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World of Warcraft: Roleplaying and WoW
Koltrane
Member UncommonPosts: 1,049
In a rather interesting piece posted at KillerBetties, Jennifer Gundlach explores roleplaying in World of Warcraft and the MMO genre at large. Although coming from a woman and posted to a woman's gaming site, the piece echoes the feelings of roleplayers of both sexes.
| Don't get me wrong; WoW is a great "game". But if you want to truly immerse yourself in the game world around you, you're going to have to make a lot of excuses in order to make it work with the universe as the developers have envisioned it. And while the graphical visions in the world are stunning (and believe me they are; Blizzard Entertainment won a gamut of awards for their graphics last year), the beauty and dynamic feel to the world is simply crushed when you start looking at it from a role-playing perspective. |
The article is an interesting read and poses some questions that developers should at least be thinking about. To read it in full, visit this link.
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Old timer.
Comments
hmmmmm - I wasn't impressed by the article at all. The author may have a good point if you are looking at things from a role-playing perspective only. But I simply cannot relate because I am having such a good time playing the game...
I just get generally disappointed with viewpoints that don't take into account the technical marvels that we encounter every day. The effort, vision, technology, effort, and creativity to come up with a work like WOW (or any other quality title for that matter) simply can't be ignored. I really believe that these titles should be appreciated for what they are, instead of drilling some kind of 'missed expectation' into the situation.
We still live in a world where a significant portion of the population hasn't even used a telephone. And here we can entertain ourselves with brilliant works of technology - where virtual worlds are rendered by means of packets and internet transmissions - and still there is something to complain about! I don't understand this.
If WOW is disappointing from a role-playing perspective, then I believe a false set of expectations has been brought to the table. I don't think Blizzard should be held under the microscope for this. WOW is what it is. My suggestion is for the author to move on and find a better venue for their game playing desires.
First I want to say I do agree with just about all the points made, but at the same time it is a game and it is a MMO... To hav one time content would be great for RP'rs, but what about the guy who buys the game and playes it a week later? What part of the story line are they missing? If there were thousands of story arc's this writer would yet complain again and more because the stories don't mix and she doesn't have the ability to cross story arcs', which would again ruin someone elses gaming fun.
I have noticed with RP'rs they are very selfish people, this comes from the natue of being a role player. It is the wanting to do everything, also knowing that no one else can do it once done. which is impossible for an mmo. They don't think that in 6 months time more people will enter the game and find WoW to be a new world. It only takes a few weeks for someone to max out their lvl and do everything in the game. What then is left for new players?
My advice to her is, go back to AD&D where you can do anything you want. It will never happen in a MMO.
Keep moving.
As much as I hate WoW with a passion, on this I will defend them.
The most popular MMORPG will seriously have troubles to promote roleplaying. Think of all the customers they get, many who their closest experience of a roleplaying game was Starcraft or Call of Duty.
Of course we can complain for more roleplaying, but all in all, on this topic, I think WoW is doing fine, they have roleplaying servers and the NPCs are encouraging roleplaying and so does the nice emotes of the characters.
If anyone want to blast WoW, I will be more then happy to comply, but not on this topic.
After outfitting pigs with wings, you try to teach them to fly, but it does take time and the result is often not exactly what you have in mind. 
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Some very nice responsese here, and thanks for the link!
While I will agree that Blizzard has done a lot of things right on the role-playing front, I wanted to write about the things that I found they could have done -better- on--and not just to bash WoW as a game (as I'm still playing it), but rather to focus the discussion on what makes and breaks immersion in a game for role-players and how can designers and developers of future games (or perhaps in this one) work to make it better.
Sure, I'll agree the game is fun, but in six months from now, when I've got some character or other maxed out, I've done all the quests, I know most of the answers, ...that fun will come to an end from just the gameplay. They're working on a PvP element now, and I'll be looking to see how that turns out for the game--especially from a role-player's perspective.
I -do- think there is more that can be done to bring role-playing and continuity into a game, and I do think that designers and developers should think about how better to do that. These are not just unimportant little things--they're details. And details are important in anything.
Thanks again for the responses!
-- Jenni --
The roleplaying aspects discussed are things that I do think everyone would enjoy seeing changed/added to any game - roleplayer, casualgamer and powergamer alike. I agree that watching a great city fall to the enemy should have a little more to it than waiting for that "NPC" to "respawn". But I honestly think that to expect any game developer to play GM (AD&D style) to hundreds of thousands of player is unrealistic.
A key example - things that actually die. Developers spend years putting together content - and in alot of cases it only takes players a fraction of the time to play through it all. So when player Xxxaragornxxx scales dreadmist peak and slays the dragon - all that development work is gone. It works great for normal RPGs but in an MMORPG the content is for everyone to enjoy. A meeting in the middle by making content only die per player still doesn't quite work. The next day Xxxlegolasxxx invites Xxxaragornxxx to slay the beast but he can't because he did that yesterday - not only even more cheesy, but it seperates people from a fun MMO experience - being able to play with others. Games are no different from books or movies (except they are far more entertaining and maintain some diginity of creativity of course) - if you read a book twice or watch a movie a dozen times it's not because the book is repedative or the movie is caught in a loop. It's because you're choosing to relive the experience!
Another big point in the article talks about death and games general lack of real consequences - this rubs me the wrong way a little bit. I am not a true roleplayer by any means but it is something I enjoy greatly when appropriate! Back to the good ol' days of AD&D - the great part about it was that all AD&D did was set a standard by which everyone rolled the dice. The rest was up to you! The great thing was that it knew no bounds and to talk about your actions causing real consequences or action by others seems to defeat the purpose. The key to roleplaying is playing with others that enjoy the same playstyle you do and not expecting the game to incorporate YOUR ruleset on everyone else. I know people who believe in ressurection and I know people who believe in true death - roleplayers who can't agree on how to roleplay because there is no one true way. Personally I like both. I'm sure there are people out there who would enjoy a game where you get a real in-game job doing menial tasks to make a living - but if you happen to not be able to "log into the game" and are late for work you'd lose your in-game job - people who would also get upset because people who don't want to or can't keep a job can go out and kill things that magically "drop loot" regularly. I like games that let me get away from reality and get into things that don't make sense - purple dragons and such.
I guess my point here is that you can't expect someone to make a game work exactly the way you want it to work. - you have to do it yourself. Some things are too extreme for some people and some things are too loose for others. The one hope for good true mmo roleplaying can return with a modern run of MMORPGS where players can host a server and institute their own rulesets and build a server for people who enjoy playing in that particular fashion - where a host can play GM and cater to that clique of roleplayers.
I find WoW to be the best MMO roleplaying games I've played (though I have only played less than a dozen MMORPGS) - not because it caters directly to roleplayers but because it has very few bounds and a ton of playstyle freedom compared to other MMOs. I am currently participating in newly formed guild of paladins named for and themed to one day take back the old kingdom of Lordaeron from the evil Undead. Of course we can never truly take back the kingdom ourselves with our characters (those blasted Undead keep "respawning") but we can have fun pretending it's really true! Maybe our next guild will be of Undead vowing to strike back at those self-righteous paladins! USE YOUR IMAGINATION!
In a game made for everyone to enjoy, such as WoW has always been, it doesn't make sense to make big sacrifices to gameplay, freedom and playtime to make it feel slighty more real for a few.
~It's taffy.
Sounds like a troll to me.
Almost every single argument can be applied to every other mmorpg out there.
Probably just doesn't like WoW.
Jenni, Glad to see you're a member here. I think you bring up some interesting ideas and many roleplayers would agreed with a lot of what you have to say, if not all of it. I play WoW on a PvP server and while it can be a hassle at times, especially when a group of 50+ characters camp out Tarren Mill and gank everyone that flies in, for example, the element it adds keeps the game fresh and interesting.
PvP is not for everyone, but it does add a spontaneous and unpredictable element to the rote of kill - quest - kill - quest.
Great piece! My hat's off to you.
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Old timer.
This is always going to be an on-going discussion among players and game designers both.
What is 'real' in a game context? Especially a fantasy based game which by its very nature transends reality. Come to that, what defines role-play?
"you're going to have to make a lot of excuses", isn't that always so? Surely in any media the level of 'conection' or imersion is set by the level to which we can suspend disbelief. Personnaly I have always found the Warcraft universe a little simplistic to capture my full role-playing attention. But that was just as true of Diablo 2, and I happily played that online for years (and think how limited the 'world-scape' of that was!)
Generally role-playing is what role-playing does. Input = return. I have already noticed changes in the interactions taking place in WoW (this is observation, it's my son whose playing this one), and most of them seem to be leading to PCs creating their own conception of the 'story' that is unfolding for them. Rather than being hand-held through a didactic dialog hard coded into the game.
As example, I watched my boy being bullied by a high level Tauran for 'bumping' his pet. Sensibly he hid, invisible, while being taunted and threatened. He also called on any other dark elves to assist! They did, setting an invisible trap for the Tauran which my lad led him into... naturally he got torn apart. In that moment EVERYONE there was role-playing. I know my son wouldn't do this in 'reality' (tho' he might want to!!). The racial conection the Dark Elves felt, and the racial aggresion the Tauran felt, were aspects of immersive role-play.
What I'm trying to say is it's not all about story, we make our own if the gaming system is flexible enough to allow it. Aren't all RPGers really looking for the 'game-with-no-end'? Now I personnally think WoW is quite far from that (and I stress that's just for me) but I'm not sure that arguments based on 'sence of reality' or 'storyline' are all that valid in the MMO context. Maybe so in solo RPG to a point, but that also depends on the individual. Some folk just need to have a task, something obvious to do, but as far as character development and role-playing go, I would say freedom of choice is the vital ingredient. Freedom to be who you want and make your own story. In an MMO much of that depends on your interactions with the other PCs, not on belief in the over-all story structure. Those who create, and refuse to deviate from, a role - are role-playing.
"If I knew then what I know now... I'ld probably do the same stupid thing
"