... let me just take over his list so i don't have to put up with that someone myself...
This article is a lot less biased than the last one on RP and RP servers. Thank you.
I don't think an RP server needs all that was listed, though. Would it be nice to have that? Yeah, it would. A lot of what was mentioned can be substituted for basic game tools used on all servers (like an ignore function) and good old imagination.
It is my belief that when roleplayers begin to focus too much upon the pixels the roleplay suffers. In my day, we could have RP weddings, RP events and the like. The guild I was a part of in Everquest (which was on a blue server because it was created before Firiona Vie and the guild didn't want to move once it was made) hosted most of our events in the arena. It was known when these events would happen but we never had issues with people interrupting because who would want to go in and interrupt an event with a huge group of ogres, trolls, and dark elves?
RP is fostered in the mind first. The nice gadgets, trinkets and such were nice but were uneccessary. I remember my EQ character, over a few years of play, only married twice. You want wedding rings? We got wedding rings. BUT they were already in game. As a quest created by ourselves the guild raided the Tower of Frozen Shadows, killed the ghostly wedding party, and took their wedding rings! It can be as easy as putting such things in a special shop but I liked that version better. We didn't need special quests from DMs. Each and every new member of the guild was given quests by guild officers and they were everything from fetch quests to exploration or socialization.
RP is about making story to me. This isn't something you always need to rely on DM interaction for if all those involved are mature. I'll take a server with RP slapped on it as all I wish for is a place where RPers new to a game immediately know where to go and thus not scatter the community to the four winds.
Sanya, you have it exactly right. And your outline for a real RP server would be very interesting to see happen some where.
I was one of those D&Ders back in the 70s (minus the costume). I play a lot of various MMOs now. But I seldom RP for the reasons you have so halariously detailed. When you do stumble across a group of those tallented RP cat-herders and imagineers (term taken without license from the Disney crowd) it truely is magical and fun. But one bad-apple spells painful drama at some point (often repeated in endless loops with endless variety).
So three cheers for your RP server ruleset.
But....
It needs some additions. Like, I want to have emote effects - a simi-transparent ring of rotating doves alternated with pulsing hearts around my head I can trigger when I find you GMing in game and ask you to marry me. Oh...and a nude patch for the honeymoon please.
By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap. The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the responses to this article. The author succeeded in placing the guilt by association on the entire roleplaying spectrum, simply because a few stick-in-the-mud roleperformers can't take it when someone interrupts their wedding.
I am sure that some of the items on the list are achievable and already existent in some MMO somewhere. The biggies, however, were slipped into the list in disguise because the author knew that many self-important RPers would take no objection to them:
1) Dedicated event team: Huh? Why? As soon as one minority gets dev attention, they will all want dev attention. The object is not to make more work for yourself as a developer, it's to make less. Roleplaying does that by entertaining itself, simply through application of game tools. You make the tools for the sandbox, the roleplayers will play.
2) Item creation: Huh? Why? Roleplayers should consider themselves a part of the game world and should use the same economy and crafting system that everyone else uses. If you need a hundred special hats, you should craft them - assuming the game is sandboxy enough for that to occur.
3) Community specialist approval on all names: No, completely unnecessary. In a game with a significant roleplaying population, you just created several full-time positions for no real reason at all. The better way is to simply not have names dangling in mid-air, or to make it so that /ignore makes someone completely invisible.
The people who responded and said they thought the article was good fell into a trap and helped the author drive roleplaying out of the genre. All the non-roleplayers reading this thread are going to look at the points made and the list of RP requirements, see the responses, and say... "Yup, that is way too much work for what it is worth."
Her bottom line is correct though. Dedicated roleplaying servers don't seem to be worth the hassle and frankly I've never encountered a very good roleplaying scene on any of them yet. It could just be I wasn't in the right place to see it but the good scenes I've encountered were all the product of the hard work of players, and players alone, on general purpose servers they claimed as Unofficial RP Servers. All a dev can do is offer tools and amenities and hope the right people show up to make use of them.
Elitist roleplayers, of the self-proclaimed variety, can often turn an Official RP Server (and some Unofficial ones until they simmer down - early Landroval was pretty bad in this respect), into a warzone that's got nothing to do with roleplaying and everything to do with trying to impose their sense of order on the unruly or the disrespectful by their own definition. Sometimes foolishly phrased official rules just add more heat to the fire and promise unrealistic levels of support and enforcement.
Ultimately Official RP Servers end up like every other server as disillusioned and bitter purist roleplayers move on and even the more accepting ones find themselves isolated in a community that doesn't look to each other for support, and upon the nonroleplaying community as a potential resource, but to some GMs and developers on high for solutions and anyone who isn't IC as disruptive or ignorant. It's a odd hybrid culture of dependency and elitism which hasn't seemed to serve roleplayers well.
I can say this because I'm an elitist roleplayer myself. I know what incredible dicks some of my peers can be.
However on Unofficial servers all roleplayers have to make their peace with other folks who inhabit the same space. This can be as easy as an /ignore or as involved as creating open events for roleplayers and nonroleplayers. Many of Starsider's early converts from the nonroleplaying side of the game were PvPers who got caught up in RPer organized PvP battles both on land and, more notably, in space. In fact, along with being the Unofficial RP Server for SWG, Starsider is also the #1 pilot community. Again, this comes from that initial seed of those early pioneer RPers setting roots down there and attracting a more mature crowd including flight simmers who very much enjoyed SWG's space combat model and were also roleplayers. Most simmers are only a hair away from hardcore roleplayer status anyhow. Look at the in-character after action reports and pilot diaries some of them delight in writing up.
I didn't address Sanya's list yet. I'll do that in my next post.
So, after years of trying to enforce the unenforceable, split hairs, and cut babies in half in order to discover the true mother, here's my own minimum feature list for an RP server:
You're good but you're not Solomon.
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
As others have noted this is an unlikely and expensive course of action. Only a title that was designed, explicitly, for roleplaying from the ground up, and seen as a real opportunity to be a part of, would even be able to attract the kind of talent you'd need on the GM staff to handle this for the, probably, modest income it would provide them. An alternative would be volunteers, a citizen's militia, out there but that could be very fertile ground for abuse and favoritism. Once there's an official in crowd versus everyone else things get ugly fast. That's one of the draws MMOs have over MUSHes for seasoned roleplay firsters. MMOs are seen as impartial. In theory, you pays your money and you have the same status as the next guy in the community at least as far as the business running it should be concerned. In reality favoritism is largely unavoidable but volunteer groups like this might be seen as institutionalizing the practice.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
Someone previously mentioned how well LoTRO's OOC channels worked. There were so many of them, with so many discrete functions, that nobody needed to use local (or 'say' or spatial) for OOC stuff at all. This was one of the most remarkable things about LoTRO for me when I first arrived: how blissfully quiet the local was once the OOC and regional channels were muted. In fact, it became the roleplaying channel. Only roleplayers needed to use it. Everyone else had a better channel, with a more targeted purpose and better reach, than local. So local belonged to us.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
For the reasons mentioned above this isn't important. Just make it easy to find the channels you want active and simple to turn the ones you want on or off. A player should have his channel status easily available, at a glance even, and modifiable.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
Again, not so much.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
I'd trade this for better RP friendly tools along the lines of SWG's Storyteller and 'holo' costuming system so we can really do our own thing. Some event teams are good, some aren't, but I'd trade those three folks for hundreds of players to chose from and experiences that are customized to serve particular individuals, groups and segments of a given server community instead of generic prefab fodder spread across multiple servers scattershot.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
Crafters can handle this. Just give them an option to name objects (as in SWG) for custom use or decoration and perhaps another to render them purely decorative or for costume purposes.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
That's never going to happen in any commercial MMO even my theoretical one developed by and for roleplayers. Too labor intensive. You simply have to create a world with mechanics and aesthetics that will attract roleplayers. Let them sort out their own business themselves. Some guilds or broader organizations (player cities, alliances, off-site RP forums) may come up with their own standards they enforce themselves but different groups of roleplayers will take different approaches to these things.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
Players can do this for themselves. Censorship isn't required except perhaps in, a perfect MMO for roleplayers, local chat. Even then it's much smarter and more practical to assume players can figure out who to /ignore or what channels to mute by themselves.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
This is a good idea. It could be incorporated into, say, a guild's information system or as an object people could put up in player business or homes. Let players create their own channels and possibly restrict membership or even charge for content. I can imagine more folks hanging out in a cantina if it's an actual source of RP information. Generally, though, folks get buy with offsite forums or guild forums to discuss things. Many spread the word of IC happenings as news releases, this is certainly the case with Starsider's offsite RP forums, and folks can react to this in the game. If that outlet were actually in the game world, though, man. That would be cool. And to restrict the information flow to a couple locations would turn those into definite hotspots for people to gather and gossip.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
You think people will read that and care about it? No, they'll either be smart enough not to bug CSRs in the first place or they'll start arguing the minutia about what roleplaying minutia means. "Define it!" Come on. We both know these folks.
* An unlimited ignore list.
Nice but not necessary. However additional fields on a friend/ignore list would be welcome. Perhaps the last time logged on so you know who you can take off ignore when it's time to clean house.
If the company can't afford to do these things? Don't claim to have a roleplay server at all. It only ends in tears. Focus instead on tools for everyone to use to contribute to the world in which they live.
Well, I'm with you on the "no official roleplaying servers" page as I've noted elsewhere for other reasons. However there are tools that roleplayers will make better use of than nonroleplayers and these aren't little things. How text communication is handled, what emotes are available (and perhaps as importantly not available - we don't need 'air guitar' or 'i'm a little teapot' by and large), can characters sit, character customization in appearance, decoratable player housing and businesses, game systems that reflect the setting and so on...
Some of these will be attractive to nonroleplayers too but they matter a great deal to us in particular.
Comments
Skimmed through the replies. A couple points stand out, i.e. better chat tools, and active CSRs. Oh boy. In almost every game that hasn't already crashed and burned these two would do a lot to alleviate the stress. Seriously.
Griefers and morons run rampant simply because bad behaviour isn't checked. I live in asia and don't have a credit card so my experience is mostly on F2P games and let me tell you that the people who play in those are definitely "a cut below" (to put it mildly) if you want to talk about community experiences. The vast majority of these free games are populated by asses, simply because in game after game nothing is done to actually help the players. It seems like the industry's SOP is just release the damn game, and then duck and cover. It's been my experience - and I'm talking about having played most of the games on the mmorpg.com list, I'm no 5-game newbie - that most companies either don't have the resources or simply don't care (?!) to police their servers. Seeing an actual GM online is about as rare as a lunar eclipse: you probably expect to eyeball them once or twice in your lifetime, that's about it. And "industry insiders" (pah!) wonder why their games fail.
Seriously. Devote less goddamn money to making things shiny - we don't give a rat's ass, as long as your game doesn't look like an 8-bit handheld game things will be fine - and devote more resources to training CSR personnel. In almost all pre-release news clips I'm always reading crap about how this new game will sport technology X or improvement Y... bullshit. Ultimately it won't matter, because I know, i just freakin know, that within half an hour of logging in you'll get people going zomfg wtf nub lolbbq and ganking level 1 people. A week later you'll see bots everywhere and nobody talking, and about a month later the entire game economy will be in the toilet as people offer a bajillion of the endgame items at ridiculous prices. Let's not even talk about chat, because it will most likely be flooded 24/7 by people either (1) advertising gold farming, or (2) drama queens.
F2P games have a bad rep for many reasons, and these are among the major ones. MMO companies expect to launch like singleplayer offline games, i.e. launch and then sit back and rake it in. It doesn't friggin work like that. You need to work at keeping things going along.
" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "
There are players who can pull it off with the right tools and many have managed to scrape by without. The Saga of Gresh'Maj is the post-mortem report of the biggest player run saga ever put together on EQ written by the guy who did it (linked in my post on the first page). They didn't have nothin' but time and creative energy and it worked.
However you do see some amazing RP storylines, like old timey tabletop campaigns, in SWG as a Storyteller can set up props, manipulate events as they interact with the players in real time, and even offer a 'narrator's' perspective to set the tone. Architect in City of Heroes is quite a bit more limited as the creator/Storyteller can't really occupy a narrator's perspective aside from what he's already scripted into the scenario. It is published to a potentially wider audience and for a given group I've seen Storytellers have thier characters fill in the blanks or offer improvised complications/responses in text but the actual encounter is set in stone. That's rule 3691 in the how not to be a roleplayer's Storyteller manual: Don't railroad the players. Architect really doesn't have the flexibility to do anything else.
Here's a log with (perhaps too many) pictures of a typical adventure. There are more recent threads with pics on my guild's site but this one does the best job really showing how Storyteller Tools and a good player GM all work to create that sense of old timy tabletop RPG goodness. More recent was a much bigger multi-PA (guild) storyline but the RP text log seems to be omitted:
http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=70851&ForumID=327664&TabID=613052&Replies=5&TopicID=7868193
More common than these though are events like markets, parties, fairs, holiday celebrations and the like. All you need is a theme for those. Much less work! But folks keep the sagas rolling in on Starsider too.
Always notice what you notice.
I believe your observations about official servers are sound, and I myself am speaking mostly from experience with MMOs where server designations did not exist, and every shard was considered roleplay (because the game was a roleplaying game).
I think point 3 here is right on the money, and it goes along with what I was trying to get at before. Whereas Sanya & Co. seem to think it is mostly financially unsound to support roleplay [in a roleplaying game *sigh*], I think the goal should be to acclimate people to freeform roleplaying. This is done through mechanics that are freeform and sandbox-style. This is done through encouraging artistic expression through graphics and emotes. This is done by reducing linearity and separating grind from character evolution.
It might also be done by labeling one or two servers "Non-RP" and calling the rest "normal."
A *great* article.
Sadly, it's makes Dana's pre-article even worse by comparison.
I think people are misreading the general gist of Sanya's column. They might want to reread it and be careful not to skim to the end. I personally believe the end was tacked on due to yesterday's responses.
The point that I got from this article is that roleplaying in general is an unsupportable, unserviceable activity for modern MMOs, and yes, I disagree strongly.
UNLIMITED IGNORE LISTS, HOORAY!
And make it hotkeyable, a one button silencer, hmmm silencer.
Awesome article and I completely agree.
RP servers are the hardest bit about any given MMO. I mean, getting people to appreciate that the game is the game, yet at the same time getting them to get involved in the game to the same extent (somewhere between more than an active player and insanely obsessed) is a pain if you don't have the right kind of people. Then again, who's to say who this "right kind of person" is?
That and it's just crazy-hard trying to produce something, anything, that the majority of people won't try to exploit.
In my opinion, you would have to create mini-servers for each individual group. It gets rid of a lot of problems, and yet it creates a few. The lack of interaction wouldn't be realistic enough for the RPers, not to mention the implementation of such a plan would be a hassle. It's an idea, maybe there's a way a game could be based off of it...
I'm only acting out because I didn't get to kill anything.
Beyond CSRs, roleplayers need events.
No, they don't. I have never roleplayed in an "event." I roleplay inside the structure of the game, and I think this is typical for most true roleplayers. There is a different style of play alltogether where people get together and act scripts out. I call that style roleperforming, and no, I am not a fan. Usually these are the players that get upset when things don't go exactly as planned, as scripted. The fact that the author doesn't seem to know the difference is telling.
Other posters in this thread have talked about sandboxy organizations that allow their members to roleplay without preconceived dialogue. That is what true roleplaying is about.
Roleplayers also need more scripted packages.
Scripted packages? No, quite the opposite. True roleplayers need an absence of scripted packages.
Finally, roleplayers need tools to execute their elaborate scenarios.
True. Is creating tools more difficult than creating "scripted packages?" I would say they are about even, with perhaps a slight nod towards "tools."
None of these people are going off a script, with reason and logic behind their choices.
Going off a script? They are writing the script as they play.
A MMORPG can make such an excellent medium for roleplay because it doesn't require every human available to maintain strict character cooperation. There can be conflict without group disintegration and metagaming. One poster in this thread mentioned being an orc among a group of friendly orcs. They didn't have to maintain civility when encountering other groups, even though a rough form of camaraderie was still available between members of the clan.
Or more probably, no one else at all.
Once more, a suggestion that roleplayers just can't get along with each other let alone the general populace. Completely untrue. In my experience the true roleplayers (not the roleperformers) are the ones that unite servers and keep everyone mollified, regardless of playstyle. They welcome new players instead of looking down their nose at them. They may, in fact, invent an event and allow everyone to participate, not just guild members.
I just wanted to point out some of the more offending areas of this article.
As a rule I dislike Ms. Weathers’ articles. Not unlike my opening statement, her articles come off as aggrandizing and self important. However, I did enjoy this article because for me it brought to light the most repeated and base lie from Developers of MMORPGs--massively multiplayer, sure, but far from role playing. Some Developers don’t even feign an attempt at including role playing aspect to their games yet they cling to the claim that they have a rich story which encourages people to invest time, money and emotions into their product. Just call it like it is: Fantasy Based MMOG, Sci-fi Based MMOG, IP Based MMOG. Please stop diluting the concept and meaning of role playing.
Okay, I'll start by saying that I had a pessimistic slant on what you would write based on Dana's opinion piece yesterday and his tie in to your piece today. Your piece today, I'm glad to say, wasn't the butchering that I thought was going to be offered up. It was...good.
You wrote:
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
* An unlimited ignore list.
If this were actually applied enforced on a game who's lore was interesting to me, I'd easily drop $20/month for it. I'm sure many other gamers, enough to make it viable/profitable, would do the same. The sad thing is that people making games it seems for the most part are cognitively incapable of putting together such a list as this for an RP server and implementing/sticking with it.
Today it seems more time is spent on trying to come up with new gimmicks and colors of smoke to blow instead of further refining exisiting options/past gameplay mechanics. Show me an P2P updated (version 2.0) AC/UO/SWG(pre-NGE) with a roleplay server with the guidelines you list, and I'll give that company $20/month for 10 years and buy expansions (as long as they don't go crazy on the expansions and drastically change the core game).
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that. As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it. Even if you paid $40/month.
This article has been whitewashed, and it says basically nothing different from Massey's, except for a slight cleanup in tone.
Good article....I like the ideas.
Being able to PVP is my first love of an MMORPG and RPing is great and comes in 2nd! I think it's a shame that allot of the "RP" community generally doesn't like PVP.....Makes for a great mix when I'm in a position that a player wants to give me gold/stuff to let them live!!
PIRATE LORDS
Agreed Agreed and did I say agreed?? Developers who ignore the above just don't (explitive) get it - and I dare say it's because of that lackluster lazy lack of imagination that is drying out the genre.
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The list in blue is a completely unachievable list, I hope everyone sees that. As a developer, I would never even consider implementing it. Even if you paid $40/month.
By developer do you mean programmer? Because I see nothing technically difficult in those objectives, over half of them are trivial chat addons. Hell, many of them are already in existing MMORPGs, scattered here and there. Give us a reason, what exactly don't you like instead of some vague "unachievable" crap.
The only thing I haven't seen is the dedicated staff part, because this is where most companies don't allocate resources. Then you wonder why the community turns to shit. That's because all the good players leave when they see they aren't getting any help, so you're left with the constant trickling in and out of the casuals and the griefers, which leads to the inevitable spiral of fail and closing of doors a year later.
" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "
Yes, yes, yes. For the love of everything, YES! Raithe-Nor hit it spot on for me. Speaking as a roleplayer from CoH/CoV, this is exactly how the good people of virtue operate and handle RP. In fact, pre-scripted events are generally viewed as inconsiderate unless said event is agreed upon OOC by all taking part.
IMO, the quality of, and the way RP is handled varies significantly from MMO to MMO. I can't help but wonder if people who were left with a bad taste in their mouth over RPers have been playing some of the worse off MMO's for RP?
I'd also add, that the concept of RP is a fickle thing, and there is no sound right or wrong way to RP. Generaly, most RPers will respect others style of RPing.
I feel also that there are a few unspoke rules of etiquette that many MMO roleplayers keep in sub-concious mind, if not concious. Number one, and perhaps most important, is to play nice and understand that in an MMO environment, there is no GM guiding the action, only your fellow roleplayers. It is thus very important to be pro-active. What that means is each roleplayer acts as their own characters GM, meaning they set the goals, challenges, and hardships that their characters want to meet/go through. And when roleplayers like this meet and interact, usually in the form of a themed guild/clan/whateveryoucallit, the fun that can be had is memorable to say the least. Twists and turns abound.
Cutting to the chase, i'll agree with previous posters that RPers only need other RPers (and of course the setting the MMO provides) to have good quality RP. Roleplaying has always been about using your imagination, and it's no different in an MMO or any other medium.
Excellent article! A perfect RP server could never be for one simple reason. Role Playing means different things to different people (not counting jack asses that name there character Bigstiffyinyourass or the Neo Natzi Grammar police wich are flipsides of the same coin)
The good news for RPers out there is that Sanya's criteria are either within reach, or that newer technologies in game engines are making RPing much easier to deal with.
Dedicated CSRs: This one is, oddly, the hardest to deal with. The human element of any online game is, sadly, the weakest link in the chain. Any time human judgement must be called on to resolve problems, there is a chance of either not resolving the issue, or even making it worse. CSRs are commonly called on the carpet for making bad calls on regular game issues, and adding RP issues to that can make things a touch worse.
However, this doesn't mean it isn't feasible. The good thing about having one or two RP servers with some dedicated CSRs on them to arbitrate game issues is that they are dealing with a more easily known factor. While some RPers can be drama queens, many are very good at communicating, making the CSR's job a touch easier. Instead of having to wait on hardcore players to finish what they are doing, and then having to wade through leet-speak, most of the RPers I know have taken time to solidly talk to the CSR, tell them the problem and answer any questions the CSR has about it.
RP server CSRs do, admittedly, need to be a touch more responsive to the community. But there are technologies in place to help with 24/7 support in such cases; in events where there is a massive disruption, off-duty CSRs may need to be paged, log in a few minutes to deal with malcontents, then go back to sleep. But this would simply be to investigate violations of TOS or EULA and hand out punishments for griefing and similar behavior. As long as the message is clear that bad behavior will be punished if committed and reported on, the rest of the community should get the message: don't cause trouble, and you won't get in trouble.
OOC Channel: This one I must respectfully disagree with. Some OOC chatter is necessary to discuss certain things that have little parallel in RP. However, having said that, as long as the game has the capability to create their own chat channels, then there is no reason whatsoever that the general rule of no OOC chat can't be implemented. If we need to take it OOC, we can do that on our own initiative.
WOW currently has the best setup, IMO, for this: all RP must be in /say and /yell, with established channels set aside for talking shop. It is pretty easy, then, to find RP, since you just look for where folks are talking in /say, and has generally worked well except when non-RPers begin engaging in harrassment that, even if reported, is rarely punished. (And no, I'm not talking about what they say. When you put a non-RPer on ignore, they just start finding any other way they can to annoy and grief you, to try and escalate things.)
I do agree with no access to /yell, though. It's abused too much as it is. It's not realistic anyway; I wasn't aware I could hear someone yelling miles away! I'd prefer a /yell where it has a set range (say 100m in WOW, to use the equivalent). It would still allow for decent RP, and not be intrusive to everyone in a zone/area.
Instead of a specialist dealing with channels, just set some basic stuff up. You only really need a General channel in areas like cities and such; most of the ones like Trade are abused and contain random conversation anyway. If a PVP defense channel is needed, that seems better suited to a party/raid channel (for those grouping up for PVP in the area) or a player-created channel. If you wanted to be a bit more selective, limit the ability to create private channels to those who hit max level or something similar; this usually weeds out the griefers who come to an RP server with a 1st level toon because their own server is down.
Server Events: Honestly, I think this is a good idea for MMOs in general. Consider the fact that new content is frequently "conquered" by hardcore players only days or weeks after it goes live. That's quick turnover for months of work, and I can't imagine that devs aren't burned out by that eventually. So you give them some flexibility in scripting some more somewhat spontaneous events that help them get creative. Give them the driver's seat of an NPC mob and some other things. This both helps them reconnect to the players, and can help stimulate new ideas for future content.
But the best part is that it takes all the pressure off the company to just push the game to endgame. If server events that permit non-hardcore players to get involved in some things crop up from time to time, it'll help people from thinking that they have to race to the endgame, because there actually isn't one. They may hit a level cap, sure, but they'll log in at least some of the time to see what server events are up that week.
And contrary to popular belief, server events do not have to be complex. It can be something rather simple. For example, you spend a week or two setting up an area where a small army of a given type (let's say orcs) start appearing in increasing numbers, along with a few tents, campfires, etc. Then for a few days, small raiding/scouting groups of mobs go into a town/city and attack folks. Finally, you have the army attack openly. Even just one town being attacked like this might get some real interest in continuing the game even if you have all the ultra-uber gear out there. If these forms of content include some appropriate reward for the challenges presented, even better.
That's just a simple event. Devs could get much, much more complex, making story-based things that play out over the course of months.
Enviromental Tools: This is something that various game engines here and there already play with. City of Heroes has much more player-oriented tools than a lot of things I know of. It allows player-made PVP events, full detailed guild bases (with both functional and decorative items), and similar aspects. Darkfall seems to be expanding on the idea significantly.
Fortunately, programming in MMO game engines is getting much better than it used to be. Many games already have objects that come or go at scripted times and dates, or for specific events. This seems more a matter of making sure the devs don't create too much server load than not having the technology, but that's just a matter of time and experience. I still think that it can be done... if someone decides they want to do it.
RP Names: This seems more complex, but it doesn't have to be. If RPers concede that they can compromise for better quality of gameplay, then the solution is found in certain persistant state worlds and how they are administered. For the really dedicated RP PSWs out there, you have to apply to play on them, subject to admin approval. Simply make the registration of a character on an RP server an application as well that you get an email about when you are approved. Personally, if the quality of the server is assured, I'd gladly wait a few hours to a day to get a character.
In-Game Communication Resources: Sanya nailed another one as a great asset for RP servers. More powerful in-game mail systems would greatly enhance the RP. What we need, though, are the tools to make written communication more usable. Make letters lootable items (which many games already allow to some degree or other). Even better, allow us to post them to certain surfaces for others to read (you can set a limit on where such things are posted, or how many you can post, to prevent griefing).
Joining Warning: We normally already have notices when you click on RP servers that these servers are for RP. The problem is that people don't take them seriously. However, the application function I noted above would definitely solve that problem. When griefing people takes more effort, it tends to discourage people doing it for casual lulz; all that are left are people doing it deliberately, making more of a case for banning them once they've crossed the line.
Ignore List: Another good point. If the list can't be unlimited, at the very least it should auto-clear someone whose character is removed from the server.
I don't think some of these things are wholly unreasonable, and would actually server to progress the state of MMOs in general. But unless someone wants to hire Sanya or others with such ideas, and implement them, we can't get much better than we already have.
Some games are a bit better about enforcing some RP server rules. WOW is pretty handy about dealing with names, but they tend to just force a rename which causes someone to pick something even more offensive. Harrassment tends to be universally despised in MMOs, and most companies deal pretty well with it.
I'm confident Sanya's list of demands can be met within the next generation of MMOs. The only question is if any company has the cajones to do it. I hope so. Darkfall took some risks to please the PVP folks out there, and I see no reason we can't get some RP love from another game somewhere out there.
RP and player generated content go hand i n hand. As the article eluded to, RP's can get pretty creative given the tools. Developer might find the solution to the 'end game content' dillema, that is the players themselves. The tools to do this needent be that sophisticated. For example player made scrolls and tomes are a must have. UO players used them to drive ongoing 'campaigns' and to document the history of the land. Happy days.
I stopped reading on the second page after seeing the part about "I roleplay because I think it adds color and flavor to the world when people speak politely..." and "I don't talk in thees and thous, but I do say "Pardon me, good sir" when I'm speaking to a higher level character..."
This reminds me of Dana's article indirectly. It has very little to do with Dana's article, but it reminds me of the people that claim role players server are just dandy. When you role play, you DO NOT have to be polite. Second, why the hell would your character say "Pardon me, good sir," to high level characters specifically? Your character doesn't know the level or reputation of another character. You are basing your characters actions on information your character wouldn't know, simply because the game's UI indicates that person is a "high level character." This is called metagaming and is not tolerated by anyone that knows what the hell role playing actually is.
My point is that the self-proclaimed role players in Dana's thread don't know shit about how to act out a character. They do stupid metagame bullshit all the time and they're too stupid and stubborn to even realize the way they play doesn't make any sense.
The chances of anyone reading this and realizing how stupid normal role playing is in MMO's, are really low. Someone has got to say it, and I'm willing to do it because this article was boring and convoluted as fuck, just like all of Sanya's articles. I'm going to get something out of this.
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"Fixed it. Because that wall of text attacked me, killed me and looted my body..."
-George "sniperg" Light
A good article! (as opposed to Danas yesterday i might add...)
I would like to throw in an idea: the *complete* ignore
What do I mean by that? Well...
It really isn't enough to have an unlimited ignore - people can still grieve you by hopping around etc. So... make them disappear. That's right, make them vanish COMPLETELY from my game. Better still: let me do that per hotkey rather than havin to type in a line.
In Addition to that: Make a /completeignore for whole friends and even whole guilds. If my friend/matey decides he sees someone breaking his/her immersion... let me just take over his list so i don't have to put up with that someone myself...
my 2 ct for today.
This article is a lot less biased than the last one on RP and RP servers. Thank you.
I don't think an RP server needs all that was listed, though. Would it be nice to have that? Yeah, it would. A lot of what was mentioned can be substituted for basic game tools used on all servers (like an ignore function) and good old imagination.
It is my belief that when roleplayers begin to focus too much upon the pixels the roleplay suffers. In my day, we could have RP weddings, RP events and the like. The guild I was a part of in Everquest (which was on a blue server because it was created before Firiona Vie and the guild didn't want to move once it was made) hosted most of our events in the arena. It was known when these events would happen but we never had issues with people interrupting because who would want to go in and interrupt an event with a huge group of ogres, trolls, and dark elves?
RP is fostered in the mind first. The nice gadgets, trinkets and such were nice but were uneccessary. I remember my EQ character, over a few years of play, only married twice. You want wedding rings? We got wedding rings. BUT they were already in game. As a quest created by ourselves the guild raided the Tower of Frozen Shadows, killed the ghostly wedding party, and took their wedding rings! It can be as easy as putting such things in a special shop but I liked that version better. We didn't need special quests from DMs. Each and every new member of the guild was given quests by guild officers and they were everything from fetch quests to exploration or socialization.
RP is about making story to me. This isn't something you always need to rely on DM interaction for if all those involved are mature. I'll take a server with RP slapped on it as all I wish for is a place where RPers new to a game immediately know where to go and thus not scatter the community to the four winds.
Sanya, you have it exactly right. And your outline for a real RP server would be very interesting to see happen some where.
I was one of those D&Ders back in the 70s (minus the costume). I play a lot of various MMOs now. But I seldom RP for the reasons you have so halariously detailed. When you do stumble across a group of those tallented RP cat-herders and imagineers (term taken without license from the Disney crowd) it truely is magical and fun. But one bad-apple spells painful drama at some point (often repeated in endless loops with endless variety).
So three cheers for your RP server ruleset.
But....
It needs some additions. Like, I want to have emote effects - a simi-transparent ring of rotating doves alternated with pulsing hearts around my head I can trigger when I find you GMing in game and ask you to marry me. Oh...and a nude patch for the honeymoon please.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the responses to this article. The author succeeded in placing the guilt by association on the entire roleplaying spectrum, simply because a few stick-in-the-mud roleperformers can't take it when someone interrupts their wedding.
I am sure that some of the items on the list are achievable and already existent in some MMO somewhere. The biggies, however, were slipped into the list in disguise because the author knew that many self-important RPers would take no objection to them:
1) Dedicated event team: Huh? Why? As soon as one minority gets dev attention, they will all want dev attention. The object is not to make more work for yourself as a developer, it's to make less. Roleplaying does that by entertaining itself, simply through application of game tools. You make the tools for the sandbox, the roleplayers will play.
2) Item creation: Huh? Why? Roleplayers should consider themselves a part of the game world and should use the same economy and crafting system that everyone else uses. If you need a hundred special hats, you should craft them - assuming the game is sandboxy enough for that to occur.
3) Community specialist approval on all names: No, completely unnecessary. In a game with a significant roleplaying population, you just created several full-time positions for no real reason at all. The better way is to simply not have names dangling in mid-air, or to make it so that /ignore makes someone completely invisible.
The people who responded and said they thought the article was good fell into a trap and helped the author drive roleplaying out of the genre. All the non-roleplayers reading this thread are going to look at the points made and the list of RP requirements, see the responses, and say... "Yup, that is way too much work for what it is worth."
Her bottom line is correct though. Dedicated roleplaying servers don't seem to be worth the hassle and frankly I've never encountered a very good roleplaying scene on any of them yet. It could just be I wasn't in the right place to see it but the good scenes I've encountered were all the product of the hard work of players, and players alone, on general purpose servers they claimed as Unofficial RP Servers. All a dev can do is offer tools and amenities and hope the right people show up to make use of them.
Elitist roleplayers, of the self-proclaimed variety, can often turn an Official RP Server (and some Unofficial ones until they simmer down - early Landroval was pretty bad in this respect), into a warzone that's got nothing to do with roleplaying and everything to do with trying to impose their sense of order on the unruly or the disrespectful by their own definition. Sometimes foolishly phrased official rules just add more heat to the fire and promise unrealistic levels of support and enforcement.
Ultimately Official RP Servers end up like every other server as disillusioned and bitter purist roleplayers move on and even the more accepting ones find themselves isolated in a community that doesn't look to each other for support, and upon the nonroleplaying community as a potential resource, but to some GMs and developers on high for solutions and anyone who isn't IC as disruptive or ignorant. It's a odd hybrid culture of dependency and elitism which hasn't seemed to serve roleplayers well.
I can say this because I'm an elitist roleplayer myself. I know what incredible dicks some of my peers can be.
However on Unofficial servers all roleplayers have to make their peace with other folks who inhabit the same space. This can be as easy as an /ignore or as involved as creating open events for roleplayers and nonroleplayers. Many of Starsider's early converts from the nonroleplaying side of the game were PvPers who got caught up in RPer organized PvP battles both on land and, more notably, in space. In fact, along with being the Unofficial RP Server for SWG, Starsider is also the #1 pilot community. Again, this comes from that initial seed of those early pioneer RPers setting roots down there and attracting a more mature crowd including flight simmers who very much enjoyed SWG's space combat model and were also roleplayers. Most simmers are only a hair away from hardcore roleplayer status anyhow. Look at the in-character after action reports and pilot diaries some of them delight in writing up.
I didn't address Sanya's list yet. I'll do that in my next post.
Always notice what you notice.
So, after years of trying to enforce the unenforceable, split hairs, and cut babies in half in order to discover the true mother, here's my own minimum feature list for an RP server:
You're good but you're not Solomon.
* Dedicated CSRs around the clock, with special training in names and roleplay conventions.
As others have noted this is an unlikely and expensive course of action. Only a title that was designed, explicitly, for roleplaying from the ground up, and seen as a real opportunity to be a part of, would even be able to attract the kind of talent you'd need on the GM staff to handle this for the, probably, modest income it would provide them. An alternative would be volunteers, a citizen's militia, out there but that could be very fertile ground for abuse and favoritism. Once there's an official in crowd versus everyone else things get ugly fast. That's one of the draws MMOs have over MUSHes for seasoned roleplay firsters. MMOs are seen as impartial. In theory, you pays your money and you have the same status as the next guy in the community at least as far as the business running it should be concerned. In reality favoritism is largely unavoidable but volunteer groups like this might be seen as institutionalizing the practice.
* No OOC channel at all. Take it to PMs.
Someone previously mentioned how well LoTRO's OOC channels worked. There were so many of them, with so many discrete functions, that nobody needed to use local (or 'say' or spatial) for OOC stuff at all. This was one of the most remarkable things about LoTRO for me when I first arrived: how blissfully quiet the local was once the OOC and regional channels were muted. In fact, it became the roleplaying channel. Only roleplayers needed to use it. Everyone else had a better channel, with a more targeted purpose and better reach, than local. So local belonged to us.
* No automatic access to zone chat channels or /yell.
For the reasons mentioned above this isn't important. Just make it easy to find the channels you want active and simple to turn the ones you want on or off. A player should have his channel status easily available, at a glance even, and modifiable.
* Dedicated community specialist to grant individual access to zone chat channels and /yell for planned events.
Again, not so much.
* Dedicated event team consisting of at least two community people and a developer.
I'd trade this for better RP friendly tools along the lines of SWG's Storyteller and 'holo' costuming system so we can really do our own thing. Some event teams are good, some aren't, but I'd trade those three folks for hundreds of players to chose from and experiences that are customized to serve particular individuals, groups and segments of a given server community instead of generic prefab fodder spread across multiple servers scattershot.
* Object creator that creates items with no stats.
Crafters can handle this. Just give them an option to name objects (as in SWG) for custom use or decoration and perhaps another to render them purely decorative or for costume purposes.
* All names, personal and guild, to be approved by hand.
That's never going to happen in any commercial MMO even my theoretical one developed by and for roleplayers. Too labor intensive. You simply have to create a world with mechanics and aesthetics that will attract roleplayers. Let them sort out their own business themselves. Some guilds or broader organizations (player cities, alliances, off-site RP forums) may come up with their own standards they enforce themselves but different groups of roleplayers will take different approaches to these things.
* Regional chat moderation tools as in IRC - in other words, the ability to mute a region at will.
Players can do this for themselves. Censorship isn't required except perhaps in, a perfect MMO for roleplayers, local chat. Even then it's much smarter and more practical to assume players can figure out who to /ignore or what channels to mute by themselves.
* In game bulletin boards and newsletters to share information.
This is a good idea. It could be incorporated into, say, a guild's information system or as an object people could put up in player business or homes. Let players create their own channels and possibly restrict membership or even charge for content. I can imagine more folks hanging out in a cantina if it's an actual source of RP information. Generally, though, folks get buy with offsite forums or guild forums to discuss things. Many spread the word of IC happenings as news releases, this is certainly the case with Starsider's offsite RP forums, and folks can react to this in the game. If that outlet were actually in the game world, though, man. That would be cool. And to restrict the information flow to a couple locations would turn those into definite hotspots for people to gather and gossip.
* A warning that must be clicked before entering stating that roleplay is subjective, that no CS tickets asking for a ruling on roleplay minutia will be answered, and that the player's only recourse is the ignore button.
You think people will read that and care about it? No, they'll either be smart enough not to bug CSRs in the first place or they'll start arguing the minutia about what roleplaying minutia means. "Define it!" Come on. We both know these folks.
* An unlimited ignore list.
Nice but not necessary. However additional fields on a friend/ignore list would be welcome. Perhaps the last time logged on so you know who you can take off ignore when it's time to clean house.
If the company can't afford to do these things? Don't claim to have a roleplay server at all. It only ends in tears. Focus instead on tools for everyone to use to contribute to the world in which they live.
Well, I'm with you on the "no official roleplaying servers" page as I've noted elsewhere for other reasons. However there are tools that roleplayers will make better use of than nonroleplayers and these aren't little things. How text communication is handled, what emotes are available (and perhaps as importantly not available - we don't need 'air guitar' or 'i'm a little teapot' by and large), can characters sit, character customization in appearance, decoratable player housing and businesses, game systems that reflect the setting and so on...
Some of these will be attractive to nonroleplayers too but they matter a great deal to us in particular.
Always notice what you notice.